With Trouble Maker, ASKAIØ delivers a sleek indie dance cut built for late-night club energy. Driven by pulsating beats, sharp synth hooks, and a steady groove, the track balances underground dancefloor tension with a polished, modern production style. Its hypnotic rhythm and infectious momentum make it an instant mover, designed for flashing lights and packed rooms. Blending indie dance attitude with club-ready precision, Trouble Maker stands as a confident electronic release that thrives on groove, atmosphere, and pure dancefloor appeal.
With BLOOD MOON, Melt Mars craft a hazy sonic atmosphere where warm synth textures meet shimmering indie guitars. The track drifts effortlessly between mellow psychedelic tones and modern indie sensibilities, carried by laid-back grooves and nostalgic melodies. Its dreamy arrangement creates a late-night mood, perfect for immersive headphone listening. Rather than chasing dramatic peaks, the song unfolds gently, letting its hypnotic textures and subtle emotional undercurrent guide the experience. BLOOD MOON feels both reflective and quietly infectious, capturing that suspended moment where indie pop and psych-tinged soundscapes beautifully collide.
With No Way To Love, Ghost Pavilion delivers a dark, cinematic indie track steeped in atmosphere and quiet emotional weight. Dreamy guitars intertwine with moody synth textures, unfolding over a slow, hypnotic groove that draws the listener into its introspective world. The song explores themes of grief, memory, and the lingering echoes of lost connections, capturing the fragile space between nostalgia and acceptance.
Subtle yet powerful, No Way To Love thrives on mood and restraint, offering a haunting late-night listening experience where every note feels suspended in reflection and unresolved emotion.
With This Is Not Fun, Filiah channels bottled-up frustration into a sharp and emotionally charged indie pop moment. The track unfolds gradually, beginning with restrained tension before erupting into a more expressive blend of atmospheric synths and edgy guitar textures. Her vocals carry both vulnerability and bite, reflecting the feeling of suppressed anger finally breaking through the surface. Balancing honesty with subtle wit, This Is Not Fun continues Filiah’s knack for turning personal turmoil into compelling, emotionally resonant songwriting.
Robben Ford returns in exceptional form withTwo Shades of Blue, a record defined by its sophistication, taste, and timeless musicality. The album will be released on 17 Aprilvia Provogue/Artone. To celebrate the news, he has revealed the first single from the album, Make My Own Weather.
The album opens exquisitely with the brittle groove of Make My Own Weather. “That’s one of my favourite straight-up, slamming blues things I’ve ever written,” says Ford. “It’s about a guy reclaiming his freedom. I tried to create the rumble of a motorcycle with the rhythm guitar.”
Robben Ford is a man in motion. Scan the five-time Grammy nominee’s back catalogue – a half-century hot-streak that darts between jazz, rock, fusion and blues – and you’ll find a musician in a constant state of metamorphosis. Spin new album Two Shades Of Blue – a transatlantic modern classic that shapeshifted as the sessions unfolded – and you’ll feel the risks taken and rules broken. “I have that curse,” smiles the 74-year-old guitarist. “I don’t have two records that sound the same…”
With a new album around the corner, Robben feels at the top of his game right now. To be released 17 April2026 on Artone/Provogue, Two Shades Of Blue is not the album Ford was planning to make – but it’s all the better for it. Tracked in the US and UK with two different crack-squad bands, this album paints with his inimitable palette, from the low-slung funk-blues of lead single Make My Own Weather to skyscraping instrumentals that even test the limits of a player ranked amongst the 100 Greatest Guitarists Of The 20th Century by Musician Magazine.
From his early days, Ford was a special talent. The 60s saw him backing Mississippi harp wizard Charlie Musselwhite and stretching those skills across Los Angeles with jazz giant Jimmy Witherspoon, before he fell in with the fearless adventurism of saxophonist Tom Scott’s esteemed ’70s fusion outfit, The L.A. Express.
That lineup’s blazing skills saw them recruited by Joni Mitchell for two classic albums (“the most formative two years of my musical life”), before Ford stepped out with rock royalty on George Harrison’s Dark Horse tour. That collaborative streak would continue throughout his career, from Bonnie Raitt to Bob Dylan. “I’m out there on the bandstand and this rocket ship takes off,” he recalls of his mid-’80s debut with jazz talisman Miles Davis. “For my solo, I put my head down and played every note I knew, as fast as I could. I look up, and Miles just goes: ‘Yeah’. And I’m like, ‘OK, he likes it’.”
