Browse: Downloads

Heavy Times

Fix It Alone

Hozac

***Chicago's most hated band on the world's most hated record label, what could go wrong? But don't believe what you've read in the papers, HEAVY TIMES are certainly back with their massive third album, mainlining 18 tracks in 33 minutes for maximum impact to your safely guarded danger zones, and simultaneously scoring the soundtrack to your summer of sickness. Picking up where the razored edge of Jacker left off and screaming off into the stratosphere where their heavenly guitar interplay weaves a complicated yet natural web around their unique and peerless punk sound, Heavy Times have raised the bar undoubtedly, and you'd better be ready. Recorded with COOPER CRAIN from Bitchin' Bajas/CAVE, this album jumps out of the grooves and shakes you senseless from one song style to the next, displaying a range and variety most modern punk bands wouldn't even understand, let alone be able to keep up with. Through all the dizzying highs, the sobering lows, and the creamy middles, Heavy Times are quickly mastering their form roght before our eyes and it's never been more evident as on the Fix It Alone LP, one incredible album that's a benchmark for modern punk, with all the hooks you just can't find in books.

Shocked Minds

S/t

Hozac

***Just when the world thought it was safe from the clutches of the primal punk sneer of the CARBONAS, SHOCKED MINDS have exploded up from the underground as the brand new JOSH MARTIN-fronted (also in EX-HUMANS, TESTORS) vehicle with hooks that kill as well as they drill. And with original lineup Carbonas members DAVE RAHN (also in GENTLEMAN JESSE & HIS MEN) and JEREMY THOMPSON (also in GAMES) rounding out the ranks, it's dead set to stick in your brain like a parasite, just the way you'd expect from these long-admired Atlanta punk figureheads. But don't let that get you distracted, Shocked Minds steer their cantankerous and razored residual noise into concise blasts of exactly what you want, glazed over with refreshing nuances of the Dead Boys, Testors, The Damned and Heartbreakers, and with closer listens, shards of the ‘70s Belgian punk creme de la creme like Mad Virgins, Revenge 88, and Raxola. Songs executed so painfully tight and impeccably produced by Mr. Rahn for pinpoint perfection, you might not even notice that obscure cover by The Eat hiding in there, and it's gonna hit you like a ton of bricks.

Verma

Chrome

Hozac

***Chicago's imminent heavy psych heavy hitters VERMA have burst upon the city like a tornado inside of an Aurora Borealis, lighting up the sky with kaleidoscopic, soaring vocal explosions, and an implacable undulating rhythm that sets off reverberations that can be felt by "the heads" several states away in every direction. With an unwavering kraut rock backbone and spidery guitar lines interwoven through their impenetrable maze of haze, somewhere off in the distance, lead vocalist WHITNEY JOHNSON’s lofty siren's scream penetrates the dense fog and coalesces their darkly throbbing waves into two sides of sinister psychedelic noise that will make your heart beat right out of your chest. Although not as driftingly ethereal as their previous releases, of which, their latest was composed for a soundtrack, these two bursts of catastrophic high-energy throb showcase their intensely controlled detonations, which blast off this 7" slab like a demon cast from the heavens and right into the frontal lobe of your fragile mind.

Winter Bear

Jump In The Fire

Hozac

***WINTER BEAR is the latest project from ERIN DORBIN, the multi-talented singer/songwriter/guitarist from the sorely missed CAVE WEDDINGS, who takes the reigns here and knocks out two summertime classics, brimming with the sunshine-soaked pop perfection you should expect from this underground pop songwriting champ. After relocating to the Milwaukee area after the demise of Cave Weddings in 2009, Dorbin spent a few months in the all-girl band THE SPECTRAS before settling in for the colder months and writing her spectacular solo material, in our opinion some of the best she’s ever produced, and we’re ecstatic to release the debut Winter Bear single into the wild this summer. The snarling girl group toughness shines through the heavenly layers of vocals like a diamond in the dark, combining to form a tightly wound pop rocket, conjuring a Nikki Corvette fronting The Reigning Sound, or Shangri-Las meets Shannon & the Clams sound running through the outtakes of Buddy Holly’s songbook, gushing through these two songs on the debut single that we guarantee you won’t be able to stop playing. Absolutely ripping pop songs that don’t let up or get soft in the middle.

Lindaman, John

Black Death Dna

Teenbeat

Caudal

Forever In Another World

Oaken Palace

***AIDAN BAKER (NADJA, WHISPER ROOM, ARC) spreads multi-layered, heavily affected guitar across the propulsive rhythms of bassist GARETH SWEENEY (GOUT) and drummer FELIPE SALAZAR (MUERTE EN PEREIRA). Equally influenced by krautrock, post-punk, and spacerock. Edition of 500, 180-gram vinyl. Free download code.

Nadja

Flipper

Oaken Palace

AVAILABLE AGAIN!!!Unique soundscapes, characterized by epic drones, radiating synths, and hushed vocals. Mesmerizing, bizarre beauty. Guests include PETER BRODERICK on violin and ANGELA CHAN on viola. Edition of 500, 180-gram clear vinyl. Free download code.

