Ba Da Bing!   Page 4

Renderers

A Rocket Into Nothing

Ba Da Bing!

Over the past two decades, The Renderers have crafted half a dozen albums of intimate psychedelia infused with Americana and noise. A Rocket Into Nothing is another extraordinary display of Brian and Maryrose Crook’s talent as songwriters and sound sculptors. The Renderers are still as essential a piece of the diverse New Zealand indie rock puzzle as they were on their first Flying Nun album. Crafted during the series of earthquakes that hit the country in 2011, A Rocket Into Nothing seethes with the anxiety born of life-threatening experiences. On opener “Down River,” slippery minor key melodies lie on beds of shaky feedback. Even the upbeat “This Shining Life” features wild, overblown guitars and subtle synth squeals. At any point, close listening reveals unexpected textures and tectonic shifts hidden just below the surface. More successfully than on any previous release, the band balances detail-oriented and spontaneous songwriting and recording techniques. Uncertainty plays a key role. Twenty years into most careers, bands lose the edge of their earlier work, but The Renderers’ music is as exciting as ever.

Dead C

Patience

Ba Da Bing!

LP VERSION INCLUDES FREE DOWNLOAD COUPON!!!   Patience is both appropriate and inappropriate as a title for the latest release by The Dead C--inappropriate because it's been only two years since the last album, which in Dead C Time is but the flicker of a candle; appropriate since the key to enjoying their sounds is willingness to sit down, listen and let the music take over your mind. These four unforgiving and intense tracks will not be confused with the work of any other band. Recorded in Dunedin over the Southern summer of 2009/10, Patience captures a restless band that never settles into any form. The trio of Michael Morley, Bruce Russell and Robbie Yeats makes their improvised music sound like the most substantial ever recorded, no matter in what direction they go. Here, vocal-less, thick and thundering electric drones compound and retreat like a Pacific Ocean of noise. Morley once again provides the artwork and continues in his color palatte of late. Its circular, flowery texture provides the perfect mandala for contemplation while lost within the deep meditations that Patience inspires.

Soft Landing

S/t

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Soft Landing is all about respect. Sure, they love our environment and our womenfolk, but there is also a sincere appreciation for musical styles both near and far. Taking an entrenched understanding of Jorge Ben, percolating the groove of Dirty Projectors and incorporating all there is to learn from Italo disco and Brazilian Tropicalia, Pendleton, Oregon-born guitarist and singer Paul Collins crafts a sound bereft of irony and deep, deep, deep with heart. Rounded out by Perrin Cloutier (drums) and Mike Lawless (guitar, bass, Farfisa, Moog), Soft Landing plummets into your mind while expanding out into the stratosphere. Armed with a variety of experience (be it as leader of the modestly titled Paul Collins Dance Machine, creator of numerous cassette releases of droning experimentation or bass player and general rabble-rouser in Beirut), Collins cuts through any stylized muck on Soft Landing's self-titled debut to find something essentially human and teeming with emotion. With the help of producer Griffin Rodriguez (Beirut, Need New Body, Icy Demons), the trio fashioned an album thick with low end, unafraid to let a beat turn into a dance and possessing an extremely loose vibe. Only on "Pendleton Woolen"--the album's centerpiece--does the tempo get low and soft.

Van Etten, Sharon

Epic

Ba Da Bing!

 Free mp3 of the non-album track "The Romance of the Telescope" (Sharon's cover of the OMD song) available  here ***BACK IN STOCK!!!  Received a 7.8 rating from Pitchfork.  Sharon Van Etten came to Brooklyn via Jersey via Tennessee via Jersey. Along the way, she sang in choirs, rejected her school's music program, worked at an all-ages venue, trained as a sommelier and got a full time job at a record label. She also had a few bad experiences in relationships. More than a few. Epic, Van Etten's second album, lays a romantic melancholy lining over the gravel and dirt of heartbreak, without one honest thought or feeling spared. She sings of betrayal, obsession, egotism and all the other emotions we hate in others and recognize in ourselves. Van Etten's grounded and clenched vocals convey the sense of hope--the notion that beauty can come out of the worst of circumstances. Epic is indeed that beauty. The album was recorded at Miner Street Studios in Philadelphia with Brian McTear. Where Van Etten's first record, Because I Was in Love, explored her thoughts on love through minimalism and sparseness, Epic embellishes her music to grandiose luminosity. She supplements guitar and vocals with drums, piano, lap steel and a trio of backing vocalists--Meg Baird (Espers), Cat Martino and Jessica Larrabee (She Keeps Bees)--for a fully realized album that astounds as it elucidates, disturbs as it soothes. The final track, "Love More," has already been covered live in a collaborative effort...

