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  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    Purchasable with gift card

      £4.99 GBP  or more

     

  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    A limited edition 14 track album bursting with so much technicolour music your CD player may become sentient. Lyric Sheet and plectrum included.

    Includes unlimited streaming of Golden Fleece via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 3 days
    edition of 133 
    Purchasable with gift card

      £7.99 GBP or more 

     

  • Full Digital Discography

    Get all 34 Nathan Hall and the Sinister Locals and Soft Hearted Scientists releases available on Bandcamp and save 80%.

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Phantom of Canton Halloween Demoz E.P., Waltz of the Weekend, Night of the Gorgon E.P., Golden Fleece, California Time Machine E.P., The Kraken of Roath Park Lake, Stand and Deliver/Pointing Paw, Sasquatch!/Tarantula!, and 26 more. , and , .

    Purchasable with gift card

      £22.99 GBP or more (80% OFF)

     

  • Limited Edition of 1 boxset!
    Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    7 Sinister Locals albums including the new album "Golden Fleece", the long sold out "Scattersparks" and now sold out "Pointing Paw" albums, and the "The Kraken of Roath Park Lake" compilation, with a few extras thrown in such as lyric sheets, posters and stuff.

    Includes unlimited streaming of Golden Fleece via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

    Sold Out

  • Limited Edition off 33 special folders
    Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    The "Golden Fleece" CD album plus 4 signed lyric sheets, a plectrum, a leaf, a copy of the promotional sheet to be sent out with the album, and a copy of part of the mastering worksheet taken to the studio when finalising the overall sound for the factory, and a couple of other random little bits and bobs from The Sinister House relevant to the Sinister Locals Universe in some way or other. Oh yes indeed. If Marvel can do it so can we. And it is all housed in a stickered folder.

    Includes unlimited streaming of Golden Fleece via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

    Sold Out

  • Limited Edition Halloween Boxset of 5 Sinister Locals albums - first of 4 available now!
    Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    "Effigies", "Tunguska Tydfil", "On The Blink", "The Kraken of Roath Park Lake" and "Golden Fleece", together with 2 lyric sheets, and a plectrum, all guarded by your own Jason and the Argonauts style skeleton.

    Includes unlimited streaming of Golden Fleece via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

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  • Limited Edition of 5 copies. Soft Hearted Scientists and Sinister Locals together!
    Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    COSMIC SMACKDOWN - SINISTER LOCALS VERSUS SOFT HEARTED SCIENTISTS!
    10 CDs in their own stickered plastic folder. New Sinister Locals album "Golden Fleece" as well as "Effigies", "Tunguska Tydfil", "On the blink", and "The Kraken of Roath Park Lake".

    As well as this you get 5 Soft Hearted Scientists albums. "Take Time To Wonder In a Whirling World", "Scarecrow Smile", "False Lights", "The Slow Cyclone" and the Fruits De Mer double CD compilation "Whatever Happened to the Soft Hearted Scientists?" (answer - they are recording a new album!).

    4 signed lyric sheets and plectrum included.

    Will the albums get on with each other? Will they fight? Will they implode and create a rift in time and space? Who knows?

    Includes unlimited streaming of Golden Fleece via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

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  • UNIQUE ONE OFF BOXSET OF ALL SINISTER LOCALS ALBUMS
    Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    Included are ALL the albums including the really rare ones - "Effigies", "Mute Effigies Soundtracks" (promotional copy), Tunguska Tydfil, Scattersparks, On The Blink, Pointing Paw, Golden Fleece, and The Kraken Of Roath Park Lake. Also 5 lyric sheets, some promotional singles, 2 plectrums and 2 Skeleton Guards.