Sissy Spacek

Wreck

Helicopter

Man’s Gin

Rebellion Hymns

Profound Lore

Formed by Erik Wunder years ago while still living in Colorado, Man’s Gin began as an outlet for the Cobalt frontman to write dark booze jams and murder ballads on his acoustic guitar. Upon moving to Brooklyn, New York, Wunder assembled upright bass / ebow player Josh Lozano and guitarist / pianist Scott Edward and took the band’s sound up a notch. The result was the debut album Smiling Dogs, a sonic jaunt down America’s barren wastelands that garnered acclaim throughout the underground. Man’s Gin soon became known for putting on an awesome live set, performing mainly around the New York area as well as doing a short tour with Bruce Lamont of Yakuza. Recorded and produced by Andrew Schneider (Unsane, Pelican, Cave In, Converge) at Translator Audio in Brooklyn, sophomore album Rebellion Hymns is a emotionally charged, cinematic opus, employing a more expansive sonic palette this time around. The group brings a formidable cast of guest musicians along for the ride, including renowned solo artist and former member of Swans Jarboe, Wunder’s Cobalt co-conspirator Phil McSorley, and John LaMaccia of Candiria. A work of genuine wonder and dark beauty, Rebellion Hymns features photography and art direction by respected rock / metal photographer Jimmy Hubbard.

Plotnick, Henry

Fields

Holy Mountain

Initial contact with Fields may lead one to believe it’s the work of an A+ grad student at one of America’s finest music colleges. On discovering the album’s creator won’t be able to legally drink for another decade, one might wince at the thought of one’s own paltry 11-year-old feats—even if those armpit farts were pretty inspired. Meanwhile, Henry Plotnick sounds like he’s ready for the concert hall. The structural and dynamic sophistication at play in Fields—the way melodic beauty gyres within rigorous academic / minimalist strictures, the manner in which perilous, mordant atmospheres are conjured—are astounding for any musician, age be damned. Seemingly under the spell of Terry Riley’s mesmerizing classic In C, Plotnick engineers ingenious strategies for mental liftoff. It’s as if he’s absorbed the principles and techniques of the 20th-century American minimalist-composer pantheon and injected them with a zeal for greater instrumental complexity and melodic flamboyancy. The two longest tracks on Fields take the listener highest, suggesting that Plotnick is more of a marathon-runner than a sprinter.Just as those who observed LeBron James on the court as a high-school sophomore could predict his NBA superstardom, anyone who hears Fields will be stirred to imagine future concert-goers rendered agog by Plotnick’s phenomenal prowess. Get in on the ground floor of what promises to be a skyscraper of rarefied sonic inventiveness.

Arner, Jay

Jay Arner

Mint

For years, Vancouver multi-instrumentalist Jay Arner has teamed up with others to translate the sounds in his head. He’s fronted an indie rock band, played synthesizers and samplers in a pop duo, manned the drums for a piano-punk songwriter, and held down the bass in a eight-member collective. Along the way, he’s also become a sought-after producer and remix artist, working out of Vancouver’s legendary Hive Studios and recording acts like Mount Eerie, Apollo Ghosts, Rose Melberg, No Gold and many more. Now, finally, he is going it alone. Every sound on his eponymous debut album was self-recorded by Arner in his 72-square-foot practice space using a precariously perched desktop computer and his home recording gear. The sum of his many talents, these ten songs sizzle with DIY energy and encompass the scope of the songwriter’s diverse résumé. Opener “Midnight on South Granville” sets a dark tone with its coldly mechanical intro before flourishing into a lush post-punk synthscape that reflects Arner’s love of analog electronics. Elsewhere, the bass-heavy pulse of “Broken Glass (In the Hall of Shattered Mirrors)” draws on ’70s pseudo-funk, while “Wildest One” is an abrasive surge of distortion and “Don’t Remind Me” is a soaring pop anthem that recalls classic Murderrecords songcraft. The lyrics are filled with self-doubt and wry cynicism, but don’t expect confessional heartbreak—these timeless melodies and intricately wrought arrangements are filled with noisy pop sweetness, and there’s not an acoustic guitar to be found. Given that Arner wrote, performed, recorded and mixed every...

Sepetci, Cuneyt & Orchestra Dolapdere

Bahriye Ciftetellisi

L.M. Dupli-cation

In Istanbul, close to the city center, lies a district not often visited by tourists. It’s called Dolapdere, and it is populated by the Roma of the city, many of whom are originally from Thrace. They supply the music for the city’s weddings, circumcisions, parades and parties. Dolapdere is the home of clarinet virtuoso Cüneyt Sepetçi and the Orchestra Dolapdere—some of the greatest musicians of Istanbul. They specialize in a modern take on classic Turkish Roma (gypsy) music, as well as folk songs from Albania, Macedonia, Spain and elsewhere that they have adapted to their own inimitable style. On days when Sepetçi is not working, one can find him in the café, drinking chai and waiting for the highest bidder to hire him for the night’s concert. In the summer of 2012, he met American musicians A Hawk and A Hacksaw, who agreed to get the under-recorded master into a studio and release his first album. Sepetçi has chosen all the tracks; many are hits from the Turkish Roma repertoire, but many have not been heard in the West.