Gate

A Republic Of Sadness

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INCLUDES FREE DOWNLOAD COUPON!!!   The first new Gate record in over a decade, A Republic of Sadness is as much a reason for celebration as indoctrination into the creative genius of Michael Morley. Known primarily for his work in The Dead C, Morley simultaneously has been doing Gate since he's started playing.A Republic of Sadness comprises the apex of Morley's various interests in one collection. His guitar and vocal drones permeate through looped beats and sounds, arriving at a sound that is not quite dance, not quite noise, not quite electronica and never, ever ambient.

Woom

Muu’s Way

Ba Da Bing!

The summer of 2008 began a whirlwind year for Sara Magenheimer, Eben Portnoy and their band Fertile Crescent. In July they moved out of Brooklyn, self-released a 7-inch and embarked on a three-month tour of the USA. After opening for Deerhoof and garnering fans across the continent, the two retreated to a cold barn in Eastern Massachusetts. Alone in the woods, they cannibalized their sound, dramatically reconstructing their entire process.  What emerged the next spring was a new beast entirely. WOOM's music is a wholly unique reinvention of pop likened to the quiet radicalism of Young Marble Giants, the devastating simplicity of early Velvet Underground, and the turbulent joy of contemporaries like Animal Collective, Tune-Yards and Micachu and the Shapes. Untethered to a traditional genre, WOOM generates music as irresistibly engaging and timeless as it is strange and new. The intensely honest Muu's Way reveals the intuitiveness of Portnoy and Magenheimer's six-year collaboration. Beneath its incredibly detailed DIY production brims a wild, uncontainable energy. Skittering beats, deep-diving bass, chorusing frogs, crumbling guitars and crackling voices swarm around songs that are at once heart-felt and emotionally enigmatic. It is an album of elemental affection and confident provocation. WOOM, based out of Oakland and Los Angeles, will be playing both East and West Coasts of the US this summer. May and June find them heading to Europe for dates with Xiu Xiu and many others.

Dead C

Clyma Est Mort / Tentative Power

Ba Da Bing!

Following the 2008 release of a pair of double-LPs, Ba Da Bing and Jagjaguwar continue their Dead C reissue project with two new records. Relegated to expensive fodder for eBay bidders until now, Clyma Est Mort can be considered The Dead C's "Ed Sullivan moment," except it wasn't performed live on network TV--it was recorded in a practice room in Port Chalmers, NZ, in 1992 with the inestimable Tom Lax of Siltbreeze as the sole member of the audience. Since the goal was to make a "fake bootleg" album for release on the mythical Proletariat Idiots Productions label--and in honor of the 13th Floor Elevators (often overlooked as an influence)--the band dubbed in fake audience noise from a gig by the Renderers. Despite the deliberate incompetence with which this was accomplished, Clyma is often touted as a "live album." This is only true in the sense that the band members were alive when they made it. This double-LP reissue includes Tentative Power, a collection of non-album tracks many consider among the band's best moments.

Dead C

Max Harris

Ba Da Bing!

Following the 2008 release of a pair of double-LPs, Ba Da Bing and Jagjaguwar continue their Dead C reissue project with two new records. Max Harris captures the first recordings The Dead C ever made, back in January 1987. Each side displays a different and uniquely raw version of "Max Harris"--reinterpreted both times by a group who can truly say they have never played the same song in any form the same way twice. Anyone who doesn't own one of the original 21 cassette tapes made of these recordings will be hearing them together for the first time. Yes, they've never been on vinyl before, so maybe one can even say this is the tracks' first "real" release. You will be able to feel the slicing tension and drive right through your bones.

