Smile Maxo

Still riding the high of their May full-length debut A Light for Attracting Attention, The Smile have announced a new live album. The Smile at Montreux Jazz Festival, July 2022 was recorded — wait for it — at the trio’s Montreux Jazz Festival set back in July, and it’ll be available to stream this Wednesday, December 14th.

Limited edition, vinyl only live EP comprised of live recordings from The Smile’s debut album, A Light For Attracting Attention, as well as the band’s rendition of Thom Yorke’s 2009 solo track FeelingPulledApartByHorses. Recorded in various cities (including venues such as London Roundhouse and Berlin’s Tempodrom and Primevera Sound, Barcelona) over the course of The Smile's first ever tour last summer.

Wasting no time, Cutouts arrives in the same year as The Smile's Wall of Eyes. And as we close in on a decade without new material from Radiohead, the third record from The Smile —Radiohead's Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood, along with drummer Tom Skinner, otherwise known for his jazz work—is a strong fill-in. There's a familiarity here, and not just because some of the songs have already been performed on the road. But The Smile is clearly its own thing as well. Greenwood is flying wild, especially on songs like "Eyes & Mouth"—guitar getting into virtuosic territory against Skinner's racehorse jazz drums and somber piano—and "Zero Sum." The latter also features traffic-jam blares and Yorke posturing with punk meets funk swagger as he, familiarly, warns about some kind of charlatans: "They're so overconfident, confident, confident/ That's another red flag, red flag." Indeed, Yorke comes on like a strong societal critic, shaking his head over fakes and hucksters—and it could be about disinformation, or politics, or AI, or any other number of things.

Since their last album in 2016, A Moon Shaped Pool, the members of Radiohead have been quietly going about their business solo between two reissues, O'Brien on his first album, Philip Selway on a soundtrack… And then, in May 2021, at On the occasion of a livestream of the famous English festival Glastonbury, Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood unveiled the most substantial of all these side projects with The Smile, a supergroup founded with Tom Skinner, the drummer of the Sons of Kemet of Shabaka Hutchings, the formation most popular of London Jazz. In the hitch, we also find the irremovable producer Nigel Godrich, the string section of the London Contemporary Orchestra and a brass section made up of the finest blades of contemporary English jazz such as Chelsea Carmichael and Byron Wallen. Not bad for a record composed to pass the time during confinement!

The Smile’s new album Wall Of Eyes, will be released on 26th January on XL Recordings. The new album, was recorded between Oxford and Abbey Road Studios, and is produced and mixed Sam Petts-Davies. It features string arrangements by the London Contemporary Orchestra. Wall Of Eyes is the follow up their 2022 debut LP A Light For Attracting Attention.

Considering how Private Energy positively beamed thanks to radiant songs like "It's My Brown Skin" and "Young, Latin and Proud," the title of Helado Negro's sixth album could come as a surprise. However, on This Is How You Smile, Roberto Carlos Lange finds ways to sustain a sense of identity, family, and love when that energy runs low. For these strong yet tender songs, Lange drew inspiration from Jamaica Kincaid's short story "Girl," in which an immigrant mother gives her daughter instructions on how to survive and thrive in a world that wasn't made for her.

The first three solo albums from multi-talented drummer, keyboardist and producer Walden He made his name as a drummer with John McLaughlin's Mahavishnu Orchestra, Jeff Beck and Tommy Bolin These three albums date from 1976, 1977 and 1979, originally released on Atlantic The Top 50 hit 'I Don't Want Nobody Else (To Dance With You)' came from 'Awakening' Digitally remastered.