Browse: Cassettes

Godflesh

Post Self Cassette

Hospital Productions

***CHECK STOCK!!!  Received an 8.1 rating from Pitchfork.  Post Self is simultaneously inventive and classic GODFLESH. The blue and icy atmosphere of Post Self can reach levels touched on in the happenings of early '90s Norway innovations. From the opening track, it's clear that the vocal performance is JUSTIN BROADRICK's best in ages, utilizing new approaches ranging from higher tortured screams to truly brutal and barbaric low roars not heard since Streetcleaner (1989). Within those extremes, mystically effected vocals coming from an industrial corner support the classic "post punk" style voice that became a hallmark dating all the way back to HEAD OF DAVID, as well as the bonus tracks heard on the Streetcleaner CD version and the ultimate hypnotic Godflesh track "Flowers." Throughout the whole of the record is a pervasive cold that settles into the atmosphere of Post Self under which nasty and vile machine rhythms create an '80s nighttime rainy streets groove. Dark, hard, heartbreaking, and beautiful, Post Self feels like the culmination of all of Broadrick's various musical interests and achievements in his 30 years of dedication to subcultural music: industrial, noise, post punk, ambient, extreme metal, bass music, and more-- but it is also quintessential Godflesh in its monumental and timeless feeling of existentialism and the human condition. A World Lit Only By Fire (2014) was Godflesh's mortal return, but Post Self feels like Godflesh's immortal soul. Cassette with foil stamped cover.

Ekin Fil

Inflame

Helen Scarsdale Agency

***Istanbul's drone-pop producer EKIN FIL turns her sites to the big screen for the first soundtrack in her impressive catalogue of recordings. Inflame (2017) is a psychological thriller laced with paranoia and nightmares, directed by Ceylan Özgün Özçelik and was showcased at the Berlin International Film Festival and the SXSW Film Festival, amongst others. In making her cinematic debut, Ekil Fil turns synths and electronics, in building the score that in part is brimming with tension and claustrophobia through out all the blank spaces. Always known for her restrained compositions that float amidst ethereal pools of drone and whorl, Ekin Fil sets forth haunting minor-key melodies, monotone arppegiations and plenty of seance-fiction dread. Scattered bits of the film's sound design flicker at the edges of these tracks, as an aural hallucination that dissolves as quickly as it becomes evident. Dubbed electro rhythms creep through the recursive leitmotifs and variations on themes always cast in a dim, crepuscular light. Less informed by the retro-garde aesthetics of Carpenter and Argento, the spectral electronics of Inflame's soundtack finds its neighbors in the skeletal sprawl of Raime and the darker ambient propositions sponsored by Posh Isolation.

Stelzer / Murray

Connector

Helen Scarsdale Agency

***STELZER / MURRAY is the duo of BRENDAN MURRAY and HOWARD STELZER, two stalwarts of the Boston noise / experimental scene over the past two decades. Both artists have long been friends and both artists have never shied away from collaborating with avant-garde musicians hither and yon. Yet, this marks their first collaborative work together. Better late than never, we say. Stelzer brings to the table an array of mangled and partially demagnetized tape; and Murray brings his knack for compacted harmonics, obfuscated field recordings, and long-view compositional strategies. An irradiated, almost Kirlian glow permeates Connector through the duo's slow accretions and erosions amidst the soaring crescendos of compacted tone and vacant shadows of mechanical thrum. On occasion, rasping saw tooth frequencies and oblique synth-noise phrases stridently pop in a clinical opposition against the field of hiss. Screaming cascades from ice storms. Tape symphonies from urban blight. Life-support machines at the point of obsolescence.

Bitchin Bajas

Bajas Fresh

Drag City

***CHECK STOCK!!! Received an 8.0 rating from Pitchfork. Bajas Fresh is on the beach here in 2017, existing and thriving in the same wrecked world as you and me. How they finding it so chill and pretty? It’s been over three years since the last proper BITCHIN BAJASs—a natural paradise of woodwinds, droning organs, analog synths, field recordings, and an ever-expanding sense of MORE (and LESS). While flowing towards a wholeness, the four sides of Bajas Fresh feature distinct approaches, approaching the ephemeral with subtle tweaks from new angles. Eschewing the grainy expansiveness of the self-titled album, this new one has an almost monolithic approach, whether spitting forth with Harmonia-styled data riffs, finding Denny-esque South Pacific exotica within a classic Sun Ra piece or teasing out almost imperceptible inflections inside the epochal fizz and whir with glassy-eyed, glacial patience.

