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Cyberplasm

Autogenesis

Iron Lung

***“What is original birth?” “Who forms?” These are questions CYBERPLASM asks of it’s listener on their newest release, Autogenesis. A record showcasing the techno/terrortronic backbone of the band in its full on pulsing ethereal machine glory. Though still very much a punk band there are no guitars to be found on this recording. Rest assured there is, however, a heaping amount of discordant noise and dystopic political lyricism tripped out way beyond the psyche. A new realm of music is being created here, tucked somewhere in the void between 90s techno and the ultra fuzzed maniac punk of the 2050s, music so modern it’ll make your head spin right off your neck while your body writhes in complete underground rave ridden pleasures. As a bonus, the EP comes with two remixes of “Autogenesis” by the homies, HIDE and SILO 77. You need this like a sickie needs medicine. Get twisted. 500 copies on black 150gr vinyl housed in a 24pt jacket with lyric insert included. Recorded by JOEY STEWARD. Mastered by SEA_WRAITH. Art by SAINTE-X.

The Vacant Lot

Living Underground

Iron Lung

***THE VACANT LOT are a first wave punk band from Canberra that released one lone EP in 1981 on the Thought Criminals’ label, Doublethink Records. They played a few gigs and broke up shortly after. What they left behind was a bit of a head scratcher for most with two songs of rough and tumble KBD/MurderPunk/proto-hardcore and two songs of pulsing, keyboard driven post-punk in the Wire Chairs Missing vein that once sold out, sort of faded into obscurity. Now with a 2022 remaster from MIKEY YOUNG and a renewed vigor for creative activity since 2014, “Living Underground” finally gets the proper reissue treatment. Faithfully and lovingly recreated to be exactly the same as the elusive original issue. 500 copies on black and 200 on green 70gr vinyl housed in a 12pt glue pocket sleeve with lyric insert included.

Tiny Ruins

Ceremony

Ba Da Bing!

Tiny Ruins, the project of New Zealand musician Hollie Fullbrook, are back with their fourth album, Ceremony, out on Ba Da Bing Records. The follow-up to 2019’s celebrated Olympic Girls, Ceremony goes deep into all the old and murky mysteries of what it means to be human—and sometimes it nearly goes under. Yet these songs also show how one can find the strength to swim from the shipwreck, push through the silt, surface into another new morning—another new chance. Ceremony washes in and takes one out like a strong tide, its songs “chapters” of a saga set on the shores of Tāmaki Makaurau’s (aka Auckland’s) Manukau Harbour. Known to locals as “Old Murky,” its western fringe of the Waitākere Ranges are home to Fullbrook. And while the harbour itself is a treacherous and oft-polluted body of water, move to one of its many peaceful inlets and it’s all tidal flats, shellfish and birdlife. “It’s beautiful but also muddy, dirty and neglected. It’s a real meeting of nature and humanity” says Hollie. The album’s songs took shape as she explored the turbulent landscape on foot with her two dogs. The things Fullbrook was struck by there are annotated across Ceremony (cover art by Christiane Shortal) as luminously as a naturalist’s scrapbook. After touring Olympic Girls both solo and with her long- term band line-up of Cass Basil (bass), Alex Freer (drums), and Tom Healy (electric guitar, producer) for eighteen months, Fullbrook returned home to the banks of Little Muddy Creek, exhausted...

O'Sullivan, Daniel

The Physic Garden

Vhf

Third in a trilogy of albums of library music miniatures from composer and multi-instrumentalist Daniel O’Sullivan (Æthenor, Ulver, This Is Not This Heat, etc) following 2020’s Electric Māyā and 2021’s Fourth Density. For heads, the term “library music” in 2021 might evoke dodgy Italian gray market LPs and crate-diggers hunting for “funky breaks”—but London’s venerable KPM Music is working with groundbreakers like O’Sullivan to open up new avenues for composers to experiment. The fifteen tracks on The Physic Garden are fully-formed and orchestrated compositions, which would be highlights on anyone’s release, never mind as incidental music. Of the music, O’Sullivan says: “The Physic Garden is an album of diverse instrumentals inspired by a swathe of verdant vistas from manicured gardens and follies to urban common land, overgrown and forgotten. Convalescent memories in the shape of psychedelic auditory botanics.” Key tracks include the droning acoustic folk of the title song; the Canterbury-esque rolling horn and woodwind melody of “Return The Heart” (with expert drum kit from Frank Byng); the prog-ish odd meter interlude “Buttercup Tea”; The quiet ambience and delicate melody of “Dusty Feather:”; and the Eno-like drift of “Vapourer Larvae.”

