Bella Union is a UK independent label formed in 1997 by members of Cocteau Twins. Run by Simon Raymonde, it has grown into one of the UK’s top independent labels, discovering and developing many American artists like Fleet Foxes, Beach House, Father John Misty, Midlake, John Grant, Explosions In The Sky, Australian trio Dirty Three, and now working with bands of the calibre of The Flaming Lips, M Ward, The Walkmen, to name just a few. This year the label finally set up offices in America and have released debut records from Manchester bands MONEY and PINS, North East of England’s Lanterns on the Lake, Berlin’s Ballet School, Swedish artists I Break Horses & Sumie, and is readying for new releases from 2:54 and Radiohead’s Philip Selway before the year is out. Bella Union is Music Week‘s INDEPENDENT RECORD LABEL OF THE YEAR 2014.

PINS are Faith, Anna, Lois,and Sophie and mix together post punk, fuzzed up garage, and rock and roll. They have created a distinct sound, and secured their place in the burgeoning Manchester new music scene. 2014 saw PINS release their debut full length Girls Like Us stateside in March on Bella Union accompanied by a string of shows at SXSW including one with Green Days’ alter ego band Foxboro Hot Tubs. They also re-recorded “Shoot You/ Eleventh House” for a limited edition Record Store Day release on a heart shaped vinyl. PINS have toured extensively through the UK and Europe supporting Warpaint, Dum Dum Girls, Crocodiles and Sleigh Bells. PINS are heading back to America for their west coat tour in October including Culture Collide Festival in Los Angeles and CMJ in New York.
 

“A dark and seriously addictive collection of post-punk riffs and girl-gang vox.” Rookie Mag
 
“After listening to their debut album Girls Like Us, you’ll see what makes this indie punk outfit stand out from the pack.” NYLON
 
“Super fierce… They tore it up.” NPR
 
“Direct descendents of Manc rabble-rousers The Fall (in sneery attitude), with a scratchy dose of C-’86 style pop hooks.” Brooklyn Vegan
 
Pins official site
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Pins on Soundclound

Marissa Nadler has been performing since 2000, releasing a number of well-received studio albums, and most recently, July on Bella Union in early 2014. She taught herself to play guitar as a teenager, and at the age of 15 began to write her first songs. Her musical style has been described as “dream folk”, featuring her haunting mezzo-soprano over the steady foundation of her acoustic guitar. Lyrically, her music has a strong narrative aspect, featuring introspective and American Gothic themes complimented by reverb-laden instrumentation and production.
 
The Boston Globe wrote “She has a voice that, in mythological times, could have lured men to their deaths at sea, an intoxicating soprano drenched in gauzy reverb that hits bell-clear heights, lingers, and tapers off like rings of smoke”.
 
July, her first release on Sacred Bones (US) and Bella Union (EU) Records, was recorded at Seattle’s Avast Studio, pairing Nadler with producer Randall Dunn (Earth, Sunn O))), Wolves in the Throne Room). Dunn matches Nadler’s darkness by creating a multi-colored sonic palette that infuses new dimensions into her songs. July is the kind of release that reminds you why NPR counts Nadler’s songwriting as so “revered among an assortment of tastemakers”, and an album she couldn’t have made earlier in her career because, as every songwriter knows, she didn’t just write these songs: she lived them.
 
“The question of whether Marissa Nadler’s elegant folk music ought to soundtrack our dreams or haunt our nightmares has been a thread through her uncannily cohesive catalogue. With six albums in 10 years and never a misstep, Nadler has grown her own perceptive language . . . Nadler has few direct contemporaries—Bill Callahan, Sharon Van Etten, or Alela Diane come to mind—but here, on July’s most extreme song [“Dead City Emily”], she could sensibly share bills with, say, Iceage or Deafheaven.” Pitchfork 8.1
 
“On her sixth album, Boston-born singer-songwriter Marissa Nadler gets darker than ever before . . . Gone is the lithe, limber-voiced ingénue of last year’s ‘Wedding,’ and in her place lies Nadler’s blackest-ever-black album. New songs like ‘Was It a Dream’ and ‘Desire’ benefit from darker hired guns: Eyvind Kang’s strings, Steve Moore’s synths and the guitars of Phil Wandscher lend emotional heft and existential dread to these 11 phantasmagoric love songs.” NPR
 
“July unfolds as a near-perfect song cycle.” All Music
 
“Gorgeously ethereal” SPIN
Marissa Nadler official site
Marissa Nadler on Twitter
Marissa Nadler on Soundcloud

MONEY is comprised of Jamie Lee, Charlie Cocksedge, Billy Byron and Scott Beaman. They formed in Manchester and embody the passion, creativity and optimism of a new generation of artists and musicians from there. “It’s an extraordinary, poetic city,” frontman Jamie says, “You feel like you can do anything here”. Selling out shows before they’d even released a single, MONEY have drawn devoted fans to strange, beautiful and passionate gigs. A band on a quest to discover new values, new ways of being, for these spiritually impoverished times. As Jamie says, “Our aim with this band – in all things we do – is to create the world afresh on our own terms.” The band return to the states in support of their debut album The Shadow of Heaven out now on Bella Union.
 
“a majestic, spiritual debut. It’s as close to a religious experience as any indie album will come this year.” Time Out
 
“Their secret weapon is frontman Jamie Lee, who despite a very London upbringing comes off like the last of Britrock’s great northern romantics: a dark theatrical man in the Ian McCulloch mould.” NME
 
“The Shadow of Heaven sounds like it could be one of those albums that’s the start of something: there’s a sense of a band that is both instantly familiar but refreshingly different from its contemporaries” The Guardian
 
“An audacious and exquisite work of gloomy beauty that should see MONEY on a fast ascent, leaving grand sonic architecture in their wake” Under The Radar
 
“An exquisite album by anyone’s standards.” Drowned In Sound
 
“The Shadow of Heaven throws down the gauntlet for what a truly organic and emotive album should be. A thing of beauty, it gets better with every listen… Spectacular.” DIY
 
“MONEY’s debut album reverberates and billows as if written to be performed amongst the pillars and pews of a church. They have made something special and, maybe, even sacred.” The Fly
 
Money official site
Money on Twitter
Money on Soundcloud

Ballet School wooed America with last year’s critically acclaimed EP, Boys Again, and are finally hitting our shores once more with their brilliant LP debut, The Dew Lasts An Hour which hit September 9 via Bella Union. The critically acclaimed album from the Berlin-based multi-nationals is a fresh, vibrant take on the lush, emoting tropes of Eighties pop and rock, all while sounding resolutely 21st century. The album’s diverse influences place the trio at the forefront of pop’s new alternative.

 
“Ballet School sounds like wild enthusiasm coursing through the internet and spilling out breathlessly into real life.” Stereogum
 
“Take one part Cocteau Twins’ genre-bending gleam pop, add in a dash of late-night rebellion, and top it all off with the kind of exuberance that comes from a truly epic weekend, and you’re well on your way to Ballet School.” Nylon
 
“Pop group Ballet School may be from Berlin, but their music pays homage to 80s American pop—a vibrantmelange of synths and elastic, soaring vocals.” Noisey
 
Ballet School official site
Ballet School on Twitter
Ballet School on Soundcloud

Wild Nothing official site

 
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