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Lost Days, The

In The Store

Speakeasy Studios SF

After meeting at a memorial for a mutual friend, Tony Molina (Ovens) and Sarah Rose Janko (Dawn Riding) started spending nights into mornings playing guitar and singing their hearts out to an audience of empty wine bottles in the East Oakland warehouse where Janko lived. Both fans of each other’s respective musical projects, they bonded over a shared love of The Byrds and Bill Fox and leaned into their friendship as a much needed support in a time of dizzying grief. The days were marked in trips to Jackson’s Liquor store, the same spot Molina frequented while recording with his band Ovens a decade earlier, at a studio in the same neighborhood. The nights drifted by. The songs kept coming. They decided they wanted to record all they’d been pouring their hearts into and The Lost Days was born. The Lost Days recorded their first release, Lost Demos, with Kit Center at his home studio and mixed it at another friend Nick Bassett’s house in West Oakland. In April 2021 the demo was released on cassette by Oakland label The Long Road Society, eventually making its way into the hands of Spanish label Mapache, who pressed the five-track release on vinyl with the addition of a previously unreleased song. Over the course of 2021, the two kept writing and sharing songs. With Janko moving to New Orleans and the pandemic keeping the two songwriters apart, they worked long distance, sending demos back and forth. Inspired by the solo work of...

Darts, The

Snake Oil

Alternative Tentacles

At last! The Darts return from their Bat Cave Covid lair, with Snake Oil—by far their best album to date. The Darts formed in 2016 with the goal of getting some solid female musicians together to make garage punk rock and roll noise, see the world, and basically have a super-fun slumber party every night. They are now hands down one of the best garage bands in the world. This is a much fuller sound than any Darts disc before, courtesy of their longtime collaborator Bob Hoag (FB Rec) and some remote control co-production wizardry from Jello Biafra himself. Featuring the return of Nicole Laurnne on vocals / Farfisa and Hammond organ, Christina Nunez on bass / vocals, and Meliza Jackson on guitars / vocals, Snake Oil is the debut of new drummer Mary Rose Gonzales. The result? It comes out smoking as if the band had been in a pressure cooker throughout the pandemic. Expect the wider sound and sparkle of Laurnne and Nunez’s previous band, The Love Me Nots (which was also recorded by the brilliant Bob Hoag), but with way more raunch—and Laurnne’s voice has never sounded better. Snake Oil is for fans of agile, sultry vocals and beefy, vintage rhythm sections paired with razor-tone guitars. This Snake Oil was concocted to remedy the most unaffected and stiff-legged garage rockers out there!

Leimer, K.

LUYU

Palace Of Lights

“These things happen,” says K. Leimer of LUYU. Listen Until You Understand is a test drive through an obstacle course designed for new instruments, arrangements, juxtapositions, and real-time experiments dedicated to leaving the original impulses untouched and unadorned. Joined at times by digital percussionist Dolphie Stein, the music throws itself against itself without loyalty to genre or form, mashing granular particles into a tremulous spectrum of soundwalls, transitions, noise, distortions, and the occasional clearing. As close to live improvisation as one can get in a multitrack studio setting, LUYU takes generative techniques and drops them into short-form events by building its soundstage in thickets of shifting elements, collapsing phrases, broken signatures, and implied patterns. An outlier in Leimer’s catalog of general stillness and subtle detail, LUYU revels in the bare sound of things usually hidden in the mix. Kerry Leimer founded Palace Of Lights in 1979. Leimer’s work has also been issued by Abstrakce, Autumn, First Terrace, Les Giants, Invisible Inc., Origin Peoples and RVNG. His work is included in the Cherry Red Noise Floor compilation series and his early cassette work is featured in the critically acclaimed VOD box set American Cassette Culture. Leimer has been actively producing music since the mid 1970s—his current catalog includes twenty solo albums plus collaborative albums with Savant, Marc Barreca, and Three Point Circle. Recent soundtracks include work for video artists Cristiane Bouger and Fred Birchman, HBO’s How To With John Wilson and the Netflix documentary John Was Trying to Contact Aliens. His...

Vacuous

Dreams Of Dysphoria

Dark Descent

London’s Vacuous finally present their debut album to follow the magnificent 2020 EP Katabasis. Greeting the listener along with the equally gloomy cover-art is an array of spectral and atmospheric death metal that is haunting beyond the nightmarish depths of the human mind. Perhaps owing to their fixation on the human psyche, or the equally inescapable reality their music conjures with contorting riffs, rock-solid drumming and bellowed vocals, chasms of atmosphere are opened to pour one’s own psyche into. One of the most unique things about Vacuous is their ability to play such bludgeoning, heavy music while retaining a very anguished emotional side, lending massively to the cataclysmic ambience of Dreams Of Dysphoria. The outcome of this is music is sonically punishing. From eerily dragging moments of graven doom through to the churning malice of sickeningly twisted fury, there is nothing but charnel brilliance on display here in a truly diverse platter of hostilities. While one could wrongfully assume that there is only simplicity to be found in this style of music, Vacuous have an utterly unique, warped way of writing their songs that is like no other. From the gloomier moments to the gut-wrenching hooks, there is always something slightly off-kilter here that is disquieting and unfamiliar. This feverish and unwelcoming side of the music is hard to shake, which gives the album a genuinely disturbing factor while the absolutely ferocious death metal core is never lost, nor anything short of thrust upon oneself. It would be an easy...