Tough Age

Shame

Mint

In the two years since Tough Age’s sophomore album, I Get The Feeling Central, the curmudgeonly, comic book-loving band have reinvented themselves. Founding members Jarrett Samson and Penny Clark relocated to Toronto from Vancouver, channelling their love of Flying Nun indie-pop into a new three-piece line-up with drummer Jesse Locke (Century Palm, Simply Saucer). The first glimpse at this new direction was their Guess Not / Unclean 7-inch EP, now followed by their long-awaited third album, Shame. This is the band’s most collaborative effort to date—honing their econo jams on tours across North America and over the sea to Tokyo, while sharing stages with artists such as The Courtneys, HSY, and Woolworm, the trio re-emerged with a fresh set of songs that are simultaneously minimal, dynamically propulsive, and eerily experimental. They limited overdubs and tried to record live in the studio as much as possible, paring down an original set of twenty songs to a sleek eight in 32 minutes. The prominent placement of a Tough Age poster above Archie Andrews’ bed in the TV series Riverdale was a hilarious thrill for the band, but their musical tastes dig much deeper: the influence of New Zealand acts continues to loom large, but there are other less obvious inspirations: early ’80s London, ON group The Hippies, the off-kilter drumming of U.S. Maple, and the austere lyricism of The Urinals’ “punk haikus.”

Amenra

Mass VI

Neurot Recordings

***BACK IN PRINT ON VINYL!!!  Contrasts have always been deep and at the very heart of Amenra, who have been uttering prayers and holding masses for eighteen years. Tormented darkness has always coexisted alongside luminous beauty, and thunderous impacts instantly follow frail, delicate subtleties. Songs that engulf everyone in the world suddenly feel whispered inside a solitary womb. Mass VI is here, and more than any other album in the band’s past, it highlights those contrasts.   The eerie quiet of the first couple minutes of “Children Of The Eye” announces the coming storm, and the nine explosive, cathartic minutes that follow hold all the striking disparate emotions one expects from the band. This album is an emotional rollercoaster until its very last second, when “Diaken” abruptly ends at its very climax. Every band member is stretched to their physical limits throughout: Colin H. Vaneeckhout (vocals) puts in the performance of a lifetime, but he is inextricably intertwined to the guitar-work of Mathieu J. Vandekerckhove; Lennart Bossu expresses unimaginable weight, both physical and spiritual, as well as weaving melodies of the utmost delicacy; the rhythm section of Levy Seynaeve and Bjorn J. Lebon rumbles like a consuming thunderstorm or retreat to the shadows with flowing spontaneity. No love without pain. No life without death. No light without darkness. That is the conflict at the heart of the album and at the heart of what it means to be human, and this music wrenches that ambivalence out.  ...

Circuit Des Yeux

Reaching For Indigo

Drag City

***BACK IN STOCK!!! Received ab 8,2 rating from Pitchfork. Reaching for Indigo is the 5th album from CIRCUIT DES YEUX. It references a moment that fell down in the life of HALEY FOHR on Jan. 22, 2016. Reaching for Indigo adds to the definition of Circuit des Yeux, as she realizes her goal of becoming one of the most distinctive voices of this time.

Mackay, Bill & Ryley Walker

Spiderbeetlebee

Drag City

***Drag City presents the second volume of BILL MACKAY and RILEY WALKER's inspired collaboration. It’s been nearly two years since their much-admired 2015 debut, Land of Plenty (Whistler Records), and SpiderBeetleBee more than makes up for lost time with rich, resonant performances that elevate the sound of the guitar duo as they work with an ever-widening panorama of styles. SpiderBeetleBee radiates forth with equal parts austerity and whimsy, opening with an almost-baroque dance before giving way to a Celtic theme, both featuring MacKay and Walker’s acoustics in rambling conversation, picking through intricate passages as though they were exchanges, thoughts and afterthoughts. Adorned with Bill MacKay’s colorful and wilfully primitive cover-art, SpiderBeetleBee wanders through styles, landmasses and hemispheres, capturing the further adventures of MacKay and Walker with spellbinding snapshots that only bloom larger the longer you take them in. (STREET DATE - 10/20/2017)

St. Louis, Anna

First Songs

Woodsist / Mare

Despite her last name, Anna St. Louis was born and raised in Kansas City. She grew up a painter and singing in punk bands, eventually leaving her hometown to attend art school in Philadelphia. After graduating she made the move to Los Angeles where she began teaching herself guitar, writing songs and recording them on her own in her bedroom. First Songs is the sound of someone discovering their talent in real time—a peak into the collage of a wonderful mind that is absorbing their new surroundings and using new tools to put them into the room. Listening to this collection you can feel the sun coming in through the window—St. Louis on the foot of the bed with a guitar on her knee, finding her voice. She wears her influences well—think Patsy Cline singing over John Fahey—but has a style all her own. And while one can take the artist out of the midwest, one can’t take the midwest out of the artist—so let this be known: this is Midwestern music ran through a California filter. Anna St. Louis will have many more releases in her lifetime, but let it all begin here—First Songs.  “a low dangling cigarette of psychedelic folk.”  —NPR Music  “...gorgeous and smoldering”  —Pitchfork

Bruno, Franklin

Works From Home 1995-2015

Shrimper

***CASSETTE STORE DAY RELEASE 2017!!! Thirteen songs collected from demos and previously unreleased songs over the last twenty years. Buyer beware, some of these are radio recordings or maybe engineered by David Schramm. Edition of 150 with heavy weight cardstock.

