Label Description: LOCKSTEP is a Nashville based band pulling elements from shoegaze, doom and heavy rock. They’ve built a sound rooted in atmosphere and weight, moving between quiet, uneasy moments and crushing walls of noise. With each release, the band has tightened their approach—cutting excess and focusing on impact.
Their debut full-length, I Know What I Saw, out July 24th through Profound Lore Records stands as the band’s most focused and complete statement to date. Following the release of several singles (their last being the ‘Drag Along’ single from 2025), their Arrival EP from 2023, and already having a decent number of shows and tours under their belt (notable past tours include runs with Prize horse and Gumm), I Know What I Saw leans into massive, slow-burning riffs and dense, layered guitars that stay engaging without letting up, locking into sections that feel both hypnotic and suffocating. Songs stretch and build with purpose, pulling listeners deeper into the band’s world while keeping a constant sense of tension and release. It’s the clearest and most realized version of LOCKSTEP yet.
Recorded by Zac Montez at Welcome to 1979 in Nashville, TN. Mixed by Matt Schumacher. Mastered by Nick Townsend.
Label Description: Northern Earth is Dean McPhee’s sixth full-length album and the second release on his own label, Bass Ritual. Expanding on the low-end focus of 2024’s Astral Gold, Northern Earth integrates overdriven guitar, a wooden snare drum pedal and a powerful 18-inch subwoofer, pushing his sound further beyond the sparse fingerpicked solo guitar of his earlier releases. Drawing on influences from psychedelic rock, British folk, dub and underground electronic music, the album’s three expansive compositions – including the side-long title track – were honed through live performance and recorded live with no overdubs at McPhee’s home in Bradford. His solo setup – stacked valve amps, subwoofer, guitar, percussion pedals and expansive pedalboard – now functions as a single self-contained instrument, layering hypnotic basslines, ritualistic loops and fluid melodies with physical weight and a deep sense of space.
Formed in the late 90s, Tulsa’s Unwed Sailor embrace a unique form of bass-led, instrumental pop with post-rock dynamics that glide between white-knuckled heaviness and breezy melodicism. Since returning from a decade-long pause in 2019, a prolific spree of creative exploration and genre blending has yielded their finest work to date, including Mute The Charm (2023), Underwater Over There (2024), and Cruel Entertainment (2025).
To craft their eleventh album, High Remembrance, founding member Johnathon Ford brought a series of home-recorded drafts, demos, and hooks to the studio, where they came to life with long-time collaborators Matt Putman (drums) and David Swatzell (guitar) guided by themes of nostalgia and the bittersweet comforts of memory. Across the album’s eight tracks, there are shades of peak era alt-rock grit, late 70s AM radio swagger, and rapturous New Wave abandon, among other touchstones that defy easy categorization.
“Truest Sentence” opens with vinyl crackle and a tremolo chime that summons an effortless groove full of layered guitars, complex percussion, and Ford’s distinctive bass guitar buzz, as catchy and head-noddingly punchy as ever. Lead single, “West Coast Prism”, pairs an indelible melodic hook with upbeat drums and a jangly arrangement that transforms into a driving, technicolor refrain. True to its title, the song evokes white light splitting into a spectrum, as spacious synths and soft backing vocals create an aura of melancholic bliss; Ford fittingly cites “a deep fondness for the ocean, surfing, redwoods, and rocky coastline of Oregon” as the spiritual backdrop for its environment.
Inspired by the ways that memories create personal identity, “Don’t Let Go” could be a lost alternative radio earworm with its taut pacing, crunchy tone, and woozy guitars, while its deceptively simple rhythm section and glitchy electronics root it firmly in the present. “Cinnamon” forefronts beautifully arranged acoustic guitar countermelodies, along with layers of subtle detail, choral vocals, and relaxed, upper-neck bass guitar strums. According to Ford, the song is “a tribute to the 70s and 80s country music that soundtracked family trips to the desert when I was a kid,” with Townes Van Zandt’s “Pancho and Lefty” as a particularly meaningful anchor point.