Smith, Linda & Nancy Andrews

A Passing Cloud

Grapefruit / Gertrude Tapes

In 1983, Nancy Andrews and Linda Smith shared a big house in Baltimore with a continuously revolving cast of artists and musicians. It was there the like-minded artists formed their first band, Ceramic Madonna Head (with Plastic Arms), a short-lived project which included housemates Elizabeth Downing and Peggy Bitzer. By the time the lease was up, Smith and Bitzer had decided to move to New York where they would form a new band called The Woods while Andrews and Downing remained in Baltimore and formed a performance art band called Lambs Eat Ivy. While playing guitar in The Woods in the mid-’80s Smith purchased her first 4-track cassette recorder and embarked on a pioneering decade of solo, DIY home recording with a series of cassettes and 7-inch records of smart and moody singer-songwriter bedroom pop music. This trailblazing period was recently documented on the Captured Tracks retrospective compilation Till Another Time: 1988-1996. Her band, The Woods, made a record which was shelved for decades but will finally see release in 2023. During this same period Andrews pursued art, animation and filmmaking with occasional forays into music including another short-lived collaboration with Smith called The Gertrudes as well as a 7-inch under the alias Pinky on Harriet Records in 1992. The friends stayed in touch but hadn’t worked on a project together in nearly thirty years. In 2020, Smith rediscovered in the back of a drawer some old tapes of Andrews’s songs she had recorded for her in the ’90s. In...

Heavy Mother

Comical Uncertainty

Feel It

***Bloomington, Indiana's HEAVY MOTHER are back with a new EP to kick off 2023. Three new originals follow up nicely on their debut album, This Time Around, that came out late last year—a stripped down, r'n'r garage punk extravaganza. Heavy Mother also treat us to dynamite renditions of "The Other Side of This Life" (Fred Neil), "Boogaloo!" (Don Gardner), and the Velvet Underground's "Foggy Notion" featuring a special guest appearance from Craig Bell (Rocket From The Tombs, Mirrors, Saucers). Comical Uncertainty is one heck of a twenty-six minute ride from Indiana's finest rock'n'roll band around!

Mckechnie, Doug

San Francisco Moog: 1968-72 Vol. 2

VG+ Records

The first volume of San Francisco Moog: 1968-72 introduced the world to a trove of recordings from a little-known hinge point in electronic-music history. Vol. 2 brings to light the rest of tapes—and the rest of the story. In 1968, Bay Area native Doug McKechnie got hold of one the very first modular Moog synthesizers ever made and began finding his own way to play it. Soon, he was hauling the finicky instrument around to perform improvised concerts at colleges and psychedelic ballrooms, as well as an ill-fated appearance on the bill at Altamont. Some of the performances were recorded, and the surviving tapes—never before released—capture a free-flowing, transportive sound that fills in the gap between the austere mid-century academic avant garde and the expansive cosmic suites of Tangerine Dream and the rest of the Berlin School in the ’70s. Vol. 2 captures a wider range of sounds and moods, encompassing austere sonic experiments, early sequenced pulses, and melodic etudes. “These pieces represent amazingly fully formed early approaches to the very idea of musical synthesis...arresting even to modern ears.” —Goldmine “Presages both Tangerine Dream’s soundtracks and, in its most grimy moments, Acid Tracks.” —The Wire

Majesties

Vast Reaches Unclaimed

20 Buck Spin

The creative centers of Obsequiae and Inexorum come together as one in the preeminent new force known as Majesties. To those familiar with the individual pieces that make up Majesties, the sound on debut album Vast Reaches Unclaimed will be another striking addition to their respective oeuvres, recalling the glorious days of Wrong Again and No Fashion Records. Evoking a time when Gothenburg was starting to unseat Stockholm as the unimpeachable city for Swedish death metal in the mind of the international metal scene, Majesties have that intrinsic sense of death metal’s rabid intensity and the effortlessly satisfying melodic ability that made albums like The Jester Race and its immediate forbears instant classics. The mix of major key melodies and twin guitar harmonies snaking through every track ornament the vigorous riff eruptions and anguished vocals in a sheen of gleaming brilliance that proves an exhilarating triumph to behold. Without a hint of the corruption the style experienced in a post-Slaughter Of The Soul world, Vast Reaches Unclaimed exists as a fervent reminder of what was and what again shall be. Majesties are re-animating the corpse of the true melodic death metal style that both divided and invigorated the death metal scene of the mid-1990s and bring it into 2023 like it never left, sounding as novel and thrilling as ever.

Cunningham, David

Grey Scale

Superior Viaduct

David Cunningham was born in Ireland in 1954. His work ranges from pop music to gallery installations including several collaborations with visual artists. His first significant commercial success came with The Flying Lizards’ single “Money,” an international hit in 1979. Originally released in 1976, Cunningham’s first solo album Grey Scale has become a landmark statement of DIY minimalist composition—continuing in the vein of the wild explosion of arthouse experimentation from the early ’70s. Cunningham, then a student at the Maidstone College of Art in Kent, drafted fellow student non-musicians and (using whatever instruments available) crafted an endlessly shifting sonic palette with an improvisor’s keen sensitivity to space, texture and tone. As Cunningham states in the liner notes, his approach was to “pursue something (which may appear trivial or meaningless) so rigorously or relentlessly to the point that it reveals something new.” Cunningham was influenced by live performances he was attending at the time by English composers Cornelius Cardew, Gavin Bryars and Michael Nyman as well as free improvisors Evan Parker, Derek Bailey, David Toop and Paul Burwell. The inaugural release on Cunningham’s own Piano label, Grey Scale was indeed “something new” in 1976. The artist quickly integrated his experimental sensibilities to produce art-rock pioneers This Heat, whose debut appeared on Piano in 1979. His popular success performing as The Flying Lizards (with two electro-punk albums on Virgin during the New Wave era) was presaged by this seminal work of fascinating sound collage and tonal freedom. First-time reissue.

Veils, The

…And Out Of The Void Came Love

Ba Da Bing!