Davis, John & Cicadas

El Pulpo

Shrimper

***CASSETTE STORE DAY RELEASE 2017!!! Cassette edition of latest by John Davis (formerly half of Folk Implosion), limited to 125 world wide. A collection of tracks about the politics of agribusiness in the context of the US empire, inspired by the book Stuffed & Starved by Raj Patel and the album In What Language? by Mike Ladd and Vijay Iyer. Executed in close collaboration with co-producer Scott Solter in the tradition of political satire, it’s uniquely funny, catchy, and informative at the same time.

Llennoc, Leo J.

S/t

Shrimper

***CASSETTE STORE DAY RELEASE 2017!!! Joel Connell (Man Is The Bastard, Refrigerator, Pilsbury Hardcore) has recorded his debut full length solo record consisting of eastern flights, outsider goth, archaic folk funk and more. Connell sings and plays all the instruments on this true DIY release. Limited edition of 125, cover art Dennis Callaci.

Wolves In The Throne Room

Thrice Woven

Artemisia

***BACK IN STOCK!!! Wolves In The Throne Room re-imagined black metal as an ode to rain storms, wood smoke and the wild energies of the Pacific Northwest. Their first studio album, Diadem Of 12 Stars (2006), was a genre-dissolving classic that created a melancholy and psychedelic Cascadian atmosphere. Since that time they have become one of the most potent and highly regarded bands in extreme music. The listener encounters crystalline metal riffs that slowly collapse and shift into ritualistic laments, singing of endless rain falling upon ancient cedars. Their music is a doorway into a mythic ethereal heathen landscape entered through music, magic and dreams. Now, a portal into the dreamworld of the band opens again with Thrice Woven. It is a glorious return to the blazing and furious black metal that they alone can create!

Claus, Michael

Memory Protect

100% Silk

Bay Area beacon Michael Claus operates from an overtly Pacific perspective in his house and techno constructs, shaping fog and bass along shorelines of elusive rhythm. Though active since 2004 he’s only in the past few years begun issuing tracks under his own name to the public domain, the latest collection of which goes furthest in embedding amorphous acid and cloud-soft synths into introspective coastal jack. Memory Protect maps eight hazed designs sourced from three years of work, misting the difference between movement and meditation, atmosphere and anticipation. Past collabs with Nackt hinted at a subtle touch for hypnosis and heightened sensory environment but here Claus captures his essence in its freest, most fluid state. Bodies of water, oceans of memory – what collects, continues. Recorded in San Francisco, 2014-2017. Mastered by Matt Tammariello.

Inner Self

O.E. Outside Experience

100% Silk

New York producer Andrew Stefano’s freshest guise reflects the different headspace he was seeking last fall, shifting gears from his ongoing jungle fusion project, Trust Image. O.E. Outside Experience finds him flexing more muted and melancholic shades of broken beat, jazz techno, and high-stepping warehouse hybrids, inspired by notions of internalization and exploration – plus “a lot of Detroit shit.” The seven tracks traverse therapeutic contrasts of rhythm and reflection, solitude and celebration, crisp percussion offset with smeared synths, vaporous texture, and acidic bass. A decade of music making has honed Stefano’s instincts for motion, melody, and atmosphere, which he wields here with a distinct, dynamic touch. The Self speaks. Recorded at his home studio in Brooklyn on a mix of hardware and software in late 2016. Mastered by Matt Tammariello.