Sunburned Hand Of The Man

Hypnotape

Vhf

A genuinely sprawling collection of high-fidelity mutation music that suits the compact disc format perfectly, Hypnotape is the third consecutive Sunburned Hand Of The Man album of studio assemblages following 2019’s Headless and 2021’s Pick A Day To Die. Recorded throughout 2021 and 2022, it’s an album possessed with a peculiar runaway locomotion which jump cuts feverishly between unusual atmospheres yet maintains a beguiling consistency—throbbing, twisting, undulating rhythmic blast-offs suddenly kick the door down into serene realms of nuanced acoustic privacy which are unexpectedly plunged back, face first into a miasma of shirtless, raging thuggery, ad infinitum. The album is notable in the group’s monstrous catalog for a few reasons: first, it showcases founding member Conrad Capistran stepping out from behind the keyboards and electronics to spread his smooth, buttery baritone atop the majority of the tracks. From his velvet cooing above the pulsing whirlwind of opener “People Person” to his vivid and febrile musings as a trip reporter on the frontlines of the meltdown zone on “Roger” his honeyed vocals guide the listener Virgil-like through the inferno all the way to the album’s finale where he duets with Ron Schneiderman on the old Dino Valenti / Quicksilver chestnut “What About Me”. Secondly, it features the recorded debut of Sunburned’s longtime friend and collaborator Mark Perretta after years of touring with the group. Some may remember Perretta from his days stomping across the primordial Boston underground of the late ’80s / early ’90s with the mighty Subskin Cables or his...

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...

Direct Hit / Decent Criminal

Split 7” + Beacon Comics #1

Dirtnap

Dirtnap Records will publish the first installment of Beacon Comics this Spring, packaged with a 7" record featuring a taste of Direct Hit's (Milwaukee, Fat Wreck Chords) dubiously-forthcoming album ("Wasteland"), and new Decent Criminal (Santa Rosa, Diised/Gunner Records) songs "Time" and "Dream" - each an alternate take, and a B-side off their forthcoming album, respectively. This lavishly packaged comic/7” combo is a one time only pressing of 500 and will only be available for a limited time. Get yours today!

Golden Grease

Zero Time

Permanent

***Golden Grease are a pummeling post-punk/garage unit out of Los Angeles. Their debut LP Zero Time comes ripping in just over 22 minutes crashing through influences ranging from post punk, hardcore and krautrock. Zero Time is dedicated to the absurdity of modern existence. Edition of 300 copies on green and yellow blended vinyl.

During

s/t

Chunklet

"During’s self-titled debut is a pipe bomb of originality, set to detonate and shake the foundation of the tired post-punk sounds of today when it hits via Chunklet on April 28th. And while some more obvious influences show across the ten track LP—like DEVO, Sonic Youth and Gang of Four—its strength lies in some of it’s wilder ideas and influences, creating a wholly new approach as yet unseen in the otherwise very tired genre of post-punk. 'I've always been super influenced by post punk stuff. The Fall is definitely up there, as well as WIRE and the Urinals, even the Gizmos,' says Fisher emphatically. 'The coolest thing about recording this LP was we didn't know what we were gonna end up with, it just sort of came out the way it came out. So while those influences are there because that's where we come from, none of it is totally clear because it’s jumbled up with so many of our other ideas.' Starting with a dizzying and frantic base, During's sound can best be classified using the hyper-cerebral approach of DEVO, garnished with touches of their more frenetic speedfreak acolytes Minneapolis’ Uranium Club. It’s from there that things drift into territories unseen, with a cold vocal delivery not unlike Mark E Smith, a quirky and free-spirited approach like the Cardiacs, atonal riffing that recalls Sonic Youth, and a mildly funk-focused bed to tether down the madness a la A Certain Ratio or the Contortions. All that comes baked in with...

Wolfmanhattan Project

Summer Forever And Ever

In The Red

Summer Forever And Ever succeeds Blue Gene Stew, 2019’s debut by the Wolfmanhattan Project, a collective unit co-starring three musicians familiar to In The Red listeners: singer-guitarist Mick Collins, front man of the seminal Detroit-bred garage units the Dirtbombs and the Gories, singer-guitarist Kid Congo Powers who played in such legendary bands as the Gun Club, the Cramps, and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, and drummer-vocalist Bob Bert, whose skin work has distinguished albums by Sonic Youth, Pussy Galore, Lydia Lunch’s Retrovirus, and Jon Spencer and the HITmakers. The group was founded as a studio project by three musicians who are kept busy by their primary bands. Blue Gene Stew was written and recorded quickly. Powers says, “I think that the new record was much more a group effort. I think there’s more of a group kind of sound, as eclectic as it is. I feel like we all played together, as opposed to playing on each other’s songs.” Bert notes that the band’s music is grounded in spontaneity: “Me and Mick went in and had a couple of rehearsals, and I would come up with a beat, he would come up with a riff. I still have a cassette Walkman, believe it or not, and we’d put it down on that. It wasn’t even a full song. We’d just put down a bunch of ideas. When it came to recording we’d lay down the basic tracks and work out different things, and a lot of it was made...