It’s been seven strange years since The Veils’ last studio album Total Depravity, and Finn Andrews has a new double album to show for it. …And Out Of The Void Came Love is the result of this tumultuous period of injury, isolation and new life. Following the release of Total Depravity, Andrews released a solo album and began a worldwide tour. One night, while lashing out at a particularly intense moment on piano, he broke his wrist on stage. He played on and finished the rest of the tour, but it wasn’t until he got it examined much later that he realized what a bad move that was. The convalescence that followed meant a lengthy hiatus from touring, so he did what he does best and stayed at home and wrote songs. Just when his hand had healed sufficiently for him to play again, The Veils found themselves in need of a new record label, but Finn set about starting to make a new record regardless. Producer Tom Healy invited Finn to his small studio underneath the old Crystal Palace ballroom in Mount Eden, and they listened through the legions of songs he had amassed throughout the previous year. Following another two years of intermittent recording between lockdowns, Finn’s wife became pregnant, and yet more songs started coming. By the time the songs had been recorded, it was clear that arranging the album into two halves best suited such varied material—but the meaning of the songs as a whole still...

Whiffs, The

Scratch 'N' Sniff

Dig! Records

***HEY YOU! Get a whiff of this: Scratch ‘N’ Sniff by The Whiffs — the second album by Kansas City’s foremost power pop foursome is upon us via Dig! Record Co (US) & Bachelor Records (EU). Not unlike their first album (Another Whiff), and as rock critic Jon Harrison heralds in the album’s liner notes: “this sophomoric offering provides all of the things you love about The Whiffs.” … Now, if you’re asking yourself ‘what do I love about the Whiffs’? Here’s a clue: SONGS. You love The Whiffs’ songs! And now Scratch ‘N’ Sniff’s got 13 new boffo numbers brimming with the hook-laden, never-far-from-the-bar pub-rock snarl The Whiffs nail everytime. The Whiffs are less recording artists than a band of journeymen, from the drums Jake Cardwell (C&C Drum Co.) built-by-hand, to Joey Rubbish’s home recording studio (Club Sandwich). It’s only natural Scratch ‘N’ Sniff is a homegrown production from the floor (tom) up, and was recorded in the band’s living room. The songs are all their own too. Whether penned by Cameron (Rory), Campbell (Zach) or Rubbish (Joey), they all stink of The Whiffs broken-in power pop confectionery. A close listen will reveal the cracks of many-a-can and roommates laughing at vocal takes. As such, everyone’s invited to Scratch ‘N’ Sniff and dive in! Recommended if you DIG!: The Whiffs’ previous output, Stiff Records, The Mats, The Rubs and any era of the Fab Four!

Only A Visitor

Decay

Mint

Described as “Bjork's light-footed nymph child,” (Beatroute) Vancouver quintet Only A Visitor brings a precise and buoyant live energy to song-crafting with their “kaleidoscopic compositions” (Dusted Magazine.) Fusing together avant-pop, jazz, classical and DIY influences and substituting guitar with three part harmonies that “display a delightful innovation” (HuffPost,) they have released three albums to date and have recently signed to Mint Records for their fourth release Decay. Since forming in 2015, they have appeared at the Montreal, Halifax, Ottawa, Toronto and Vancouver Jazz Festivals and the Vancouver Island Music Festival, among others, and have toured Canada and internationally. With drummer Kevin Romain, bassist Jeff Gammon, and vocalists Emma Postl and Celina Kurz, classically trained but DIY nurtured songwriter and arranger Robyn Jacob wraps gently asymmetrical sonic tendrils around pop skeletons.

Object Of Affection

Field Of Appearances

Profound Lore

Field Of Appearances is the full-length debut from Los Angeles-based band Object Of Affection, which contains members of renowned acts Fury, Death Bells, and Lock. Meticulously crafted with Grammy-nominated producer Alex Newport and emerging engineer Phillip Odom, Field Of Appearances is an exceedingly memorable, precisely cohesive, and importantly, a refreshing addition to the alternative music landscape. With the inclusion of drum machines, synthesizers, acoustic guitars, and auxiliary percussion, Field Of Appearances highlights the band’s sophisticated evolution and experimentation from previous single “Through And Through” (Suicide Squeeze) and their self-titled tape. The result: ten songs exploding in character, contrast, and excitement. Exploring themes of reflection, insufficiency, and déjà vu as well as additional contributions from Bre Morell (Temple Of Angels, Crushed) and Brittney Beppu, each track on here simultaneously plays a role in making it a more significant sum than its parts while also standing out individually. This debut taps into the primitivism of said members’ other projects while elevating their capacity for atmosphere and melody. Hints of gloomy post-punk, forlorn new wave, and down-and-out Reagan-era alternative rock reverberate in their sound, not as pastiche but in sonic kinship to the austerity and fatalism embedded in the previous generation’s desperate and dejected anthems. Already sharing the stage with accomplished bands including Ceremony, Fiddlehead, Gulch, These Arms Are Snakes, and Special Interest, the band is a welcome addition to the Profound Lore family.

Brain Tourniquet

…An Expression In Pain

Iron Lung

***Rage fueled powerviolence/harDCore from the “City of Magnificent Distances”. Since their 2018 inception, Brain Tourniquet has payed homage to the classic West Coast Power Violence legends like Man Is The Bastard, Crossed Out and Neanderthal while maintaining their own identity and consistently twisting the conventions of the genre to make something new and urgent and fucking skull crushing. …An Expression In Pain takes that forward trajectory 10 steps further and absolutely decimates expectations. This band is truly a light in the darkness. (STREET DATE - 2/24/2023)

Wound Man

Human Outline

Iron Lung

***People will only be pushed so far before they snap. And then violence ensues. Followed by an immediate need for solitude. Human Outline is what that feeling sounds like. Fists packed, boots laced, ready to destroy everything in sight. Wound Man has always been a band heavily influenced by the likes of Crossed Out and Infest, that’s obvious, but what really makes them stand out is a heavy doom undercurrent that doesn’t necessarily come out in the riffs but the darkness of it is there. No rip-off shit, just tangible depression given to angry action via alternating/direct current. And that is some magnificent ugliness. (STREET DATE - 2/24/2023)

