News Posts — Fika Recordings
A DIY INDIEPOP VINYL & CASSETTE LABEL

Oct 9: Allo Darlin' at EartH Hall

Anglo-Australian indiepop heroes Allo Darlin’ are back with their first new music in a decade. We’re delighted to host them for the London leg of their UK tour - and there’ll be some very special guests joining them on stage.

Support to be announced.

Face value tickets include a £1.50 venue restoration levy.

No questions asked concessions are available for anyone that can't afford a full price ticket, for whatever reason. No eligibility requirements - we trust you.

Tickets on general sale 10am April 9th.

Pre-sale exclusively via the Allo Darlin' mailing list from 10am April 7th - sign up here in advance to get the pre-sale link: allodarlin.com

Apr 8: Bill Botting & The Two Drink Minimums + Common or Garden + jay cavalier at The Waiting Room

You’ll know Bill Botting as one half of Moustache Of Insanity, a quarter of Allo Darlin’ and a whole lot of awesomeness. He's back in the UK briefly for what'll be a very special show!

Support comes from Common or Garden. A step forward from her previous acoustic based & ukulele lead outfit Owl & Mouse, London located Common or Garden is self described as ‘scrappy’ synth pop - self produced and more experimental than her previous outfit. The core of her songwriting charm remains: vociferously personal stories, resonating harmonies and layers of vocals to lose yourself in.

Opening the night is Jay Cavalier and The Band, a mysterious bedroom-stadium rock group from England. They have one song on the Internet (as of April 4th) and so far only one confirmed member had been sighted. He hopes that more of his band will join him soon.

Join us at The Waiting Room on the 8th of April.

Tickets from wegottickets.com/event/653644/

Allo Darlin' - Tricky Questions [Digital]

Artist: Allo Darlin’
Title: Tricky Questions
Format: Digital single
Cat#: Fika107SG1
Release date: 2nd April 2025
Bandcamp | Spotify

Allo Darlin' return with new single "Tricky Questions" - their first new music since 2016
Out now via Fika Recordings (UK) & Slumberland Records (USA)
October UK tour, with shows in Nottingham, London, Glasgow and Manchester.

After almost a decade away, Anglo-Australian indiepop quartet Allo Darlin’ are back with their first new music since 2016’s farewell 7” single ‘Hymn On The 45’, and announce a UK tour this October (details below).

New single ‘Tricky Questions’ exhibits Elizabeth's adept skill at taking specific experiences and creating something timeless and universally resonant, and recalls living in Florence having left London:

“There’s a piazza, Piazza della Signoria, not far from where I used to live, where the Palazzo Vecchio is. You used to be able to go and walk right up to the sculptures in the Loggia, but I think now they are roped off and a guard watches over them. The city was full of tourists during the day, but after 9pm, they would all go back to their hotels. That’s when the city came alive to me, and it felt like it was just for us.

"I was really thinking about that place when I wrote this song. I wanted to go back there and soak it all up again. Writing about it helped me feel like I was back there, in a place that is timeless. But of course, more than being about a specific place, this song is really about a relationship and how it makes me feel.”

‘Tricky Questions’ was the first song Elizabeth wrote for a reformed Allo Darlin’, in the early months of the corona pandemic. Indeed, it was the corona pandemic that brought the band back together, while stuck in their isolation in Norway, England and Australia. Missing each other and the music they made together, Allo Darlin’ started having group Zoom calls, and decided that when the pandemic was over, they would become a band again. In early 2023, the band announced that they would play a couple of shows in October of that year in the UK, and the fan response was truly overwhelming.

Tickets sold out in minutes, with fans travelling from all over the world, and the band had to upgrade their London show to a venue twice the size of the original. It seemed like their fans had missed Allo Darlin’ as much as they had missed each other. 

Live Dates

5th April - Cologne PopFest, Germany
7th October - Nottingham, Old Cold Store
9th October - London, EartH Hall
10th October - Glasgow, Stereo
11th October - Manchester, Yes Pink Room

Tickets on sale Wednesday 9th April 10am
Pre-sale for all dates via the Allo Darlin’ mailing list from Monday 7th April 10am - sign up via allodarlin.com

Artwork for Allo Darlin' digital single Tricky Questions

Allo Darlin' were formed in 2008 after Australian Elizabeth Morris arrived in London and bought a ukulele from the Duke of Uke shop in Shoreditch. Like a whole host of Australian musicians before her, Morris had headed to London to realise her musical ambitions, a young woman with the small instrument in the big city with even bigger ideas.  Once there happenstance, chance encounters and a Bruce Springsteen cover for a compilation would all conspire to create the crack squad that has endured, Morris being joined by fellow Brisbanite Bill Botting and the British duo of Michael Collins and Paul Rains.

From its first line (“Will you go out with me tonight, lose it on a disco floor?”), their self-titled debut released in 2010 fizzed with the effervescent, intoxicating energy and excitement of the opportunities and experiences it offered. From frosty night buses through to fiscal inadequacy and everything in between, it was an album which presented the city as a blank canvas where everything was fair game for romanticising and celebrating, and a world where most of life's tribulations could be solved with the warm embrace of a loved one. Fresh, bright and unashamedly hopeful and idealistic, blissful exuberance ran through it like the sound of a band in love with being in a band.

