***REISSUED!!! The final ROYAL TRUX album to be released while they were still a live, touring entity, Pound for Pound promised another new world of classic rock in the new millennium. Royal Trux had been flying the flag (well, actually a bunch of different flags) in the name of rock and roll since the beginning—while simultaneously, and with a cynical grin, manipulating styles to get across to certain crowds and mindsets. Two interests at the same time: rock and roll, and the short con. In ‘98, Royal Trux had emerged from their Virgin contract buyout, proudly bearing the brand of SELL-OUT! tattooed on their forehead by the angry mini-hordes of indie rock. As always, out was in and the only direction was UP. Accelerator and Veterans of Disorder provided Frankensteinean takes on the anti-narrative of their career arc, to show the indie-hordes that perhaps these guys hadn’t changed after all. Well, of course they had, but that wasn’t really the point. Remember: rock and roll, and the short con. With a production almost as clean and lean as David Briggs’ mix of Thank You, Pound for Pound plays like the follow-through to the two Virgin Records, but separated by four years and a flurry of other releases, just to keep you guessing. Knowing Royal Trux, this was the beginning of nothing—the next album was just as likely to slide into another direction—and as it transpired, Pound for Pound was the last go-round for the muse and bliss of Royal Trux,...
LP $19.50
10/21/2014
CD $13.75
10/21/2014
***Singer’s Grave a Sea of Tongues is the 11th new full-length album from the mind, soul and voice of the man that is BONNIE PRINCE BILLY. His first solo record on Drag City in nearly three years, it is a rich and roiling time of life that is captured in a myriad of moments throughout all the songs here. Throughout Singer’s Grave a Sea of Tongues, mythos is in the wind, trysting with truth and the joys of song, of singing and playing in open space; harmonies and acoustic instruments spread in bright stereo sound, accosting in the air between the speakers and going deep, without hesitation into our waiting and needing minds and souls. Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy sings for who he was, is and will be, and for all of us in time. Singer’s Grave a Sea Of Tongues was recorded in Nashville by MARK NEVERS and played by Bonny, with EMMETT KELLEY, BEN MARTIN and PAUL OLDHAM. Additional instrumental contributions were made by RICHARD BAILEY, BILLY CONTRERAS, TONY CROW, JEDD HUGHES, PAUL NIEHAUS, and CHRIS SCRUGGS; additional voices provided by CAROLINE PEYTON and ALFREDA MCCRARY-LEE, REGINA MCCRARY and ANN MCCRARY singing together. (STREET DATE - 9/23/2014)
LP $21.50
09/23/2014
CD $13.75
09/23/2014
MC $10.50
09/23/2014
***CHECK STOCK!!! Received a 7.6 rating from Pitchfork. DAN’L BOONE is CHARLES BALLAS (FORMANT), NEIL HAGERTY (ROYAL TRUX, HOWLING HEX, etc.), NATE YOUNG (WOLF EYES, REGRESSION, etc.), and ALEX MOSKOS (DRAINOLITH). The crew convened in Denver, CO to work on the forthcoming Drainolith record and decided to make another record at the same time. Everyone involved seemed pretty dedicated to experimentation and pushing the music forward. Neil and Nate really ran things at the sessions at Uneven Studios. There were lots of electronics that Young would set up and Hagerty would give some direction. Hagerty had various lyric sheets and scores that the group worked with but once the record started to take shape Young became very involved in plotting out the flow of the record. (STREET DATE - 9/23/2014)
LP $19.75
09/23/2014
CD $13.75
09/23/2014
***BACK IN STOCK!!! Received a 7.5 rating from Pitchfork. After they got back from Mars, PURLING HISS went back down to the basement—but they came up again after they got their Weirdon! Full-tilt with tunes, aggro riffs, feedback peals, stoned soul-searching, pop turnarounds and magisterial portraits of the go-nowhere lifestyle in abstract, Weirdon is also a new-phase Purling Hiss album, using the songwriting and guitar style of MIKE POLIZZE to come up with a quicksilver sound touched on only briefly on previous records. Replete with handclaps, pounding pianos, tambourines and vocal effects, but steeped in guitar roar, Purling Hiss streamlines up nicely, serving the new songs and directions of Weirdon while still slamming down hard on your ears like they like to do.
