ATIC Records - News

Aim's classic album 'Flight 602' has been selected by the good folks at amazon.com as one of their '100 for $5' promotion through August 2010. Along with essential releases by the likes of A Tribe Called Quest, The Beastie Boys, Sparklehorse and Belle & Sebastian, Flight 602 is available now for the paltry sum of just $5.00! Click here to check the full selection and get yours (offer open to US customers only).

It's that time again - on June 27th ATIC's Aim and Gripper along with Ad Bickerdike of Movement plus special guest Funkmaster Moon bring their mix of soul, funk, disco and whatever else they feel like playing to Barrow's Park Bandstand. Set in the park's gorgeous gardens, it's a wonderful way to wile away a lazy, hazy Sunday afternoon so get your blankets out and pack the pork pies.  Fingers crossed for a scorcher... Barrow Park Bandstand 12:00 - 6:30 pm. FREE!

It's a bank holiday again this weekend (Sunday, 30th May 2010) Why not come and enjoy the sun at our open air and free-for-all,  ATIC / Movement park party set in the stunning surroundings of Barrow's park bandstand and gardens. The thrid party this year expect a nice lazy and chilled vibe, Feat. Movement DJ's (Ad, Ste, Kid Cagoule & Peter) and ATIC's Aim & Gripper. Barr...ow Park Bandstand, 12pm - 6.30pm. See you there!!

This Bank Holday Sunday (May 2nd 2010) The second of this years ATIC / Movement 'parties in the park' will take place. It's our free-for-all, open-air afternoon / early evening session set in the glorious surrounds of Barrow's park bandstand and gardens. Chilled vibes, a beautiful setting and the finest musical selections from the Movement crew (Ste Kendall, Ad Bickerdike, Kid Cagoule and Peter Kay) and our very own Aim and Gripper. Trust us, if the weather's right it doesn't get any better than this. Click here for details.

In this months issue of FUTURE MUSIC (April 2010). Aim's debut 'Cold Water Music' has been featured as a 'CLASSIC ALBUM' with a 4 page article by Roy Spencer. Including an exclusive interview, history told from the man himself, stories behind each track on the album, influences and favorite albums, and a look at Aim's studio today. Originally released on Grand Central in 1999, and re-released on ATIC in 2004, 'Cold Water Music' has stood the test of time and remains as relevant today as the day it was released a decade ago.

Get yourself the album or download now! Plus 2 bonus tracks! 

It's with great pleasure that we can announce the first of this years ATIC / Movement 'parties in the park', our free-for-all, open-air afternoon get-togethers set in the glorious surrounds of Barrow's park bandstand and gardens. Chilled vibes, a beautiful location and the finest musical selections from the Movement crew (Ste, Ad, Chatty and Peter), our very own Aim and Gripper, and special guest Funkmaster Moon (www.soullotto.com). Trust us, if the weather's right it doesn't get any better than this!

Niko's classic debut album 'Life on Earth' has been out of print and un-available to download for years. Due to popular demand this album, origianlly released in 2004, is now re-released digitally on ATIC. Boasting timeless song-writing with production from Aim, Mark Rae and Mr Scruff, it sounds as fresh as the day it first came out. Enjoy and stay tuned for her second LP due out later this year.

"Life on Earth is... a debut of delicious self-assurance, with beats that sashay from slouchy electro to brassy, soulful funk and hip hop. By turns ballsy, elegant and utterly intoxincating, a record to grab you by the collar and shove you onto the dancefloor" - Q

"Niko.. NY found protege, a singer- and, boy can she sing... production from friends and family like Aim, Mar Rae and Mr Scruff...Some fancy beats and that voice (complete with that range) hold it all together rather beautifully" - City Life

"There's a unifying charisma to Niko's songwriting and deadpan delivery...Life on Earth sings in the universal language of brill pop music" -NME

"Niko's debut is a highly original take on modern soul, showcasing her big versatile voice over equally round grooves" - Flux

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The Witch and the Robot have had a fantastic past few months, with their debut release "On Safari" they have had tons of great reactions from the music press. Here's what they've been saying...

