Drag City   Page 5

Flying Saucer Attack

New Lands

Drag City

***REISSUED ON VINYL!!! After what felt to be an extended wait, “New Lands” arrived in late 1997, marking phase two of FLYING SAUCER ATTACK as an ostensible solo act for DAVE PEARCE. New Lands presented a foreboding atmosphere, with coarse electric textures from the very top of the record, as well as an unanticipated rubbery bottom and the implied physicality of such on several songs. These developments hardly implied a newfound peace of mind, as had been suggested by Further; instead, an encroaching darkness spreads out over side two of New Lands. Both “The Sea” and “Forever” conclude the album with a feeling of anything but accord; glacial floats that might seem placid in other contexts are enervated with jagged rhythms and teeming guitar textures, all of which seem to affirm our uneasy desire to cleave the skin from our bodies as being a perfectly acceptable plan. The highly palpable psychedelic shadows of the debut Flying Saucer Attack album flicker throughout New Lands, albeit in a much altered form.

Red Krayola With Art & Language

Baby And Child Care

Drag City

***Drag City presents a newly-unearthed artifact from the long history of THE RED KRAYOLA: 1984’s previously-unheard Baby and Child Care. Every year, we discover in our society the injustices of history in many and myriad forms. Surely among the most profound realizations of 2016 will be that the heads of (record) industry circa 1984 did not hear a fantastic new release when the tapes for Baby and Child Care were played to them! Grooving sinuously in prime mid-80s form in a production redolent with funk, dub and new-wave inflections, Baby and Child Care is of a musical vintage whose dry complexity is even more appreciable today. At the time of its recording, The Red Krayola were a band on a musical roll, having just recorded and released Black Snakes on the Swiss Rec Rec label. When presented with the lyric qualities of Dr. Spock’s psychoanalytic texts (in his Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care), passages of which had been transposed by ART & LANGUAGE's MICHAEL BALDWIN and MEL RAMSDEN, MAYO THOMPSON immediately set them to music. The Red Krayola “Black Snakes” band—BEN ANNESLEY on bass, CHRIS WHITE on drums and ALLEN RAVENSTINE on synthesizer and soprano sax—provided musical accompaniment in performances recorded by ERIC RADCLIFFE at Blackwing Studios in London. Thirty-two years later, the conversant playing and production approach of Baby and Child Care comes across with an enduring completeness that belies its position on the shelf for the past several decades. (STREET DATE - 5/13/2016)

Flying Saucer Attack

Chorus

Drag City

***CHECK STOCK!!! Received an 8.0 Best New Reissue rating from Pitchfork. It was in the year of ’92 that they were first sighted, high over the western skies of Bristol, UK. FLYING SAUCER ATTACK originally manifested in the form of 7" singles, shot through with noise sheets and touches of eastern-tuned psychedelics, hooded with shoegaze-inspired somnambulance. In 1993, the first Flying Saucer Attack LP hit, and hard. Dubbed by some as “Rural Psychedelia”, the eponymous album exploded the sound of the singles into a full-length trip. This set the bar for FSA impossibly high, but in the following year, a collection of singles sides called Distance provided a companionable listen—and still without a personal appearance in support, the audience for Flying Saucer Attack continued to expand. In ’95, the nebulae aligned, the red giants went supernova and the black holes issued forth onto the Drag City label: the second FSA album, Further, delivered deeper-focus textures with an increased acoustic presence that traded in new ways on the “rural psychedelia” label, sharing an encompassing access of space in doing so. Later in that same year, Chorus emerged—an icy blast of electric-band FSA that in no way revisited the wild-eyed pastures of the first album, but instead found refinements and experimented in new directions. Further has been out of print on vinyl for the past decade. Chorus has been unavailable on LP since the golden days of CD (1998)!

Bitchin Bajas & Bonnie Prince Billy

Epic Jammers And Fortunate Little Ditties

Drag City

***Epic Jammers & Fortunate Little Ditties” contains moments of tranquility & trance, with the players integrating their separate ways, vibing off each other, making songs together. BONNIE PRINCE BILLY is at his spirit-melting celestial best wandering through a lifetime of fortunes that amount, when incanted, to a prayer to the god of many names. The BITCHIN BAJAS’ access to the universal aural paintbox is unparalleled; their reach is deep. Epic Jammers and Fortunate Little Ditties is simple and stark and empyrean and inspirational... and pretty modal, too—probably never more than three chords!—as Bonnie and the Bajas pursue the life of the spirit down ever-fading vapor trails, in a bottomless space.

High Llamas

Talahomi Way

Drag City

***BACK IN PRINT ON VINYL!!! For the past eighteen years, THE HIGH LLAMAS have been following their own lights, making records, and essentially occupying their own genre in doing so. Their music is timeless; elements of retro and modern share the space, creating a unique time and place that is outside the lines of history as we experience it. Talahomi Way is the latest evolution in their body of work, a record that will please those who enjoy their musical adventures while also providing a draft of their eternal mystery to neophyte listeners. In the course of their post-millennial albums, The High Llamas sound has shifted subtly into a more organic setting—gone are the slick, electric-band settings of their great ‘90s albums Gideon Gaye, Hawaii and the rest. With 2003’s Beet Maize and Corn, Can Cladders (2007), and now Talahomi Way, their arrangements have breathed with acoustic space, giving the music a more intimate, personal resonance. Still, SEAN O’HAGAN’s lyric-writing is in the great traditions of the American and British 20th century songbook: story-songs, impressionistic feel-pieces, crafted without an aim towards personal exposition. Even so, their set and focus provide a view to the world as he sees it. No Export to Europe. No CD export to Japan.

