Jono McCleery - There Is
(CD/Digital) Counter Records COUNTCD41/COUNTDNL41, 2011-09-05

At last, after a long and careful gestation, Jono McCleery is ready to release his first album with Counter Records, There Is. Jamie Woon recently described him in The Observer as "a really fantastic… singer-songwriter", but There Is proves there's much more to him than that. McCleery has taken his wonderful, timeless voice and the sheer skill of his songwriting and, with producer Fybe's talent for electronics, and Matt Kelly's arrangements, made a startlingly beautiful and contemporary record. Jono McCleery completed his first album, Darkest Light, in 2008. The record was self-produced and funded by fans, including folk-star Vashti Bunyan and BBC radio DJs Tom Robinson and Fiona Talkington. Jono has toured with the likes of Gil Scott Heron, Jamie Woon, Bonobo, Fink, Jose Gonzales, Little Dragon and the Portico Quartet and cites his main influences as John Coltrane, Nick Drake, Bill Withers, Jeff Buckley, John Martyn and Nina Simone. With There Is he has made a record of real soul and subtlety, one which fully showcases his wonderful voice but also works in its own right as a scintillating collection of music.

Pop Levi - Motorcycle 666 / Rock Solid
(Digital Single) Counter Records COUNTDNL037, 2011-07-04

Recently anointed by NME as a true cult hero, injecting some much needed fun into the boring world of rock, the one and only Pop Levi returns with a new single, a new band and a whole new life. Having scrapped release plans for his now-much-bootlegged Smack Musick album, Pop Levi returns from outer/inner space with this crazed fuzz-fest of a Double A-side Single. Once again based in the UK after a long sojourn in California, Pop continues to make outlandish, Marc Bolan-influenced blues, stringing sexual innuendo and, more often, outtuendo togther like a man counting his girl's anal beads (she has a lot). Recorded in a mountain-top converted barn in Norway, with accompanying video directed by William Overby, Motorcycle 666 is "about a girl that's a bike that's had her soul stolen by Lucifer". Frrrreaky. Rock Solid, already featured as a Track Of The Week in NME, was recorded at Pop's infamous White Arc studio in Los Angeles. Classic hand-clapped sex'n'rock'n'roll re-booted for the 21st century, the song features Levi's most outrageous vocal performance to date. Killer-lightning guitars, spastic bass and the most psychedelic bridge since Prince ate the spirit of Hendrix. Both ahead of his time and out of time, Pop Levi is ready to finally reap the plaudits for his unique, twisted rock vision.

Jono McCleery - Wonderful Life / Garden
(Digital single) Counter Records COUNTDNL040, 2011-06-27

After his Tomorrow single released on Ninja Tune last summer, Jono McCleery returns with Wonderful Life, a beautiful, stately cover of the 80s Black classic. At the hands of McCleery and his producer Fybe, the whole tune is stretched out into an aching lament which ends up not a million miles from the work of James Blake, a tune where the space between notes is as important as the notes themselves. Jono McCleery completed his first album, Darkest Light, in 2008. The record was self-produced and funded by fans, including folk-star Vashti Bunyan and BBC radio DJs Tom Robinson and Fiona Talkington. His new album There Is is scheduled to be released first week in September.

The Death Set - Can You Seen Straight
(Digital Single) Counter Records COUNTDNL043, 2011-06-13

The Death Set return with the latest single from their album Michel Poiccard, Can You Seen Straight , a perfect slice of pop infused punk with a distinctly classic punk feel to it. Nadastrom lead out the remixes. Signed to Switch's Dubsided label and at the forefront of the Moombahton movement, Dave Nada and Matt Nordstrom take the 80s aesthetic in a different direction, reimagining the original as epic Moombahton electro-pop. In demand NYC remixers Designer Drugs take They Come To Get Us and make it sound like a girl group getting off with the Prodigy. Nadus & Steel take the same tune and turn it into crisp trouble-funk New Jersey based Club. The band themselves round out the package with both an extended club version (surely one of the band's longest tracks ever, weighing in at over 5 minutes!) and the original lo-fi punk version.

Spokes - 3,4,5
(Download) Counter Records COUNTDNL042, 2011-04-18

After the critical success of Everyone I Ever Met, their debut album for Counter Records, Spokes return with latest single. 3 4 5, the kind of burst of euphoric "choral indie" (Clash) that had Q proclaim that "Spokes seem destined to make waves". A building, emotional epic that began life as an "acoustic shanty", it showcases once again the unique aesthetic and wide-eyed seriousness that make Spokes stand out so far from a drab crowd. There's even a director's cut of the tune, giving full rein to the band's emotional playing and weighing in at almost seven minutes! Remixing duties are kicked off by Grasscut, who give the beat a bit of electronic snap while Marcus Odair cuts loose in Jaco Pastorius mode on the bass. Liverpool's Capac give the melody more space, cloaking it in melancholy and slatherings of sub-bass. Hiatus takes the bucolic earthiness of the original and transplanting it to dark, damp city streets.

