With 2011's Blue Songs running the gamut from full-blown disco and jacking house to the more experimental, Hercules & Love Affair’s new album ‘The Feast Of The Broken Heart’ sees another musical reinvention from ringmaster Andy Butler - delivered by an impeccable new line up.

The ever-revolving collective led house music’s resurgence with club anthem ‘Blind’ in 2008 (Pitchfork’s record of the year), and 2014’s line up is another roll call of exceptionally talented vocalists. BRITS nominee John Grant’s ability for translating hardship into elegance is writ large on ‘I Try To Talk To You’ and ‘Liberty’; Rouge Mary, whose deep, spiritual voice is hewn from a gospel education; Belgian singer Gustaph whose counter tenor takes lead on the single ‘Do You Feel The Same?’ and smoky voiced virtuoso Krystle Warren, who was introduced to Butler by Grant, and sings the provocative ‘My Offence’.

Andy Butler comments: “I wanted nasty basslines, stormy, bleary-eyed sounds, fiery, rough, tough and ragged old school house productions that sounded almost techno. I didn’t want polite, I wanted aggressive.”

This aesthetic coupled with tales of emotional triumph makes for something tough yet soulful. Meaningful house music that IS pop music and can speak to the most musically adroit of tastes.

Kicking off proceedings is the dancefloor single ‘Do You Feel The Same?’ (w/Gustaph on vocals) , a jacking pop anthem released 14th April, with B-sides ‘Raid’ (a late night dancefloor banger replete with sirens) and ‘Working Miracles’ (a sample led journey into the more experimental side of Hercules & Love Affair). 

‘The Feast Of The Broken Heart’ is co-produced by Ha-Ze Factory and industrial stalwart Mark Pistel and released on Moshi Moshi on May 26th.

One of dance music’s finest live acts Hercules & Love Affair are set to announce a full run of European dates, summer shows and festivals.

Album tracklisting:

Hercules Theme 2014

My Offence feat. Krystle Warren 

I Try To Talk To You - feat. John Grant

That's Not Me - feat. Gustaph

Think - feat. Rouge Mary

5.43 To Freedom - feat. Rouge Mary

The Light - feat. Krystle Warren

Liberty - feat. John Grant 

Do You Feel The Same? – feat. Gustaph

The Key - feat. Rouge Mary 

20^th Century Fox Benelux has revealed their upcoming titles. Here’s the list.

VIKINGS, SEASON 1

(Released on 23th April 2014, on both DVD and Blu-ray)

Tv-series: drama, action

Director: Rick Jacobson

Cast: Travis Fimmel, Katheryn Winnick, Clive Standen

Synopsis :

Vikings follows the adventures of Ragnar Lothbrok: the greatest hero of his age. The series tells the saga of Ragnar's band of Viking brothers and his family as he rises to become King of the Viking tribes. As well as being a fearless warrior, Ragnar embodies the Norse traditions of devotion to the gods: legend has it that he was a direct descendant of Odin, the god of war and warriors.

THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY

(Released on 30th April 2014, on both DVD and Blu-ray)

Genre: Drama

Director: Ben Stiller

Cast: Ben Stiller, Kirsten Wiig, Jon Daly

Synopsis:

A day-dreamer escapes his anonymous life by disappearing into a world of fantasies filled with heroism, romance and action. When his job along with that of his co-worker are threatened, he takes action in the real world embarking on a global journey that turns into an adventure more extraordinary than anything he could have ever imagined.

BAGGAGE CLAIM

(Released on 21^st May 2014 on DVD)

Genre: Comedy

Director: David E. Talbert

Cast: Paula Patton, Taye Diggs, Jill Scott

Synopsis:

Pledging to keep herself from being the oldest and the only woman in her entire family never to wed, Montana embarks on a thirty-day, thirty-thousand-mile expedition to charm a potential suitor into becoming her fiancé.

ENOUGH SAID

(Released on 21^st May 2014 on DVD)

Genre: Drama

Director: Nicole Holofcener

Cast: Julia Louis-Dreyfus, James Gandolfini, Catherine Keener

Synopsis:

A divorced woman who decides to pursue the man she's interested in learns he's her new friend's ex-husband.