Dead Rider

Crew Licks

Drag City

***DEAD RIDER are up and rolling again, and Crew Licks is the latest job. After the thousand days and nights since Chills on Glass, Dead Rider had to overcome the creeping suggestion that they multitask themselves to sleep—or to premature brain death—whichever came first. Now they’re ready to get into their Rolling Stones suit and thank you for letting them be themselves again; to extrude rude grooves, shattered r’n’b and/or hip hop and mother’s blues in a priapic triad, tripped-out and overlaid, shedding the old fresh in search of new flesh; a gateway they’ve been dreaming of building in their minds. If you’re lacking for rhythm and imagination in your everyday nine-to-five, Dead Rider got the time for you. With Crew Licks, Dead Rider offer an anti-hero for today. He’s the everyman, the workingman (the man that they in fact are), in a tailor-made creature—a monster, if you will—made up of many, to funk and bump through the bepuzzled night. To render the thing, they’ve grasped onto tools pulled from the rubble of rock and roll. The beat is lode-bearing, brick-house solid, but flexible, breathing. In through the cracks come stuttered words and whispers, the pealing of a steel drum, a squalling sax or two, barks from the outside. Crew foreman TODD RITTMANN twines them with a cabling of acid-base guitar licks, cutting down into the roots for fingerings to invert and extend. The basslines roll and crush, bounce and squish as required, bringing synth and synthesis into and away...

Ka Baird

Sapropelic Pycnic

Drag City

***Sapropelic Pycnic is the Drag City and world debut of music presented under the name of KA BAIRD. While this record is a commencement of many sorts, it is in no way a mere beginning. Ka’s ritual is well underway here, her craft clearly already a dedicated mastery; it finds her on the hunt for new discoveries with a humble desire for the transfigured, the sublime. This has been among the goals since early times, when Ka was one of the founding members of experimental psychlings SPIRES THAT IN THE SUNSET RISE. Ka relocated to NYC in late 2014 and immediately embarked upon new directions—exploring piano improvisations, electroacoustic intervention, extended vocal technique, physical movement, and the electronic processing of her flute playing. The singular force that is Ka is represented on two releases under the SAPROPELIC PYCNIC—the improvised piano album See Sun Think Shadow (released in November 2015 on Brooklyn’s Perfect Wave imprint) and the Coltrane tribute A Love Supreme (on Chicago’s No Index label in January 2016). With the release of Sapropelic Pycnic, Ka manifests an evolving selfhood, expanding upon the essence of her first two albums’ artist name, while replacing and thus becoming that name on her own. “Sapropel” is a contraction of the ancient Greek words sapros and pelos—putrification and mud. “Pycnic” draws from pyknos—dense; stocky. This wordplay is meant to suggest a physical consumption, ingesting of the nutrient-rich mud found at the bottom of seas, lakes and rivers. Very much akin to the gorging of this...

Wand

Plum

Drag City

***BACK IN STOCK!!! Received a 7.9 rating from Pitchfork. Plum is WAND's fourth LP since the band formed in late 2013 but their first new album in two years. After a whirlwind initial phase of writing, recording, and touring at a frenetic clip, their newest document marks a period of relative patience; a refocusing and a push toward a new democratization of both process and musical surface. In late winter of 2016, the band expanded their core membership of EVAN BURROWS, CORY HANSON and LEE LANDEY to include two new members—ROBBIE CODY on guitar and SOFIA ARREGUIN on keys and vocals. From the outset, the new ensemble moved naturally toward a changed working method, as they learned how to listen to each other and trust in this new format. The songwriting process was consciously relocated to the practice space, where for several months, the band spent hours a day freely improvising, while recording as much of the activity as they could manage. This new process demanded more honest communication, more vulnerability, better boundaries, more mercy and persistence during a year that meanwhile delivered a heaping serving of romantic, familial and political heartbreak for everyone involved. They learned more about their instruments and their perceived limitations.

Faith Healer

Try ;-)

Mint

When Edmonton’s Jessica Jalbert first began performing solo under the name Faith Healer, the alias was her way of avoiding being pigeonholed as a singer-songwriter. Now, however, times have changed: Faith Healer has blossomed into a band, with singer-guitarist Jalbert joined by drummer / multi-instrumentalist Renny Wilson and their first album as a duo is Try ;-). The follow-up to 2015’s Cosmic Troubles was largely recorded during an intensive month-long session in September 2016 at Wilson’s personal studio in Montreal. During the process, Jalbert rented a room in Wilson’s house and the pair spent hours jamming and listening to bargain bin rock records in the basement. The resultant pop-rock arrangements are overflowing with beautiful sonic details—from the Twin Peaks synths that enshroud “Sterling Silver” to the funky clavinet nestled within the paisley-patterned pop of “& Waiting.” Jalbert and Wilson were also inspired by the garage-punk snarl of Wipers, the deadpan drama of Leonard Cohen’s Death Of A Ladies’ Man, and the classic songwriting chops of Scott Walker and Elvis Costello. The intensive creative process of making this album inspired the title and serves as a reminder that sometimes you need to grab life by the horns rather than waiting for inspiration to strike. As for that winky face: “I always use that winky emoticon,” Jalbert says with a laugh. “I think it’s hilarious. I think it’s cheeky and fun, which is something I was trying to access a little more with this record.” Balancing melancholy lyrics with playful moods, lush...

