Browse: Vinyl

Owen, Maisy

My Youth is All For You

Tompkins Square

The debut single from Tompkins Square’s latest signing, 22 yo Nashville born and based Maisy Owen. Maisy plays all the instruments on this song. Produced by Robin Eaton. Includes both stereo and mono versions. Exclusively available for North America.

Moms With Bangs

Do What's Delicious!

Alternative Tentacles

Alternative Tentacles Records is proud to present the debut 7” release from Moms With Bangs; “Do What’s Delicious” out everywhere on November 14th! Born out of the Northern California DIY scene, Moms With Bangs started as a ragtag group of high schoolers looking to build a musical community filled with loud, chaotic, unfiltered energy. Quickly becoming known for their loud experimental sound and unhinged live shows. Moms With Bangs become legendary for being high-volume, high-energy, and having zero barrier between them and their audience. It was these qualities that caught the attention of Jello Biafra himself, who was so impressed he signed them to his label Alternative Tentacles Records, making Moms With Bangs the youngest signing in the history of the label. Recorded at Tiny Telephone in Oakland, CA over the course of two days in January of 2024, Leo Hirsch, Michael Cook, Austin Kennedy, Axel Sanchez, and Oliver John live-tracked these songs in one large recording room, recording at the same time facing each other, to make sure the recording captured the unfiltered energy of the live show as much as possible. As for the name of the 7”? “Do What’s Delicious” came from a suggestion from Jello Biafra himself, while the band was in the studio, as a name he once considered for a Dead Kennedys release. The two tracks on “Do What’s Delicious” capture the throttling high energy rhythms of bands like Thee Oh Sees. Showcasing an affinity for the off-kilter groove of bands like Deerhoof or...

Sonny And His Cosmoromic Sunsets

The Diving Kind

Rocks In Your Head

"in 2024 myself, and a musician friend of mine from Geneva wanted to go make some new music, explode our heads and be new. we have a mutual friend from Switzerland who married a Senegales painter. his name is Mbaye Diop. He said he would go with us to Senegal and introduce us to Senegalese musicians. so, we got a little grant from the Swiss government to help with most of the expenses and we began organziing .We flew to Dakar after a tour I had in Spain, and took a five hour taxi to San Louis in the north and we met a Studio owner by the name of Boubacar Tall. And he introduced us to musicians in San Louis. and it didn’t take long, we began making music the first day.They spoke Wolof and a Senegalese version of French, I spoke English, my friend spoke a Swiss French. There is some singing by myself, and some words by Mbaye Diop in Wolof. meanwhile I met a singer by the name of Theresa N’gambi from Zambia, when I was touring with WITCH, the zamrock band. and so she sang alot of b/ups and often in Nyanga, her language. I blended her with my favorite American singer Kelly McFarling and it’s really kind of rich. sometimes it sounds a little like 90’s R & B and sometimes it sounds like some thing very new and not common."—SonnyMusicians -M’baye Diop - narrationSouleymane Samb - keyboardsKhadim Niang - percussionYorro Niang- percussionTheresa N’Gambi...

Puppet Wipes

Live Inside

Siltbreeze

Has it really been 4 years since the Puppet Wipes debut LP? Well now, in that time, Arielle & Kayla enlisted Jay Wong (Glitter, Janitor Scum, Yankee Cowboy) on drums, then hit the road. They did a tour of Canada with The Retail Simps & even popped down to the Lower 48 for a couple of dates. Needless to say, the fans wanted more. And while there aren't any US shows planned, the good news is their followup to The Stones Are Watching And They Can Be A Handful has finally arrived. Entitled, Live Inside, it's every bit the corker we'd hoped for. The Lewis Carroll-meets-David Croneberg ambience is still in play, but relegated to the corners. Much like The Raincoats Odyshape, or The Shadow Ring's Put The Music In Its Coffin, Live Inside exudes a higher level of mettle to match their singularity. Hell, they even take a cover by Septimus & make it work in Puppet Wipes time. Some bands find the sophomore effort to be a cursed hurdle, but for Puppet Wipes, Live Inside sees them polish off that tired trope like Diamond Jim Brady shooting back oysters at a seafood buffet. A shoe-in for Best Of 2025, no doubt about it.

Bezier

Decompose

Dark Entries

Bézier ripples their way back to Dark Entries with Decompose, an LP of doomed spa music. Multi-instrumentalist Robert Yang has made numerous appearances on Dark Entries for more than a decade, with releases spanning the stylistic gamut from hi-NRG disco floor-fillers to lush ambient epics. Decompose, Bézier’s second LP, is perhaps his most introspective work yet. It is an album almost ten years in the making, a deep investigation of life, loss, and the struggle of knowing oneself. If one were to pull a tarot deck for this album it would be the Nine of Swords. The album honors the lives of the fallen victims of Pulse Nightclub. It honors lives lost or suffering through the ongoing genocide in Gaza. The title track takes the form of a Buddhist chant, a brooding synth-driven meditation that scales steadily until breaking into John Carpenter-esque arpeggios halfway through. Tracks like “Egg,” “Marionette,” and “A Fading Citadel Atop Black Sand Bluffs” build on this soundworld, one in which intricate melodies and cavernous reverb induce in the listener feelings of both claustrophobia and free-fall. The album’s dancefloor-leaning moments, like “Codebreaking” and “Split a Path Towards the Thicket” are spartan, tunnel-vision techno tracks speeding towards ego-death. Decompose chronicles Yang’s journey to find peace with himself, as a gay Asian American. During this process, they learned to “repot” long-lost parts of their identity so they could grow forth in wholesome fashion. The sleeve for Decompose was designed by Eloise Shir-Juen Leigh, and features a photograph by Frankie...

