AMY MILLAN

Amy Millan sings, plays and writes in Stars and Broken Social Scene. For three years and over three studios, when not touring the world she wrote and recorded songs outside of her role within a band setting. Toronto's weekly paper Now Magazine voted Amy to "Toronto's Best Female Singer". "In terms of sheer vocal ability, Amy Millans remarkable voice steals the award; a note-perfect mezzosoprano that flutters between girlishly flirtatious and huskily lonesome melancholy."

APOSTLE OF HUSTLE

'National Anthem of Nowhere’ is for everyone who feels that they have no voice or can’t be heard. They hear this title and something stirs inside them. Then they hear this song and they feel that they “know” it. They meet strangers in nowhere places and will never forget those meetings. They wander out into the suburban, in-between zones and there they are welcomed

ARCADE FIRE

The band worked and played and worked, and as Christmas 2006 approached the recording was finished. NEON BIBLE was full of both half-assed punk rock mistakes and meticulously orchestrated woodwinds. Processed strings and mandolin. Quiet rumbles and loud rumbles. But mostly just eleven songs that the band thinks are really good. And that might be of some public interest. So, on with 2007.

BLACK MOUNTAIN

With the self titled debut album of Canadian art collective Black Mountain, City Slang delivers one of the most extraordinary, complex and adorable records in 2005.

BLACKMAIL

BLACKMAIL found each other at the end of 1993 at a time when it still made sense for musicians to advertise for members in the scene’s magazines. In 1997 their self-titled debut album was released on a local label and by February 1999 the band had released the follw-up”Science Fiction”. Both records were suitably celebrated, there were non-stop tours throughout the country and guess what happened? A major label pulled out its chequebook. ...

BROKEN SOCIAL SCENE

Founded ten years ago by Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning, Broken Social Scene very quickly established themselves as one of the most vital voices in independent music.

CALEXICO

Yes, you heard right! The new album is finished! Carried To Dust follows up to Calexico's masterpiece Garden Ruin.

CARIBOU

If you think you know Caribou, think again. Dan Snaith’s new album, Swim is the sound of the musical glass ceiling being blown away.

CORTNEY TIDWELL

CORTNEY TIDWELL’s debut full length DON’T LET STARS KEEP US TANGLED UP came out of nowhere: its ravishing guitar pyrotechnics, brittle electronic excursions, intimate torch songs and a duet with Lambchop’s Kurt Wagner served as context for TIDWELL’s spectacular vocals and ensured critics adored the record.

DEAR READER

“I love it here,” Cheri MacNeil says of Johannesburg, South Africa, where she and musical partner Darryl Torr formed Dear Reader some four years ago. “And I hate it here. A lot of the time I feel really alienated. I feel like I don’t belong. But neither do I belong in Scotland or England or the Netherlands, where my ancestors come from. This is my home.”

GET WELL SOON

Get Well Soon is the solo project of Konstantin Gropper. Vexations is his second album, the follow up to 2007’s, Rest Now, Weary Head! Vexations marks another leap forward for Gropper, the classically trained singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist from Berlin, for it is a truly beautiful work, one that sparks the imagination with its poetic depth, classical montages and haunting panoramic mood mosaics.

GOLDRUSH

Goldrush have spent the past few years dipping in and out of the Oxford, England countryside: building a studio, starting a record label, running a festival and in between touring the world. Along with the small matter of writing a set of songs with inspiration far from the current climate: Legends like Neil Young, Nick Drake and The Band, and more recent American innovators like Grandaddy and Mercury Rev.

HEALTH

„LA’s premier ear-splitters: the purveyors of strangely dancable grind-core...
The Future of Noise!“ (NME)
„HEALTH’s debut is a brilliant, brutal, fine-tuned dollop of hardcore noise....
The band also have a great nose for drama... Seriously impressive“ (Uncut)

HERMAN DUNE

On the new album Next Year In Zion, songwriter and vocalist David-Ivar Herman Dune and drummer Neman Herman Dune deliver a dozen charming and intricately constructed pop songs. Next Year In Zion is the Parisian duo’s debut long-player for the City Slang Label. It is the sound of Herman Dune, all grown up.

JASON COLLETT

Most singer/songwriters are lonely souls with only a stool, an acoustic guitar and a heart-worn sleeve. Not Jason Collett. Oh sure, the Broken Social Scene guitarist has his instrument and a stack of intimate tales to tell—but his new solo album, Idols of Exile, sounds more like a house party.

