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Teledetente 666

S/t

Sweet Rot

***Having released highly acclaimed singles by French bands A.H. Kraken, Feeling of Love, The Anals, and The Dictaphone, Sweet Rot returns to France to release the debut 7" from Strasbourg's TELEDETENTE 666. Taking elements from all of the aforementioned, Teledetente plays some of the most gnarly sounding guitar damaged, drum machine punk that we've heard since The Anals. The two songs here "Les Rats" and "Panne Sexe" are pretty unrelenting in their all out attack on your senses. Menacingly recorded by SEB NORMAL. For fans of The Anals, Cheveu, A.H. Kraken, Volt, Pierre & Bastien, etc. 300 copies pressed.

TV Ghost

Phantasm

Sweet Rot

***Sweet Rot is pleased to present a two song scorcher of a single from Lafayette, Indiana's TV GHOST as a follow up to their quite excellent 2011 LP, Mass Dream on In the Red Records. "Phantasm" and the flip "Panic Area" are both typical TV Ghost—sinister, pummeling, psychedelic, lurching, spastic, and ugly, in all the right ways. We here at Sweet Rot are huge fans of all the band’s records, and feel that this just might be the best one yet and the one that best captures the intensity and urgency of their epic live show. For fans of Scientists, Slug Guts, Gordons, Cramps, etc.

Russian Tsarlag

Midnight At Mary’s House

Not Not Fun

***Vagabond American legend CARLOS GONZALEZ drops his first NNF full-length, and it's 10 of his greatest junkyard surf-slime tunes of all time. Edition of 500.

Bonnie Prince Billy

Hummingbird EP

Spiritual Pajamas

Is it safe to say that Will Oldham has rarely met a recording device he didn’t like?  The man who goes by Bonnie 'Prince' Billy continues to document feverishly--and yet with fine discrimination--via a steady march through the canon of modern music: rock, country, gospel, keep on listing...   The great Leon Russell’s “Hummingbird” bookends this digital EP, and Bonny and his assembled cast of LA musicians render it an exercise in contrast.  Using Russell’s famed Shelter Records soundboard for this one-off session--with its memories of Petty and Cale, and now owned by one Jonathan Wilson--Bonny introduces a pallet of musical soundscapes including the keys of "Farmer" Dave Scher, the porch-stomp grooves of Entrance Band rhythm section Paz and Derek and the claps of a thousand hands before letting the song "fly away" in a breeze of soulful psychedelia that stretches nearly twice the original’s length.   Next up: a cover of the traditional “Tribulations,” with Cairo Gang mainman Emmett Kelly, in a purely Appalachian reflection on judgment and fear and all manner of Old Testament threat.   Rounding out this EP, Bonny and band make a run at country master Merle Haggard's "Because of Your Eyes".  As always, Oldham’s soulfully solemn voice comes to the fore in this spare arrangement. The bottom line is utter beauty.  This version of "Because of Your Eyes" is only available on the inaugural (and very limited) Spiritual Pajamas Records 7 inch release, AKA Spiritual 000 which means, perhaps, that it really does...

Cheap Time

Wallpaper Music

In The Red

Hailing from Tennessee, Cheap Time has been around in one incarnation or another since 2006. The nucleus has always been Jeffrey Novak, who writes and sings in addition to playing guitar and keyboards. The band began with members of the band Be Your Own Pet rounding out the lineup—theirs was a sound of a teen punk band with more attitude than musicianship, owing more than a little to early Redd Kross. By the time Cheap Time recorded their debut album, the personnel had changed drastically and, in addition to improved musicianship, Novak brought in influences of ’70s glam and power pop acts like Sparks and The Quick. The band followed this with more lineup shuffles and a sophomore album, Fantastic Explanations (and Similar Situations), that was darker, moodier and more complex than its predecessor. Despite the many changes, however, Cheap Time has always been a sum of its parts. A quintessential ingredient is the low-fi bombast with which they scuzz up their otherwise lightweight brand of simplified 1970s glam punk, packing an impressive amount of adolescent snottiness into two-minute blasts of sound with both precision and melody. Cheap Time are now back with their third and by far strongest record to date. Recorded in Novak’s new home studio, Wallpaper Music distills perfectly all the phases through which the band has passed to date. Retaining both the punk moves and pop-damaged glam jams, the band delivers their most realized, cohesive record yet. Songs like “More Cigarettes” and “Another Time” are Aussie-esque...