Maraudeur

Flaschenträger

Feel It

***"With its twirling surrealist melodies, bricolage song structure, and adroit rhythmic changes, Leipzig’s Maraudeur have made an album suffused with the spontaneity of an art school party that somehow by the end of the night evolved into making a record. The trilling laughs and clinking glasses are transformed into bright synth lines and guitar riffs that are at times wiry and then, sometimes with little warning, hard and angular. Underneath this is the roiling chatter of Devo-funk infused bass and skittish bap-bap-boom drums. Shouty, echo-y vocals, covering a range of topics—some deadly serious, others less so—cap the 4am anything-can-happen-so-what-will-happen-next feel to the entire record.The comparisons to Kleenex/LiLiLPUT are perhaps inevitable, but the band wears this influence lightly as they have on their past releases, picking up with ease where their predecessors left off and always exploring where to go next. This is music that is energetic, that embraces discovery, that is disquieting in the best ways—this is music to stave off the boredom endemic in our post-everything society."—Ben Michaelis

Den

Post Pink

Digital Regress

For starters, we have a solid foundation for the stomach: cheese puffs made with aged Comté. Den have mastered this opening bite, an amusing and gentle snack. Yes, you’ve heard: Den moved out of the darkness and the chilly cold and have moved inside The Restaurant. They’ve commandeered the kitchen and present a greater depth of flavour and culinary nuance. You might remember them first as a food track in a Marrickville back alley where they served a damaged blend of salty post punk and psychedelic hardcore, salt in the hair and salt on the skin, and then a delivery service of ultra minute, dense bites on their Deep Cell LP. Years of experimenting and balancing flavours have encouraged them to embrace a restraint and subtlety with Post Pink, a truly new sound and direction for the band that honours their culinary legacy. Post Pink infers a certain kind of comfort that you might not anticipate in the wake of their previous output. By this I mean, the ears do not bleed! There is a similar density to the new album, but in place of the sharpened rapier poking deep in your head and puncturing your eardrum, Post Pink has an ethereal quality much like you’d love about Wire’s 154. The weight and solemnity of Deep Cell has lifted, the weightless lyrics will hit you with a brilliant mash of imagery in a way that you love about Brian Eno’s lyricism, some silly moments with words like “happenstance”, copulating jellyfish,...

Laundry Bats

Hangin On A String

Hozac

***It’s not every day that a true Memphis super group crawls out of the shadows, and one packed with these heavy hitters is even more difficult to explain. Formed out of the prolific triangle of Greg Cartwright and Jack Yarber (Reigning Sound / Oblivians / Compulsive Gamblers) with the wild card of Abe White (Manateees / True Sons of Thunder) at the helm, Hangin on a String is a ruthless Memphis punk serving delivered hot & raw around the edges. Making their debut at Gonerfest 2023, they tore a hole in an otherwise enjoyable afternoon like no other, and that same ruthless spirit comes across with the same ferocity here on their debut release. Full of messy hooks and bad ideas taken to the brink, LAUNDRY BATS fill the void of barrel-head rock’n roll left far too open for far too long. As ruthless as that sounds, the Stonesy swagger gives way to full-on BRASS, confirming their solid punk parameters are as confrontational as they are contagious.

London Clay

Private View

La Vida Es Un Mus

***There’s undeniably a certain kind of environment conjured up by the music of London Clay: drab municipal housing schemes; concrete walkways; a parade of shops in a post-war suburb; an underpass running underneath a dual carriageway; decaying social housing stock; the shadows of new build blocks for young professionals falling across the ever changing landscape. When they sing “tarmac shimmers, no future plans” you can feel this sense of place pressing in on the songs, shaping the melodies like they’re harmonising with the wind blowing through scaffolding sheets, the rhythms reflecting the sound of jackhammers and wrecking balls.This description perhaps makes their music sound somewhat uninviting, and whilst it is suffused with a certain amount of urban claustrophobia and late night paranoia, there’s also a lightness of touch that illuminates the dark corners - the gentle tone of a human voice and memorable repeating keyboard motifs offsetting the industrial chug. And whilst you can locate this music on a broad spectrum of post-punk (that most malleable and co-opted of genre terms), particularly the sounds of early 1980s Sheffield, there’s a more varied sonic palette at play than that might suggest. At various points as you listen to this record you can hear: the looped sound of a dot matrix printer as percussive texture; a delay-blasted guitar weaving in and out of arpeggiated synth bursts; a descending piano line that sounds like it’s haunting the corridors of a deserted school hall; a cluster of distorted loops building to a crescendo that...