JUSTINE ELECTRA

Justine Electra stands near the oven heater, alert and feline, in her Australian army pants and faux-fur coat. At times a wide-eyed young girl, at others a coarse-mouthed poet, this girl's presence is undeniable. Her sweet sounding folk style is belied by an undertow of someone suspended between nostalgia for the past, and uncertainty before a glimmering future. Hers are songs of hope shot through with darkness, bright love serenades drawing shadows behind them. Justine Electra's blue-toned voice is an instrument of extraordinary versatility and power: it sings, drawls, lures and drowns the listener in a world of glistening perfection where the delicious and the dangerous are never far apart.

KEVIN DREW

This is the first album in the Broken Social Scene series. And this is only the beginning...

KURT WAGNER

The leader of the mighty Lambchop is all by himself sometimes...

LACKTHEREOF

„Lack thereof“ means something mentioned before is missing. And Lackthereof is the artist name of Danny Seim, the drumming giant of Menomena.

LAMBCHOP

From the front, the house in the quiet Nashville suburb where Kurt Wagner has lived the last thirteen years looks the same now as it did when he first moved there. The pillared porch still faces out over a patchy lawn to a small industrial warehouse on the other side of the road. The chair in which Kurt has composed so many of his songs stands on the left, an ashtray overflowing with butts nearby.

MALAJUBE

Malajube is a Canadian pop-rock quintet that quietly impressed hungry listeners with their debut record Le Compte Complet in 2004, has drawn a wide amount of praise for their second album Trompe-l’Oeil, springing out of the already artistically rich local music scene, with their unique and original sound and now impress with their third record "Labyrinthes".

MENOMENA

"Friend and Foe" shines Northwest indie
songcraft through a Chicago post-rock lens, illuminating the quiet recesses with an unpredictable,
experimental light.

NADA SURF

Having survived and thrived, Nada Surf indeed has a lot to feel lucky about. After listening to this new album, though, it becomes clear that we are really the fortunate ones.

O'DEATH

New York outfit O’Death’s third LP, Broken Hymns, Limbs and Skin, feels like a giddy junkyard hoedown, from the panicked fiddle screeches of opener “Low Tide” to the celebratory gallop of closer “Lean-To.” At times it sounds morose or contemplative, but underneath the melancholy is a gospel fervor—bashed from paint buckets, banjos, guitars and anything else in kicking distance—that defines their sound.

PANTHERS

They are probably the most untypical New York band ever and at the same time they embody the spirit of this city more than any of the westcoast cokeheads that moved there. They are furious libertines, who fight for freedom of speech and thought ... and they are the first band in years that coat the words "I disagree" in thick layers of heavy riffage, the biggest wall of sound since God helped out with the horns of Jericho.

PINK MOUNTAINTOPS

Pink Mountaintops is Stephen Mcbean (and also many of his friends when the full band is assembled to play live). Mcbean has been in numerous groups over the last two decades. Most recently, his psych-tinged maximal rock group Black Mountain captured a great amount of critical acclaim with their debut record.

PORT O`BRIEN

May we (for once) quote Billboard Magazine. Usually not the bible of frenetically played folk rock:
"Bay Area five-piece Port O'Brien has already shared stages with Bright Eyes and Modest Mouse without having a full-length to its name. That'll change this summer when the band will release its first record, "All We Could Do Was Sing," a collection of folk-tinged songs loosely involving the sea. But sea shanties these ain't, mate. Port O'Brien crafts beautiful, melodic tunes that utilize string instruments to their fullest. And the group is not afraid to rock out: "Pigeonhold" has it grinding down on guitars and "I Woke Up Today" revels in an Arcade Fire-style energy."

RADIO 4

"Radio 4 evoke the Clash, Wire, Les Savy Fav and neo-new wave, jamming epileptic rhythms with chunks of white noise to get a restlessly eclectic sound." ALTERNATIVE PRESS

ROYAL BANGS

Royal Bangs are a five-piece rock band from Knoxville, Tennessee. We Breed Champions is the band's first full-length offering on Audio Eagle Records. Angular, dueling guitar melodies dance around manic, start-stop rhythms and are crowned by the earnest, pushed-to-the-breaking-point vocals of frontman Ryan Schaeffer. Or whatever. They have been compared to Modest Mouse, TV on the Radio, Architecture in Helsinki, etc, etc.

