Ambition

This week’s new releases trace eccentric paths through history and noise. Rough Trade 45s: Volume 1 is a very limited boxset (only available in selected shops) curated by Jeannette Lee and Geoff Travis, highlighting formative singles from the label’s early years—a fizzing document of its DIY beginnings, featuring singles by Stiff Little Fingers, Augustus Pablo, The Raincoats, Subway Sect, and more. Daily Toll’s A Profound Non-Event subverts its title with a brooding tangle of slowcore minimalism, folk pastoralism, elliptical lyricism, and post-punk's skeletal dynamics—leaning into the Flying Nun tradition while carving out something more spectral and disoriented. Haim’s i quit, their first album since 2020’s Women in Music Pt. III, is a 15-track set produced by Rostam and Danielle Haim, drawing on classic rock with a live-band feel and a rawer, more immediate energy. University’s McCartney, It'll Be OK blends lo-fi jangle with online-era sincerity, playful and oddly moving (this one we have as a very limited Dinked Edition). Tropical Fuck Storm’s Fairyland Codex is a heavy-lidded fever dream of dystopian noise, surrealism, and scorched melodies.

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