Writing in his 1200 word essay on the album for Australia's The Monthly (later featuring in his writing compilation Ten Rules Of Rock And Roll), former Go-between Robert Forster suggested that the band “now have doors open before them”. Thus follow-up Europe could be viewed as the album The Go-Betweens dared them to make, culminating in the sparkling pop perfection (and throwback to Morris' native Queensland) of lead single 'Capricornia'. Their sophomore effort simultaneously looked at the Europe of her present alongside the Australia of her past, offering a stunning reflection on belonging and sense of place and a band at their most dazzlingly technicolour that built on the eagerness and immediacy of the debut with contemplation, sophistication and ambition.

Successor, 2014’s ‘We Come From The Same Place’ dwelt on belonging in terms of new beginnings and documented Morris' journey into a new chapter in her life, resulting in an album that saw her flit between the uncertainty of starting anew and post-resettlement confidence.

Allo Darlin's songs work because, to borrow from Don Draper's Kodak Carousel pitch in Mad Men, they take us to a place where we feel loved. Emotional trust falls, they often take us to parts of ourselves we've either suppressed or have yet to discover and then are always there to catch us if and when we get there.

Mirrored Daughters - Mirrored Daughters [12"]

Artist: Mirrored Daughters
Title: Mirrored Daughters
Format: 12” black vinyl
Cat#: Fika106LP
Release date: 21st February 2025
Bandcamp | Spotify

Fika presents Mirrored Daughters - an album of lo-fi folk-pop and explorative woodland meditations from members of Firestations, The Leaf Library and Marlody. Bright-eyed, melodic music inspired by travels in Epping Forest as much as it was by spontaneous collaboration, these 11 tracks deliver an intriguing journey through (and beyond) the forest - crystal clear melancholy interspersed with benign drone rituals. 

The music on their self-titled debut takes a step away from the widescreen production of the artists’ other groups and instead revels in the instinctive, warm tones of acoustic instruments; guitars, cellos, clarinet, a harmonium and bells providing the earthy sonic environment for these spacious songs. 

Starting out as quickly-recorded acoustic guitar and bass pieces by Lewis Young (Leaf Library drummer) they were then taken up by Mike Cranny (guitarist and singer in fellow Walthamstow travellers Firestations), cellist Hannah Reeves and additional Leaf Library member Matt Ashton. Each added parts remotely, engineered in their home studios, before singer Marlody brought her crystalline voice to the music; layered harmonies and twisting, looping phrases that tie the story together.  

Alongside these sketches were Lewis’s trips to the forest with a train of bells and a battered old violin, all dragged through mud, fallen leaves and brambles to create otherworldly yet natural sounds - music that sounds like it’s sprung from the forest floor. Lewis likens this ritual to “uncovering music that’s always been… a summoning of spirit folk, used to appearing in autumn, taking a pilgrimage through forests with joy and frivolity. A Miyazaki-meets-Chaucer kinda vibe.” 

While the music is inhabited by these eerie and historic landscapes - camps, iron age forts, the folklore and the golden atmosphere of autumn - the lyrics speak to more personal (if occasionally abstract) concerns, both revelling in the escape enabled by the forest and worrying about the encroaching city at the edge of it. There are dreams of leaving (“Leave the sound and your heavy head behind” from first single City Song, “Silently running at the moment of waking” from Waiting At The Water) and fear of stasis (“I fell over in my sleep again, a head all cloudy with fine rain, depthless in the breaking day, tiredness is waiting, serpentine” from Unreturning Sun). 

The band name, taken from lyrics posited by Mike during the lyric writing process, perfectly encapsulates the atmosphere conjured here, neither sinister nor wholly comforting, unknown yet alluring. As author Will Ashon says in the sleeve notes to the album (an excerpt from his book Strange Labyrinth published by Granta Books), “Everything is always changing in Epping Forest. There’s the yearly cycle of growth and death, of course, and the daily iteration of this in new buds, new blossom, new leaves, dead blossom, dead leaves and so on, the tiny, inconsequential shifts which gradually add up to something more”.

From the album opener, the gently sinister Mirror Descend, to the skyward-looking, hopeful closing track of Mirror Ascend, this collection of songs and rituals leaves space for the listener to take their own journey through a half-real, half-imagined landscape, before emerging changed, re-entering the borderlands at the boundary of the suburban sprawl.

Biographies:

Mirrored Daughters are Marlody, Mike (Firestations), Matt and Lewis (The Leaf Library), and Hannah.

Marlody (Skep Wax) is a singer/songwriter based in Kent. Dominated by her extraordinary keyboard playing, Marlody’s songs are illuminated - and sometimes made sinister - by occasional bursts of programmed percussion, submarine bass and distant, chiming digital bells. 

