Road Trip

Following on from the latest album The Road Part 1, James Lavelle brings UNKLE to the stage of Camden’s Koko on September 26th 2017, with the show being recorded by Live Here Now for release as On The Road: Koko. Available on limited edition CD and Vinyl, alongside a selection of limited edition merchandise, the show features guest signers Fran Lobo, Callum, Elliot Power, Dorian Lutz an ESKA who featured on The Road part 1.

The Road Is Just A Surface is the brand new album by renowned Norwegian artist Anja Garbarek. It is available in two editions, "Red" and "Yellow". The Red concept album is a dazzling and sinister soundscape that stretches for more than 70 uninterrupted minutes. On the Yellow edition, the songs have been edited and remixed to offer a different route into Garbarek's melodic pop art.

UNKLE have announced their new album, The Road: Part II/Lost Highway, out March 29 on Songs For The Def. It’s the second part of a new musical trilogy from James Lavelle and the gang, and the follow-up to UNKLE’s 2017 album The Road: Part I. The new record is reportedly split into two acts, and features collaborations with Tom Smith (The Editors), Ian Astbury (The Cult), Andrew Innes (Primal Scream), Jon Theodore (Queens of the Stone Age), and Mick Jones (The Clash).

Trip Shakespeare unfortunately went unnoticed in their time and more unfortunately have remained in obscurity, but they were lucky enough to record in a time when major labels took greater chances with music and would more often indulge ambitious projects. Lulu is the group's defining set, a result of inspired and talented musicians with an expense account to afford their aspirations and enough sense to exploit it appropriately. Why then did this record go through the ringer almost completely unnoticed and why did the reviews the album received tend to be overly critical? Part of the answer has to do with the timing of its release. 1991 was the great embrasure of the grunge movement when Nirvana's Nevermind set the decade-long trend for the popular music charts. The release of a melodically complex and romantic pop masterpiece with lush vocals was entertained by neither the critics nor the masses, and no doubt A&M had lost much of the majesty they found in Trip Shakespeare when they were signed two years previous, which is a shame since Shakespeare's leader, Matt Wilson, was at the height of his poetic optimism and the melodic hooks he wrote with his brother Dan Wilson are complex, plentiful, and on par with the classics of pop music's innovation.