Colossal Yes

Charlemagne’s Big Thaw

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After Comets on Fire played Auckland, Utrillo Kushner met one of his idols, the legendary DIY producer and songwriter Chris Knox. The following day Knox invited Kushner and his bandmates over to his house for conversation and beers. The afternoon was spent in the kitchen (Knox was baking a cake for The Clean's Bangers and Mash anniversary tour) drinking while Knox spun stories of the New Zealand music underground of yore. From this experience, Kushner conceived of the initial idea for the second Colossal Yes album.  Inspired by the Kiwi indie-pop formulas of Tall Dwarfs, The Clean, and The Verlaines, Kushner set out to write his own songs using piano as the main instrument. It was a reawakening of the pop aesthetic done Piano Man style. Recording of the basic tracks started in the summer of 2007 with Kelley Stoltz producing and Kevin Ink engineering. Songs were then fine-tuned over a series of nighttime and weekend sessions with Matt Waters in early 2008. Finally, they were mixed with Ben Chasny (Six Organs of Admittance) and Waters almost a year from the starting point.  The end result is unique yet similar to the epic pop bands of the past. Charlemagne's Big Thaw combines simple melodies and basic structures with lyrical territories such as expired youth, grand betrayals, overdrawn faculties, and dissolving empires. In this regard, Kushner pays respect to songwriters like Robyn Hitchcock, Dan Bejar of Destroyer, and Alex Chilton while also incorporating the honesty of Graham Nash's Songs for Beginners, the romanticism...

Dead C

Secret Earth

Ba Da Bing!

The elegance of howling guitar noise was fully realized when The Dead C appeared. For over twenty years now, the trio has continually redefined what rock music is and can sound like, and have inspired Sonic Youth, Yo La Tengo, Wolf Eyes, and Comets On Fire, not to mention the current fertile underground noise scene.  The Dead C is the ultimate blues band. But rather than departing from the heartfelt singing of the African-American South, they express the tenets of alienation in society with unrelenting force--a focused soundtrack to accompany Knut Hamsun novels, Samuel Beckett plays, and Ingmar Bergman films. Michael Morley's monotonic vocal moan anchors the inherent isolation of our modern world--nothing is more earnest, nothing sounds so lost.  In its career, The Dead C has oscillated between two poles. Recent albums explore drones, electronic loops, and musique concrete. However, their new album, Secret Earth, proselytizes oceanic feedback, catastrophic drumming, and a return to the cripple rock blasts of their early material.  Along the axis of The Dead C's recordings, Secret Earth sounds like it was created between Eusa Kills and Harsh '70s Reality. It contains a straightforward (for them) expression of sound, while continually pushing their vast improvisational techniques into a realm of subconscious genius.  To coincide with this release, the band will be playing rare, select shows around the US in mid-October. They have not been to the east coast in over a decade, and will be visiting some places they've never been (cheers, Seattle). In addition, Ba Da Bing is...

Wetherill, Benjamin

Laura

Ba Da Bing!

Recorded in a disused 19th-century palace on the outskirts of Budapest, Benjamin Wetherill's first album captures the intimacy of a delicate folk idiom along with the innovation of original technique and approach. Wetherill, a Leeds native who has been making his own music for almost a decade, plays intricate fingerpicked guitar passages, and sings with a lilting style unlike anybody recording today. A startling listen for anyone looking for truly talented musicians wholly focused on their own vision.  Jeremy Barnes, A Hawk and a Hacksaw's inventive songwriter, heard Wetherill while touring and offered to produce his debut album. Barnes enlisted his Hun Hangar Ensemble of Hungarian musicians to assist in the recording, delicately expanding Wetherill's songs to include a feather orchestra of light touches and subtle accents, blending sentiments of pre-war European jazz with early English pathos.  The result is Laura, an album as emotional as it is detailed and fragile. Folk music has enjoyed a resurgence of late, but with Wetherill one always seems to get something refreshingly different--true, original music in a manner never quite done before, with the capacity to combine a mystifying sense of the early 19th century with a 20th century outlook. The effect is startling.