Lightstorm

Creation

Drag City

***Husband and wife team JOHNIMA and KALASSU WINTERGATE are LIGHTSTORM: globetrotting musical collaborators retransmitting messages of love from their teacher and Avatar Sathya Sai Baba. Since 1973, the Lightstorm discography has been issued under a variety of aliases (Creation Earth, 33 1/3, Teeth) unknown to all but the most obsessed vinyl casualties. Insofar as the irrepressible J&K are known at all, it’s for their twisted, ridiculously entertaining 1982 shot-onvideo horror-comedy classic Boardinghouse. The ever-unpredictable Drag City / Yoga Records now present the first-ever Lightstorm collection. Creation fuses the best tracks from the spiritual concept double LP Who Am I: One (1977) and sensual glam rock killer 33 1/3 (1980, recently featured in the Enjoy The Experience private press book). Eleven pieces of riveting catchy, psych-glam-weirdness, Creation captures both sides of Lightstorm. Soar with ‘Let Your Astral Body Fly,’ and rut with ‘Missionary Is Impossible.’ To say that there’s nothing else like Lightstorm would be an understatement, but their natural clear underlying love energy is unmistakable. (STREET DATE - 2/19/2016)

Rangda

The Heretic's Bargain

Drag City

***The third album from the trio SIR RICHARD BISHOP, BEN CHASNY and CHRIS CORSANO. After years of recording and touring together, Bishop and Chasny’s guitar playing has mutated via some kind of lateral gene transfer of their musical DNA, and the rhythms ridden by Rangda feel mutually funded (though Corsano’s beat-making is as fine-lined and rawly inspired as ever). The Heretic’s Bargain takes territories that Rangda explored on their first two albums—the abraded fury and free forms off False Flag and the serpentine Rang-dang-doodle songatechture from Formerly Extinct. Further informing Rangda’s unity are the recording-mixing-mastering team of JASON MEAGHER and PATRICK KLEM ason Meagher,

High Llamas

Here Come The Rattling Trees

Drag City

***While cycling around his home-district of Peckham (in southeast London) a few years ago, SEAN O'HAGEN decided that not only would the new HIGH LLAMAS music be driven by narratives, a collection of stories, but they would first have to be performed as theatre; reshaped theatre, if you like, blending stories, songs and soundtrack. It was essential for these performances to take place before the songs and underscores were recorded. The resultant piece, Here Come The Rattling Trees, introduces six characters, some real, some less so, whom Sean has encountered over past years in Peckham. It is also The High Llamas new LP. Here Come The Rattling Trees was first performed in the Montpelier Theatre pub in Peckham in June 2014, and in October 2014, it played for a week-long run at the Tristan Bates Theatre in Covent Garden, London. With witty, artful musical strokes, Sean and The High Llamas have crafted deft musical sketches with the signature “Llamas” sound that has evolved over ten album releases since 1992. A colorful array of electric, acoustic, and synthetic instruments, alongside Sean O’Hagan’s gentled vocals, are deployed to transport the listener to the low-key highs and lows of the British working week—an incisive, sympathetic view to the wonders slipped in between the pages and too often passed over in everyday life. (STREET DATE - 1/22/2016)

Segall, Ty

Emotional Mugger

Drag City

***BACK IN STOCK!!! Received a 7.3 rating from Pitchfork. Brand new full-length album from TY SEGALL and his first of 2016. Twelve songs!  "get in the booth—punch in the number when they pick up don’t say a word just listen shout at the double from the damned from a dry throat dry eye chuckle insistent / elastic (but never plastic) thick / butt jump pierced by the kids sweet angel voice sinister (what are they thinking) guitars sliced with scribble graffiti sprawled across the hemispheres; stuttered, stunted, dual-mono machine dreams flashing sudden stereophobic and back again / two screens alone together squeezing shaking oozing metallic pool like brain blood, slowly draining away all mental life. shaking ass / nihility at most corrodes candy’s gone no more fun." (STREET DATE - 1/22/2016)

Bonnie Prince Billy

Pond Scum

Drag City

***Received a 7.0 rating from Pitchfork. ***There are no Peel sessions anymore—that tradition was buried in the pyramids with John Peel himself upon the great man’s passing. Of the thousands left in the wake, six are ascribed to BONNIE PRINCE BILLY—and of those six, three have been combined to form the deeply congruous experience of Pond Scum. A span of eight years is covered, in reverse, and many chestnuts are rolled out, freed of former contexts with sparse arrangements. “(I Was Drunk at the) Pulpit” feels, ten years from inception, more vividly worn; “Death to Everyone” is loosed from its frame, the bones decoupled and spread out, giving the song a reflective air (as opposed the biting declamation of the original); “Arise, Therefore” adapts its metronomic base, the evangelic twist of its roots made palpable. With the center of the performance in stark relief, the gnomic qualities of two “Get On Jolly” pieces are intensified. Further accenting the devoted spirit of this collection is the inclusion of “When Thy Song Flows Through Me,” from the writings of Paramahansa Yogananda, as well as the previously-unreleased original “Beezle.” Bonnie’s lone shadow casts over this lot, accompanied on the first four tracks by David Heumann, but otherwise playing solo through a set of original songs (and two covers) representing a decade of progress in the almost unbearably intimate-yet-unknowable manner that was so often the vibe of those strange and wondrous days. Peeling backwards through time produces a curious hypnosis that we may not...