    Includes unlimited streaming of Golden Fleece via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

    Sold Out

  • 1 SET ONLY OF SINISTER LOCALS BACK CATALOGUE
    Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    Rare Volga Sturgeon Face E.P.
    Effigies
    Tunguska Tydfil
    Rare Scattersparks CD
    On The Blink
    Rare Pointing Paw CD
    Rare Golden Fleece CD
    Kraken of Roath Park Lake compilation
    4 signed lyrics sheets
    2 prose sheets
    Fortune Teller Fish and plectrum

    Includes unlimited streaming of Golden Fleece via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

    Sold Out

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New Eyes 03:40
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about

14 songs of technicolour psychedelia with a heart. Awash with songs, sounds and lyrics to infuse your day with colour and hope, induce flashbacks to childhood, lift your mood and transport you around the solar system from the comfort of your sofa without the need to ingest illegal substances. Songs about being transported to Laurel Canyon in 1967 via red wine and anti histamines. Songs about nervous breakdowns set to disturbingly cheerful music. Songs about putting your demons to work to pay their rent. Songs about taking a pill that makes your face look like the Green Goblin. Songs about beautiful dead actresses. Songs about "Jason the joyrider, chased by police, poor man's never going to find the Golden Fleece, his Argonauts have all settled down or are doing time". Songs about joyriding a Ferris Wheel and riding it down Garth Mountain then dumping it in Caerphilly. Songs about joy deferred set to music that sounds like a lost 1966 Beach Boys track. Songs about the British Weather finally getting its act together so you can go to the damned seaside. A song that invents a new dance called "The Jellyfish". Songs about "Strumming while Rome burns" to block out the insanity of the world.

REVIEW BY ANDREW YOUNG AT TERRASCOPE
NATHAN HALL & THE SINISTER LOCALS – GOLDEN FLEECE

A new album by Welsh wizard Nathan Hall is always welcome around here and his new self released record is due out very soon. Nathan is the main singer and songwriter in The Soft Hearted Scientists and this is his 6th album with his Sinister Locals.

The opening track ‘California Time Machine’ is a gently humorous tale of life in Laurel Canyon in 1967 from the point of view of a transported Welshman. Arthur Lee and Jim McGuinn and David Crosby, Jim Morrison and Peter Tork and Joni Mitchell goes the refrain. A nice squelchy organ spews all over it. The following song ‘Apples On The Motorway’, slows things down a bit before the melodic ‘Castles In My Head’, with its flanged guitars and acoustic strummery. Nathan plays electric and acoustic guitars, organ, Fender Rhodes, synths, pianos, effects, electronics, drones, percussion and sings, the sinister local he is joined by here once again is Michael Bailey on Bass. Hash Pipes and flying unicorns inform the next song ‘Sand Dune Song’, a sort of breezy, bossa nova/mamba affair. How could you not love a tune with the title of ‘Green Goblin Blues’? It turns out to be a psychedelic delight. ‘Song For Janet Margolin’, is a whimsical, pastoral elegy.

‘House On The Hill’, is a worrisome waltz, about portent and escape. The title track ‘Golden Fleece’, has a gentle curl of sitar, before a jaunty romp about Jason and his Argonauts appears, it’s also about playing the guitar and being left in peace, a lovely Wurlitzer sounding lounge organ wheezes away as it progresses. ‘I Won’t Take You For Granted’, is a cool instrumental, with plenty of squelching synth. ‘Go Ape’, appears to be about joyriding a Ferris wheel in Cardiff and features a spoken word section.

‘A Long Time To wait’, is a song about joy deferred, sounding like a certain Californian surfing band with cabin fever, a gently lilting, haiku like song. . ‘New Eyes’, parks itself firmly in fab four territory, and dispenses some sound advice before the excellent ‘The Jellyfish’ appears, all Fender Rhodes, flanged guitar, bleeps and squiggles. The album ends with ‘Fire Escape Friends’, the longest song on the album at 4.40, it’s ostensibly a song about blocking out the insanity of the world. A fine way to spend an hour, great stuff Nathan.

(Andrew Young)

REVEIW BY DAVE THOMPSON AT GOLDMINE

Nathan Hall and the Sinister Locals arrive bearing The Golden Fleece (Nathan Hall/Bandcamp), a collection of 14 new songs that maybe take a couple of listens to sink in and sort out, but then demands repeated listens for the rest of the week. At least.

