Browse: Vinyl

Real Losers

Time To Lose

Total Punk

***AN OFFICIAL RLD 2025 RELEASE. THE 22ND ANNIVERSARY JOHN CALE MIX / DAVID BOWIE MASTER OF REAL LOSERS TIME TO LOSE LP. 20+ YEARS OF DUST LOVINGLY CRAMMED INTO EACH GROOVE!!! ALL MANNERS OF SCIENTIFIC ADVANCEMENT AND TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION WERE USED BY DR. GARY JARMAN, DURING REMIXING, TO ENSURE THAT NONE OF THE HISS WAS LOST WHILE ELEVATING THE THUD! A PERFECT THUD TO CRUD RATIO IS MAINTAINED THROUGHOUT THE 30+ MINUTE LISTENING EXPERIENCE. BLOWN OUT BUDGET FRIENDLY PUNK FROM THE DAWN OF THE 21st CENTURY! AVAILABLE APRIL 19TH FROM ALL STORES THAT CELEBRATE RLD DAY!!!! LOUD , LOOSE AND 100% TOTAL LOSER!!!

Moondaddy

Poet Lies

Volar

***In a world full of lies and deception, it’s important to live within the truth when it comes to what we tell ourselves. That’s what Poet Lies, the debut album by San Diego’s moondaddy, is all about. Multi-instrumentalist and driving force behind the project Cara Potiker wrote the record as a means of grappling with difficulties she’s lived with for most of her life. An escapist at heart, Potiker’s manner of getting away during the early days of the pandemic, when no one could go anywhere, meant diving deep into songwriting as a coping mechanism. Yet in that process of solitude and introspection, Potiker discovered a few aspects of herself that she no longer wanted to keep buried, and it all unfolds within the notes of the tracks. The eleven songs that make up Poet Lies all comment on establishing a balance between working to resolve that which ails and being proud of the person those ailments helped shape—an interesting dichotomy that manifests itself in many ways. Poet Lies is a reverb soaked, shimmering fever dream of a record that sonically pulls from influences ranging from 1970’s glam rock to 90’s shoegaze and trip hop. Featuring contributions from talented local musicians from Juarez, Mexico and El Paso, Texas.

Scrounge

Almost Like You Could

Ba Da Bing!

Almost Like You Could ignites its art punk fire with Lucy Alexander proclaiming, “Everyone wants something to talk about/ But not a minute to spare, so be brief.” Not surprising from a song that’s 1:54 (“Higher”), but the raw honesty in her lyrics ring far after the music ends. Alexander, along with bandmate Luke Cartledge, place the propulsive power of their beliefs at the core of their debut full-length album, and their guiding motivation towards social justice is as fierce as it is welcoming. “Living as part of the queer community, and being queer myself, leads me towards supporting every person’s truth,” Alexander says. Scrounge’s songs skip to a fast beat, electrifying the entire album with a sense of empowerment. Their approach is OG punk: they make music for their peers and themselves. Only now, with a world of connections possible, they’re able to open arms wide for a far-reaching embrace. Alexander’s rich vocals give their sound its central force, anchoring the songs with confessional lines (“If this is the pinnacle, then I need a miracle/ Cause everyone’s laughing at me,” “There’s not much left/ this corpse I have to keep/ Above board.”). They sing about economic inequality, political corruption, environmental destruction, and collective change. “We’re inspired by those around us, and we write about what we care about. Art has always existed for us as a means of catharsis, a way of expressing something we might not be able to otherwise, and we hope our music can be that...

Myers, Jackie

What About The Butterfly

577 Records

***"There is something intensely alluring, almost addictive, about Kansas City-based artist Jackie Meyers. Known for her innovation and fluidity on the keys and her sultry, bluesy vocals that could spark warmth in even the iciest of souls, she has a way of leaving all your flabbers ghasted and with a voracious appetite for more. Now, 577 Records is ecstatic to present her latest work of art, What About the Butterfly, a technical masterpiece born from the depths of this vocalist/pianist/composer’s beautiful soul and enviable mind. Every sound and beat in these arrangements projects Jackie’s meticulous approach to composition, technique, and innovation. Her use of spectral composition and microtonality pays homage to the French spectral composition movement’s Gérard Grisey and Tristan Murial, who she says has shown us 'how to embrace the perspective that the physics of sound should inform the compositional process'. Although she had envisioned most of the work for this record between 2022 and 2023, Meyers took her time to procure the right band members and refine the arrangements. In What About the Butterfly, she is joined by three members of Fountain City String Quartet, including their lead, Alyssa Bell (on viola), Matthew Bennett on the violin, and cellist Sascha Groschang. She specifically chose quarter sharps and three-quarter flats for the string players, pushing them beyond their norms in a way that required many rehearsals supported by carefully prepared tools and materials. To satisfy her need for an experienced horn section, she turned to her mentor, former member...

Chime Oblivion

s/t

DEATHGOD CORP

*OUR COLOR VINYL VARIANT IS DOUBLE MINT*Chime Oblivion began out of the blue. David Barbarossa reached out to John Dwyer saying he was a fan of Osees and he was invited to a show in London. The two hung out and hit it off, "then I rabbit holed on Bow Wow Wow too…," Dwyer recalls. "I reached out to David and suggested that we try and write some songs together... I flew David out, we met at my studio and spent five days writing basic drums ideas." The two got to know each other and had a lot of laughs. Dwyer then brought in Weasel Walter, knowing that he would be perfect "to add all that legitimate old-school weird proto-punk no wave guitar scratch to it, which of course he did masterfully." Next came Tom Dolas to play fuzzy marimba, and the fabulous H.L. Nelly, "as I knew her from a record I’d put out back in the day for a band called Naked Lights from Oakland. I knew that she could pull off the vocal style I had in mind." Together, the group created their debut self-titled album. for Deathgod. "For fans of Adam & the Ants, Bow Wow Wow, Crass, The Slits, and any other wierdo punk we fell in love with as youths."

