Absolutely thrilled to welcome old friends Guttersnipe to Night School.
Extinction Burst! is the new invocation in album-form by Guttersnipe, Leeds’ premier and pre-eminent XFCER (XFCER: Xenofeminist crisis-energy rock)* duo. Slamming at full speed to multi-dimensional oblivion, Extinction Burst! is the most full, hi-definition lurid dream-mare yet spewed out by Uroceras Gigas & Tipula Confusa.
Engineered and mixed by Ross Halden at Hohm Studio in Bradford and mastered by Rashad Becker, Extinction Burst follows 2018’s My Mother The Vent, which garnered universal critical adoration. Nevertheless, this long-awaited follow up is more extreme: it is wildness beyond reason, splitting new tears in the reality gauze, ultimate hallucination through sound ecstasy.
Wednesday 22nd April – Leeds – Wharf Chambers Saturday 25th April – Shrewsbury – English Bridge Studios Sunday 26th April – Birmingham – Supersonic Festival
We are so excited to bring Rose McDowall’s Cut With The Cake Knife back in print. This is initially available as a Dinked edition for UK-based shops, we’ll be posting up the standard version later.
Red & black marble vinyl Alternative album artwork Signed* risograph poster Gold foil sticker Numbered obi-strip 12″ x 24” insert Limited pressing of 500
Remastered Audio for 2026.
Recorded in the aftermath of Strawberry Switchblade’s break up, the original “Sunflower Demos” included songs intended for the unrealised 2nd album. These songs posit an alternative future where McDowall pursued a Pop career instead of becoming an underground icon.
“In McDowall’s world, cake and chaos go hand in hand. She’s the witch at the door of the gingerbread house, beckoning you inside.”
– Pitchfork
“One wonders what would have happened had these delirious songs made it to mainstream radio airplay. The exquisite nature of this slices of dappled pop genius is a joy to behold.”
-The Quietus
Rose McDowall’s Cut With The Cake Knife was originally reissued in 2015 by Night School Records and Sacred Bones. Since then, Rose McDowall and her previous band Strawberry Switchblade have only grown in cult status. Following a discovery by a generation of young, disaffected kids on social media of Strawberry Switchblade and McDowall’s succeeding band Sorrow, Night School Records has remastered Cut With The Cake Knife and presents the album with a reimagined artwork that more closely recreates the original hand-made CD produced by McDowall.
Cut The With The Cake Knife was recorded by Rose McDowall in 1988/89 following the break up of her group Strawberry Switchblade. Produced with the aid of several musicians in several studios, the album features songs written for the fabled second Strawberry Switchblade album. More importantly perhaps it showcases the honest, direct and life-affirming songs of one of the greatest unsung songwriters of the modern pop era at a tumultuous time in her career.
Tibet opens the set and could be one of the best pop songs you’ve never heard. The innate sadness of the songs’ content – the loss of a friendship, impending sorrow – is heightened to heart-melting level by McDowall’s pop nous and melodic sensibility. Choruses and hooks are everywhere on Cake Knife, from the outsider take on stadium 80s pop in Wings Of Heaven to the spiraling, ecstatic So Vicious, a glorious anthem that highlights the human fragility in McDowall’s vocal performance, an instrument that has never lost the naïve purity it first exemplified in Strawberry Switchblade’s early 80s recordings. The centerpiece of the album, the title-track, is the greatest Switchblade pop chart hit that never was. Like the veiled melancholy of her former group’s hits, Cut With The Cake Knife hints at a darkness beneath the gloss, a darkness that saw McDowall delve into more esoteric territory with her subsequent recordings and collaborations. Cut With The Cake Knife serves as the bridge between the pop music McDowall had been making with her friends Jill Bryson, Lawrence from Felt and Primal Scream to what became a more extreme, deep sound informed by neo-folk and post industrial music.