Firestations (Lost Map Records) span genres from shoegaze to alt-pop and harmony-driven psychedelia. Their second album, The Year Dot, released in 2018, was followed by sonic collage album Dream Home in 2020 and the Automatic Tendencies EP project in 2020-21. The latter took the form of three EPs over a six-month period, each including alternative “sunken” versions by the band as well as covers and remixes of the band’s tracks by other artists. Thick Terrain, released in 2023, saw Firestations return to album format with ten tracks ranging from hypnotic sci-fi landscapes to addictive dream-pop jangles, exploring ideas around identity, conflict, progress and sanity.

The Leaf Library (WIAIWYA) are a north London band playing melodic dream-like music built on layers of chiming guitars, pulsing electronics, noise and looping drones. They have released three studio albums (Daylight Versions, About Minerals, The World Is A Bell) and a double LP of rarities and compilation tracks (Library Music: Volume One) on Where It’s At Is Where You Are, a collaborative LP with Japanese artist Teruyuki Kurihara (Melody Tomb) on electronic label Mille Plateaux, and a recent EP of electronic pop songs on the Castles In Space label.

“a moment of unabashed beauty that feels like clouds parting after a storm. By the end of this evocatively autumnal album, Mirrored Daughters have wandered deep into the forest, but are finally out of the woods.” The Quietus

“a deeply atmospheric self-titled album that never really left the forest, a blend of ambient folk and mystical lo-fi that’s halfway between Modern Nature and The Left Outsides” Shindig ⭐⭐⭐⭐

“shades of The Staves, The Incredible Strong Band and Pentangle, Mirrored Daughters’ debut has real charm and freshness” Songlines ⭐⭐⭐

“A diaphanous as much as lamenting wisp of veiled pastoral folk rich tapestry, Mirrored Daughters haven’t just evoked the landscape but blended right in with it, becoming part of the stories, the myth and dream realism of an iconic English woodland. The ensemble manages to inhabit many different ages of existence as they stage an intervention against urbanisation and the loss of wildling areas.
Many fans of the folk idiom, of the English school of folk-rock and bards and troubadours will feel very much at ease with this album, whilst presently surprised by the touches of the unearthly, of visitations and the near cosmic. A case of the familiar and yet, not so familiar. A good start to a new project.” Monolith Cocktail

“Bright acoustic guitars and Marlody’s voice ensure that it isn’t wrong to call Mirrored Daughters a pop album, but neither do Mirrored Daughters shortchange the more experimental side of their music; the instrumental, ambient, nature-sound pieces are integrated smoothly alongside the folk songs.” Rosy Overdrive

“From the voice-led cohort of compositions, there are some truly captivating passages to be found. This entails transporting us through the Meg Baird-meets-Tindersticks beauty of “City Song”; the skittering harmony-loaded uplift of “The New Design”; the overlapping vocal swirl of “Unreturning Sun”; the cello-steered hypnotics of “Waiting At The Water”; and the wistful Vashti Bunyan-tinged psych-pop reverie of “An Open Door”.” Freq

“The creaking of electronics and field recordings on “Something Hollow”, the bold foray into folktronica on “Decrowned” and the evanescent, almost goth liturgy on “The Lanthorn Daughter” further shift the axis towards an indefinite temporal dimension, in many ways similar to Low’s first albums, a key to understanding the many merits and very few defects of an excellent debut.” Ondarock [IT]

Mirrored Daughters - Unreturning Sun [Digital]

Artist: Mirrored Daughters
Title: Unreturning Sun
Format: Digital single
Cat#: Fika106SG3
Release date: 4th February 2025
Bandcamp | Spotify

Taken from the forthcoming self-titled debut album (Feb 2025).
Mirrored Daughters play The Harrison, Kings Cross, London to launch the album on the 26th of February.

Fika Recordings present Mirrored Daughters - an album of lo-fi folk-pop and explorative woodland meditations from members of Firestations, The Leaf Library and Marlody. Bright-eyed, melodic music inspired by travels in Epping Forest as much as it was by spontaneous collaboration, these 11 tracks deliver an intriguing journey through (and beyond) the forest - crystal clear melancholy interspersed with benign drone rituals. 

Unreturning Sun is the third single taken from the self-titled debut album, more pensive than the previous two singles. It’s a worried wander through misty rain at the edges of the forest/city during the onset of winter, when the summer is at its furthest distance, drenched in looped vocals.

The music on their self-titled debut takes a step away from the widescreen production of the artists’ other groups and instead revels in the instinctive, warm tones of acoustic instruments; guitars, cellos, clarinet, a harmonium and bells providing the earthy sonic environment for these spacious songs. 

Starting out as quickly-recorded acoustic guitar and bass pieces by Lewis Young (Leaf Library drummer) they were then taken up by Mike Cranny (guitarist and singer in fellow Walthamstow travellers Firestations), cellist Hannah Reeves and additional Leaf Library member Matt Ashton. Each added parts remotely, engineered in their home studios, before singer Marlody brought her crystalline voice to the music; layered harmonies and twisting, looping phrases that tie the story together.  

Alongside these sketches were Lewis’s trips to the forest with a train of bells and a battered old violin, all dragged through mud, fallen leaves and brambles to create otherworldly yet natural sounds - music that sounds like it’s sprung from the forest floor. Lewis likens this ritual to “uncovering music that’s always been… a summoning of spirit folk, used to appearing in autumn, taking a pilgrimage through forests with joy and frivolity. A Miyazaki-meets-Chaucer kinda vibe.” 