Shakti

s/t

La Vida Es Un Mus

***"Out of Barcelona, but with the relentless weight of India’s history, Shakti’s debut is a declaration and a provocation. This is punk refracted through childhood memories of Bollywood soundtracks on corner-store TVs, mafia dons scheming on-screen, the rich exploiting the poor - a nostalgia for the times when class consciousness still pulsed through India’s popular culture. There are echoes of Hindustani classical, 80’s Indian disco and garage, but ultimately this is a punk record that molds itself and takes space between expansive post punk and the rowdy tongue-in-cheek hardcore of bands like the Electric Deads or Tozibabe.Shakti’s wall of noise is full of contradictions. There’s gorgeous, deeply danceable bass lines and earworm guitars dueling against Crass-records-like snares and harsh vocals delivered in Marathi - sometimes as whispered curses, sometimes screams and manic laughter, lurching from song to song with a touch of mischievous glee. There’s a playfulness at the core of this record, a sarcasm built into lyrics about idiots coopting slogans like Inquilab Zindabad ('Long live the revolution'), or requests for the British to bring back the Koh-i-noor not to India as a whole but to 'me', personally, because sometimes punks are just broke like that.There’s film transitions that set time and place, holding within themselves inside jokes understood by 1.3 billion people, and a grooviness that builds towards dance before suddenly collapsing on itself to bite back. And yet Shakti is most powerful at its most furious, when carrying the specific weight of immigrant rage shaped by that...

Metalucifer

Heavy Metal Drill

Metalized

***The Japanese heavy metal band's debut album from 1996 is finally available again on vinyl courtesy of Metalized Records from Mexico City. Metalucifer was created by Gezol from Sabbat as a way to channel his love for all things heavy metal. This is true metal made by veteran musicians who worship at the altar of heavy metal.

Araphel

The Endchanter

Nuclear War Now

***Spontaneous and genuine yet undeniably within the canon of extreme metal, Araphel wear no masks nor offer no mysticism. Full-length proof: The Endchanter, which follows last year's introductory Old Comet Transition EP. Across the record's seven-song / 39-minute runtime, one will hear the honest voice of a musician speaking about his experiences and point of view—in this case, prolific Italian musician Santo alongside a lineup made up of veteran musicians of the Italian underground scene—sharing a critique of society and the dullness of our lives and rules we are forced to live by. The music is rooted in black metal, with a clear METAL aesthetic, and has deep ties to the best of the underground and classic metal tradition, but it's the heartfelt synthesis of form and content where The Endchanter creates its own poignant landscape. To be sure, sonic signposts are aplenty on The Endchanter—from old-school Greek black metal to the culter likes of Poland's Xantotol and Colombia's Nebiros to the spirit of Bathory, Dissection, Immortal, and Desaster among others—but where Araphel excel is narrative songwriting, rooted in sincerity and personal truth rather than fantasy. To immerse oneself in the album's lyrics is as engrossing as the music itself. There are no devils, messiahs, or sacrificial horrors here—just reality, resulting in an experience brimming with tragedy and triumph. A raw-yet-poetic reflection on the END—not just of individual existence, but of an entire belief system—Araphel's debut album seeks authenticity in a fragmented era, offering a perspective that is clear-eyed, disenchanted,...

Oxiplegatz

Worlds and Worlds

Nuclear War Now

***The passage of time can have a curious effect on our assessment of music. Some artists or albums that seemed so vital and important at their inception age poorly, appearing dull and derivative as the decades pass. On the other hand, there are many bands—often the most experimental and innovative—that were initially under-appreciated, overlooked, or dismissed, but whose value becomes apparent only many years later. Oxiplegatz, a solo project by Alf Svensson—best known for his guitar work in Grotesque and At The Gates on their classic early releases—falls into this latter category. As At The Gates’ popularity grew following the release of With Fear I Kiss the Burning Darkness in 1993, Svensson felt the band was moving in a different direction than he envisioned and parted ways. His disenchantment was not limited to his former band but to the scene as a whole, which, he felt, was becoming increasingly predictable and formulaic. Bored by the familiar tropes of Satanism and evil that permeated black metal, Svensson found inspiration in the science fiction books and films he avidly consumed. His first self-released Oxiplegatz album, Fairytales, from 1994, was largely culled from unused riffs he’d written for At The Gates. Although it was, as he put it, of “uneven quality,” it set the course, stylistically and thematically, for his second album, Worlds and Worlds, which followed two years later and more fully realized Svensson’s vision for the project. While bands like Voivod and Nocturnus were premised on science fiction themes, there were...

True Iron Will

Spirit of Steel

Nuclear War Now

***Hailing from Austin, Texas, True Iron Will is the vision of the lone songwriter and multi-instrumentalist responsible for the project known as The Iron Blood Commander. Finding expression in riffs that are simultaneously melodious and muscular, that vision is one of valor and conquest, the fortification of one’s will against the encroaching forces of banality, degradation, and weakness. With Spirit of Steel, the band’s sophomore album, The Iron Blood Commander has sharpened his compositional approach, diversifying the expressive range of his songwriting and tightening the instrumentation. The effect is blunt, confrontational—a storming display of martial might. There is a purity of purpose in The Iron Blood Commander’s music. The focus is not on atmospheric conjuration and spiritual contemplation. Rather, it is a rejection of stasis, an explosion of kinetic fury exalting man’s martial impulses, the honor of warfare, and the profound existential revelations obtainable only through battle, where one inhabits the liminal space between victory and defeat, and feels most acutely the immediacy of life pregnant with the omnipresent threat of death.

