A DIY INDIEPOP VINYL & CASSETTE LABEL

Allo Darlin' - Bright Nights [12"/CD]

Artist: Allo Darlin’
Title: Bright Nights
Formats:
12” vinyl (ltd edition dusky nights colour vinyl
black vinyl edition
sunshine Rough Trade Exclusive yellow on transparent)
Digifile CD
Digital
Cat#: Fika107
Release date: 11th July 2025
Bandcamp | Spotify
Fika Recordings [UK] & Slumberland Records [USA]

On their first new material in a decade, Anglo-Australian indiepop quartet Allo Darlin’ return with their upcoming album 'Bright Nights' in July 2025 and marking the return of their smart, beautiful pop music, with lyrics that resonate with experience and melodies that chime, echo and soar.

Missing each other and the music they made together, Allo Darlin’ started having group Zoom calls during the early days of the corona pandemic, and decided that when the pandemic was over, they would become a band again. True to their word, 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. 

Bright Nights follows the emotional tides of the preceding ten years: “It’s an album from the heart, dealing with themes of love, birth and death, which are things we reflect more on than we did when we made our first album. I would hope that the album sounds timeless and joyous, at other times reflective and emotional” says songwriter and vocalist Elizabeth Morris Innset.

Drawing inspiration from a mix of classic pop, folk and country, Bright Nights picks up where Allo Darlin’ left off with the warmth of 2014’s We Come From The Same Place, and recalls the confident and sophisticated sound of their second album, Europe. “When I listen to it I think of the desert, but I can see the sea. The sweet sounds of summer’s bright nights in the Northern hemisphere, but an awareness that winter will one day return”.

The lilting first single ‘Tricky Questions’' exhibits Elizabeth's adept skill at taking specific experiences and creating something timeless and universally resonant, and recalls living in Florence. “The city was full of tourists during the day,” she recalls “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.” 

This sense of place is also prevalent on the warm reflection of ‘Historic Times’, which paints pictures of quintessential Mediterranean European scenes while musing on the magic of love, acting as a perfect distillation of the songwriting that's led to a legion of adoring fans following Allo Darlin's journey to date.

While Bright Nights isn’t a country album, the timelessness of folk and country influences weave throughout the record. ‘My Love Will Bring You Home’ might be written about Elizabeth’s young daughters, but it’s a mother’s love song, disguised as a country love song. “It also makes me feel a connection to the place I come from, which is a country town in Queensland, Australia - if I think of myself as a country singer, it makes more sense that I come from Rockhampton.”

On 'You Don’t Think Of Me At All' bassist Bill Botting’s songwriting makes an appearance for the first time on an Allo Darlin’ album, exhibiting his brand of road-trip power pop that he's made his own courtesy of 2017's well-received solo album. “I'm nervous and excited to have this song on the record and I hope people will think of it as a sad banger! It's about the heart break and embarrassment you feel when you figure out someone you maybe think of as a dear friend, just doesn't think of you at all” Bill explains. “It marked a fun change in the recording process, letting someone else be in the spotlight” adds Elizabeth, “especially when that someone is Bill”.

‘Slow Motion’ showcases Elizabeth's Morris’ skill of crafting songs that are both vulnerable and poignant. “I wrote Slow Motion after reading Lucinda Williams’ autobiography. I wanted to try writing a song that was just telling a simple story. I wrote it in about 10 minutes, about a car crash I had while I was pregnant and my eldest daughter was in the backseat. It felt good to make a song out of a situation that was frightening, to turn that into art. The recording on the album is a live take, which we have found is the best way for me to record these types of songs.”

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. In a changeable world, the warm embrace of their new record is as needed as it is welcome.

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, Band on the Wall

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.

Stanley Brinks - Happy New Year [12"]

Artist: Stanley Brinks
Title: Happy New Year
Format: 12" silver vinyl
Cat#: Fika109LP
Release date: 6 June 2025
Bandcamp

The prodigiously prolific Stanley Brinks’ (f.k.a. André Herman Dune) releases his latest album Happy New Year.

Happy New Year follows a series of acclaimed albums with The Wave Pictures, a pair of folk shanty and old-time calypso albums alongside Norway’s The Kaniks, and is scheduled for release shortly after another new record from Stanley, Iron Eye, this time alongside longtime collaborator and touring-partner Clemence Freschard.

Freschard appears on drums throughout Good Moon, with backing vocals from guests including anti-folk legend Jeffrey Lewis, The Burning Hell’s Mathias Kom, The Moldy Peaches’ Toby Goodshank and Maltese multimedia artist Alexandra Aquilina.

Stanley Brinks is renowned for his unique anti-folk style: both playful and suggestive, insightful and entertaining. 

Brinks was born in Paris, France, in 1973. He studied a bit of biology and worked as a nurse for a while. Half Swedish, half Moroccan, strongly inclined to travel the world, he soon began spending most of his life on the road and developed a strong relationship with New York. By the late 90s he’d become a full time singer-songwriter – André Herman Düne – as part of three piece indie-rock band, Herman Düne. Several albums and Peel sessions  later and after a decade of touring Europe, mostly with American songwriters such as Jeffrey Lewis, Calvin Johnson and early Arcade Fire he settled in Berlin. The early carnival music of Trinidad became a passion, and in the early 21st century he became the unquestioned master of European calypso, changing his name to Stanley Brinks. Under this moniker he has recorded more than 100 albums, collaborated with the New York Antifolk scene on several occasions, recorded and toured with traditional Norwegian musicians, and played a lot with The Wave Pictures.  

