Today, July 29th, Sub Pop is celebrating the 10th anniversary of the release of Shabazz Palaces’ Lese Majesty, his acclaimed second album and the follow-up to his label debut Black Up, with a new repress on red and black vinyl.
 
Lese Majesty is a seven-suite, eighteen-track sonic mythmap of new black wave and ghetto psychedelics, featuring singles and official videos for “They Come In Gold,” “Ishmael,” “#CAKE” (directed by Hiro Murai), and “Forerunner Foray” (directed by Chad VanGaalen).
 
Lese Majesty features Shabazz Palaces leader Ishamel Butler alongside Black Constellation collaborators Tendai Maraire, THEESatisfaction’s Catherine Harris-White, Erik Blood and Thadillac. The album was produced by Shabazz Palaces and mixed by Blood at Protect and Exalt Labs in Seattle, Washington.
 
Upon its release, Lese Majesty earned raves from the likes of New York Times, NPR Music, Entertainment Weekly, FLOOD, All Music, and would go on to see placement on “Best of 2014” lists from the likes of Gorilla Vs Bear (“Album of the Year”), Pitchfork, PASTE, SPIN, The Wire, Passion of the Weiss, Stereogum (“Best Rap Albums”), and more.
 
Today, you can also hear two remixes from the Lese Majesty universe, “…down 155th in the MCM Snorkel (OCnotes 40 Acres and All the Grease Flip)” and “Major Winnings (OCnotes Pocket Full of Loaded Dice Remix).”
 
The new repress of Lese Majesty is available now to order from Sub Pop Mega Mart, MM2 (EU/UK) and independent retailers worldwide worldwide. 
 
Shabazz Palaces’ Robed in Rareness and Exotic Birds of  Prey, his companion releases from 2023 and 2024 respectively, are also available worldwide from Sub Pop. 
 
What people said about Shabazz Palaces’ Lese Majesty:
Lese Majesty is Shabazz Palaces getting interstellar, a set of intricate, enigmatic, yet meaningful suites complete with an (initially) impenetrable multidimensional blueprint/map connecting it all in the liner notes. Beneath the visuals, the album contends with a strain of Afrofuturism that puts its faith in finding unities in contradictions and clarity in riddles (“I’m having my cake and I’m eating cake,” “facts stated to enhance what is pre-born,” “we try to unreproduce six tension intervals”), reconciling structure and formlessness, forethought and spontaneity….meter-defying breaks and tactile, synthesized bass-church/musique concrète production that turns human language into primordial elements of cosmic influence. It’s humbling stuff that urges you to dance but knows full well that, to do so, you’ll need to relearn new and better steps [50 Best Albums Of 2014] - Pitchfork
 
“Unlike their previous, also brilliant full-length Black Up, Shabazz Palaces’ new “sonic move” Lese Majesty is not necessarily conducive to absorption in small doses. The record is a massive, dense monolith, divided into suites that only start to make sense after countless repeat listens. It’s a bridge from rap’s beginnings in the early ’70s into its future — structurally, thematically, lyrically, sonically, all of it — that sounds so many light years ahead of everything else in the genre that its nods to the past only reveal themselves after one invests real time immersed in what we called “the impossibly deep, singular astral landscape” that the group has created.” [Album of the Year]  - Gorilla Vs. Bear
 
“With their second album, Seattle hiphop duo Shabazz Palaces unshackled Afrofuturism from cliche in order to present a holistic almost familiar worldview that the future is already here, before demanding an honest response to that revelation. Hua Hsu said:  Abstraction is only useful insofar as it shakes our reliance and this is what makes Lese Majesty’s primal futurism such a bewildering experience. Palaceer raps with secularity and conviction as all that was once solid melts into air - rules and codes vanish, leaving nothing but ghosts while beats dissolve into pretty colors.” [#7 / Albums of the Year] - The Wire 

Shabazz Palaces
Lese Majesty
 
Tracklisting:
1. Dawn in Luxor
2. Forerunner Foray
3. They Come in Gold
4. Solemn Swears
5. Harem Aria
6. Noetic Noiromantics
7. The Ballad of Lt. Maj. Winnings
8. Soundview
9. Ishmael
10. …down 155th in the MCM Snorkel
11. Divine of Form
12. #CAKE
13. Colluding Oligarchs
14. Suspicion of a Shape
15. MindGlitch Keytar TM Theme
16. Motion Sickness
17. New Black Wave
18. Sonic MythMap for the Trip Back

Today, July 25th, Sub Pop & Royal Mountain Records will digitally release “Bending Over Backwards” from Bria Salmena. This stand-alone single from the Canadian artist marks the first original music released under her full name. It also follows Salmena and her longtime collaborator and producer Duncan Hay Jennings’s departure from Orville Peck’s band.
 