Light Fantastic

S/t

Spiritual Pajamas

When we first met the man behind Light Fantastic, Terry Sowers was singing harmonies and playing guitar in the Farmer Dave Scher band. His introduction to the stage was a diving-head-first experience, playing alongside one of his musical heroes as support for acts like Jenny and Johnny and Conor Oberst. However, Sowers was also sitting on a treasure chest of his own songs, fine-tuning a sound he’d developed for years, mostly alone, in his Victorian apartment in San Francisco. Teaming up with Jeremy Bringetto (Vue, Bellavista, Tamaryn), the two worked this set of bedroom pop sketches into what can be described as a modern take on California—as much Southern California as an expression of the Bay Area. This dreamy, surfy shoegaze views an age of innocence through the idyllic lens of reflection and personal nostalgia, like the pure, happy memories of a long-lost love. It’s no surprise that the songs’ author hails from the hot suburbs of Los Angeles and that his compositions string together a sincere sense of personal displacement and longing for home. When Sowers and Bringetto brought their song ideas to Rex Shelverton, who was in the midst of producing Tamaryn’s latest album, a strange but harmonious union was born of light and dark. Shelverton’s homegrown version of Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound was the perfect compliment to songs that evoked Laurel Canyon, Carol Kaye and mid-’60s Brian Wilson California optimism. The Light Fantastic EP is sunny, hopeful and dreamy, and even in its darkest moments aims...

Octopus Project

Sharpteeth

Peek-A-Boo

Austin’s favorite experimental pop band The Octopus Project is set to return with their fifth studio full-length, Fever Forms. The single Sharpteeth, a limited-edition 7-inch pressed on florescent pink vinyl, drops two weeks before the album’s. But proceed with caution: As tempting as it may be to keep “Sharpteeth” on repeat, the soaring guitorchestra and haunting Theremin lead has been known to reduce some listeners to puddles of tears about the 250th consecutive listen. The single also features two exclusive non-album B-sides. The Octopus Project has released joyous party music since 2002, all the while touring the world both on their own and as handpicked support for artists as diverse as Aesop Rock, DEVO, Explosions in the Sky and Trail of Dead. They’ve earned a reputation for exceptional experiences through elaborate multimedia experiments, lavish album packaging, and the intensity of their extremely fun, extremely loud live shows. The band plans to hit the road again in July and August in support of Fever Forms. Tour dates coming soon!

Irreparables

S/t

Nominal

AVAILABLE AGAIN... New Pressing limited to 147 copies on opaque blue vinyl in reverse board jackets. With their four-track demo recorded in a friend's flat, Brighton's IRREPARABLES stripped away the excess of some 35 years of punk rock and found perfection in its most rudimentary elements. The ghosts of Ramones, Dead Moon, Wipers, The Cure, and The Shaggs remain. In an increasingly contrived world, reaffirmation is found in their simple, direct nature. Innocence and longing ("I Wanna Make a Fanzine," "Dear Mixtape," "Broken Sound") stand beside contempt and disgust ("Bendito sea Dios," "Spit on the Pope," "Release the Hounds," "Digested System"). These 10 songs make up the totality of Irreparables' recorded existence. Features members of CISMA, DESTRUCCION, FIRMEZA 10, OTAN, LAS TIMIDAS, and others. "If the Desperate Bicycles had mohawks, if the Vaselines wore studded jackets with Destrucción backpatches and sung about making fanzines instead of not being wanted by Jesus Christ, if some shitty indie-rock kids suddenly discovered the virtues of keeping things raw and not giving a fuck about musicianship, chances are the result would sound more or less like Irreparables, the current band I’ve blasted on repeat in 2012, sometimes up to five times a day, seven days a week. They only have one self-released demo tape out, and they probably imploded five minutes after releasing it, but shit do I love this tape. This is just what you need if you’ve been feeling a bit burned out and bored with punk – anthemic inept...

Wreck & Reference

No Content

Flenser

Formed in 2011 by drummer Ignat Frege and multi-instrumentalist Felix Skinner, San Francisco, California’s Wreck and Reference play by their own rules, employing only drums, vocals and a Korg sampler. After releasing the highly-acclaimed Black Cassette demo (later reissued on vinyl through The Flenser), the pair unleased their debut full-length No Youth in 2012, catapulting them to the forefront of unconventional heavy music. The album generated widespread critical praise, with Invisible Oranges declaring that the forward-thinking band “pushes the traditional metal template toward regions unexplored, expanding the sonic legacies of Swans’ filth and Big Black’s harshness.” Now, Wreck and Reference return with a new genre-defying two-song 7-inch, No Content. Heavy and experimental with nods to post-metal, industrial, electronic, noise and doom, the duo’s latest work is unorthodox and captivating. The devastatingly somber and addictive “Absurdities and Echos” is more melodic and atmospheric than anything the band has done before, while “Abhorrence” is concise and raw.