Dwyer, John + Ryan Sawyer & Andres Renteria

Posh Swat

Rock Is Hell

Posh Swat, an all-percussion improvisation album with John Dwyer (OSEES, Damaged Bug, OCS, etc), Ryan Sawyer and Andres Renteria. “Sand in your hair and bugs in your teeth. Hand on your knife, knife in your sheath. Grimy bass burps thru a fried stack. And the crack of the snare is a mighty pink smack. Bells, whistles conga and vibes. This is a drug record. One thousand times. For fans of Niagra, Black Pus, Container, Bruce Ditmas and all things beat driven and drum craven.” —John Dwyer

Sunfoot

In The Baleen

Rocks In Your Head

Sunfoot—the minimalist expressionistic improvisational experimental emotional intellectual cathartic project of three best friends / musicians created an epic sonic smattering during the heart of the Covid 19 Pandemic. Wearing protective masks just to play music with each other, and staying in separate quarters at the infamous Sou'Wester trailer hotel, they would gather like silent monks in the morning, make highly original music with very little verbal communication and then part ways at end of the day. Under the production of Sonny Smith, they created with little break until they were exhausted and emotionally unhinged. During the mixing of the record, percussionist Ron Burns died tragically and unexpectedly, creating a whole new meaning for the record and a whole new meaning for his remaining two best friends. The songs range from a post punk devolved pop song form punctuated by searing guitar to an extremely personal and original musical communication style between three thoughtful musicians. With the passing of Burns, songs like "Space," "Mean World," "You Roll the Dice Everyday" and "No Master Plan" take on a more tragic and sensitive hue. However, Sunfoot has always been a positive vibration ensemble, spiritually speaking they are a very American counterpart to Japan’s Maher Shalal Hash Baz. Sunfoot’s love for each other and life quest to battle negativity has carried through their music all along. Beneath the cloud of tragedy during the making of this sensitive and emotionally intelligent art piece the album stands as a testament of friendship, originality and deep musical...

Tithe

Inverse Rapture

Profound Lore

Tithe is a Portland, Oregon-based band that constructs an unorthodox amalgamation of death metal, black metal, and grind without straying too far from the fundamentals of aggressiveness and depravity. Conceived in 2017 by vocalist / guitarist Matt Eiseman and drummer Kevin Swartz, the band spent its first years writing and releasing a self-titled EP before finding bassist Alex Huddleston at the end of 2018. This lineup went on to release their debut album Penance in May 2020, which despite the challenge of releasing in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, was well-received. The album explores the themes of psychedelics, mental illness and the human condition. Tithe’s sophomore album Inverse Rapture evolves upon the themes of Penance and morphs into a more angry, raw and dissonant form. The trio’s most incendiary material to date, this latest maintains the blazing tempos the band is known for with dreary, lowering passages strewn throughout. Produced / mixed by Fester, mastered by Adam Gonsalves and featuring the macabre art of Abomination Hammer, Inverse Rapture is a complete exhibition of viciousness and despair beginning to end.

Ulthar

Anthronomicon

20 Buck Spin

***CHECK STOCK!!! Received a 7.6 rating from Pitchfork. Over the course of their first two albums, Cosmovore and Providence, Ulthar carved out a unique niche on the spectrum of underground metal, forging a grotesquely elegant hybrid of technical death metal alchemy and black metal’s stinging blizzard winds, all with the acerbic color of the absurdist’s brush. Nearly three years on from Providence, a burst of deadly creativity has resulted in two new albums, to be released simultaneously. Anthronomicon embodies the continued progression of Ulthar’s mastery over its art—always evolving, refining and pushing forward. From the opening blasts and twisting mania of “Cephalopohre,” Ulthar baffle with angular warped riffage, dipping in and out of various dimensional spheres. Off-kilter multi-directional turns veer swiftly and violently as though about to come apart at the seams only to reshape again and again into ever more monumental forms. Each of Anthronomicon’s eight tracks represent a fractious piece of a larger puzzle, each a maze unto itself that when taken together allow one to traverse this inverted surrealist conundrum. Having reached albums three and four concurrently, and having many other bands and albums under their collective belts, the three seasoned players that comprise Ulthar have not been content to play things straightforward, to be just another death metal band among thousands. Rather the band continuously seeks and executes with more compulsive complexity, more nuance and in pursuit of a persistent ascension to a transcendent and incongruous world beyond the mundane; a place of euphoric exultation and...

Ulthar

Helionomicon

20 Buck Spin

***CHECK STOCK!!! Received a 7.0 rating from Pitchfork. Over the course of their first two albums, Cosmovore and Providence, Ulthar carved out a unique niche on the spectrum of underground metal, forging a grotesquely elegant hybrid of technical death metal alchemy and black metal’s stinging blizzard winds, all with the acerbic color of the absurdist’s brush. Nearly three years on from Providence, a burst of deadly creativity has resulted in two new albums, to be released simultaneously. Where its sister album Anthronomicon presents an eight-piece puzzle of labyrinthine tumult, Helionomicon takes those elements and creates two towering twenty minute monoliths of radiant avant-garde immensity. Each track, appropriately titled “Helionomicon” and “Anthronomicon,” transports the listener on a vast journey of psycho-cerebral spectacle where hitherto unimagined landscapes take shape and strange intangible structures pierce the disintegrating firmament. Despite the substantial length of these two tracks, it’s never a tedious ride; each visits countless new vistas and perspectives across time. In essence Helionomicon becomes a synthesis of all Ulthar’s recorded output to this point across two climactic, ambitious epics. Having reached albums three and four concurrently, and having many other bands and albums under their collective belts, the three seasoned players that comprise Ulthar have not been content to play things straightforward, to be just another death metal band among thousands. Rather the band continuously seeks and executes with more compulsive complexity, more nuance and in pursuit of a persistent ascension to a transcendent and incongruous world beyond the mundane; a place of...

