Browse: Cassettes

Rangers

Europe On TV

Not Not Fun

Nearly a decade after their original assembly, two crucial early volumes of Texan ranger Joe Knight’s voyaging kaleidoscope kitchen sink-psych have been dusted off and dressed up for a new generation of suburban tourists. Europe On TV collects the entirety of both 2009 outings on freeform Pittsburgh imprint As Above So Below, totaling 110 twisted minutes of miasmic guitar heroics, sci-fi city surf, face-melt glam, no-fi jangle, art rock squall, and bootleg new wave, pocked with 4-track feedback bramble and cathode-blasted voices.   Taken as a whole, these sides vividly remind just how omnivorous, inventive, and scrambled Knight’s sound was in its infancy, like scanning low-watt stations in a shitty car cruising the industrial outskirts of a foreign city. Fragments of mangled melody and rhythm beamed from crumbling radio towers in the distance, half-heard through static before the road turns and the signal fades. An alien and absorbing revisitation to the restless roots of Rangers.  Remastered by Alex Nagle. Design by Britt Brown.

Dravier

Spirit Channels

Not Not Fun

Prolific proprietor of the Jungle Gym recording empire Caleb Draves aka Dravier has trafficked all manner of hypnotic vapor, emotive drone, and extraterrestrial atmospheres across several dozen micro-edition documents issued the past few years but Spirit Channels spans an even wider, weirder breadth of sound and mood, and feels as close to a definitive collection as he’s yet attempted.  Free-flowing through 50 minutes of equatorial new age, narcotic lounge, surrealist exotica, desert island serenade, sunrise sky-surf, and devotional tape hiss, the album sustains a poignant, plasmatic wavelength, sensory and spontaneous, wandering alone along winding coastlines. Field recordings of nocturnal jungles, insects, waves, and distant birds ground the songs with a sense of landscape but this is equally music of inner voyaging, adrift in archipelagos of memory and meditation. Mastered by Matt Tammariello. Design by Britt Brown.

Unknown Me

Astronauts

Not Not Fun

Japanese synthesis squad UNKNOWN ME’s latest sequence of electron blueprints is true to its title, evoking a sense of lunar wonder and stargazer reverie, inspired by notions of “20th century space development.” Astronauts expands the group’s signature mode of spatial restraint and hushed harmonics with accents of angelic voice, solar samba, sleeping pod hiss, and futurist vocoder, flowing between moods of heavenly astral drift and nostalgia for life on earth. The album’s eight songs float in an airless limbo of exploration and emotion, final frontiers and memories of home, zero gravity ambient zones conjured from an array of old analog Roland and Juno synthesizers. UM visualist Osawa Yudai’s artwork furthers the theme, abstracting “the universe, the stars, the lives of the space ship into the shapes of sound grains and waves.” Lift off and prosper.

Doctor Deaf

Nicotine / Fonzarelli Complex

ZZTapes

***“Possibly the last true garage band in the yuppie resort town that is New San Francisco. DOCTOR DEAF makes Wesley Willis sound like Etta James” Limited edition of 100 tapes. Includes a download.

Lexicon

5 Tracks Demo

Iron Lung

***Nearly inhuman levels of rage and power from Seattle's newest noise punk outfit featuring MADAM KJ on (first time ever!) vocal shredding duty. Ferocious styles to say the least. LEXICON stalks like a newly liberated beast and pummels your senses to dust. Proper shit. 100 pro-dubbed cassettes housed in a custom J-card with extra insert.

Axis: Sova

Shampoo You

God?

***Shampoo You is the third AXIS: SOVA album, following 2015’s Early Surf and 2016’s Motor Earth. With each succession, the Axis sound-shape we recall in our mind’s ear morphs in subtle yet definitive ways, allowing Axis: Sova to take its intended form before us, as different essences coming into clearer view in every listen. Now, with Shampoo You, the impact is unprecedentedly direct and connective, the amusement of rock-making turned thrillingly alive, in the present! The sharpened peaks of the landscape on the Shampoo You trip provide fresh pleasures for the listener—as we get into their neck-throttling dysmorphia anthems, we become glammy and physical, moving and transcending beyond our fallible body. Reality becomes a crystalline game to be mastered, as our mind vanishes beyond the fog that’s plagued our existence, the eternal night flashing blindingly into bright day. (STREET DATE - 11/16/2018)