Williams, Devon

Carefree

Ba Da Bing!

Carefree, Devon Williams' debut album, has a melodic complexity that belies its immediacy, and descends from a lineage of great music. Those yearning for a return to intelligent pop music--songs as gratifying on their 1,963th listen as they are memorable after their first--need look no further.  Over the course of a year and a half, Williams recorded at three different studios around Los Angeles, walking away with a handful of songs each time. Laying down multiple guitar tracks--making as many as ten different mixes for some songs--Williams scrutinized every moment to achieve his ideal sound. Songs such as "A Truce" or "Honey" presumably come from a lifelong fan of greats such as Nilsson and Chilton, Cope and Downes, Lennon and McLennan. However, Williams sports an unlikely background. While many people had a hyper punk band in their teenage years, the controversial Osker, a group formed when Williams was 16 years old, was signed by Epitaph Records. He quickly learned the benefits and dangers of the scene as he proceeded to kill punks' idols. As Williams grew up, the manic energy of Osker became less appealing than an expansive pop sound, so the band broke up. This led Williams to test new approaches, recording and touring in various setups before centering in on the sound that defines Carefree. Help from friends Allen Bleye and Greg Arnold, with whom he still plays, were key.  Carefree should have seen release a year ago. However, before he finished mixing, Williams was contacted by his friend and...

Dead C

Future Artists

Ba Da Bing!

Now available on vinyl! In their first new album since 2003’s The Damned and last year’s double-CD greatest hits behemoth, Vain, Erudite and Stupid, New Zealand’s The Dead C return with another uncompromising realization of the finest rock improvisation you’ll ever hear. Future Artists contains five tracks of genius drone and barbarous clashing sounds. From the first track, “The AMM of Punk Rock” through to the last, “Garage,” their intensity is unyielding, their inventiveness jaw-dropping. It’s been twenty years, and The Dead C show no sign of losing their ability to express the surreal and undefined. Long may they prosper.  “The Dead C are legends of the avant rock scene ... one of the world’s most revered noise merchants.” —Boomkat  “Amazing improvisers, upchucking Twin Infinitives-sized messes at will. It’s garage rock, maybe, but the garage is burning down and you're in no rush to escape....” —Pitchfork

Beirut

The Flying Club Cup

Ba Da Bing!

Since its release in May of 2006, Beirut’s internationally celebrated Gulag Orkestar album has soundscanned more than 45,000 copies, and the band has done a tsunami of interviews, photoshoots and features (including NY Times, Spin, Pitchfork, Urb, and Village Voice). This great fervor developed around an album conceived and constructed in a teenager’s New Mexico bedroom.  Six months of recording has led to The Flying Club Cup, an homage to France’s culture, fashion, history, and music. Two years ago, Zach Condon immersed himself in Balkan folk, absorbed sounds, scales, styles, and the sonic joys of a skeletally structured, cacophonic ensemble—and moved west. Soaking up the likes of François Hardy, Charles Aznavour, and, most notably, Jacques Brel (a huge influence on both Scott Walker and Mark E. Smith), Condon has been articulating his conversational French.    Most of the album was created at a nondescript Albuquerque office space, a.k.a. A Hawk and a Hacksaw’s practice room; Heather Trost plays violin and viola on three songs. Engineering and production assistance came from Griffin Rodriguez (A Hawk and a Hacksaw, Man Man). He helped separate the many instrumentalists involved in recording, as opposed to Gulag’s largely solo flight. The orkestar, which has solidified into a core group of eight members, has grand plans for replicating the album live, and is now an integral part of Beirut’s identity. Additional recording was done with Owen Pallet (Final Fantasy) at the Masonic church studio owned by The Arcade Fire.  Within the spectacle and intimacy...

Bright

Albatross Guest House

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Cleandenim, Patrick

Baby Comes Home

Ba Da Bing!