Hall, Nate

A Great River

Neurot Recordings

The debut solo release from Nate Hall, the driving force behind US Christmas, A Great River captures a brief, impulsive moment. Recorded in a single March evening, it is as pure and honest as music gets. The songs are regretful of the bad times, hopeful of times to come, and respectful of the great power that causes all thing to be.  Reflecting a lifetime spent with the echoes of Dylan, Young, Petty, Springsteen and Van Zandt, A Great River draws from the rich musical history of America and the melancholy of Appalachia, and harnesses the “electric vacuum roar” of guitar slingers past and present.  “The first time I heard Nate Hall’s voice I knew that I was hearing something that would haunt me forever. The unmistakable sound of mountains’ wind and the desperation and anguish of truth and experience. Authenticity isn’t something you can acquire. Either you are or you are not. Nate’s work shows a depth of heart and a pure channeling that you won’t come across ten times in your life.” —Scott Kelly (Neurosis)

Nugent, Cian

Grass Above My Head

Vhf

Cian Nugent’s lovely follow-up to 2011’s much acclaimed Doubles album presents two short solo acoustic turns—one original, and one Black Flag cover.  “Grass Above My Head” is a wistful, fingerpicked, South Dublin coastal lovesick blues. In contrast to the two ambitiously complex side-long tracks on Doubles, “Grass” is simple and elegant, full of just-so chord changes that make all the right references to the genre classics.  In contrast, the truly unusual assault on Black Flag’s “My War” is a knot of edgy picking, starting with an abstracted take on Greg Ginn’s naggingly dissonant intro and rapidly moving into a hypnotic variant that suggests an entirely different kind of blues than the A-side. Truly one of the weirdest (and best) Flag covers of all time.

Mean Jeans

On Mars

Dirtnap

***Portland's premier party punks THE MEAN JEANS return with their long-awaited follow up to 2009's Are You Serious! This is a different album, though, more mid-tempo catchier, and poppier (but less "pop punk" if you know what we mean) than their debut. In addition to the standard 3 piece instrumentation, Mean Jeans On Mars also features, at various times, acoustic guitar (!), keyboards (!), drum machines (!), empty Jaeger bottles (!) and boxes of macaroni (!) played as extra percussion. Oh and it also features the debut of new member JR. JEANS on bass! (Howie Doodat is busy tearing up Portland in the Suicide Notes!) This is a fantastic, exhilarating summertime pop album, so down a couple of jaegy bombs and get ready to moonwalk into the unknown with the Mean Jeans!

Obolus

Lament

Flenser

***OBOLUS is one of the most exciting new bands in the American black metal realm, devoid of pretension or pandering and devoted to the ways of old, when nothing but the strength of will and power of the riff mattered, and the music spoke, loudly, for itself. Lament contains multitudes and speaks with the thunderous voice of a thousand falling angels.

Oram, Daphne

The Daphne Oram Tapes - Vol. 1

Young Americans

***DAPHNE ORAM, founder of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, died in 2003 leaving a colossal archive of reel-to-reel tapes and documents behind. This important collection of material eventually made its way to Goldsmiths College, London, who have been administering it on behalf of the Daphne Oram Trust for the last few years. The collection holds over 400 tapes made by Oram during her lifetime, and 211 of those have been archived and catalogued by the college so far. The Daphne Oram Tapes: Volume One is the result of almost two years spent trawling through the archive in an attempt to piece together a coherent document of one of the most pioneering and genuinely experimental characters in electronic music history. Although some of Oram's recordings have surfaced on the Oramics compilation, this compilation reveals a complex, dark and sometimes disturbing body of work which has, until now, been partially obscured by the more recognizable Radiophonic bleeps and whirrs the Workshop is best known for. This first volume focuses on Oram's love of experimental forms, of musique concrète, of the science and mystery of sound and composition. It comes at a time when her work is only just starting to gain wider acknowledgment in scholarly as well as popular circles. The "Oramics" machine (the first electronic musical instrument in history to be designed and built by a woman) has gone on display at the Science Museum in London, an important step in what will no doubt be a sustained effort to assert Oram's...

Christian Cosmos

Cadence Upon The Threshold Of Judgement

Hospital Productions

"Another 'soundtrack for the judgement of souls' as Dominick Fernow puts it. The men behind the Prurient/Vatican Shadow projects is making some uncomfortably affective releases as Christian Cosmos with a sort of baroque machine noise like beacons of oncoming doom spread across the curent musical landscape. On this issue, pulverized machine rhythms crawl under plangent, near-black metal guitars until a resolution of redemptive meditation on 'The Old Creation Has Been Imbued With A New Dimension Of Spirit'. But it's the incredibly dank chamber atmospheres of 'And A New Creation Has Begun', or the marrow-freezing ambience of 'God Has Entered So Fully Into The Human Experience That Everything Has Changed' which most grab our attentions partly thanks to that petrified mastering finish. So good."--Boomkat

