Clearance Sale

While things are generally rosy in the PHOP realm right now we do have a couple of problems that we could do with addressing:

1. We have too much debt. Roughly 1 in 3 of 149 releases have lost money. While I think that is a pretty decent ratio it has still left some debt which I am still trying to pay off (over £6,000).

2. We have too much stock left of older titles in the stockroom. I say stockroom, that's not strictly true since I moved the label back home earlier this year. It's taking over my flat.

So then I think I can can two birds with one stone here, with a clearance sale to raise some funds and clear some space.

With titles available for as little as £1take a look at the list below. Please spread the word, there's some underappreciated records here. Thanks

CD Mystery Bundle 5 CDs for £10
Post War Glamour Girls - Live At St. Austin's 12" LP £8
Wanna Buy A Record? Double Best Of 10 Years CD £5
Take Turns - Cryptomnesia Crept 12" LP £2
Piskie Sits - Stick and Twist 12" LP £8
Piskie Sits - Live At Unity Works 12" £5
Piskie Sits - Creature Feature CD album £4
Yard Wars / Cactus Knife Spilt 10" EP £5
Yard Wars - Death To Western Hifi CD album £3
The Spills - Collecting Dust 12" LP £8
The Spills - Collecting Dust CD album £4
The Grand - Incapacitated, Ill Fated and In Love CD album £5
Protectors - The Stem and Leaf 12" EP £2
St Gregory Orange - Midnight At The Sycamore Lounge CD album £3
St Gregory Orange - Things We Said In Bedrooms CD album £2
Charlie Padfield - Balloon Magic CD album £3
The Ainsley Band - Live At Unity Works 12" LP £3
The Ainsley Band - Devil's In The Detail CD album £2
The Ainsley Band - 5-4-3-2 She's not the One CD album £1
The Ship-Tones - Indie Reggae Revolution 12" LP £5
The Ship-Tones - Indie Reggae Revolution CD album £3
imp - Moon Coastal Maine CD album £3
Runaround Kids / We Are Losers Spilt 12" EP £1

Sic Itur Ad Astra EP out now

Our new 3x3 EP Sic Itur Ad Astra is released today. The EP eatures 6 tracks - 2 each from Slurs, JJ Swimsuit and Bad Idea - spread across 3 3" CDs in a limited handmade package. There are only 100 of these packages available. You can buy them for only £3 from our bandcamp. The 3" CDs will work in a standard top loading CD player with a one with a front loading tray. The EP includes a download code.

The EP is also available digitally and you can find it in a whole host of places such as these.

End of 10 Years Bash

We are putting on an all dayer to celebrate our 10th anniversary. It will be at Warehouse 23 on Saturday 8th December with doors open at 1pm.

Playing will be:
Piskie Sits
Climbing Alice
The Reacharounds
Bad Idea
Slurs
One Day, After School...
Fur Blend
Dead Slow Hoot
Shake Your Halo Down
Chloe Juliette Beswick
These Men
Charlie Padfield

It will be £10 on the door. Advance tickets are currently available for £6 (rising to £7 in November & £8 in the first week of December). Buy them now from here.

Wanna Buy A Record?

To celebrate our 10th anniversary I have written a book about the past 10 years. I have selected 22 tracks from the back catalogue for a new compilation. In addition a number of artists we have worked with have re-imagined tracks from their labelmates. The whole project is called Wanna Buy A Record? and will feature brand new artwork from Russell Searle. We have launched an Indiegogo campaign for this. Check it out now here

Tracklistings

Best Of
CD1
Hearts Are Tape Machines - St. Greogory Orange
Falling Into Better Hands (7" version) - Runaround Kids
Helpful - The Do's
Write Home - Baker Island
When The Weathers Wrong - The Bambinos
Call Of The Wild (EP version) - imp
When We Were Evil - Lapels
I Don't Want To Make You Happy I Want To Make You Cry - The Grand
Dilemma - The Ship-Tones (featuring Edwyn Collins)
Home It's Not The Heart - Shake Your Halo Down
This Good This Bad - Piskie Sits

CD2
When I Loved Music, When Everything Was New - One Day, After School...
Sometimes Life's Cool - Mi Mye
Turns Green - Gary Gore & E.E. Viles
Jason Orange - Climbing Alice
You'd Have Never Even Asked My Name As Long As You Got The Satisfaction You Need - Clandestines
Happy To Stay - The Ainsley Band
Dark Horse - Dark Horse
Vampires Of Silicon Valley - Yard Wars
Happiness Is Important - Buen Chico
Serotonin - Fur Blend
Going Back To Missoula, Montana - The Spills

Cover versions
Back From Battle (imp) - Clandestines
2 Sunrises (Mi Mye) - Climbing Alice
Crash Landed Clouds (The Spills) - Maude and the Modules
Invisible Anchor (One Day, After School...) - Buen Chico
Can't Lose Lover (Runaround Kids) - We Are Losers
Weasel (The Compression) - St. Gregory Orange
Don't Step Back Into Your Grave (Clandestines) - Shake Your Halo Down
Dream Sequins (Sponge Wings) - Lapels
Blush (Runaround Kids) - Mi Mye
Bones (Fur Blend) - One Day, After School...
Three Guesses, No Prizes (St. Gregory Orange) - Chloe Juliette Beswick
Constellationing (Charlie Padfield) - These Men
Night City Air (Mi Mye) - The Ship-Tones
561 Dead Astronauts (Lapels) - Sponge Wings
The Narcissist (We Are Losers) - Runaround Kids

The book and compilations will be released on 30th November with the Indiegogo campaign running until 3rd November.