Cheater Slicks

Ill-Fated Cusses

In The Red

Cheater Slicks, the take-no-prisoners Columbus, Ohio-based trio, return to Los Angeles’ In The Red Records with the thrilling, musically diverse Ill-Fated Cusses, their first album in eight years and their first package for the label in twenty years. The ten-track collection follows Piano Tunnels, a freewheeling, improvisation-based benefit collaboration with vocalist Bill Gage, whom the band has known since the then newly-formed trio and the singer’s group BILL were working in the Boston area in 1987. Other players joined this record other than core members Tom and Dave Shannon and Dana Hatch. Will Foster, who recorded the record, is heard playing various keyboards and MIDI instrument emulations on the finished record. Most interestingly, James Arthur, of Fireworks and the Necessary Evils, was drafted to play bass, and he appears on every song on the album. Cheater Slicks had not deviated from the two-guitars-and-drums formula since its early days in Boston, when bassists Dina Pearlman, Allen “Alpo” Paulino of the Real Kids, and Merle Allin, brother of the notorious GG Allin, all rotated through the group. After thirty-five years in business, it makes about as much sense to pigeonhole Cheater Slicks as simply a “garage-rock band” as it would to call the Rolling Stones a “blues band.” Ill-Fated Cusses, more than any other album in the group’s discography, explores a broad musical palette on its nine original songs and one cover, Memphis rockabilly icon Charlie Feathers’ stark barroom murder ballad “Cold Dark Night.” This latest chapter in the Cheater Slicks saga...

Carlton Melton

Resemble Ensemble

Agitated

Carlton Melton, from Northern California, are now a practicing four-piece in the arts of melted-minds psychedelia. With the added kraut-oomph and sike-flutter of fellow Californian Anthony Taibi (whom you may know as being a member of White Manna, and also DDT with Andy) Rich Millman, Andy Duvall, and Clint Golden have now embellished the Carlton Melton sound. Pushing forward as a quartet, the band recorded Resemble Ensemble in July 2021 at Anthony’s home studio, 3D Light in Freshwater, CA. Anthony did all the recording and mixing. The Melton Magick Karpet settled, and our favorite contemporary sikedelic warlods plugged in, amped up and let it flow—and flow it does—from the krautrock fuelled pszych-raga of "Prescribed Skies," the fluid dronescape of "Elsewhere" that welcomes you into its arms with a warming tone, almost a missing Spacemen 3 demo at the feast here. "So The Story Grows" has the drone scraping through a murk of dazzling feedback and pummel, with the fuller sounding Melton giving the genre a proper wobble, hold on to your brains people. "High Alert"—whas this? Synth and guitar interplay jambusting, this is the Melton wigging out and almost interweaving 70s high table rock with some odd and downright perverse synthfunkpunk rhythms. Get weird or get wired—or both. Easily done here.. Closing out the album with "Route Thirteen" is the road trip home. They’ve been, they’ve massaged and mangled your synapses, plug in the satnav and take the higher-route home, if you get our drift.

Lisel

Patterns For Auto-tuned Voices And Delay

Ba Da Bing!

Eliza Bagg leads a complex musical life: working as a classical opera singer, she has soloed with the New York Philharmonic, performed in Meredith Monk’s opera at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and toured Europe with the legendary John Zorn. While making her own music under the guise of art-pop solo act Lisel, she’s also collaborated as a vocalist with some of the most renowned experimental artists, including Ben Frost, Julianna Barwick, Daniel Wohl, and many others, all while playing indie rock venues and lovably dingy basements. One day, it’s Lincoln Center or The Kitchen, the next it’s an outdoor LA ambient series. She was always torn between her two worlds, and it wasn’t until she began work on Patterns For Auto-tuned Voices And Delay that she discovered a way to merge them together. Patterns comes out of Bagg’s experience as a vocalist singing Renaissance and Baroque music along with the work of modern-day minimalists like Steve Reich and Philip Glass. “I developed a vocal processing system that allowed me to change the idea of what my instrument is,” Bagg says of the album’s genesis, a system that combines her virtuosic singing with autotune and delay effects to create a melding of human and machine. Sure, she’ll admit it. “I’m a sci-fi nerd,” she says, with a laugh. “I’m a Blade Runner and Battlestar person. I love things that explore how society interacts with machines.” While making Patterns, she dove first into Renaissance polyphony and chant. The music of Hildegard von...

Class

But Who's Reading Me?

Feel It

***CLASS are back with But Who's Reading Me?, their third outing since teaming up with Feel It Records in June 2022. Recorded at Midtown Island Studios in their hometown of Tucson, Arizona, CLASS kick off their 2023 output with four stellar new cuts rounded off by alternate versions of two from their latest full length, Epoca de Los Vaqueros. Fourteen minutes of punk, glam, garage, and power pop sounds swirled into one glorious EP from a group capable of writing and cranking out the hits on par with the best of 'em. The sky truly is the limit for the desert-dwelling geniuses in CLASS.

