The 48-year-old music producer and composer Jürg Schwarzenbach, aka Samaistha, has a new release Upgrade Your DNA, a double single featuring a soothing ambient instrumental version as the B-side.
The vocal version on the A-side stands out with powerful, cinematic beats. They carry the piece, lending it tension and intensity. Expansive violin sounds convey emotional depth and connect the individual elements. Striking synthesizer sounds create a sense of space and openness within the soundscape.
The ambient version of Upgrade Your DNA on the B-side is significantly slowed down, completely forgoes beats and violins, and focuses instead on far-reaching synthesizer soundscapes. Conceived as meditation music, this version enables a calm, inward-focused listening experience with an impulse toward transformation.
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British singer guitarist Mick Clarke began his career with Killing Floor, part of the British blues boom of the late 1960s and contemporaries of Free, Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin. The band backed Texas blues guitar star Freddie King and toured with legends Howlin' Wolf and Otis Spann. The album "Killing Floor" was listed as one of Classic Rock Magazine's twenty top British blues albums of the period.
THE Mick Clarke Band was formed in the early 80s and toured extensively in Europe and the USA. Mick has appeared on numerous festivals with artists including Joe Bonamassa, Johnny Winter and Rory Gallagher, and the Southern California Blues Society called him "One of the finest blues players to come out of England".
Mick Clarke tells us: "Here's a collection of some recent blues releases and a few old favourites. My version of Elmore's 'Blues before Sunrise' is followed by John Lee Hooker's 'My Own Fault' - a song best known by BB King. (There's also a fabulous version by Otis Rush). I put a version of Wolf's 'Ain't Superstitious' out as a single a few weeks back - here's an alternative take. And then Arthur Crudup's classic 'That's All Right' - slightly remastered for this collection.
Otis Rush's 'All Your Love' and the evergreen 'Kansas City' keep the blues rollin'. My own song 'Purple Cat', about the club in Chicago where Little Walter developed his sound, is followed by Bill Broonzy's 'Banker's Blues' (with a nod to Rory Gallagher), and my tribute to the great 'Barbecue Bob'. And the collection rocks out with my version of the blues and country standard 'Crazy Arms'."
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| Photo - Patrick O'Brien |
Beggar Weeds will release Tragedy in U.S. History on February 20, 2026 via Strolling Bones Records. The 13-track career retrospective combines their 1988 5-song EP, six previously unreleased songs co-produced by Michael Stipe of R.E.M. & the filmmaker Jim McKay, as well as two bonus tracks. Beggar Weeds’ small catalog still sounds gloriously eccentric, familiar yet distinctive, subversive in its oddball vision of underground rock. The Jacksonville, FL trio were motivated by the offbeat and took inspiration from their favorite bands—the jangle of R.E.M., the almost-falling-apart-ness of the Replacements, the rumbling melodicism of Hüsker Dü—and combined them with hardscrabble country and rustic folk.
Then they played it loud and fast. Their songs sound like only these three young men from the Sunshine State could have dreamed up. Met with early critical acclaim, Uncut magazine called the compilation “revelatory” in their 8/10 “Rediscovered” album of the month review, saying “As a band they were deeply odd and deeply Southern, grounded in punk and twang as though connecting the dots between the Allman Brothers and The Minutemen.”
“We wanted to do something different, chase our own ideas,” says the band’s Adam Watson. “We were combining all of those things, punk but also pop and country and folk. I remember someone described us as the Everly Brothers on speed.” The trio quickly developed a reputation for rambunctious shows where anything could happen and often did. Opening for X, The Meat Puppets, the Dead Milkmen, and more, Beggar Weeds danced and shimmied constantly, switched instruments with each other, and emphasized volume, speed, and feral energy.
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East Anglian (England) based grunge-pop riser Gabby Rivers just released the hotly anticipated new EP What is the problem? The Suffolk solo artist has already built a reputation across the south of the UK, playing festivals and headline shows around East Anglia and London. Displaying her move to a move direct, alternative-rock sound, the new EP captures the progression in Gabby’s sound as she finds her identity as an artist.
A punchy collection of tracks driven by crunching, distorted bass, fuzzy guitar lines, and gritty production, the EP delivers a compelling fusion of garage rock and grunge beneath Gabby’s catchy melodies and raw, honest lyricism. From the coming-of-age angst and explosive chorus of 'Dig Me' to the brooding grit of the title track and the slow-burn build of 'Lipstick Karma,' the seven-track release showcases Gabby’s talent for pairing commercial appeal with direct, guitar-led soundscapes. Anchored by inventive songwriting, sharp melodic instincts, and forward-focused energy, the EP feels urgent, confident, and creatively re-energized.
Speaking about the Ep Gabby explains: This EP has been a long time coming, after releasing my EP in 2023 I found it was full of different genres and I did not know where my creative direction was heading, I felt like I had a music identity crisis, I didn't know who I wanted to be as an artist, what I wanted to create or how I wanted to sound. I took most of 2024 off as an artist, I barely did any shows or any releases because I wanted to write, create and figure out what I wanted. Allowing that breathing space allowed me to create What is the problem? the EP I have always wanted to create, the sound I have always wanted to make, the artist I was inspired from growing up merged into an EP. It felt like the band and everyone involved understood the vision and ran with it.
The EP is inspired by a time in my life where I got betrayed by a few people in a short space of time, I was blind sighted in relationships I thought were good for me but were actually ruining me. After long nights, conversations and a lot of poetry writing I walked away from it all. Although it was hard and upset me, creating this EP helped me cope.
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