While the music is inhabited by these eerie and historic landscapes - camps, iron age forts, the folklore and the golden atmosphere of autumn - the lyrics speak to more personal (if occasionally abstract) concerns, both revelling in the escape enabled by the forest and worrying about the encroaching city at the edge of it. There are dreams of leaving (“Leave the sound and your heavy head behind” from first single City Song, “Silently running at the moment of waking” from Waiting At The Water) and fear of stasis (“I fell over in my sleep again, a head all cloudy with fine rain, depthless in the breaking day, tiredness is waiting, serpentine” from Unreturning Sun). 

The band name, taken from lyrics posited by Mike during the lyric writing process, perfectly encapsulates the atmosphere conjured here, neither sinister nor wholly comforting, unknown yet alluring. As author Will Ashon says in the sleeve notes to the album (an excerpt from his book Strange Labyrinth published by Granta Books), “Everything is always changing in Epping Forest. There’s the yearly cycle of growth and death, of course, and the daily iteration of this in new buds, new blossom, new leaves, dead blossom, dead leaves and so on, the tiny, inconsequential shifts which gradually add up to something more”.

From the album opener, the gently sinister Mirror Descend, to the skyward-looking, hopeful closing track of Mirror Ascend, this collection of songs and rituals leaves space for the listener to take their own journey through a half-real, half-imagined landscape, before emerging changed, re-entering the borderlands at the boundary of the suburban sprawl.

Biographies:

Mirrored Daughters are Marlody, Mike (Firestations), Matt and Lewis (The Leaf Library), and Hannah.

Marlody (Skep Wax) is a singer/songwriter based in Kent. Dominated by her extraordinary keyboard playing, Marlody’s songs are illuminated - and sometimes made sinister - by occasional bursts of programmed percussion, submarine bass and distant, chiming digital bells. 

Firestations (Lost Map Records) span genres from shoegaze to alt-pop and harmony-driven psychedelia. Their second album, The Year Dot, released in 2018, was followed by sonic collage album Dream Home in 2020 and the Automatic Tendencies EP project in 2020-21. The latter took the form of three EPs over a six-month period, each including alternative “sunken” versions by the band as well as covers and remixes of the band’s tracks by other artists. Thick Terrain, released in 2023, saw Firestations return to album format with ten tracks ranging from hypnotic sci-fi landscapes to addictive dream-pop jangles, exploring ideas around identity, conflict, progress and sanity.

The Leaf Library (WIAIWYA) are a north London band playing melodic dream-like music built on layers of chiming guitars, pulsing electronics, noise and looping drones. They have released three studio albums (Daylight Versions, About Minerals, The World Is A Bell) and a double LP of rarities and compilation tracks (Library Music: Volume One) on Where It’s At Is Where You Are, a collaborative LP with Japanese artist Teruyuki Kurihara (Melody Tomb) on electronic label Mille Plateaux, and a recent EP of electronic pop songs on the Castles In Space label.

Mirrored Daughters - The New Design [Digital]

Artist: Mirrored Daughters
Title: The New Design
Format: Digital single
Cat#: Fika106SG2
Release date: 14th January 2025
Bandcamp | Spotify

Taken from the forthcoming self-titled debut album (Feb 2025).
Mirrored Daughters play The Harrison, Kings Cross, London to launch the album on the 26th of February.

Fika Recordings present Mirrored Daughters - an album of lo-fi folk-pop and explorative woodland meditations from members of Firestations, The Leaf Library and Marlody. Bright-eyed, melodic music inspired by travels in Epping Forest as much as it was by spontaneous collaboration, these 11 tracks deliver an intriguing journey through (and beyond) the forest - crystal clear melancholy interspersed with benign drone rituals. 

The New Design is the second single taken from the self-titled debut album, and the first track that Marlody sang on. It exudes warmth in a cold season, with choral layers and rousing cello.

Winter is further down
Nothing is in its place
Trees break the pale sky
Morning has been replaced

The music on their self-titled debut takes a step away from the widescreen production of the artists’ other groups and instead revels in the instinctive, warm tones of acoustic instruments; guitars, cellos, clarinet, a harmonium and bells providing the earthy sonic environment for these spacious songs. 

Starting out as quickly-recorded acoustic guitar and bass pieces by Lewis Young (Leaf Library drummer) they were then taken up by Mike Cranny (guitarist and singer in fellow Walthamstow travellers Firestations), cellist Hannah Reeves and additional Leaf Library member Matt Ashton. Each added parts remotely, engineered in their home studios, before singer Marlody brought her crystalline voice to the music; layered harmonies and twisting, looping phrases that tie the story together.  

Alongside these sketches were Lewis’s trips to the forest with a train of bells and a battered old violin, all dragged through mud, fallen leaves and brambles to create otherworldly yet natural sounds - music that sounds like it’s sprung from the forest floor. Lewis likens this ritual to “uncovering music that’s always been… a summoning of spirit folk, used to appearing in autumn, taking a pilgrimage through forests with joy and frivolity. A Miyazaki-meets-Chaucer kinda vibe.” 