Dearly Departure

Genesis

100% Silk

Santa Clarita daydreamer Daniel Crook flipped his DX-7 to dent tuition at California Institute Of The Arts but while there fell in with a crew of fellow hardware heads and began making periodic pilgrimages downtown to soak the city’s thriving warehouse scene. His own productions soon followed, inspired by the moodier fringes of LA’s nocturnal underground as well as the “dark gothic energy” of certain fatalist new wave.  Genesis spans 40 minutes across eight tracks, crisscrossing stained glass house, lovesick jack, and varied states of rhythm delirium into a raw, reflective self-portrait of empty streets and midnight memories. Crook’s process is part planned and part exploratory, mapping melody in advance then ripping live takes at a table of synths in his bedroom. From cobwebbed dub-dance (“Serpent”) to cyber-mechanical disco (“Move”), the songs feel intuitive and imprecise, grainy screengrabs of systems in flux.  Most are solo instrumentals but Crook’s classmate Bludwork guests on the sci-fi sequencer trance “Infrared” while local morbid beauty duo Morticia My Angel haunt the mic for “Words Unspoken.” Even his own voice makes an appearance on “Own Perceptions,” mixed into a glimmering grey haze, pulsing and poignant: “I don't know what to do with me / no more.” Mastered by Matt Tammariello. Design by Britt Brown.

Olsen

Dream Operator

100% Silk

Manchester miasma-house specialist Andrew Anderton aka Olsen sculpts swirling, stream-of-consciousness rhythms inspired by subliminal perception, hyperspace anime, and reflections on how the mind works. His latest is also his haziest, tracked at home on analog synths bathed in echo, tape-hiss, and found sounds, conjuring a liminal realm between sleep and reality ruled by a shadowy figure: the Dream Operator. Opaque acid, mumbling voices, and decayed keys whisper in the periphery, tethered by black hole bass, a narcoleptic kick, and dusty claps. This is music for “the space between,” where the dream operator takes control, and “shows you an image of a tree, soft fruit growing… night falls, and the black dog serenade continues.” Compelling contemporary warehouse noir by a producer poised for heady depths. Mastered by Matt Tammariello.

Dorji, Tashi

But A Night That Ends, As All Nights End, When The Sun Rises

Moone Records

***NOW AVAILABLE ON VINYL!!! TASHI DORJI is a celebrated free-form/improvisational guitarist. Born and raised in Bhutan, but transplanted to Ashville, NC in the early 2000s. He is a musical force that is in a caliber of his own. The amount of originality in his playing could have only been summoned when one is forced to confront limitations and raise a big middle finger to the ‘status quo’. He is known to focus his attention heavily on tonal qualities over melody. Mellow harmonics that integrate interference of seemingly random items (such as a paperclip) turn into aggressive spasms and abrupt stops. He utilizes the silence and space between the notes, as if it is an instrument itself. Tashi’s latest album but a night that ends, as all nights end, when the sun rises is pieced together in a non-linear/non-hierarchical form. Every segment equal part fragile and intense. The album feels like it is addressing a dark political climate but from an anti-establishment perspective. It is a transmission from another dimension, to let us know we aren’t doing this “humanity thing” right. However, in its confrontation, it still arouses hope for a brighter future.

Silver Jews

American Water

Drag City

***BACK IN STOCK!!! A 20th anniversary reissue of SILVER JEWS' Amerian Water. Even as an unapologetic anti-metallite, I still can’t escape the call of this band’s silvery gleam. Still pleasant, still clever, still all the good-great pop action DAVID BERMAN and STEPHEN MALKMUS can dream up o’er the course of an album’s time. Twelve chuckle-along songs hitting red on your geekest hip-o-meter. Vinyl version half-speed remastered at Abbey Road. Received a 9.4 rating from Pitchfork.

Cave

Allways

Drag City

***Tremors rhythmically shaking your place—the air’s gone electric! You’ve seen this kind of weather before… you weren’t expecting it today. This is the beginning of Allways. CAVE are kind of beyond time, though. You might feel like it’s been awhile since you’ve seen or heard them, but when you see or hear them again, that moment will feel like Allways. During the making of the last album, Threace, Cave was in the process of becoming a quintet. They toured the world afterwards, playing on four continents and eighteen countries—as close to everywhere as they could get. Then they took a minute. They recorded it over time, in Chile and then Chicago. You can hear all of this, the energy of liveness, the reps, and consolidating expanded possibilities within their new alignment, the time away, the distance, and the freshness of returning to recorded sounds, everywhere on All ways. Cave digs driving down into a pulse and staying there for as much of FOREVER as they can. In the past, much has been made of Cave's use of particular compelling tropes, but man, their inspiration comes from everywhere—Miles, psych, beats, exotica, library music, rock, punk, the Germans, the New York guys too, minimalists, the Dead, music from India, everywhere! This is a bunch of guys playing rock-based music in a way that pushes them forward from everything they’ve experienced. When we listen to the new Cave, we’re hearing guitars, lots of ’em, bubbling under, scratching, fanning, locking in and taking off,...