Super Apes

Kill The Humans

Mountain Records

***Kill The Humans, is 40 minutes of melodic "indie" rock, veering into sludgy riffs a la, the mid nineties, Northwest. Song writer, Michael Carlson's collaboration with co-producer Brian Hamilton, of Fleshies infamy, takes the listener on a journey through themes of isolation, ambition, and strained relations. This debut album, garnering praise from West Coast rags and club audiences, was partially recorded in a remaining home studio originally occupied by the Grateful Dead. Mixing genres like 90's punk swagger and early power pop, it is characterized by heart-on-sleeve anthemic choruses without pretense, and includes sound clips that bring to mind the band Hickey. Super Apes are laconic and deliberate, scuzzy and sweet. They’re doing a kind of raw, wonky, grimy hybrid of power pop and hard rock that scans as both ’90s and timeless, sometimes sounding like Pavement-ized West Coast punk, sometimes like a dive bar residency version of Weezer, sometimes like both Motörhead and The Pastels are never far from their thoughts. The dynamic range is important—Kill the Humans moves from gnarly to wistful to points in-between casually and comfortably, and the band’s heartaches and disappointments and overall frustrations are underplayed, making them twice as potent. Fried melodies, ragged glory—it’s all here.

Boay, Andy

You Took That Walk For The Two Of Us

Does Are

This is the first new Andy Boay album since 2013’s In The Light. I recorded it in January 2024 to a Yamaha MT8X 8-track cassette recorder in my room at the New York Center for Creativity & Dance in the East Village of Manhattan. I mixed it in June 2024 with Joe Santarpia and Roberto Pagano at the Idiot Room in San Francisco.The three songs on Side A (“HBM,” “If I Ever Come Off,” and “You’re In The Air Now”) were initially arranged over several live performances using a multi-track looper. When I then sat down to track them to my tape machine, I meticulously sang and played out all repeating parts, layering and ping-pong-bouncing each doubled take to another tape-track. In this way I hoped to maintain the hypnotic quality of the looped parts while keeping them organic, singular, and fleeting.Side B is a triptych of more carefully arranged pop songs: a tremolo & mod-delay elegy to youth called “Careless,” bookended by two variations on the same theme — the stark, mellotron prayer of “One & One” and the lonesome after-hours funk of “I Want More”.The line “You took that walk for the two of us” has a dual meaning. In 2011, my friend Spencer Gilley took a long walk through Montreal while listening to demos I’d recorded. He described the experience to me as magical, ecstatic, inspiring. His encouragement from that moment still echoes every time I sit down to write or record. Less than a year later,...

K/S/R

Already In Heaven

Gilgongo

***K/S/R (Ben Kujawski, Abigail Smith & Justin Rhody) have been performing and recording together since 2022. Recorded by the band themselves during a full week of day-long sessions—violin, percussion, lap steel, accordion, flute, guitar, harmonica, and rhodes piano were each stretched, damaged & made to sing through various extended techniques. The trio's non-concentric approach to collective improvisation mirrors the dark harmonic density and symbiotic formal structures of the cosmos. Industrial work zones are also a major inspiration. K/S/R are the co-founders No Name Cinema (an underground microcinema in Santa Fe New Mexico). The trio has previously performed and/or lectured at ATA Gallery (San Francisco), Highlands University (Las Vegas), University of New Mexico (Albuquerque), Shapeshifters (Oakland), the Firehouse (Joshua Tree), and the Light Matter Experimental Festival (Alfred University, NY). Their music has been featured on the legendary Coast to Coast AM radio program and experimental/jazz-focused community radio shows across three continents. The group will be touring in Northeast and Southwest USA (November 2025) and in the UK (England & Scotland), April 2026. Already In Heaven will be followed by a split LP with Nihilist Spasm Band (also co-released by Physical & Gilgongo Records) in March 2026. Edition of 100 copies.

Smegma

Folklore & Concepts

Gilgongo

***A new LP from Smegma (now in their 52nd year!)—featuring Ju Suk Reet Meate, Oblivia, Ace Farren Ford, Dennis Duck, Aaron Dilloway, John Wiese, Tom Recchion, Rick Potts and more. The record celebrates the inevitable portions of joyous cacophony from the modern era of the group (circa 2008 - 2024), while also including a piece dating clear back to November 1973, from the day the group landed on the name Smegma. Incorporating imagery from their 2023 induction to the Oregon Music Hall of Fame and a cover drawing from Ju Suk, the record also features a variety of collages from Ace (who unfortunately passed away in December 2023), throughout the layout itself but also with the inclusion of a unique xerox of collage work in each copy of the record.

Sobbing Honey & Anna Homler

s/t

Gilgongo

***LA musique concreté / drone duo Sobbing Honey (Grant Capes & Mike Meanstreetz) meet Anna Homler—a serial collaborator who’s eclectic and playful contribution to experimental music can be, in recorded form, traced back at a fever pitch to her 1985 LP with Steve Moshier, Breadwoman (reissued by Rvng Intl. In 2016). Recorded one fine day at Seahorse Sound, the trio launched into a shifting weave of feral chants, haunting dirges, and clattering percussion. Synth pads and skewed tape loops led by Homler’s unearthly voice merge to sounds fit for lovers of both organic and electronic music.