Hauras

Pervades

Helen Scarsdale Agency

***Head to the western neighborhoods of San Francisco, and the city becomes a very quiet place after midnight. By 3am, one can almost hear the fog spilling past the sodium lights that illuminate a lonesome street corner at Judah and 15th. Whatever soundtracks that emerge from that time and that place inevitably embody that nocturnal atmosphere, a narcoleptic weariness, a waking dream of the insomniac. Such is the psychogeographical realm as channeled through sound for Hauras, the obliquely musical concern for San Franciscan Howard Ryan. In Pervades, Hauras returns to the fragments of guitar warbling through chains of echo and flange, his Basinski-esque loops of crushingly sad ambient melody, his EVP impressionistic vocals, and his curious interruptions from scanner radio. More than before, he expresses a confidence in his oblique craftsmanship that allows him to push the sounds to include a very compelling drum machine plus guitar noise track in "Stellaged." Richard Youngs, Gate, and Graham Lambkin all come to mind, as does the terminally obscure project Dial (Jacqui Ham's post-Ut band of similarly late nite expressionism). Pervades concludes a trilogy of recordings made during the pandemic era, that also includes In These Coming Days (2020) and The Glare of the Nave (2021). Inspired by Rinko Kawauchi and Audrey Szasz. Mastered by Brian Pyle

Vertonen

Einige Schadstoffe

Helen Scarsdale Agency

***In Einige Schadstoffe, we have quite the potent homage to the classic era of industrial noise. Think Throbbing Gristle's Second Annual Report, Come's I'm Jack, MB's Symphony For A Genocide, and even Nord's Ego Trip. The sentiment linking all of these records is a clinical detachment in the production and broadcast of scalding tone, sickly rhythm, and unclean readymades, emerging through the spectacle of the human conditions of alienation, paranoia, and cruelty. Ultimately, such works are intended as critiques by way of gonzo journalism, where the intent is not always what it seems. Vertonen, the longstanding project of veteran Chicago avant-noise technician Blake Edwards, masterfully recapitulates these strategies and affects, both aesthetically and materially. On Einige Schadstoffe, Edwards transmits feverish arppegiations cascading through nervous distortion, followed by plodding rhythms and dead-toned electronics that gird case studies on living monstrosities. There is also a rather clever, if oblique and almost Oulipian framework to the album. Plenty of breadcrumbs have been laid as to the nature of Edwards' puzzle, and we have already said too much about that.

Planning For Burial

Matawan - Collected Works 2010-2014 (Vol. 2)

Flenser

In 2017 The Flenser released a CD collection of material from Planning For Burial's early period entitled Matawan - Collected Works 2010-2014. Named after the bands long-term home-base in Matawan New Jersey, the collection included many of Planning For Burial's beloved rare tracks that originally appeared on seven inches, cassettes, or online. Since 2017, the band's own Thom Wasluck has re-examined the material found on the Matawan collection with the intention of releasing a vinyl version. This vinyl version of the second volume of the Matawan collection includes much of the first disc of the CD version tirelessly remixed and edited, and the inclusion tracks not found on the original edition specially prepared for the vinyl format.

Barth, Lauren

Stormwaiting

Spiritual Pajamas

“Driving up the coast highway from LA, once you hit Santa Barbara you are struck with a noticeable change in landscape. It is the gateway to the Central Coast, where the contours of the land begin to take on more dramatic inclines and feelings burn like wildfires. This was the childhood home of Lauren Barth, ranch-living and horseriding amongst the golden and dusty open ranges that still expand through parts of California. It is at these gates of change that Lauren Barth explores on Stormwaiting, her second solo effort and first on the Spiritual Pajamas label. “Behind the musical landscape of Stormwaiting, Lauren drew from a backstory she created as inspiration. A young woman and spiritual leader of a commune, blind yet finds her way by a heightened sense of awareness, is caught between the physical world of ‘Rialto’ and the spiritual—‘Morian.’ ‘Stormwaiting’ is slang for living in Rialto and the storm is the tempest within Morian. The cult’s most important message is one of Awareness. Like her protagonist, Lauren steps through these contemplations of change coming, treading one step at a time between the physical and spiritual realms, in a bittersweet anticipation of something upon us. Each song is like a deep breath in, an exhale, a pondering of the past and a wonder about the future with an acute awareness of each passing moment. “Barth is a true seasoned folk music player, evoking the California folk movement of the late 1960s like David Crosby (who also hailed from...

Infinity Ring, The

Nemesis & Nativity

Profound Lore

In the summer of 2020, the seeds for what would become The Infinity Ring were planted by Cameron Moretti, drawing together many musicians long active in the Boston metal, punk, and electronic scenes. The initial endeavors of the band started as an experimental take on dark folk music with added elements of drone and noise. The band eventually grew to be an alchemical fusion of experimental rock with many disparate strains from the post-industrial continuum, all delivered with a spiritual and mystic bent. The band’s output sits at the crossroads of many different styles, such as ominous folk, no wave, industrial, and black metal, with elements of occult and ethereal antiquarian sonics laced throughout. The band spent most of 2020 and 2021 experimenting in various studios around New England, deeply immersed in open-ended musical R&D. These sessions would eventually lead to the collaborative Ohr EP with Jarboe. In early 2022, the band set out in earnest to record its debut album, Nemesis & Nativity, at God City Studios in Salem, Massachusetts with Kurt Ballou. The album built on much of what came before, but with a more pronounced sense of ritual, atmosphere, and heaviness. During the creation of the album, genre conventions fell by the wayside and extreme experimentation was channeled, resulting in a sonic palette that morphs from elegantly haunted atmospherics to mystic ritual drone, brutalist industrial rhythms to passages of hallowed melancholy. In the live setting, the band is dedicated to bringing the same experimental and spiritual energy,...