Two Shades Of Blue was loosely sparked by Ford’s move to London, where his antennae picked up the echoes of a sadly departed British blues-boomer. In the same period, having launched the Robben Ford Guitar Dojo with partner Milam Kelly Roberts, he felt the burning urge to explore the instrument’s outer limits.
“The way this album started, I planned it as a tribute to Jeff Beck,” he recalls. “Meanwhile, the Guitar Dojo had reinvigorated my playing, so writing instrumental music became fresh for me again. I didn’t own a Stratocaster, so I literally went out and bought one for this project. Then Daniel Steinhardt from That Pedal Show put together a new pedalboard for me, along the lines of what Jeff Beck was using. I wanted to do something different, set myself a challenge.”
Loading into Eastcote Studios with engineer George Murphy, the chemistry is palpable, with Ford’s guitar and vocals leading a first-call band that takes in drummer Ianto Thomas (Mark Knopfler), keys man Jonny Henderson (Otis Grand), bassist Robin Mullarkey (Paloma Faith) and a brass section comprising of Paul Booth (saxophone), Ryan Quigley (trumpet) and Trevor Mires (trombone). “Great cats,” smiles Ford. “London has been incredible for finding musicians. This place is loaded, even better for me than Nashville or LA.” The album also features the incredible talents of bassist, Darryl Jones (The Rolling Stones), Keyboardist Larry Goldings and Gary Husband on drums for the instrumental songs, The Fire Flute, The Light Fandango and Feeling’s Mutual.
“I still love to play,” he considers. “I’ve kept writing better music and become more acquainted with what it is to make a record. The fact that I’m all over the place musically has confused some people over the years. But I always need a change. I always want to do something different. And I’ve been that way since the very beginning…”
Track Listing
1. Make My Own Weather
2. Jealous Guy
3. Perfect Illusion
4. Black Night
5. Two Shades of Blue
6. Fire Flute
7. The Light Fandango
8. Feeling’s Mutual
North Queensland based Alt/Rock outfit Slippery Gypsy are back again with the release of their hard-hitting new single called ‘Poison Love’, which premiered exclusively via The Point Music News.
“Poison Love is about addiction in all its forms — whether that’s a relationship, a substance, or a pattern you keep running back to even when you know it’s wrecking you. It’s that space between denial and self-awareness — pretending you’re fine while quietly wondering if anyone makes it out the other side.”
Hailing from country towns across Australia, Slippery Gypsy are known for their
down-to-earth vibe, unfiltered songwriting, and passionate live shows. Their mix of Rock Grit, Pop sensibilities and musicianship creates a unique style driven by singer Luke’s distinct, powerful vocals.
Slippery Gypsy recently released their soaring single called ‘Stranger’, which premiered exclusively via AAA Backstage. The single was aired on over 100 radio stations worldwide and received coverage from the likes of Good Call Live, Australian Music Scene, HEAVY Mag, Learn Two Exist and AMNplify. With seven singles already released, the band is now sitting on three unreleased tracks that they believe are a cut above anything they’ve done before.
New single ‘Poison Love’ is available on all major online streaming services.
Everyone’s favorite punk agitators, Drug Church, have returned with a brand new singlePynch out now via Pure Noise Records. The song is the first taste of new music from the band since the release of their acclaimed 2024 full-length PRUDE (which drew praise from the likes of The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, Stereogum, NPR, BrooklynVegan, Revolver Magazine, and many more) and it’s well worth the wait.
Pynch is a tremendous dose of the anthemic hardcore-infused alt rock that Drug Church truly excel at, building off the muscular musicality of PRUDE as well as vocalist Patrick Kindlon‘s signature tightrope walk between irreverence and profundity. “It’s as close as we’ve ever come to a love song,” he says, “This one is about meeting someone who won’t allow you to be a loser forever.”
And it’s sure to sound phenomenal live on Drug Church‘s upcoming North American co-headlining tour with White Reaper, which starts this week. Featuring support from SPY, Public Opinion, and Death Lens, it’s a must-see tour for any loud music fan. And later this year the band will be hitting Europe and the UK with Liquid Mike and Downward. Get ready to stage dive to Pynch.
About Drug Church: Drug Church is #1, so why try harder? Truer words have never been spoken (or emblazoned upon merch that may or may not reference a novelty shirt seen on a 1998 Fatboy Slim album cover). For over a decade, Drug Church have been building a very strong case that they’re the best loud guitar band in the game; their fifth full-length PRUDE–a 28-minute blast of aggression, melody, irreverence, and genuine heart–feels like the undeniable proof. The album is so downright satisfying it tricks you into thinking there’s nothing all that surprising about a difficult-to-pigeonhole punk band from Albany, NY, with a name like Drug Church somehow having a career at all, much less one that would last over 10 years and qualify them as the best band going. But before you start trying to think of who might have them beat (good luck), consider what just might be the key to Drug Church’s unexpected staying power: Don’t take it too seriously.