Canavarro, Nuno

Plux Quba

Drag City

***BACK IN PRINT!!! NUNO CANAVARRO's Plux Quba hails from three decades in the past, yet the simple profile of its abstract/ambient/cutup collage makes it a record that sits quite comfortably in our IDM-informed future. In 1988, Plux Quba was a primal dark horse in the world of pants-forward electronic music—an obscurity issued with little explanation from the laid-back west coast of Europe: Portugal, of all places. The vanguard of electronics in late-80s Europe was being pushed by organizations like Nurse With Wound, The Hafler Trio, HNAS—and yet, when Christoph Heemann came across this recording, it struck his ears and the ears of fellow listeners like nothing before. Plux Quba was handed around between the principles of the early 90s A-Musik scene: Jan St. Werner, C-Schulz, Frank Dommert, Georg Odijk, plus interested fellow travelers like Jim O’Rourke, to the intense curiosity of all. To ears that were already saturated with all things kraut, the dark corners of prog and the frontline of experimental and improvised music, it proved elusive. Not simply in how it sounded and how that sound was achieved, but in where it was coming from—like later Robert Ashley at times; certain stretches of melody recalled some of Eno’s ambient pieces—but mostly, it was a completely alien soundscape. O’Rourke reissued it as the first record on his Moikai label in 1998, and it had a good run through around 2005 before the last of the print parts were filled. It’s almost a decade since Plux Quba was available, which...

Silence, The

Hark The Silence

Drag City

***THE SILENCE are a storm that has been brewing across Japan for over a year—and now that system is breaking into the skies of the rest of the world! Their self-titled debut of this past spring was simply a preamble to the fluid and formidable electro-acoustic interplay that has quickly evolved since then. The first record is of a song-based nature, rendered with careful beauty familiar to longtime listeners of MASAKI BATOH and GHOS; a sound that turned on occasion into greater journeys. Hark The Silence takes that notion and runs with it in a powerfully jamming album containing all the musical elements that define The Silence in flowing and transcendent performance, all of it recorded on 24-track analogue tape, a process which brings their musical and spatial qualities into dynamic balance.

Six Organs Of Admittance

Hexadic Ii

Drag City

***CHECK STOCK!!! Received a 7.8 rating from Pitchfork. Sounding forth from a resonating body, the music of SIX ORGANS OF ADMITTANCE seems to reach us from an ancient remove. BEN CHASNY's 6OOA vehicle is a wide-ranging craft, spanning over a dozen albums whose gaze is always shifting, but whose focus never wavers, descending through a labyrinth of contrasting lexicons (both linguistic and musical) in an attempt to resolve existential codes while engaging the listener and the musician in shared pursuit. With Hexadic II, Ben Chasny’s unique touch on acoustic guitar is brought back to our ears after what feels like a kind of forever. What may signify to some ears as folk music is caught in an equally compelling undertow of powerful subterranean energy. Ghostly vocals of divergent timbres sing over the fluid interplay of guitars, harmonium, violin—and pure space, as the reverberant room around the sounds plays as much a part in the experience as the music. (STREET DATE - 11/20/2015)

Newsom, Joanna

Divers

Drag City

***BACK IN STOCK!!!  Received an 8.5 Best New Music rating from Pitchfork.  "Good heavens—five years go by—what can one do? Dive, listener, knowing that your next hour will be filled with diversions aplenty: a wheeling circuit of sci-fi sea-shanties and cavalier ballads, narrated from parts unknown; a family of polysemic song-sets; a paranomasaic Liederkreis of harmonic sympathies and knotted hierarchies; a fanfare of brazen puns and martial lullabies, blazing in sorrow and horseplay and love, in turns symphonic and spare, joined by Mellotrons and Marxophones and Moogs, clavichords and celestas—and of course the harp, thrumming its threnodies of circadian invasions and avian irruptions and strange loops of Shepard-toned resonant-frequencies and something called goddamned Simulacreage. The music of Divers is a wonder of considered arrangements—a taut line, threaded with the pearls of passed and passing times... a round, a chant, an incantation... a ray of light diverted eleven ways, into eleven songs that striate, in chromatic collusion, their simultaneous arc... a span that takes in lifetimes, but is immaculately sequenced for telescoped brevity. The music speeds with dissociative dread over montaged cityscapes; it hoofs with delight among the collaged quotations and sepia-toned codices of Popular Song..."

Wand

1000 Days

Drag City

***BACK IN STOCK!!! Received a 7.0 on Pitchfork. The plan, it turns. Some many revolutions in a year, in a life. WAND launch their third album in what can only be called the relative blink of an eye, and it is 1000 Days. This year’s last year: August of 2014 was Ganglion Reef, Wand’s debut album release, on GOD?, reveling in their dark circuits and three-ring modulations. Following that, they ranged from their south-Cali base, towing their sound around this maze of interstates and state routes. Shows of all kinds were playing, plenty of people to meet up with on the way. Hands across the water: Europe got booked. And suddenly, just look over your shoulder—it was March of 2015, with a second album entitled Golem (this time on In the Red) trailing Wand’s sound farther down the road, past the sky, into storm and casino food. No time to spare; more dates to be played across the landmass. And another set of European dates later, 1000 Days. One year in the life of Wand so far: the world—some beyond.