SCHNEIDER TM

Schneider TM is really Dirk Dresselhaus. The name stems from a party joke that you just wouldn't understand. His first album MOIST is one of the most influential German Electronic records of the last decade. He has toured the US with Les Savy Fav & the Faint, his Smiths cover "The Light 3000" even turned my grandmother onto Electronica, he's workaholic, a visionary, a genius and a pretty normal guy that happens to come by your house to play you his new songs on the kitchen stereo.

SONGS FOR THE YOUNG AT HEART

“Songs for the Young At Heart” is an enchanting side project bought to you by Dave Boulter and Stuart Staples of the Tindersticks. Inspired by memories from their childhood of music from the radio, school room and television, “Songs for the Young at Heart” features the sunny, simple, dark and sad songs from the halcyon days of school holidays and endless summer afternoons...

SOPHIA

Sophia is the band of Robin Proper-Sheppard, who is an extremely gifted and unique songwriter, a master at crafting mournful, intimate songs. He first made a name for himself with the cult band The God Machine, and later with SOPHIA, which has released three full length studio albums and one live album.

STARS

After spending two years touring the world in support of the internationally acclaimed, gold selling album Set Yourself On Fire, Stars set to work writing and recording their fourth studio album. In Our Bedroom After The War was recorded at the Warehouse Studios in Vancouver, BC and was mixed by Joe Chiccarelli (Morrissey, The Shins, The White Stripes).

THE ALBUM LEAF

Jimmy LaValle is a classically-trained and prolific pianist and musician, whose ambitious projects have involved San Diego’s seminal ambient piano-rock outfit Tristeza, the noise punk of The Locust, the beat-driven GoGoGo Airheart and the gloomy, brooding epic-core outfit Black Heart Procession.

THE JAI-ALAI SAVANT

Chicago-by-way-of-Philly trio THE JAI-ALAI SAVANT (pronounced hi-a-lie- sa-vant) have been active since 2002. Their list of influences are vast and their sound eclectic, but it's their reggae-slanted post-punk roots that take the foreground in the most recent music of the band. Their genre-bending pop compositions coupled with an obvious love of bass culture have drawn comparisons to everyone from the Clash to The Police, Trench mouth and Fugazi. Groove-oriented and accessible yet still engaging and challenging to the idea of what punk-derivative music should sound like is what makes THE JAI-ALAI SAVANT a breath of fresh air in an otherwise stale and hype-driven world of independent rock music.

THE MOST SERENE REPUBLIC

City Slang has a new best friend: They're called arts&crafts and you might already know them, cause of former releases by Broken Social Scene and Stars. In January 2006 a&c opened a European office in Berlin with City Slang. So you have to check the first release - THE MOST SERENE REPUBLIC:

THE NOTWIST

The Notwist emerged from their famed Weilheim roots almost 20 years ago. Back in 1989 their sound was fuelled by a visceral sonic aesthetic more readily associated with hardcore Metal than with the musically diverse, widescreen productions that made their 2002 album “Neon Golden” their biggest commercial and critical success to date.

TO ROCOCO ROT

Their stated aim has always been the transfer of electronic music from the club to everyday life, in which music in its fleeting, non tangible form becomes something more concrete. It's an almost impressionistic style, one in which slight traces are the very heart of the sound. And here it works better than ever before to create a blueprint for a new music, neither abstract nor heavy handed, neither ambient or overbearing. TO ROCOCO ROT's music is gentle, dreamlike, graceful, utterly engaging and endlessly imaginative, and after six years influencing and inspiring the likes of Leftfield and Bjork it is ready to penetrate a world as widescreen as its intentions.

TOY FIGHT

The Paris based act never expected to make a second album, but you’ll be glad they did. Their feel-good charm and ramshackle sophistication, coupled with their enigmatic lyrical approach and love of studio experimentation, make them one of the most exciting and unconventional acts to have emerged from France in many a year.

VARIOUS ARTISTS

„Wim Wenders' latest film, the thriller "Palermo Shooting," is generating more excitement than anything the 62-year-old German auteur has made since 1999's "Buena Vista Social Club."

VIC CHESNUTT

more info coming soon....

YO LA TENGO

YO LA TENGO sound like no other band. This is not because they're contrarians, but because they're artists.