Iron Lung

Adapting // Crawling

Iron Lung

***"Behold! Seattle’s immortal IRON LUNG have bestowed upon us their fourth studio full-length Adapting // Crawling. This, their first album since 2013, is as fierce and uncompromising as we’ve come to expect from the duo of JENSEN WARD and JON KORTLAND, who originally bonded over a shared fascination of punishing hardcore and arcane medical barbarism. On this new LP, it’s not a funhouse mirror they’re holding up—society has devolved into this misshapen, ugly and distorted form, and Iron Lung take no pleasure in pulling back its curtain. As truth-tellers in this breakneck and unrelenting hardcore tradition, duty commands Iron Lung to ram their bulldozers, Hanatarash-style, through the tidal waves of horseshit.""Extreme hardcore is not a new phenomenon, yet Adapting // Crawling is undoubtedly a vital new fork in its socket. Hearkening back to forebears Despise You and Crossed Out, these eighteen tracks offer distinctly original pathways to obliteration, from the ominous opening blows of 'Adapting' to the inspired decision to sandwich the distressing 'Virus' between two halves of 'Purgatory Dust', a rare piece of art that accurately conjures the monotonous terror of surviving an active pandemic. Their blasts of hardcore/agit-prop are savage and unrelenting, but Irojn Lung somehow manage to imbue the negative space between blasts with an oxygen-destroying heaviness as well, perhaps the defining trademark of this group who once saw their reflection in a full-body pressurized metal chamber and decided to turn it into music."—Matt KorvetteRecorded, mixed and mastered by GREG WILKINSON. Cut by JOHN GOLDEN. Art by...

Ex, The

If Your Mirror Breaks

Ex Records

In true ‘Ex fashion’, If Your Mirror Breaks picks up where 27 Passports left off, and erupts like a musical short story collection, a ten-part series of surrealist daydreams, calls to action, ominous warnings and bursts of vitality tapped into the pulse of time. What time could be more appropriate to release this album in, as the current one? Arnold de Boer, Katherina Bornefeld, Andy Moor and Terrie Hessels once again impress with their trademark urgency and creativity.Starting from a staccato Walt Whitman poem from 1861 and wrapping things up with the unstoppable, joyful thrust of “Great!”, the new album by The Ex is equal parts exploration and determination, with wistful shades accentuating their live wire intensity, unpredictability and sheer determination. Yes, there are moments of doubt and insecurity (“reality is shifting / there is no escape”), of distress (“I get desperate / I feel the wide washing of death”), but time and again, perseverance wins. As Bornefeld sings so aptly in her beautiful contribution “Wheel”: “New life force unfolds for those who flow / with the song of their souls.”De Boer has a striking way with images. Walls speak, spiders write and turning into an apartment block becomes a life goal. Imagination and language become a refuge, but also weapons in times of loss and division. When you’re not afraid to question yourself and realise, in James Baldwin’s words, that “You could be that person / Be that monster, be that cop”, you might find a way out of...

Ancient Death

Ego Dissolution

Profound Lore

Ancient Death was formed in the summer of 2019 in Walpole, MA by Jasmine Alexander (bass and vocals), Ray Brouwer (guitar), and Jerry Witunsky (guitar and vocals), soon followed by Derek Malone Moniz (drums). Blending progressive and technical death metal with cosmic and lushful atmospheres, Ancient Death creates a unique soundscape of introspection and growth. With the release of the Sacred Vessel EP in 2022, the split single “Glowing Auras” in 2023, followed by Demo 2024, the band has continued to expand and push the envelope of honesty and vulnerability. The upcoming debut full length album Ego Dissolution showcases the band at their most fierce and creative thus far, further expanding on the atmospheres and mindfulness of their inner and outer worlds. Worship the true cosmic flow that is… Ancient Death!

Tribunal

In Penitence And Ruin

20 Buck Spin

Tribunal returns with their sophomore album, In Pentinence And Ruin, an elegy most grievous and forlorn, descending deeper into the solemn abyss of woe. 2023’s debut The Weight Of Remembrance set a high bar for the Canadians becoming one of the year’s most notable and praised doom releases, leading Decibel Mag to include the band’s new album in their annual list of most anticipated releases. Tribunal took their time and crafted an opus of enormous scope to echo evermore through halls long abandoned.Having expanded into a fully fleshed out five piece band and live unit, In Penitence And Ruin has a wider lens of cohesion and maturity weaving together the widow’s wail of doleful strings, chilling keys and percussion that tolls like the iron bell of fate. These elements ornament the monolithic foundation of crushing dirge and funereal melodies hewn from the marrow of sorrow itself. The duality between the wistful, impassioned singing of vocalist / cellist Soren Morne and agonized growls from guitarist / vocalist Etinne Flinn bind with resolute tread and stride forth into darkness, traversing a path lit only by the pale glow of distant lament.Tribunal hath wrought a requiem most dire where beauty and ruin become one and in doing have forged a second album beyond expectations, progressive in its embrace of the penitent and eminently listenable as a scripture of loss. Like ivy upon the tombstone, In Penitence And Ruin winds slowly but inexorably towards spectral grandeur and eternal oblivion.

