Blog: Half Machine Records

"There's no contest - this lot are the weirdest of them all"

Alton Ellis - Rock Steady - Alton Ellis

The Clean were a New Zealand based band, formed in 1978. They were one of the quintessential Flying Nun bands, alongside The Verlaines, The Chills, The Bats etc. Their debut single 'Tally Ho!' surprisingly reached number 19 in the New Zealand charts followed by a few number 1's. Despite this the Clean are little-known outside of New Zealand, although their influence is surprisingly far-reaching. They became a staple of US college radio in the 1980s, Stephen Malkmus of Pavement cites them as a major influence, and the band's droney 80s output is a [...]

Back at the end of last year I stumbled across a band from Brooklyn, New York called Mirror Mirror . After some emails went back and forth they kindly sent me an albums worth of demos, which we took 'New Horizons' and 'Lock Up Your Sons' from to put out as a UK only 7" Sounding like Syd Barrett if he'd joined the Moonies, nothing else sounded like this single in the UK 2008. 20 Jazz Funk Greats called it "pagan drone psyche folk" [...]

Half Machine decamped to New York City for a week, here's a little round up of the trip: I arrived in NYC on Thursday, after a quick trip to the hotel to ditch my stuff and see some friends, we went to Other Music to waste some money on stuff I could get in London. I was a little disappointed with Other Music, after the big sell it had from everybody. It's kinda like the old Pure Groove on Holloway Road, with a more second hand vinyl. I did manage to [...]

Beyonce's little sister, and former Destiny's Child backing singer, Solange recently released her second album - 'Sol-Angel and the Hadley St. Dreams'. It, perhaps surprisingly, is really, really good. Cee-Lo Green, Mark "anything for a few quid" Ronson, Q-Tip, Neptunes and Lamont Dozier all worked on the album. She also samples Boards of Canada on 'This Bird', Marvin Gaye (on 'Ode To Marvin') and The Dap Kings (on '6 O'Clock Blues'). It's a 21st century re-imagining of Motown's 60s pop. Lead single, 'I Decided' has a nod to two of the best songs to [...]

Sun Ra--space-age prophet, Pharaonic jester, shaman-philosopher and avant-jazz keyboardist/bandleader--lands his spaceship in Oakland, having been presumed lost in space for a few years. With Black Power on the rise, Ra disembarks and proclaims himself "the alter-destiny." He holds a myth-vs reality rap session with black inner-city youth at a rec center, threatening "to chain you up and take you with me, like they did you in Africa" if they resist his plea to go to outer space. He duels at cards with The Overseer, a satanic overlord, with the fate of the black race at stake. Ra wins the right [...]

Sam Buck Rosen is somebody we've been in to for a long time now. He was recommended to me at 4am in a Belgian jazz bar by Vampire Weekend's Rostam. Since then I've amassed quite a collection of Sam's music - 33 songs at the moment, which is quite a prodigious output for a 19 year old. It takes in distorted tropical dance pop, country death songs, a glitch-y take on dub-step via 50s crooned ballads (all completely lo-fi of course). There's going to be a UK 7" soon-ish, which will [...]

Benji Hughes is a genius and his album, 'A Love Extreme', is brilliant. Go and buy it. It's just come out on New West Records and is two discs of psych country pop, space synths, torch songs and ode's to the Flaming Lips. You can download an MP3 of 'Why Do These Parties Always End The Same Way' from Spinner 'Waiting For An Invitation' (live): 'The Mummy' (live)

MIT, who released their critically acclaimed debut album 'Coda' in March, have posted a free download of 'Rauch (COMA Remix)' on their myspace Feel free to use the download for whatever you want, re-posting etc. COMA are signed to Kompakt records and are based in MIT's hometown Cologne. We will be releasing a 12" single and download of 'Rauch' early next year featuring remixes by Luke Abbott (Border Community), Shitdisco and more TBA. MIT = HOTT

Legendary record man Jerry Wexler, who helped shape the sound of R&B, guided the careers of titans such as Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, and Led Zeppelin, and helped launch Atlantic Records into a powerhouse, has died at his home in Florida, according to Rolling Stone. He was 91. Wexler began his career in the late 1940s as a journalist, writing for Billboard magazine. He invented the phrase "Rhythm and Blues" for the publication for use on what was then known as their "Race Music" chart. In 1953, Wexler joined Ahmet Ertegun as co-head of Atlantic Records, a post [...]