Dlina Volny

In Between

Italians Do It Better

***The latest from this darkwave / post-punk trio from Minsk, Belarus. Dlina Volny’s music vaporizes on the event horizon where Eastern European Post-Punk collides with Western Synthwave. The album balances mystical narratives & dreamlike fantasies sourced deep in the trio’s subconscious. Walking the tightrope that separates pain & euphoria, the lyrics wrestle with polarity. Anxiety vs passion, & hope vs the deep despair that surrounds negative space.

Davidson, Ethan Daniel

Lear

Blue Arrow

Ethan Daniel Davidson’s second record of 2025 deepens the allegorical and reflective songcraft that he established on Cordelia earlier this year. Lear is a rich, legs-stretched companion to its counterpart where Davidson draws from his life’s experiences like water from a freshly tapped well. Lear’s eight songs possess a distinct ache akin to Neil Young’s On the Beach. Every lyric, a new road to be explored, and Davidson, the perfect guide to the journey. Davidson’s fourteenth studio album emerged from the same sessions that birthed Cordelia, in similar fashion to alt-country legends Lambchop’s 2004 sister albums Aw C’mon and You C’Mon. He’s accompanied by the same crackerjack team: producers David Katznelson and Luther Dickinson, bassist and Emmylou Harris collaborator Byron House, drummer Marco Giovino (Robert Plant, John Cale), and pedal steel legend Rayfield “Ray Ray” Holloman. At first blush, these tunes might appear more deceptively upbeat than the ruminations on Cordelia, but fear not—Davidson is still mining the dark corners of his own psyche to great aplomb. “It’s me trying to figure out what's happening inside of myself,” he explains, while reflecting on the lyrical headspace he inhabits throughout Lear. “I'm a positive person, but this is a part of my own psychological healing process, which we should all engage in. We're all wounded people, in some kind of way—and I've figured out how to confront that through music and storytelling.” Sometimes, that means confronting his own catalog, as “Count the Knives” revisits the original’s easy-shaking arrangement as captured on...

Nilsson, Molly

Amateur

Night School / Dark Skies Association

Amateur is the 12th studio album by Molly Nilsson. Deep in the teeth of a career that threatens to tip into something resembling a “legacy,” Nilsson celebrates with an album recorded instinctively, quickly and bursting with so many moments of emotional brilliance and clarity it may be her greatest yet. Hers has been a career spent reaching out, perennially powerful in her earnestness, a warrior ridiculously defenceless and armed with a glittering sincerity. Shearing herself of the machinations of the music industry, recording at home, writing direct to the heart.Amateur is a jubilee for losers. A treatise in thirteen songs, it states clearly that one should live their life with eternal curiosity, offering one an open hand of comradeship out of the rat race. The songs on the album are both some of the most personal of Nilsson’s career and the most anthemic. First single “How Much Is The World” asks to re-evaluate value in the face of a neoliberal system squeezing the life out of love. Pulsing opener “Die Cry Lie” satirizes the commercialisation of emotion in the form of a shout-along diss-track. With a pounding rhythm track held down by gorgeous chord changes, heartbreaker “Valhalla” carries the torch for the main themes of the album: never growing up, making mistakes with kindness, moving on.There are moments on Amateur shrouded in reverb, slightly out of focus, forcing the listener to step deeper into the Mollyverse. Nilsson’s open-armed beseeching to the world permeates every beat, every chord. These are songs...

Gnomes, The

s/t

Dog Meat Records

Introducing the Bayside Beat of The Gnomes!Although they emerged from Melbourne bayside outer suburbs onto the local live scene with their fresh and spirited indie-rock update of the garage-beat sounds of The Easybeats, Kinks and early Beatles only a year or so ago, Gnome actually started out as a bedroom solo project for teenaged singer/songwriter/ guitarist Jay Millar a few years back. Jay, playing everything himself, started recording and releasing a steady succession of material—quite a few albums' worth—on his own Goblin Records label via Bandcamp. Realizing he needed a band to start playing out, Jay approached some like minded players from Frankston's rehearsal hub Singing Bird, and with Jay on lead vocals and lead guitar, Ned Capp on guitar, Olly Katsianis on bass, and Ethan Robins on drums, Gnome became a band.Early in 2025, the last solo Jay recordings released under the Gnome name caused something of an international underground sensation when the Bandcamp only I Like It EP—four songs of kranked up Kinks-style mono riffage—was posted by a Spanish garage-punk YouTube page and quickly clocked up over 50,000 views.At the same time, the band quickly began gaining attention on the thriving Frankston scene and around Melbourne. They started breaking out, sharing bills with the likes of Drunk Mums, Skegss, Split System, The Prize, The Unknowns, Cosmic Psychos, Hockey Dad, Guitar Wolf, The 5.6.7.8's, The Breadmakers, Loose Lips, fellow Frankstoners/Singing Bird alumni The Belair Lip Bombs, and, on a quick trip to Sydney, Cammy Cautious & The Wrestlers.And now,...

Lyons, Chris

Painters Street

Nudie Records

***Painters Street from Chris Lyons (Silver Synthetic) is a groovy meditation on transition and growth, an honest, earnest, warm and wistful dive into the deep. Whirling wurlitzer and gentle harmonies gather together with easy rolling rhythms and intimate words, a trip through a sweet hazy listening experience over 70s AM Gold. About the record, Chris says “The sound was really a result of our limitations. 16 tracks. 1 inch tape. Whole band crammed in a tiny room. Lots of bleed. Limitations are your guide! Clearly there are overdubs, but the majority of this record was cut live. I like records where the room is a sound that you hear. It feels more like you're in it. You are there. It feels human. Unpolished, imperfect, and graceful.”

