With each issue of Loud And Quiet, our subscribers also receive a limited edition flexi disc of an exclusive or rare track from an artist we love and have featured in the issue. So far in the series we’ve had live recordings from Pig Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs and Protomartyr, the only physical release of a new single by Robbie & Mona, an exclusive demo from Squid and a lost track by The Streets.

This month we have an early track by Lankum called ‘Lullaby’, from their 2014 debut album Cold Old Fire, which we felt particularly made sense considering our issue 162 cover feature with the band concentrates on their lesser-known 20-year history, ar the end of their breakthrough year.

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The band had this to say about the track:

“This piece was conceived while attempting to imagine the type of music somebody would be comforted by while going through a very difficult period, the likes of which we all experience at some point or another. Periods pockmarked with startling revelations relating to the nature of our situation, that is, as a hive of fast-multiplying creatures, or the cells of some bizarre slime-mould-like organism, spreading like molasses over the surface of a tiny planet in the depths of unfathomable nothingness. The alarming insights that are gifted upon us in these moments can be terrifying and harrowing, made all the more dizzying by the fact that they are all but ignored by those around us, as our entire being opens up to the vast ocean of abuse we impose on ourselves and each other every moment of our sleeping lives. From something as simple as police receiving commissions for arresting more poverty-stricken people on the streets, to systemic abuse of children in a supposedly spiritual organisation, to world governments declaring war because they are backed by oil companies and corporations that prosper by designing machines to kill innocent people more efficiently, it can be quite an overbearing and lonely experience. We dedicate this song to Robert O’Donnell, a man who felt these things all too clearly, yet still managed to turn them into the funniest joke you ever heard.”