Christian Cosmos

Which Echo Again And Again

Hospital Productions

"Dominick Fernow's (Prurient/Vatican Shadow) Christian Cosmos project is quickly establishing itself as a vital concern for darker tastes. The third release under this alias in less than six months 'Which Echo Again and Again' returns us to a bleak scene with a "soundtrack for judgement of souls", as he puts it. Brittle, minimal drum machine rhythms ricochet against sepulchral surfaces in a mystic ambient synth gloom, creating the perfect atmosphere for personal rituals of undisclosed and esoteric nature. This is music for end times - so damn good."--Boomkat

Lussuria

American Babylon

Hospital Productions

"Compiling all three volumes of Lussuria's 'American Babylon', Hospital Productions have just unleashed one of the most terrifying pieces of dark ambient you'll hear all year. In fact, the ambient tag maybe sells this a little short; it's heavily atmospheric, in the most literal sense, but there's also encounters with industrial rhythms and sadistic black metal voices to anticipate from the comfort of your puddle of piss in the corner of the basement. Strong recommendation."--Boomkat

De Babalon, Christoph

A Bond With Sorrow

Tigerbeat6

Christoph de Babalon’s new album conjures up the spirits of melancholy and romanticism in a cold and shallow world. It’s a powerful opus deserving of its own movie about sad love and the wish to give life sense in the absence of a better future. We all are filled with hope and dreams of love before realizing the futility of life, and it is at this point that de Babalon stands on razors edge. This album harnesses the energy of heartbreak and despair as fuel to create dramatically beautiful music that finds its power inside darkness. “Is it possible that existence is our exile and nothingness our home?” (Emile M. Cioran) A mastery of his tools and over two decades of esoteric knowledge of electronic music is applied throughout the album, managing to implement the best aspects of the ever evolving jungle, breakbeat ambient, and modern bass scenes. Standout tracks like “Into The Shadows”, “Traumspiel” and “A Little Less” seem both familiar and futuristic at the same time. The beatless “Mist Of Life” and “Hunger” are so deep and well executed they could be performed by a full orchestra and will stay fresh for years to come like classic David Cronenberg. Most artists live in their own self created world of indulgence and delusion, hoping that the audience will be enticed to hop on board for a fun ride until the next distraction comes along, but very few artists are willing to come face to face with emptiness to transcend...

White Mystery

People Power

White Mystery

White Mystery returns with a floor-stomping, fist-pumping, three song EP that rattles the walls! Fuzzed-out guitar, smashing drums, and howling vocals from the brother/sister garage duo makes this an essential rock'n'roll trilogy.

Amps For Christ / Woods

Woods / Amps For Christ

Shrimper

Shrimper Records has a long-standing tradition, going back to the early years of the label, of its artists collaborating with one another—from John Davis and Lou Barlow’s Folk Implosion to Franklin Bruno and John Darnielle’s Extra Glenns / Lens, with dozens of other examples in between. This split between Woods and Amps for Christ began as an idea for a 7-inch single, but grew into a full-length LP featuring four songs by each artist and an additional collaborative track. While Woods and Amps for Christ explore a lot of the same land mass, each turns over different rocks and shards of glass. And even though the two work independently from one another, listeners will hear the sublime manner in which the LP’s two sides (or the harsh, tinny digital skree of the MP3s for you 20th century types, dig your irony) complement one another both musically and lyrically. Check out the ESP interplay of Henry Barnes and Jeremy Earl when together or separated by coasts.

Mrs Magician

Strange Heaven

Swami

***BACK IN PRINT!!! Mrs. Magician hails from the pilings of various San Diego piers. Like those pilings, their sound is encrusted with salty hooks and drenched in waves of reverb. Strange Heaven is the band’s first LP and magnifies the cacophonous lullabies of their four previous singles. The record is for connoisseurs of fuzz, distortion, echo and reverb who prefer their noise to be tempered liberally with minor-key, bubblegum and sometimes haunting melody. These hoodads’ pop songs are massive and exude a beach-shack, bummer-of-the-summer posture. Strange Heaven was produced by John Reis (of Hot Snakes, Rocket from the Crypt, Night Marchers and Drive Like Jehu) in the way of the old masters in order to achieve a more musical hiss and crackle. The result is a timely and timeless artifact. Mrs. Magician plays the US with Hot Snakes in March and with Cults in March, April and May.

