Crime On The Moon

Cold Beat

Mother

Crime On The Moon

***NOW AVAILABLE!!! Wound tight with an energy that ricochets from one song into the next, COLD BEAT's Mother was made while frontperson HANNAH LEW (formerly of indie trio GRASS WIDOW) was pregnant and considering the chaotic conditions of the world she was bringing a new human into. If we consider Mother an artistic style guide through space and time, the framework Cold Beat provide is overcast by design but focused in execution; locked-in drums and synths with choir-like melodies high above it all. The A-side of Mother presents the facts as we perceive them, while the B-side accelerates into the uncertain. Each of the first five track titles is one evocative word: the synths on “Prism” slide against the motorik guitar riffs and the plaintive saxophone on “Paper” casts the Leonard Cohen-esque melody in a melancholy shadow; “Gloves” is a real mood, all drive. Everything begins to unfurl from there.

Cold Beat

Chaos By Invitation

Crime On The Moon

***Back in stock on LP!!  Cold Beat, aka Hannah Lew, returns with the announcement of her third album, Chaos By Invitation, out April 7th via her own Crime on the Moon label. As compared with previous releases, Chaos By Invitation began in Lew's home, alone, with additional tracking done later by Phil Manley (Trans Am) at El Studio and Mikey Young (Total Control) - only to return to Lew's home for completion over the course of many months. As a result, the offering is much more personal and direct than Into The Air, which was more of a band effort. Collages from Lew's home environment make up many of the textures of Chaos By, woven in to create an intimate atmosphere, a sort of chaos by necessity and design. The album also features performances by her friends Kyle King, Alex Shen, Jackson Blumgart, and Mikey Young.  The album moves through themes of sensuality/intangibility. Lew attempts to reconcile the distance between these two modalities throughout the album. One can hear the surrender in Lew's voice as she grasps to hold onto the end of a rope during "In Motion" - as if succumbing to a strong current of emotion. Chaos By Invitation examines what can be machine-readable and what is only felt in the body.    Inspired musically by bands such as NEU! and Tubeway Army, Lew was also influenced by her own burgeoning interest in astronomy. The first single, "62 Moons," is a song about love...

Tropic Green

Golden Light

Crime On The Moon

***Tropic Green is music from the planet Saturn as channeled by Adee Roberson. Roberson is a visual artist and musician who has been a fixture in underground art and music for over a decade. With Tropic Green she is leading the way for us into a Black Futurist fantasy that draws from the minimal aspects of punk, reggae, house music, and spirituals. She weaves rich celestial landscapes with her drum machines, synthesizers and various percussion instruments.   Roberson works with black identities and abstractions in her visual work. She uses visual storytelling to weave a new narrative that combines threads from her cultural history and also from the cloth of infinity. She imagines a future that we all want to live in and gives us the sonic tools to imagine it. It's a place where new identities thrive and where her deep voice is vibrating in the wind, holding us with her strength. These motifs are extended into Tropic Green, where she offers us a taste of the future she may be from. Tropic Green lives in the same realm of imagination as Sun Ra or Arthur Russell. She holds up a telescope to show us a new galaxy of her own design where palm trees blow in the wind against a starry backdrop.  These tracks were recorded cross-country in California & New York City. Crime On The Moon label owner Hannah Lew handled the West Coast tracking & participated in the birth of the music which features...

Cold Beat

Into The Air

Crime On The Moon

***Less than a year after COLD BEAT's debut LP, Over Me, the band is set to release Into The Air on bassist, vocalist, and primary songwriter HANNAH LEW's label Crime On The Moon. Moving past the themes of grief and loss prevalent on Over Me, Into the Air explores ideas both earthly and celestial. Some songs are attempts at describing complex emotional landscapes, while others playfully wonder about physics and astronomy, often delving off into deep fantasy. But it doesn’t stop with the personal or metaphysical. With the exodus of artists and musicians leaving San Francisco due to increased rent prices and overall cultural changes, Cold Beat has persevered through the city’s metamorphosis into a place less and less hospitable to artists. One can pick up on a sense of discontent in the face of a rapidly growing techie millionaire culture on Into The Air. There is a sense of fighting to survive. One can almost hear the struggle represented on the record as guitars face off against increasingly prevalent synths.   The truth is, the formation of a more stable group—including KYLE KING (guitar), JACKSON BLUMGART (guitar), and SUSI LENI (drums)—allowed the group to begin writing more collaboratively, expanding their vocabulary to include lush synths and crisp drum machines. While the record explores a wide swathe of sonic territory—the propulsive rock hooks of “Broken Lines,” the trance electronics of "Cracks," the ethereal abstraction of "Clouds"—it seamlessly transitions between modes, all anchored by Lew’s distinctive glassy vocals. Into The Air...