Cobra Man

New Driveway Soundtrack

Goner

Fearlessly drop into Goner Records’ first foray into the sunny summer skateboard scene: Cobra Man’s debut album showcases the wild-ass energy of The Worble skateboarding, perfectly interpreted through the minds of long-haired session musicians of ’80s Los Angeles. This infectious neon celebration will surely freshen the spirits by satisfying the search for classic innovation and fun. Follow us as we push further down the driveway, the New Driveway.

Diko, Aaron

DDCT

Empty Cellar

Get-ting back to familiar zones for a change of scenery, Bay-area electronic musician Aaron Diko (former synth wiz in the band POW!) returned to the Circle City in his home state of Indiana to record DDCT -or- a series of solo works and collaborations with friends Landon Caldwell, Mitch Duncan and Mark Tester.   Bring the gang over. Plug them all in to one another and flip the switch. Results of recording upstairs on borrowed time with a room full of hardware and optimistic intentions. Sequencers, drum machines and hand-moved knobs clash with analog synths and crisscrossed signal paths. Direct-in guitar overdubs rub shoulders with rhythmic happenstance. If we've gotta do this, then let's say it sometimes carries the pace and menace of genre milestones like Eno's Music for Films record. Other times these tunes tread the same highways and byways once drove upon by the likes of Ralf und Florian-era Kraftwerk, early Tangerine Dream and some of the more playful kosmiche ilk of that time. Although this road is for sure more pot-hole infested, billboard-bedecked stretch of Midwestern interstate than autobahn, any day. Straight shot all the way across and looping around the more dense and busy spots. This music was recorded to half-inch tape over the course of three humid days in a house on the near-East side of Indianapolis, Ind. and was mastered by Sonic Boom (Spectrum, Spacemen 3, E.A.R.) at New Atlantis. Aaron Diko's DDCT is out now on cassette from Empty Cellar Records and Medium...

Wong, Ryan

More Milk

Empty Cellar

Though Ryan Wong’s boyish charm might be obvious to anyone who’s seen him perform solo or with his group the Cool Ghouls, what might not be obvious about the artist behind More Milk is that he is, in fact, lactose intolerant. What’s up with that? What kind of milk are we talking about anyway? Well, sometimes a songwriter in a rock group has a jolt of creativity that results in some great numbers for the band (that’s the milk), and then even more ideas that might have to find their way into another icebox (more milk). While there’s a delicate acoustic sketch or two on this home-recorded cassette, don’t let Wong’s easygoing attitude or vocal style belie his ability to turn a great idea or two into a fully ambulant creature of a tune. Ryan—handling guitar, bass, and keys with a rotating cast of bandmates and roommates filling in on percussion and woodwinds—makes it happen. Just try to listen to the two-note, triple time trill that drives “Good Lovin” without imagining approaching an overcast San Francisco day with a Mr. Natural stride. If you should stroll into a club in the Mission on a chilly evening or find this tape in your dealer’s deck, why not slow down and take it in for a moment? There’s a little something in these six songs for the deadheads, for John Cale obsessives, and for tough rockers in derby jackets and boots who like to eat mushrooms, sit in the grass and listen...

Barnes, Jeremy

Winter '16

L.M. Dupli-cation / Cimiotti

***Second in a series of extremely limited edition cassettes by Jeremy Barnes.  Compellingly melodic instrumental music recorded in Sonido Del Norte Studio using primarily electronic sounds and Barnes' characteristic drumming. Echoes of Basic Kirchin, Terry Riley, and Jaques Thollot. More late night home recordings by Jeremy Barnes, of A Hawk and A Hacksaw, Neutral Milk Hotel and Dieterich & Barnes. Limited to 150 copies. Comes with a download code.

Violence Creeps

Gift Of Music + Singles

Total Punk

***Total Punk takes our first foray into tape releasing a cassette collection that compiles the out of print Gift of Music 12" on Total Punk as well as all the early singles and comp tracks. Edition of 150 copies.

Canada Effervescent

Crystalline

Not Not Fun

Discreet French synthesist Denis Tremblay’s latest offering, Crystalline, spirals further into the recesses of refracted relaxation music and interstitial new age which have come to define the sound of Canada Effervescent. Sun-bleached keys phase, dazzle, and decay against shimmering vistas of synthetic harp and piano, layered with raga drones, meditative mist, and field recordings of running water, wood chimes, and nocturnal insects. Inspired by the canonic healing music of Steven Halpern and David Naegele as well as “wood-and-carpet covered studios, forest moons, and humid love songs,” Tremblay’s touch is ambient but expansive, unspooling in fragile arcs of inner space reflection. An immersive and softly psychedelic sound spa of tonal voyaging by one of today’s more attuned Next Age conduits. Design by Donnie Ka.

