Godlike & Electric announced today the availability of ”Best Of” in a deluxe edition with 8 (well, actually 7) previously unreleased tracks! For now, it’s only available for streaming but let’s hope for at least a downloadable version soon.

The new tracks are:

New Holland Blue
The Second Colour Blue
A Ribbon For My Hair (Demo)
Cylons In Love (Instrumental)
High Fever
I Love My Man (Instrumental)
Rocky
Terry (Demo)

The reason I said 7 is because ”Rocky” was actually one of the bonus tracks on the limited edition of ”From The Vaults”! Go and check these tracks out on several streaming platforms: Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer and Tidal – here is the Spotify link: tinyurl.com/yjcahy9k

So what else has been going on since the last update? A whole lot, actually.

There’s a Bent remix and a Simon Mills remix on this EP by artist Zero Netcost. Coming out on vinyl later on! zeronetcost.bandcamp.com/album/remixes

Simon has released ”Shelf Life – Unreleased Demos ’91 to ’21” volumes 2 and 3, 39 more great tracks which you can find here: simonmills.bandcamp.com/ and keeps releasing house tunes with Somethin’ Sanctified on Soundcloud.

Neil’s band Champyun Clouds are working hard. Together with Asa Thomas Hudson they’ve already released two full albums, five singles/EPS and a live album in little over a year! champyunclouds.bandcamp.com/

Neil himself is also keeping busy. As well as a steady flow of new and previously unreleased house tunes on 89ghost.bandcamp.com/music, how about some deep, deep dub under the name Nitroman? Two albums, right here: The Return of the Dub Calculator and Nitroman Meets the Dubmariner in a Scubadub Style?

Want more? Thought you would. A wide variety of things can be found on neiltolliday.bandcamp.com/ – admittedly some of it’s very experimental, but let me point you to the fourth album by Goose Fair Island called ”Rope”.

Has it really been fourteen years? Yes! Also, no. ”From The Vaults: 1998-2006” came out in 2013 and ”Best of” in 2009, but the music on those were either previously released, or only new in the sense that it was so far unreleased and not newly composed. But yes! It’s been fourteen years since ”Intercept!” and finally Simon and Neil got back together to record brand new music for us.

Since ”Intercept!”, Simon and Neil have been keeping busy with their own projects. Neil released a whole lot of deep house vinyls as ”Nail”, several sample-heavy albums as ”Goose Fair Island” and uncountable experimental electronics under an ever increasing number of pseudonyms. Simon upped the analogue flavour of Bent with two albums and about a million EPs as ”Napoleon” before changing the all too ubiquitous artist name to his own for the following records, and has been releasing house tunes in projects ”Pincer Movement” and ”Somethin’ Sanctified”.

One fun thing about listening to their separate output is that you kind of get the feeling of who-does-what in Bent. The most Bent-comparable output of Neil would be the Goose Fair Island stuff, which is sample heavy, more out there and more unpredictable. Simon on the other hand, as Napoleon, is more about classic analogue sounds and big chords. Bent then, always worked best with the two mashed together. I think many fans with me love Bent as much for the lush reverbs, great melodies and emotional songs as they do for the odd samples, unique twists and, you know.. being quirky.

The announcement of their new release is imminent, so keep track of their Facebook to know all about it.

Simon Mills / Napoleon on Bandcamp

Neil Tolliday / Goose Fair Island / etc on Bandcamp

Nail vinyls on Juno

Nail digital music on Juno