The Blessed Madonna began with three magic words, scrawled in shoe Polish on a broken – down box and hung on the wall at a small sweaty party: We Still Believe. “I think you have to give up completely to really understand what hope is. It was like 2011? I had spectacularly, monumentally failed. I left the label. I wasn’t DJing. I wasn’t putting out records. I was divorced and living on my Dad’s couch so naturally my friends and I decided to throw an illegal rave. We didn’t have any decorations, so I took a box and wrote, ‘We Still Believe’ on it. I needed to believe that something better was possible and that’s how it all started.” After years of $50 gigs, strung together by gas money and surfed couches, The Blessed Madonna cemented her reputation as a sublime technician behind the decks with a legacy of fluent and dynamic sets, spanning from disco to techno to house and back. One room sweatboxes, circus tents, theatres, massive festival stages and entire city blocks have all served as the canvas for her shows. After a jam packed 2023, from Glastonbury to Sonar to Boiler Room Bali, The Blessed Madonna has been filling the dance floor everywhere she goes and is now releasing her debut album.

GLASVEGAS return with their triumphant fourth album Godspeed, which will be released digitally on 2nd April 2021 the music we all need right now. The latest single Shake The Cage (fr Theo) sums up the dazzlingly eclectic sound of Godspeed perfectly this is an electronic barrage with devastatingly powerful spoken word lyrics which call to mind Im Gonna Get Stabbed from the bands astonishing debut.

The single is perfectly positioned at the end credits of Alan McGee new movie Creation Stories, written by Irvine Welsh and executively produced by Danny Boyle. Hand picked as the only current track to grace the music moguls biopic, it is a kind of dystopian, free-associative Choose life sermon (Stand on a wave / calculate quantum mechanics / Surf, dance / Believe in chance) set to the escalating dread and claustrophobia of a John Carpenter murder-chase.

Launched on their own label Go Wow Records, Godspeed takes place, all on the same night, just as the suns going down, The album presents a fragmented portrait of a single evenings events, one James half-jokingly compares toAmerican Graffiti, director George Lucas 1973 coming-of-age classic, where everything happens in one night, and nothing major goes down plot-wise, but you still love the characters and the world. Each song in its own right as diverse as the next, pulling James Allan into each world with free reign to experiment in this latest masterpiece.

James Allan is first and foremost an artist and his refusal to be bound by convention, by rules, by accepted limitations, by society or by boundaries of any kind makes Glasvegas a band who at times defy categorisation. What other band could be responsible for such diverse tracks as Shake The Cage (fr Theo), Keep Me A Space and My Body Is A Glasshouse (A Thousand Stones Ago), taking examples only from the Godspeed singles youve heard so far?

Simply, none. There can be only one and they are Glasvegas.

For James, who has spent an agonising seven years crafting this album, from writing to demoing, recording to producing and engineering, starting when he was living in Sweden, and finished it in lockdown in his spare-room studio in Glasgows east end. That ethos of listening only to what his heart and soul tell him is the key to everything. Its the only rule he will even consider listening to. He said: If you follow your heart and your instincts, it might be difficult and youll trip yourself up at times – but usually, it works out. Making this album has probably made me understand myself a bit better as a person, to be honest. And its the hardest Ive ever worked on anything in my life.

From strident techno to joyous singalong anthems, Godspeed captures that quintessential Glasvegas essence incomparable, uncategorisable, and ultimately music that actually means something.

For that alone, welcome back Glasvegas we really need you right now.