“Bending Over Backwards” is a hazy, euphoric song with a pulsing trance-like beat and anthemic chorus, showcasing Salmena’s range as a vocalist. “It’s about some crazy life experiences that I’ve had in the past four years and the work that it takes to go into chaos and come out of it,” she says. Describing the song as “a manic conversation with myself,” Salmena developed different vocal styles for the different parts, pushing herself to sing in an uncomfortable falsetto for the verses, demonstrating her heartfelt desire to embrace change and discomfort in pursuit of artistic authenticity.
 
Directed by Talvi Faustmann, you can watch the official video for “Bending Over Backwards” here.
 
“Bending Over Backwards” was co-produced by Duncan Hay Jennings and Meg Remy (U.S. Girls), mixed by Graham Walsh & Steve Chahley, and mastered by Heba Kadry. Additional instrumentation from Evan Cartwright (Cola) on drums, Lucas Savatti (FRIGS) on bass guitar and piano, with backing vocals from Jaime McCuaig and saxophone from Andy Manktelow.
 
For the better part of the last decade, Bria Salmena has refused to be pigeonholed, effortlessly exploring various genres. Initially becoming known as the frontwoman for critically-acclaimed Canadian experimental post-punk group FRIGS, which she co-founded with producer and multi-instrumentalist Duncan Hay Jennings, Salmena then joined up with the enigmatic sensation Orville Peck, with whom she toured the world for the past half-decade as an indispensable and instantly recognizable member of his live band. Between tours, Salmena and Jennings (also a Peck collaborator) recorded two well-received covers EPs, giving classic and modern Americana songs a gothy dream pop spin, pushing the boundaries of the country genre; the cheekily named Cuntry Covers Vol. 1 & 2 were previously released on Sub Pop under the mononym Bria.
 
Yet the artistically restless Salmena was ready to start carving out her own sound after conquering both the worlds of punk and country—and that meant it was time to lean into the sense of vulnerability that comes with being a solo artist, even if it scared the shit out of her. “I have a really hard time defining myself so concretely because I think that’s just creatively boring,” she says. “I want to do a bunch of different things and explore in all sorts of ways, so it’s nerve-wracking—but it’s also me taking ownership, and that feels good.”
 
And she isn’t entirely on her own, either. Jennings remains Salmena’s closest creative collaborator— since both left Peck’s band earlier this year, they have dedicated themselves to mapping out a musical path that feels artistically authentic and fresh, forging new territory free from past expectations. “I come from a punk background, and then I explored my affection for country music. I feel like those two worlds are combining, and I’m finding my own sound within that,” says Salmena.
 
In her solo music, Salmena pairs various eras of brooding rock music—from austere goth and cottony shoegaze to hypnotic krautrock and gleaming coldwave—with an introspective singer-songwriter approach, her rich, distinctive vocals a perfect match for evocatively personal lyrics. Similar in vibe to the idiosyncratic chamber pop of Aldous Harding or Kate Bush, the raw art rock PJ Harvey, and the long-form ambient of Grouper, Salmena approaches genre like a puzzle, her music a strangely beautiful amalgamation that feels immediate, intimate, and original.

On November 8th, Sub Pop will release Like Someone I Know: A Celebration Of Margo Guryan. This 12-song compilation is an homage to Guryan’s classic 1968 record, Take a Picture, featuring reinterpretations by contemporary artists Clairo, Margo Price, TOPS, Rahill, June McDoom, MUNYA & Kainalu, Frankie Cosmos & Good Morning, Kate Bollinger, Pearl & The Oysters, Bedouine & Sylvie, Barrie, and Empress Of. A portion of proceeds from this album will be donated to providing and advocating for affordable reproductive health services.
 
Today, you can watch the animated official video for Empress Of’s version of “Someone I Know” directed by Sabrina Nichols (The Smile, Loma, youbet). Click here to watch.
 
About Margo Guryan:
Most of our stories about cult musicians who make an album or two and then seem to vanish are framed by grief, despair, and frayed ambition. Not so with Margo Guryan, an ardent jazz anomaly who disdained pop music until hearing “God Only Knows” in 1966, opening a window onto the wonders that form could contain. Only two years later, she released her own set of little pop symphonies, Take a Picture, to great praise and expectation. But having already divorced the hard-gigging valve trombonist Bob Brookmeyer, she declined to tour or even talk about it all that much, content even if her reticence meant Take a Picture was soon consigned to discount racks and cutout bins. She wrote and recorded for years to come, even collaborating with Neil Diamond’s band, but mostly she seemed satisfied by her relatively private life—raising her stepson, Jonathan; carousing with a small clutch of pals; talking politics with whoever was game. Rather than a tragedy, Guryan was an ornate pop architect who also drew and lived by her boundaries.
 