Converse, Bill

Trust

Dark Entries

Cult icon Bill Converse trots back to Dark Entries with Trust. Converse has honed his craft since the early days of the Midwest rave scene, absorbing lessons from luminaries like Claude Young and Traxx. His skill as a producer has been cemented with releases on labels like Dark Entries, Fit Sound, and Obsolete Futures, and his prowess as a DJ has been witnessed on floors worldwide. In recent years, Converse has also pushed audiences to their lysergic limits with his sinewy and kinetic live sets, which pair classic analog boxes like the Roland TB-303 with cutting-edge modular synthesis techniques. The 7 tracks on Trust pick up the wild energy of these live hardware explorations, channeling the splayed beats of Chicago’s Relief Records, the acidic grit of Midwest techno like Woody McBride’s Communique Records, and the hypnagogic hooks of Artificial Intelligence-era IDM. According to Converse, the abrupt changes and off-kilter rhythms are “an effort to facilitate or express trust-making in the listening experience. I want some degree of give and take with the listener.” This process makes Converse’s sound truly singular, the kind of aural landscape that can only be conjured through a lifetime of crate-digging and analog abuse - just check out the untenable funk of “Live Track” or the otherworldly groove of “Romance.” Trust comes in a sleeve featuring artwork from Sonya Rapaport from 1986 featuring images generated with an MS-DOS computer. Converse says “I think there's also a muscle-to-love vibe with this one.” We can trust him.

Nowhere Flower

Heat Dome

Digital Regress

"Portland, OR musician and visual artist Lila Jarzombek has been in a groove over the past year. In 2024 she contributed searing guitar leads to The Spatulas' first couple of releases, including their exceptional LP Beehive Mind (Post Present Medium), and she also cooked up the first Nowhere Flower release of her potent solo recordings, Ruts the Place (Radical Documents). On HEAT DOME, her urgent new LP for Digital Regress, she embarks on a further excursion into her third ear across 14 transporting tracks. Throughout HEAT DOME, Lila leads us around a world of her own design, coaxing out rhythmic grooves and sweet melodies along the way. She employs a diverse patchwork of sounds while leaving space for an airy lightness. Bright and crisp guitar chords and fuzzy leads, swirling phased out synthesizer, fiddle, drum machines, keyboards, and melodica weave in between and around her unearthly and spellbinding vocals. She channels these sounds through slow-burning rockers like HEAT DOME and WHAT THE CREEK SAID and melancholic psych-folk ballads TORCHING IT ALL and GROUND CLOUD. HARMONICA is a cosmic bridge to side B, a windy portal that transports you to another realm. This album would be great company to 90s/00s “new weird” New England groups like Tower Recordings or Magik Markers with their wide-ranging interpretations of psych. And it embodies the spirit of punk like Japanese underground artists Onna or Michio Kadotani, or Columbus home-recording geniuses Jim Shepard or Tommy Jay. But like those singular artists, this music is authentic and...

Brokaw, Chris

Ghost Ship

12xu

***Four years after his rock juggernaut Puritan, Chris Brokaw delivers Ghost Ship, a landscape meditation (at sea) for vocals and electric guitars."I set out to make an 8 song statement like Desert Shore or Raw Power, but it became a 9 song... something else. I've described it to friends as Twin Peaks-ish but that feels only part right. The songs were written on a 60's Teisco Del Rey electric guitar, set up by the Belgian luthier Flip Scipio with heavy gauge flat wound strings and an .80 gauge low E string tuned down to a low A, which reframes how you play the instrument. I wrote them all quickly in a kind of fever."—Brokaw

Shit And Shine

Mannheim HBF

12xu

***"So the bad news is, in a fit of pique, I asked Chat GPT (nicely) to compose a one-sheet for the new Shit and Shine double album, Mannheim HBF. The even worse news (yes, even worse than resorting to such tactics) is that the resulting biography is halfway passable and on some levels, superior to the sort of thing being published by what’s left of our weekly coupon-shoppers. But for fuck’s sake my friends, Craig Clouse did not get to where he is today today by settling for halfway passable and neither should you. That Shit and Shine’s discography is vast and dizzying is already well established; what’s not nearly as established are these recordings being specifically dizzying. I don’t know if there’s anyone else in modern music as skilled in waltzing around the periphery of so many disparate idioms ('noise', being one of the least prominent this time around) and somehow, against all odds, tying ‘em together in the most intricate of knots. And who doesn’t love knots?We all have our favorite ways to experience music that’s all-engulfing, but whether your preferred method is thru a stadium sized sound system or ear buds affixed as you’ve leapt off the tallest building in Bastrop, TX (the Jerry Fay Wilhelm Center for the Performing Arts, since you asked), not for the first time, Shit and Shine is entirely appropriate in either instance, possibly every instance. There are moments where I think this is a club record. The Friars Club, however.Far be...

Decicca, Jerry David

Cardiac Country

Sophomore Loungs

***Jerry David DeCicca is songwriter and producer. He makes his living as a vocational rehabilitation provider for special education students and adults. He’s produced albums for Ed Askew (Tin Angel Records), Bob Martin and Ralph White (Worried Songs), Will Beeley (Tompkins Square), Chris Gantry (Drag City), Larry Jon Wilson (1965 Records / Drag City) and worked on reissue projects for Numero Group. Collaborators on his DIY solo albums include David Hidalgo, Kelley Deal, Augie Meyers, Jeff Parker, Spooner Oldham, Will Oldham, and many others. He lives in the rural town of Bulverde, TX with his two dogs, three cats, five toads, and wife. His previous band, The Black Swans, released 5 albums and toured for 10 years. Cardiac Country features: JDD (acoustic & electric guitar/vocals), BJ Cole (pedal steel), Don Cento (electric guitar & mixing), Armando Aussenac (drums), Jorge Palomo (bass), Eric Casillas (percussion) Eve Searls (backing vocals), Trevor Nealon (organ/piano), Mason Hankamer (tuba)."I wrote and recorded Cardiac Country, my 6th solo album, just a few months before I received a diagnosis that led to open heart surgery at the Cleveland Clinic to replace my leaky aortic valve. At the time, I thought I was in the best shape of my life. Only the last song, “Old Hat,” was written and recorded with the knowledge of my health issue. I tracked it, solo acoustic, two weeks before my operation, just in case… You can hear me running out of air.I listen to these songs now and try to make sense...

