Stealing Sheep return with “Apparition”, the third single to be released from their critically acclaimed second album Not Real.

Accompanied by a playful video, directed by Dougal Wilson, in his first music video in 6 years, that creates the illusion of a candid one shot in an unassuming village square witnessing a group of Morris dancers that are infiltrated by the band.

The band explains “we liked the idea because the English folk imagery juxtaposes the moody synth style of the music. The Morris dancing goes surprisingly well with the electronic drums and made us laugh! We love the dreamlike flow of the choreography and the camera. It was Dougal that first introduced us to a female experimental film maker from the 50's called Maya Deren and her style really influenced our visual when we began working on our album, exploring dreams, subjective reality and streams of consciousness"

 Wilson elaborates:

 "The idea for ‘Apparition’ came from the fact that the song had a mysterious, hypnotic feeling, and the fact that I’ve always found Morris Dancing slightly strange and psychedelic.

 I’d also wanted to re-visit Morris Dancing since I made a Four Tet video in 2003, where I simply cut existing Morris footage to music.

 Since then, I’d always wanted to take the idea further by actually having a band learn Morris Dancing themselves, and this seemed like an appropriate opportunity given the unexpected contrast of the girls' personalities with the characters in a genuine Morris side. 

 Very luckily for me, Emily, Becky and Lucy, were very conscientious and learnt their dance steps very well. I also thought it would be appropriate to attempt to capture it in one (apparently) continuous take, as Morris dancing seems to always shot by one camera when it appears on Youtube."

 Following a hugely busy and successful festival season, which included an appearance at David Byrne’s Meltdown, Stealing Sheep are about to embark on a equally busy Autumn live schedule which includes support shows with Django Django and further performances of the In Dreams: David Lynch Revisited series (in Dublin, Bristol and Paris) alongside Villagers, Stuart Staples, Mick Harvey and Jehnny Beth from Savages. The band will also be performing in NYC as part of CMJ. Upcoming live info below: 

Friday 10 December – BRUSSELS – AB w/ Django Django

 The Greatest Switch of Studio Brussel is collected in an unique box
Switch has been a longstanding Studio Brussel's brand for quality electronic music. Annually the listeners of Studio Brussel choose their favorite dance records. On Saturday 10th October Studio Brussels broadcasts its list of the 100 best dance records in history.

This broadcast traditionally comes with a collector. This year, for the occasion all previously collectors were brought together in a unique box containing more than 200 club classics, only available on CD.
On that same evening there is in the Vooruit in Ghent The Greatest Switch Party with sets of The Subs, Goldfox and Studio Brussels and Switch-founders Jan Van Biesen and Michael Sheridan Midnight.

The Wharves combine gracefully minimal psyche-rock with fuzzed out folk. Their songwriting remains consistently rich, largely due to the startling harmonies of Gemma Fleet (bass) and Dearbhla Minogue (guitar) that bond together each song. They invoke the reverberated spook of 60s girl groups, the mid-fi guitar crunch of Kim Deal’s The Amps, the vocal flavours of The Roches and the narrative and structural panache of 70s progressive folk. Marion Andrau’s thunderous drumming drives through these compositions, ensuring the wealth of disparate influences remain focused and celebratory.

Following on from last year’s brilliant ‘At Bay’ album on Gringo Records, this brand new 7” single gives us a glimpse of what their next album ‘Electa’ will sound like next year. PRS’ 'Women Make Music' grant made these recordings possible and enabled the band to spend a day recording with a rebel choir made up of friends of the band and family members. Side A boasts the plaintive yet powerful track ‘NAZ’, which soars for the sky with each vocal climb and guitar trail. Whilst, ‘My Will’ on the flipside takes us back to a wintry past life, sounding practically medieval in its quietude, before leaping up like a newly lit bonfire when the rebel choir join the fray.