Fielded

Drip Drip

Deathbomb Arc

‘Drip Drip’, the fourth full-length album from New York based Fielded, is built around internalized myth. Carried by her soulful voice, Fielded tells the story of a woman finding her liberation through the embodiment of consent. Her songs explore feelings of shame and isolation as well as desire, curiosity and strength; as we move with her through her healing from an early experience of sexual trauma we find ourselves exploring deeper our own relationship to emotional fortitude. However, these are not the sounds of mournful regret and victimhood. Fielded finds empowerment in the vulnerability of her lyrics and the intensity of her production. The cutting edge sense of rhythm, electronic arrangement, and hip-hop influenced vocal phrasing exudes a power and freshness that compliment the message of finding one’s courage and intuition. ‘Drip Drip’ is a fun album communicating a deep well of wisdom. Her exciting sound is comfortably paired with thoughtful and confrontational ideas, making the album feel both distinctly contemporary and wholly futuristic.

C.H.E.W.

Feeding Frenzy

Iron Lung

***NOW AVAILABLE ON CASSETTE!!! Do you have unexplained scars on your body, piercing eyes, an unquenchable thirst for intricately relentless hardcore punk music, deep compassion for the fate of mankind, a notion toward punishment by stoning or the capability to disrupt electrical appliances? If so, Feeding Frenzy will be your audio guide to unlocking the delicate depths of this confusing planet. Though you may have a keen sense of not belonging to the human race, it will help you to blend in and go unnoticed so you can quietly further your agenda. Enable yourself.

Precipitation

Earth / Sky

100% Silk

The latest capsule collection from pensive Vancouver visionist Zefan Sramek aka Precipitation presents a more binary take on overcast house and half-light ambience, split between a rhythmic “earth” side and a smeared cirrus “sky” side. Tracked live to tape and padded with Pacific Northwest field recordings of rainy forests and wet meadows, the pieces soar, sink, and spiral like small birds blown by the wind, isolated and adrift. Past cuts for Ville Nouvelle (in the duo Aquatic Language) and Jungle Gym have shown Sramek’s versatility with vignette melody and soft-focus atmospherics but Earth / Sky distills them even further, into a muted, melancholic expanse of elemental conditions and emotive hypnosis. Mastered by Eric Hanson. Video stills by Zefan Sramek.

Takahashi, H

Escapism

Not Not Fun

5-year anniversary expanded LP edition on white vinyl, includes 2 vinyl-only bonus tracks. Tokyo architect Hiroki Takahashi is a world-builder both in matter and sound. His latest collection of serene micro-miniatures was inspired by “the dissatisfaction with reality that I feel on a daily basis.” Escapism offers exactly that: percolating patterns of fiberglass synthetics and fluorescent melody, assembled into minimalist bio-domes of refracted light and hanging gardens. Recorded during metropolitan commutes, afterhours office meditations, and various windows of urban stasis, the album’s six songs actualize the ambient muse of their maker, willing space from density, tranquility from tedium. As with his work in exotic atmosphere unit UNKNOWN ME, Takahashi’s touch is hushed, precise, and prismatic, coaxing spectrums of illusion and bliss in its tinted glass spirals: “Extreme tension produces extreme relaxation.”

Bikini Kill

The Singles

Bikini Kill Records

***BACK IN STOCK!!! Received a perfect 10 Best New Reissue rating from Pitchfork. Bikini Kill Records is excited to reissue of The Singles, on both vinyl and compact disc. This is the first time that it has been released as a 12-inch (special note for all you vinyl fanatics, we managed to keep it at 45rpm for better sound quality)!  The Singles was initially released in 1998 as a CD only compilation of all of BIKINI KILL's 7”s. Once called "their defining document" by Pitchfork it includes Bikini Kill's legendary collaboration with JOAN JETT on the New Radio (1993) single as well as the long out of print Anti Pleasure Dissertation (1995) and I Like Fucking (1995) singles.

Les Halles

Zonda

Not Not Fun

Composed in conjunction with the latest Les Halles long-player, Zephyr, Zonda stands unique among Baptiste Martin’s output both in duration and diversity of source material, smearing samples of Baegu music from the Soloman Islands, J.S. Bach, Max Cilla, and the Croatian Sea Organ of Zadar into a sixty-minute suite of surreal celestial navigation. Flutes, waves, strings, insects, percussion, pitched voices, and spatial synthesis float in and out of frame, alchemizing and unraveling in unexpected ways. It’s a vast, perplexing, and poignant listen, spanning solar winds, subdued harmonics, and elusive constellations of transmutational beauty. Compiled & mixed by Baptiste Martin. Design by Dieter Durinck.