Though it cannot help but be redolent, in places, of Hall’s Soft Hearted Scientists, The Golden Fleece is an album of cunningly wry low-key pop songs, laid back even when faced with titles like “Go Ape!” And “Green Goblin Blues.”

Infectiously light-hearted, it’s inflected, too, with at least a distant relative of the same Laurel Canyon moodiness that Hall dreams of in the opening “California Time Machine.” Although you shouldn’t take that too seriously. The chorus might invoke “Arthur Lee and Roger McGuinn and David Crosby / Jim Morrison and Peter Tork and Joni Mitchell.” But all of them are over there, while Hall is stuck in Splott - a neighborhood of Cardiff that might be best remembered elsewhere for its role as a long-running joke in television’s Torchwood.

There are moments of mighty rock - “House on the Hill” chimes on grand guitars; the title track is the next best thing to an acoustic boogie; and “New Eyes” feels a little like it’s been hanging out with sundry sixties beat groups, as they transitioned towards the psych boom. And then there’s “The Jellyfish,” a sweet instrumental that Hall insists is inventing a new dance. Just don’t forget your tentacles.

REVIEW BY ELEDIR SEREN AT UNIVERSAL MIND DECODER
I’ve come a bit late to The Golden Fleece, the most recent album release by Nathan Hall and The Sinister Locals, on account of my copy of the CD seemingly having been sent by an asthmatic carrier pigeon with a permanent case of cramp, but, now that its finally arrived, I’m delighted to report that it was worth the wait.

It's only as we reach the 6th album proper (discounting this year’s earlier release The Kraken of Roath Park Lake which served as an introductory sampler to the magical world of Nathan Hall and those Sinister locals of his) that I realise that, to my mind, at least, this run of albums were in danger of blurring into each other, possibly as a result of Nathan Hall being such a prolific one-man songsmith.

This isn’t a criticism because I’m a big fan of Hall’s playfully jocose approach to psychedelia, but this album sounds different to the previous five releases, as if he’s changed his sound palette from A Saucerful of Secrets, say, to The Bee gee’s 1st - both of which inhabit the sunlit glades of a switched-on, tripped-out summer of 1967, which is where the spirit of this whimsical album abides, its eyes the size of dinner plates, no doubt.

Not that Golden Fleece is trying to mimic either of those albums, rather it shares with them a technicolour soundscape of its own, but one clearly at home to that year’s lysergic sense of wonder. Hall’s trick for conjuring up magical imagery is still in place – there are chandeliers in garden sheds to consider; a name-checking of West Coast Laurel Canyon aristocracy to admire; unicorns make an appearance; as do Jason and the Argonauts (the album title is a bit of a giveaway), the Green Goblin, and lost, beautiful, enigmatic actresses; alongside Ferris wheels and joyrides and exhortations to not wear sandals on any day featuring the letter ‘Y’; and in the sublime ‘Castles In My Mind’, my favourite track on the album, we find the line “if you can’t evict your demons, be sure they pay their rent”, possibly the best lyric I’ve come across in ages; and musically, guitars flange, analogue electronics squelch and elsewhere a whole kitchen sink of instrumentation is employed to kaleidoscopic effect – all these elements combine alchemically with Hall’s usual way with a fanciful melody and a touch of pastoral loveliness, and, from this magic, two psychedelic bedfellows, wonder and delight, are produced. This is the best album he’s produced since 2017’s Effigies. Highly recommended.

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released September 9, 2022

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Nathan Hall and the Sinister Locals and Soft Hearted Scientists Cardiff, UK

The music mixes psychedelia with baroque touches, and analogue electronics and seeks to create the same confusion of the senses that a prime Beach Boys track does. Is it summer or is it Christmas? Neither. Its both simultaneously. The lyrics walk the dark side of Sunny Psychedelia Street and know that all is not well with the world. Burning effigies and suicidal Ice Road Truckers all feature. ... more

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