Bobby Would

Mumia

Cost Of Living

"In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche wrote, 'Without music, life would be a mistake.' Mumia follows that trajectory in its quiet unfolding. It lingers, seeps in. There is no drama here, no display of unique feelings. Each side offers a unified meditation on stillness, numbness, and the beauty that exists within sadness. "Robert Pawliczek aka. Bobby Would offers an explanation for the events that inspired Mumia—a story that could easily be the material for a novel. Its eerie, tragic, and unresolved backstory serves as an invitation rather than a statement, creating space for contemplation. It is not a retelling or an indulgence in sorrow but a measured, almost ritualistic meditation on absorption and acceptance. Would began working on Mumia in late 2020, after the sudden death of his close friend, artist Sven Sachsalber. Sven had come to visit Would in Vienna during the height of the pandemic but passed away mysteriously at his accommodation. Rumors spread, grief settled into something shapeless, and even though doctors traced it to a complex heart condition, uncertainty had already taken root. "At the time of his death, Sven had been painting Pantone cards of extinct pigments. He was fixated on Caput Mortuum, a deep iron-red historically linked to paintings of skulls. But he had confused it with Mumia, the ancient brown pigment once made from ground mummies and thought to hold some remnant of life within it. That mistake—two colors, two histories blending into one—became the conceptual thread in Bobby Would’s music. Bobby Would...

Battle Elf

10

Birdman

Three sonic wanderers make up the band Battle Elf: guitarists Gretchen Gonzales & Chris Peters and drummer David Hurley. Their unified electric sound creates universes from ancient dust, telling tales of battles and redemption. Hailing from Detroit, a hub of industry and culture, each member of Battle Elf absorbed the sounds of the world as they grew. They draw from dark memories, pulling energy from CAN, Lee Ranaldo, Sun Ra, Fred Frith, Eddie Hazel, Cosmic Jokers and Ash Ra Tempel... channeling through Krautrock and deep psychedelia. Battle Elf defies the heavy jam, and their debut record is the first earthly gift of their musical journeys. 10 is a reckoning.

Oh Sees, Thee

Floating Coffin (Reissue)

DEATHGOD CORP

***We all know the type: prolific bands that commit every loose thought, stray idea and 90-second song fragment to tape. Bands that pay no attention to little inconveniences like “release cycles” or “self-editing,” and instead decide that quantity equals quality, creating a discography more labyrinthine, imposing and—ultimately—exhausting than the cast of creatures in a sci-fi novel. Here is why none of that applies to THEE OH SEES. Because each of the dozen-plus albums they’ve released since 2004 possesses a distinct personality and represents a different point along the path of JOHN DWYER’s slow transformation from auteur of woozy, bare-bones four-track psychedelia to goggle-eyed garage rock marauder backed at long last by a band that both shares and stokes his singular vision. Because drop a needle on any record and—to their great credit—it takes several songs before you’re convinced it’s Thee Oh Sees. The seasick hundred-bottles-of-rum shanty “What the Driven Drink,” from 2007’s delirious Sucks Blood exists in a different galaxy than the rollercoastering “Chem-Farmer” from last year’s Carrion Crawler / The Dream; the doomy doo-wop of “Blood on the Deck” hardly seems like the product of the same band that delivered the yelping “Ruby Go Home” in 2009.

Oh Sees

Orc (Reissue)

DEATHGOD CORP

***The Oh Sees wasted no time in racing headlong into nightmarish battle with the mighty Orc, clawing even farther up the ghastly peak stormed so satisfyingly by their previous A Weird Exits. The band is in tour-greased, anvil-on-a-balance beam, gut-pleasingly heavy form, nimbly braining—with equal dashes of abandon and menace—on this fresh batch of bruisers and brooders, hypnotically stirred into to the cauldron of chaos you’ve come to expect.On Orc, fresh blood Paul Quattrone joins Dan Rincon to form a phalanx of interlocking double drums, alternately propelling and fleet-footing shifting ground to pinion John Dwyer’s cliff-face guitars to the boogie. Tim Hellman keeps it swinging like a battle-axe to the eyebrows. The tunes veer toward the violence of their live shows, with a few tasty swerves into other lanes: heavy to lush, groovy to stately. Throughout, it remains sinister in its swaggering skulk, manic in its fuzz-fried fugues. They hit all the sweet spots the heads foggily remember, and there’s plenty to sweat over if you just hopped into the sauna.More evil…more complex…more narcotic…more screech… more blare…more whisper…there’s even more Brigid. Less “Thee,” but more of everything else.

Donna Allen

Atom-ic Citizen of the Dying Empire

Ever / Never

***Singer-songwriter Donna Allen (Chronophage, Love & Compassion) is back with her second Song Diary. Her distinct style of Alt-Folk blooms with personal musings and religious motifs, soaring to reach out and make a connection with anyone who listens with their heart. Recorded with Sasha Stroud at Artifact Audio, these songs want to sit on the couch and hold your hand in the early morning light.

Why Bother?

You Are Part of the Experiment

Feel It

"Do you ever wonder—What's the long term effect from eating fake ultra processed food in a box? Why are young and old people getting sicker and weaker in the mind and body every year? What if we have all been lied to by governments, religious leaders, science and industry about our biology and the history of human kind? What if you are so tainted by indoctrination that you feel more comfortable being lied to then told the truth? Before you know it you start thinking to yourself.. why bother at all? Well maybe it's because—YOU ARE PART OF THE EXPERIMENT."