Magnetophonique

Une Cartographie Ideale

Not Not Fun

In 2011 Charles Belpois and Baptiste Martin became roommates in Dijon, France and began making music, both together and alone. The solo projects they birthed – Magnétophonique and Les Halles, respectively – share a similarly introspective mood, vignettes of emotive, smeared ambience conjured from private communions with tape hiss, loop stations, and bleached keys. The label they founded, Carpi, issued many of their early recordings (typically in editions smaller than 50) but ceased operations in 2015, with Belpois’ last release coming out on defunct Mexican imprint Dept Tapes the year before. Une Cartographie Idéale collects 12 gems from the Magnétophonique catalog to map a nuanced portrait of his evocative mirage exotica, wavering between bliss and abandonment, paradise and prison. Isolation and island fantasy intermingle in bewitching delirium, the sound of waves and tropical birds refracted through heat-stroked haze while melting cassettes unspool degraded melodies into lost horizons. Escape is heaven – until it isn’t; in the artist’s words: “You’ll never belong here.” Recorded in Dijon and Lyon, 2011-2014. Remastered by Alex Nagle.

Innumerable Forms

Punishment In Flesh

Profound Lore

***NOW AVAILABLE ON CASSETTE!!!  Received a 7.5 rating from Pitchfork.  Massachusetts-based death metal force Innumerable Forms have completed their much anticipated, devastating debut album Punishment In Flesh. Formed in 2007 by mastermind Justin DeTore (Sumerlands, Magic Circle, Mind Eraser), a veteran of the Boston hardcore / power violence scene, as a solo project to bring forth his vision of death metal influenced by the Finnish style circa 1991, it quickly generated a cult following with their live shows supporting a small amount of releases, consisting of the Dark Worship 7-inch EP, a split with Blessed Offal, and the Frozen To Death compilation cassette. Now with this debut, they will harness the true spirit of ancient darkness and fury, seething with sheer brutality and primal rawness with total disregard and contempt for modern-day death metal.  While DeTore pretty much handled all the instruments himself on previous recordings, for this he assembled a full band (which has also been the live lineup as well) including guitarists Chris Ulsh (Mammoth Grinder, Power Trip) and Jensen Ward (Iron Lung), bassist Doug Cho (The Rival Mob), and drummer Connor Donnegan (Genocide Pact).

Papa M

A Broke Moon Rises

Drag City

***That chill in your spine makes total sense. PAPA M is back in the room, and like the animal you are, you sense it before you actually know he’s there. As the light from the broke moon floods in, you feel that you’ll survive—even if you’ll never be the same.... Late 2016’s Highway Songs brought Papa M back to us, after many years of silence and several harrowing dances with death for his Id-ego/host body, DAVID PAJO. Now, two years on down the road, we’re all here again to witness A Broke Moon Rises. Highway Songs was a necessarily cathartic experience in all phases. Afterwards, with no tour dates forthcoming (partially due to lousy clubs and their lack of wheelchair-accessible stage doors!), it felt good just to play for fun again, like being in the practice space instead of the psych ward—a much healthier change of pace than some might guess! David blew it out; all the different styles he’s played in over the years, from folk-blues to metal, electronic, pop, Bollywood—all of it. But when the spasms subsided, a back-to-roots sediment remained in the bottom of the bowl, which he read as a motive for a new Papa M album done with all acoustic instruments. That’s how there’s nothing electric about A Broke Moon Rises. The five songs of A Broke Moon Rises find David focusing his technique in unknown directions, to find out what he can do with them. When that happens, he finds himself on the very...

Segall, Ty & White Fence

Joy

Drag City

***CHECK STOCK!!! Received a 7.8 rating from Pitchfork. Blonde and brunette. Dog and cat. Lemon and onion. Friend and foam. The change has been made! You can scratch your seven-year itch freely now: TY SEGALL and WHITE FENCE are become one again, regrooving what we once called Hair into what is now Joy. Hair grew out of a simpler time, man! If, as the dyphrenic duo indeed affirm on Joy, rock in 2018 is dead, don’t come around here looking for no burial. Instead, find Joy caught up in the commencement of on-beyond rock; music made with the old tools, but emitted from a fresh new, single-celled organism. This time, the old “one and one make one” line does not apply. Hair had the quality of emulsion—drops of Segall suspended in Fence; a compound of White dispersed over sheets of Ty. With Joy, Tim and Ty arrive without traveling from the same place, occupy one single headspace, finishing the other’s phrases, pulling licks from each other’s places. Singing and thinking and laughing as one. Calling themselves from inside the house. C-c-c-creepy! Both these fellows have been known to trifle with tropic pasts and reactivate vintage visions within their new music. Not now. Now is the only time this time—Joy is their own sound of today, a shared individuality, prisming all possible stances into an unseamly metastasis that FLOWS for 15 ebbcentric tracks. Plus, since it ends at the beginning, it never has to stop. LOOP that shit!