Niles, John Jacob

Boone-Tolliver Recordings

L.M. Dupli-cation

“Niles was otherworldly and his voice raged with strange incantations.” —Bob Dylan In the 1950s, while audio recording was still an astronomically expensive art, limited to the laboratory-like environment of the professional studio, a few forward-thinking artists began to experiment with the idea of home recording. Sun Ra in Chicago and Les Paul in New York made history away from the studios. And deep in Appalachia, folk singer John Jacob Niles recorded a series of EPs in the place where he was most comfortable singing—his living room. Niles’s decision may have seemed strange to people around him; he was internationally known, had released music on RCA Victor, played Carnegie Hall, toured extensively in the US and been to England. But to Niles, it must have been a natural choice, as his life was a direct product of the things he made—he built his own dulcimers, farmed his land, carved the big doors at his Boot Hill farm. Niles then went one step further, and started his own label, Boone-Tolliver, literally a mom-and-pop affair (his wife Rena was in charge of mail order). The label released two EPs: John Jacob Niles: American Folk Love Songs and Ballads by Niles, before larger folk labels, like Tradition, came calling. While an independent, artist-owned label in the 1950s proved too difficult for Niles to run, by shying away from the studio and surrounding himself by family and friends, he succeeded in producing some of the best recordings of his career. Until now, these recordings...

Ufomammut

Oro: Opus Primum

Neurot Recordings

Ufomammut, Italian sorcerers of supernatural and obliterating doom, have completed their sixth full-length, and first as part of the Neurot Recordings family. This is the mammoth follow-up to their 2010 full-length Eve, the band’s most devastating piece of magic to date... until now. Oro is divided into ten massive movements, which are to be delivered in two separate pieces over the coming year—the first chapter, Opus Primum, arrives in April, and the second, Opus Alter, in September. This is the third project Ufomammut recorded with Lorenzo Stecconi. The band is also in the process of crafting a full video / visual version which will accompany the audio. As with all previous Ufomammut albums, the concepts behind Oro are expansive and multi-faceted, mutating the Italian palindrome which translates to “gold” with the Latin translation of “I prey.” Oro explores the concept of knowledge and its power; the magical stream controlled by the human mind to gain control of every single particle of the world surrounding us. Oro is the alchemical process to transform the human fears into pure essence—into gold.  Although Oro’s two chapters will be released months apart from each other, they must be considered as a single track in which the musical themes and the sounds appear and reappear, mutate and evolve, progressively culminating in the crushing final movement. Oro is an alchemic laboratory in which substances are flowing, dividing and blending themselves in ten increments from the alembics and stills, culminating into the creation of gold.

Mad Scene

Blip

Siltbreeze

It’s staggering to think that this is the first album from Mad Scene since Merge released Chinese Honey way back in 1995. But that’s a fact. Not that the band has been inactive on the live front—far from it. When you have a group as diverse as Hamish Kilgour (The Clean), Lisa Siegel (Vegetarian), Steve Thornton (Go-To Guy), Georgia Hubley (Yo La Tengo), Gary Olsen (Straight Shooter), Josh Feldman (Professional Athlete), Cassie Tunick, Danny Tunick (Same Last Names!) and Brian Turner (WFMU Music Director), things can get sidelined when it comes to the studio. But eventually things fell into place and for their fourth long-player, the band enlisted Sonic Boom to produce and mix, then thrust the finished product into the waiting hands of the Siltbreeze label. Blip is a masterful mélange of sounds, mixing a range of influences such as nascent Flying Nun chug, Television Personalities DIY psych, shambling Pastels-like rockers and Sarah label indie-pop nuggets. The palette of aural perfection here offers something for everyone. And yeah, it may have taken 17 years to get here, but you can’t say it isn’t worth the wait.

Occultation

Three And Seven

Profound Lore

Formed in the late ’00s, Brooklyn, New York’s Occultation released the limited Somber Dawn EP in 2011. Showcasing their bizarre brand of creepy and haunting psych horror metal, the three-track 7-inch attrached a buzz due to the presence of Negative Plane mastermind EMM (a.k.a. Nameless Void) on guitars and backing vocals. With Negative Plane’s reputation as one of the most important US black metal bands today, it was no surprise that the band’s aura rubbed off on Occultation—their twisted, dissonant and progressively constructed guitar scales finding their way into Occultation’s vision of horror. But Occultation has morphed into a beast in its own right. Along with weird and unearthly guitar play, the trio conjures ethereal and ghostly female vocals, dirge-like organ sounds, pulsating bass lines and ritualistic drum rhythms. The band takes its cues from ’70s prog, ’80s dark rock, classic metal (most notably early Mercyful Fate and Death SS) and cult horror soundtracks. Their debut full-length album Three & Seven is a haunting, creepy and unrelenting venture into a cathedral of sonic horror.