Synthetic ID

Escapement

Crime On The Moon

***Now that the Eighties is the most vogue decade for musicians to rehash, droves of new bands have adopted the post-punk sound. But few have successfully channeled its spirit of maladjustment—except for local quartet SYNTHETIC ID.  While a lot of modern post-punk bands digress into atmospherics and moody dawdling, Synthetic ID is assertive and fiercely present. JAKE DUDLEY’s sinuous and trebly guitar riffs are the obvious musical focal point, but PAUL LUCICH’s circular bass grooves effectively reinforce the general unruliness, and each track is propelled by crisp, eighth-note-centric drum beats. Never saturated or clamorous, the production on the recording is sparse—a vital element to Synthetic ID's sound: The clarity and space between each instrument actually maximizes the neurotic mood. All the while, vocalist NIC LANG’s monotonous shout provides an ideal counterpoint to the otherwise volatile sounds. While other post-punk groups convey only a vague sense of moodiness, Synthetic ID conjures a distinctly urban sense of alienation. It reflects the restlessness of a world in which buildings become towering predators and commuter crowds signify impending doom.”—Sam Lefebvre. Edition of 500 copies with hand-painted and silkscreened jackets, each unique from the others.

Cold Beat

Over Me

Crime On The Moon

***Following the release of COLD BEATS Worms/Year 5772 EP via bandleader HANNAH LEW’s (GRASS WIDOW) Crime on the Moon imprint, Over Me is the Bay Area act’s debut album. Propulsive and taut performances from guitarist KYLE KING and drummer BIANCA SPARTA (ERASE ERRATA) bely Lew’s glassy vocal melodies. A cathartic album, Lew sourced difficult personal experiences to create an immersive lyrical world sometimes fraught with paranoia, anxiety and impending doom, and also an exploration of hope and imagination—themes felt ever more acutely by a native San Franciscan artist in the midst of tech boom cataclysm once again. Over Me was recorded by PHIL MANLEY at Lucky Cat Studios in San Francisco, and mixed and mastered by MIKEY YOUNG  in Australia. As a Crime on the Moon release, a percentage of sales benefit Charity: Water, an organization committed to eliminating privation in developing nations. A meditation on the duality of identity, “Mirror” rides tear-drop guitar leads into a buoyant chorus, then cascades mightily towards an exalted outro. It is the first of three album tracks to receive music videos created by Lew. Elsewhere, the menacing “UV” couples fetishistic imagery with instrumental vigor, while the dystopian subject matter in “Out of Time” finds Lew’s vocals entwined in the sky, on a swift ascent to space with only glistening notes in their wake. Seething with circuitous anxieties, even teetering at times towards terror, Over Me ultimately marvels in the face of staggering unknowns.

V/a

San Francisco Is Doomed

Crime On The Moon

***San Francisco Is Doomed is a compilation put out by Crime On The Moon. The compilation includes 13 songs written by bay area artists as a response to the tech boom. The Compilation includes tracks from Thee Oh Sees, Erase Errata, Valley Boy (solo project of Shannon Shaw), Mikal Cronin and several others.

Bridge Collapse

Wilderness / Blockbreaker

Crime On The Moon

***This is the second release on HANNAH LEW’s (GRASS WIDOW, COLD BEAT) label Crime On The Moon. BRIDGE COLLAPSE are songs written by Hannah Lew and RAVEN MAHON of Grass Widow. JON SHADE of RANK / XEROX plays drums on this recording. “Wilderness” is the title track on side A with “Blockbreaker” on side B. This is a very limited pressing and each cover is unique and hand silkscreened.   Wilderness by bridgecollapse

Cold Beat

Worms / Year 5772

Crime On The Moon

Cold Beat is Hannah Lew, bassist and co-songwriter of the band Grass Widow. It’s the fully expressed voice and emotions of one person, versus the harmonic and lock-step declarations of three women. It’s the emergence of Lew as a singular voice, using dream logic and abstraction to describe the themes of death, internet surveillance, paranoia and science fiction that permeate her music. “Worms” is the lead single off “Worms/Year 5772,” the first EP from Cold Beat, out 11/5 on Lew’s new label, Crime On The Moon. Written not too long after Hannah Lew's father passed away in 2009, it’s largely about the horror of things one does and does not know about death. Lew uses the tools of pop music to access the inaccessible and honor her grief while discussing some of the most jarring aspects of her father's death. However, anyone who listens to “Worms” can hear that it transcends the overtly personal and manifests itself as melodious and universal.     The A side of this 12" EP features "Worms" and "Year 5772". The recording features Kyle King on guitar, Lillian Maring ( Grass Widow, Ruby Pins) on drums and Cody Blanchard (Shannon and The Clams) on guitar/synth. The B side of the EP features a Worms remix by POW!, a local SF doom synth band, and also a remix of Year 5772 by Mikey Young of Total Control. The live band features Bianca Sparta (Errase Errata) on drums, and Greer Mcgettrick (The Mallard) on guitar as well...