Churchburn

None Shall Live... The Hymns Of Misery

Armageddon

***BACK IN STOCK!!!  Note new price.  It's been 4 years since the first album The Awaiting Coffins was released. CHURCHBURN is proud to finally unveil the new album None Shall Live...The Hymns of Misery. Churchburn is the musical collaboration between two of the undergrounds masters of misery. DAVE SUZUKI (VITAL REMAINS) and RAY MCCAFFREY (SINS OF ANGELS, GRIEF). The two have set out to share with the world their love of the riff. Not only the heaviest but also the most haunting. Each song is crafted with the most sinister of intent. Churchburn want the listener to feel a true sense of dread as each song progresses. Includes guest appearances by ANDY GRANT (THE VOMIT ARSONSIST) and former member MIKE CARDOSO, along with new members TIMMY ST. AMOUR (HOWL) on guitar and DEREK MONIZ (HEADROT, WREAK, BLACK ACID PROPHECY) on bass. Recorded, engineered and mixed at Machines With Magnets by SETH MANCHESTER, mastered at Audiosiege by BRAD BOATRIGHT for maximum hearing damage. Features artwork by NESTOR AVALOS. LP housed in gatefold jackets and pressed on colored vinyl.

V/a

Turn It Around: The Story Of East Bay Punk / Lest We Forget

1-2-3-4 Go!

This double cassette set brings you the Turn It Around: The Story of East Bay Punk soundtrack and the first official repressing of the essential Lest We Forget in one handy package.  Turn It Around: The Story of East Bay Punk is a sprawling audio companion to the documentary of the same name. You get ninety minutes of music over thirty-five mostly rare, unreleased and / or out-of-print tracks from bands like Green Day, Rancid, Neurosis, NOFX, Operation Ivy, Jawbreaker, Pinhead Gunpowder, and many more. This album is must-have for both new and old fans of the early East Bay punk scene. Lest We Forget was assembled by Aaron Cometbus from extremely rare demos, rehearsal and live tapes and originally released on his BBT Tapes label in 1991. This compilation provides a crucial document of the East Bay’s pre-Gilman punk scene. Including the original bands of members who would go on to spawn Rancid, Operation Ivy, Pinhead Gunpowder, Samiam, Neurosis amongst many others. This release has new liner notes by Cometbus and freshly cleaned up audio.

Dumb

Seeing Green

Mint

Dumb is the new smart. Don’t believe it? Look no further than this ridiculously prolific Vancouver quartet, who have somehow cracked the code on including quality with their quantity. Over the last two years, they have self-released three albums of quirky, frenetic post-punk. While others might go stale, however, this band breaks new ground with each new idea. Enter Seeing Green, the band’s first full-length for Mint Records. The album’s fourteen tracks were produced by Jordan Koop (Wolf Parade, You Say Party, The Courtneys) at the Noise Floor on Gabriola Island, BC. While it’s the band’s first time working on this relatively larger scale, Koop’s production has crystallized their ideas. The result is a batch of songs that sound both urgent and timeless, referencing classic post-punk projects like DEVO, Pylon and the Mekons, while placing them nicely within the pantheon of Canadian contemporaries like Ought, Fountain and Freak Heat Waves. Their jagged guitars and punchy rhythm section lay a perfect basis for their lyrics, all of which explore the inherent absurdity of modern life. At times paranoid and other times exuberant, it dares you to dance and deconstruct. It’s a trim, explosive collection of songs that suggests these four will be cranking out hits for years to come. It’s time to get Dumb.

Cadell, Adam

Bush Songs

Soft Abuse

Radical traveling fiddler Adam Cadell is a teacher/student of the instrument, one-half of the duo The Scrapes, and is based in Brisbane. Cadell flirted with a life and practice in academia and modern composition, but shed all that in favor of researching and playing with fiddlers from around the globe, including heroes like Tony Conrad and Henry Flynt. The shift from highbrow to a player of the people comes to bear with Bush Songs, his rendering of Australian labor folk songs. Cadell works every bit of his violin on Bush Songs, giving new life to these songs of yore.

De Gennaro, Matthew

Conversation With A Roadside Skull

Soft Abuse

Matthew De Gennaro is a deep listener & composer of unclassifiable esoterica that draws on folk music from around the globe. In recent years, his finger-picked, highlife imbued guitar playing has taken on more prominence in his pieces, and there’s been a proliferance of personal story songs as well. Ever present is his gorgeous, otherworldy viol, and melodies from an arcane organ or two. There’s no one out there quite like him, and Conversation with a Roadside Skull provides further proof of this. Joining Matthew on organ for one track is long-time friend and collaborator Scott Tuma. Enjoy the short ride.