Yohuna

Revery

Art Fag

Aside from being the phonetic pronunciation of her given name, Yohuna (“yo-HUN-ah”) is the solo project of Johanne Swanson, an unsettled native of Eau Claire, WI, whose hazily brilliant music evokes the purest states of mind. With a Casio keyboard, layered vocal arrangements and vehement, minimal beats, she writes sedated, downbeat anthems. Sounds and lyrics drip with moody reference to past love, loss, reflection and rejection while maintaining a hopeful, airy quality eagerly anticipating an uncertain future. Over the course of a year in New Mexico, with her head and heart in other, faraway places, Swanson transformed her emotions into four enigmatic, intimate, leisurely structured pop gems and a collaborative drone. Recorded December of 2010 with the help of friend Andrew Todryk (Vacation Dad) in a basement during a bitter Wisconsin winter, her debut EP Revery remains relatively unearthed—still frozen in that season waiting to be thawed. Only 50 hand-dubbed cassettes were made, now long sold-out rarities.  Coupled with a considerate amount of blog coverage, however, Revery left an undeniable impression as a meaningful piece of music in early 2011—an essential listen for anyone interested in home recording. Art Fag Recordings, a California-based label home to a small but potent roster of up-and-coming artists, dug it up a year later, and the label is proud to present a remastered Revery on 7-inch and cassette, incontrovertibly giving this hidden treasure the proper release it deserves.

Guided By Voices

Jon The Croc

GBV Inc

"Jon The Croc" is one of the heavier songs on the forthcoming Class Clown Sees A UFO. We don't know who the Jon referenced in the title is, but we wouldn't want to be him. Features a wonderfully melodic dual-guitar solo towards the end. The B-Side is a classic Tobin Sprout song, with Toby playing all the instruments himself, and it's as catchy as hell, although we're not sure why hell is catchy, but people do say that. Would not have been out of place on the album itself, but you can't have everything. Apparently.

King Blood

Vengeance, Man

Richie Records

Second offering from KING BLOOD & it's a motherfucker. Throbbing, claustrophobic, triumphant, room shaking, and chiming electric guitar worship. The type of record that'll lodge into your head & reduce your mind to a luminous toxic jelly. Enters the static void alongside Earth, Skullflower, & Les Rallizes Denudes.   Vengeance, Man by KING BLOOD from Vengeance, Man by TestosterTunes Dead Meat by KING BLOOD from Vengeance, Man by TestosterTunes

Spacin'

Deep Thuds

Richie Records

***BACK IN PRINT WITH NEW ARTWORK!!! Received a 7.8 rating from Pitchfork. Debut LP from SPACIN', the newly formed Philadelphia act that's bringing together kick-flippers, arm-wrestlers, and hackey-sackers in head-nodding, beer swilling unity. Inhales the same fumes that fuel the Velvets workout at the gymnasium, the Stooges sleazy-fuzz with Asheton on guitar, and the groovy zen of Nigeria '70.   “The first pearl bestowed upon us in the form of a side project from Philadelphia’s finest gnarled-out Psych trio BIRDS OF MAYA  was guitarist Mike Polizzes’ Purling Hiss, and now we have bass player JASON KILLINGER with his very killer and very screwy new project, SPACIN’. Originally a basement-only solo thing consisting of Killinger playing guitar through a pyramid of amps accompanied by a drum machine, Spacin’ has started to squeak itself above ground and into the barrooms of the city with a fully functioning lineup. The dude doesn’t even need the drum machine anymore; he’s got his wife EVA pounding the skins! Sneak previews of their upcoming debut full-length Deep Thuds, shows a unit who knows the economic gain to be had from a good, hypnotic riff. For those who have ever gotten lost for days in the strains of the Velvet Undergrounds’ ‘Sister Ray,’ Jonathan Richmans’ ‘Roadrunner,’ Hawkwinds’ ‘Silver Machine’ or even Deep Purples’ ‘Space Truckin,’’ repeated listening to Spacin’ is required in excessive doses.”—Tony Rettman (Philadelphia Weekly)   Empty Mind...

Sand Circles

Motor City

Not Not Fun

This is Martin Herterich’s second pass around the NNF circuit in his Sand Circles hovercraft (following 2011’s Midnight Crimes EP), and though the general schematics and engine design remain the same – aged drum machines, afterhours analog tape echo, faded synth riffs, derelict metropolis atmospheres – Motor City’s grace and execution place it in a superior division to anything else he’s tracked to date. A cool, loner narrative arc plays out across each side too: “Entering Motor City” across “White Sand” wherein there’s a “Downtown Holdup” in the “Innercity Haze,” before cruising back out of the urban sprawl, “Distant Lights” in the rearview, on through the “Endless Nights,” “Descending Into Space.” As with his last tape, the Sand Circles chemistry of transfusing reverb-refracted electronic horizon melodies with pulsing, primitivist warehouse-party drum machinery really succeeds in evoking this weirdly poignant bedroom/industrial reverie mood-sphere, and the 11 instrumentals of Motor City hit this interzone pressure point better than ever. 