Man Or Astroman?

Defcon 5...4...3...2...1

Chunklet

***BACK IN STOCK ON BLUE VINYL!!! MAN OR ASTROMAN? have returned to earth for the human masses and after years of hibernation they are now unveiling their finest recorded work to date. it has been nearly 12 years since the band last released their intergalactic sonic wave forms, and the new album, Defcon 5...4...3...2...1 is here now with a striking validity that the band is unquestionably as both tuneful and energetic as they ever have been. The record combines ever-familiar Astro audio tones and the well-established playing ferocity that MoAM? are known for, but yet now, there is an un- deniably evolution to the band that is both intuitive, logical and well crafted. defcon is here and is here with imminent purpose. Recorded by STEVE ALBINI and DANIEL FARRIS. Albini and Now put your space helmet on and strap in.

Magic Panda

Temple Of A Thousand Lights

Tigerbeat6

Temple of a Thousand Lights is the debut album release from 31 year old UK producer Jamie Robson aka Magic Panda. An entire year in the making, Temple is the full length follow up to the well-received "Days are Numbered" and "Tokyo" EPs, with the titular tracks of both EPs making their way onto the LP. Having spent several years establishing his sound, down to his acute and obsessive attention to detail, Magic Panda arrived late on the electronic music scene in 2011 with his debut EP, The Glass Mountain but in this short time has attracted support from and been playlisted by the likes of Laurent Garnier, Hernan Cattaneo and Max Cooper (whose remix of Distant Places featured on the Tokyo EP and skyrocketed to the top of the Beatport electronica charts). In addition to a handful of EPs and remixes, he has developed a club orientated live set and played alongside Luke Abbott, Ricardo Tobar, Mount Kimbie, Portico Quartet and DMX Krew both in the UK and across Europe.  Temple of a Thousand Lights is an album of contrasts, from the propulsive and energetic opener Tokyo, and Zwolf, to the delicate and expansive Luna Rosa and Mothlight, it is an exploration of light and dark spaces (Chiaroscuro), euphoria and melancholia (Days are Numbered, A Perfect Circle). Despite these contrasts the tracks are unified by their powerful intensity, creative song form and by the thread of wistful melodies that runs throughout. Temple's melodies allude to far away spaces,...

Actuary

Reality Is, The Dream Is Dead

Crucial Blast

Since forming in the latter half of the past decade, California-based extreme noise outfit Actuary has steadily cranked out a stream of split releases that saw them sharing wax (or other petroleum-based substances) with everyone from Merzbow, Bastard Noise and Gnaw Their Tongues side-project Aderlating to cult underground noise spewers like Winters in Osaka, Bacteria Cult, Juhyo and Fetus Eaters. Keeping up with their prolific output has been a daunting task, but also a rewarding one, as Actuary’s epic-length blasts of abstract electronic chaos, extreme psychedelic circuit-fuckery and monstrous synth abuse consistently deliver serious sonic skull-melt. On their first proper full-length CD The Reality Is, The Dream Is Dead, Actuary returns with four new tracks of intense noise that cover all the different aspects of their sound. Opener “Spiritual Armageddon” sends spasms of squelchy electronic carnage through a massive, rumbling dronescape, evoking visions of high-end robotics in the bowels of some subterranean forge. “Heat of Eternal Punishment” blends scraping, metallic tones and sputtering distortion before shifting into fields of layered and processed samples that ratchet up the panic level to nearly unbearable heights. Corrosive buzzsaw drones flutter and fluctuate across the “Pool of Perpetual Torment,” building into crushing waves of percussive industrial pummel. On final track “Baptized in Flames,” the band works up a smoldering, apocalyptic noisescape infested with clanking metal chains, pulsating synths and the howling of mutant cetaceans—becoming by the end something resembling an entire megalopolis consumed in the hell of nuclear fire.  The malevolent, psychedelic electronics...

Gulaggh

Vorkuta

Crucial Blast

In 2008, Dutch blacknoise maniacs Stalaggh announced that they altering their sound and changing their name to Gulaggh, with the new incarnation of the band creating their terrifying soundscapes using orchestral instruments instead of the blackened, ultra-harsh distortion and feedback of their previous works. And while their updated sound isn’t as harsh or oppressive as the Stalaggh material, Gulaggh delivers something equally disturbing and nightmarish with their debut album Vorkuta. The first chapter in a planned trilogy, Vorukta was initially released in 2009 by New Era Productions. The album soon went out of print, but has been resurrected by Crucial Blast in a revised package for newcomers to Gulaggh’s dissonant, otherworldly dread. Comprised of a single 45-minute track, Vorukta is an epic sound-collage of surrealistic dread employing violins, saxophones, trumpets, electronics and voices.  Growing slowly and inexorably from ominous, murky ambience into a bizarre aural nightmare, Vorkuta is like a cross between some demonic chamber ensemble tuning up and a free-jazz group achieving maximum dissonance. Intensely harrowing and deeply creepy, the album is one of the more uncomfortable listens in recent memory—equal parts hellish free-improv, dissonant chamber horror and intensely disturbing sound collage. This new Crucial Blast edition comes in a black digipack with metallic silver printing.