“I think at this point I’m at peace with the fact that I’m not a musician–I’m a band guy,” laughs vocalist Patrick Kindlon. “I’m just a guy in a band. It works because there’s a drive to express myself and we’re good enough at this that we’re allowed to do it–but I’m never gonna try to sell myself as a person that’s pushing boundaries or is super clever. I make music because I enjoy it.” This ‘the mystique is that there is no mystique’ mentality isn’t so much a guiding principle as it is a dose of honesty. In a world where everyone is telling you how game-changing their material is, part of what makes Drug Church so special is that they seem to be extraordinarily good at being themselves. The band–Kindlon, guitarists Nick Cogan and Cory Galusha, bassist Pat Wynne, and drummer Chris Villeneuve–arrived fully-formed in 2011 with a singular amalgamation of eye-popping aggression, bulletproof hooks, and incisive lyricism, and rather than reinventing themselves on every record, they’ve simply aimed to get better and better at a sound they can actually call their own. “Doing something really leftfield isn’t really our ambition,” Kindlon explains. “The goal is to put out good records that sound like we do–we’re not trying to do an OK Computer. But I do think that when you just do something well, you hit a point where people think they have a complete understanding of who you are.”
Of course, in true Drug Church fashion, PRUDE rejects that kind of oversimplification, instead demanding attention and keeping it through sheer force of will. Produced and engineered by longtime collaborator Jon Markson, the album makes it very clear that Drug Church haven’t stopped pushing themselves and still have more than a few tricks up their collective sleeve. PRUDE begins with the 20-second misdirect of a far away guitar that introduces Mad Care. The song then suddenly launches into the kind of hyper-catchy mix of hardcore and ‘90s alternative at which Drug Church’s instrumentalists excel, while Kindlon (with his signature roar that’s halfway between singing and barking and somehow just as hooky as Cogan’s earworm guitar leads) spits out a portrait of bad circumstances and even worse choices.
Kindlon’s ability to walk a tightrope between harrowing, hilarious, and heartfelt is crucial to Drug Church’s alchemy, but for someone whose writing style is perhaps most known for being cuttingly sardonic, PRUDE unexpectedly leans into that third H. “I’m hesitant to say this album is more emotional, but I think there’s definitely some emotional songs on the record,” he explains. “I wanted to avoid some of the topics I’ve been hammering for years, but I almost can’t, I’m limited to what interests me, or upsets me, or grabs my attention. So there’s certainly classic Drug Church stuff–people derailing their lives, a strong pull to some type of individualism, frustration with mob mentality, this idea that maybe community isn’t what it’s sold as–but I would say that this album approaches it from sort of a sad storytelling way. This one feels more earnest to me.”
No song better exemplifies this than Hey Listen, with lyrics that describe seeing a missing persons bulletin in the Walmart near the remote recording studio where the band made PRUDE. “This idea that there’s just a class of children that’s not even considered, it’s just very upsetting to me,”Kindlon says. “The notion that you could be not even a runaway, but a throwaway kid–that you could go missing and someone wouldn’t even look into it for a week.” It’s a dark and deeply affecting song juxtaposed by some of the sunniest guitar lines Cogan and Galusha have put in a Drug Church song.
Throughout PRUDE, the band continuously pull off this core magic trick: messy characters and knotty ideas delivered through massive hooks. See Slide 2 Me, where they forcefully push these elements towards opposite poles to phenomenal result: the story of a botched liquor store robbery wrapped in a guitar riff that would make Stephan Jenkins jealous and Kindlon’s delivery at its most outright melodic. Or Business Ethics, where the singer recounts the inspired-by-true-events hijinks of a drug-fueled self-kidnapping scheme across a song that sounds like Copper Blue performed by Slapshot.
Elsewhere songs like Chow and The Bitters lament a kind of misguided moralizing and sanctimony. “It just feels like everyone in the past 10 years or so seems to believe they’ve tripped into being right–and with that comes righteousness. So you stand in judgment and come off like an annoying dickhead,” Kindlon laughs. As always with Drug Church, while there’s an ingrained irreverence in his lyrical venting, there’s also a real sense of frustration and sadness around the undeniable callousness that’s seeped into everyday life–and become dismayingly mundane. “You see this in every culture, but particularly in desperate ones,”Kindlon says. “Like in prison culture–you’re looking for the permissible population to abuse. You’re looking for the guy with a charge worse than yours so that you can crack a skull, because cracking skulls is your outlet.”