Donnelly, Stella

Love and Fortune

Dot Dash

Stella Donnelly returns with a deeply personal and anchored album, a body of work that traces the journey back to herself after a period of profound change. Recorded in Naarm/Melbourne, the album carries the grounding energy of place, offering a sonic landscape that feels both intimate and expansive. Joining Donnelly on the record are longtime collaborators and friends Marcel Tussie, Sophie Ozard, Julia Wallace, Timothy Harvey, and Ellie Mason, whose playing brings a looseness and vitality to the music, holding space for Donnelly’s voice to shine in its most tender and unguarded forms.

Stark, Susannah

Minor Gestures

Night School / Stroom

Drifting in on a stream of birdsong, synths and field recordings of rivers, Susannah Stark posits questions from the outset of Minor Gestures, her second studio album. Sung in both Gàidhlig and English, Stark is in constant dialogue with her surroundings, with history, mythology and with the listener on her second album for cult label Stroom of Brussels and Glasgow’s Night School. Recorded with an ensemble curated from the worlds of experimental and folkloric music in her adopted city, Minor Gestures is an omni-directional conversation, open-ended and infused with curiosity and sensitivity. Using primarily acoustic instruments and folk modalities, the songs here display an almost preternatural confidence as Stark shifts perspectives and narratives throughout. Minor Gestures is a body of work that celebrates standing in vulnerability and cultivating resistance to the onset of the corporatisation of daily life. Stark’s duo-linguistic approach feels like a love letter both to the Gàidhlig language and term for translation: eadar-theangachadh, 'inter-tonguing' itself as a creative act. Much of the album was composed from visual cues, and experimenting with the fundamentals of existing in bodies, in this time and place: breath, drone, whisper, song, and primal rhythms inhabiting the unknown space of the mouth. These practices suffuse Minor Gestures with a physicality and immediacy that feel akin to practice of zen meditation: in an age of constant distraction and speed, perhaps truly living, with all its corporeality and massiveness is a form of resistance? A leap forward from the more electronic and solitary practice of...

Wesleys, The

Explosive Device

Meritorio

***Since 2022, The Wesleys have been delivering the kind of unapologetic, “straight to the heart” rock ’n’ roll that sticks with you. Their songs channel love, heartache, anxiety, and all the sharp turns life throws your way. Wrapped in unforgettable hooks and melodies that linger long after the last chord rings out. Hailing from Montreal, Henry Girard, William D'Amours, Quentin Chisholm, and Pablo Garcia pull from garage, jangle, pop, and punk, but never stay in one lane. Their new release, Explosive Device, pushes their sound forward with fresh tones, new textures, and the same raw energy that’s become their calling card. Featuring four dynamic new tracks with Girard, Chisholm, and Garcia each taking turns at the mic, Explosive Device captures the band at their most collaborative and adventurous. Recorded in Montreal with Monty (Pre-Occupations) and mixed by Adrian Popovich (Tricky Woo, American Lips, Physical Congas), the EP shows the band in full command of their craft. The vinyl edition of Explosive Device comes paired with Outside Voices (2022), marking the first-ever physical release of The Wesleys debut EP. Together, these records tell the story of where the band started and where they’re charging full speed ahead. Pressed on transparent green vinyl.

Hot Load

Fate Unknown

Going Underground

***Los Angeles' Hot Load delivers their first long awaited full length. 11 tracks of raging Punker Music drawing magic aura from Poison Idea's Feel The Darkness, Discharge. A metal tinge—but from a Japanese Punk angle so it's not overboard. Limited Pressing of only 500 copies.“Local heroes HOT LOAD don't disappoint with this ripping debut. Fans of RAW POWER, ENGLISH DOGS, POISON IDEA and even old school metal like TANK will probably dig this. but really those are just references, HOT LOAD is doing their own thing and it rules.”—Jesse Michael (Operation Ivy)

Great Lakes

Don't Swim Too Close

HHBTM

***Great Lakes’ Ben Crum returns with a fantastic new album, Don’t Swim Too Close. Over 25 years and eight records, Crum has built a reputation for sharp songwriting and interesting stylistic shifts. Don’t Swim Too Close is no exception, as Crum draws from a classic rock tradition, echoing both the Americana spirit of Neil Young and The Band and the proto-indie rock of Television and the Velvet Underground.Immediately accessible, its songs land with the ease of lived-in classics. Themes of empathy and regret, mental health struggles, disillusionment, and the lone journey of the writer weave through the record. But this isn’t a bleak listen. Crum’s dry, gallow's humor bubbles up throughout, balancing heaviness with wit. The characters in Crum’s songs are soul-searching, making for a compelling and thought-provoking listen.Don’t Swim Too Close is that rare record that blends superb lyrics with the subtle smoke of melody, and delivers it all in an instantly enjoyable format.

Cosmic Tones Research Trio

Cosmic Tones Research Trio

Mississippi

***New album of peaceful explorations by The Cosmic Tones Research Trio. This, their second record, maintains the space and long tones that made their debut, "All Is Sound" a successful anecdote to the loud and fast times we live in. It also expands their musical palate with powerful rhythmic elements. The Cosmic Tones Research Trio have been breaking new ground with healing / meditation music that also honors their roots in Gospel and Blues... and hints at forward looking Spiritual Jazz. Through their Cello, Saxophone, Piano and Flute playing they bring a new sound to the table. Ancient to the future.