THE WAY WAY BACK

(Released on 21^st May 2014 on DVD)

Genre: Drama

Director: Nat Faxon, Jim Rash

Cast: Steve Carell, Toni Collette, Allison Janney

Synopsis:

Shy 14-year-old Duncan goes on summer vacation with his mother, her overbearing boyfriend, and her boyfriend's daughter. Having a rough time fitting in, Duncan finds an unexpected friend in Owen, manager of the Water Wizz water park.

DEVIL’S DUE

(Released on 4^th June 2014 on DVD)

Genre: Horror

Director: Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett

Cast: Allison Miller, Zach Gilford, Sam Anderson

Synopsis:

After a mysterious, lost night on their honeymoon, a newlywed couple finds themselves dealing with an earlier-than-planned pregnancy. While recording everything for posterity, the husband begins to notice odd behavior in his wife that they initially write off to nerves, but, as the months pass, it becomes evident that the dark changes to her body and mind have a much more sinister origin.

DRAGONS: RIDERS OF BERK

(Released on 9^th April 2014 on DVD)

Genre: Tv-series, animation

Regisseur: Anthony Bell

Cast: Boyan van der Heijden, Bert Simhoffer, Eva Hetharia, Jop Joris, Huub Dikstaal

Synopsis:

The further adventures of Hiccup and his friends on the Island of Berk.

Avant-pop four-piece Our Future burst out of the dizzying chaos that is New York City with their debut EP 'Perennial Construct', rising above the static of the myriads of indie bands, electronic-scene-martyrs, and over-saturated hip-hop of the moment they are clearly trying for something new, different, and permanently original while reflecting on the present and reaching to a more recent past of No-Wave, Noise, Pop, and Art fueled NYC of the 1980s.

Three startling disparate tracks tied together by vocalist Brian Hill's woozy drawl, from the industrial-flecked post-blog pop of 'On Surface', to the musique-concrète like collage of '21cm TTH' – a smear of glitchy noise and guitar drone and Delia Derbyshire-esque synths - the EP takes a surprising detour off to Wales with finale 'Hiraeth'; a noise obscured folk song about longing for your homeland which may have never even been there in the first place, done up to throbbing techno-ish undertones and buzzsaw synths. Watch the live video for 'On Surface' below, filmed at 7 Dunham Gallery in New York...

The scope of Robert Beatty's hydra-headed art practice has grown into an extreme articulation of unconfined creativity across multiple disciplines. A founding member of 2000's noise outfit Hair Police, as well as visionary illustrator and album-art designer for many of this era's most celebrated underground artists, Robert Beatty records his solo work under the name Three Legged Race. Come May 27th, 2014, Three Legged Race will release the first volume of Rope Commercial, a planned series of EPs premiering through the label Underwater Peoples.

Rope Commercial Vol. 1 will be the first Three Legged Race record since 2012's acclaimed Persuasive Barrier (Spectrum Spools / Editions Mego) and Beatty's follow up to last year's video score collection, Soundtracks for Takeshi Murata (Glistening Examples, 2013). Where those records take charge in a paradigm of collaged synth melodies, fragmented samples and twitching textures, Rope Commercial is more unsettling. Rope Commercial Vol. 1 delivers claustrophobic geometries, intensely disfigured narratives, and genre-free experimentation.

Beatty's recent celebrated performances as Three Legged Race abandoned prior synthesizer-dependent set-ups in favor of an intentionally dematerialized approach, employing just a sequencer program in an iPhone, and a lone tape machine. Conceptually, Beatty was defiantly shrugging off the fetishized hardware-oriented model so rampant in current electronic music discourse, and this became the inspiration to create Rope Commercial. Beatty stepped even further in recording Rope Commercial Vol. 1 however, adding acoustic instruments, (dulcimer and piano), and thoroughly processing sampled elements to warp the whole into un-recognizable dimensions.