Baby Comes Home is the extraordinary debut album by 22 year old Patrick Cleandenim. Combining a love of classic songcraft with a mountain of charisma, Cleandenim is just at the start of a highly promising career.  After playing with Kansas favorites Clockwork, Patrick began performing under his own name with help from his brother Andrew and Clockwork drummer Jim Pillar. Shows opening for bands like The Decemberists and John Vanderslice followed until Patrick moved to New York to attend the prestigious Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Arts.  Two years later, in December of 2005, Patrick returned to Lawrence to record Baby Comes Home. Booking an armful of sessions at Black Lodge Recording Studio (co-owned by local heroes the Get Up Kids) and with a killer rhythm section in tow, Patrick expanded the band to orchestra size by enlisting the help and goodwill of music students from University of Kansas to serve as string and horn sections. The sessions took place in the graveyard slot of 12.00 - 4.00 am. On the last day of recording, Patrick turned 21.  Baby Comes Home inhabits a lush world of its own. From the opening drum beat crack of "Baby Comes Home" to the dying seconds of "Hollywood," there's a sense of identity to the album that's rarely achieved these days, like a great novel or film rather than just a collection of songs. While prime time Scott Walker may be an initial point of comparison, Baby Comes...

Dead C

Vain, Erudite And Stupid: Selected Works 1987-2005

Ba Da Bing!

There’s no “correct” way to respond to The Dead C’s music. With a catalogue that oscillates between subverting traditional song structures and stomping out and obliterating the very notion, New Zealand’s Michael Morley, Bruce Russell and Robbie Yeats have continually made the most crushing, expansive and intelligent rock noise ever to be heard. The number of their peers who are also fans — Yo La Tengo, Sonic Youth, Comets On Fire, Black Dice — shows the league in which they play. The Dead C have been creating the greatest of squalls for twenty years now, and to mark the anniversary, Ba Da Bing is proud to present this double CD retrospective, with tracks hand-picked by the band members themselves, collecting old and new faves and out-of-print rarities. All this at a price so nice, you’d think you were picking up a ten-song Supertramp greatest hits package. This release serves long-time fans and the curious alike, as chances are few people have heard everything on these discs. The band chose critical highlights as well as material they felt deserved wider exposure. While classics like “Constellation,” “Power,” and “Bitcher” are present, so are obscurities like “Mighty” from their Forced Exposure 7-inch, “All Channels Open” from the limited, double-disc DC record and “3 Years” from the Xpressway Pile-Up compilation. The real thrill is listening to the band’s development over time, from the deconstructed skeletal rock of their early output to the eventual, cosmic marriage of reason and squalor that is as crushing as...

Beirut

Gulag Orkestar

Ba Da Bing!

While it may sound like an entire Balkan gypsy orchestra playing modern songs as mournful ballads and upbeat marches, Beirut’s first album, Gulag Orkestar, is actually the work of 19-year-old Albuquerque native Zach Condon, with an assist from Jeremy Barnes (Neutral Milk Hotel, A Hawk and a Hacksaw). There are no guitars on this album; instead, horns, violins, cellos, ukuleles, mandolins, glockenspiel, drums, tambourines, congas, organs, pianos, clarinets and accordions all build and break around Condon’s deep-voiced crooner vocals, swaying to the Eastern European beats like a drunken twelve-member carnival band.  Though young, Condon has already recorded several albums of astonishing diversity. He recorded under the name Real People when he was fifteen, crafting an electronic record inspired by his love of the Magnetic Fields. At sixteen, he recorded an entire doo-wop album that sounds a bit like like Frankie and the Teenagers. Although he was a straight-A student, in 2002 Condon dropped out of school to travel Europe, cavorting and partying with the locals wherever he went. During one of these evenings that he was first exposed to Balkan gypsy music, blasting from an upstairs apartment. Condon went to investigate, and stayed up all night with a Serbian artist, going through albums country by country, note for note. Gulag Orkestar is the direct result of what he learned that night.  This past winter, Condon headed to Sea Side Studios in Brooklyn’s Park Slope where, along with Barnes and A Hawk and a Hacksaw’s Heather Trost, he added...

Park Attack

Half-past Human

Ba Da Bing!