White Poppy

I Had A Dream

Not Not Fun

From out of the coastal, cloud-covered conifer forests of Canada’s coolest west coast enclave (Vancouver, BC) comes this blithe slice of exploratory gauze-pop majesty by one-woman guitarist-looper-siren-producer White Poppy (aka Crystal Dorval), I Had A Dream. The moniker conjures her soundworld astutely. The spiraling, sunblind ascent of “Wish & Wonder,” “In The Window”, and “Free” feel like levitating over fields of poppies, opiated pollen glowing gold in the air, while a scrappy, early 4AD/Rough Trade 7” obscurity’s rhythm section rides a lock-groove somewhere down by a glittering stream. Deeper in, “In Over” out-Cocteau Twins the CT’s (in terms of delay pedal sensuality), while “I Had A Dream” and “Treeforts” both percolate and pirouette dizzy blurs of electric guitar, practice-amp bass fuzz, cardboard drums and skywashed vocal mists. A lot of the songs have this beautifully bewitching ‘fantasy band’ vibe that makes the project feel less solitary and 4-track-y than its origins. A mesmerizing debut and hopefully a harbinger of things to come.

Coleman, John Wesley III

Nightmare On Silly Street

Monofonus Press

***“Back in 2008 we unleashed GOLDEN BOY JOHN WESLEY COLEMAN on the world with his first ever full length release, American Trashcan. Before coming back to us with his fifth album he put out LPs on Daggerman, Certified PR, and Goner. As an experiment for this LP, Wes brought MORGAN COY some 4 track recordings of new songs (these appear as Side B), and Morgan rebuilt them into a multi layered cake (Side A).” Edition of 300 copies.

Harris, Xander / Dylan Ettinger

Driver / Tipoff

Moon Glyph

"Xander Harris and Dylan Ettinger carve up a killer 7" on this moonlight rogue mission for Minneapolis-based Moon Glyph Recordings. For his best outing since last year's acclaimed 'Urban Gothic' LP episode, Harris is evidently amped up for 'The Driver' with pedal-to-the-metal NRG disco rhythm outlined by frightfully effective synth stabs and cruising-at-100mph chords. Flipside Dylan Ettinger's 'Tipoff' is a more insidious minimal wave gem. Throbbing, distorted, stoic bass anchors intense synthline modulations while a tormented voice yelps like he means it, making for an ominous, uneasy piece of synthesized drama."--Boomkat

Aufgehoben

Fragments Of The Marble Plan

Holy Mountain

The follow-up to 2008’s Khora, Fragments of the Marble Plan adds an electronic carapace to Aufgehoben’s cataclysmic noise-rock foundation. The prevailing sound evokes the Mego label before it added “Editions” to its name and became enamored of American guitar mavericks—back when it purveyed cyclotronic, abstract electronic music that had the centrifugal force of an irrefutable Ph.D. thesis. Such is the overwhelming power of Aufgehoben on the British group’s sixth album that even exposure to the MP3s makes one relieved to have health insurance. Music this apocalyptic has few peers, but some approximate touchstones are the most radically “out” and knotty moments of Norwegian post-jazz ensemble Supersilent, This Heat after realizing that Brise-Glace didn’t pay them a penny in royalties, or Farmers Manual after extensive immersion in Mainliner’s back catalog. Fragments of the Marble Plan is a terrifying force of nature, a Rube Goldberg machine run amok, the sound of civilization atomizing into controlled chaos. It’s so cold, it’s hellish. Although Aufgehoben feels your need for catharsis, they convince you that being ready to jump out of your skin is the new normal. If Aufgehoben prompted clichés, one would say that they “take no prisoners” on Fragments of the Marble Plan. This music is war—with all of the fascinating horrors and grisly casualties inherent in that endeavor. Get a helmet.