At this point in Unwed Sailor’s storied career, Ford finds some of his strongest inspiration in reflecting on where the project began, while perpetually pushing it forward with new ideas, arrangements, and genre infusions. “It’s become about holding onto the things you love the most,” he notes, “including yourself.” His chord-driven bass playing remains the common thread through the band’s records, lending a familiar gravitas and warmth to every new collection.
The second side of High Remembrance commences with “Punk Broke”, an homage to the band’s Seattle origins – and David Markey’s famed documentary, 1991: The Year Punk Broke – where whammy-bar wobble, palm muted picking, and shimmering synth stabs lead into an anthemic guitar solo that descends over a field of crisscrossing melodies. With its twang, reverb, and cumulus clouds of slow-attack keys, “Gingerman” evokes a nighttime desert drive with the cobalt fade of the day behind a jagged silhouette of distant mountains, while the sonic contrasts and layered mix of “Three Jewels” offer up the album’s most rewarding headphone listen.
Title track, “High Remembrance”, showcases Unwed Sailor’s ability to employ a relatively simple arrangement to create a memorable, widescreen finale and embody the tone of the album as a whole. Written back during the band’s hiatus in the 2010s, the song feels like a familiar forest trail seen during all four seasons at once, and as it closes with a long fade, we are left in the blurry, liminal space of memory, absorbing the last few moments of a reverie before returning to reality.
All Winter we’ve been hiding in the Barn, experimenting, improvising and nourishing our souls from a dying world.
These recordings are a testimony of the dark times we are living in, to uplift, to manifest and to divert our ways.
Recorded between December 2025 and February 2026 at the Barn, Betekom, Belgium.
Bang of Hearts is a musical entity consisting of Dominique Van Cappellen-Waldock (Baby Fire, Veda, Fleur de Feu,…) on vocals and spoken word, Timo Jacobs / Forestaal (Schim, the Moondig, Myaelin, Pilod,…); vocals, electronics, drums and percussion and Peter Verwimp / Ashtoreth ( Maya, Emptiness, Building Transmissions,…) on vocals, bass and guitar.
Together they conjure up an eclectic form of vast, improvised drone pieces with a ritualistic character. Every now and then they gather at the Barn in Betekom, Belgium and pour their hearts out. They play what they feel and this may result in a patchwork of styles and influences: dark ambient, sludge, kraut rock, ritual drones, gothic doom, electronic soundscapes…one never knows what to expect as it is always delivered in a free form; a hypnotic sonic adventure for both the players as well as the audience.
Spoken Word and voices: Dominique Van Cappellen-Waldock Drums, Electronics & voices: Forestaal / Timo Jacobs Guitars, Bass & Voices: Ashtoreth / Peter Verwimp Live mix: Timo jacobs studio mix: Peter Verwimp Mastering: Ronald Mariën Artwork: Peter Verwimp
“a band committed to disruption and abrasion. The jagged guitars, the fragmented structures, and the oscillating vocals all underline the same point: this is music designed to unsettle, and it succeeds.” – Patrick Malone, Joyzine joyzine.org/2025/09/06/single-review-vexations-stone-vultures/
Named after composer Satie’s infamous composition, that was banned because it was deemed too unsettling to perform live, Vexations create frenetic and off-kilter post-psych, with dissonant layered guitars, unorthodox song structures, and vocals that oscillate between spoken word and emphatic screams, to give a punchy yet unearthly sonic experience.
Formed in Edinburgh in 2023, Vexations brings together the diverse contributions of Calum (guitar) whose angular and disjointed riffs steer the band, David (guitar) whose distorted cacophonies of noise provide the sonic texture, Bradley (drums) whose warp-speed frenetic percussion drives the energy, and Rayhana (bass/vocals) whose ethereal yet punchy spoken-work and then screaming vocals punctuate the tracks and arrest attention with her abstract and otherworldly lyrics. The result is a high energy, emphatic, off-kilter and distorted wall of sound experience that contorts the sense and captures that feeling we all have that something just isn’t quite right.