Park Attack are the new noise. Driven and intense, the band’s music is an explosion of feedbacking power and wild-throated melody. Founded by the trio of guitarist Rob Churm, drummer Lorna Gilfedder and keyboardist Tom Straughan, Park Attack have been the best kept secret of the Glasgow music scene for years.  After releasing their debut EP in 2005 (the stunning 16-minute Last Drop At Hideout, on French label Tigersushi and Club Optimo’s O.S.C.A.R.R. imprint in the UK) the group headed to France to record their first full-length. A wild mix of stomp rock, slop punk and no wave intensity, Half-Past Human recalls the tribal arrhythmic sounds of DNA, the blaring energy of Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, and the noise-guitar hell of early Sonic Youth. The synth-heavy sound does little to smooth the roughly sewn corners, which sets electronics against grumbling guitar and wailing vocals. The recent addition of a fourth member, Jamie Grier, on electronics, synth, and bass has further intensified the band’s sound. Live, they are a severe, stomping force of nature and with a host of US dates planned for 2006, the noise will finally be heard.

Colossal Yes

Acapulco Roughs

Ba Da Bing!

Widely known as the ‘drummer dude’ in Comets on Fire, Utrillo Kushner’s musical talents range far beyond the drunken-master-style wailing he unleashes on any given night with the Comets. It’s his skills as a songwriter and bandleader that impress on the sentimental rock stylings of Acapulco Roughs. Having tickled the ivories for close to a decade, Kushner assumes command of the keys in Colossal Yes and steps it up as a full-fledged piano man. The songs on Acapulco Roughs have existed in Kushner’s mind for years, heard only by a few close friends on home demos or at one of a handful of solo shows. Far from their humble beginnings, these simple piano chords and melodies have morphed and developed over the years, reaching maximum clarity on the Acapulco sessions.  Acapulco Roughs is so pure, so honest, that it risks a headlong dive into cheeseville. Kushner repeatedly urges his side men to ‘play how you think Mark Knopfler would play!’ and rallies his players with calls for ‘More Fozzie Bear!’ when the group loses focus. The risks are obvious, but the payoff is ever greater chooglin’. In fact, the two elements that should damn this album to lite-rock purgatory - unabashed sincerity and piano-playing - miraculously work to its advantage. Somehow, when untainted musicianship meets earnest presentation something happens, and the results are damn good. Maybe it’s just the joy of creation. If you haven’t guessed yet, this is the ‘70s. The idealized, mythological ‘70s, where you’re not sick of great...

Th’ Faith Healers

Peel Sessions

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***Coming out at the same time as Stereolab and PJ Harvery (with both of whom they shared a record label as well as a previous Peel Sessions compilation on Strange Fruit), Th’ Faith Healers were a gritty, noisy version of their peers but were no less revelatory. Led by the meaty jangle of guitarist Tom Cullinan (Quickspace), they played a type of neo-Krautrock minimalism but never forgot they were a rock band. Songs could go on for over forty minutes, locking into a groove, shifting and changing with subtlety, pummeling the rhythm home with energy and force, yet remaining spontaneous and fun. The songs on their three albums (the last two of which were released in the U.S. on Elektra Records) are amongst the greatest of nineties rock, avoiding the indulgences of the day and keeping chained to the strength of the melody. "Reptile Smile," "Don’t Jones Me," and "Sparklingly Chime" maintained a constant energy throughout, thanks to Joe Dilworth’s steel-secure drumming style (Joe took over for Ben Hopkin, who then switched to bass) and Roxanne Stephen’s powerful and charismatic vocal delivery.  Over the years, the band was asked five times to record sessions for John Peel’s innovative radio show. The first session was released in the mid-nineties on the compilation listed above, but the others have not been available until now. Besides displaying a band that was just as powerful when taped live as in the studio, the sessions also boast some surprises, including a few songs written...

Weeks, Greg

Blood Is Trouble

Ba Da Bing!

