Darker Than Amber

Since last September when we announced our collaboration with Billy Valentine, Bob Thiele Jr. and the Flying Dutchman label, with Billy’s peerless cover of Curtis Mayfield’s ‘We The People Who Are Darker Than Blue’, we have been looking forward to the moment when we could share more music with you.

Flux is ambient, lower-case music that continues the journey started by ‘The Silent Cartographer’. Both warmer and darker than its predecessor, there are no beats or percussion - asymmetric loops of processed found sounds pulse to provide rhythmic shift over a bed of processed field recordings and found sounds above which float, half-glimpsed piano melodies and electronic phrases.

Bella Union are thrilled to release the long-awaited debut solo album Albion by Harp, the adopted name of Tim Smith, formerly the singer and principal songwriter of Texan legends Midlake, who is joined by his wife, Kathi Zung. The road to Albion might have been long and winding, and bumpy to boot, but the music Harp has created is steeped in sublime melody, mood, drama and detail, its ten songs and two mood-matching instrumentals framed by a mesh of acoustic/electric guitars, soft shades of keyboards and Smith’s gorgeous voice; in other words, the quintessence of what drew people in the first place to his work with Midlake.

“It’s not the destination, it's the journey,” suggested American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson in his essay Self-Reliance. But in Smith’s case, the reverse is true.

The 16th studio album from alt-rock pioneers Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds. "Skeleton Tree" began it's journey in late 2014 at Retreat Studios, Brighton, with further sessions at La Frette Studios, France in autumn 2015. The album was mixed at AIR Studios, London in early 2016. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds were formed in Melbourne in 1983 by lead singer Nick Cave, multi-instrumentalist Mick Harvey and guitarist Blixa Bargeld. The band has featured international personnel throughout it's career. They have released 15 previous studio albums and completed numerous international tours.

Victorian Sensations transports us to the last years of Queen Victoria's reign to explore a moment of thrilling discovery and change that continues to resonate today.