Bitchin Bajas & Natural Information Society

Automaginary

Drag City

***NATURAL INFORMATION SOCIETY, like their partners in time BITCHIN BAJAS, live their days in flow motion. Rhythms come and go, instruments sound as a means to a greater end. Their debut convergence, Automaginary, feels as natural as it does inevitable. Both groups were first heard in 2010, both emerging from solo endeavors that accessed a vastness, more room than a single player might ultimately fill—a place then for fellow travelers! JOSHUA ABRAMS, a questing bassist and improviser by trade, with an extensive discography of solo recordings and collaborations with a wide variety of artists, formed Natural Information Society as a conduit for the live presentation o f his guimbri music. Abrams had delved into the sound of the three-stringed Gnawan lute on his own, intrigued by the instrument’s ability to provide melodic and rhythmic direction with a minimal, hypnotic palette. Known for the drone also are Bitchin Bajas. Both Natural Information Society and Bitchin Bajas are in pursuit of the unconscious in their musical expression, and through their independent methods, both have ridden the wind to unseen places, using the playing as the carpet that will take them there. LPs packaged in silkscreened jackets with art from LISA ALVARADO.

Dope Body

Kunk

Drag City

***CHECK STOCK!!! Reveived a 7.0 rating from Pitchfork. Since 2008, DOPE BODY have been refining and redefining their own kind of hard rock music, a sound that has many tributaries flowing into it, but one that is definitely coming through a group that could only happen in the post—ALL the shit mashup of 21st century schizo, man! Kunk is essential, coming from the marrow of Dope Body. While laying tracks for Lifer, they were prepared, ready to go, with the material in their grip, under their hands. Tense, with the anxiety that comes from the rendering process: you gotta get that flesh stripped off, so try and clear your mind and get it done. But in between takes, they relaxed, let their animal selves out, blew steam. Creativity sparked and new music flew. Catharsis was in the house. Lifer got done, but nobody could get over those moments, and at a certain remove, they went back and said, man—are these the next songs? They were—and the songs were already written and recorded. Dope Body are in a four-way conversation here, with drums, guitar, bass and vocals all pushing it around. Leaning into the future, mindlessly, just reacting, the jams of Kunk are shimmering, alive with a simmering sizzle. Swirling jams that pound and float, cloudlike, associating segmentally like a naturally growing train of thought. Kunk rolls forth with funk and flutter, plenty of riffs, stuttering and structure gleaming in the air. It’s a juggling act, and no balls hit the...

Baird, Meg

Dear Companion

Drag City

***AVAILABLE AGAIN!!! A beautiful new album of traditional folk from MEG BAIRD of ESPERS. Ten tracks of both traditional and original folk (plus a few choice covers), beautifully performed with Meg playing guitar, dulcimer and singing. Beautiful.

Flying Saucer Attack

Instrumentals 2015

Drag City

***NOW AVAILABLE ON CASSETTE!!! Something thought lost forever re-enters your life. How do you respond? How do you even begin to negotiate the vortex of mixed emotions whipped up by such a reappearance? The world shifts sideways. Logic is confounded. The uncanny takes a hold. West Country feedback outfit FLYING SAUCER ATTACK are a case in point. In recent years it’s become clear that the Bristol based group were prescient to a considerable degree. The amplified pastoralism of the group and its various offshoots might have seemed out of step with the times during its initial emergence at the height of Britpop, but the rural has since emerged as a rich source of inspiration for numerous artists in the fields of experimental rock and electronic music. Enter Instrumentals 2015. Comprised of 15 fresh DAVE PEARCE solo performances recorded in characteristically lo-fi manner on tape and CD-R, Instrumentals 2015 is an album that will appeal both to FSA diehards and those wholly unfamiliar with the outfit’s recorded output. The 15 tracks present an impressionistic narrative which transports the listener through the excoriating dronescapes and rueful introspection of the album’s early pieces to the more redemptive cadences of its closing half. Given its sense of momentum, maintained through Pearce’s thoughtful sequencing, this is an album that should be experienced in its entirety, the better to appreciate its deliberate emotional arc. (STREET DATE - 8/28/2015)

Midnight

Into The Night

Drag City

***MIDNIGHT is one of those “shoulda/woulda/coulda” bands that might actually have made it—had their utter youthfulness not got in the way. Hailing from the ’burbs of Olympia Fields, Country Club Hills, and Chicago Heights, Illinois, DAVE HILLl (keys), SCOTT MARQUART (drums), FRANK ANASTOS (guitar, vox), and JOHN FLASTROM (bass) were all record-obsessed teenagers taking music lessons at Homewood’s Melody Mart in 1974. After meeting, they realized that Hill, Anastos and Falstrom went to Rich Central H.S. in Olympia Fields, while Marquart was just down the road at H-F High School in Flossmoor. That same year they formed Midnight, covering hot and heavy hard rock songs from the likes of Uriah Heep, James Gang and Sabbath (natch!)—but they evolved quickly, playing house parties and high schools around the south suburbs in ’75. By the following year, despite the teenaged years of their members, they were playing nightclubs and colleges in and around Chicago, while adding electrifying original songs to their repertoire. In the fall of 1977, still lacking either management or producer, the kids recorded their LP Into the Night at A-K Sound Recording Studio in Orland Park, IL—privately releasing it in early 1978 in a small edition, making it a majorly sought-after hard rock rarity today. Distributed themselves (and barely promoted), the LP certainly covers all the heavy bases with a wickedly raw mix, at times sounding like proto-doomers Pentagram, with the odd, occasional boogie number and power-ballad as well. (STREET DATE - 7/17/2015)