Rose McDowall’s role in the canon has always been one of an outsider. Beginning in Glasgow’s East End in the avant proto-noise group The Poems, achieving fame briefly in the 80s and then disappearing into counter-cultural folklore, the emphasis in the internet-age has been skewed towards her image and cultural significance. Unseen to many, her solo work, her groups Sorrow and Spell and her collaborations with a whole host of underground luminaries have still touched lives. As McDowall elucidates: “They’re real sad songs, about real life. I’ve had people come up to me to say I’d connected with them and helped them. I remember a gig in America when we made a whole room cry. It was bizarre. A couple at the front of the stage started crying and then these two boys beside and suddenly everyone was crying. And I thought, “that’s power.”
Night School’s issue of Cut With The Cake Knife includes unpublished photographs, extensive sleeve notes from Rose McDowall and 2 bonus tracks culled from the bootleg 7” “Don’t Fear The Reaper.”
Today we’re announcing the first official Strawberry Switchblade merch to be made available in 40 years. This is the first drop.
These shirts have been made with the blessing and collaboration of Strawberry Switchblade.
10 years ago when we were planning the release of the 1982 4 Piece Demo, it was always in the plan to make Strawberry Switchblade shirts to accompany it. It’s taken a while…
When I first fell in love with the band as a teenager, like a lot of fans I bought Strawberry Switchblade merch wherever I could find it. These were bootlegged shirts, badges, patches made by enthusiasts, genuine fans and opportunists alike. While we’re not here to judge it always felt a little off that the members of Strawberry Switchblade were never able to represent themselves to their fans in this way. This is the thinking behind designing and making Strawberry Switchblade merch now, in 2026.
For the first drop, there are 3 designs. 2 are new designs based on the 1982 4 Piece Demo release and featuring the original, surviving contact sheet photographs by Peter McArthur. These are designed by Musheto Fernandez in Glasgow. The other design is a reproduction of the classic Since Yesterday 12” single art from later in the band’s career, the most recognisable version of the group, and is probably the most commonly bootlegged image.
These shirts have been made with the blessing and collaboration of Strawberry Switchblade.
These will be available at first on the Night School Bandcamp. There are two shipping locations: UK and USA for optimum shipping rates.
We will be taking Pre-orders and shipping these at the end of April from both locations.
After a year of working on this amazing record, I’m thrilled to announce the debut solo album from Cold Beat / Grass Widow’s Hannah Lew. A sublime synth pop record that feels like an instant classic, I’ve been listening to these songs non-stop for so long it feels surreal to have them open to everyone else. Hannah Lew’s record fits snugly between my favourite Molly Nilsson, Liberation or Patience records.
Recorded at home in Richmond, CA and in The Best House studio with MaryamQudus in Oakland CA, with the assistance of a crack team of West Coast musicians, this album sees Hannah Lew stepping out from behind the legacy of her two groups Grass Widow and Cold Beat. While musically bearing similarities with her previous work, “Hannah Lew” is a bold leap into direct pop territory, making ample use of a vocal style that teases out the inherent melancholy in her melodies. Mastered by Sarah Register, each song is a perfectly honed nugget that frequently pulls the heart in two directions at once.
Today Lew also shares lead single “Another Twilight”, carried along a pumping, Italo-disco-style 4/4 beat and mono-synth bass line, the low end pulling at the heart and body. Lew’s vocal melody teases the track before swan-diving into a gorgeous chorus as she sings “it’s all over baby and I don’t mind… in decline, I take my time…”
Lew says of the song: “Another Twilight is a goodbye song . It’s about coming to terms with change and being OK with it. Kind of the turning point where lamenting over a break up turns into ownership of a current state, not dwelling on the past. It’s about moving on!”
Hannah Lew will be shipping from April 10th and available in your favourite indie store
Susannah Stark’s 2nd album, Minor Gestures, is out now. Co-released with Stroom of Belgium, it’s a deep, spacious body of work that explores the shifting meanings between language and music. Sung in Gaelic and English, Minor Gestures is a highly collaborative work, with contributions from Philip Cardwell (trumpet), Caroline Hussey (accordion) and Laurie Pitt on percussion and drums.