Ulaan Markhor

Helm

Soft Abuse

Ulaan Markhor returns with Helm, a new batch of instrumentals that explore the dissonant, dark corners of post-punk and it’s many permutations. Steven R. Smith’s first recordings as Ulaan Markhor surfaced in 2012, and since that self-titled debut LP he’s continued to refine the sound and feel of the project. Once more the focus is the intersection of rhythmic groove and scorched guitar (“The Meters-meets-Amon Duul”), but on Helm the nuanced, meditative pieces built around spike fiddle or organ are as commanding. Just like the many great records he’s made before now, Helm is gorgeous, evocative, deep and above all, killer.

Fosil Sangiran

Khayal Kuno

Helen Scarsdale Agency

Fosil Sangiran is the pseudonym for Seattle polymath Matt Shoemaker (1974-2017). The two recordings that have been uncovered from his archives under this moniker were recorded during a lengthy sabbatical in Java, Indonesia between 2012 and 2013. Though these works both operate very clearly within Shoemaker’s aesthetic, he choose to operate under this moniker to provide a clarifying distance from what he believed to be his commonplace birth name. Sangiran refers to the UNESCO world heritage site in Indonesia where numerous archeological discoveries have been made providing insight into the understanding of early human development. It’s an apt metaphor to his churning arrays of psychotropic sound design, which give the allusion of being distressed from aeons of jungle rot.  Khayal Kuno represents one of several detours that Shoemaker undertook over his career. Instead of the long-now drone mutations, Shoemaker turns his attention to an interplay between warbling cassettes and primitive rhythm-box sequencing. The minimal, proto- techno explorations suitably evolve slowly out an initial dispersion bloom from swarms of cassette splutter and insect mimesis. Cast within his slinkies-as-spring-reverb contraptions that provided a signature Kirlian glow to his work, Shoemaker’s foray into the realm of the rhythmic are masterful declarations of his under-recognized talents. Through his brilliant aptitude for cross-hatched ltering, spatialized modulation, and electro-magnetic tricknologies, his stark pulsations take on organic qualities through a surging uidity and a varispeed vortex of blank hypnosis. His motorik pulsations recall a rich if elusive vein of taut, industrially minded electronica sculpted by Monoton,...

Fosil Sangiran

Pasar Fosil

Helen Scarsdale Agency

Fosil Sangiran is the pseudonym for Seattle polymath Matt Shoemaker (1974-2017). The two recordings that have been uncovered from his archives under this moniker were recorded during a lengthy sabbatical in Java, Indonesia between 2012 and 2013. Though these works both operate very clearly within Shoemaker’s aesthetic, he choose to operate under this moniker to provide a clarifying distance from what he believed to be his commonplace birth name. Sangiran refers to the UNESCO world heritage site in Indonesia where numerous archeological discoveries have been made providing insight into the understanding of early human development. It’s an apt metaphor to his churning arrays of psychotropic sound design, which give the allusion of being distressed from aeons of jungle rot.  Pasar Fosil is classic Shoemaker. At the core to this album is an ur-drone sculpted from electro-acoustics, analog synthesis, and most probably a radically altered eld recording here or there. All of these accretions of sustained tone organize themselves with a rhizomatic logic of recombinant twists, folds, and mutations. Elegant harmonics with golden, clarion hues set the stage to this album, but Shoemaker would never allow for any his compositions to merely stand as polite ambient music. No. He deftly introduces sheared metallic timbres and rasping dissonance that tug with a gravitational heft. By the second half of the album, Shoemaker plunges into aural thickets that are openly hostile to the listener, articulated through allusions to a humid claustrophobia and radioactive toxicity. Even compared to the muscular minimalism of Organum,...

Soft Kill

Savior

Profound Lore

Portland, Oregon’s Soft Kill ripped through 2016 with Choke, the follow up to 2015’s Heresy. It became the band’s most acclaimed album to date and saw them on a constant touring cycle through North America and Europe. The band now returns with the triumphant follow-up Savior, released by Profound Lore Records, bringing a unique blend of gloom laced with pop charm and flawless songwriting that transcends the post-punk genre.  The writing for this album was influenced by tragic events in frontman Tobias Grave’s life, including songs about losing his son, his battle with drug addiction, and the empty space suspended between mourning and celebration, life and death. Recorded and mixed in Kingsize Sudios in Los Angeles and produced by Benjamin Greenberg (Uniform, The Men, Algiers), this band has matured into a powerhouse, effortlessly combining genres, always with Grave’s powerful, raw emotional storytelling. From the pop perfection of “Trying Not to Die” to the swelling and crushing guitars on “Hard Candy” to the unrelenting dirge of “Bunny Room,” Savior is a creative tour de force.