Drin, The

Today My Friend You Drunk the Venom

Feel It

***BACK IN STOCK!!! Received a 7.4 rating from Pitchfork. Way out there. From up in the attic, in the village of Cincinnati - the third album from the Drin has arrived to commence 2023. Cold rhythms reverberate through the layers of tape spliced together by Dylan McCartney and his impressive cadre of musical companions. The Drin spawned from a debut cassette edition of 50 on the Future Shock label, since teaming up with both Drunken Sailor and Mangel to issue two LPs. Their loose, careening live unit features members of Corker, Crime of Passing, the Serfs and Fruit LoOops. 'Today My Friend You Drunk the Venom' is the Drin's finest hour as a creative entity. McCartney's incredible command of rhythm lies at the forefront of the mix, complimented by a group that is able to seamlessly transport between post-punk, acid guitar jangle, and krautish experimentalism. There's even a stellar dub track on here. As much as contemporary artists tend to flaunt their affinity for the past - it's entirely worthless to apply such trappings to the Drin. Their genre-expansive abilities and deep knack for rhythm and layering are something entirely new and futuristic. Ohio has never sounded so close to outer space.

Ibex Clone

All Channels Clear

Goner

Imagine a world apart from our own—an agrarian utopia where the corroded cables of the 20th century lie in moss-covered heaps and the Mississippi River runs clear. New structures rise from the detritus, gnarled patchworks of the natural world and everything else humanity left behind. This is a world where Nirvana and NAFTA never happened, punk didn’t break but bloomed, and guitars jangle in the breeze. This is the world of Ibex Clone and their new album, All Channels Clear. Formed by members of essential bands from the modern era of Memphis rock and roll, Ibex Clone reconfigures the paranoiac punk of Ex-Cult, NOTS and Hash Redactor into something altogether different, a vision of music from a timeline that split with ours a long time ago. Guitarist George Williford’s dizzy six- and twelve-string explorations form a lush thicket for Alec McIntyre’s fluid basslines to slip in and around, anchored by Meredith Lones’ steady, driving rhythms. Williford’s powerful vocal melodies ward off impending death and decay with visionary lyrics about humanity’s place in the ecosystem, the balm of love and friendship, and the complex feeling of being alive in this version of the world of tomorrow. With All Channels Clear, Ibex Clone develops the woozy, folk-tinged post-punk of their excellent debut From Nowhere into a catchy, complex approach to the pastoral power pop of XTC, the Meat Puppets, and Guided By Voices. These ten beautiful tracks tunnel back through the shredded remains of folk, pop, blues and psychedelia to rediscover the...

My Dad Is Dead

Pow!

Scat

Here one has a reissue of a My Dad Is Dead record that never was. Recorded shortly after Peace, Love & Murder, The Pow! EP was intended to be released in the summer of 1987 on Cleveland’s St. Valetine Records, but that never quite happened. Newly signed to NYC’s Homestead Records, it was resolved that the tracks could find a home there, and they were later issued on The Best Defense outtakes compilation on that label. Now, thirty-seven years on, the EP as originally intended is being released. Like its predecessors, Pow! is an isolationist post-punk affair with Mark Edwards performing all musical duties. Pow! features three strong tracks in stunning 45RPM sound, or maybe one should just say it’s really freaking loud and sounds better than the last time around. First is a reprise of “Anti-Socialist,” a highlight from the 1985 debut album. But this is not a mere re-recording, but a new arrangement of the song with additional sections and lyrics, and a more aggressive feel with unmistakable undertones of violence (“I wanna fix ’em with my bare hands”). On the flip is the haunting “In the Morning,” in some ways a foreshadowing of the murderess later meet on “Nothing Special.” Wrapping things up is the instrumental “The Best Defense,” which is about as spritely and engaging as Mr Edwards gets during this era.

My Dad Is Dead

Peace, Love & Murder

Scat

***AVAILABLE ON LIMITED NATURAL PVC W/BLACK SWIRL VINYL!!! Peace, Love & Murder was the second album by Cleveland’s My Dad Is Dead, originally released in 1987 by Boston’s Birth Records. Like the debut, ...And He’s Not Gonna Take It Anymore, Mark Edwards wrote and performed all the music on his own. While not a significant departure from that album, Peace, Love & Murder does differ from its predecessor and has some qualities that make it unique in the voluminous MDID discography. While combining live drums with drum machine is a hallmark of the MDID style, on this album Edwards introduced the Roland TR-505 into the mix, and in a bold move recorded the live drums first, which had the effect of making the rhythm tracks feel a bit more organic despite the presence, and occasionally the prominence, of the TR-505. Modal guitar tunings remain de rigeur here, but Edwards’ abilities as a guitarist display a marked increase in proficiency and imagination. While the debut album sprawls a bit, PLM is a tight and focused ten song set, buoyed by a more impactful production job by Chris Burgess. Just as the debut album had a few lighter (or at least slightly less grim) songs, so does this album, but here they shine with a bit more pop sparkle. “Babe In The Woods” and “Hill O’ Beans” would go on to be fan favorites for many years, as would the utterly harrowing unstoppable bulldozer that is “Like A Vise.” All these years...

Crawl

Damned

Profound Lore

Crawl is the one-man blackened ambient doom entity helmed by mastermind Michael Engle and consists solely of Engle performing drums, bass, vocals, synth and samples simultaneously. This unique performance process is one that is undertaken during recording and in live settings. With Damned, Engle (current Boris live drummer) has created the most enormous and despondent Crawl release yet. Through waves of immense negative energy and hopelessness being emitted through this sonic monolith—not for the faint at heart, Damned is a singular audial expression of pure torment and agony.

Rotary Club

American Tower

Iron Lung

***"As a massive early Killed By Death style punk fanatic, constantly in pursuit of the ever elusive records and one-off-obscuro sound, I frequently turn up my nose at modern bands playing the style. You can't just crap out a poorly recorded generic riff punk track, slap a 'KBD' label on it and expect me to fall for the ruse. I mean bands have done that and had varying degrees of wool pull—see The Uncalled 4's 'Grind Her Up' 7" for the best success of this—but it doesn't usually work out. What I particularly enjoy about Rotary Club is that they rework the lyrics into all things landline telephone while heavily referencing the riffage from the genre's top tier tunes, twisting them just enough to make them their own. A refreshing and well executed take to say the least.—Jensenensen Rotary Club is from Reno, NV. This is their first ever vinyl record, the only format that matters. 4th of 5 in the Systemic Surgery series each hand numbered and limited to 200. Hand stamped labels on black vinyl housed in a custom die cut sleeve with a risograph print hand glued to the front. Tracked, mixed and mastered by Tim Green at Louder Studios. Artwork by Jawsh Hageman. Classy.