Importantly, Rope Commercial Vol. 1 will be outfitted in a picture-disc of a classic Beatty vision. In a creamy neon-green urban landscape, the face of a humanoid figure is merged with a screen of a smartphone, its consciousness fused to the glass. Dangling from the phone is one leg outfitted in a woman's heel, presumably its sole means of transport. These kind of pathetic cyborg figures in states of physical flux frequently appear in Beatty's art. They function neatly as windows into Beatty's music as well, with its electronically marred voices and barren sonic spaces. These figures are Beatty's torpid avatars, in his music and art both, their humanism is strained by a confounding digital synergy.

Aptly, the picture-disc is a perfect setting for Beatty's airbrush work, his favored rendering tool, and the general modus operandi of Beatty's electronic music as Three Legged Race. In all, Beatty renews obsolete materials discarded from a voracious commercial culture, and employs them in strangely poignant contexts. In Rope Commercial Vol. 1, such found samples are diced and strewn into uneasy chapters. There is the dizzying, terse "All Ajax Dial", the interplanetary gale of "Aside From Each Other and Together Overnight", the faintly whirring "New Government", the white noise of "The Humidity Mascot" and perhaps Beatty's motif-to-be "Rope Commercial." In this title track alone, something of the whole EP is condensed: intentionally un-heroic melodies plod out over a darkly redundant groove and voices are haltered in the instance of utterance. Its electronic music most overtly, but defrocked of its sheen, with any conceivable hallmark of commercialism littered on the gravel. 

soundcloud.com/underwaterpeoples/three-legged-race-all-ajax/s-bX5Qq

Arrow Video is excited to announce the UK Dual Format Blu-ray + DVD release of the Teruo Ishii’s 1970 Japanese cult classic Blind Woman’s Curse which will be available to own in the UK from 31st March. This deluxe edition, which represents the first time the film will be released on any home video format within the UK, features packaging that showcases stunning newly commissioned artwork by Gilles Vranckx and a new high-definition digital transfer of the film prepared by Nikkatsu Studios, the famed studio behind many pinky violence and genre classics, and home to filmmakers such as Seijun Suzuki (Branded to Kill).

Starring the cult actress Meiko Kaji, of Lady Snowblood fame (whose singing from that film was borrowed by Quentin Tarantino in Kill Bill), is seen here in her first major role. As her star would rise she would go on to the classic girl gang series Stray Cat Rock, which will be released by Arrow Video later in 2014 and Lady Snowblood is available now.

Featuring a full length audio commentary by author and Japanese cinema expert (and recent curator of a Nikkatsu cinema programme at the British Film Institute) Jasper Sharp, newly-translated and English-subtitles, trailers for four of the films in the Meiko Kaji-starring Stray Cat Rock series (made at the same studio as Blind Woman’s Curse), a collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Japanese cinema expert Tom Mes, illustrated with original archive stills. 

Synopsis

From “The King of Cult” Teruo Ishii, Blind Woman’s Curse (also known as Black Cat’s Revenge) is a thrilling yakuza film featuring eye-popping visuals, sensational fight sequences and the gorgeous Meiko Kaji (Lady Snowblood, Stray Cat Rock) in her first major role.

Akemi (Kaji) is a dragon-tattooed leader of the Tachibana yakuza clan. In a duel with a rival gang Akemi slashes the eyes of an opponent and a black cat appears, to lap the blood from the gushing wound. The cat along with the eye-victim go on to pursue Akemi’s gang in revenge, leaving a trail of dead yakuza girls, their dragon-tattoos skinned from their bodies.

A bizarre blend of the female yakuza film and traditional Japanese ghost story, with a strong dash of grotesque-erotica (the same movement was a sensibility of Edogawa Rampo whose works were adapted by Ishii in Horrors of Malformed Men), Blind Woman’s Curse is a delirious mash-up of classic genre tropes, of which Ishii was no stranger, having directed everything from Super Giant films to biker movies!

Special Features

· New high definition digital transfer of the film prepared by Nikkatsu Studios

· Presented in High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) and Standard Definition DVD

· Uncompressed mono PCM audio

· Newly translated English subtitles

· Audio commentary by Japanese cinema expert Jasper Sharp

· Original Trailer

· Trailers for four of the films in the Meiko Kaji-starring Stray Cat Rock series, made at the same studio as Blind Woman’s Curse

· Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Gilles Vranckx

· Collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Japanese cinema expert Tom Mes, illustrated with original archive stills.