The Death Set - We Are Going Anywhere Man
(Download) Counter Records COUNTDNL039, 2011-04-04

The Death Set return with yet another burst of their unique style of art punk from their sophomore album, produced by the one and only XXXchange, a fellow Baltimore resident relocated to Brooklyn. As Johnny Siera puts it, the tune is "just about persevering. A lot of what the year was about". The latter is a reference to the sad death of fellow bandmate and Death Set founder Beau Velasco, who is memorialised on second tune I Miss You Beau Velasco. "This song is sad," Johnny explains, "as the first verse and chorus were written when Beau was going into rehab and we were all confident he was going to be OK. The second verse was written after he passed." The package is rounded out by a cover of the Cure's classic Grinding Halt, one minute thirty three seconds of Krazy Krayon madness chosen after hearing the record again on the brink of consciousness in a girl's apartment. "I decided to cover it while throwing up." Welcome once again to the world of the motherfucking Death Set - holding nothing back…

The Death Set - Michel Poiccard
(CD/Download) Counter Records COUNTCD036/COUNTDNL036, 2011-02-28

The Death Set's new album, Michel Poiccard, comes prefigured by tragedy. For their first record Worldwide, the core of the group had been the two Aussie ex-pats who moved together to Baltimore in the early noughties - Beau Velasco and Johnny Siera. Just as the pair were about to embark on writing a new album together, Velasco, who had struggled with drug addiction on and off throughout his life, died of an overdose. The band were shattered, so much so that Johnny still finds it almost impossible to talk about. It wouldn't have been surprising if the group had decided to call it a day. Instead, Johnny Siera, with long time band members Daniel Walker and Jahphet Landis decided to make the record a celebration of Velasco's life. Relocating to Brooklyn and enlisting long time friend and Baltimore associate XXXchange (Spank Rock, Kele, The Kills) to man the desk, they created Michel Poiccard, an album which loses none of the charm of their previous “punk spazz" work but adds considerable depth, both in terms of the punch and bottom end that XXXchange brings to the table, and in terms of a sense of desperate loss or longing, which permeates everything on the record and reaches a considerable pinnacle on “I Miss You Beau Velasco" and the closer “Is It The End Again?"...

Spokes - Everyone I Ever Met
(CD/Download) Counter Records COUNTCD033/COUNTDNL033, 2011-01-17

Euphoric, heartfelt and utterly beautiful, Spokes present Everyone I Ever Met, their first album for Counter Records. Effortlessly blending together elements of shoegaze, folk, post-rock and much more, its bittersweet joyfulness will purge your system of cynicism for weeks. This is an album that moves from the chamber shoegaze pop of title track Everyone I Ever Met, through heartfelt acoustic folk on Sun It Never Comes, slowly building piano balladry (Give It Up To The Night), spinning revellry on Torn Up In Praise, rural-psych in Happy Needs Colour and beautifully poised pop on closer When I Was A Daisy, When I Was A Tree. More than anything else, what strikes you listening to Spokes is their complete sincerity, their lack of any sideways glance at what their contemporaries are doing. They make beautiful, sad, celebratory, delirious, worshipful music because that’s how they feel and, in doing so, that’s how they make you feel, too.

The Death Set - Slap Slap Slap Pound Up Down Snap
(Download) Counter Records COUNTDNL035, 2011-01-10

The Death Set return with the first single from their new album, Michel Poiccard. The record is prefigured by tragedy, founder member and co-writer Beau Velasco having died early in the recording and writing process. You wouldn't necessarily know it to hear the first single, though. Slap Slap Slap Pound Up Down Snap is a blast of pure energy, producer XXXchange (Spank Rock, Kele Okereke) playing the Rick Rubin role to the Death Set's early Beasties screaming rap-yelp, expanding the beats and hardening the guitar lines until the whole thing snaps. Brutal, funny and undeniably exciting, it is, Johnny Siera explains, about "the handshake that all our friends do here in Brooklyn. Fun lil handshake. You'll get the idea when you see the instructional video we're making." Exclusive track Been Too Long sounds like the soundtrack to Pretty In Pink being vandalised by teen speed freaks, while the O.G Version of viral sensation Yo David Chase! You P.O.V. Shot Me In The Head ditches the slinky Diplo-funk of the original for a more traditional punk workout. Short, sharp and motherfucking loud, the Death Set are back.

The Heavy - How You Like Me Now? EP
(CD/10"/Download) Counter Records COUNTCD038/COUNT038/COUNTDNL038, 2009-11-29

The Heavy will be releasing the new How You Like Me Now? EP digitally on October 19th via Counter /+1 Records, with vinyl and CD's available on their current fall tour dates. It includes two previously unreleased songs, as well as new versions of some of their most popular songs, including the smash hit title track that features the Dap-Kings Horns (who were recent tour mates when the band opened for Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings earlier this year). The Heavy recently proved that there is indeed no rest for the weary when they announced that they would return to North America in October and November for another mind-blowing run of shows, a handful of which are with Mayer Hawthorne (Stones Throw), and the rest which they will be headlining themselves. The tour is now underway, including shows at The Bowery Ballroom and The Music Hall of Williamsburg the past two nights.

That Kind Of Man (1.1) | Download MP3