Kraus

Grip The Moon

Soft Abuse

Kraus has been a going & growing concern for years now. Each new release from the hands and mind of Auckland’s Pat Kraus is an extension of the one before it, with blasted riffs piled high, explosive drumming and modified electronics teetering on collapse. Grip the Moon is his latest statement, and it’s got all of the Kraus trademarks aplenty with an added dose of Turkish scales bumping up against his Bolan-ish bombast, and primitive futurist take on psychedelic music. Layers and layers of sounds await. Limited.

Les Halles

Zephyr

Not Not Fun

The welcome and wondrous return of Lyon musician Baptiste Martin’s aerial ambient identity, Les Halles, following a year’s sabbatical from recording, Zephyr takes its name from a light westerly wind, which aptly evokes the warm, weightless, whispering spirit of these beguiling ambient designs. Working entirely with a computer for the first time, Martin’s sample bank swelled in both depth and detail, giving his compositions a crisper focus and finer grain. Slovakian fujara flutes shudder and shimmer, offset with rippling PVC panpipes, chimes, and gentle webs of delay.   The tracks are titled according to their sample source, designated with one of three words that are same in French and English: horizon, mirage, and distance. Martin speaks of these pieces as conjuring “landscapes with almost no human traces,” and his criterion for completion is simple: “When I feel like I’m losing the perception of time while listening.” Nine new divinations by one of today’s most attuned waking dreamers.   Mastered by Alex Nagle. Design by Dieter Durinck.

Cyclist, The

Beat At The Heart Of The City

100% Silk

A six song sidekick to The Cyclist’s latest extended play offering, Alabaster Thrones, these two magnetized sides span nine years of hermetic hardware experiments conducted in itinerant living arrangements across Derry, Liverpool, and Birmingham. From toy tape loops and echobox gauze (“Diorge Grian” – Irish for “Derry sun”) to shredded soul (“Lucille”) and tightly coiled dub noir (“Cologne Halls”), Beat At The Heart Of The City showcases Andrew Morrison’s singular ear for vibrantly damaged dancefloor energies. Tensions and raptures rev and unravel in intuitive asymmetries, evoking cold clubs, deserted streets, dazed gardens – bleary beauty for crumbling kingdoms. Of the feverish rhythm delirium “One Day In The Life Of Ivana” Morrison even credits illness as muse: “I deeply remember being extremely sick at the time.” It’s grim up north. Mastered by Eric Hanson.

Pleasure Model

The Executive

100% Silk

Amsterdamaged dancefloor industrialist Antoni Maiovvi’s futurist EBM alter ego, Pleasure Model, returns to SILK with a second slate of sleek, surveillance state cyber-jack: The Executive. Recorded in late summer 2016, the album’s eight tracks pulse with android anxiety and pirated voltage, hotwired circuitry snaking through bleached neon tunnels towards strobe-lit ziggurats. More mechanized and weaponized than its predecessor, Kendo Dynamics, these two sides swerve from replicant rave (“International Geographic,” “Sound Investment”) to matrix hacker hardware (“Labelmouth,” “Belinfurbellt”) to liquid chrome catwalk (“Body Double,” “Alumni Precursor”), in the spirit of Bunker, Clone, and Crème. 41 minutes of metro-gnomic sequencing and streamlined code for artificial intelligentsia.

Donovan, Mike

How To Get Your Record Played In Shops

Drag City

***THE PEACERS / SIC ALPS lead singer MIKE DONOVAN steps out from behind the ash-stained curtain for his second solo album in the past five years: How to Get Your Record Played In Shops. The Donovan oeuvre is not something you’re meant to think about—instead, enjoy the soupy soak, sliding beneath its opaque and filmy surface to discover the sensual world in the moat below. But if you had time to think, you might reflect that this music blooms from ’neath the gritty carpet of the USA herself, sighted psycho-acoustically via SF futures and pasts, through rose-colored lenses shoved in and now cracking at the edges, amid hoots and cries from mystery pursuers in the historical, but now-less-than-fully-existent boho jungle. Yep: four Sic Alps, two (The) Peacers and two Mike Donovan albums along the line, Mike is still jiving down on main street, a footloose man of the world, twisting the dial, running ahead of the pack and through twists and turns, past dark characters in shady doorways. Then retiring for a mellow moment around the chambers, staring above the rooftops, through the tangle of aerials and wires. And then lifting the music-box lid.... (STREET DATE - 4/20/2018)

Drinks

Hippo Lite

Drag City

***BACK IN PRINT!!! Received an 8.0 rating from Pitchfork. The latest from CATE LE BON and TIM PRESELEY as DRINKS. "A month spent in an old mill in the under belly of France. River swimming thrice a day. Hot nights soundtracked by the rattle of randy frogs. Scorpion fear. In the sheets, on the face. Hours of bird watching—no phone service. No wifi. 3 DVDs. Jurassic Park 1, 2 & 3. Violin practice. Bread scoffing. Early morning coffee drinking before the sun was too hot to do anything but snooze in the thick walled house. Music in the afternoon after a dip in the river and a cold beer on the square. With all the ease and air needed, in this mysterious place, we made an album made for each other by one another with no hands, eyes or ears piercing the bubble other than our dear friend Steve who slid in under the door and took note of it all."—Cate Le Bon