While the music is inhabited by these eerie and historic landscapes - camps, iron age forts, the folklore and the golden atmosphere of autumn - the lyrics speak to more personal (if occasionally abstract) concerns, both revelling in the escape enabled by the forest and worrying about the encroaching city at the edge of it. There are dreams of leaving (“Leave the sound and your heavy head behind” from first single City Song, “Silently running at the moment of waking” from Waiting At The Water) and fear of stasis (“I fell over in my sleep again, a head all cloudy with fine rain, depthless in the breaking day, tiredness is waiting, serpentine” from Unreturning Sun). 

The band name, taken from lyrics posited by Mike during the lyric writing process, perfectly encapsulates the atmosphere conjured here, neither sinister nor wholly comforting, unknown yet alluring. As author Will Ashon says in the sleeve notes to the album (an excerpt from his book Strange Labyrinth published by Granta Books), “Everything is always changing in Epping Forest. There’s the yearly cycle of growth and death, of course, and the daily iteration of this in new buds, new blossom, new leaves, dead blossom, dead leaves and so on, the tiny, inconsequential shifts which gradually add up to something more”.

From the album opener, the gently sinister Mirror Descend, to the skyward-looking, hopeful closing track of Mirror Ascend, this collection of songs and rituals leaves space for the listener to take their own journey through a half-real, half-imagined landscape, before emerging changed, re-entering the borderlands at the boundary of the suburban sprawl.

Biographies:

Mirrored Daughters are Marlody, Mike (Firestations), Matt and Lewis (The Leaf Library), and Hannah.

Marlody (Skep Wax) is a singer/songwriter based in Kent. Dominated by her extraordinary keyboard playing, Marlody’s songs are illuminated - and sometimes made sinister - by occasional bursts of programmed percussion, submarine bass and distant, chiming digital bells. 

Firestations (Lost Map Records) span genres from shoegaze to alt-pop and harmony-driven psychedelia. Their second album, The Year Dot, released in 2018, was followed by sonic collage album Dream Home in 2020 and the Automatic Tendencies EP project in 2020-21. The latter took the form of three EPs over a six-month period, each including alternative “sunken” versions by the band as well as covers and remixes of the band’s tracks by other artists. Thick Terrain, released in 2023, saw Firestations return to album format with ten tracks ranging from hypnotic sci-fi landscapes to addictive dream-pop jangles, exploring ideas around identity, conflict, progress and sanity.

The Leaf Library (WIAIWYA) are a north London band playing melodic dream-like music built on layers of chiming guitars, pulsing electronics, noise and looping drones. They have released three studio albums (Daylight Versions, About Minerals, The World Is A Bell) and a double LP of rarities and compilation tracks (Library Music: Volume One) on Where It’s At Is Where You Are, a collaborative LP with Japanese artist Teruyuki Kurihara (Melody Tomb) on electronic label Mille Plateaux, and a recent EP of electronic pop songs on the Castles In Space label.

“The pleasantly endearing early foretaste from next February 2025 debut LP, unfurls on serene sparkling acoustic fingerpicking, stirred by soft percussions, round bass pulses, warm tonal cello inlays, and melancholic string flourishes, to frame heartfelt wide-eyed vocals, with the warmth and comfort of a nostalgic surrounding amid the encroaching menace of city sounds.” White Light White Heat

25 Years of The Winter Sprinter

The Track & Field Organisation, Fortuna POP! and Fika Recordings present the 2025 Winter Sprinter.
Twenty-five years on from the Track & Field Winter Sprinter, we've enlisted them and subsequent custodians Fortuna POP! to bring you four nights and twelve bands - the perfect antidote to the January blues in the intimate surroundings of The Lexington.

Jan 8th: Modern Nature + Trust Fund + The Ballet
Jan 9th: Fresh + Mammoth Penguins + Atlanta Dream Season
Jan 10th: Holiday Ghosts + SUEP + Evripidis and His Tragedies
Jan 11th: Sacred Paws + Autocamper + Sassyhiya

Tickets from wegottickets.com/fikarecordings

MODERN NATURE

Jack Cooper is a musician and composer based near Cambridge, UK.

He is primarily the leader of Modern Nature, a group that blurs the lines between folk music, modern composition and improvisation. Since 2019, alongside collaborators Jeff Tobias and Jim Wallis, they have released two critically acclaimed albums and a host of other material that includes an instrumental album, a short record called Annual and four cassettes of improvised music. Their next album No Fixed Point In Space is due in autumn 2023 on Bella Union Records.

His notated music has been performed by the UK based chamber group Apartment House, at Fouroneone in New York and recordings of his pieces Tributaries and Arrival were released on the U.S. label Astral Spirits.  In 2024 the BBC Concert Orchestra commissioned a piece called ‘Triptych For Orchestra’ which was performed at the Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall.

Describing his work, Jack Cooper says “in all my work I provide a framework for musicians to interact within where no instrument or performer is more important than the other.  All of the musical elements; the melody, the pulse, the dynamics and the narrative are the shared responsibility of the collective.  I want to hear that magic in detail, so I lean towards slow and quiet music”

He was previously a member of the rock bands Mazes and Ultimate Painting and has worked as a touring musician for Andrew Savage (Parquet Courts) and The David Nance Group.