PRUDE comes to a close with two songs that continue to highlight how far Drug Church have actually come. Yankee Trails and Peer Review are some of the most anthemic tracks the band have ever written, which is a tall order for a group of musicians who seem to have stage-dive-inducing-shout-along as their default songwriting setting. Both are powered by Wynne and Villeneuve’s thunderous rhythm section, but Cogan and Galusha’s guitars are equal parts distortion and texture, pivoting on a dime between bite and shimmer. On Yankee Trails, Kindlon describes a friend’s cross-country struggle to kick a drug habit with the kind of granular detail that rings heartrendingly true, and then on Peer Review, he makes it crystal clear that there isn’t an ounce of judgment in this or any of the hard luck stories that populate the album. “I’m just not at all interested in judging people,” he says. “I can have a laugh, I’m not immune to people’s missteps being entertaining, but I have zero interest in filing anyone under good or bad. People seem to want you to die in your mistakes and I just don’t share that at all. I think the mistakes people are capable of making is a continuous theme in our work, and maybe we played it for laughs a little more in the past, but I’m a little more somber on it now.”
So is this all indicative of some kinder, gentler Drug Church? Is it clean guitars and sincerity from here? Is this where the edges soften and hard-earned longevity gives way to a slow descent into mediocrity? Of course not. Don’t take it too seriously, don’t overthink it. As the final words of PRUDE say: “Too much time inside your own head / you lost sight of what it is.” It’s Drug Church. They’re #1.
Australian metalcore merchants Engraved have unleashed another slab of power by way of their new track, Bleed.
Bleed is a raw, unflinching exploration of toxic competition and the dark side of human nature. Delving into the psychological warfare that unfolds when someone becomes so consumed by envy that they’ll sabotage themselves just to see you fail.
With gritty guitar riffs and haunting vocals, the song captures the moment you realise someone you trusted has been orchestrating your downfall all along. It’s a powerful anthem about recognising manipulation, reclaiming your power and rising above those who thrive on bringing others down.
This hard-hitting single confronts the uncomfortable truth that some people would rather watch the world burn than see you succeed.
Bleed, along with previous singles, NCB and The Fallen, are featured on Engraved’s new album, Hymns For The Hollow which will be released on May 22 via XMusic.
ABOUT ENGRAVED:
Drawing inspiration from metalcore giants like Trivium, Parkway Drive, Killswitch Engage, and Bullet For My Valentine, Engraved combines intricate instrumentation and commanding lyrics with a distinct early 2000s metalcore vibe. This sound has helped them establish a loyal following across Australia since the release of their debut EP, Unleashed, in 2022 and earned them over 100,000 streams and climbing.
Australian funk rock royalty SKUNKHOUR are set to light up Sydney this winter with a one night only exclusive show at Manning Bar on 20th June, joined by none other than fellow groove merchants SWOOP. This rare double bill brings together two of the country’s most beloved genre blending acts for a night stacked with rhythm and nostalgia
Skunkhour remain one of Australia’s most enduring and innovative musical acts, a band whose fusion of funk, rock, hip hop and soul carved out a sound that was unmistakably their own. Decades on their live shows still hit with the same electricity that made them cult heroes. Fans can expect a set loaded with favourites including ‘Up to Our Necks in It’, ‘Home’, ‘Kick in the Door’, ‘Weightlessness’, and ‘Breathing Through My Eyes.’
Joining them for this special event are Swoop, the ARIA nominated collective whose infectious blend of funk, pop and dance made them one of the most recognisable Australian acts of the ’90s. Their catalogue of feel-good anthems, from the Certified Gold hit ‘Apple Eyes’ to ‘Do It’ and their unique take on the Roy Ayres classic ‘Everybody Loves the Sunshine,’ guarantees a dancefloor ready, high vibe set that perfectly complements Skunkhour’s groove driven firepower.
With both acts known for turning venues into full blown parties, this is a rare chance to see two iconic Australian bands share the stage for a one night that celebrates the unmistakable energy of live performance
Skunkhour + Swoop Saturday 20th June Manning Bar SYDNEY
Tickets:
Pre-Sale: Monday 16th March at 10:00am
General Public On Sale: Wednesday 18th March at 10:00am
In December, ML Buch contributed vocals to Oliver Coates’ Pillion soundtrack and the month before that she was on Smerz’s stacked Big city life EDITS. Now, the Copenhagen experimental-pop artist is sharing a new untitled song on her YouTube channel with the caption, “felt like finishing this track from 2016.” Earlier this week Buch received…