Baird, Meg

Don’t Weigh Down The Light

Drag City

***CHECK STOCK!!! Received a 7.1 rating from Pitchfork. MEG BAIRD is back! Don’t Weigh Down the Light is her first album since 2011’s Seasons On Earth, and it arrives alive with mystery and color—buoyed by a voice that’s a warm, mesmerizing call across time. Meg Baird’s last decade would be remarkable by any artist’s standards. She co-founded and recorded three albums with ESPERS—one of the most distinctive and hypnotic bands of the century’s first decade. She recorded two solo LPs for Drag City: Dear Companion and Seasons on Earth. She also collaborated with Will Oldham, Kurt Vile, Sharon Van Etten, and Steve Gunn and toured with the legendary Bert Jansch. And while it’s been four years since her last release, the days since have been anything but restful. She played drums and recorded with Philadelphia cave punks Watery Love, and toured with Michael Chapman, Michael Hurley, Vile, Cass McCombs, Hiss Golden Messenger, and Lambchop. And after more than a decade as a fixture in Philadelphia’s boiling-over musical scene, Meg moved west to San Francisco where she joined forces (as drummer and lead vocalist) with members of Comets on Fire and Assemble Head to form the moody and thunderous HERON OBLIVION. She also wrote and recorded this LP—Don’t Weigh Down the Light. Like Meg’s previous LPs (and much of Espers output,) the foundation of Don’t Weigh Down the Light is her lyrical, precise, and propulsive fingerstyle guitar work and a voice that moves from soaring and tender to soothing and spellbinding....

Dreyblatt, Arnold

Nodal Excitation

Drag City

***BACK IN PRINT!!! A vinyl reissue of the debut album from one of the figureheads of the new minimalism movement ARNOLD DREYBLATT—a late '80's contemporary of Glenn Branca, Lee Ranaldo, Ned Sublette, Thurston Moore, and Rhys Chatham, but with a higher sense of "rock."

O’rourke, Jim

Simple Songs

Drag City

***BACK IN STOCK!!! Received an 8.6 Best New Music rating from Pitchfork.***2015, and the silence has been broken with Simple Songs. JIM O’ROURKE is ready to talk to you again. First, he wants you to know he’s not dead—yet. But you’re not, either—and really, what have you done lately? Certainly not made your first pop album since 2001—and even if you had, it probably wasn’t any good. Meanwhile Simple Songs is more than just a first of anything since whenever! It’s an amazing record of musical song entertainment—because Jim O’Rourke knows what he wants and how to get it.—musically, that is. The rest of the world is still a mystery and a bottomless source of aggravation for the old boy. What do we care? We get a great new album out of it. Yes, Simple Songs is an album of songs sung by Jim O’Rourke all the way through! It has been ten years since Jim’s voice rang out from a new album. What Simple Songs sounds like.... At this point, the range of sounds and songs that have turned Jim’s head are numerous enough to have crushed together into something that is unmistakably his—the vast, glossy and glittering O’Rourkian (yes, like Kervorkian) wall of sound. The music’s got OCD quality, played so immaculately by so many instruments, and most of them by the creator’s hand. This time’s really the widest screen yet for Jim’s popular song-style, truly breathtaking!

White Glove Test

Louisville Punk Flyers 1978-1994

Drag City

***White Glove Test: Louisville Punk Flyers 1978–1994 is a rich visual history of an ephemeral and overlooked art form: the DIY concert poster. Beautiful, funny, and profane, the collection of more than 700 flyers compiled here vividly represent the golden age of this fugitive street art, revealing a neglected facet of punk’s expressive force. Clipped, collaged, and photocopied, meticulously hand-painted and lettered, or designed on a glowing computer screen in the early days of desktop publishing, these flyers were outsider broadcasts stuck to phone poles and storefronts, a makeshift gallery installed with staple guns and wheat paste. As a lavishly detailed document of Louisville’s vibrant and diverse music scene, this book offers an insider’s view of one seminal community’s rise from bold beginnings to eminent, international status. The images also chart the thriving, interconnected underground that extended well beyond New York and Los Angeles, offering a parallax view of American punk from an influential yet removed location. Assiduously assembled from rare originals, sure to appeal to any fan of independent music in Louisville and beyond, White Glove Test uncovers a previously hidden history of prodigious do-it-yourself production, illustrating a national phenomenon in microcosm and illuminating a vital style of pre-Internet social media. Edited by Mike Bucayu, Stephen Driesler, Tim Furnish, John Kampschaefer, Douglas Maxson, Shawn Severs