Leopardo

SIDE A / SIDE B

Dot Dash Sounds

***"Leopardo, the well-mannered and quirky Swiss group from Fribourg, are back once again with SIDE A / SIDE B, an album that invites the world into their jagged and naïve psych-pop and electrified tape experiments that undercuts conventions and create a scanty, but vivid compendium of absurdity, delicacy, and humor, à la The Velvets, Slapp Happy, Desperate Bicycles, and the Performing Ferret Band. While 2021’s Malcantone displayed sketches of a group in progress and 2023’s full-length was a somewhat “best of” solo recordings from bandleader Romain Savary, Side A / Side B seems to identify a new chapter of the group’s knowingly charming perfect unpop with a fully observant long-term trajectory and naïve spirit that makes humanity more believable."—Joe Massaro, Hot Sounds

Nape Neck

s/t

Dot Dash Sounds

***Leeds UK, fractured, frenetic post-punk trio. Heavy, intense rhythms with male/female vocals from all members - wild flurry in the Erase Errata, The Ex realms. Debut LP compiles their two self-released cassettes, remixed and remastered for vinyl. Members of Objections, Guttersnipe.First US tour in the works for this fall!

Eilbacher, Max

7 Runs (in arc mental stylings)

OMA Editions

***On the new album 7 Runs (In Arc Mental Styling), Max Eilbacher (Horse Lords) juggles a series of electronic tones, meticulously sculpted and spaced to create what the Berlin-based composer describes as “a structural mirage made from constant movement.” Following a conceptual compositional algorithm, Eilbacher’s effervescent, repetitive digitally constructed electronic tones appear to endlessly rise across two side-long climbs that bend and twist like a barber pole. This quality is extenuated by a series of diagrams included in the release that map the arcs, arches, and columns created by this sonic shadowplay. As tones and repeating patterns layer and imperceptibly shift, the music seems to grow more solid and spectral all at once. Eilbacher may explain the “movement” of his illusory structures and even show his work, yet we are still left in awe at the seamless magic generated. A debut release on OMA, a new label co-founded by Eilbacher and his bandmates in Horse Lords, 7 Runs makes for a bemusing and breathtaking liftoff.

Gentle Leader XIV

Joke in the Shadow

Feel It

End days pop. Electronic extinction rock. No future for sure, surf’s up dude.Gentle Leader XIV (jen-tul lee-der ex-ivy) is a post-punk synth-pop band from the ends of Ohio. The Cincinnati/Cleveland trio is comprised of long-time scene vets Jeffrey Tucholski (Running), Matt Hallaran (Glass Traps), and Maria Jenkins (Hollows). The band originated in 2016 out of what would become the ashes of the Chicago music scene in the “Teens”. Their first album, Channels, was released on Moniker Records in 2018 to critical acclaim by one French outlet. Serving in a support capacity for acts such as Fuzz, Exploded View, Tropical F*ckstorm, The Serfs, Cloud Nothings, Ryley Walker, Timmy’s Organism and EXEK; Gentle Leader XIV is a chameleon, a band’s-band that may change color but never loses its shape.Joke in the Shadow sees the band shift from their Julee Cruise / Cocteau Twins inspired brand of ethereal dream pop towards a darker, bleaker, more industrial bend in the burning river of their collective consciousness. This record has the vibe of a lost Depeche Mode acetate found at an Ohio flea market, repackaged and resold to play as background for a yet to be made Lynchian remake of Terminator VIII.Recorded in Louisville, KY, co-produced with Ryan Patterson (Fotocrime/Coliseum) at his studio, the House of Foto, Joke in the Shadow spans an array of sonic textures while sticking to a core, omnipresent tension between despair and possibility. Jenkins’ bellowing vocal is both sobering and captivating, careful not to crowd space while lyrically reflecting a...

White, Jack

Archbishop Harold Holmes

Third Man

***A brand new 7-inch from Jack White featuring the studio version of “Archbishop Harold Holmes” backed with a live version recorded at The Blind Pig in Ann Arbor, MI, September 11, 2024.

Takaat

Is Noise Vol. 1

Purplish Records

TAKAAT (pronounced tuh-cot), meaning “noise” in the Tuareg language Tamashek, is the trio of Ahmoudou Madassane, Mikey Coltun, and Souleymane Ibrahim, also known as the rhythm section of Mdou Moctar. TAKAAT is sonic chaos, improvisation, freedom of exploration, and the punk styles of bands such as Fugazi and Unwound, all mixed together with the guitar music from the Sahel. TAKAAT started during soundchecks while on the road with Mdou Moctar when the trio indulged their shared love for amps cranked to 11 and the sound of blown out speakers. Towards the end of 2023, the three started writing music together, inspired by their shared experiences with the sounds and energy of Hausa bar bands, gritty soukous, and 2000s post-punk. The music of TAKAAT is intense, dark, and energetic. Deeply inspired by the DIY ethos of punk, Ahmoudou, Mikey, and Souleymane capture that thrill of the new and the ecstasy of togetherness in these heavy rockers. TAKAAT follows in the spirit of the independent music culture that birthed hardcore basement shows, bedroom tape labels, and generator-powered pick-up wedding bands. Is Noise Vol. 1 (10”) EP was recorded on a cold winter day in Washington, D.C by engineer, bass player, and producer Mikey Coltun direct to ½” tape. The band set up, took a short tea break, and banged out the four tunes in one take. Very little editing was done. The record is as raw as the way the EP was recorded. All songs written by Alhassane Gajil and Ahmoudou Madassane...