TRUST FUND

Trust Fund, the musical project of singer-songwriter Ellis Jones.

Fans of Jones’ delicate, funny, relatable songwriting will know that yes, it has been a while. His last album was released six years ago. The 2018 LP Bringing the Backline – which received praise from Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, The Guardian, and more – coincided with Jones calling time on Trust Fund, as band members began their own families, and he moved to Norway (and then on to Canada) to begin a career in academia. As he puts it: “I turned thirty, I moved away, and I thought, ‘I guess I don’t do that anymore’”.

His return reflects a realisation that his music-making days continue to stretch out before him, and marks the development of a mature style that offers both continuity and change. While previous Trust Fund albums have foregrounded a fuzzy, indie-rock aesthetic, on Has It Been A While? Jones strips his songs down to classical guitar and vocals, supported by captivating string quartet arrangements provided by Maria Grig. Trust Fund’s lyrical dexterity remains, and is showcased here on tracks such as The Mirror (a duet with Radiant Heart’s Celia MacDougall), whose vainglorious protagonist would gladly “use the mirror as TV”.

THE BALLET

Formed in 2005 by Greg Goldberg and Craig Willse, The Ballet marry wry poeticism with pop romanticism and a queer DIY ethos to create literate, infectious pop gems. The band self-released their first two albums: ​Mattachine! ​(2006) ​and Bear Life​ (2009). These records caught the attention of indie-label-legends Fortuna Pop!, who released their third album, ​I Blame Society,​ in 2013. After FortunaPop! closed shop, The Ballet partnered with Fika Recordings, who released their fourth album, the critically acclaimed Matchy Matchy, in 2019.

The Ballet have been joined by a few other musicians over the years including Ginger Brooks Takahashi and Michael O'Neill, who left in 2007 to join JD Sampson in MEN, as well as guest appearances on previous albums from Linton of The Aislers Set, Ramesh from Voxtrot, Scott Matthew, and Kaki King.

In addition to citing Stephin Merritt as a formative influence, Goldberg—who writes and home-records all of the band’s songs—draws from an array of pop artists and periods; from 60’s bubblegum to 80’s synthpop and 90’s indiepop, fusing these genres in sophisticated and novel ways.

FRESH

Punx from London who love emo, shredding, touring, oat milk and using friendship to fill a large and uncertain hole inside of yourself. Made up of singer and guitarist Kathryn Woods, bassist George Phillips, guitarist Joely Smith and drummer Daniel Goldberg.

MAMMOTH PENGUINS

Mammoth Penguins are a 3-piece indie powerhouse, showcasing the songwriting and vocal talents of Emma Kupa (Standard Fare) backed up by the noisiest rhythm section in indie pop.

Mammoth Penguins are Emma Kupa (guitar, vocals), Mark Boxall (bass, vocals) and Tom Barden (drums, vocals). Reminiscent of the pop melodies of The Beths, the indie dissonance of Land of Talk, and the guitar forward slacker rock of Weezer, Mammoth Penguins marry heart-ache indiepop with spiky guitars and Emma’s frank confessional songwriting.

ATLANTA DREAM SEASON

Atlanta Dream Season are an indie rock band from London consisting of David Singleton (vocals & guitar), Donal Sweeney (vocals & guitar), Robin Lindop Fi$her (vocals & bass) and Jim Humphries (drums).

Atlanta Dream Season have yet to disband acrimoniously in 2027 as the members move on to self-indulgent solo projects. In 2036, they will undertake a moderately well-received reunion tour.

HOLIDAY GHOSTS

Holiday Ghosts - a prolific four-piece of musicians and friends bring their hip-shaking, head thrashing, raw and upbeat energy to their recordings and unforgettable live shows. The result is unadulterated and unclean, unabashed and uncompromised. As drummer, Katja Rackin, and guitarist Sam Stacpoole, share lead vocal duties, their voices come together as one with dispersed harmonies, often joined by rhythm guitarist Ben Nightingale, and grounded by Morgan Lloyd-Mathews tastefully simplistic bass grooves. Call it garagy, jangly, rock n rolly, indie, punky, poppy, whatever you wanty.

Since the birth of the band they have played iconic stages throughout the UK and Europe, from Latitude Festival to Left Of The Dial, from Dot to Dot to Misty Fields from the Pyrenees mountains to the chapels of Chester. They’ve toured with top acts such as WITCH, BODEGA, Shannon & The Clams, Juan Wauters, Black Lips, The Bug Club & more; attracted widespread praise across the press community (KEXP, Brooklyn Vegan, The Guardian, The Independent, Stereogum, DIY, So Young, The Line Of Best Fit, Clash, Gigwise & more), and been consistently spotlighted by BBC 6 Music, with their Album of the Day feature and live interviews. With catchy melodies, fiery lyrics, hard-picked guitars and a DIY punk spirit, Holiday Ghosts have cemented their status in the UK music scene and have big plans for the year ahead.

