***"Arriving with the latest Cindy collection from Sloth Mate comes this new long player from fellow San Fran mainstays, Violent Change. Headed up by Matt Bleyle, the force behind Sloth Mate and a former Rat Column no less, and completed by a rotating cast of other scene notables (you'll not be surprised to hear that Stanley Martinez [Famous Mammals, Children Maybe Later, Non Plus Temps, et al] is also involved), Violent Change have been circling the Bay Area waters long before our current fascination with that part of the world. Their debut came out over a decade ago, but time seems an irrelevance when you're talking about these kinds of sounds, Starcastle feeling as if it could be a product from almost any era of San Fran over the past four decades. Garage rocking, DIY art bent melodicism that connects the dots between the Kinks, Swell Maps and TVP in ways we're familiar with yet somehow can never resist. The recent Now and Famous Mammals LPs are obvious points of comparison/connection, each pulling from that same electrically charged spirit that underpins those hilly streets and splashing it with the same pastel shades of its neighbourhood buildings. Maybe it's cliched to talk of such things, but this is music that feels like it could only be from that part of the world, a further expression of a lineage that no-one but the city can ever own. That makes Starcastle Environmental Music in its own kind of way, an expert divination of...
LP $20.50
11/10/2023
***VIOLENT CHANGE is a San Francisco Bay Area act formed in 2012 as the recording project of MATT BLEYLE (SOPORS / ABI YOYOS). The band has had a rotating cast of musicians (once including Tony Molina and Sterling Mackinnon of The False Berries). The current line up featuring, STANLEY MARTINEZ (RAYS, THE WORLD) finds them straddling the boundaries, again, of all things questionably recorded. Their sound has been described as somewhere between GBV and a Killed By Death compilation or The Idle Race meets Vertical Slit.
7" $6.00
03/25/2022
***"VC3 is—you guessed it—the third LP from San Francisco’s VIOLENT CHANGE, a brand new collection of hazy pop channeled through submarine-fidelity noise. If you were among the fans of their previous records, this remains heavily dissociative music; if it helps to paint the picture, the live band now includes members of Bay Area favorites RAYS and LIFE STINKS, though these recordings here are a whole different grade of barbiturate. Still, take note: from the opening notes of the second track, 'Unit A,' it’s immediately apparent that bandleader GLADYS BIEYLE has learned to let his melodic brilliance shine. This is Violent Change’s real pop moment, an album of lonesome romanticism on par with Shoes’ One In Versailles and Chris Bell’s I Am The Cosmos. I kid you not, this record is that good. A co-release of Melters and It Take Two."
LP $15.50
01/20/2017
***We here at Melters are beyond excited to bring to your attention VIOLENT CHANGE’s amazing new long-player, A Celebration of Taste. On this record, GLADYS BLEYLE and fellow noise maker/kindred spirit STERLING MACKINNON have crafted a seriously weird, strangely beautiful sound. In Celebration, they still observe the rites of their devout GBV worship, while bringing in experimental, abstract= sounds à la Flying Saucer Attack or the Dead C. Though there are certainly fantastic standalone tracks, this is a record that is meant to be digested as a whole, and was thoughtfully sequenced with this in mind. The record washes over you with an eerily effective combination of true pop song craft and studied excursions into otherworldly noise. When it all comes to a close after a brief twenty-two minutes, you will have awoken from a baffling dream. Moments of beauty and sincerity float alongside harsh noise and submerged words—it’s up to you what to make of it. Bleyle and Mackinnon have crafted a rare thing: a record of unpretentious, unfussy significance, and we couldn’t be prouder to present it. Edition of 500 copies.
LP $15.50
08/26/2014
MP3 $9.90
06/12/2014
FLAC $11.99
06/12/2014
MP3 $3.96
10/14/2012
FLAC $4.99
10/14/2012