Rotorvator

I Vivi E I Mort

Crucial Blast

I Vivi E I Mort is the debut album from Italian void-gazers Rotorvator, a seven-song blast of blackened electronics, pounding industrial rhythms, deformed black metal and punishing abstract noise issued through Crucial Blast’s Crucial Blaze series. The band’s unique strain of extreme music was first issued via a series of limited cassettes and CDRs on obscure, noise-friendly Italian labels like Dokuro; although Rotorvator’s early works emerged out of the noise / drone underground, their music is unmistakably rooted in black metal. Blistering vocals, blasting tempos and eerily dissonant riffing are woven into their strange, mechanical music, a unique sound that shifts between moments of mutant majesty and vicious chaos. Beginning with the pneumatic industrial rhythms, icy black metal guitars and gothic synthesizers diffused into wavering clouds of nebulous electronics on opener “Ad Sanctos,” Rotorvator begins its descent into angular, blasting violence; the mechanical percussive backbone gives this a rigid, relentless attack that suggests the influence of early mecha-BM pioneers Mysticum and Dødheimsgard, even as the song slips into murky, tectonic breakbeats in its final moments. On tracks like “Domenica,” the black metal elements are consumed into a strange, mutated industrial sound—shuffling breakbeats and eerie electronic ambience wrap themselves around ragged, utterly psychotic vocals and creeping minor key guitars. Elsewhere, the bleak, droning crush of “In Limine” fuses brooding, slow-motion bass thud and sheets of corrosive noise with fractured drum loops, swells of dramatic synthesizer drift and a swirling fog of distant screams. Released as part of the Crucial Blaze series,...

Joyner, Simon & Callaci, Dennis

New Secrets

Shrimper

Simon Joyner, who over the course of thirteen albums has released a unique and influential body of work on a myriad of independent labels, and Dennis Callaci, who has recorded nearly as many records with his band Refrigerator and runs one of those said labels, present their second record together.  Their first collaborative release was a one-sided vinyl-only release on Catsup Plate Records a decade back entitled Stranger Blues, a direct-to-one-track live recording of the two playing together and sharing one mic. Though recorded in the same spot (i.e. the living room of the Callaci home), New Secrets is a different record altogether—a call and response exercise of sorts, with a Joyner song answering the plea to the preceding Callaci dirge. Recorded and mixed live by Jarvis Taveniere (noted for his Rearhouse recordings and as a member of Woods) over the course of three days, the duo was backed up by Joyner’s band from the Ghosts record of last year. Augmenting the album’s eleven tracks are guest appearances by Franklin Bruno (Human Hearts, Nothing Painted Blue) and Kevin Morby (The Babies).  Reuniting the original cast from the first release, noted artist Rob Carmichael designed the cover art around Callaci’s drawings.

High Wolf

Kairos: Chronos

Not Not Fun

French globe-tourist High Wolf has hand-rolled his way up Mount Fuji, trainspotted every corner of Europe, hitch-hiked across America and Australia, chugged Ganges water, and crouched on all manner of smoke-stained prayer rug since first looping a bongo back in ’09. His apprenticeship in the House of Wah nearly complete, he’s hinted at a potentially seismic shift in the High Wolf third eye doctrine lurking in the near future; perhaps his Away Team exfoliation moment is nigh. Fortunately, Not Not Fun has coaxed the astral jungle jah concoctions of Kairos: Chronos out from the ether, because this LP is the summation of his entire half-decade Amazon Cosmos quest.  All the tenets of the High Wolf mythology are in place: humid hand-percussion heat-spells, coiling snake-charmer fuzz-guitar stacked six deep, sunlit synth textures, dubby bass-lines thumping through grass amps, ceremonial voodoo babble, etc. From the hidden temple hymn “Kulti” to the thirteen-minute self-beheading solar eclipse shakedown, “Alvarado,” the record represents rarified proof of The Wolf on High. On tour now in every country on Earth.

Russian Tsarlag

Gagged In Boonesville

Not Not Fun

Providence, RI, garbage-artisan savant Russian Tsarlag (a.k.a. Carlos Gonzales) should need no introduction at this point—he’s been trucking his moldy fruit cart of sewage-pop and bad acid storytelling across the American wasteland since longer than most people have had an email account. Yet over the past few years his uniquely zombified scrapheap songcraft has fermented into its ripest and most reflective forms, none more so than his latest bleach blanket odyssey, Gagged in Boonesville.  The album tells the sordid tale of a huge tenement apartment building whose residents are mentally poisoned by an ancient poster of Medusa haunting the basement, not to mention the unruly pack of rabies-stricken stray dogs living in the courtyard. (Shit’s pretty bleak in Boonesville, clearly.) Given the backstory, it’s fitting that the LP’s nine tracks traverse a more melancholy, meditative dimension of the Tsarlag multiverse: dumpster-scrounged fifth-generation new-wave demos (“Gagged in Boonesville,” “Play This Tape Again”), homeless mutant campfire dirges (“This Waltz”), cyborg-mumbling depressive ambience (“Become Solid”), even a cockroach-covered piano ballad (“Island of Lost Souls”).  It’s all here, echoing down the derelict stairwells—another fascinating, unclassifiable chapter in the Neverending Story of Tsarlag. Read it or weep. 