The John-Pauls

Eep Eep EP

Aagoo

***Following the success of their debut EP and two full-length LPs for New Jersey-based Aagoo Records, the John-Pauls are back with a new 7-song EP titled Eep Eep. Recorded mostly live in Lockhart, Texas, by Matt Gerhard and Knife in the Water’s Aaron Blount, the songs exhibit the full range of the John-Pauls’ post-indie-parent-rock. “Florescent Brown” is ‘80s poetry wave, like riding a 99 Luftballoon to Athens, GA, piloted by Johnny Marr and the Edge. “Hold Me Tight” is an xx-esque interplay of naked guitars and Mikila John-Paul’s damaged chanteuse vocals. “Eep Eep,” the single, is a bubble gum punk POV monologue of a libidinous and articulate dolphin, the Plastic Bertrand Band circa a minute before tomorrow. “Islands in a Ditch” sounds nothing like Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton, but everything like overhearing a conversation between Lou Reed and Edna St. Vincent Millay at the HEB. “Ugly Feelings” is affect theory put into practice, as if sung by Mark E Smith backed by Robert Fripp. Beneath it all, Elizabeth John–Paul’s Ringo-in-front-of-the-beat drumming keeps the mood urgent, beyond present. The ep closes with Neu/Unrest inspired experimentation and never ends.

Granicus

S/t

Riding Easy

GRANICUS transcends the genre of early ‘70s progressive hard rock, they will thrill somebody hungry for a killer in that department but are so creatively explosive anybody into any brand of hard rock from classic, metal, punk, prog up into the wild beyond will get caught up in the band’s whirlpool of manic energy. You get to relax here and there but most of the time they come at you so decisively you gotta hang on to your brain. For my money these guys delivered an LP on level with the best famous bands of the day, contemporaries like Led Zep, Rush, Deep Purple, Sabbath... based on the power and variety captured here it is clearly only a lack of promotion that kept Granicus off the charts. It has hard prog moves in spades but also over the top energy with outrageous vocal moves powerful enough to have scored a big bullseye in teenage wasteland America 1973.As the liner notes on the sleeve declare... “Granicus puts forward a musically cohesive, emotionally compelling vision of growing up wasted in America, searching desperately for and occasionally glimpsing spiritual truth, in a climate foreshadowing Armageddon”. Granicus is named after a battle in 334 BC where Alexander The Great defeated the Persian Empire. This album has more than enough ammo to defeat your head right now, they take you deep down into the sordid demonic underbelly of America 1973, ending the LP with an ultimate rock and roll exorcism. Appropriate to say fasten your...

Sarid, Loris S.

Ambient $

Moon Glyph

***Mythology has a recurring theme: creating ambiguity by rearranging worlds and creatures that normally don’t belong together. Centaurs, Minotaurs, Hydras and so on: mockery and mystery intertwine into entities that are in equal parts magnificent and ridiculous. Referencing this idea in the present, Loris S. Sarid conjures 12 compositions simultaneously showing traits of dreamlike trap, candy-flavoured New Age and Spoken Word. The lines between spiritual and mundane, drama and parody are bent and questioned, used as raw material and treated with the same importance. Binding the work together is the sense of feeling peacefully lost inside a shuffling iPod, buried in a quiet zen garden inside a noisy shopping mall or vice versa. What connects Ambient music, which often anonymously swims into endless sleeping playlists with monthly subscriptions to well-being, to the mainstream output of commercial music? Ambient $ doesn’t explore the social aspect of this question, but rather celebrates the beauty of its paradoxes. This album is the morning choir of forgotten NFTs, brewing lyrics in their binary exile. The television homily of a wrestler turned priest, turned influencer chef, then hermit and then rapper. Randomness is reclaimed as a human quality, and the aesthetics of mass music consumption are repurposed into a rather inexpensive guide to streaming-service-enlightenment.

Invunche

II

Nuclear War Now

***+ANCESTRAL BLACK METAL+ Remastered reissue of debut full-length by Dutch-Chilean band INVUNCHE. Featuring the original cover art and never before released lyrics. II is inspired by Ildjarn, Dawn of Humans and Bone Awl, channeling vile black metal punk into two seamless psychedelic.

Siege Column

Sulphur Omega

Nuclear War Now

***The return of darkness and ugly metal. Not for fans of Opeth.

Cusumano, Joel

Waxworld

Dandy Boy

***Fiery debut power pop LP from a Bay Area underground mainstay! Though you, dear reader, may not know it, Joel Cusumano has played a huge role in the Bay Area underground scene for years—as songwriter and/or lead guitarist in a wide-ranging lineup of bands such as Sob Stories, R.E. Seraphin, and Body Double. Cusumano began writing the music that would become his first solo album, Waxworld, after a stint in a mental hospital treating his debilitating OCD: “It was bleak. For a year I could barely function, barely leave the house. After [the hospital] I recovered pretty rapidly. But instead of feeling relief, there was dread, like, ‘Well, what now’? You spend over a year falling off the deep end and you’re a different person when you hit the ground … I needed to write differently than I had before. I was looking around the world and not recognizing what I saw. The songs had to reflect that alienation. I was done with the ‘angry young man’ jilted lover stuff I’d been doing in Sob Stories. I was bored with that kind of boilerplate rock’n’roll topography.” A painful breakup at the end of writing process further sharpened Cusumano’s eye towards material reflecting his growing unease in a world in unrelenting flux. But despite weighty origins, Waxworld sound is, like all of Cusumano’s work, instantly fun, catchy, and accessible, if a little moody. Waxworld effortlessly weaves between guitar pop styles from bubblegum (“Push Push”) and post-punk (“Death-Wax Girl”), to straight power...