Pacific! are releasing their debut album on Monday 18th August (on our label - skills). Ruddy good it is too. Think Phoenix, Air, Daft Punk, Beach Boys, ELO, 10CC etc etc, via Sweden. Stephane Manel, the French illustrator who does all the drawings for Vogue and Playboy, has drawn all the artwork. You can see more stuff by him here , including his videos for Pacific's 'Hot Lips' and 'Number One' and his video for the new Chromeo single. There's also a 12" single and download out this week. It has [...]

Having a week where I refuse to do any work and sit around at my parents house is all well and good, but it does get a little boring. So I made a mixtape. It's badly mixed (most of these songs aren't 'mixable' and I hadn't used this program for recording or mixing before) and there's a few skips and stuff. I was thinking of re-recording it so it sounds better, but I can't be arsed, Neighbours is on in a minute. So here you go, some songs that I like all as one long [...]

Leonard Cohen seems to be going through a bit of a resurgence in popularity at the moment after doing the festival rounds this summer. I didn't get to see him (so pissed off - damn my Glastonbury aversion), but it jogged my memory of how much I was obsessed with him when I was at college. There is a second hand record shop near my college called Golden Disc ('Stolen Disc' to the locals due to the amount of nicked cds in there) where I used to spend money I had for lunch on records. One [...]

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The debut UK single by Psychedelic Horseshit comes out on Monday (28th). I sent Matt from the band 50 copies the other day, to which I got this email in reply: "to: half machine records subject: new wave hippies ep dude, got the ep's today, what the fuck is with the spaces in between the tracks. they were strung together with care. THERE ARE GUITAR AND DRUM PARTS CHOPPED IN HALF. i am beyond pissed off. this is why bands are supposed to get test pressings. this thing is a piece of junk now, completely [...]

Italo Disco has made a bit of a comeback in the six months, with Glass Candy, Invisible Conga People, Mirage...well the whole Italians Do It Better roster basically. Which is no bad thing, I've long been a fan of 'space disco' (as it used to be called). But what most people seem to forget is that most Italo disco was shit: 'Italo disco', as a term, originated from Germany and this bloke in particular, not Italy. As cool as it is now, people also don't realise [...]

"The greatest rapper alive". So say you, Dwayne. So Lil Wayne (Dwayne Carter) has sold a million copies of 'Lollipop' in the US and pretty much fuck all over here. "I don't write shit 'cos I ain't got time." However, 'Lollipop' is a tune and the lyrics make no sense - "I told her to back it up/Like burp, burp." - what? What I like about Wayne most though is summed up in this quote - "Wayne will ignore all incoming beefs and infuriate [...]

One of my favourite stories about San Pedro's finest, the Minutemen, is when D Boon and Mike Watt played together for the first time. They had no concept of tuning; thinking it was a matter of preference as to whether you liked your strings loose or tight. I love this band - they're one of my favourites of all time, and as i'm not going to sit here and tell you how great Radiohead are ... here are a few tidbits to show why this fucking awesome band deserve much more attention in Boris Johnson's London. [...]

Hello, I'm Dean, I'm Half Machine's boy, if I had a record label I'd probably name it after an album I like, probably Straight Outta Compton Records or something just as stupid. Richard told me I could contribute something to this blog, so I thought that I would pay homage to my favourite genre of music ever. UK Garage, so I bring you my top 10 (in no particular order) UKG songs to ever grace the scene: "Melody" - Masterstepz [...]