Sunderland-based, The Futureheads, are thrilled to announce the stateside release of The Chaos set to drop June 1 via New York-based indie label, Dovecote Records. The Chaos is a screaming, visceral rock and roll response to our current world, and a wild, thrilling ride from start to finish. We have a free download of the first single, Struck Dumb [listen to it here], in the Music Download section of Lost At E Minor.

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I put together a few mix CDs for a friend’s party the other week and had to include this track from the Modfather himself, Paul Weller, during his Style Council period, which marked the second distinct phase of his ever-changing career. Weller may have disavowed much of his back catalogue, but for the rest of us, there’s still much pleasure to be had living vicariously through soulful, introspective moments like these.

Like a packet of perfectly seasoned pistachio nuts, I can’t put this album down until it’s well and truly finished: until every last morsel of taut, snappy percussion and hypnotic vocals have been digested. They’re like Animal Collective at the wind-down hour – slightly more stabilised and with the psychotic fits tempered into a soothing, trance-inducing pace. Somehow it’s also immediately catchy, laced with subtle hooks and soaring backing vocals. It’s the sort of sound that sucks you into their warm world, likely to cause you to miss your bus stop if your mind sinks too far into the rich chasm of tracks like Red and Purple [below] or The Ball. Listen closely, because this might well be one of the releases of the year.

This clip had such an impact on me when it first came out, back in the day. There’s just something so poignant about the idea that some people you pass on the street everyday have a little bit more insight into their world — our world — than we could ever imagine. It’s beautiful and confronting, and it’s all set to the most wonderfully evocative music.

In my next life, I want to sing like Frightened Rabbit frontman Scott Hutchison. Oh, and grow a lush beard, so I can play in their band. Better start cracking.

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Thanks to our friends at Madman, we have five copies of the Kurt Cobain documentary, About A Son, to give away to randomly selected Lost At E Minor subscribers.
To be in with a chance of winning, simply be a Lost At E Minor subscriber and leave a message under this post saying ‘Joy, Joy, Joy’ or words to that effect. We’ll announce the winners on Friday morning New York time.

In 1976 four young men from ruined, post-industrial Manchester, England went to see the Sex Pistols. They formed a band, Joy Division. Three years later it was a matter of art, life and death. Now thirty years later, they are enjoying a larger audience and more influence than ever before with a profound legacy that resonates fiercely in today?s heavily careerist music industry and over-mediated pop culture. Pieced together from archival footage as well as new interviews with the remaining band members and musical experts, Joy Division is the definitive documentary about this influential and timeless band.

The DVD includes more than an hour of additional clips, interviews and outtakes from the documentary, plus the original theatrical trailer.

It beggars belief how such a good sound can go unnoticed for so long. British three-piece The Shortwave Set have been dilligently crafting some very fine songs since 2005, yet are only gradually making a name for themselves. Their latest album, Replica Sun Machine ticks all the right boxes for mass appeal, featuring poppy hooks, jangly percussion and that psychedelic 60′s touch that yanks them away from today’s mainstream. The dual male/female vocals are oozing intimacy, as if Patti Smith was in post-coital dialogue with an equally amourous Lou Reed. It’s a real cocktail of sonics, dipping one hand into Sufjan-esque folk and the other into bluesy Babe Ruth licks but always dappled with bright synth and sampling. Hopefully their sporadic UK festival appearances this summer will gain them the following they deserve. You can’t close your ears to this music when the sun is out.

Listen to The Shortwave Set track, Harmonia.

Originally hailing from Kendal, Cumbria and now based in Leeds, the Wild Beasts foursome are the next hopefuls for Domino Records, who sent the group out to Sweden to record their first album, Limbo, Panto, released on June the 16th. The new single — The Devil’s Crayon — shimmers in wide-screen around a sense of location, melody and wonder at the scale of things. Indeed, it sounds like the theme song to a new kind of very English road movie.

Subscribe to Lost At E Minor now and you could be rocking these insanely stylish MOSCOT Nebb sunglasses, as worn by those modfathers of musical sleek, Young Knives. Hell, Cee-Lo even wore them on Saturday Night Live a few weeks back. We’re giving the sunnies away with a copy of Young Knives’ new album, Superabundance, which came out last Tuesday. To enter, just sign up to receive the Lost At E Minor weekly email newsletter and leave a message under this post saying, ‘You betch, I want these!’. Or sumthin’ like that. We’ll select one winner randomly. Shucks, it’s a tough job, but … Entries close 10am Monday, New York time.

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Don’t be afraid of the word retro. It has haunted us all from time to time, but one group that has embraced it with open arms is UK duo, La Roux. Their music is synth pop in the vein of Calvin Harris, Human League, The Eurythmics, and The Knife. There are quite a few of these young and ambitious pop starlets on the scene including Goldielocks. But La Roux takes the cake. Literally. I’m obsessed with their song In For the Kill and have a feeling summer will take it and make it a hit.

Despite their jarring name, British noise duo Fuck Buttons are surprisingly palatable. The band’s long, droning tracks are infused with sweet twinkles and sunny synth, but dark shards of ominous guitar overdrive and distorted screeches pierce the shimmering surface just when you’re ready to zone out. Danceable beats occasionally draw everything back together, creating a stormy, pulsing, and disorienting atmosphere.