The Wainwright Sisters will be releasing their anticipated new album 'Songs In The Dark' on November 13 via [PIAS]

Although they're sisters, Martha Wainwright and Lucy Wainwright Roche didn't grow up together. Aside from genetics, their true bond was a musical one, both growing up in families steeped in songwriting. Both their mothers would sing them lullabies (Kate McGarrigle to Martha and Suzzy Roche to Lucy) - now to honour that, 30 years later, Martha and Lucy are singing many of these same songs, some penned by their mothers and father (Loudon Wainwright III) on 'Songs In The Dark.'

The record also includes songs that shaped their childhoods, made famous by the likes of Woody Guthrie and Jimmie Rogers. When Martha and Lucy grew up and become songwriters of their own, they discovered their physical separation was trumped by their shared musical DNA. On 'Songs In The Dark,' this is captured in its elemental essence: dark, mysterious, and beautiful.

The Wainwright Sisters - Upcoming Showcase Dates

11/07 - City Winery, New York, New York

11/10 - St. Stephens Church, London, England

12/1 - Phi Centre, Montreal, Quebec

Two years on from the critically acclaimed Until The Colours Run, Lanterns On The Lake return with their third full-length record Beings, released 13th November on Bella Union. It marks another leap in the band’s development as they expand their range, pushing the envelope of their signature atmospheric rock and scaling new heights of absorbing song-craft. The band have unveiled a track from the LP entitled ‘Faultlines’ which is streaming HERE and announced a 6-date UK tour, the dates of which are below.

Work on Beings began in February 2014, hard on the heels of successful tours of Europe and North America. It proved to be a productive period. “The ideas came effortlessly and in abundance,” vocalist Hazel Wilde says of the writing process. “At first we had no expectations, no prescribed ideas of how we wanted the songs to turn out. We were just writing and playing together because that’s what we’d always done.”

This was made possible by their setup, working in splendid isolation; writing, rehearsing and recording in their Newcastle rehearsal room meant the results were undiluted by outside influence. Imaginatively produced and mixed by guitarist Paul Gregory, it’s also his experience that helped yield such compelling results. This allows Beings to move seamlessly from airy, chiming beauty to dense, forbidding soundscapes - sometimes in the same song - while still feeling like the product of a cohesive unit, retaining the band’s spark. “We wanted it to be more raw,” Wilde says of the record. “At its darkest points, we wanted it to feel like you’d dived into the deepest part our dreams and were taking a look around. At its lightest we wanted it to feel like you were coming up for air.”

Opening song ‘Of Dust and Matter’ strikes just such a balance. The band’s most sinister moment yet, it prowls out of a burble of radio static and feedback, propelled by ominous piano chords as its menacing pulse builds to a tumbling climax of almost discordant, warped guitar parts and the fractured drumming of Ol Ketteringham. “In my greatness I vowed to destroy all I am,” Wilde sings. “It brings out the best in me.”

It’s an interesting early lyric, and it soon becomes apparent that this is a braver, more headstrong Lanterns on the Lake, a band now less about floating on water than racing across land, eager and with points to prove. Often their melancholy necessarily turns to action. “Fractured lives like faultlines, unto the breach my friends if you will” is Wilde’s call to arms on ‘Faultlines’, a critique of austerity, as the band turn in a cavalry charge with her voice as the clarion call.

Wilde's lyrics also shudder with evocative and often surprisingly dark imagery in songs that attempt to understand the world around her, built from charged moments of universal insight. “There is a sense of the need to connect to something; the need to find meaning,” she says of the material. “There’s such frustrating injustice in the world, yet this feels like a time of disconnection where we’re encouraged to celebrate the shallow side of culture. This record carries that sense of yearning for something greater.”

This gives Beings immediacy, depth and resonance as it touches on community, love, culture, politics and self-examination, and our own place and limitations within each. “I want to walk with the brave, give me a good day, I want to feel human” Wilde sings on the graceful ‘I’ll Stall Them’, exploring the importance of connection, kinship and reconciliation.

Beings is the engrossing product of a band operating in total harmony to the point where their music creates its own idiosyncratic world whilst also distilling outside concerns into it. The horizons open to Lanterns on the Lake are now as broad as the sweep of these beautiful songs.

Beings is released 13th November on Bella Union