Marble

Diego

Not Not Fun

Fourth world fusion voyager Anton Glebov’s latest full-length of chimeric environmental music, Diego, emerged from field recordings he conducted on a recent trek through Georgia: gurgling waters of Narzan springs in the Caucasus Mountains, serenading frogs late at night by a lake in Batumi, crickets and cicadas hissing in the fields. Returning home to St. Petersburg he layered them with meditations and melodies using balafon, flute, percussion, saxophone, and synths to create surreal, shape-shifting habitats. Though Mårble began in Siberia the project has always been rootless, a mercurial melting pot of scrambled electronics, tribalist rhythm, prismatic jazz, and ethnographic ambience, evoking illusions more than identities.   Glebov speaks of his music inducing “transcendental ideas and infinity,” hinted at in the lofty alien hymnals “Upanishad” and “Болото Релаксации” (Russian for “The Swamp Of Relaxation”). Elsewhere Glebov’s message is more garbled and miasmic, in keeping with the dizzying hybridity which could well serve as his artist’s statement: “Not belonging to any musical style creates an atmosphere of freedom, disengagement, and levity.” Guest sax and flute by Slavic Ipatov. Mastered by Alter Echo. Cover painting by Alisa Gvozdeva.

Severed + Said

Incorporeality

Not Not Fun

The latest long-player by John Touchton’s eerie Everglades industrial enterprise Severed+Said is also his loftiest, equal parts synth-wave séance, abduction hallucination, and paranormal noir. Collaborating with the same recording engineer as 2015’s Occlusions, Jeremiah Johnson, but this time in a more equipped North Florida garage studio, the pair routed an array of synthesizers, drum machines, and guitars through speaker cabinets to achieve an impressively tactile, spacious mix. The 13 tracks of Incorporeality alternate between rhythmic, ravaged, and reflective, psychic and sinister, beyond the swamps and behind the eye. Speaking of his process, Touchton touches on the music’s dimensional aura: “Something omnipresent filters through me, into the sound – I feel a somewhat transcendent state.” Mastered by Alter Echo. Images by JT. Layout by Britt Brown.

Terlu

Big Bingo

Not Not Fun

Unreleased archival collection of minimalist keyboard reveries by one of the Western States’ unsung tape hiss savants, Orvang aka Terlu. The bulk of Big Bingo was recorded late at night in the spring and summer of 2011 in a garage in Grass Valley, California using a medley of thrift shop Casios, Yamahas, and scavenged cassette recorders. Heavily inspired by Raymond Scott’s proto-ambient Soothing Sounds For Baby volumes and Mark Mothersbaugh’s playful mid-80’s synth sketches, Musik For Insomniaks, the songs share a similarly naïve, delirious spirit, woozy and wistful, cloudland loony tunes traced in joyous haze. He describes his original intention as evoking an imaginary kids show soundtrack, “but twisted.” The transistor fidelity and sun-warped melodies echo fellow fringe psychedelic innocents like Tracey Trance and Orphan Fairytale but Terlu also ventures more abstract, textural terrain. Closing cut “Corafax (Psyche Toner)” – a reference to a recurrent dream in an astral office space wherein he begins receiving a series of faxes from his future self – unfurls seven mesmerizing minutes of grainy, iridescent murk, a persuasive paean to the ageless pleasures of inner space. Mastered by Alter Echo. Design by Britt Brown.

V/a

Hexadic Iii

Drag City

***CHECK STOCK!!! Received a 7.6 rating from Pitchfork. If we subscribe to the current ISO 8601, then 2018 is Hexadic year three—the third annum since we were introduced to a new wave in combinatorial theory with powerful potentialities for music composition. The book, The Hexadic System, was written by SIX ORGANS OF ADMITTANCE's BEN CHASNY, who demonstrated the possibilities of the system with two albums of Hexadic composition, as well as touring the music and chairing talks on the process and uses of THE SYSTEM around the United States and Great Britain. This third installment of the Hexadic series had been planned from the beginning—inviting others outside of Ben Chasny’s Hexadic headquarters to make music using THE SYSTEM. Features music from MOON DUO, JENKS MILLER, MEG BARID & CHARLIE SAUFLEY, TASHI DORJI, RICHARD YOUNGS, PHIL LEGARD, and STEPHEN O'MALLEY, TIM WYSKIDA & MARC URSELLI.