Paint Fumes

Real Romancer

Dig! Records

***PAINT FUMES have survived a decade of being in Paint Fumes. No small feat for a group that's released 3 albums for 2 distinct and luminary labels (Slovenly and Get Hip), swaying their way between opposite ends of a sonic spectrum (garage and punk; old and new) on a no-fucks-given wrecking ball pendulum. Evolution occurred steadily from their earliest primitivism to more tuneful rockers. Real Romancer, the band's fourth LP is a whole new world of glam stomping', dual-guitar-with-added-bass hammerin' sounds taken to anthemic new heights previously unexplored by this born too loose group. If leader of the pack ELIJAH VON CRAMON's description of the band as "panic attack punk and power pop nightmares" rings true, this is Paint Fumes' KBD-benzo treat-all for a 12-song long wet dream.

Voidceremony

Threads Of Unknowing

20 Buck Spin

Upon the release of the first full length album Entropic Reflections Continuum: Dimensional Unravel it was instantly revealed that VoidCeremony were treading a path few walk. The album proved that death metal can be performed with the gliding, controlled chaos and smooth fluidity of a jazz quartet, while still leaving the listener holed up in a dungeon, low on HP, out of spells, and surrounded by deadly demons. Threads Of Unknowing is a journey which resurrects concepts on earlier display and summons evermore progressive and technical compositions. Mastermind and guitarist / vocalist Garrett Johnson and guitar virtuoso Phil Tougas (Atramentus, Chthe’ilist, Worm, First Fragment) share both vocals and lead guitar duties here, while bass god Damon Good weaves both fretted and fretless bass mastery and drummer Charlie Koryn encompasses not only speed and brutality, but a fine mix of precision and improvisation from jazz fusion. The end result is VoidCeremony and their signature sound: time-melting death black fusion. With an apt cover painting representing the lyrical and philosophical vision of an ancient and forgotten future, VoidCeremony itself seems to be operating on an alternate death metal timeline that once made itself known, but only briefly, and was soon left behind for more commercial appeal. Yet the portal has been re-opened and the merging of these boundless possibilities and directions are now being brought forth directly once again.

Miesha And The Spanks

Unconditional Love In Hi-Fi

Mint

Uncompromising, witty, authentic, inspiring–Miesha & The Spanks have established themselves as a rock ‘n’ roll force of nature to be reckoned with. The Calgary-based duo are equal parts searing guitarist / heart-melting vocalist and all-stage / all-star percussionist personality. Vexatious frontwoman Miesha Louie sets the steamrollers of love a-rollin’, ploughing through obstacles and destroying assumptions, like a red-hot indie music machine. Her new record Unconditional Love In Hi-Fi is her Mint Records debut; the album was produced by The Buzzcocks' Danny Farrant. The record's themes touch on personal and political topics such as parenthood and stories related to Miesha's mixed Shuswap heritage. Miesha and the Spanks have extensive tour plans following the release of Unconditional Love in Hi-Fi including the UK, Europe, US and Canada. RIYL: Wet Leg, Alvvays, Fleshwater, Black Mountain, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Joan Jett

Helena Celle

If You Can't Handle You At Your Worst, Then I Don't Deserve Me At My Best

Night School

Dedicated 21st Century polymath Kay Logan continues to expand her soundworld in every direction at once with her Helena Celle alias. A maximalist internal landscape of broken Jungle patterns, distorted synths and heavily warped instrumentation bent out of cognisance, If You Can’t Handle You At Your Worst, Then I Don’t Deserve Me At My Best is Logan’s most danceable, most fun and most gloriously congealed record to date. Conceived in part as a response to her 2016 debut release If I Can’t Handle Me At My Best, You Don’t Deserve You At Your Worst, 2023’s update employs similar principles (degrading technology, the joy of chance, an outsider’s gaze onto the dance floor, an embracing of the occult) to delirious effect. If I Can’t Handle was lo-fi and fragile in its technoid recasting of dance music, here Logan’s confidence allows a frantic playfulness that retains the spontaneity of all her output. It’s the work of a creative spirit reveling in the possibilities of sound, rhythm, texture and pattern. Helena Celle’s music opens up psychic space in front of the listener and invites them in. In this world, sounds and tropes once recognisable are rendered fractal, spectral and continually melting in and out of recognition. Simply put, Helena Celle might be detouring Drum & Bass, Techno and Breakbeat with a prankster’s grin but the result is pure ecstasy crushed into a part of the listener’s consciousness hitherto untroubled.