McDowell, Mississippi Fred

I Do Not Play No Rock 'N' Roll

Jackpot

Recorded in 1969, this album, as Mississippi Fred McDowell’s titular quote suggests, is not just a collection of songs but a significant piece of musical history. It’s a masterclass, a confessional, a musical statement, and a history lesson all in one. Despite its seemingly simple nature, it’s a profound work. Regarded as one of the greatest blues albums of all time, I Do Not Play No Rock 'N' Roll is a must-listen, a testament to one of the greatest musical forces that has directly influenced The Rolling Stones, Aerosmith, The Black Keys & Bonnie Raitt (to whom McDowell taught slide guitar). In 1959, McDowell’s talent was first captured by folklore musicologist Alan Lomax, and from there, he quickly rose to stardom with his live recordings and festival appearances across the US and UK. This album is a testament to McDowell’s unique voice and guitar style, dominating the air and filling it with raw power and authenticity.

Pasmo

Pasmo

Sentient Ruin Laboratories

***"Pásmo", meaning "zone" in Czech, or a place of rigorous uniqueness sculpted into its form by crumbling geopolitical and industrial power, wild nature, and ancient local culture and lore. Pásmo's mesmerizing debut self-titled album (originally released in spring 2024 on cassette by the Czech label Vřesová Studánka and now finding its first ever vinyl release) is an unparalleled voyage crafted through the mediums of dark post-punk and arcane heavy metal into the remote landscapes and mystique of the ex-soviet Eastern Bloc, narrated through the eyes of two self-described "backwoods stalkers" who are one with their culture, origins, and place, or what they call the "zone", the Moravian-Silesian region, one of the poorest regions in Czechia, immersed in majestic mountains and valleys with beautiful nature and folk culture contrasted by the vestiges of Gottwald's soviet industrialization of the region. "Nature and Metal" as the duo summarizes their music. Eight songs unraveling visions of soviet industrial ruins, abandoned factories, and dissolving concrete buildings scattered amongst the region's wild nature and consumed far beyond, eastward more into the relics of the old Soviet horizon reclaimed by nature and falling into dusty memory. An encompassment of Eastern European culture condensed into thirty five minutes of dark musical storytelling and spiritual reconnection to the zone. The epic crust punk of Amebix and Killing Joke's apocalyptic industrial post-punk transposed into the crumbling atomic bunkers, abandoned mines, and industrial rusted ruins of the Eastern wilderness. The visions, sounds and legacy of Chernobyl and "Stalker" transfigured into shamanic...

Siyahkal

Days of Smoke and Ash

Static Shock

***"Finally, SIYAHKAL delivers unto us their complete vision. Days of Smoke and Ash, is the first full length from a band that has been dominating shows in Toronto for the better part of the past decade. The city's best kept secret. And what better a release to formally announce the relocation of the Static Shock Head Honcho, than the excavation of the city's most overdue LP?From the opening notes of 'Your Head In My Arms,' SIYAHKAL unleashes absolute, stomping psychedelic hardcore perversion. Self-recorded, the thing sounds like a demon unleashed. Squalls of noise are smeared across a record of near-meditative, throbbing HC. It's an unrelenting, brutal album that would see any sane person running for the exits.While the music itself is precise, intentional and pounding, the vocal delivery and its lyrical subject matter provide a deeper meaning. This isn't just a record to crack skulls to, it's an album loaded with political subtext. How does an artist reconcile their own exile? How do they engage with the caricatures that western psychosocial dominance makes of their beautiful home? When their own survival is at stake, what is the true meaning of justice? SIYAHKAL manages to produce something indebted as much to the likes of Destino Final or Mobs, as it is the Persian culture KG bleeds into it.And the sentiments expressed here are not just Iranian, or Venezuelan, or Palestinian. SIYAHKAL's Days of Smoke and Ash reflects the reality of the world as this era comes undone. They've manifested something universal...

To Live And Shave In L.A.

The Wigmaker In Eighteenth-Century Williamsburg Deluxe Edition

Palilalia

Palilalia is proud to present this 25th anniversary deluxe reissue of To Live and Shave in L.A.'s The Wigmaker in Eighteenth-Century Williamsburg in an expanded 4LP box set.The four LPs contain all 27 tracks from the original Wigmaker double CD remastered for vinyl, including complete lyrics, original liner notes and production credits, plus an entire LP side of unreleased songs from the original 1996 version of the album.The set also includes a 36-page perfect-bound book with never- before-seen photos, a critical appreciation by Matmos’ Drew Daniel, and a 10,000 word oral history of the five year period 1995-2000 that bandleader Tom Smith worked on Wigmaker, including interviews with the band, the label, the many guest musicians, and friends and co-conspirators like Aaron Dilloway, Jim O’Rourke and others."A gloriously hostile masterpiece whose time has come... The product of five years of jamming, equipment mooching, couch- surfing, and marathon self-editing, the record is at once supremely out of control and structured to the tiniest detail."— Drew Daniel"An ambitious marriage of ass-shaking rock dynamics, hard disk manipulation, ‘sound on sound’ concrete architecture and industrial strength electronics... Intellectually savage"— David Keenan, The Wire"A truly great album... totally convinced of its own necessity and complete in its absurdity. From the perplexing cover art to its utterly indigestible length, there is no wink or nudge to suggest this is an elaborate put-on, no window left open to the real world... 8.5"—Jason Nickey, Pitchfork

Decrepisy

Deific Mourning

Carbonized

***Decrepisy returns with brutally gothic doom-laden death metal on their second full-length album, Deific Mourning. Leaning heavier on the doom side of death than their first output, Emetic Communion, Deific Mourning pulls from goth-industrial influences that seep through the infected wounds that comprise the decomposing body of the album. Each track a stage of grief and unbelief as life abandons form into the mystery of the unknown. Stillborn in anxiety, grief, and sickness, every riff agonizingly culled from terror, despair and disintegration of a dying form. A body desecrated by vaccine damage, an inflamed nervous system and dysautonomia, pumping fear into every heart beat and waking moment. Deific Mourning was recorded by Charles Koryn (Ascended Dead, Chthonic Deity, Thanamagus) at Elektric City Recording with Vocal tracking, Reamping, mixing, and mastering handled by Greg Wilkinson (Autopsy, Necrot, Mortuous) at Earhammer Studio. Additional vocals, synths, and noisescapes performed by Leila Abdul-Rauf (Hammers of Misfortune, Saros, Vastum) and Gabriel Lageson. Cover illustrations by Kyle House (Acephalix, Necrot, Vastum) with an additional inner sculpture by Emil Melmoth.