Burkat, Alex

Tarot

100% Silk

Prolific Pennsylvanian Alex Burkat has been active in several spheres of house, disco, acid wash, and global rhythm both as DJ and producer but his 100% Silk debut skews more hazed and sensual, to great effect. Swelling loops of new age mist give way to classic Chicago figure-8 bass patterns punctuated by dubby drum fills, before billowing back into breathy warehouse atmospherics. His recent EP for Mister Saturday Night explored higher tempo dynamics but Tarot unwinds with a dreamier deja vu, waves of arpeggiatted echo, strobing stereo shimmer, and low acid warble arcing over a limitless subterranean dance floor. Hypnotic humanist mantric mystery music for the 21st century, for those invested in what the deck has to hold.

Polysick

Under Construction

100% Silk

Visionary Roman hyperrealist Polysick (a.k.a. Egisto Sopor) is one the most inspirationally omnivorous electronic futurists in the biz. From the miasmic sci-fi terrariums of his 2012 opus Digital Native to his scrambled alien radio hijack tape Flow FM to his recent new age metropolis techno-fantasy Daydream, he traverses every sphere with a masterfully warped, expansive and maximalist touch.  Under Construction finds him fracking fresh dancefloor terrains: breezy rooftop acid stretched into animal balloons, degenerated house dubs refracted through ’80s video-arcade ambience, jazzy champagne-spritzed 303-dosed loft funk, screwed Barry White samples echoed across the chill-out lounge. Four instant time-travel crate-dug classics by one of today’s most clued-in constructionists.

Winter Makes Sailors

Moving On

Anyway

Winter Makes Sailors is the car that drives the engine of Sean Gardner, a Columbus,Ohio music fixture who has played up and down the main streets of mid-western cities in a variety of bands for the last decade. He lives a simple life with his wife, he works as a third-grade teacher and spends his weekends teaching guitar and crafting his own music. While Moving On carries the full sound of a band, it is in reality much more of a collection of friends coming together to help Sean exhale the music he makes, at times it is reflective of growing up in rural Ohio ("I think My Time Has Come") while others show the best of orchestrated pop music at its finest ("Maybe Someday Soon" & "On The Beach") all carry echoes of spinning vinyl records that support a 4am seduction, such as The Kinks "Something Else", Elliot Smith, Jeepster Records and the oft forgotten Silos. Sean pulls it all with a stellar sense of pop song arrangement. Dig in. 

Oh Sees, Thee

Moon Sick Ep

Castle Face

***NOW AVAILABLE ON CD!!! Culled from the same sessions as the Floating Coffin LP and featuring guest spots from LARS FINBERG of THE INTELLIGENCE, K DYLAN EDRICH of THE MALLARD and KELLEY STOLTZ, as well as the full and finely honed weight of the touring band, Moon Sick is a similarly synth-drenched, psychotic-then-sweet companion piece to Floating Coffin. So toke up to the melted swing of "Grown In A Graveyard," yelp along to "Sewer Fire," pogo in place to live staple "Humans Be Swayed" and finally and bend your sweet tooth on the harpsichorded ballad "Candy Clock." Originally released on 12-inch vinyl for Record Store Day 2013.

Sissy Spacek

Aimless

Helicopter

Alberich

Machine Gun Nest: Cassette Works, Vol. 0

Hospital Productions

Miles

Unsecured

Modern Love

*30 minute EP follow-up to Miles' recent 'Faint Hearted' album for Modern Love, mastered by Matt Colton* An addendum of sorts to his recent 'Faint Hearted' album, Miles' returns with a half-hour EP more squarely aimed at the floor with four darkened, robust variants. 'Blatant Statement' is up first, slowly emerging from a rough alignment of metallic percussion and abrasive stabs not a million miles removed from the kind of racket you'd most likely associate with Vatican Shadow, before the almost-clipped rub of those super-warm bass stabs shifts the perspective to a different kind of environment altogether. 'Technocracy' delivers an oozing House deconstruction, slowed down and inebriated, while 'Infinite Jest' revolves around an industrial cacophony harnessed into a rhythmic anomaly situated somewhere between a technofied Pete Swanson and a sweaty Kassem Mosse. 'Plutocracy' ends the set with a bleached-out warehouse chug, slowed down and menacing, surrounded by a submerged choral arrangement and more of that toughened hammered-metal sound that runs through the EP.