White Fence

(vol. 1) Family Perfume

Woodsist

“Fuck nostalgia. Live the truth. Truth is feeling, truth is sound, truth is motion. I am believing. I am seeing. I am moving. Truth is forever. Meet the Tim Presley / White Fence Truth Serum. Imagine, if you will, that your Uncle Frank, Aunt Jane and Cousin Ricky all made out with George Harrison at the same time and felt good about it. That’s what the Family Perfume smells like. Like the real shit. This ain’t your regular mutton-chop rock. This is freak your fucking mom out ’cause she caught you naked in the backyard blasting this shit rock. This is not a joke. This is the hit factory. This is the eye. This is another planet. And hurry up, cause this perfume ain’t available at no Macy’s. Fuck the Rolling Stones. Long live Keith. We’re already dead. Smell the truth. Fuck the truth. Fuck rock and roll. Love rock and roll. And this is just Volume One.” —Ty Segall

Design

Hangin'

100% Silk

SILK is dance and beyond dance, as duo DESIGN confirm with their too vibe-y to be confined Hangin’ cassette. Featuring the bumpin’ brill Bobby Browser and friend Cem, this is private time music made by gear journeymen – mesmeric, introspective rhythm experiments, techno structures with an anodyn-ergy – from their choky, smoky aughts vaults. Practice room groove skeletons from deep within the Super Studio, Hangin’ offers a continuous monument, technological spirituality, mechanization for the modern mingle. Design means dream up, dope out, and Hangin’ means holdin’ on, stayin’ up. Architect yr deck, scheme yr sunrise scenario, destine this DESIGN.

Sissy Spacek

Wastrel Projection

Helicopter

rRope

We Are You There

Deathbomb Arc

"On May 27th, 1998, Sonic Youth played at The Fillmore in San Francisco. As usual, their choice of opening acts showed love for the local scene. Recent Matador signings, Fuck, took the middle slot, but the real coup of the evening was the opening act. This was the first time anyone had seen rRope on a stage this big. While their larger than life sound could be threatening in a small DIY venue, here they were transcendent. rRope never relied on blown out amps or distortion pedals that mangled their guitars into oblivion. Known for building their own amps based on old tube schematics, their guitars were meant to soar from one dimension, temporarily into ours, and then into another beyond imagining. When their rhythms would burst into neutrino fast intricacies, this was the sound of string theory manifested right before you, not a simple-minded blast of anger. At small warehouses, these sounds would bounce around the room, for better or worse. But on that night, they were truly free. This was rRope in their true element and it was their night. Rumors began that Sonic Youth had invited them to tour together. Years of hard dues seemed to have paid off. Needless to say, it was exciting. This would also be rRope's last show.   The bay area is well known for it's musical innovation and the 90s were a golden era. From Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 to A Minor Forest, from Caroliner to Henry's Dress and...

Kid 606

Ejaculazer Tag

Tigerbeat6

Ejaculazer Tag: A big 80 bpm blast of shiny synthesizer funk influenced in equal parts by Dr. Dre, Daft Punk, and Vangelis. Mochipet brings an epic remix that makes the original sound small in comparison with sweeping strings and a soaring angelic vocal chorus. We call it life: another 80 bpm Sci-fi hip hop jam, but dark and brooding with a more dirty south crunk influence. Ejaculazer Tag 160bpm club remix: High power 160 bpm hyped up juke styled remix. Cartoon funk: this one is just plain freaky and weird like someone spilled cough syrup in your 808 and it had a mind of its own. Ejaculazer Tag - Joe Lentini Dub: New Schematic artist Joe Lentini shows another side of his incredibly diverse style with this thick and contemplative smoothjam. Let’s Get Radioactive - Kanji Kinetic remix: Mutantbass Mastermind and the UK’s most underrated producer makes a fun and nasty hardcore crowdpleaser out of Kid606’s delusional song about aliens and nuclear energy. Cover art by Dj Zhao.

Pollard, Robert

Mouseman Cloud

GBV Inc

Robert Pollard’s new solo album Mouseman Cloud shows the Guided By Voices frontman in a playful and spontaneous mood. This is a record by a guy who just wants to rock, and not have to worry about how that rock will be received by anyone other than himself. While the songs here are not a world away from anything you’ll find on GBV’s new Let’s Go Eat the Factory album, the emphasis on Mouseman Cloud is on wordplay rather than melody, on unkempt exploration rather than traditional song structure. A lot of the tracks sound as if they started as lyrics—even poetry—and were fit around the sounds, which is not an uncommon way for Pollard to work, but the album’s gleeful verbosity could be interpreted as the work of a man who might have been feeling the pressure of expectations from (for instance) a Guided By Voices reunion and just wants to cut loose. Recorded in collaboration with producer / multi-instrumentalist Todd Tobias, Mouseman Cloud is catchy, heavy, lovely, rocky, exuberant, complexly simple and freaking wonderful. Not sweating the small stuff is not the same as taking no pains over the writing and recording—too often the two are conflated when discussing Pollard’s prodigious output. He takes pains. He edits. He cares deeply about each and every part of each and every song he records. That he seems to do so frequently and effortlessly is not his fault. It’s a unique and unparalleled talent. Mouseman Cloud is the work of a consummate...