Speed Plans

Statues Of God

Iron Lung

***In the ripping hardcore scene that has recently cropped up in Pittsburgh surrounding bands like Living World, White Stains and Necro Heads comes Speed Plans—a writhing, drug fueled, violence machine of manic hardcore in the vein of Repos or Ripcord. When we were first contacting Speed Plans on account of their absolutely raging cassette output, they mentioned wanting to do an LP that was "15 fast ones and 1 slow one." We were sold right then and there. If mean, fast, low-fi and low brow is what you're after then look no further, you've arrived. 500 copies on 150gr black vinyl housed in a 24pt reverse board jacket with lyric insert included.

Habel, Juni

Carvings

Ba Da Bing!

Push open the door of the old Norwegian school house in the rural hinterland Juni Habel shares with her close-knit family and climb the stairs and one will find oneslef in a former classroom—the home of her new album Carvings. Crafted seventeen years after guitar tuition would try to iron out the creases of her bohemian upbringing, it is a songbook of life’s lessons offering an expansive perspective as it navigates personal shadows between darkness and light. Just as her more featherweight debut album All Ears would attest, the timelessness of Habel’s music has evolved from her lived experiences. Growing up with six younger siblings alongside horses, hens, sheep and pigs on the family farm, she was a Forest School child. Today, little—and a lot—has changed since eschewing the city in favor of koselig-cohabiting with husband Emil, friend Isis, cat Lisa, dog Sajo. Living alongside them is Grandmother Inger, who gave Habel her first guitar aged ten and has always been a big influence on her life. This unyielding spirit of family and nature is etched into Carvings’ unschooled approach. With beauty in mock-simplicity and radiating humanity like the music of Tia Blake, Julie Byrne or Myriam Gendron, Habel’s songwriting unfolds on her own terms, and is the sound of facing whatever mother nature decides will find its way to the top of the list. Recorded between the classroom (‘big hall’), the hallway on the second floor, and her bedroom with simple gear and vocals laid down in a single...

Serfs, The

Primal Matter

Dream

***Emerging like a missile from some surreptitious silo in southwestern Ohio, The Serfs are a deliberately nebulous and incidentally industrialist gang of dance-floor hymners—perturbed and tranced-out troubadours whose sound and musical ideology seems to be a causal manifestation of their immediate environments—hard-wired and hypnotic synthesized melodies propel alongside churning and scraping percussion of every metallic tonality—with temperamental and eremitic words and voices dictating the forlorn venture. Like their Ohio predecessors, The Serfs seem askew from the art that surrounds them, and proud of it. Pressed on white vinyl.

Jetsons, The

Suicidal Tendencies

Gulcher

***"In 2001 or so, my friend Amy made me a mix tape that was solely of bands from Indiana and included the LP comp Red Snerts, which compiled bands from the Hoosier state that were affiliated with the Gulcher Records label. One of the bands that really stuck out for me was a little band from Bloomington called THE JETSONS. Their track on the comp has a lite power pop feel to it, but has more damaging lyrics like 'I wanna puke, I wanna vomit on your feet, but you're such a cliched punk, you'd think I was being real neat.' I wanted to hear everything this band ever put out, but had no idea how to find it. I later found out (from the MaximumRockNRoll archives) that The Jetsons had one EP that came out on Gulcher back in 1981, and then they broke up. The first song, 'Suicidal Tendencies,' has a really warm, totally early-80s feel and is just as good (or better) than their comp track. My favorite part is when the singer is chanting 'Kill myself! Kill myself! Kill myself! Kill myself!' at the end. The other two songs, 'Genetically Stupid' and 'Killing,' are also great and make me want to hear more by them, but this is all there is since their demise came soon after this recording. Members of The Jetsons were also in the LATEX NOVELTIES, one of Indianapolis' first punk bands, and one of them went on to form THE UNATTACHED in...

C.I.A., The

Surgery Channel

In The Red

“Step into a sick rhythm. And I mean sickly. Surgery Channel is a constructed world where everything is piercing and pinpointed. Every single word brings confrontation. With an intro as intimate and uncomfortable as this, The C.I.A. make you question what could be happening here…or what they’re after. Denée Segall (vocals, lyrics) is both haunting and seducing us at once with her voice. Something unhinged might be about to happen and they’re calmly dangling it over your head. Is it the possibility of dismemberment? Revenge? “There is something about Surgery Channel that is sterile and covered in dirt at the same time. Maybe it’s the feeling of simultaneous anger and defeat. Maybe it’s what comes after. Or maybe it’s about the ever-so-brief silent spaces between notes and words. Rhythm would be nothing without empty space. Words are rhythm at The C.I.A. “There’s nothing wishy washy about The C.I.A. or the way they sound. It’s all about precision and aim But really, it’s a warning... amplified by the suspense of tick-tocking drum machine beats that resemble a hospital room. Ty Segall (bass, percussion, back up vocals) and Emmett Kelly (bass, synth, back up vocals) have painted a jarring and dissonant landscape behind Denée’s story. Their basses could easily be swapped for bone drills and you might not be able to tell the difference. Emmett’s modular synth envisions an environment reminiscent of the instrument itself, a mess of wires and pulsing red lights. Ty’s subtle use of electronic and analog percussion fluctuates...

