by Andy Coombs of Soft Cotton County Music was once ‘the most important, unimportant thing we had,’ said music critic and presenter Robert Elms. This sums up my relationship with writing in general and music in particular. I want to keep it unique and avoid the fillers and the B-sides. One great song would make me happy. In an ocean of mediocrity, sea levels are rising, but starfish are still found in the depths. Listen to the album while reading the text. Songs start in my head as phrases and lines — a slow, multi-faceted process for me. Imagination is the driver. The instrument is the inte ..read more

by Jonas Franck a.k.a. Corpse Feet Why call it Corpse Feet? No one, to my knowledge, can survive death, so I guess we’re all just corpse feet walking until we lay… Here’s how it went. It was in the late 70s, and I was just a few years old. I had seen a man with his guitar on our black and white TV, probably Elvis Jailhouse Rock, and immediately wanted to be that. So, I grabbed a tennis racket at a birthday party and got up on the table to do my first show. Listen to the album while reading the text. Growing up listening to and digging a weird mixture of disco, calypso, rockabilly, synthpop ..read more

by Martin Ejlertsen How can you convey a song about a disease? Especially a disease like epilepsy that most people have heard about but probably know very little about. And can I express the feelings and the hopelessness associated with having a child with this disease without it being simply too much for others to listen to? Among other things, it was with these thoughts that I started writing the song Epilepsy. A song that has now become very central to my album The Admirer, which is my most personal album to date. The song was also the first single from the album, and was released on Inte ..read more

by Lyndon People ask me what instruments I play, and usually, I respond with, “Whatever gets it out of my head.” Music has been an outlet for me for more than half my life at this point. I come from Chesapeake, Virginia, a place where music (let alone any form of art or entertainment) is totally underrated, never even remotely appreciated. Listen to the album while reading the text. Usually, I make all the effort to make music under the moniker Lyndon — anything from playing guitar, bass, keyboard, and singing, or even producing and mixing. Lyndon is my middle name, and not many people know ..read more

by Rey Montano I guess if I had to describe my “story,” the story that at least gets told through my music, it would be a story of adolescence, at least for now. I have lived in Fresno for all of my (admittedly short) life, and I think it can show through my music at times. But I’m always looking for a way to escape. Whether it be the mountains or the beach, make no mistake that I’d rather be anywhere than Fresno from at least July up to September. Our summers are scalding and long. If I can’t do that, though, I still have the long-standing escapist cliche of music. Listen to the album while ..read more

by Jesse Crowley aka The First Humans Many years can go by, and one would have just a faint idea at best of what was going on in the midst of those rote routines, cycles, ellipses that engulf the conscious mind on a daily basis. The constant whirring of the gears, the hum of the system casting a tint across one’s attention span to prevent any particular deviation from the expected routine of the machine as it rolls along in its tread. An observation of Tennessee Williams’ characters that seems inescapable to me is that of the unconscious voice that breaks through that cacophony of time rolli ..read more

by Oly My story starts with my Mexican parents. They eloped from Mexico City then had me in Los Angeles.  Their early gift to me was a stand-up piano for kids. According to my mom, I spent most of my time on it, writing songs and playing them over and over. When I was a teenager, I was the frontwoman in a punk/indie cover band, then played in a few post-rock bands. I became obsessed with the label Thrill Jockey, and moved to Chicago because they were based there. My sister was my biggest champion—she accompanied me on the long drive. Even though she slept most of the time in the passeng ..read more

by Remi of Aurora Falls We are Aurora Falls, a post-rock band from Poland. We are a mixture of musical souls We gathered at the beginning of 2021 to play some music, and we stayed longer. From the very beginning, we loved to seek space in our musical improvisation, somewhere between shoegaze, post-rock, blackgaze, or dreampop. After a year of playing together, this concept finally took the shape that we call Aurora Falls. At the end of 2022, we decided to record some of our songs to share it with the world. That’s how it started. Listen to the album while reading the text. The idea behind t ..read more

by Parramatta Hi, we’re Parramatta from the UK. We write and record music that we hope would have been played by the late, much-missed DJ John Peel. If you have ever heard his show, you’ll understand; if you didn’t, let us explain. Listen to the album while reading the text. In the 70s, 80s & 90s, John Peel pretty much single-handedly championed alternative and independent music on the BBC’s nightly radio show. He played punk, reggae, folk, and anything that grabbed his attention. The more experimental and individual, the better. He introduced thousands of kids in their bedrooms to amazi ..read more

by Peter Gilliver My name is Peter Gilliver. I am in a London based band called Wondergeist, along with my bandmates Sam Stretch and Sam Lott. We released our first album as a three-piece this year called ‘The Gulf.’ This is how we got there. Listen to the album while reading the text. The Roots of the Band Wondergeist was formed between myself and a close friend on a small island in the British Channel Islands called Guernsey in 2014 as an acoustic duo. The band quickly morphed into a collective that at times involved up to ten people. At that time, the music we made was conceived amidst a b ..read more