Allo Darlin' - My Love Will Bring You Home [Digital]

Artist: Allo Darlin’
Title: My Love Will Bring You Home
Format: Digital single
Cat#: Fika107SG2
Release date: 7th May 2025
Bandcamp | Spotify
Fika Recordings [UK] & Slumberland Records [USA]

11 years since the last Allo Darlin’ album, the Anglo-Australian indiepop quartet are back with a new record “Bright Nights”. The album is due in July on Fika Recordings (UK) and Slumberland Records (USA), ahead of live UK dates in October.

  • Today Allo Darlin’ announce their new album “Bright Nights”- out July 2025

  • Bright Nights is their 4th album, and their first since 2014’s “We Come From The Same Place”

  • New single “My Love Will Bring You Home” out today digitally

Out today is the new single “My Love Will Bring You Home”, the second track to be taken from the forthcoming album following April’s rapturously received “Tricky Questions”.

On their first new material in a decade, Anglo-Australian indiepop quartet Allo Darlin’ return with their upcoming album 'Bright Nights' in July 2025 and marking the return of their smart, beautiful pop music, with lyrics that resonate with experience and melodies that chime, echo and soar.

Missing each other and the music they made together, Allo Darlin’ started having group Zoom calls during the early days of the corona pandemic, and decided that when the pandemic was over, they would become a band again. True to their word, 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. 

Bright Nights follows the emotional tides of the preceding ten years: “It’s an album from the heart, dealing with themes of love, birth and death, which are things we reflect more on than we did when we made our first album. I would hope that the album sounds timeless and joyous, at other times reflective and emotional” says songwriter and vocalist Elizabeth Morris Innset.

Drawing inspiration from a mix of classic pop, folk and country, Bright Nights picks up where Allo Darlin’ left off with the warmth of 2014’s We Come From The Same Place, and recalls the confident and sophisticated sound of their second album, Europe. “When I listen to it I think of the desert, but I can see the sea. The sweet sounds of summer’s bright nights in the Northern hemisphere, but an awareness that winter will one day return”.

While Bright Nights isn’t a country album, the timelessness of folk and country influences weave throughout the record. ‘My Love Will Bring You Home’ might be written about Elizabeth’s young daughters, but it’s a mother’s love song, disguised as a country love song. “It also makes me feel a connection to the place I come from, which is a country town in Queensland, Australia - if I think of myself as a country singer, it makes more sense that I come from Rockhampton.”

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, Band on the Wall

For UK press: Liv at One Beat PR
For US press: Daniel at Force Field PR

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.

Sekunderna - Se dig inte om [Digital]

Artist: Sekunderna
Title: Se dig inte om
Format: Digital single
Cat#: Fika108SG1
Release date: 30th April 2025
li.sten.to/sekunderna-se-dig-inte-om

Swedish powerpop punx Sekunderna are back with their new single “Se dig inte om”.
Se dig inte om is classic Sekunderna: a razor-sharp burst of melodic energy for fans of The Replacements, Martha and Husker Du. 

The track title, a nod to Swedish Nobel laureate Eyvind Johnson’s novel (the follow up book to 1935’s “Här har du ditt liv” from which Sekunderna’s debut album borrows its title), blends literary references with raw emotion. This is an anthem about betrayal and self-deception, condensed down to two feelings, love and disappointment. It’s a big song, with bigger feelings.

Sekunderna are a four-piece from Umeå in Sweden, who combine the melodic instincts of Guided by Voices with the ferocity of Radioactivity and Ebba Grön. Their sound? Think glittering power pop riffs delivered with punk rock urgency—all sung in Swedish.

They formed in 2018, originally under the name Persona, to play punk rock inspired by the darkness of Ingmar Bergman films. Sekunderna (translation: The Seconds) refers back to short punk songs, counting down the seconds before you have to pause your dreams to go to work, counting the seconds until you fall asleep. They sing about the everyday issues in a late stage capitalist society.

Catchy, heartbroken, and totally alive—Se dig inte om is the sound of Sekunderna moving forward without looking back. Turn it up. Let it hit.

Sekunderna are:
Lars Sekund - Lead vocals, guitars
Johan Omen - Lead guitars, back up vocals
Tåme - Bass, back up vocals
Johan Fjellström - Drums

Discography: 

2018 - Persona EP (Luftslott Records, digital)
2020 - Paradiset EP (Luftslott Records, 7”)
2021 - Hjärtat EP (Luftslott Records, 7”)
2022 - Här har du ditt liv (Bloated Kat Records, Rockstar Records, Luftslott Records, LP)
2023 - Tiden är en dröm (Rockstar Records, 12”)

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 ⭐⭐⭐

“Oh what an unadulterated joy this self-titled album from Mirrored Daughters is. A combination of various weird folk artists, conjoined in an Electric Eden of collaborative noise. Almost borne of those pages of that fantastic book, an exultation of the rural against the urban. In the absence of our beloved The Left Outsides, this is surely the tonic for a bucolic spring.” Echoes and Dust

“Harmonium heavy instrumentals such as ‘The Ambresbury Daughter’ are incredibly atmospheric while singer Marlody effortlessly floats throughout songs such as ‘Unreturning Sun’ and ‘The New Design’. Very nice.” Americana UK

“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]

“it's a truly beautiful creation, subdued, sensitive, and in many ways full of magic and peace. It's hard to resist this call of the wild.” Sunburnsout [FR]

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

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