It’s a funny thing being an independent label in 2025, for myriad reasons. Reflexively performing acrobatics in the dark as you grasp for where you think the trapeze bar of the latest algorithmic fad with which you have to align lies, were you to have the audacity of wanting anyone to hear about your latest release.
Now, that is not to say that we are sitting in the Chemikal office as tortured as that woeful circus-based metaphor – it is a joy that we are still here 30 years and 5 months after our first foray into the record industry. It is more a thank you to you for finding your way to our actual website, your interest sufficiently piqued to evade some Silicon Valley tech-tosser trying to keep you on their app/hellsite.
So well done, and welcome!
The main reason for this news post is to tell you that the new, and long-awaited fourth, Emma Pollock album Begging The Night To Take Hold will be released by Chemikal Underground on 26 September 2025, and is available to pre-order right now.
It is wonderful news to finally be able to give you, as it has been a number of years in the making. Recorded during and immediately after the COVID-19 pandemic at Chemikal Underground’s Chem19, with longterm collaborator Paul Savage in the producer and drummer’s chair, Emma fleshed-out her songs with instrumentation by Pete Harvey (cello) and Graeme Smillie (piano & bass). The ideas and tonal shifts cascade, flowing in a technicolour deep and evocative. It’s a richness that Pollock has always played with, both solo and in The Delgados, but here it’s given an enhanced poignancy that only a period of upheaval can instigate.
In the nine years since her 3rd album In Search of Harperfield, Emma experienced the death of her father and a period of personal disruption that resulted in self-revelations that reverberate throughout the record. The album’s title is hewn from the lyrics of Black Magnetic: with its reference to the call of the void, the song plays with shades of black but points to a notion at the heart of the album: the night might be “an anaesthetic” but it also promises renewal.
It is this humble mailing list author’s sincere opinion that this is her best and most complete work as a solo artist, and I would express that opinion even if she weren’t sitting across the office from me, within grasping distance of a number of objects, both blunt and sharp.
You may already have heard the first taster of this new LP, Prize Hunter, when it got its exclusive first play on Riley and Coe on BBC 6 Music on Tuesday night. It is available everywhere to stream and buy now.
