Following the success of Shabazz Palace’s ‘Black Up’ LP last year (the first hip hop album to be released by Sub Pop), the Seattle label will unleash two more urban records in 2012, including the second album by South Africa’s Spoek Mathambo.

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M.I.A. has wasted no time in following up last year’s pretty disappointing ‘/\/\ /\ Y /\’ LP, with her forth album coming this summer, courtesy of a new album deal with Mercury.

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Seven years ago today [25 January 2012] 150 copies of the first edition of Loud And Quiet were printed and left in various record stores and clothes shops around London. In retrospect, it wasn’t very good at all, but we are still here.

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Robot Elephant – a London indie label that deals heavily in weird, frightening electronic music – last year teamed up with kindred spirits Disaro Records (a weird, frightening, electronic label from Hollywood) to give us the rather brilliant Isvolt compilation.

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We liked Fair Ohs’ 2011 debut album (‘Everything Is Dancing’) so much it featured in our albums of the year poll. Then Tough Love Records released a 9-track 7″ of the band’s early hardcore material, which was very nearly as good.

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Last year, London label No Pain In Pop re-released ‘Geidi Primes’ – the debut album by Grimes [real name Claire Boucher] that until then had only been available in the musician’s native Canada, on tape cassette and as a download.

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