Back catalogue: Rock (All)

Review: The Tele Music catalogue follows a long tradition of library music mores; stock patterned album art and themed series included. Originally from 1973, Rhythmiques functions as one of the label's most iconic releases. Written entirely in collaboration between French composer and percussionist Pierre Dahan and synthesist Mat Camison, it features tense funk, blunted jazz and heavy breaks all the way. It is considered the rightful sequel to Continental Pop Sound, and despite the origin as library music intended for TV and film, has endured as a vital album for producers and DJs.

Review: Madness are releasing a deluxe edition of their 13th studio album, Theatre of the Absurd presents C'est La Vie, which debuted as their first UK number one last year. This special reissue features five new tracks from the original sessions and seven unreleased live recordings from their recent tour. It also has a 12", one-sided Zoetrope vinyl record, two CDs and a flexi-disc, packaged in large format bookset. Interestingly, the Zoetrope vinyl doesn't feature the album, it hosts the five new tracks that offer fans something to get even more excited about.

Review: An intense exercise in duality, 'Know Your Enemy' was actually born as a mission by Manic Street Preachers to record two albums in quick succession. 'Solidarity' and 'Door To The River' were simultaneous early-noughties left and right brains, channelling completely different ideas in some ways, and the same ideas in others. Now, the compiled album gets a full restoration, and includes two previously unreleased tracks 'Rosebud' and 'Studies In Paralysis'.

Review: Johnny Marr's solo debut of 2013, The Messenger showed him channelling his love for classic guitar rock through post-punk dynamics and a sense of urgency apparently abetted by his time spent in Modest Mouse and The Cribs. Keen to establish himself as an artist in his own right rather than a sideman, Payland builds on that album's impact, delivering an impressive salvo of sparky intensity; 'Easy Money' may well be the catchiest and most immediate thing he's committed to wax for decades, whilst elsewhere he brings a chilly frissante to proceedings, seemingly inherited from the like of Wire and Gary Numan. After thirty years of wrenching new inspiration from six strings, it can be a powerful tonic to know that this curiously youthful figurehead is still as restless and driven as ever.

Review: The Mausovic Dance Band may be based in Amsterdam but their music comes from an utterly unique and distant world. Their madcap sounds are driven by elastic rhythms with potent dub sorcery as the five-pice outfit draws on global music traditions and adds in their own synth styles and forward-facing dance floor dynamics. The new album Buckaroo Bank brings an industrial, post-punk feel with proto-electronic explorations all couched in, of course, dub. It's a captivating listen, make no mistake.

Review: Now seven albums into a career as a celebrated yet understated singer-songwriter, Cass McCombs occupies a unique promontory - his music remains possessed of a uniquely laid-back charm, influenced by West Coast rock and funk and topped off by his easy-going falsetto, yet his lyrics bite hard, essaying the iniquities and inequalities of the modern era with pithy panache and even earning him comparisons to Samuel Beckett in the process. 'Mangy Love' is the clearest articulation of this dichotomy to date, so it's no surprise that it's also his darkest, most compelling and ambitious to date - the sound of a modern maverick comfortable with his own paradoxes, if not those of the wider world.

Review: Mermaid Chunky are the logical result of the creative partnership of Freya and Moina, two visual artists and musicians from Stroud and South London each. Having shuttled between each locale for inordinate stretches of time, their latest record - the whimsically Christened slif slaf slof - nonetheless bridges these local poles. A breezy homage to the duo's shared ideal excesses - an interest in fantasy folk, costume, absurdist nature, surrealist scatting - the likes of 'Ceili', 'Tiny Gymnast' and 'Chaperone' are liable to solicit all manner of reactions in the listener, from on-the-spot bouncing to full-frontal gyrating. A sorely difficult to place record, merging motifs of indie, freak folk, and a decidedly DFA experimentalism.

Review: Laurel Hell is a superb statement of intent from Mitski which confirms the artist is in a place of real power. Her talents work alchemic charms on listeners from the off despite being couched, ostensibly, in pop music. It features her channelling plenty of personal life experiences into cathartic music with which we can all connect. I wrote what I needed to hear," Mitski has explained o the album which follows up her availed last LP, Be The Cowboy, itself building on her breakout debut Puberty 2 in 2006. This one proves she remains a vital talent.

