When creators f<ck with how we experience time and space, great fictions emerge: Clive Barker's Imajica, Andrei Tarkovsky's sci-fi classic Solaris, and Godard's Alphaville. But what happens to artists when the flow of time gets f^cked up IRL? When an hour stretches into eternity, and the voices in your head begin to echo through empty rooms?

Formed in 1984, Dinosaur Jr carved a singular path through the latter half of the 1980s, issuing three highly influential albums in the process before finding a home with Sire Records, who issued a run of four excellent albums as the alternative American rock scene the band had long been part of exploded, dominate and then retreated during the 1990s.

Marking 40 years of The Jesus And Mary Chain, Glasgow Eyes was recorded at Mogwai’s Castle of Doom studio in Glasgow, where Jim and William continued the creative process that resulted in their previous album, 2017’s Damage and Joy, becoming their highest charting album in over twenty years. What emerged is a record that finds one of the UK’s most influential groups embracing a productive second chapter, their maelstrom of melody, feedback and controlled chaos now informed more audibly by their love for Suicide and Kraftwerk and a fresh appreciation of the less disciplined attitudes found in jazz.

Opened up by the delirious alchemy of contemporary pop music, Sean O’Hagan leaps back into life with High Llamas, with a set of killer tunes reflecting on dimensional levels how definitions change over time. Arranged by Sean and produced with mix collaborator Fryars to engage the eardrums in non-stop new possibilities, Hey Panda radiates optimism inspired by the joys and sorrows felt in former lifetimes and the diverse conundrums of today alike.

THIS MONTH’S COVERMOUNT CD is Jet Powered Pop: 15 tracks of Macca-adjacent powerpop excitement, featuring The dB's, XTC, Brendon Benson, The Lemon Twigs, Teenage Fanclub, Nada Surf and more!

Recorded at April Base studio and co-produced by Bon Iver drummer and acclaimed solo artist S. Carey, Pieta Brown’s lush new album, Freeway, is a delicate yet forceful reckoning with change that’s marked by the push and pull of unabashed intimacy and a slow-burning intensity. Brown cut the album with an all-star band that included Carey, bassist Mike Lewis (Bon Iver), and guitarist Jeremy Yivisaker (Andrew Bird), and the resulting recordings reflect the foursome’s seemingly telepathic bond, a deeply organic chemistry fueled by a shared passion for emotional exploration and sonic discovery. Released September 20, 2019 on Righteous Babe Records, Freeway is Brown’s most experimental collection to date, but it’s also her most confident and direct, an honest accounting of bittersweet endings and hopeful beginnings, of painful loss and traces of liberation in the aftermath, all captured here with a raw spontaneity and fierce self-assurance.

THIS MONTH’S COVERMOUNT CD is The North Will Rise Again: 15 killer tracks from Manchester and environs. Stars The Fall, James, Black Grape, Magazine, A Certain Ratio, The Durutti Column, A Guy Called Gerald and more.

An anthology boxset that compiles all five volumes of the Stereolab Switched On series: 94 non-album tracks and sought after deep cuts by the groop. Includes the original Switched On compilation LP released in 1992, 1995's Refried Ectoplasm [Switched On Volume 2], 1998’s Aluminum Tunes [Switched On Volume 3], 2021’s Electrically Possessed [Switched On Volume 4], and 2022’s Pulse Of The Early Brain [Switched On Volume 5]. All the tracks have been remastered from the original tapes in recent years, personally overseen by Tim Gane of the band at Calyx in Berlin.

The Paradise Edition added a second CD for a total of 23 tracks. Even after selling nearly three million copies of her debut album worldwide, Lana Del Rey still faced a challenge during 2012: namely, proving to critics and fans that Born to Die wasn't a fluke. In that spirit, she released Paradise, a mini-album close to Christmas, one that finds her copying nearly wholesale the look and feel of her vampish Born to Die personality. The sound is also very familiar. Strings move at a glacial pace, drums crash like waves in slow motion, and most of the additional textures in these songs (usually electric guitar or piano) are cinematic in their sound and references. Del Rey is in perfect control of her voice, much more assured than she was even one year ago, and frequently capable of astonishing her listeners with a very convincing act, even while playing nearly the same character in each song.

It was in December 2022 that The Staves celebrated the 10th anniversary of their debut album Dead and Born and Grown - a strange and beautiful period in the lives of sisters and band members Jessica, Camilla and Emily Staveley-Taylor, making their fourth album All Now with the same organic vulnerability as that first record: except now everything was different, and they kind of were too.

Since forming in 2008, Chicano Batman have followed their own visionary impulses to tremendous heights—a journey that began at local dive bars and recently saw them co-headlining the legendary Hollywood Bowl. In the making of Notebook Fantasy, Chicano Batman worked with producer John Congleton (Erykah Badu, Death Cab For Cutie, St. Vincent) to double down on their hyper-creative tendencies, discovering new dimensions of their prismatic music while infusing the lyrics with an unflinching honesty.

Ed Harcourt releases his new album, El Magnifico via own imprint, Deathless Recordings. The self-produced album was recorded at his own Wolf Cabin studios with finishing touches made with assistance from producer Dave Izumi Lynch at Eastbourne’s Echo Zoo Studio.

When Colin MacIntyre's debut Mull Historical Society single Barcode Bypass (Rough Trade) was named NME's Debut Single of the Year in 2000, and it then received it's first daytime airplay (all 7 minutes of it) on Radio 1 - Jo Whiley's show, it was clear a truly original song-writing talent had emerged as if fully formed - and from the unlikely Atlantic outpost of the isle of Mull, in the Scottish Hebrides (population of 2,500 people, 28,234 sheep).

OUR FREE CD! THE SOUND OF 2020: 15 fantastic tracks from the cream of the year’s releases, including songs by Jason Isbell, Courtney Marie Andrews, Jarv Is, Stephen Malkmus, Phoebe Bridgers, Laura Marling, Fontaines DC, Thundercat, Kevin Morby, Brigid Mae Power and more.

THIS MONTH’S COVERMOUNT CD compiles the best new music around right now, with 15 tracks from Yard Act, Curtis Harding, Anaïs Mitchell, Arooj Aftab, Working Men's Club, Binker & Moses, Imarhan, Billy Strings and more.