SUEP

Featuring members of Porridge Radio, Joanna Gruesome, Garden Centre and PC World, SUEP’s debut is fresh outsider guitar pop packed in a six track genre-fluid mini album. Tied by the force of invincible friendship, SUEP playfully subvert every little life-struggle into cohesively winsome tunes, flying high on lighthearted theatrics and absurdist reserve against the world.

Led by Georgie Stott (of Porridge Radio, Garden Centre) and Josh Harvey, SUEP was born out of a near-decade of playing in sheds and barns with like minded personnel, holding a mutual love for Paul McCartney, Jona Lewie, the B-52s, Devo and other performative freaks enjoying themselves.

EVRIPIDIS AND HIS TRAGEDIES

Evripidis and His Tragedies is Evripidis Sabatis. The "Tragedies" are the devastating, confessional, self-sarcastic, darkly humorous songs that draw on his classical piano training, queer sensibility and storytelling skills to examine and own up to the vicissitudes of life. Evripidis' pop inclinations take us for a bumpy, dancey ride across the fine line between tragedy and joie de vivre.

SACRED PAWS

Sacred Paws have a natural inclination not to take things too seriously. You can hear it all the way through a conversation with its two members, guitarist Rachel Aggs and drummer Eilidh Rodgers, punctuated by rolls of giggles and thoughtful pauses, and you can hear it in the light touch they bring to their music, a jangly blend of indie pop full of fizzing world rhythms and bright horns.

Shimmering guitar riffs dance between snappy beats and swooning melodies that will have crowds committing to far more than a simple head-bob. “I think we’d get bored if it was too slow,” Eilidh says. “We’d never want to play something live that people couldn’t dance to. It would feel really strange to us. It’s kind of the whole point.”

AUTOCAMPER

With buckets of melancholic charm and a cardigan collection that would make even Stephen Pastel blush, Autocamper are the perfect pop antidote to Manchester's predictable post-punk machismo. Their new single Summertime / Ken Hom, effortlessly captures the jangle pop spirit of the '80s—without the C86 revisionism. Driven by a relentlessly melodic organ and a spare, scratchy guitar jangle, both tracks exemplify Autocamper's fresh and exciting UK-meets-NZ pop sound.

SASSYHIYA

Sassyhiya  (pronounced “Sassy Hiya”) were formed when Helen and Kathy, real-life partners and co-songwriters, joined up with Pablo and Neil (drums and guitar). Helen had previously been in Boys Forever and Basic Plumbing, collaborating with much-missed Veronica Falls musician Patrick Doyle. She and Kathy then formed Barry, a stripped-down queercore outfit, with Bart McDonagh (The Male Gays) and Mark Amura (My Executive Dysfunction). Sassyhiya feels like a culmination of all these elements, hitting the sweet spot between post-punk and indie pop. They know their way around a melody but still keep it wonky, with influences ranging from the Breeders and Broadcast to Dolly Parton.

Alison Eales - Through Hoops EP [Digital]

Artist: Alison Eales
Title: Through Hoops
Format: Digital EP
Cat#: Fika094RMX
Release date: 30th December 2024
Bandcamp | Spotify

Through Hoops – taken from the album Mox Nox – is a song about the tensions inherent in friendships between people who are almost too alike. Upbeat and energetic, it features flute improvised by Diljeet Kaur Bhachu.

With support from Creative Scotland, the track was produced by Paul Savage at Chem 19 studios and mastered by Reuben Taylor. The cover lettering was cut from a risograph print made by Rhian Nicholas for the cover of Mox Nox.

The song is accompanied by a video made from clips of Prelinger Archives films, including Control Your Emotions (1950), Heavenly Bodies (1920s), Facing Reality (1954) and The Lamp of Memory (1944).

Along with vocal and instrumental versions of the lead track, the digital single features four remixes. The remix project was prompted by a request from Knut Børre Lindbjør, founder of the band Featherfin (along with the Eardrums music blog and EardrumsPop label). The track has also been reimagined by Matt Ashton (The Leaf Library and Basic Design remixes) and Isobel McKenna (Blue Kanues, Even Sisters).

About the remixes, Alison says:

When Knut asked me if he could remix one of my songs there was really only one contender. As he wasn’t overly familiar with the original track, I decided to make it even more challenging by sending him just the isolated vocals. I was so thrilled with the result that I decided to approach some other friends to see what they could do.

I knew that Matt liked the song, and as a fan of The Leaf Library I trusted him to come up with a wonderful remix – in the end, he came up with two, each with a distinct feel. I also knew that Isobel was interested in mixing and remixing, and that I could rely on her to make a version that would bring some contrast to sit alongside Knut and Matt’s dreampop.

Sunturns - Christmas III [12"]

Artist: Sunturns
Title: Christmas III
Format: 12” transparent & purple splatter vinyl
Cat#: Fika105LP
Release date: 6th December 2024
Bandcamp | Spotify

The Norwegian super-group with members from Making Marks, The Little Hands of Asphalt, Mildfire, Flight Mode and Elva return with a third album of original Christmas songs. 

Get into that alternative, Nordic Christmas spirit!