Review: Whilst Mogwai's scores for Zidane and Les Revenants were diverting enough pieces of work, it's some testimony to the frontier-striding attitude and emotional heft of 'Atomic' - which marks a soundtrack to the movie made by Mark Cousins and shown on BBC4 last year, dealing with the atomic age - that is stands amongst their very best work, Expanding the band's palette to include Kraftwerk-esque electronica and emotive orchestration alongside their trademark six-string melancholy. these powerful and resonant pieces pack a mighty punch, summoning awe and fear in equal, elegiac and singularly appropriate measure.

Review: Ask yourselves not whether Mogwai are just the tonic we all need in the middle of a particularly psychologically damaging pandemic. Instead, ask yourselves if there are any situations in which we don't need a new record from the Scottish space rock, post-rock, math-prog masters. Needless to say, then, As The Love Continues couldn't have arrived soon enough.

Marking the triumphant tenth LP, in many ways it's typical stuff from the band - commanding, epic, crashing, wooshing, flying, falling, loving, losing, dreamy guitar music that seems to open as many eyes as it does render listeners blind through sheer hypnosis. Packing some delightfully droll track titles to boot - for example 'F**k Off Money' - given most of us spent a good deal of time after the announcement last year wishing this would get here sooner it's our pleasure to confirm it's every bit worth the wait.

Review: You Never End, the third album from Moin (Valentina Magaletti, Tom Halstead, and Joe Andrews), released via AD 93, marks a new chapter for the band. The album features vocal contributions from Olan Monk, james K, Coby Sey, and Sophia Al-Maria, each bringing their distinct, enigmatic voices into Moin's evolving sound. The collaborators add layers of allure and depth: james K's ethereal, reverb-heavy vocals, Coby Sey's rhythmic reflections of London's urban landscape, and Olan Monk's emotionally charged songwriting. Sophia Al-Maria's contributions reflect her multidisciplinary artistry, seamlessly blending into Moin's sonic universe while expanding its possibilities. Moin continues to challenge the conventional band structure, using a mix of traditional and innovative production techniques. You Never End subtly redefines the boundaries of grunge, shoegaze, and indie rock, imbuing them with a melancholic yet comforting tone. The vocal collaborations bring clarity and emotion, maintaining Moin's signature sound while enhancing it with electronic elements. The result is an album that feels both familiar and refreshingly new, resonating with textural richness and emotional depth.

Review: Movietone are a Bristolian band from the late 1990s to early 2000s whose music aimed to bridge the conceptual gap between film and sound, mainly through the sonic medium of shoegaze and the visual medium, of, well, not-so-visual lyrical references to film. That being said, this new reissue from ultimate curators World Of Echo hears their debut album receive a full restoration, bolstering memories of their rise in the late 90s as a secondary school shed band and on into a full-blown powerhouse. With nods to every influence from beat poets to Galaxie 500, Movietone is and are an intellectual's darling of post-rock and indie.

Review: Fearsome garage rock / grunge punk foursome Mudhoney, active since the late 1980s, juxtapose their latest record Plastic Eternity - which laments the plight of humanity - with a complementary reissue of their breakout debut record, which documents the relatively carefree mode that defined them from their early days onwards. The indie quad squad - made up of vocalist Mark Arm, guitarist Steve Turner, bassist Guy Maddison, and drummer Dan Peters - are best known for their crusted sludge-punk sound, and this reissue is a working reminder of this fact, one that landed them squarely in deathless annals of grunge history; many of the tracks on Mudhoney, especially the Blue Cheer cover 'Magnolia Caboose Babyshit', are considered pioneering of the later mainstream sound. The record is sickeningly fast, shreddy and road-hardened, but a closer listen, especially to the mixes thereon, hears it also house an early stirring of the purply/neon sonic haze that would also go on to define the indie pop music emergent shortly after that time.