Prolific London-born, Dartford-based psychedelic pop/psych rock artist Black Market Karma (aka Stanley Belton) has announced his twelfth studio album ‘Mellowmaker’.
To mark the announcement he has also shared the record’s title track and its accompanying video. The follow-up to his 2024’s Wobble, marks the second chapter in Black Market Karma’s two-part album series on Fuzz Club. It will be out on June 6. Pre-order your copy here.
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 remain recorded with one mic and ran through guitar amps or mixed with drum machines, but lean even more into 60s dancefloor breakbeats.
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.”
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.”
Check out “” below followed by the album’s artwork and tracklist.
Black Market Karma “Mellowmaker” Tracklist:
- Mellowmaker
- Soft & Heavy
- The Sound Of Repetition
- Flutterbug
- Coasting in Aquatica
- Jellylegger
- Recalled By The Rays
- Nautodelia
- Looper
- Lagging Through The Soup Of Yesterday
- Adoration
Photo credit: Holger Nitschke