Christmas III at its heart is an alt-Christmas album: the songs are firmly rooted in December’s festivities, albeit not usually relying on the season’s traditional reference points. The songs hone in on the more ambivalent sides of Christmas - family, customs and the passing of time - with a keen eye towards the holidays’ most obvious function in countries close to the Artic circle: getting through the cold and dark times to celebrate the winter solstice and the turning of the sun. 

Drawing from Sufjan Stevens’ epic indie Christmas compendium and Phil Spector’s wall of sound classic A Christmas Gift From You, Christmas III is built on shimmering guitars, snow filled piano lines, gentle strings, springy vocals and dynamic drums - all steadily conducted by Sunturns’ own Sjur Lyseid (Flight Mode, The Little Hands of Asphalt) in the producer’s seat at his Globus studio in Oslo.

Songs like "I Do", "New Snow", "Colibri Heart" and "The Day Before the Day", have indeed been released as singles in the years after 2015, but the record is also packed with new Christmas songs about sunstroke, winter depression and everything other belonging. Beautiful First Winter was the first taste of the album already in October, and the Christmas singles Crash Course Christmas and Back in Town will make the Christmas bells ring in the right way.

With three songwriters (Ola Innset, Einar Stray and Sjur Lyseid) contributing to Christmas III, there’s an ever shifting sense of reflections. Parenthood and the struggles of the dark Norwegian winter is behind Ola’s track First Winter. “Some times I feel bad about bringing children into such a difficult world. Not so much with respect to daylight and the seasons, they’re just going to have to learn how to live with it, but with many other things – like war, poverty, climate change and even just death.” 

Back In Town might have been inspired by a discussion over whether Thin Lizzy’s “The Boys Are Back In Town” is a Christmas song or not, but it’s written about his youngest daughter Klara, to his elder daughter, about taking holidays with your family in a town you once lived.

Einar pulls in Phoenix and Mew by the way of Jesus and Mary Chain on Crash Course Christmas, resulting in a seasick wave of a pop tune. “It’s a song about the guilt of not prioritizing your relationships. It’s been year of rainchecks and Christmas finally gives you some time to reflect. You’ve experienced so much and changed so much as a person that you almost forget your origins. Coming home for Christmas can then be a ritiual of finding your way back to what you left behind."

Drawing on the knitwear from the film Love, Actually, Turtle Neck, taps into the Backstreet Boys by way of Mac Demarco, with a sneaky reference to the legendary Norwegian Christmas hit En Stjerne Skinner I Natt.

Album closer This Christmas / Next Christmas leans in on the hook for the Norwegian Christmas TV show Jul i Blåfjell, a multi-generational seasonal staple (essentially a daily children’s advent calendar kids show). “The song is about your parents ageing and needing your help – possibly really far away - while at the same time having your own children to take care of”.

If previous albums Christmas I (2011) and II (2015) are somewhat different from each other, then Christmas III represents a fusion of the two. Sunturns’ debut is full of youthful exuberance and was recorded with plentiful overdubs in Oslo, while 2015’s follow up is more pensive and somewhat darker, and was recorded live during one week in the Swedish forests. Einar elaborates: “I love making records like this: short, effective sessions with limited time and therefore no bland ‘perfection’. There’s a nerve to knowing you can collectively bring it all together without the luxury of time”. Christmas III represents a return to the lighter tone, on at least some of the songs, but with the wisdom of age that emerged on the second. You can’t just return to your twenties, however much you might want to!

The cover artwork is a homage to Christmas dress codes for Norwegian men. Suits and shirts are a rarity in day to day life, but there are a handful of occasions that require some form of formal attempt at a suit: New Year’s Eve, National Day, weddings & funerals, and Christmas Eve: resulting in various degrees of sartorial elegance on the day (and on this instance, a hot summer’s day stifling the Christmas vibes, with ambiguous apparel instructions ahead of the photoshoot!).

Sunturns will reconvene again in December for their annual Oslo show, complete with string section and choir at Parkteatret on the 13th of December.

Merry Christmas!

Sunturns are
Ola Innset – vocals, guitars, banjo
Sjur Lyseid – vocals, guitars
Einar Stray – vocals, keyboards, guitars
Eivind Almhjell – guitars, bass
Simen Herning – guitar
Jørgen Nordby – drums

“This is little Christmas music for people who don't like Christmas music, but with a Christmassy twist to it. With musicians from Little Hands of Asphalt and Making Marks, this is a sure hit for a hipper Christmas.” Aftenposten [5/6]

“There’s a Ronettes-style introduction to the album opener ‘New Snow’. This evolves into a jangle pop sound – complete with M Ward-esque guitar, choral backing vocals and self-reflection: I’ve been taking it too slow, now there’s blood in the snow’. Lead single ‘Crash Course Christmas’ follows with crashing drums and glockenspiel for that extra festive touch. Reminiscent of Los Campesinos’ Christmas EP, there’s air of heartbreak as they sing ‘Tonight I missed the sound of stupid Christmas songs I sang with you’. Sunturns’ ‘Christmas III’ is a warming soundtrack to a special, emotional time." Spectral Nights

“the album might find its way under more Christmas trees than Santa can handle” Nordic Music Central

“I have to feature this beauty” The Ginger Quiff

Stereogum

That’s Good Enough For Me