Glittering Insects

s/t

Mind Meld

***"Following up Timmy Vulgar and Quintron with a Mind Meld threefer. The collective brains of GREG KING, RYAN BELL, and JOSH FEIGERT gives us GLITTERING INSECTS. An Atlanta "Ego Summit" written and recorded over the course of four weekend sessions. These three turned in the quickly thrown together EVOKER Tape as a companion piece for GG KING- Remain Intact LP back in 2020. I was so moved by it I asked if they would be interested in putting together a Mind Meld LP." "Glittering Insects and their self-titleddebut album takes the concept a bit further, exploring a trio of minds, bringing together Atlanta’s Greg King (GG King, Carbonas), Ryan Bell (GG King, Predator), and Josh Feigert (Wymyns Prysyn, GG King) for a collaborative effort. While all three members play together in GG King, Glittering Insects is assuredly something different, and it’s pretty astonishing. Written and recorded over a series of weekends spent in the studio, the album is made off-the-cuff, but you’d never believe it upon hearing it. The record trades in garage punk and beer soaked power-pop for something far more dense, sinister, and vastly expansive. Glittering Insects are entrenched in the weeds, tangling themselves ever deeper through an array of post-hardcore menace and death rock with touches of krautrock, black metal, and shoegaze adding impossible amounts of texture. The thing is though, it doesn’t really sound like any of those genres as the trio really only pull bits and pieces together to make something amorphous."—Post Trash

Dj Panthr

Jade District

100% Silk

The inaugural vinyl debut by Hunter Thompson aka Akasha System’s shadow self, DJ Panthr, is an 8-track technoid night ride inspired by the fern-shrouded neon streets of South Tabor, Portland, where the album was conceived and created: enter the Jade District. Simmering and serpentine, the songs slipstream from lithe to liquid to narcotic, traced in acid, dub, and deep house fog. It’s dance music as both reverie and nocturne, overcast and underground, the perpetual motion of mossy neighborhoods passing in the dark, streetlights smeared by rain. Thompson speaks of the “desolate peace” of sleepless dawn walks through Southeast Portland, tall trees silhouetted against glowing strip malls. The synthetic and natural worlds fused in greenery and concrete. Jade District feels both immediate and introspective, club tracks for midnight minds, born of distance, dreams, and things unsaid.

Indopan

Yupana

100% Silk

Named for a banned 60’s psychoactive stimulant, Indopan is the splinter entity of Irish producer Andrew Morrison, aka “tape throb” godfather The Cyclist. Its sound runs distinct but parallel, a fusion of blasted house and ghosted soul, smeared with dub, breaks, and redline grit. Yupana collects nine new tracks for a 50-minute trip through outer limits and altered states, cutting keys at the doors of perception. Smoky horns, snaky bass, smeared organ, and deep torch laments spiral through kinetic, kaleidoscopic strains of dizzy swing, dusty jack, and jittery acid. Alternately weightless and weary, tense and unhinged, Morrison’s mastery of mood, rhythm, and restraint hits a supreme peak here. This is music of liquid nights, chemical bloodstreams, and ancient sorrows, ebbing and flowing from lost roots to fractured futures, unbowed and unknowable.

Edren, David

Relativiteit Van De Omgeving

Not Not Fun

Antwerp synthesist David Edren describes his latest solo collection in conceptual terms: a harmony of space and time, elements and environments, perception and impermanence. Conceived in the morass of 2020, he began envisioning a widescreen suite of electronic compositions connected to the hidden rhythms of what surrounds and affects us. The 12 tracks of Relativiteit Van de Omgeving trace a chain of miniature terrariums, from misty meadows and moonlit gardens to cosmic vistas of asteroid showers. It’s music both subtle and symphonic, attuned to the sweeping planetary clockwork of water and wind, birds and insects, seeds scattered in soil forever being reborn: “skating the thin ice of ideas, like a heroic water strider.”

Golden Hallway Music

Rules & Chance Vol. 3

Not Not Fun

Manhattan’s resident innerspace organist Zack Tornaben centers the third installment of his ongoing Rules & Chance series on breath, tone, and the ancient Qigong practice, “Eight Pieces of the Silk Brocade.” Working once again with the classic Golden Hallway Music palette of a pair of reel-to-reel tape machines, a 49-key Acetone combo organ, and an 80’s synth clone, he records everything live without overdubs in sprawling séance sessions, then digitally transfers them for distillation into choice excerpts. Swirling, shivering reveries of skylines and stained glass, Tornaben’s process prizes intuition, intimacy, and “feeling around in the dark,” inspired by a pantheon of greats from the grand tradition of harmonic divination – Young to McClellan, Brouk to Battiato. Rules & Chance Vol. 3 gently expands his evolving lexicon of daydream minimalism, levitational and limitless, born of passing thoughts and everyday joys, rippling in the mind like light on water.

Disintegration

Time Moves for Me

Feel It

***From the minds of Haley Himiko (Pleasure Leftists), Noah Anthony (Profligate) and Christopher Brown (Cloud Nothings), Disintegration's Time Moves for Me EP transcends the post-punk and synth pop sounds of the past into something entirely new and futuristic. The Cleveland group recorded these four songs in summer 2022 and self-released them on cassette shortly after. Himiko's soaring vocal range carries the EP forward atop a mix of sounds that draw from the worlds of minimal synth, programmed percussion, noise rock guitar, and pure pop melody to create an incredible seventeen minute debut. Feel It is proud to present Time Moves for Me on a vibrant 45 RPM 12" and cannot wait to hear what Disintegration does next!

