Rachel Parks Changing Room

Un cellulare della polizia percorre le strade deserte nella notte californiana. Le detenute vanno trasferite quando cala il buio, per tenere distante dagli occhi della gente perbene quel branco di ladre, mogli assassine e madri degeneri. Romy Hall è seduta a bordo, e cerca di farsi gli affari suoi: una delle prime regole che s'imparano in prigione. Di lei non sappiamo molto. Sappiamo però che ha ucciso un uomo e per questo è stata condannata. È successo quando faceva la spogliarellista al Mars Room. Alcuni clienti optavano per il «pacchetto fidanzata» e uno di loro, Kurt Kennedy, si era convinto che lei fosse davvero la sua fidanzata, maturando una gelosia ossessiva e perversa. Romy era scappata a Los Angeles, ma non sembrava esserci modo di fuggire davvero da quell'uomo..

Amidst the whirlwind that came in the wake of her 2021 Mercury Prize-winning debut Collapsed in Sunbeams, Arlo Parks took time off—from performing, social media and generally being in the public eye—for her mental health. The reward for that space is My Soft Machine, an album that Parks, 23, has said is about navigating life in her 20s, the "anxiety, the substance abuse of friends … the viscera of being in love for the first time, navigating PTSD and grief and self-sabotage and joy." And for all those stressful words that come before it, there is the sound of so much joy here. Jazz-rap drums and the slightest of an Asian riff bring sunniness to romantic "Impurities," about letting yourself be happy with someone else, even if you're not picture-perfect. "My chest is buzzing like a bluebird caged/ Love like Juliette Binoche/ You touch my leg to make sure I'm still there/ I radiate like a star, like a star, star, star … When you embrace all my impurities.

Twice Grammy-nominated, Mercury Prize and Brit Award-winning artist Arlo Parks is returning with her second album, My Soft Machine on Transgressive Records. My Soft Machine is a deeply personal body of work; a narration of Parks’ experiences as she navigates her 20’s and the growth intertwined. Explained ever-articulately in her own words below…

Dreamer Awake' is the fifth album from Rachel Sermanni, her first for Navigator Records (Katherine Priddy, Kitty Macfarlane, Sam Kelly & The Lost Boys, Bellowhead). Hailing from the Scottish highlands, Sermanni is an enchanting singer-songwriter, whose performance and lyrics draw from a deep well of mysticism, dreams, nature and the simple-complex experience of being human; a contemporary folk musician influenced by a wealth of genres including jazz, rock, old-time and traditional.

I’m very pleased to announce that I have a new album coming out on the 16th February 2024. Titled Ashes and Dust, Earth and Sky, LLudw a Llwch, Daear a Nef, it is a solo project that feels like a bit of a shift in direction for me. One of the outcomes of a DYCP grant (thank you Arts Council England) that I received to explore composition using different recording techniques, it uses field recordings collected from West Wales and London, and recordings of saxophones, flutes and other bits and pieces.