Iguana Moonlight

Wild Palms

Not Not Fun

Unlikely desert island meditations beamed from the suburbs of Moscow courtesy of synthesizer imagineer Ilya Ryazantcev aka Iguana Moonlight. Inspired equally by a childhood fascination with tropical isolation and La Iguana, Alberto Vázquez-Figueroa’s novel about a disfigured 19th century harpooner shipwrecked on a remote island who “declares war on humanity,” Wild Palms sways through six pensive instrumentals of castaway electronics, quiet surf, and coastal birdsong. The simplicity of the songs suits their mood of solitude, combing the shoreline for signs of life, eyes weary from scanning the horizon. A unique suite of equatorial reveries by one of Russia’s rising bedroom voyagers. Recorded July-August, 2016, on a Tascam Portastudio. Mastered by Anton Korablev. Design by Britt Brown.

X.Y.R.

Labyrinth

Not Not Fun

St. Petersburg pathfinder Vladimir Karpov coaxes hushed auras of keys, metronomes, fog, and feeling to evoke hazed and isolated realms, traced in altered states. His latest collection—and vinyl debut—maps the maze at “the bottom of self,” subterranean consciousness manifested from decaying synthesizer and shadowed pulse: music for fading torchlight. Labyrinth leads through six misty, mystic chambers of dreams, drones, delirium, and phaser’d percussion, spiraling in slow, sacred arcs, in quest of “the inner world.” Tosya Chaikina’s ghost vocals on “False Angel Lullaby” and “Shadows Of Forgotten Ancestors” bring a whispered hymnal mood, but otherwise the album is ambient and abandoned, obscure meditations along corridors of candlelit runes, “to find the right path, to find the true answer.”

X.Y.R.

Reflections

Not Not Fun

Adjacent assemblage to the Labyrinth LP, Reflections wanders six more forking paths of smeared Soviet synth, opiated percussion, and phaser fantasia across lost, liquid, looping landscapes. Here the X.Y.R. experience oozes illusion, the morass of memory, and spectral static, crescent tones glimmering against warm webs of echo and reverberated rhythm. The dark is depth; the flame flickers; continue. Mastered by Alex Nagel. Art and design by Dieter Durinck.

Peacers

Introducing The Crimsmen

Drag City

***Introducing THE PEACERS Introducing the Crimsmen! Escalating from a disembodied voice to slowly mounting full-band hypnosis, this is a trip into the goldenrod days of fandom, a dimension where a t-shirt could change your life. Since their first LP in the summer 2015, The Peacers have been gigging in SF and around, wood-shedding and collecting tunes for this divinely awaited moment: Introducing the Crimsmen. Lurching back into life, with buzz and hum alight and colors flashing, is the name, but the instigators of the sound are almost a whole other bunch (MIKE DONOVAN, SHAYDE SARTIN, MIKE SHOUN and BO MOORE). The tunes rock forth from a jukebox with a crack in the glass, with channels leaking / kaleidoscopic aspects of low-fi life directed back through the wires to form discrete detail, little shadows, backdrops, edgework. And the tunes! The Peacers got a hand into a variety of rock and roll baked goods. Whether gentle psych, basement throb, keening “Time of the Season” nocturne or ground-glass soundscape, it’s all bubblegum boiled in pot, scripted up with stinging street smart, zoloftnagenic reverie and a wink and a chill grin. (STREET DATE - 6/16/2017)

Royal Trux ("live")

Platinum Tips & Ice Cream

Drag City

***CHECK STOCK!!! Received a 7.3 rating from Pitchfork. Platinum Tips + Ice Cream (scenes from the water park) is new from ROYAL TRUX. The songs were written over a span of time as wide as eagle’s wings—but the recordings are new, live, unrehearsed and were presented in real time to a few thousand people in California and NYC. Performance art? Yes! But only because, unlike so many other aural “content providers,” NEIL HAGERTY and JENNNIFER HERREMA are true artists writing their own futures into the present. Wrapped up in a TRUXian collage scrapping together the crazy quilt of time in their ROYAL-iverse, which in the light of this reunion is now folding back over itself, Platinum Tips + Ice Cream collects twelve Royal Trux non-sequiturs in tribute not only to the past but the unending nature of the future. (STREET DATE - 6/16/2017)

Signor Benedick The Moor

Toybox

Deathbomb Arc

Signor Benedick The Moor is no stranger to collaboration, having worked with experimental rap artists such as clipping., Milo, and Open Mike Eagle. But it truly is his solo work that shines. On his first official follow up to 'El Negro', Signor Benedick takes an brilliant, summery turn towards joy. His prog-rap instincts and layered melodic charm are presented through the shine of catchy pop numbers perfect for a day at the beach. It is a fun, surprising twist perfectly matched for this California based rising hip hop star.