Why Bother?

A City of Unsolved Miseries

Feel It

***Mason City, Iowa's WHY BOTHER? return with A City of Unsolved Miseries, their third album in as many years. Their patented basement recording setup has yet again captured something magical, thirteen originals in all. From the fringes of a small, landlocked Midwestern city—Why Bother? have honed in on a punk sound that is original, self-driven and shows no signs of slowing. Swirling in darker thematics, such as the still unsolved 1995 disappearance of Mason City TV anchor Jodi Huisentruit, the album speaks to every outcast living out their days underneath dark, grey skies. However the music strikes you—Why Bother? have defined yet another chapter of their enigmatic existence with the genius sounds captured on A City of Unsolved Miseries. First pressing limited to 300 copies.

Laurel Canyon

s/t

Agitated

Strap yourself in people, we have here the debut full length from Philly’s Laurel Canyon; after some online EP releases, and a (now) sold out 7” with Savage Pencil, Agitated Records is excited to announce the release of their self-titled album! Guitars are drenched in an Asheton worshipping haze and pummel, melded alongside a Velvets chug and mid-to-late '80s Pacific Northwest guttural / primal howl—this is American primitive music at its most powerful. Pigeonholers beware, this album takes its cues from all the most potent place—Funhouse, Loaded, Green River, early Sub Pop, all providing valid reference points. In amongst this over-amped harmonious murk are 10 visceral and catchy pop songs practically screaming for attention, the core members of Serg, Nick, and Dylan have created a beast of a record. Some tracks were recorded with Steve Albini, some with Bryce Goggin and all were mastered by Howie Weinberg. The band played 40 chaotic shows in 2022 alone from New York City to Los Angeles, where they opened for Agent Orange and Strawberry Alarm Clock on two separate occasions at the Whisky a Go Go. Recommended to fans of: The Stooges, Green River, Screaming Trees, Tad, Fluid, The Velvet Underground, Mudhoney, The Birthday Party

Kommand

Death Age

20 Buck Spin

Death Age maintains the armed to the teeth savage militancy of earlier material from LA’s Kommand, now taken even further into enemy territory with more grisly wartorn brutality than ever. Like the coordinated bombardment of an entire continent, Death Age is an air raid siren for imminent cataclysm. The ominous atmosphere on Death Age heralds the single-minded concentrated objective; to batter, demolish and destroy with no quarter given. Death metal of this kind taps into the most primitive, untamed instincts, advancing like a convoy of tanks through occupied territory, heedless of whatever or whoever stands in its path. From opener “Final Virus” to closer “Collapse Metropolis,” Kommand’s vision of a dystopian hellscape, cities permanently scarred by heavy weaponry, and those unfortunates who survived the onslaught never relents or offers respite. Death Age thus renders a terminal epitaph on the bloody trash heap of near-future history.

Spirit Possession

Of The Sign…

Profound Lore

Almost three years spent sharpening orthodox weapons, Spirit Possession reveal their second full length Of The Sign…, six schizo spiraling, deranged hymns of black heavy metal from a lost time. While the s/t full length was a raw blistering torrent draped in first wave blood, Of The Sign… seems to be thoroughly drenched in its epic, strange and primitive ways. A violent cacophony of insanity laden cavern vocals, labyrinthian guitar trilling, scalding drum brutality, and analog harsh-noise eruptions—these are sinister yet adventurous black / heavy / death abominations from a forgotten age. Erratic musical madness with improbable entrances, and impossible exits. Featuring S. Peacock (Ulthar / Pandiscordian Necrogenesis / Mastery ) on strings and vocals, and A. Spungin (Vouna / Ormus / Taurus ) on drums and handmade synthesizers. Recorded in the depths of the S•P Dungeon / and studio mixed at Menegroth The Thousand Caves.

Keithley, Joe

STAND

Sudden Death

After forty-five years of leading legendary punks D.O.A., the man they call Joey Shithead aka Joe Keithley, has a new solo album out on Sudden Death Records—don’t worry, D.O.A. is still touring! Stand has a rootsy, rebellious tone, as Keithley combines acoustic and electric guitar on this timely and politically charged album. Many have compared Keithley to a modern day Woody Guthrie or Pete Seeger because he has spent a lifetime standing up for what’s right through his music and through his actions—Stand befits that ethic and long-held tradition. The songs cover a wide range of emotions. There’s timely political stuff like “The Warrior Lives Again,” “Fentanyl Blues,” “This Machine Kills Fascists,” and “Ginger Goodwin.” Poignant songs include “Lookin’,” “For A World,” “People Power,” and a cover of D.O.A.’s “2+2.” Keithley even digs into movies and TV with his spaghetti western-inspired “Man With No Name” and an ode to Star Trek called “Men For All Ages.” He really hits the mark, as he covers songs from his idols Johnny Cash, Leadbelly and Stompin’ Tom Conners. On Stand, one gets a wide array of Keithley’s talents: from his vocals that have never covered such a wide range, to his sterling guitar playing, to his powerful songwriting ability. To make sure the album had the right tone, Keithley got the right people to accompany him, which includes one of the best acoustic rhythm sections in Canada, Leon Power and Darren Parris, and also great keyboards from Chris Gestrin, with Jessie Zubot...

