Significant Other #2: Poussin sweat it out with Bike Tour

Bike TourOne of the joys of starting Significant Other, our new singles series for 2018, is that it's given us the opportunity to work with a tonne of new bands and illustrators, including some outside our usual remit. The second single in the series is not just a new one for us, but a new band entirely - introducing Poussin, with their first single Bike Tour.

Formed from members of Bristol band The Cavemen, Poussin's basically music sounds like all that good shit from the 90s - dissonant, off-kilter guitars redolent of bands like Polvo, with a subtle sense of humour that stops their music from ever getting too self-indulgent or serious.

On Bike Tour, an ode to both the joys and pains of cycling with accompanying comic by illustrator Alice Bowsher, placid scenes of fields and windmills roll by, broken up by pangs of exhaustion and hill-induced anxiety. That imagery is perfectly mirrored in the music, - the track's spidery, rolling guitar loop split broken up by discordant stabs, and indeed the comic, which draws on similar inspiration, only with animals, thereby making it better.

Download the single from our Bandcamp, as well as the first track in the series from Paris punx Bitpart, and read the comic below. You can see more of Alice Bowsher's work on her website here. Significant Other 2: Bike Tour by Alice Bowsher

Introducing Significant Other: a new series for 2018

Significant other blog image Barely Regal turns seven years old this month, and to celebrate we're dead excited to finally announce a project we've been working on for a good while now.

'Significant Other' is our first ever singles series, bringing together two of our main passions - music and comics. Over the course of the series, we'll be pairing musicians and illustrators, the latter creating a comic in response to a track.

Each month, we'll be releasing a new single by a different band or artist, along with the accompanying comic (a different pairing of musician and illustrator each time), available as a pay-what-you-what digital download. Maybe we'll do some kind of fun physical product at the end, and there'll possibly a few surprises along the way - we'll see.

The first single in the series is one that's especially close to our hearts - a new track from Parisian post-hardcore trio Bitpart, who we've wanted to work with for a very long time. The accompanying comic is by David Brohet, one of my favourite current illustrators. Listen to the track and read the comic below, and you can download both here.

Significant Other 1: You Matter by David Brohet Not familiar with Bitpart, or David Brohet for that matter? You can listen to Bitpart's previous releases here, and view more of David's illustration work here. Here's a photo of Bitpart lookin' cute (note the sick PMS tee): Bitpart press photo 2018

Happy birthday to us…

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So this week Barely Regal turned five years old. FIVE YEARS. That’s probably not really even all that long in the grand scheme of things, but considering we were shocked we even made it to five months it seems like a long time to us.

We’ve been pretty terrible at celebrating our birthdays to date (mainly because, at 30 years old any acknowledgement of aging is a bit of a sore subject), but seeing as this feels like something of milestone, we’ve worked with Welsh coffee roasters Coaltown Coffee on putting together something that brings together two of our biggest loves - coffee and music, releasing a new 16-track compilation as a bag of coffee with a download code.

Featuring tracks from Barely Regal OGs like Olympians and Theo, plus recent additions to the Barely Regal family including Arkless and Weddings, stream the compilation in full HERE, buy the thing HERE.

Five years ago, we put out or first release, a zine/compilation called ‘Zero Years of Barely Regal’ (a joke that, like our name itself, seemed funny at the time). We were inspired to start a label in the first place by the incredible community of musicians, labels and promoters we met while living in Cardiff, and while we’ve since moved away from the city, dragging the label kicking and screaming with us, both Cardiff and indeed Wales remain places that are very important to us. As such, we’re really pleased and honored to able to work with a Welsh coffee roasters on the release that marks us miraculously somehow having made it to five years as a label – particularly one that shares our grassroots ethics.

The coffee bags are super-limited - we've only done 20, and once they're gone they're gone, so you'd be wise to grab yourself one now if you're keen.

Here's to five more years, I guess. Oh, and if you see us around you're more than welcome to buy us a pint. Or a coffee, we're not picky.

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