Lavender Flu

Lavender Flu

Tracing The Sand By The Pool

In The Red

For roundabout a decade now, The Lavender Flu has been pumping their inimitable, underground group-sound way past all manner of lesser modern muck, moving only and always as their varied inspirations prompt them. As players, Chris Gunn, Ben Spencer, and Scott Simmons remain open to where any given moment might take them, which has resulted in thrilling experiences both live and on record at every turn. Tracing The Sand By The Pool, their latest album for In The Red, finds The Flu firing at their most crisp and direct, a full-band collection of meander-free hits triumphantly captured to tape by the lads themselves. Moments will tug, others will stun, but there can be no doubt this new communiqué is their mightiest. The record unfolds from “Within,” born out of a Kiwi brightness that is methodically guided through a series of near-crashes and sly, inward moves, spotlighting the key pillars of the band’s songcraft and tailored to convert the uninitiated. Gunn’s guitar work continues to fascinate and marvel, boasting too many moments of both melodic sweetness and violent shattering to detail here. Their cover of the hangmen’s “I’m Gonna Love You” capably inverts Suicide’s menace to a hopeful, romantic sheen. Of critical note are a pair of guest contributions from The Spatulas’ Miranda Soileau-Pratt, who lends vocals to multiple songs including the deceptive 80s dosed pop of “Snail On The Map”, and The Tube Alloys’ Shelby Jacobson, who takes lead on a cosmos-injected cover of Fleetwood Mac’s “That’s Alright,” as well as “Patron Eyes (Cocoon 2069),” the most vicious, smashingly...

Lavender Flu

Assorted Promenades

Mind Meld

***"We’ve been keeping this one under our hat for nearly two years. On the short list of people, I wanted to work with when the original Mind Meld concept was hatched was Chris Gunn (Lavender Flu/ Hunches). I reached out to the Lavender Flu crew at the time (2019) a few emails were exchanged, but it wasn’t till I moved to Portland in 2020 that this collaboration came to fruition. Sure, the original label idea was to work with people outside the genre or project they were known for but when one of my favorite bands ask me to put out a record, I wasn’t going to let something like self-imposed parameters get in the way. Besides Lavender Flu completely fits the vibe I’m trying to cultivate here at Mind Meld. I eagerly said yes but asked if they would be cool with forgoing the usual pre-release rigamarole and let this record magically appear on release day. Well now here we are…. The new Lavender Flu EP, Assorted Promenades, was started at a point during the pandemic when the band had no practice space and limited options for getting together as a full band. They decided to record a single based around a Moby Grape cover (I am not willing) and spontaneously composed tracks built up on the tape machine. Realizing they had too much material, it morphed into a 12 inch at 45 RPM in the style of the early Flying Nun EPs. By this time they had a...

Lavender Flu

Tomorrow Cleaners

Meds

***"Mixed with a firm lock on disorientation and guided by the inspiration of James Yancey and The Upsetter, Tomorrow Cleaners sounds like it was left in the sun and melted all over the rocks and into the ocean. This is basically the 'lost' 2nd album (put on hold due to malfunctioning equipment ) and it is somewhat of a return to the alien underwater vibe of Heavy Air. After an arduous process of casting spells, reverse engineering the enemy and acquiring the necessary equipment, this was completed in quarantine and the tapes were mastered direct to lacquer. Illuminate your future. Maximal hallucinatory states await. "—MEDS. Limited edition of 500 copies.

Lavender Flu

Barbarian Dust

In The Red

“In contrast to their prior mobile-unit hole-ups and home-taped fryers, Barbarian Dust, the third album from Lavender Flu, marks the band’s first raid of a proper studio. Extending the formalities further, the conceptual impetus for the sessions stems from a collective meditation on cosmic biker rock. Smokey, sure—and that peculiar, chunky ether seeps into the resulting collection—but it all ultimately serves to a liquid frame, a set of parameters imposed purely to burst through.  Compositionally and thematically, Barbarian Dust alternates between hope and anger, each idealized, a sway thoughtfully achieved through an often-soaring, occasionally busted version of rock heaviness (without ever approaching ‘Heavy Rock’, thank heaven / hell). In every sense of the word, it’s their most aggressive work to date.“Barbarian Dust collects songs that move in and out of wobble and explosion, each pushing forever forward, just as the composers themselves do. Galaxies past cool-but-copyist trips, Lavender Flu—brothers Chris and Lucas Gunn, Scott Simmons and Ben Spencer—slaughter the trivial in favor of a newer, deeper, more meaningful sound, indifferent to any path other than their own. Time to transform, yet again.”    —Mitch Cardwell

Lavender Flu

Admiration For A Dancer

Meds

***BACK IN STOCK - LAST COPIES!!!  Radically different new LAVENDER FLU album, Admiration For A Dancer. Spontaneous jams captured without everyone even aware they were being recorded. Everything was improvised on the spot and there are no guitars: just synth, drums, synth percussion and some bass. It was all recorded live to 1 microphone and nearly all of it on a Sunday afternoon in January 2019. Edited by SCOTT SIMMONS. Mastered by JUSTIN HIGGINS. Edition of 275 numbered copies on MEDS.

Lavender Flu

Mow The Glass

In The Red

The new Lavender Flu album Mow The Glass was recorded in the living room of a small house on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. One can hear it in the music: the Oregon coast, the dream life of an Axolotl, the open sound of a band playing to an audience of endless water, sun, and sky.  A bald eagle flew by the window every few hours as if to remind the band where they really were. Still, the laughter was real, the freedom was magic, and the tambo was sprinkled like sugar. Heavy Air, the previous album, was a home recording project. The songs started with Chris Gunn (The Hunches) on a guitar or a synth or a bowl of cereal and were built up from there. A rotating cast of friends and family helped flesh out the material. It could have been made in deep space or at the bottom of the ocean. Transmissions from a bedroom at the bottom of Pill Hill. This new album is a reflection of the live experience. Four people playing together; working within the template of pop classicism. thirty-five minutes of music. This time, the Flu comes out of the water and spends a little more time on land: pop kicks, psychedelic derangement, beauty, spells cast via hate raga and rocker. The band moves backward, forward and sideways; often within the same piece. The music breathes. It doesn’t deal in nostalgic regression or self conscious futurism. It just sounds like the Lavender...