***If personal strife in any way elevates artistic expression, then the career of singer-songwriter Greg Weeks is strangely compelling. Hardships such as exasperation with his own recurring health problems (a physical inability to play guitar) and depression, a dogged determination to turn things around -- and to beat crippling stage fright-- led Weeks to accept an offer to perform at VPR's highly regarded Amstel Fest in Amsterdam. The experience transformed his outlook and launched him on a series of tours, both here and abroad, and brought him to a point of experimentation in songcraft that resulted in the material for Blood is Trouble. Produced and recorded by himself over the summer of 2004, Blood is Trouble marks the investigation of new songwriting territory for Weeks. More focused melodically, with richer harmonies, and a bolder folk / rock presentation, the album radiates an honesty of personal expression that comes naturally to Weeks. It is, in fact, the only means by which he operates. Momentum was stifled by crippling tendonitis and carpal tunnel inflammations, leaving Blood is Trouble on the back burner for nearly a year. While patiently awaiting relief from his symptom-- a relief that never fully arrive-- Weeks co-formed the acid-folk group Espers, whose debut he produced, recorded, and released in spring of 2004 on Locust / Time Lag, met critical praise and, more importantly, struck a significant chord within the music listening community.  

Crowley, Adrian

A Northern Country

Ba Da Bing!

***The newest release by Dublin's ADRIAN CROWLEY , A Northern Country captures the lush melancholy Crowley has always worked to achieve on record. The deep vocals, sparse guitar and drums, and enrapturing cello create a serene and unique beauty that's evocative and heart-rendering. Absolutely enchanting.

James Orr Complex

Chori's Bundle

Ba Da Bing!

***A new album from Glasgow's CHRIS MACK under the JAMES ORR COMPLEX moniker. Known for his rock work in the band ESKA (Stuart Braithwaite of Mogwai was once a member), Mack moves from the power of volume to the force of melody, as he brings his rock skills to the realm of folk. A collection of beautiful, skillfully finger-picked compositions that shoot off into tangents at some points, circle melodic phrases at others, and remain highly original at all times.

Guthrie, Jim

Now More Than Ever

Ba Da Bing!

***The third album from Three Gut Records chief and ROYAL CITY member JIM GUTHRIE. Joined by members of ROYAL CITY, CONSTANTINES, HIDDEN CAMERAS, and ROCKETS RED GLARE, Guthrie brings self-discovery and experimentation to the plate, and follows his muse wherever it may take him.

1 Mile North

Minor Shadows

Ba Da Bing!

***From the team of composers and pop musicians JON HILLS and MARK BAJUK. A blend of Hills' atmospheric yet effect-free experimental guitar and Bajuk's daisy-chain-strung vintage synth drones and shimmers.

Morphew, Jason

Duke Of Arkansas

Ba Da Bing!

***Hot on the heels of his much-lauded sophomore effort Not For The Faint of Heart, JASON MORPHEW delivers his latest opus. An all-out American rock'n'roll attack featuring IKEY OWENS of MARS VOLTA on keyboards, current and former members of BEACHWOOD SPARKS, and an assortment of strings, loud guitars, synthesizers, and pedal steel to round it all out. Recorded by former RATT bassist MATT THORNE. Includes special guest appearances from the women who sang the theme song to the TV show The Jeffersons.

Dwinell, Mark

Nonloc

Ba Da Bing!

***A brand new solo recording from the guitarist, singer and co-founder of Boston space rock favorites BRIGHT, MARK DWINELL. Trading his electric guitar for an acoustic, and his previous impromptu indecipherable vocals for songs with real lyrics—one track features a ten-part vocal arrangement—Dwinell builds giant melodies over simple drones, and accentuates them with piano, string arrangements, clarinets, and mandolin.

Comets On Fire

Field Recordings From The Sun

Ba Da Bing!