Pins Of Light

II

Alternative Tentacles

San Francisco’s Pins of Light resides in that murky musical shadow-territory of the nearly unclassifiable. They craft a brutal and intricate mélange of metal, punk and prog that isn’t quite any of those things. Pins of Light’s most progressive moments are more Motörhead than Mothers of Invention; their metal is more Pink Floyd than it is Priest; the elements of punk are a driving fistfight that’s entirely the band’s own. Singer and bassist Shane Baker, guitarists Jake Palladino and Ravi Durbeej, and drummer Phil Becker come previously (and currently) from such SF institutions as Dead and Gone, Night After Night, Hightower and Triclops! (among a slew of others).  The group’s debut album II was recorded by Kurt Schlegel (Jello Biafra & Melvins, I Am Spoonbender) and Phil Manley (TransAm, The Fucking Champs) at Lucky Cat Recording and mixed by Becker in the band’s hometown. Their live shows are a sweaty mess of flailing limbs, hair and crushed beer cans. It’s a joy to behold.

Korperschwache

Night Country Fog

Crucial Blast

The most recent of the "excavated" Korperschwache albums is the 2005 album Night Country Fog, a collaboration with Smolken from Dead Raven Choir/Wolfmangler that, for some bizarre reason, never received any kind of formal release until now. This is pretty surprising, as Night Country Fog is one of the best of Korperschwache's considerable catalog of releases, and is possibly my favorite of all of the unearthed "lost" Korperschwache albums that we're releasing. It's the one that hews closest to the strange basement black psych dirge of Korperschwache's more recent material, but at the same time is very different from Korperschwache's other releases, a kind of amp-noise soaked funeral folk dirge, like what I would imagine one of those Belgian psych covens would sound like if one of their midnight forest jams was invaded by a wave of skuzzy HeadDirt Records-style guitar filth. Smolken's cello figures prominently on this album, and gives Night Country Fog much of it's strange, creeping folk feel.  The first song (and these are all definitely songs, and not just assaults of noise) "Afternoon" begins the album with a hazy, slow-moving cloud of strummed guitar chords and gauzy feedback drifting and unfurling beneath the sounds of birds singing and forest noises and distant sirens; the guitars are pushed to the background, heavy but not oppressive, and the clanging chords and thick clusters of dirgey rumble form into a surprisingly pretty wash of almost dreampop-like melody. The sounds of wind chimes and strange scraping noises surface intermittently...

Unsane

Wreck

Alternative Tentacles

***BACK IN PRINT!!!  Received a 7.6 rating from Pitchfork.  New York City noise-rock gods Unsane return with a vengeance on their long-awaited seventh album. Recorded by the band and producer Andrew Schneider at Brooklyn’s Translator Audio (Shrinebuilder, Keelhaul, etc.), Wreck is an unfettered burst of pent-up emotions and frustrations channeled into song—an unflinching glance into a type of life others probably should not lead.  From the shock and awe of lead track “Rat” and the stunningly damaged “Decay,” to the doom and gloom of the heavy-handed “No Chance” and the transcendental brainwork of “Stuck,” Wreck is darkly abrasive and poetic music delivered with a fearsome intensity. A punishing yet ultimately tuneful album, realistic in subject matter and as engaging as it is abrasive, the album showcases Unsane at their legendary best. Chris Spencer’s vocals and lyrics positively ache with fear and loathing (resembling the sound of a man trapped in the New York Subway system) while his searing Telecaster howl and pulverizing chords wreak havoc over Vincent Signorelli’s thundering drums and Dave Curran’s muscular, thick-as-lava bass lines.  Unsane celebrates its 20th anniversary by delivering the darkest and most personal record of their celebrated career; Wreck is the band’s defining moment.

Worm Ouroboros

Come The Thaw

Profound Lore

Formed in 2008 by Lorraine Rath (ex-The Gault, Amber Asylum) and Jessica Way, San Francisco’s Worm Ouroboros made quite an impression with their self-titled debut album—described by Decibel magazine as “Kate Bush sitting in with Asunder.” Their delicately constructed chamber pieces, an immaculate combination of ’80s 4AD-inspired dark rock and doom metal, provided the perfect accompaniment to Agalloch on that band’s Marrow of the Spirit North American tour in the spring of 2011, and Worm Ouroboros even had the live set from their NY show streamed on NPR.  Now joined by veteran drumming underground legend Aesop Dekker (of Agalloch and the now-defunct Ludicra) on drums, Worm Ouroboros presents their most fully realized work yet. On Come the Thaw, the group refines their musical craft into something more meticulous and moving, staking out a much darker, more somber and delicate-sounding territory.