Electric Chair

Act Of Aggression

Iron Lung

***There was a time when the fear of nuclear destruction was so thick you could feel it in the your lungs and walked the streets. Like at any moment some ICBM would rain fire on your town and the troops would be thrust into action. Only they wouldn’t be defending the town they would use the melee as an excuse to rid their little podunk heaven of the “punker plague”. Those freaky weirdos with pins in their ear and stains on their gear. The ones that spray paint “Ronald Reagan SUCKS a big one” on the hoods of cars. The ones that don’t fit and don’t wanna… Friends and enemies, introducing ELECTRIC CHAIR! 1,100 copies on black 150gram vinyl housed in a full color 24pt jacket with lyric insert included. Recorded by Detto. Mastered by Geza X. Art by Collin Buhr and Jesse Michaels.

Eteraz

Destined To Kill

Iron Lung

***Just when you thought it was safe to come out of the bomb shelter, Eteraz returns, crustier and more metallic than ever… Rabid with violence in their veins and the sonic arsenal to carry out full scale warfare on the senses. Starting in the ear and drilling its way to what’s left of your sorry excuse for a brain. There will be nothing left. Bombastic buzzsaw guitars, relentless pummeling bass, chaotically vicious drum battery and a wildly sinister vocals make for an unholy alchemy of evil fucking hardcore. Not to be taken lightly. 500 blood red 7” flexis housed in a reverse card 12pt four panel foldover sleeve. Recorded by Detto. Mastered by Sasha Stroud. Art by Rose.

Soft Shoulder

Smile Building's Exit

Gilgongo

***Recorded in late 2020 but catching an extreme pressing plant bottleneck, the new LP from Soft Shoulder could appropriately be subtitled: “More Songs About Nothing Much, Some Entropy Implied”. A document of a slow-moving human experience (being unable to retrieve packages from your post office’s parcel locker, other occupants of the building your studio is in screaming wildly in the hallway while you try to record, vague homage to public-access television, a “how to” in changing your password, ETC) housed inside a dilapidated, but smiling, building and channeled through an amalgamation of sporadic picks from the record collection of James Fella (e.g. / in the key of F: The Fall, Fire Engines, The Futurians, Frumpies). Mastered by John Dieterich, back cover art by Eric Sanchez.

Choncy

Community Chest

Feel It

***Choncy’s Community Chest is an itch-scratching debut album shaped by post-punk, garage, and hardcore-adjacent music. The album confronts the trials and tribulations of the modern day workforce culture day-by-day in the Rust Belt. The four piece band out of Cincinnati, Ohio embraces their original punk sound through uniquely biting vocals and fluctuating shrill guitars, all kept together with a potent and driving rhythm section. The album was recorded to tape at Amish Studios with Joe Tellman in Nashville, Tennessee. “Company Man,” the album's lead single, capitalizes on its post-punk rhythm and witty vocals, while “Beehive” parallels modern hardcore music. Choncy passionately shape their Midwestern identity across 'Community Chest' with an original sonic and visual prowess.

Frisk / Last Affront

Split

Iron Lung

***If music that feels like a massage with broken glass, then this is the rub for you! We know, we’ve withstood the pain for you but now it's finally time to share. Short, fast and raging hardcore from both of these UK bruisers. Meant to be a promo tape for Frisk’s "Stalker" LP, which as you know is already out, and meant to coincide with their jaunt around the Empire late last year but, of course, Iron Lung Records got it done just in time for the day after, haha. As chance would have it, Last Affront is coming over to the states to do a tour so now this tape is their tour promo thing. Life is a stab in the dark at best so turn the lights off and start waving your knives in the air.

Dark, The

Dressing The Corpse

Scat

***ON LIMITED CLEAR + BLUE VINYL!!! The Dark were a Cleveland hardcore / deathrock hybrid that in many ways was ground zero for The Guns, Spike in Vain, Knifedance, and several more beyond. For The Dark’s first ever vinyl album Dressing The Corpse, Scat has collected highlights from sessions recorded between 1981 and 1984 that range from savage post-punk (imagine Venom covering Warsaw), to raging exacto-knife thrashers, deathrock, and proto-black metal —there’s even the requisite creepy, atmospheric instrumental to open the album (“Beyond The Ice”)—which is naturally followed by “Fire In The Church.” Then things go other places, the group covered a lot of ground in its two and a half years and were always ahead of the curve. Although the band’s median age ranges from fifteen to seventeen across these recordings, the rhythm section is second to none. The guitar playing is way further afield than most hardcore bands of the era. Namesake vocalist Tom Dark howls like a wolf, and could command a stage like few others. To be fair, the band’s youth does make itself known in some of the lyrics, but otherwise you’d never guess this was just a bunch of kids—it needn’t be graded on a curve. The Dark had auspicious beginnings. They cut their teeth as The Decapitators in 1979, learning to play at the feet of the electric eels, Pagans, Dead Boys, and Cramps. After a year off, the four reformed to play only originals as The Dark, and almost immediately Mike Hudson...