King Blood

Eye I Aye Ivy

Petty Bunco

***The return of your favorite unknown guitarist’s favorite unknown guitarist! If previous platters ran on filthy diesel and sputtering engines, Eye I Aye Ivy is powered by jet fuel and has sights set way beyond the horizon. It's a cosmic headbanger that vamps on nearly recognizable rock riffs to build one excruciating crescendo after another. It’s the soundtrack for the first ravioli western to be filmed on the moon in the gutter. Conceived and recorded entirely by Ry himself, this thing is stuffed with twelve tracks that show influences ranging from the patient throb of King Tubby, the confident triumph of Iron Maiden, the otherworldly din of Blues Control, the budget sci-fi fantasy of Chrome, and the easy come down of Spacemen 3, often within the same damn tune. It’s the type of record that’ll have ya knee deep in murk, humming along, and flipping it over and over and over again, desperately waiting for the next time Ry turns up from parts unknown to give us another King Blood offering.

Julius Smack

Starlight

Constellation Tatsu

***Julius Smack engages in a dialogue with a fictional AI assistant to create an album using the prompt, “Make an album that tells the story about the origins of Julius Smack.” Starlight emerges as the imagined response, envisioning a world where beauty and violence intertwine, and memories and dreams are excavated to craft stories. In a near-future Earth, where artists are among the planet’s last inhabitants, a symbiotic relationship has formed between humans and AI—each relying on the other for nourishment and healing. At the sight of a shooting star, artists mine their memories and dreams with generative AI to produce art, which sustains them but generates toxins that must be expelled upon the next shooting star by creating more art. To compose Starlight, Julius Smack drew inspiration from all facets of life, with the album’s “dataset” serving as a kind of diary. It weaves together old demos, bookmarked TikTok clips of AI-generated content (such as a deepfake of Biden and Trump singing in Mandarin alongside Kamala Harris’ laughter), 2000s dance music, and ‘90s cyberpunk anime, including Ghost in the Shell and Neon Genesis Evangelion. Everyday experiences also became part of the dataset: learning Yaqui in online classes with fellow diasporic Yaquis, riding the train, walking the dog, and dreaming. These disparate threads coalesce to question AI’s role in creative and labor economies, forming a counterfactual narrative where everything—and nothing—is art. In 2025, Julius Smack will perform iterations of Starlight across the US, Europe, and Asia. Blending dance, music, theater,...

Rhymies

I Dream Watching

Dandy Boy

***Seablite shoegaze maven Lauren Matsui has traded her two suitcases of guitar pedals for an assortment of Korgs, Rolands and Yamahas on I Dream Watching, the debut EP from her solo project, Rhymies.The songs are built on arpeggiated melodies and sequences rooted in the nostalgia of an 80s dance party. The gauzy textures serve as a perfect base for Matsui’s breathy, wistful vocals. Often glimpsed through the mire of swirling guitars on Seablite records, here they take center stage, to great effect.The title track (and lead single/video) brings to mind another artistically successful convert from guitar-to-synth-pop, Patience (Roxanne Clifford of Veronica Falls), while “Crashing Lead” somehow fuses the bounce of early Madonna with the ethereal, surreal vocals of Cocteau Twins. It’s the closer (and shortest track at 2:40), “Hesperian (Again)” which points to what we can hope for in the future. It builds one layer at a time to an ecstatic crescendo, before abruptly leaving us with only the memory of the refrain - “When’s it happening?”. For Rhymies, if there’s any justice, the answer is NOW.FFO: Chromatics, Patience, Broadcast, Italians Do It Better

Bernstein, Andrew

Shadows and Windy Places

OMA Editions

***Flying between virtuosic formalism and freewheeling openness, Andrew Bernstein’s (Horse Lords) new album Shadows and Windy Places is a gripping picture of the Germany-based saxophonist right now. Capturing recordings across the last five years and disparate sources—some are previous album sessions, others peak into Bernstein’s daily practice—they all fall perfectly into place to form an album as rich as a self-portrait and as spontaneous as a snapshot. “I often feel the pull to formalize my music, to have a reason for every decision, an internal logic that can be explained,” Bernstein says of the album. “This is countered by my lived experience, of music and otherwise, in a chaotic, improvisatory, and complex world. This music attempts to reconcile these impulses.” That tension between logical forms and chaotic, improvised flights only becomes more rewarding and joyful as Shadows and Windy Places unfolds through the hypnotic “A Shadow, Blooming” with subliminal flashes of gamelan and Ethiopian jazz, the silvery, pulsing “Of Infinite Space” and the playful, bubbling “Counting Sines.” They all revolve around the gripping centerpiece “In Blue”, an explosive performance where Bernstein doesn’t reconcile his impulses so much as fuse them entirely with his saxophone forming a fiery crucible. As both an end point for years of material and an opening statement to OMA, a new label co-founded by Bernstein and his bandmates in Horse Lords, Shadows and Windy Places is a defining work for the virtuoso saxophonist.