But as befits music so stunning and subtle, Guryan, who died in 2021, has enjoyed several renaissances over the last few decades—multiple reissues and international intrigue, faithful champions who introduced her tender work to successive generations. And now, it’s happening again: Soon after her near-whispered and lovelorn hymn “Why Do I Cry” made her a TikTok star in 2021, the same year she passed, Numero Group launched a reissue campaign, resulting in the acclaimed 2024 set, Words and Music. And now, a dozen artists—none of whom were born when Take a Picture was made, most of whom weren’t even born for a crucial early reissue by Franklin Castle—have reinterpreted and reimagined that entire album (plus one bonus track) for Like Someone I Know: A Celebration of Margo Guryan. Empress Of, Margo Price, Clairo, June McDoom: They all affirm Guryan’s sharpness as a songwriter and the brilliance of an album that has far outstripped whatever promotional cycle Guryan rejected so long ago.
 
Guryan was born to a sprawling family in a home so big it housed multiple generations just before World War II in Far Rockaway, back when the place was still mostly framed by trees. Her family was matrilineal, with a mother who worked as a radiologist while her father played piano at home and a widowed grandmother who ran the place with unwavering sovereignty. While still a composition student at Boston University, Guryan stumbled into a gig playing piano between Miles Davis Quintet sets, signed a songwriting deal with Atlantic Records, and botched a session with Nesuhi Ertegun. But she wasn’t looking to be a singing star, anyway. In 1959, she headed to the foundational Lenox School of Jazz in the Berkshires, staving off advances from her contemporaries to write for Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry, earn the attention of instructor Max Roach, and made a longtime mentor and friend of Gunther Schuller. She became an accomplished lyricist, writing not only for Coleman and Nancy Harrow but also for Harry Belafonte and Gary MacFarland.
 
But it was that subsequent encounter with the Beach Boys that opened the trap door for Guryan to Take a Picture and scores of other super songs, many of which appear on Words and Music. Take a Picture is a sophisticated survey of mid-20s romance and indecision, from the flirty romp of “Sunday Morning” and falling-for-you affirmation “Can You Tell” to the desperate helplessness of “What Can I Give You.” In less than 150 seconds, “Thoughts” traces a relationship from its ecstatic start to empty end, Guryan’s pillowtop voice sitting perfectly between the bouncing piano and lachrymose strings. She mines nostalgia for the recent past in “Someone I Know” and, quite brilliantly, for something that hasn’t even ended yet in the title cut.
What remains astonishing about Take a Picture is how placid and nice the surface can seem yet how much is going on just beneath it—the difficult rhythmic shifts, the textural juxtapositions, the dissonance and eeriness lurking in the crevices. Twice as long as almost everything else here, the willfully psychedelic excursion and closer, “Love,” is a jarring semaphore, telling you to go back and listen for the intricacies in everything else. “When do you get to be someone who can give/And live without hurting someone you love?” she coos over caustic guitar and curling organ, the question spilling in reverse over the rest of the record.
 
Those mirrored senses of slyness and meticulousness, both musical and lyrical, presided over Guryan’s output long after any idea of stardom had faded. She turned earthquake danger into existential boogie on “California Shake,” celebrated the outlaws and their long odds during “I’d Like to See the Bad Guys Win,” and danced with entendre during “Come to Me Slowly.” Indeed, Guryan was not afraid of mischief, whether lampooning the president and all his men during a three-song suite about Watergate or presaging Rihanna by half a century on “Under My Umbrella.” Her perpetually soft voice, audacious songcraft, and complete candor: Guryan, in 1968 and beyond, was making daring music, no matter how gently those sounds seemed to move.
 
A portion of proceeds being donated to providing and advocating for affordable reproductive health services, Like Someone I Know reinforces the strength of Guryan’s songs by allowing different artists to take them for trips of their own. The core always remains, unwavering. McDoom stretches static and harmony beneath “Thoughts,” as if they’re spinning on a dub plate beneath her arcing vocals. Rahill lets “Sun” unfurl over harmonium drone and entrancing percussive ticks, digging into Guryan’s interest in the surreal. Frankie Cosmos and Good Morning take a country shuffle through “Take a Picture,” entwined vocals falling over the rhythmic skips with perfect romantic relish. Over the last few decades, it has become increasingly clear just how good Guryan was, how sturdy her songs have been amid varying tides of taste. Like Someone I Know offers absolute validation, a testament to the enduring relevance and brilliance of Guryan’s work.

Like Someone I Know: A Celebration Of Margo Guryan Launch is now available to preorder from Sub Pop. LP preorders from megamart.subpop.com (North America), Mega Mart 2 (UK/EU), and independent retailers worldwide will receive the limited Loser edition on Opaque Red vinyl (while stock lasts!).