Octo Octa

Between Two Selves

100% Silk

Sophistication and elegance have not always been the strobe light honey for die-hard divers into the Dance genre, but it’s been Octo Octa’s strongest suit since his 2011 debut 12” on 100% Silk, and here again are those initial ideas of identity and hunger for intimacy all leading to an adrift, uneasy feeling, only they’ve materialized into that instantly recognizable, authentic OO sound.  Promising was an early word used to describe the thoughtful, dedicated producer (who records in a cramped corner of a kitchen in a cramped corner of Brooklyn), and our anticipations were justified; Between Two Selves has a facile sensuality – the reclining nude of Octo’s Blue Period – with more room to breathe or sigh, and the sort of anthemic samplics handily summed up with a single coaxing call (“I want you,” “I don’t want you to go,” “All his kisses taste sweet”).  Focusing on fewer elements manipulated, pitched and played with over the course of more extended, abstracted compositions, Octo Octa has become one of the prophetic personifiers of regal melancholy in electronic music, along with James Blake and King Midas Sound.  Homoeroticism and homosentimentality, urge and satisfication, celebration and celibacy lay languidly across Between Two Selves, a lofty, soulful statement that Silk is blessed to release on the world. 

Bleeker, Alex & The Freaks

How Far Away

Woodsist

“New Jersey-born Alex Bleeker is an old soul. For his sophomore album, How Far Away, he lets that come into play fully. Over eleven tracks, he deals with the autumnal phase of lost love, the point after the grieving subsides and you start figuring out what you’re supposed to do next. As with his last album, Bleeker cobbles together a ragtag collection of ‘freaks,’ including Mountain Man’s Amelia Meath, who provides gorgeously weighty backing vocals on four tracks, Woods’ Jarvis Tanviere, Real Estate’s Jackson Pollis, Big Troubles’ Sam Franklin, among plenty other like-minded musicians who lend sparkling instrumental flourishes and a full-bodied backbone to Bleeker’s pained yowl. “Album opener ‘Don’t Look Down’ feels like a mission statement for the rest of the record. Over upbeat guitar jangle and smooth organ runs, Bleeker’s voice cracks and lilts: ‘Don’t look back on the way we met / Don’t look back at me now / Don’t retract all the things you’ve said / Don’t back out on me.’ In the hands of plenty other songwriters, this would come off as self-pitying, but Bleeker just seems wise. “The key to How Far Away isn’t just Bleeker’s lyrics, which [are] both universal and intensely specific, but also the relaxed dynamics of the players. Bleeker is a jam band fanatic, and he takes the core ethos of The Grateful Dead—let things unfold naturally—and distills it into concise pop songs: tracks like ‘All My Songs’ and ‘Rhythm Shakers’ are brief, but they shift from crystalline guitar to...

Mordecai

College Rock

Richie Records

College Rock is the rabidly anticipated new full-length from Mordecai, the most charismatically tuneful knuckle-draggers in Missoula; quite possibly in all of Montana.    The album cruises and plods across twelve tunes that recall the rougher trades coming out of the UK, the early squall of Cleveland’s proto-punk merchants and the reckless abandon of Will Shatter and crew. This rock trio lacks pretense; their power comes from the electric joy of plugging in and turning up.    Geographic isolation works in their favor, as guys of Mordecai’s talent and vision would surely have been chewed up and spit out long ago by a more populous metropolis. Instead, College Rock proves that at least a few residents of Silver Bow County can teach a lesson in urban detachment.

Oblivians

Desperation

In The Red

In The Red is proud to announce the release of The Oblivians’ first studio full-length album from since 1997’s ...Play Nine Songs with Mr. Quintron.  Desperation picks up right where the band left off, delivering fourteen scorching tracks of soulful punk-garage-blues trash rock informed in equal parts by ’50s rock ’n’ roll, ’60s garage rock, Memphis soul, Delta blues and Killed By Death-style punk. There’s even a Cajun Zydeco cover here!  As Greg Oblivian puts it, “Between our last record as a band in ’97 and now, a lot of water has passed below that bridge. We three went our own ways after that and pursued our own musical goals. Personally, I often missed the dynamic that Jack and Eric offered to my songwriting. Almost as much as I missed being given carte blanche to add a thing or two to theirs. I’ve played with lots of great musicians in the interim but needless to say, it’s a hard itch to scratch. The dynamic between us was a singular thing. So, over the years as we would occasionally reunite for a festival or special occasion, the idea began to grow in the back of my mind—the idea of making a new record. I mean, if you’re going to keep playing as a band eventually you’ll want new songs to play. Because as much as we enjoyed playing together the thing I missed the most was creating together. So that’s what we did.”