Red Crayola

Malefactor, Ade

Drag City

***In 1989, Malefactor, Ade was issued on the UK’s Glass Records, which had arranged several years earlier for the first actual release of MAYO THOMPSON’s 1970 solo LP, Corky’s Debt to His Father. This was the first Red Crayola record released in five years. The fearlessness with which genres are converted can be disarming, but stick to it—you’ll find listening an utter triumph. Malefactor, Ade was reissued on CD by Drag City in the year 2000. Now that it is 20 years since the most recent of the records was issued, it’s time for all those who sail the way of The Red Krayola to have a copy to spin again—at going market rates, of course. (STREET DATE - 4/21/2015)

Red Crayola

Corrected Slogans

Drag City

***Corrected Slogans was first pressed by ART & LANGUAGE and THE RED CRAYOLA in 1976; it was the first mention of the The Red Crayola’s name on LP since 1968. The only review it received at the time was by Glenn O’Brian in Interview magazine; his response was a positive one, though he found the material ironic. By the time the album was made available to the public, it was clear that The Red Crayola would continue with JESSE CHAMBERLAIN joining MAYO THOMPSON. This was the start of five years of steady activity. Corrected Slogans was repressed on the UK label Recommended Records in 1981. Drag City reissued it for the first time on CD in 1997. Now that it is 20 years since the most recent of the records was issued, it’s time for all those who sail the way of The Red Krayola to have a copy to spin again—at going market rates, of course. (STREET DATE - 4/21/2015)

Red Crayola With Art & Language

Black Snakes

Drag City

***Black Snakes was issued in 1983 as a co-release by Switzerland’s Rec Rec and Germany’s Pure Freunde label. With a quartet featuring synthist ALLEN RAVENSTINE doubling on soprano sax, this was a smaller group than had appeared on either of the Crayola’s two previous releases, Soldier-Talk and Kangaroo?. MAYO THOMPSON’s guitar in particular shines in the space allowed by this configuration. As with Corrected Slogans, Black Snakes debuted on CD via Drag City in 1997. Now that it is 20 years since the most recent of the records was issued, it’s time for all those who sail the way of The Red Krayola to have a copy to spin again—at going market rates, of course. (STREET DATE - 4/21/2015)

Red Krayola

Amor And Language

Drag City

***Amor and Language was one of three RED KRAYOLA releases on Drag City in 1995 (two were from the vault: Coconut Hotel and Kangaroo?). After returning to America in 1994 and producing the first Red Krayola record since Malefactor (it was appropriately self-titled), MAYO THOMPSON was producing new Red Krayola material at a prolific rate—Hazel was released the following year. When Amor and Language was in production, the pressing plant claimed to hear imperfections in the CD master. ? Now that it is 20 years since the most recent of the records was issued, it’s time for all those who sail the way of The Red Krayola to have a copy to spin again—at going market rates, of course. (STREET DATE - 4/21/2015)

Silence, The

S/t

Drag City

***CHECK STOCK!!! Received a 7.5 rating from Pitchfork. The debut album from THE SILENCE (former GHOST members MASAKI BATHOH and OKANO) is at last available! Drawing deep into a collective musical soul that extends many eras into the past, the songs of The Silence fill the air with the richness of powerful rock and roll and the deep mystic resonance of the ancient traditional musics of the world. From the rich melodies of Silence originals, “Lemon Iro No Cannibis” and “Jewels In Tibet,” to their flute-and-power chord-laden version of “Black Is the Color of My True Love’s Hair,” to the flowing liquid psychdelia of “Triptycon,” the guttural cabaret mutterings of Can’s “Tango Whiskeyman” and the frantic, explosive dimensions of “Pesach,” The Silence runs through instrumental colors like passing thoughts in the mind, making each one of them music and making an incredible rock album for this century. (STREET DATE - 3/24/2015)

St. Jude, Frederick Michael

Gang War

Drag City

***From beneath history’s landslide come so many previously unknown treasures. They are from the past, but once rediscovered, they belong to today. This is undeniably the truth about FREDERICK MICHAEL ST. JUDE’s Gang War. Derived from a storm of pure inspiration, this 13-song journey into the future came together quickly when it first struck FM St. Jude in 1982. Based on one song’s dark vision, Gang War was a prophecy of destruction that promised great things. St. Jude’s ear for pop music and the sound of teenage rebellion had been sharpened over the years since he first started playing in dance bands across the northeast U.S. in the mid-’60s. His first solo album was released in 1977. A bandleader by trade, FM had an astonishing presence when making personal appearances—and even though Gang War is a studio recording, it captures entirely his incendiary vibe. FM St. Jude’s musical concept for Gang War formed a synthesis of different rock styles then in vogue, played expertly by studio pros capable of generating the sound of the radio in all its forms. Marinated in the sounds of Rush, ELP, Styx, Journey, Halen, and yes, even the mighty Zep, FM and the band are remarkably supple, providing each mood in their rock opera with a musical style to match it. Yet, these were changing times. The ‘70s were giving way to the ‘80s in 1982, and things would never be the same. No matter—FM St. Jude strides fearlessly forward throughout Gang War, not trapped...

Bishop, Sir Richard

Tangier Sessions

Drag City

***BACK IN STOCK!!! Received a 7.5 rating from Pitchfork. Armed with a newly purchased antique guitar of unknown origin, SIR RICHARD BISHOP spent a week in Tangier, Morocco wandering the city, drinking strong coffee and improvising on his new instrument. The tone of the guitar and Sir Richard’s gentle, loving touch with it hold forth from the first moment of Tangier Sessions, sitting clear and true in the home-recorded night air above the city. The album sequence is the precise order of the songs as they were conceived and recorded. Rick’s all over the neck in the early going while sorting through the dynamics of the instrument—in fact, guitarophiles, the first couple of songs feature Sir Richard Bishop playing without a plectrum for the first time ever! It was as if the songs were almost being written by the guitar itself... using, of course, all the available wide-ranging and maxi-cultural vocabulary resources unique to Sir Richard Bishop. Yet, even as change after change is visited upon and charged through, the progression is smoothly rendered, the guitar and hands playing it in agreement about where they are going.