Goods, The

Don't Spoil the Fun

Dandy Boy

***Oakland power pop outfit The Goods arrive with their long-awaited full-length, Don’t Spoil the Fun. Recalling the jangle and melodicism of early luminaries like The Byrds and Big Star, with the punch and verve of 90s torchbearers like Teenage Fanclub and Matthew Sweet, The Goods adapt the hallmarks of the genre into a fresh and effervescent cocktail that sparkles with sincerity. Reverent of their influences but with a sound unmistakably their own, on Don’t Spoil the Fun The Goods fulfill the promise of contemporary power pop with grace and panache.Produced by songwriter Rob Good (also of indie pop darlings Ryli) in his own Oakland studio, the album’s 11 songs positively leap from the grooves, putting Good’s penchant for tight, clever songwriting and big melodic hooks on full display. The LP marks a great leap forward from the band’s debut EP, eschewing much of that disc’s punkish grit in favor of a sunny technicolor jangle, without sacrificing an ounce of their trademark energy. Joined by bassist Cherron Arens and guitarist Gabriel Monnot, Don’t Spoil the Fun finds The Goods embracing a fully-realized panoramic pop sound, where electric guitar arpeggios ring and vocal harmonies soar atop a bed of sprightly strummed acoustic guitars and bouncing basslines. The arrangements are snappy and assured, and earworms abound.

Cindy Lee

Malenkost

W.25TH

Cindy Lee is the brainchild of singer/guitarist Patrick Flegel. While some may know Flegel from his time spent in Canadian experimental indie band Women, Cindy Lee has spent the past four years crafting songs that push and pull in opposing directions – from tales of tragedy laced with haywire distortion to moments of breathtaking beauty. On Malenkost, Flegel combines everything that makes Cindy Lee so essential: heart-wrenching romantic pleas, rough shards of noise and twilit ballads. Featuring the lo-fi pop single “A Message From The Aching Sky,” Malenkost sounds like Deerhunter playing The Supremes or vice versa. Superior Viaduct’s imprint W.25TH presents the first of many Cindy Lee releases. Spectral and timeless, the music of Cindy Lee is hauntingly familiar yet of another plane, a magical collision of Brill Building hooks and uncompromising No Wave. “Cindy Lee is intensely dark and cathartic, an eerie fever dream of fleeting, utterly heartbreaking classic girl-group melodies … one of the best things we have heard all year.” —Gorilla Vs. Bear

Cindy Lee

Act of Tenderness

W.25TH

Cindy Lee is the diva alter-ego of singer / guitarist Patrick Flegel, the one-time captain of heralded Canadian experimental guitar pop act, Women. In Flegel’s working on / as Cindy Lee exclusively over recent years, their songwriting makes a move toward high atmospherics, often achieving a mysterious sweetness rooted equally in beauty and ache.As Cindy Lee’s third long-form statement, Act Of Tenderness makes use of antipodal themes to create a living sound: static with grace, distortion and sugar, all masterfully arranged with crooked nods toward pop classicism. The layered vocal on “Power And Possession” creates a palpable haunt, bringing historical girl-group lament to choir-esque heights. The feedback shriek and industrial grind of “Bonsai Garden” provides near-operatic damage, yet never stumbles into the irrevocably grave. These snowy pieces give the album a decidedly cinematic feel, albeit one bent more towards Eraserhead.Originally released in a scant private edition in 2015, Superior Viaduct’s imprint W.25TH is pleased to give Act Of Tenderness its deserving wide release.

Cindy Lee

Model Express

W.25TH

BACK IN PRINT - PRICE INCREASE - Cindy Lee, the performance and songwriting vehicle of Canadian artist Patrick Flegel (who fronted influential indie group Women earlier), previously stunned listeners with Act Of Tenderness, a heart-wrenching statement informed by the noirish core of celebrity, and has continued to enchant with every album, including the startling What’s Tonight To Eternity released earlier this year.Model Express originally appeared as a self-released edition of 100 gold cassettes. The arch, filmic drama of Cindy Lee’s songwriting—realized with keyboards, guitars, aching voice and collaged, lo-fi production—traverses a wide range of emotional and sonic terrain. The red velvet psych-pop of “What Can I Do” gives way to the fluid “Diamond Ring” like radio bursts from space. Model Express finds Flegel at both their most experimental and immediately melodic, and this first-time vinyl release recognizes the collected tracks as a pillar in the Cindy Lee catalogue. Cindy Lee (who uses the gender neutral pronoun they) is a drag persona drawing on suburban closet queens and mid-century divas. In keeping with Flegel’s interest in the faultlines of identity, gender expression, performance and media, Model Express delivers an intense and diverse set of unforgettable songs.