“Some sort of freak-folk, pastoral, krautrock mindblow. seriously, SOOO good!...On Safari gives the folk tradition a twenty-first century kick up the arse... The breadth of approach and scale of ambition mark TWATR out as innovators."
Drowned in Sound 8/10

"Great tunes: lyrics at once bizarre and erudite: groovy arrangements. A bit of a punt but I don't think man of you will regret it."
The Sunday Telegraph 4/5

"The Witch And The Robot add something piquant and properly odd to the psyche-folk pot... On Safari is studded with cracked gems."
Uncut 4/5

"genuinely great."
NME 7/10

"It's Twisted, It's charming and it's too good to miss"
Bearded

"On Safari is indeed a delight, fusing its different styles into one tempting whole. It’s pessimistic, pastoral, frantic, psychedelic in parts, and floating face down in a lake of lost desperation – the stuff of which nightmares are seeded."
Head full of Snow

"You cannot help but get absorbed by the music...an enderingly weird and irreverent listen." To Cool to Die 8/10

“As the music gets more intense, so the mood gets a little sinister. It‘s obviously performance art put to music, but so against the grain of typical ‘indie’ careerists it’s a little un-nerving.”
The Cumberland News

“The music started with Cumbria’s The Witch And The Robot. This unfathomably absurdist gang sing of industrial disease and Morecambe Bay tour guide Cedric Robinson - over guitar, flute and volleys of cream pies.”
Review of Britsh Sea Power’s Sing Ye From The Hillsides Festival

“TWATr (their preferred abbreviation, case sensitive) play darkly psychedelic anti-folk with a bit of blues about it, an occasional flute and a large sense of impending doom. It has no close relatives (no small achievement in itself)... were it played by the sort of boring looking beards that normally produce stuff that people call "anti-folk" (whatever that even means), it would still be as disturbing as walking alone across a deserted landscape as the clouds close in and stumbling across a dead body with your own face on it.” 
Cath Aubergine's famous blog

“Putting the projectors to their best use, these masters of mood control conjour a heck of an atmosphere. Described as “Bizarre, compelling, always entertaining” their music is powerful, technically superb, and frankly speaking if they hadn’t assaulted each other with cream pies periodically for light relief, the atmosphere of menace might have become too intense for my comfort “
The Juice ‘Contemporay Media E-Zine’

“One minute they're a mildly threatening Violent Femmes doing film noir soundtracks, the next an acoustic goth Fall with the scariest sounding flute you've ever heard. These comparisons are still pretty wide of the mark”
Manchester Music

“No matter how much you've been told about The Witch and the Robot (or TWATr, of course), they are at least ten times more deranged.”
Fugitive Motel
 

Hot on the heels of their critically acclaimed debut LP ‘On Safari’, comes TWATr’s first single - brand new track ‘Hetero’, backed with album and live favourite ‘Giant’s Graves.’ Available to download from the 22nd February, here’s Sam (aka Venice) to explain what ‘Hetero’ is on about;

"In 1518, Frau Troffea began to dance fervently in a street in Strasbourg. This lasted somewhere between four to six days. Within a week, 34 others had joined, and within a month, there were around 400 dancers. Most of these people eventually died from heart attack, stroke, or exhaustion... In Ambleside there is a late night disco called Sportsmans Inn, every small town has one, the type of nightclub where big men stare at women while listening to Vega Bus or Dario G, totally Hetero..."

But that's not all. That other nicely good band of Cumbrian instrumentists (British Sea Power) are friends and fans of The Witch And The Robot and for this release, BSP’s Martin Noble provides a stunning, apocolyptic re-working of 'Hetero' which we can't get enough of. Massive. Check our live section for details of an upcoming TWATr micro-tour .

Follow the Outline our first label compiltaion was named 'ALBUM OF THE WEEK' by The Independent. What a great start to 2010! Well done everyone!!

Andy 'Aim' Turner's delicate hip-hop soothed many a hangover in the early Noughties, and a decade on, his label's debut compilation should do the same. Highlights include Aim's ambling beatscapes, Gripper's lo-fi cosmic disco and accordian house, and Crowhead's tense rave. A spirit-lifting anitdote to the January blues. - Rahul Verma - The Independent (Saturday Jan 2nd 2010)

Availiable now on CD and MP3

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