Six Organs Of Admittance

Hexadic

Drag City

***BACK IN STOCK!!! Reveived a 7.6 rating from Pitchfork. SIX ORGANS OF ADMITTANCE’s BEN CHASNEY has a restless intellect, which has regularly guided the progress of his creation. A lyrical mastery of acoustic finger-picking would be enough to build a body of work for most musicians; this is just the stepping-off point for Ben. From the earliest days of private-press psych home recordings, Six Organs of Admittance has sought out alternative spaces in which to make music and has challenged his audience to keep up with his rapid advances into new terrain. Over the last two years, Ben has assembled a comprehensive system of musical composition. Designed to free sound and language from rational order and replace calculation with indeterminacy, THE HEXADIC SYSTEM is a catalyst to extinguish patterns and generate new means of chord progressions and choices. THE SYSTEM builds all of the tonal fields, chord changes, scales, and lyrics on this record, creating the framework for the songs with which the musicians engage. Yet THE SYSTEM is open; within the framework, Chasny’s own personal aesthetics—such as the production mode of loud guitars, the order of songs, the editing of length—were all conscious decisions made to communicate the pieces. The exact same combinatorial patterns used on this record can create infinite results, depending on the choices of the individual. Ben’s years of study have produced an operational agent that has not only built all the songs on Hexadic but is also a system anyone can use to restructure their...

Roberts, Alasdair

Alasdair Roberts

Drag City

***CHECK STOCK!!! Received a 7.3 rating from Pitchfork. Alasdair Roberts is the name of the new solo record from the well-known Scottish songwriter, guitarist and singer ALASDAIR ROBERTS—his eighth Drag City Records release under that name, following on from 2013’s A Wonder Working Stone. The making of Alasdair Roberts found Alasdair back at Glasgow’s Green Door Studio, where he previously made his 2009 album, Spoils. Alasdair Roberts has a warmer feel than A Wonder Working Stone, partially the result of having been recorded in the analogue domain by Green Door’s masterly house engineer SAM SMITH. In the main however, the rich ambiance throughout the album is evidence of yet another tremendous leap in Alasdair’s writing, playing and singing. The six years since Spoils seem like a much greater expanse of time for all the growth shown on the four albums between then and now. The decision, then, to self-title this album hints at the idea of the artist as having achieved, in Jungian terms, complete ‘individuation.’ Evident as well upon listening is the sound of deep contentment in Alasdair’s playing and singing. Moreover, this music is projected from a place of confidence, where what is needed for the music comes naturally, instinctively and as needed. (STREET DATE - 1/27/2015)

Ishibashi, Eiko

Car And Freezer

Drag City

***EIKO ISHIBASHI returns from her Imitation of Life in an all-new Car and Freezer! Ever wonder if you could make an album twice, with completely different lyrics? It’d probably help if you had two completely different languages to draw from—and for Car and Freezer, that’s exactly what Eiko did. In 2013, we introduced Eiko to the world outside of Japan by way of her first US album release. At that time, we explained that Eiko was an instrumentalist and arranger who had come into writing songs somewhat accidentally. She’s been doing so without further accident since 2006, with a series of acclaimed albums in Japan. Her previous album, Imitation of Life, was so developed lyrically that it was in essence a song cycle linked by a science-fiction narrative. This natural evolution in her writing notwithstanding, Eiko has often questioned her role as a creator of songs, seeking some way to be at peace with the song while wondering if it was right that she was the human singing them.  Since each album requires its own approach, the session for Car and Freezer provided another chance. In the Spring of 2013, Eiko convened with her band—but in contrast with the previous album, she did not come prepared with arranged demos. Instead, she and the band stared unblinking at each other for DAYS, seeking to divine the elusive communal flow for her songs! No, actually, TOSHIAKI SUDO, HATANO ATSUKO, YAMMAMOTO TATSUHISA and JIM O’ROURKE all got it right away—make Eiko’s kind...

Rainhorn, Joshua / Paulinho E Beatriz

Fred Armisen Presents Local Heroes Vol. 3

Drag City

***The third volume in FRED ARMISEN’s Hometown Heroes series featuring carefully chosen singles from regional music stars of decades past.   Originally from Columbus, Ohio, Joshua Rainhorn moved to the Silverlake area of Los Angeles in 1998, packing only a portable electric piano and lyric notebook into the back of his Honda Civic. His ragged/formal style required little upkeep: white suit jacket with dusty black jeans, and a reddish mop of messy hair. He found a studio apartment behind a corner cervecería and immediately got to work, writing as many lyrics as he could. He filled pages and pages with his thoughts, sometimes falling asleep while his hand continued to write into the early morning hours—literally words from a dream state. At the time, he was so prolific, that he would sometimes write lyrics on top of other lyrics, right on the same page. Joshua’s imagery evoked a world of old wine bars and coffee-stained book covers. Honky tonk music and worn out shoes. Elusive, mysterious lovers. His plan was to become a locally-revered lyricist, and it wasn’t long before his dream came to fruition. Booking a Tuesday night residency at a piano bar called Marla’s, his audience grew steadily, to the point where after only a few months of playing at the club, a line would form down the street. Fans could often be overheard saying “I hope we get to hear some of his new lyrics” and “I love his lyrics so much”. Since then, Joshua Rainhorn...