Elder

Reflections Of A Floating World

Armageddon

***BACK IN STOCK!!!  It’s time to get euphoric. With EDLER's fourth full-length album, an epic piece of rock music will be released unto the world. And we think that’s a reason to celebrate. Band members and friends NICK DISALVO, JACK DONOVAN and MATT COUTO already dismissed any last remains of stoner metal stereotypes on Lore (2015). Their current album, which was written following the long and acclaimed Lore tour in moments of intense creativity, is a journey into prog rock and psychedelic worlds. Six monumental songs, huge in sound, each of them their own cosmic expedition. What begins as driving mid-tempo rock filled with heavy guitar riffs repeatedly erupts into melodic tangents and clever variations. The high demands that DiSalvo places on his own songwriting seem to become more unfettered from minute to minute—as does the pleasure of listening to him. Guest musicians MICHAEL SAMOS and MIKE RISBERG have added additional guitars, pedal steel and keyboards to the trio, making Elder’s sound more voluminous than ever, and the influences found here range from '70s prog dinosaurs such as Yes, King Crimson or Pink Floyd to their kindred spirits in the European psychedelic and space rock scenes. And it is of course a cliché, but Elder bring their own organism to life from all these influences.  Elder will be taking Reflections of a Floating World live to European fans in July and August 2017, followed by a USA tour in the fall. The East Coast trio will be...

Carr, Kate

The Story Surrounds Us

Helen Scarsdale Agency

***KATE CARR melds the exquisite details of her field recordings with an ephemeral approach to the song. This Australian has relocated herself to London after many trips around the globe. With each orbiting journey, she has collected innumerable sounds from the urbane to the aqueous and from the frenetic to the sublime, contextualizing all of these into compositions rippling with primordial melodies through guitar, piano, voice, and electronics. The Story Surrounds Us follows her highly acclaimed albums I Had Myself A Nuclear Spring (first released on her own Flaming Pines imprint in 2015) and Carr's debut for Helen Scarsdale in 2016, It Was A Time Of Laboured Metaphors. Emblematic of her work is a gentle dislocation between the environmental sounds and her drone-dub ellipses of somnambulant melody. The clatter of a frozen dock or a vibrational shimmer from rustled objects or the unintelligible whispers displaces the sense of self amidst a sea of disparate symbols and coded thought. More a travelogue in and out of one's own body than to any particular place. Carr suggests "In a way, it is about restlessness, an uncomfortable tossing and turning in all these many different places, a struggle somehow to forge a connection between my own internal world and all these places and persons I have encountered. I think this holds a sense of unease and strain, with both beautiful and failed moments of intimacy and connection which are made either possible or impossible in the difficult and distorted context of being away....

Deeper Kenz

S/t

100% Silk

Wayfaring American producer / DJ Deeper Kenz named his project in homage to the “cinematically intense” Northeast Philly hood where he resided intermittently for nearly eight years. Surrounded by dive bars and decrepit lots, he turned inward and crafted a set of recordings “designed as tools to light up a small but intimate community of dancers and lovers.” The A side skews lean and linear, crisp percussion laced with shaded bass and violet textures, while the flip goes more mirror ball delirium, sweat and heat and disco samples “chained up and grooving to the unceasing rhythms of the big city machine.” Indulge, internalize; motion is meaning. Recorded in Kensington, Philadelphia, 2013-2016. Illustrations by Mariah Welch. Mastered by John Flynn at Balance Mastering, UK and Eric Hanson at Maven Mastering, Los Angeles.

Control Freaks

Mindless Entertainment

Slovenly

***After years of clenching our fists and throwing tantrums like they were hand grenades, GREG LOWERY of THE RIP OFFS, SUPERCHARGER, and some other jerky combos finally granted us our wish and slapped us silly with this LP from his latest no-count crew CONTROL FREAKS. Be careful what you wish for, indeed! This is snot-caked Bay Area slime by abusive maniacs with the teen-beat on lockdown, and they will C.O.N.T.R.O.L. your last remaining brain cells! Mindless Entertainment got all the obnoxious pop you can handle: “Hollywood” is classic G-Lo retardation, and guitarist NATALIE SWEET is making us itch sharing vocal doodies all over the album in her best Edith Bunker impression. Keep punk stupid, stupid! (STREET DATE - 5/19/2017)

