The Leaf Lab

When Fernando Corona released Martes, his first album as Murcof, back in 2002, it was a bolt from the blue: a work of such clarity and strength of character that it became an instant genre classic. Utopía is a collection featuring sympathetic reworkings of tracks from Martes, the two tracks from 2003's exceptional Ulysses 12", both tracks from the Utopía Remixes 12" (April 2004) and two further previously unreleased Murcof tracks, ‘Una’ and ‘Ultimatum’.

With an intuitive understanding of melody and dynamics, Nancy Elizabeth brings a refreshingly Northern turn of phrase to her debut album, Battle and Victory. The Lancashire-born singer’s down-to-earth songs are brought to life by her warm and unaffected voice; Unpretentious but effortlessly ambitious, Not content with writing and singing all the songs herself, the 23 year-old also plays most of the instruments, including guitar, khim, Indian harmonium, Appalachian dulcimer and bouzouki, amongst many others. Prominently featured is a 22-string Celtic harp, which she first picked up a little over two years ago, after an inspirational chance meeting with a harp player at a Liverpool gallery. Not long afterwards she received a modest award from a music foundation, and within days had spent it all on the perfect instrument, which has become a cornerstone of her performances.

Listening to volcano! is a journey through highs and lows, through confusion and clarity. Like much of their work, ‘Apple Or A Gun’ (the first single from their groundbreaking debut album Beautiful Seizure), refuses to be pigeonholed, or indeed easily comprehended on first listen. But it will repay your attention a hundredfold. With dramatic stylistic shifts and a typically ambitious arrangement, the song veers from delicate to possessed in the blink of an eye. Lucid but anarchic, never allowing the listener a moment to relax. Yet despite the apparent chaos, melody is never sacrificed. The single is backed with a recording of a live favourite that will only ever appear on this release: ‘I’ve Been Loving You Since Desert Storm’.

I Used To Try is the second single by Lancashire born and bred Nancy Elizabeth. With shimmering dulcimer and sparse, booming percussion, ‘I Used To Try’ is a forceful statement of independence. “I like my world/’cause it’s mine”: the song’s strident declarations are proudly unforgiving. ‘In The Morning’ (which is exclusive to this single) is more contemplative, just Nancy’s delicate piano and down-to-earth, unaffected vocals.

The lead single from volcano!’s second album, Paperwork, 'Africa Just Wants To Have Fun' demonstrates a more playful, immediate side to the band, while clinging to the unpredictability and originality that defines their sound. The song is a razor-sharp satire of certain rock stars who purport to save the world with dubious, self-serving rhetoric. Backed by Mark Cartwright (bass, electronics) and Sam Scranton (percussion), vocalist Aaron With’s lyric is a searing indictment of the misguided philanthropic attitude of participants in everything from Band Aid to the [Red] campaign, ending with the candid admission “I don’t know what to do / But I know what not to do”.

Beautiful Seizure is the debut album from Chicago trio volcano!, and it’s an intense, exhilarating and immensely rewarding ride. What may at first sound chaotic and unplanned reveals itself on repeated listening as meticulously structured: rhythms gather, flicker, melt (down) and emerge as something different; splenetic episodes give way to passages of hymnal calm which in turn are shattered as language breaks down into strobe-like stuttering and is tugged back into line by Sam Scranton’s insistent drumming; silvery shards of controlled static ride high above everything. Melodies are stretched to and beyond breaking point, Aaron With’s guitar shifts between a ragged, feverish dissonance and bright spaciousness. There are no boundaries and no indulgences, nothing here that’s hackneyed or extraneous.

Miami Ice is the highly melodic, playfully energetic third album by Chicago’s Icy Demons, and their first for The Leaf Label. The band’s altered pop music draws on a vast musical vocabulary, sometimes within a single song, transporting the listener to exotic locations with songs of dreams and endurance, alien paranoia and community, time travel and the western frontier. Using an odd assortment of vintage keyboards and ethnic percussion, Icy Demons evoke a past that actually might prove to be the future.