Mandrake Handshake announce debut double-heavyweight vinyl LP & CD ‘Earth-Sized Worlds’, set for release February 21st via cult indie label Tip Top Recordings (Japanese Television).
The concept tying together every last note and lyric of ‘Earth-Sized Worlds’ – the debut album from the London/Oxford self-dubbed ‘Flowerkraut’ collective Mandrake Handshake – is an awfully simple one: ‘Welcome to Space Beach’. A mantra to unite under one aesthetic roof the various creative compulsions of this complex, multi-limbed organism – varying at any one time between 7 to 10 members – it’s an album that conspires the alienating vastness of the cosmos against the warm nostalgias of home.
Full of surprise, leftfield turns and closeted experimentations, tape-soaked Brazilian Sambas morphs into Kosmische Krautrock crusades, and shimmering avant-pop electronics melt into sweetened psychedelic bliss… “Welcome to the Spacebeach – the new era of the Mandrake. Here, where the sea joins the sky, and where the trees touch the stars and where we will have you stay a while.”
With news of their biggest UK headline show to date at London’s No90 (Hackney Wick) on February 28th, Mandrake Handshake are certainly firing on all cylinders as their debut album release draws ever closer. Having already showcased lead singles ‘Charlie’s Comet’, ‘King Cnut’ and ‘The Change And The Changing’ as they experiment further with their eccentric brand of ‘Flowerkraut‘: a hedonistic, brain-frying feast of krautrock, art-pop and psychedelia.
Varying anywhere between 7-10 members – including a dedicated, flamboyant tambourine shaker – their pristine, multi-limbed spectacle of a live show has journeyed up and down the UK and EU in recent times. With multiple headline tours to their name, including a sold-out show at London’s iconic 100 Club and headline slot on the BBC Introducing stage at Truck Festival earlier this year, the group have already ticked off slots at the likes of Wide Awake, Green Man and Manchester Psych Fest,.
Label: Top Top Recordings
UPC: 5052442027126 (CD) | 5052442027010 (LP)
Catalogue Number: TIPT062CD (CD) | TIPT062 (LP)
Release Date: 21 February 2025