Newly remastered and back in print on vinyl! Field Recordings From the Sun is the second album from West Coast skull-peelers and daisy-wilting psychedelic stormtroopers Comets On Fire. Joined by an armada of friends and hangers-on—including Tim Green of the Fucking Champs (who also produced) and Ben Chasny of Six Organs of Admittance (soon to be a permanent member)—the band erects towering tombs of natural ethereal beauty and pure sonic destruction set above a cosmic freight train of unhinged riffs and jagged grooves. And their drummer is more than happy to perform naked, you don’t even have to ask.“Field Recordings From the Sun demonstrates that melted guitars can sound just as good as the real thing. Maybe better, for that matter. This is old school being funneled into the future, garage rock unearthed from the tomb and infused with solar energy. These four Bay Area fellers grafted echoplex and oscillators onto a hard rock trio from hell and discovered that the results are a stoned avant-rocker’s wet dream.“This album’s thirty-six minutes are quality over quantity, just the way I like it…. 2002’s proving to be the year of fucking great outer-space rock, and aren’t we all lucky for it?” —Mason Jones, Dusted

Landing

Seasons

Ba Da Bing!

***The latest from Connecticut's leading otherworldly sound explorers LANDING (who along with Adam Forkner of Yume Bitsu make up the groups SURFACE OF ECEON). Adding vocals and a stronger sense of songwriting to their already mastered long ambient instrumentals, the band delivers some beautiful drones, delicate melodies, and wonderful moments.

Crowley, Adrian

A Strange Kind

Ba Da Bing!

***US issue of Crowley's first album from 1999, A Strange Kind is a folk masterpiece of minimal and sparse playing. Crowley's voice has a deep, steady brogue that anchors his minor-keyed compositions.

Crowley, Adrian

When You Are Here You Are Family

Ba Da Bing!

***The second album and first domestic release from Irish songwriter ADRIAN CROWLEY. A bittersweet collection of disparate songs, touching ballads, and sensitive tunes, done with Crowley's deep, gentle voice. Recorded in Chicago by STEVE ALBINI, and featuring Crowley's backing group KATE ELLIS on cello and THOMAS HAUGH on drums.

Mirza

Last Clouds

Ba Da Bing!

***A collection of material released by San Francisco's late MIRZA, whose members went on to play with THUJA and STEVEN R. SMITH. A stunning assortment of psychedelic compositions which lead tangential melodies to the most unexpected places. Includes their long-out-of-print debut EP, along with thirty minutes of previously unreleased magic. JEWLED ANTLER COLLECTIVE members.

Spiny Anteaters

Well Laid Plans

Ba Da Bing!

***The first new release since 1998's Last Supper album from Ottawan minimalist explorers SPINY ANTEATERS. Focusing on the more melodic side of the group's personality, Well Laid Plans is twenty tracks of sound experimentation moved with subtle overdubs, careful progressions, self-made instruments, and varying recording techniques.

Weeks, Greg

Awake Like Sleep

Ba Da Bing!

***The latest from singer-songwriter GREG WEEKS checks in with nine tracks of beauty and despair. Folk melodies sung in hushes over fingerpicked acoustic guitar with an occasional hint of cello, piano, mellotron, organ and bass. Greg is currently one of the main songwriters in Phladelphia's renowned ESPERS. 

Morphew, Jason

Not For The Faint Of Heart

Ba Da Bing!

***The latest from wandering Southern soul, and songwriting veneance wreaker JASON MORPHEW. A twenty-track report from the far edge of America broadcast via acoustic guitar and vocals.

Yume Bitsu

Giant Surface

Ba Da Bing!

***AVAILABLE AGAIN!!! The debut album from Portland's spacey dream pop youngsters. A longform blend of blissful enlightenment via dreamy spacerock sounds. Atmospheric and beautiful.

V/a

Follow The Bouncing Ball

Ba Da Bing!

***Mostly downtempo rock from BARDO POND, JESSAMINE, JOEL RL PHELPS, SIMON JOYNER, SPENT, RECEPTIONISTS and more.

Monaural

Monitor Interference

Ba Da Bing!

***Detroit atmospheric satelliters return with their first full transmission from deep space. Extensive and extended abstract electronic space-aways propelled by the gravitational forces of dub and jazz. Previous 12-inch on Rollin' Joe's Burnt Hair label left the solar system long ago.

Alger Hiss

Settings For Nudes

Ba Da Bing!

***First EP from this New York group led by Jordan N. Mamone which grafts harsh, no wave onto modernist progressive rock. Approximates the meeting of Shellac with Swans in terms of dark aggression.