Kid Congo & The Pink Monkey Birds

Haunted Head

In The Red

Waking from a nap in the swamps of outer space, Kid Congo & The Pink Monkey Birds ride a geisterbahn into the hypnagogic, a place between sleep and consciousness also known as the “Haunted Head.” Haunted Head is the third LP the quartet has oozed out for In The Red. Legendary guitar stylist Kid Congo Powers (The Gun Club, The Cramps, Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds) and longtime cohorts bassist Kiki Solis (Knife in the Water), drummer Ron Miller (Up The Academy) and guitarist Jesse Roberts (Sandrider, The Ruby Doe) take matters into their own mitts by having Roberts engineer and Miller mix the record at the now well-known Harveyville Project High School in Kansas.  With The Pink Monkey Birds’ cocktail of fuzz guitars, New Orleans drum beats, soulful strut bass lines and sonic ambrosia at its most potent, Haunted Head offers the purest distillation of the group’s powers. The trip of your dreams includes the “cheap and tawdry” in a tribute to dearly departed actress Susan Tyrell (“Su Su”), the morphing of Jerry Lee Lewis with Phyllis Diller (“Killer Diller”) and the plain ol’ insanity of romantic love (“Dance Me Swamply”). The band also tells you how they like “the mondos and the cholos and the weirdos and he freaks” on the rollicking “Let’s Go!” and how they don’t like “neocons in square back suits” and “throwing up in a dirty phone booth “ on the punky proclamation “I Don’t Like.” I mean, who does?  On...

3 Leafs

S/t

Spiritual Pajamas

Let’s call it a coincidence. Bay Area collective 3 Leafs drops this heavenly EP of electronics-threaded rock right on the heels of a mini-meteor plunging from the Siberian sky. But there’s no terror or apocalyptic overtones to this galactic effort—these songs are mysterious and ethereal. Listening to them makes one want to be somewhere far away. The 10-inch EP is anchored by “Omniscience,” a song with two parts. The first half feels like a misleadingly innocent joyride, the second its natural consequence: marooned under an inky desert sky soundtracked by a haunting guitar. “Out Ritual” comes from 3 Leafs’ Canal Smarts sessions, this one a slew of frequencies raining down over a cornerstone groove. Closer “Golden Weapons” feels like Can meets NASA, which would’ve made for a great television show.

Iron Tongue

Dogs Have Barked, The Birds Have Flown

Neurot Recordings

“The iron tongue of midnight hath told twelve. Lovers, to bed; ‘tis almost fairy time.” —Bill Q. Shakespeare   The Iron Tongue of Little Rock, on the other hand, hath told about 4:53 A.M. Fairy time’s come and gone, and spurned lovers toss and turn and sweat out the sleepless night’s chemical indulgences in lonely beds all over town. They’re not singing of magical, moonlit escapades. These are songs of pain, regret and motherfucking heartache that recall everything from the proto-metal stomp of Blue Cheer and Grand Funk to the darkest hours of Kiss, Deep Purple, Buddy Guy and Skynyrd. The band formed when a group of veteran players with diverse musical backgrounds found a common interest in the need to get down and dirty and way, way gone.  Iron Tongue has spent the last three years and change playing its soulful, heavy-amp blues steadily around the South, touring the Midwest and East Coast with Memphis kindred spirits The Dirty Streets, and sharing bills with Black Tusk, Scott Kelly, The Sword, High on Fire, Crowbar and Lita Ford, as well as fellow Arkansans Pallbearer and The Body. Neurosis’s Steve Von Till called Iron Tongue’s debut “a solid slab of balls-to-the-wall shameless rock, with a power and an edge and soul that rarely exists in music today.

Gevurah

Necheshirion

Profound Lore

The two members that comprise Canada’s newest black metal disciples Gevurah embrace the pure essence of the genre, upholding the true values of black metal—values that honor and give praise to the dark lord through uncompromising and sophisticated art presented in an intellectual manner. Necheshirion is Gevurah’s debut EP and features five hymns of elite Satanic black metal clocking in at 33 minutes. Reminiscent of such acts as Deathspell Omega, Funeral Mist and Causus Luciferi-era Watain, the release includes a cover of Malign’s “Entering Timeless Halls.”

Iron Forest

Body Horror

Crucial Blast

Body Horror is the second full-length release from Iron Forest, the new project of Midwestern industrial / experimental artist Brandon Elkins, and follows his extremely limited 2012 album Pantechnicon. Some might know Elkins from A Crown of Amaranth (who released an excellent album of dark, futuristic heaviness and black-hole ambience on Crucial Blast’s Crucial Bliss series in 2005) as well as his short-lived group A Crown of Light. The eight songs on Body Horror are forged from gleaming metallic drones, glitchy electronica and vast clouds of interstellar synthesizer that wind around fractured, doom-laden riffs. The album is rife with the sort of apocalyptic atmosphere that Godflesh exuded on their more experimental albums, and while Justin Broadrick’s pioneering industrial metal is an obvious influence on Iron Forest’s sound, here the crushing guitars and solemn ambience are cracked and broken into strange splatters of percussive noise and dissonant dronescapes that evoke an altogether more warped vision. Elkins abuses dubstep tropes—the speaker-rattling bass tones, the vicious synthesizers, the fragmented rhythms—but there’s nothing here that a sane person would consider “danceable.” It’s a chaotic, noise-damaged, dub-infested version of Skin Chamber’s industrial metal, if that band had been obsessed with Autechre’s experimental glitchery. Combine that with an obsession with Cronenbergian themes (mutation, deformity, etc.) to get an idea of the type of pitch-black, mechanized dread found on Body Horror. Released in a limited edition of 400 hand-numbered copies, the album comes in the signature Crucial Blaze clear DVD-style case with an insert card and a...