We love the incessant rumble and roll of London’s The Duke Spirit. So we caught up with the group for a chat. You’ve gone for a very spatial sound, delivering songs that stretch for miles. Ironic considering you hail from the concrete jungle that is London. ‘It’s not ironic: music isn’t site-specific. Some of the most interesting stuff happens when, and where , you least expect it. You can’t predict that, or it becomes a pigeonhole. You make the music you are compelled to make, nothing more’. Did the contract for Chris Goss (of sandblasted KYUSS and QOTSA fame) stipulate that your new album — Neptune — had to be recorded in the desert? ‘No, hbe didn’t. It was more a case of cut your coat according to your cloth. He suggested it as we had been there before for the Unkle collaboration and it was so easy to work there — we felt totally creative. He aims high, though. We could have made a sprawler of a record with a load more cash, spending years in the studio, I reckon! And Chris would have been happy marshalling those sounds into something awesome. I’m not sure it would have been this record, though! We’re all in love with this record. It sounds hi-fi where we wanted it to, but making it was so easy and down-home, without all the big city distractions’. Neptune is, in your words, about sadness and redemption, death and rebirth, containing the sounds of the ocean but recorded in the desert. Is conflict a source of creation for you? ‘Personal conflict isn’t part of our writing process either. We’re pretty honest but fair with each other, so we make decisions quick with regards to parts, arrangements, and sounds. You all want to hear a song sounding perfect when you’re working it out. It’s like music addiction, getting to the perfect little pocket of sound. Then you get excited about it and refine it, and then it’s a song’.

Sheez, if I was a girl, I would probably be swooning right now. Elusive by Scott Matthews distills every breathy tremolo and falsetto that Jeff Buckley ever uttered into four minutes of beautiful melodies. Kinda special.

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The music of UK group By The Fireside is an epic, sprawling, and ambitious sound. Their new album, The Great Hartford Fire, is reigned in thematically by lyrical references to the 1944 disaster in Connecticut that killed some 200 people. We spoke to By The Fireside’s Daniel Lea: What was the inspiration to write an album around such a calamitous event? ‘I watched a film called Nightmare Alley — a 1950’s film noir based in the circus — and from that I started looking for books about the circus. That’s how I stumbled upon the story of The Great Hartford Fire. It naturally happened after that. I started writing songs influenced by the circus and Robert Sagee, who was accused of starting the fire. I like creating little worlds I can get lost in for a while and this time around it just happened to be the circus and the fire. There was so much to draw from lyrically and musically I could have done a double concept album! Ha, not really’. Having successfully produced so many other acts, is it more difficult to release something under your name, with the weight of expectation on the finished product? ‘Oh, thank you. Well there’s always a lot of pressure writing and making an album; mostly from myself, to make it better and push it in directions I haven’t been before. For me producing albums and working with different people all the time adds a lot to my own projects. I love collaborating with different musicians and artists. It makes a song end up in different place to how you thought, which is sometimes for the better. I realized that after producing for artists you suggest things that they haven’t thought of and it push’s the song in a different direction. So I am very open to ideas when recording with friends, which is why I ended up co-producing half the album with Matthew Cousins. When you work a lot by yourself you can easily get stuck in a hole in your head and its great having someone with an outside point of view to pull you out of that and put a different angle on everything’. Is there one track in particular on the album that sent chills down your spine as you listened to it back through the headphones as it was being mixed? ‘The title track from the album — The Great Hartford Fire. It is the backbone of the album. The song is about Robert Sagee who was accused of lighting the fire. I wanted to write a song about him that questions if he was responsible or not. The song for me is like a mini-epic lullaby. It is the most cinematic piece on the album and my favourite to play live. What’s the next project you’re working on? ‘I’m recording the Dark Captain Light Captain album, who are signed to Loaf Recordings (Thurston Moore, Square Pusher) for January and February. We have a lot of By The Fireside gigs in February and March to support the release of “Moon Lake” 7” single. I plan to record an album with Matthew Cousins, who co-produced a lot of The Great Hartford Fire, which will be a project separate from his solo stuff and mine. I’m also in the process of writing new material for the next By The Fireside album and EP, which I plan on finishing by the end of the year’.

At a gig last year Foals were forced to abandon their last song halfway through because the stage was stormed by too many crazed fans. The reason behind the hype they’re creating, both on stage and in the normally merciless media, isn’t immediately clear upon first listen: the sound is less than friendly on the ears, and they don’t employ the same catchy hooks and melodic chorus patterns that shoot your average band to fame in their early years. Indeed they epitomise the ‘mathematical rock’ sound, where sequential guitar plucks, drum kicks and staccato vocals are the order of the day. But lying somewhere within this is a depth and energy — worthy of comparison with At The Drive-In and Fugazi — that riles the listener into an almost unquenchable head-nodding frenzy. The band has a collective vocal force that produces a barrage of hollering, ordering whoever is on the receiving end to stop dead and take in what they’re throwing at you. It’s shout after riff after drum loop, a relentless succession of blips, beeps and cries that interweave with pinpoint accuracy, in equal measures invigorating and exhausting. And with the sound refusing to let up, The Foals are likely to trample their way through 2008 and emerge victorious.

Listen to the Foals track, Hummer.