Black Ribbon - Strobe OUT NOW

Black Ribbon's debut album Strobe is released today on CD and digital formats. The CD is available from Crash Records, Jumbo Records (both Leeds), Vinyl Tap (Huddersfield), Wah Wah Records (Wakefield) and here. Find places to stream and download the album here. 

Black Ribbon to release debut album Strobe on 28th September

Black Ribbon releases his debut album Strobe on 28th September on CD and digital formats. The album is available to pre-order now from us here. The CD will also be available from Jumbo and Crash Records in Leeds, Vinyl Tap in Huddersfield and Wah Wah Records in Wakefield. Downloads and streams will be available at all the usual places you find those.

Black Ribbon is the latest project from Philophobia mainstay Tim Metcalfe (St Gregory Orange, Yard Wars and more). Recorded in his Leeds home studio, ‘Strobe’ combines the DNA of a multitude of genres; from Post-Punk to Dub, Noise to Disco with an aim to create a singular miasma of sound.

Influenced by the nightmarish cinematic universes of David Lynch and David Cronenberg’s detached surrealism, as well as William Burroughs’ scissor-ed sci-fi narratives and JG Ballard’s cold pathologist-like depictions of violence; ‘Strobe’ trades in clipped lyrical and musical motifs: A dark soundtrack evoking the peculiar glamour of some non-existent narcotic underworld.

“It’s easy to create something totally freeform and leftfield” say Metcalfe, “granted it’s not easy to do it well. Not everyone’s gonna come up with Trout Mask Replica by hammering on a piano. But what’s infinitely more interesting to me is when you inter-pollinate that with elements of pop music; create some mutant form that exists between the two extremes. That midpoint between two seemingly incompatible worlds is where it gets interesting. Think about Timbaland’s late 90s / early 2000s productions. They’re totally non-elitist, populist collages of sound that are so seamlessly constructed they don’t even register as ‘weird’. Nobody’s quietly pontificating over the musical “meaning” of this stuff. But seriously, take out the vocals; those beats consist of a really interesting, minimalist combination of sounds. I mean, everyone knows this, it’s not some huge revelation, but it’s still an under-used vocabulary in a world that’s so musically fragmented”.

Thus, angular guitars and discordant synthesizers are (mis)treated through vocoders and electronics as time-stretched jazz horns buckle and blare, yet the familiar thud of an 808 kick or a funk-infused bass line remains present to ground the enterprise.

“This is body music. It’s not music to scratch your chin to. I mean, fine; there’s hopefully enough there lyrically to pique interest. There’s some sort of surreal, ultra-violent crime narrative running through it, populated by grotesque characters and cut up into stray phrases. But that’s really not what this album is about. It’s about everything working in tandem to create a world. And hopefully you can dance in it”.

Listen to the songs that inspired the album on our Black Ribbon curated playlist.

Dual Atlas OUT NOW

Tim Metcalfe today has released his new album Dual Atlas. The album consists of one single track. In Tim's own words the "first half is all sunlit nostalgia, second half goes DARK." As the album is available as a single track it is available to download from some stores for only 99p like 7 digital,  others have it at the more usual album price of £7.99. You can also Pay What You Feel for it at our bandcamp. If you would rather just stream you can find the album on Spotify, YouTube, Apple Music, Deezer etc.

His previous album, The Hunter's Kindness can be found here.

Pay What You Feel Vinyl

As you know we love putting out vinyl records. Unfortunately though it's costly and sometimes we have found ourselves in the position of of having a band splitting up before we've covered the cost of getting the record pressed. This has happened on several occasions. We can't afford to discard these records but it seems a little unfair to charge full price for a record by a departed artist no matter how good it is. We are therefore offering the following records on a Pay What You Feel basis:

The Ainsley Band Live at Unity Works

Take Turns - Cryptomnesia Crept






and Runaround Kids Vs We Are Losers EP

on a pay what you feel basis on our bandcamp page. Bandcamp insists on a 50p minimum after that it is up to you plus the postage charges.

Popwitch OUT NOW

Chloe Juliette Beswick today releases her debut album Popwitch. The 7 track album is available on CD and digital formats. You can buy the CD from Crash, Jumbo, Vinyl Tap and Wah Wah as well as directly from us here. You can stream the album from all the usual places such as Spotify, Apple Music etc.

Chloe has also curated our PHOP Goes The Radio Spotify playlist this month. Check it out here.

Guitarmageddon Is Here

The Reacharounds release their sophomore album Guitarmageddon today. Available on CD and digital formats the albums sees the band tweaking their signature Heavy Roll sound to better explore the highs and lows of these turbulent times.

The CD can be found in Crash Records, Jumbo Records (both Leeds), Vinyl Tap (Huddersfield), Wah Wah Records (Wakefield) as well as direct from us here. The digital format can be found at all the usual digital outlets such as Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, Amazon and many many more.

You can listen to The Reacharounds curated playlist on Spotify here. 

We also still have copies of their 2014 debut Heavy Roll available on CD here.

You can next catch the band live at The Grove Inn in Leeds perform two sets on Saturday 30th June, details here.