Robedoor

New Age Sewage

Not Not Fun

Angeleno forgotten lurkers Robedoor return to the recorded realm after a four-year absence with a six-song slab of psychic skyquake ritual and subterranean industrial voids: New Age Sewage. Formed and deformed across multiple tours, ruptures, relocations, and re-awakenings, the album grew denser and more detailed with time, damage, and discipline. Following two failed attempts, the tracks were finally captured at the band’s spiderweb shed / practice space across several months of willed hallucination in the summer of 2015. Key rig additions allowed for more nuanced metronomes and textures, channeling negative western mythologies of cultic deception and territorial mindwash. Tune in, turn on, turn against; the New Age is Sewage. Recorded at the Black Lodge. Mixed by Ale Cohen. Mastered by Eric Hanson

Life's Blood

Hardcore A.D. 1988

Prank

***BACK IN STOCK!!! LIFE'S BLOOD were a legendary short lived band from New York City. Formed in 1987, The band played 20 shows and recorded two radio shows, a demo at Don Fury, one 7-inch, "Defiance," released on Combined Effort Records and appeared on the seminal New Breed tape comp in 1988. In these short 14 months as a band they left an indelible mark on the history of hardcore punk, as their sharp, earnest, and challenging lyrics backed with remarkably sturdy, dissonant and distorted hardcore songs emerged at a time where the focus of underground hardcore had been blurred by commercialism, crossover and violence. Hardcore A.D. 1988 collects 27 songs from their Defiance EP, demo tape, compilation tracks, their posthumous split EP with Sticks And Stones, WFMU and WNYU recordings and live tracks, Members went on to play in BORN AGAINST, MENACE DEMENT, SINKING BODY, MEN'S RECOVERY PROJECT COLLAPSE and MY RIFLE. Features new liner notes from guitarist ADAM NATHANSON, extensive band notes compiled by bassist NEIL BURKE and a ton of photos and flyers. The LP comes in a Stoughton tip-on gatefold with a 11x22" insert and download card. The CD version comes with a 16 page booklet.

Video Salon

S/t

Not Not Fun

The transcontinental collaboration of Arcata shoegaze abstractionist Brian Pyle and spectral Russian songstress Galya Chikiss began in Berlin, where the former was on tour and crashing with the latter, then finished in Northern California. Despite such distance, the duo’s debut feels symbiotic and seductive, shimmering nocturnal mirages of devotional drone and processional dub. Named after the site of certain of Chikiss’ formative teenage experiences (“trashy rooms with old anonymous TV sets and video recorders, a zone of freedom and new information”), Video Salon conjure a ghostly, glassy-eyed mood, low-lidded metronomes layered in haze, whispers, and dazed fluorescent static. Sung in Russian, the lyrics cast an ominous spell: “I turn around and see the door / the lock moves in my hand like a cold grey snake / your sharp talons tear apart my shadow.” An eerie and entrancing suite of electronic incantations by a complementary pair of exploratory expressionists. Mastered by Brian Pyle. Artwork by Britt Brown.

Bonnie Prince Billy

Best Troubador

Drag City

***CHECK STOCK!!! Received a 7.4 rating from Pitchfork. With Best Troubador, BONNIE PRINCE BILLY pays homage to a long-time and forever hero, the late Merle Haggard. A singer who, some 25 years previously, first performed in public by playing a Merle Haggard song, Bonny has often cited Merle’s work in performance, on records and in conversation with anyone who was around, even talking to Merle himself for Filter magazine in 2009. Merle’s body of work was considered by Bonny for a record such as this for some time, but his passing in April of 2016 almost put a stop to it. The goal was to participate in the handing forward of the songs of a living legend, as Merle had done so many times in his own career. Best Troubador flips through his song book, landing on pages unmoored from their time and located anew. Moving from 1978 to 1969 to 2003 to 1981 allows the album to circle Haggard’s music in a simulation of thought and memory, slipping around from spot to spot as if they were discrete impressions, unknown but knowable yet. Dedicated to new life and old, Best Troubador is wistful and bittersweet and no lament at all,v but a tribute instead, for the triumph of a life spent in unending pursuit of the goal: new and expressive music, as our inspirations and heroes once sang it.

Colossal Yes

Exposed Prehistorics

Ba Da Bing!

*** Those who heard Colossal Yes' 2015's Surrounded by Progress, a tribute to Brutalism, won't be surprised by the synth-heavy styles found on Exposed Prehistorics. Those of you who didn't hear the last CY release, well, surprise! Exposed Prehistorics further's Utrillo Kushner's sonic exploration of the less humane art of the 20th Century. What at first sounds like a confabulated sci fi soundtrack reveals deeper meaning upon repeated listening, as notions of fascistic aesthetics, steely electronic glares and unforgiving chord changes form the basis for music you would hear as you helplessly watch others marching by.