Since forming, Vexations have become a relentless and immersive live project, playing numerous headline and support shows across Edinburgh and Glasgow’s scuzziest venues, honing their distorted and hook-laden sound, showcased here on their debut record, A Dream Unearthly.
STONE VULTURES lyrics by Rayhana Hashmi
Down the river from the mud brick temples, Past the houses of the morning star, Along nerves stripped bare by razor wire, See them come from near and far. I have seen the triremes burning, Out on the Arabian Sea, But I have lived a hidden life, I touch no one, no one touches me.
The world goes dim and black, The old ones turn away, Beneath the open throat of the world, The ash clouds smother the day.
Have you seen them piled up high? Have you seen the water bleed? Carrion in crimson weather, Bodies turned to stone in the street.
Morning bells in the western harbour, Gilded petals on the mountain throne, I watched stars fall on the city of the enemy, But my skin is not my own. We write slogans into dust, We never tell the truth at all, Lanterns in the broad daylight, No one left to hear us call. credits released October 17, 2025
Recording and mixing: Calum Piercy Mastering: Pete Maher Vox/bass: Rayhana Hashmi Guitar: Calum Piercy Guitar: David Stockwell Drums: Bradley Hillier-Smith
Label Description: Guitars, bass, synths, beat programming, Kalimba, recording mixing and arrangement: Frank Ehrhardt Mastering: Alexander Kolb Synths and additional beat programming on Broken Shadows: Erdem Cakir (magikkarpetkaravan.bandcamp.com) Additional effect manipulation on Algorhythmic Dreams: Alissa Jäger Additional guitars and additional beat programming on Of Hope and To Go On and additional mixing: Stefan Harth (gigalurgh.bandcamp.com) Drawing: Frank Ehrhardt Design: Marius Schmitt Videos: Korneli Gorbatchev (kogofilm.de)
Ten years in the making, Reon Moebius’s long awaited and threatened project Collector Of Dust makes it’s recording debut via Argali Records having retired his older venture The Jesus Fish Experience in 2019 and his short lived solo live project Seagull Died On Impact in 2024.
Lush yet minimal, spacious but dense, sweeping and intimate: Collector Of Dust’s orchestral ambitions betray the sparse instrumentation and lonely isolation that was employed to create what Reon has dubbed ‘chambergaze’. Music meant to invoke vulnerable romanticism set against the vastness of ancient, decaying hyper objects and indifference of the natural world. To lovers, dreamers, and survivors this one’s for you.
Dedicated to the memory of Peter & Ursula Megert, Dominick Pfefferkorn, Hasan Abdur-Razzaq, & J Guy Laughlin
Our new release is in fact a re-release. ‘Thanksgiver’ by Botany Bay is a beautiful album by Schall und Stille artist Stephan Kleinhert whose albums Biike and The Drunken Fisherman were rightfully well received here.
Thanksgiver is a swampy reverb heavy minimalist elegy that leads with the 20 minute Winter Wolfpack Serenade. To-die-for vocals by Stefanie Mühr and a growing orchestra of bluesy angst. Like ECM meets Daniel Lanois recording Maria Muldaur, it’s simply gorgeous.
This is a stunningly produced work that deserves to find a bigger audience. Originally self released in 2018, SubCastCo is happy to bring this work to our talented & erudite listeners.
At the time of the initial release Stephan had the album pressed to vinyl. We would be super happy if we could encourage our listeners to head over to the Botany Bay BC page and make a purchase. It’s an artistically exceptionally made release with well thought through spot-UV over matt black card with inserts. A perfect clean sounding press for your audiophile pleasure guaranteed.
Music For The Rest Of Us 