Segall, Ty

Singles 2

Drag City

***CHECK STOCK!!! Received a 7.9 rating from Pitchfork. The second collection of singles from the one-and-only TY SEGALL. Features non-album singles and B-sides from the Goodbye Bread, Twins and Sleeper era (2011-2013), including covers of GG Allin, Velvet Underground and The Groundhogs. Includes the songs: “Spiders,” “Hand Glams,” “Cherry Red,” “Falling Hair,” “Children of Paul,” “It’s A Problem,” “Mother Lemonade,” “For Those Who Weep,” “Fucked Up Motherfucker,” “Femme Fatale,” “Music For A Film,” and “Pettin’ The Dog.”. No Export to Europe.

Ambrogio, Elisa

The Immoralist

Drag City

***Limbo as the space between heaven and hell where unblessed babies float, sighing; limbo as the supple-spined Calypsonian dance craze: here exists The Immoralist. ELISA AMBROGIO, MAGIK MARKERS power front, lyric intelligence, guitar g’rilla, and awkward weirdo, is back, and forth too, to deposit her first full length solo outing on yer doorstep. Like she’d been going barefoot for years to keep her good shoes shiny for church, Ambrogio exhibits a new refinement on The Immoralist. Working with PAPERCUTS’ JASON QUEVER, Elisa’s earliest childhood musical loves The Poni-tails, Tiffany, and The Dixie Cups rise through the haze-n-raze of electric guitar and drums with a pop repercussion previously unexplored by Magik Markers. Glossy melodies, drums that throb with the rhythmic stamp of a celibate sect, and layers of vocals joined in harmony over stark sound-beds engage a whole new quadrant of Starship Ambrogio. (STREET DATE - 10/21/2014)

Cave

Release - Singles 2007 - 2013

Drag City

***Release compiles jams from the sweltering heart of CAVE that didn’t make it onto their three LPs and three EPs. Anyone who’s heard their albums can attest that CAVE have a fresh, yet well-seasoned ear for long-play records, and each one shows their ever-revolving palette. Being in CAVE is also about fun though, and they’ve also indulged themselves now and again with stand-alone songs and short-play records on Trensmat, Static Caravan, Giradiscos and Permanent, as well as some self-released cassette freakouts. Like the best singles, CAVE’s sides here have singular qualities that songs on albums can’t, as they unwind themselves over 30 or more minutes in time. A couple of the Release tracks rock more extreme too, which the CAVE-head will find in awesome contrast to the refined production of Neverendless and Threace. Since the beginning, when they recorded on cassette and released on CD-R, CAVE’s been all about formats, interacting with them as the they captured their sound, the weirder the better. Release contains mostly 4-track stuff, plus some 8-track stuff. A bunch of the masters had to be transferred from VHS, which CAVE liked for mixdowns in the early days of the late aughts. Cool! Man, VHS masters sound GREAT! P.S., the “harshmellow mix” of “Butthash,” is NOT the same version as on the Permanent split 10" with the California Raisins, FYI. In fact, there’s still a few sides that haven’t been compiled yet, so look out for another Release in the future. (STREET DATE - 10/21/2014)

Dope Body

Lifer

Drag City

***Have you ever been punched in the face while dancing ecstatically, but the person who hit you ALSO seemed to be dancing and loving it but you couldn’t really tell? If you’ve been in the front row at a DOPE BODY show—or the back row or somewhere in the middle for that matter—it’s a distinct possibility. Dope Body has built their name in the underground with intense live performances of their ALSO intense studio recordings. On the back of their second album, 2012’s Natural History, they embarked on a rigorous nineteen months of almost nonstop touring, bringing their individual performance stomp to every bar, basement and backyard that asked for it. On Lifer, Dope Body redefines the aural yawp they have been venting for some time, honing wild windmills into surgical strikes, their gut-busting repulsion-sound continuing to expand without losing any of the feral energy that made a crazed reputation in the already-insane Baltimore music and arts underground. (STREET DATE - 10/21/2014)

George Edwards Group, The

Chapter Iii

Drag City

***Chapter III of THE GEORGE EDWARDS GROUP archives draws from deep in the pockets of their sporadic later embodiment. With their grand ‘70s dreams of Hollywood stardom fading, EDWARD BALIAN and RAY GEORGE continued to track their winsome muse, perhaps a bit more aggro and with a bit more dolor than they had back in the 38:38 days. Although late-’60s Detroit was the seedbed for The George-Edwards Group, they had more in common with Silver Apples than the Amboy Dukes. Enamored of keyboard effects and sonic tomfoolery, they developed their sound away from the scene, slowly developing a spacily elegant pop music as the ‘70s passed by outside their basement lair. Scoring their melancholic melodies with bells, pianos and synthesizer led to something you might almost call ba-roque n roll (if someone hadn’t already said it about The Left Banke!), or perhaps like demos for Big Star’s Third. (STREET DATE - 10/21/2014)