The Fauns were formed in 2007 in Bristol and consists of Alison Garner (vocals), Will Slater (guitar), Michael Savage (bass) and Guy Rhys-Davies (drums). Their their eponymous debut album was released in 2009, followed by the 2013 release of Lights. These two works garnered warm acclaim from both critics and fervent shoegaze-loving fanbase alike – arriving into an atmosphere rekindled by the return of My Bloody Valentine.
Throughout the 2010s, the band toured relentlessly across Europe, sharing the stage with Creation label act The Telescopes for a number of shows. A European support tour with French doomgazers Alcest broadened The Fauns’ reach, and during this period they recorded sessions for BBC Radio 6 Music and XFM, even winning Steve Lamacq’s coveted rebel playlist accolade. The creation of their third album How Lost unfolded gradually over the subsequent years, led by three original members: Michael Savage, Alison Garner, and Guy Rhys Davies. In 2019, accomplished soundtrack composer Will Slater joined the band, catalyzing an intensified period of songwriting. The push and pull between Savage and Slater’s recording styles producing interesting and unique results. This latest album bridges The Fauns’ transformation from their earlier incarnation to their current evolution. The tracks traverse a spectrum of styles, ranging from intricate, guitar-driven sci-fi fantasies to industrial-tinged new wave compositions. The hallmark shoegaze elements are now stretched over gritty pulsating electro beats. 

Four piece Silent Forum are from Cardiff (but now splitting their time between Cardiff, London, Bristol and Barcelona). Silent Forum’s sound isn’t straightforward. It’s a textured, technicoloured trip that separates it from punk’s three chords or post-punk’s monochrome doom. Rejecting both geographical and musical pigeonholing, they had their first album, Everything Solved At Once out on Libertino Records in 2019 (after Sanctuary+, a very limited edition cassete, was out the year before, summarising their previous five years’ working their way up). Avoiding cliched break-up or party tracks, Silent Forum’s debut album was in part themed around a disgruntled office worker, with an awareness of the tongue-in-cheek humour in juxtaposing corporate life lyrics with jagged punk numbers. Silent Forum have a special magic whereby their music has echoes of every seminal band you ever loved across every pioneering and forever fresh genre of the last 4 decades, yet crammed into edgy, enthralling, infectious songs with a fervent originality and unrivalled energy. 
Now the band is back with its new album Domestic Majestic which will be out on Libertino Records on February 23rd, preceded by four exciting singles.

Podcasts formed in Oslo in late 2018, bringing together four work colleagues – Ellis Jones (Trust Fund), Kyle Devine, Tore Størvold and Emil Kraugerud – who just happened to have a music rehearsal room in their basement.
Their first demo recordings were released as a double single (‘Dragging The Lake’ / ‘First Things First’) in September 2019 on Oslo’s Snertingdal Records. Their debut album was recorded in Oslo in late 2019, and was almost complete before Covid hit, during which time half the band moved away from Oslo. The band finally reunited in May 2023 to put the finishing touches on their record. Podcasts (the album), which came out on Prefect Records in August 2023, consists of 11 mostly short, mostly fast songs, drawing on the band members’ diverse musical backgrounds, but centered safely within the realm of indie rock. Some songs sound like they contain three or more little compositions, but that’s probably just the sound of Podcasts.

Born in Poti, near Lake Paliastomi in Georgia, Nino Gvilia is a singer-songwriter whose lyrics range between ecology and politics, bodies and love. Her songs are influenced by folk and minimalism and make use of magnetic tapes, field recordings, vocal samples of contemporary thinkers and an array of weird instruments and vintage textures, drawing an intense dreamlike atmosphere. Nino Gvilia has just released her debut digital EP Nicole via Hive Mind Records (UK) that will be followed by Overwhelmed by the Unexplained, respectively side A and side B of a vinyl that will see the light of day on March 8th 2024. The project started getting noticed by radio stations and webzines since the BBC played the single Nicole during the Late Junction programme. But, despite this… Nino Gvilia does not exist. She is a fictional character composing, answering interviews and living in mockumentaries, invented and performed by sound artist Giulia Deval to reflect on question such as: is it still possible to convey sentimental and political content through songs? How does this need relate to the saturation of the mainstream and its mechanisms?

Atka is a Brandenburg-born, London-based, songwriter and producer who released her debut EP The Eye Against The Ashen Sky on Nov 3rd. Although Atka has been writing, producing and recording her own music for years, she has so far remained in the background of the music industry. Growing up in a tiny village in Germany, she moved to the beaches of the Gold Coast in Australia at the age of 15 and later to the snowy mountains in Squamish, Canada, until she found a home in London. Initially pursuing a career in sustainability research and politics, Atka quickly became disillusioned by the bureaucracy of the political system and instead considered going into filmmaking. A few self-directed short films, runner- and costume assistant jobs later, she however returned to music as a journalist for Rolling Stone, Groove and Musikexpress and others. With her own sound however, she has only been tinkering in private – whether on her walks through St. James Park to procrastinate writing her master’s thesis, on the tube on the way to Soho or in her improvised home studio in East London. A versatile musician who cites Joy Division and Kraftwerk as her most formative influences, she wrote her first song at the age of ten and later gained the attention of big names in the music scene for her poetic lyrics and unique flair for music production and composition. The artist, whose real name is Sarah Neumann, wrote her debut EP The Eye Against The Ashen Sky last year in London parallel to completing her master’s degree in philosophy, in which she intensively studied the French philosopher’s, Jean-Paul Sartre’s, theory of the gaze.