Prolific London-born, Dartford-based band Black Market Karma are today announcing their twelfth studio album ‘Mellowmaker’, out June 6th on Fuzz Club, and sharing the title-track and lead single. The new music arrives ahead of a run of Spring UK/EU tour-dates on sale now.
Following 2024’s ‘Wobble’, ‘Mellowmaker’ is the second chapter in Black Market Karma’s two-part album series on Fuzz Club. Crafted entirely by Stanley Belton—who writes, records, and produces everything himself—the record embraces analogue imperfections and tape wobble, splicing them with modern techniques to create a “cassette-ified” lo-fi psychedelia blending ‘60s pop, ‘90s neo-psych, and crunchy hip-hop breakbeats.
“Mellowmaker was made immediately after Wobble, I kinda see them as two sides of each other”, Belton says. The washed-out saturated vocals and jangling Vox guitars are there, but the in-built fuzz and repeater sounds on his cherished vintage Ultrasonic get some heavier usage here. Synths take more of a back-burner in favour of dreamy mellotron samples. Drums are still recorded with one mic and ran through guitar amps or mixed with drum machines, but lean even more into 60s dancefloor breakbeats.
On the title-track, out everywhere today, Belton says: “The best of us often struggle with self-doubt, while the worst of us exude unwarranted confidence. The ones who crave power are usually the least suited for it, while those who would wield it wisely often shy away. I see so many talented, special people crippled by self-doubt, while louder, less impressive individuals dominate spaces and climb to the top. This song is a message to those who deserve more but hold themselves back. It was inspired by a compilation of iconic hip-hop breakbeat samples from the 1960s—I looped one, layering Mellotron flutes, guitar melodies, and vocal lines before replacing the loop with my own live drums, re-amping and doubling them for a rich thud and crunch.”
At its core, Belton states that ‘Mellowmaker’ attempts to give temporary permanence to the timeless and intangible, a liminal feeling permeating the eleven tracks here: “With these two albums I’ve attempted to crystallise how it feels to be stuck between a feeling of amnesia of the soul and the earthly experience of piloting a meat suit… I’m still chasing that longing intangible ‘hiraeth’ feeling. The sense of wanting to find our way home to a place that maybe doesn’t exist.”
‘Mellowmaker’ and last year’s ‘Wobble’ arrive off the back of 2022’s ‘Aped Flair and Hijacked Ideas’ album and the 2023 collaborative album ‘Friends In Noise’, which saw Belton team up with Tess Parks, The Underground Youth, Les Big Byrd’s Joakim Ahlund and The Confederate Dead. In 2023 Black Market Karma also released ‘The Sour Truth’, a collaborative single with Sonic Boom (Spacemen 3 co-founder Pete Kember), and toured heavily around Europe. In January of that year, they went out on a European run with The Black Angels, invited by the Texan psych-rock heavyweights themselves, followed by a 2023 November headline tour of their own and a run of UK/EU ‘Wobble’ dates in 2024.
UPCOMING SHOWS
27/03 – Groningen, NL @ Vera
28/03 – Amsterdam, NL @ Q-Factory
29/03 – Vlissingen, NL @ De Piek
30/03 – Breda, NL @ Mezz
31/03 – Rouen, FR @ Le 3 Pieces
01/04 – Amiens, FR @ Le Peniche
03/04 – Perpignan, FR @ Le Nautilus
05/04 – Barcelona, ES @ Barcelona Psych Fest
08/04 – Arthez-de-Bearn, FR @ Le Pingouin Alternatif
09/04 – Bordeaux, FR @ La Maison Allez Les Filles
10/04 – Nantes, FR @ Mosta Nantes Festival
11/04 – Les Roches-l’Évêque, FR @ Zero Degre Est
04/05 – London, UK @ Moth Club
10/5 – Eindhoven, NL @ Fuzz Club Festival
Thoughts Words Action 