Kruelty

Untopia

Profound Lore

Formed in Tokyo, Japan in the summer of 2017, Kruelty has emerged as the most notable artist to find that sweet spot where the amalgamation of heavy beatdown hardcore and ’90s American / Scandinavian death / doom metal meet—a blueprint of brutality the band slams and unleashes. Untopia is the ultimate convergence of punishing death metal riffs and mind-blowing breakdowns influenced by Japanese and ’90s East Coast hardcore bands. 2020 saw the release of Kruelty’s debut album A Dying Truth and revealed itself as one of the heaviest albums that year. With their new album, they release an album even bigger in scope and ultimately heavier than their debut. Expect Kruelty to crush stages live in cities throughout 2023 with tours planned in North America, Europe, Australia, Asia etc.

Úlfúð

Of Existential Distortion

Dark Descent

Bred in the land of ice and fire, Úlfúð are the latest addition to Dark Descent’s flawless, ever-diversifying roster. Championing their personal blend of black and death metal (with emphasis on the former), the band’s debut album Of Existential Distortion uniquely captures the desolate vastness of the volcanic wastelands like only Icelanders can. Úlfúð’s first full-length is a masterclass in songcraft, showcasing a stunning balance of entrancing atmosphere, haunting melody, and deathless violence. Artist Bahrull Marta was summoned to conjure the breath-taking artwork, whilst photographs by Alma Líf Þorsteinsdóttir adorn the inlay with visions of each offering. “We are extremely excited to be releasing our first full-length album with Dark Descent! This album heralds our entity and declares our intent; to immerse you in our ritual of catharsis and cacophony! We cannot wait to share our music with you. The time is nigh!” Úlfúð’s (pronounced “ool-wooth”, meaning animosity or hostility) were formed in early 2015 in Reykjavik, Iceland. The band self-released debut EP First Sermon in 2018 and recorded debut Of Existential Distortion in 2020. A release truly worth waiting for!

Infinite River

Prequel

Birdman

“Finally, we get some of the finest artistic results of the awful, forced hibernation zones we all were forced to bubble ourselves into during the COVID era. It [Infinite River’s Prequel] sounds like the soundtrack to a space desert film you can’t wait to watch. There are so many of the sounds you already like that might come from guitars and drone elements, but it’s subtly put together here in ways that remove all sense of ego. These are sort of slowed-down post-rock songs, but it’s not overly interested in math, and it is way too cosmic to be post-rock. Sorry we even said ‘post-rock.’ “These perfect, first instrumental recordings here were made in a home studio in Birmingham, Michigan by three longtime friends and compatriots who were slowly starting to go nuts as lockdown started. Later, another friend shuttering in place in the U.P. added percussion elements. ‘All our friends were doing yoga, so we made this yoga music for them,’ Gretchen Davidson explains half-seriously. But this music contains multitudes. It exists in a curious space between improvised music and subtle songs that fall apart the closer you get to them. There is a lot of space in between these notes. “No one will call this a ‘Detroit supergroup,’ and we implore you to follow suit. However, the group curiously brings together disparate yet friendly threads of the fertile Detroit underground: garage, weirdo indie, and the noise scene—from its very top practitioners, no less. Gretchen Davidson (Slumber Party, Terror...

Sonny And The Sunsets

Longtime Companion

Rocks In Your Head

The first country record of Sonny & the Sunsets, Longtime Companion, has grown into a bit of a cult classic. So much that tours have been made under the fitting moniker Sonny & His Rhinestone Sunsets, with Smith swapping out his doo wop garage ensembles and replacing with full country bands. In the lineage of Gene Clark, The Flying Burrito Brothers, Townes Van Zandt, a little Johnny Cash, even the countrier side of the Kinks. When Sonny Smith's ten-year relationship started to hit the skids, he picked up his guitar and chronicled his eventual breakup with the Sunsets' third record, Longtime Companion. Joined by the Sunsets plus his country band the Fuckaroos, Smith toes the line between contemporary sometimes Country performers like Angel Olson or Shannon Shaw (both of whom he's collaborated with) and honoring his ramshackle pop origins. Whether longing for a place back in his ex's heart on the lilting "Pretend You Love Me," finding "a funny kind of sad joy" in the emptiness of her eyes on the bitter "I See the Void," or recounting an affair with a divorcée on the woeful/wistful "Children of the Beehive," Smith mostly keeps the lyrics simple, which makes Longtime Companion more universally relatable and, by holding the details close to the vest, conjures the feeling of him wandering the world on his own as he rediscovers his identity as a single man. And sure enough, when he's not singing about his relationship, he's self-analyzing, confessing to drinking too much ("Dried...