V/a

3rd Bombardment - Rescue Ladders & Human Barricade

PNV

***PNV Records presents the first ever vinyl pressing of long out print Pinoy Punk comp tape “3rd Bombardment - Rescue Ladders & Human Barricade”. Originally released in 1986 as very limited cassette only release in the Philippines. It features the top Pinoy punk bands of the day, a snapshot of the early Filipino Punk scene. The comp introduced the world to now legendary pioneering Pinoy punk bands Philippine Violators, Private Stock, Intoxication of Violence, Chaos, R.D.A., Deceased and Betrayed. This is PNV Records 2nd installment in our Pinoy reissue campaign, earlier this year we released on vinyl for the first time the Wuds "Arms Talk" debut cassette tape from 1985. This LP allows fans all over the world to get a hold of this true rarity for the first time since 1986.

Cistern

New Standard

Meat Machine

Cistern is a rock band from Squamish, BC, rooted in the unceded land of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) Nation and formed by the restless souls of Noah Varley, Noah Wilson, McKinley Languedoc, and Chris Boys, the band channels the raw, scrappy energy of friends forging awe and anguish into song. As Ursula Le Guin once wrote in her Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, “It’s a strange realism for a strange reality”—a fitting description of the world Cistern builds with their music. Drawing from the collaborative sparks of their previous projects (Loam, Good Normal, Painted Fruit, and N0V3L), Cistern has carved a distinct sound that merges intricate instrumentation with DIY experimentation. Their debut album, Head Full of Questions (January 2024), is a tightly crafted collection of nine tracks that traverse jaunty rhythms and tightly coiled post-punk. This was followed by New Standard (May 2024), a five-song EP released through Meat Machine Records. The EP showcases their knack for crafting raw, tape-warm anthems recorded on an 8-track tape machine. The songs dive into existential and everyday themes with jittery tension, from the tangled relationships of “Crisis” to the hymn-like individuality of “Metal Detector” and the high-wire balance of “Pendulum.” Cistern’s sound draws inspiration from indie rock icons like Modest Mouse, Alex G, and Duster, balancing atmospheric grooves with tight, harmonious, and dissonant instrumentation. Their music is as intuitive as it is experimental—a testament to the band’s DIY ethos and creative synergy. Produced by Mikhail Oreshkov (N0V3L), mixed by Michael Halls, and mastered by...

Niemi, Eliza

Progress Bakery

Tin Angel

Kneading dough is tricky—you should know how it’s supposed to feel. If you try too hard you could make it worse. It’s a beautiful practice—creation with a gentle touch, to work at something so it can be left alone. “If it’s too drawn out it’s awful. It’s easy to give too much.” Dance in the mirror. Contemplate your veiny hands. Who do they remind you of? On Progress Bakery, her second album as a solo artist, Toronto artist Eliza Niemi knows to leave some questions alone—to let juxtaposition and tension be the proof. It doesn’t have to be hard. The feelings and revelations they provoke rise in the heat. The smell is sweet. Crispy on the outside and soft all the way through. She playfully slip-slides through words and sounds and images, delighting in surprise, skimming ideas like stones cast across clear water, touching down briefly with uncommon grace. Music and words don’t always have to interact. Where she decides to keep them apart gives a new contour to where and how she puts them together. The kind of thing you’re supposed to take for granted with songs and their singers comes alive in Eliza’s hands—the little miracle of mixing, kneading, stretching, and stopping.

Exploding Flowers

Watermelon / Peacock

Meritorio

***Exploding Flowers are a Los Angeles quartet who have crafted their own universe of guitar- based pop, with its flourishes of piano, organ, synthesizers, vibraphone and glockenspiel on top of a foundational rhythm section. Led by Sharif Dumani who has worked with a variety of artists which include Alice Bag, Cody Chesnutt, Sex Stains, the Moon Upstairs, Classics Of Love, Nick Garrie, Jowe Head, Nikki Sudden, Silver Apples and many more, the quartet is comprised of members Josh Mancell (the Moon Upstairs, Cell\Borg), Happy Tsugawa-Banta (Lassie Foundation, Ray Barbee), and Mark Sogomian (the Moon Upstairs). With two previous albums and an EP released, they have been compared to everything from Big Star to the Soft Boys, and L.A.’s Paisley Underground to New Zealand’s 1980s-era Flying Nun Records guitar pop roster (such as the Chills, the Bats, etc.). Watermelon/Peacock is Exploding Flowers third release packed with analog production, poetic lyricism, and the same strong melodies and hooks we’ve now come to expect from a band that prioritizes its songwriting with smart left turns. Joined on this release by indie veterans Rachel Love of seminal pop legends Dolly Mixture, and Jowe Head of D.I.Y. legends Swell Maps and post-punk/mod/psychedelia legends Television Personalities, this is a release that has something for everyone to enjoy. Album artwork by artist and musician Jill Emery (Hole, Mazzy Star).

Grigoni, Michael • Pan•American

New World, Lonely Ride

Kranky

Michael Grigoni and Pan•American present their first collaboration. The album’s title, New World, Lonely Ride, gestures toward its meditative orientation. The duo offers a series of reflections on the zeitgeist of our present moment, the spirit of our age: the isolation and loneliness that continues to echo in the wake of the pandemic; the fractures that mar our political discourse; the uncertainty that has stamped itself on the future of democracy. The vast geography of America and the absence of a common ground, a shared political vision, have contributed to the affective landscape of contemporary American life—of what it feels like to live in the United States today. Using instrumental voices and textures drawn from the traditional American forms of folk, country, bluegrass and blues, and informed with a modern sense of ambience and space, the sound is both contemporary and deeply rooted. With New World, Lonely Ride, Grigoni and Pan American join countless American artists who have drawn upon this landscape—physical and affective—giving it a voice and shape, listening to its character. And in starting there, with listening, offer a response for the future.