Fizer, John

Treasure Man

Scissor Tail Editions

Barely saved from obscurity by a series of chance events, John Fizer’s only recorded album Treasure Man will finally see the light of day. Forty-five years in the making, while for the last twenty-nine years Fizer has been “living rough” couch surfing, sleeping in play structures, friend’s backyards and more recently his old Volvo station wagon. Fizer is currently residing in a nursing facility in Northern California. Below is the story of how this never before heard album came to Scissor Tail’s attention. “I used to walk my daughter to school and passed the original Peet’s coffee every day. Across the street was Berkeley’s beloved John ‘Treasure Man’ Fizer playing chess, doing crosswords and waiting next to the treasure tree which he had filled with gemstones and various magical trinkets. To this day any child passing by is welcome to choose a treasure. Over many stops with my daughter I got to know John, a fountain of love, intelligence and humor and as quirky and feisty as can be. We became friends. Eventually he showed me a few old cassettes of cassettes of cassettes in poor condition of him performing and asked if I could make them sound better. I agreed to take a listen. Such amazing songs! “So I proceeded to remaster the cassettes while continuing to ask John at least four times over several months if he had the original master studio recordings. The answer was always no. About the time I finally had his cassette sourced recordings...

Tribunal

The Weight Of Remembrance

20 Buck Spin

The Vancouver duo Tribunal may yet be unknown to the wider world, but spellbinding debut album The Weight Of Remembrance is poised to immediately change that. Steeped in the black velvet finery of Gothic doom metal, Tribunal weave dark tales of ultimate judgement, never-ending rain and forsaken despair. Featuring classically trained cellist / bassist / vocalist Soren Mourne and guitarist / vocalist Etienne Flinn, the duo’s brick heavy classic doom riffage borders on death metal heaviness, like My Dying Bride filtered through a colossal stained glass edifice. The sound is instantly familiar with nods to the ’80s and ’90s but never sounds retro or like mere homage. Rather, The Weight Of Remembrance evokes the feeling of a painstakingly composed orchestral movement fit for a crumbling cathedral overgrown with moss. The duo frequently trade off vocals alternating between haunted wailing cleans, scathing black-metal style shrieks and dread-filled death calls. Tribunal’s debut is an essential addition to the modern doom canon, one which can expand in infinite musical directions from a base of crushing tragic heaviness and forlorn purpose. In that sense, The Weight Of Remembrance has the accomplished atmosphere of a band beyond their years in the scope and execution of its vision.

Bobbie Lovesong

On The Wind

Woodsist

Bobbie Lovesong is the alias of American recording artist Madelyn Strutz. “On The Wind” is the debut full length from Bobbie, who produced, performed, recorded, and mixed the album herself in Taos, New Mexico. The album is a collection of psych-pop oddities and fizzy space age interpretations of jazz standards that are informed in equal parts by Larry Heard’s breezy dream sceneries, LSD blotted Americana and kaleidoscopic 60’s pop. Bobbie went to Taos, New Mexico in 2020 to live communally with a small group of musicians as the lockdown stretched on for months. Retreating into an unfinished Earthship, Bobbie passed the days writing and recording music, with nothing more than a laptop microphone and a few instruments. At once surreal, timeless and extraterrestrial, “On The Wind” can be heard as a hallucinatory sonic love letter to Taos.

Spike In Vain

Jesus Was Born In A Mobile Home [Expanded Edition]

Scat

Ready for some more racket from the titans of the tritone? The deans of decay? The earls of entropy? Until recently it was unknown how prolific Cleveland’s Spike In Vain were in their three year run, roughly Fall 1982 through Fall 1985. Had all the group’s songs been recorded, they would’ve filled five LPs handily. While only the debut album Disease Is Relative, compilation appearances, and a virtually unknown cassette were issued during their run, 2021 saw the band’s unreleased second album Death Drives A Cadillac pulled out from its secret lair, and 2023 will see the release of the Jesus Was Born In A Mobile Home cassette via this much expanded double vinyl edition. Upping the original’s twelve track program with an additional fifteen unreleased or rare tracks, this compilation provides a panoramic view of this mercurial, many-headed beast of absurdity, discord, and death. This release is loaded with surprises for even die-hard fans. Among other highlights, there’s a nine minute version of “Opus.” While the recording on Disease Is Relative is essentially three short songs smushed together, this later live version doubles that, with all new material seamlessly tacked onto the original. “Winter’s Black Hand” is a shocking outtake from the second album with the same insane, harrowing quality as “Children In The Subway.” There’s a 1982 rehearsal recording of “Tenement Housing,” the closest the band ever came to a straight up punk song. Or the rambling, shambling, and devastating “Drunk And Ugly Soul Food (As I Understand...

Guided By Voices

La La Land

GBV Inc

La La Land doubles down on the intricate proggy-pop displayed on Guided By Voices’s last album Tremblers And Goggles By Rank. On a hot streak of critical acclaim, Robert Pollard continues expanding his songwriting towards extremes of prettiness, heaviness and poeticism. As always, unforgettable hooks are everywhere. But with thsi latest, it seems Pollard is playing with the extremes of his abilities as a songwriter, emboldened by the power of this lineup now on their fourteenth album together since 2017. The prettiest stuff is prettier than ever (“Queen Of Spaces”) and odder, more complex songs like “Slowly On The Wheel” combine minimalism, whimsy, and cinematic inclinations. There are the exquisite power pop bangers that fans come to expect like “Ballroom Etiquette” and “Pockets.” Tracks like “Instinct Dwelling” and “Caution Song” effortlessly display a cranked-up weight and complexity most bands could never muster. Celebrating forty years in 2023 with their thirty-eighth album, GBV has lately been garnering rave reviews from Rolling Stone, Stereogum, Brooklyn Vegan, Uncut, MOJO, Shindig, Paste, Popmatters, The Quietus and many more.