LP $19.75
09/23/2014
CD $13.75
09/23/2014
MC $10.50
09/23/2014
***LAETITIA SADIER’s (STEREOLAB) new album has just been delivered, and it’s a joy! Something Shines was recorded and matured more slowly than either Silencio or The Trip. It took nine months, and you know what that means, baby! New life.... Something Shines was initially recorded in Switzerland, where Laetitia’s collaborator DAVID collects amazing old keyboards and organs from people who have inherited them but find no space or usage for them—so they let go of these useless things for a symbolic franc. Scattered through Europe are the component players of the Something Shines band; drummmer EMMANUEL MARIO in Paris and bassist XAVI MUNOZ in Castellon near Valencia, so additional parts were laid down in those cities. The strings were done in St. Etienne by JEAN-CHRISTOPHE CHANTE, whom Laetitia had met on a tour with French band, and friends, Angil in the fall; she found his playing mesmerizing and felt compelled to ask him if he would like to participate on her album—which he did, bringing a great emotional charge to the record. Laetitia recorded a lot of the content in London, including all the vocals, guitars, additional electronics and soundtrack effects as well as final mixing, which wrapped up this Spring. The desire was for the songs of Something Shines to alternate between a riveting caress and an invigorating shake. To start from the Earth and to tilt up, towards the sky, before coming back down to the planet again. Additionally, Something Shines is an exploration—yes another—through Debord’s La Société...
LP $21.50
09/23/2014
CD $13.75
09/23/2014
***BACK IN STOCK!!! Received a 7.8 rating from Pitchfork. The Segall has landed. And it’s fully loaded, with everything that TY SEGALL are gonna need in the world to come. Sticking his hand deeper into the machines all around him, Ty is reaching ever further to the outer limits of inner space orbited throughout Twins and Sleeper. And now more than ever, the chunks of the world that came before are like asteroids formed in his image. Still fighting the power with all the energy that a determined mind-patriot can conjure, Ty’s a fighter who loves, a surfer, a spaceman, and yeah, a casualty—like you, he’ll never be free. But unlike you, he knows it—and when he goes down and his head cracks in two, out pour the multi-colored manias that make up Manipulator. Sour-sweet declarations featuring freaks and creeps alike: “The Singer,” “The Faker,” “Mister Main,” “Susie Thumb,” the “Connection Man,” and “The Crawler,” to name but a mutant fistful. To see these peeps, to realize their dreams and visions, Ty kept working, kept writing, laying down more tracks than ever. New musical expressions pop and surprise relentlessly throughout all the knockout tunes of Manipulator with many sounds in the mix — but most of all, SO many guitars! There’s so little time, and a LOT to say. In order to ensure that he got it all out, Ty called a few friends to fill in special parts on certain songs. He got great touches from CHRIS WOODHOUSE (piano,...
CD $13.75
08/26/2014
2XLP $27.75
08/26/2014
MC $8.50
08/26/2014
***CHECK STOCK!!! Received a 7.5 rating from Pitchfork. BITCHIN BAJAS have been around the world in five years; chasing sonics through space and time and coming up with a lot of conclusions along their discographical path. Always, they push forward, recklessly consuming processes in order to realize their own works—but the sound and the music regularly emerges with tranquil essence, bringing them and their listeners into a shared experience. Bitchin Bajas’ output has been remarkably diverse in search of this singular goal, which makes for great listening across multiple albums etc.—and with the release of this new double-LP, they have mapped and traversed their own ecosystem as they journey in search of the aural epiphany, the true unknowing. With plenty of room stretched over four sides, Bitchin Bajas use their many methods to attain PERFECT FLOW throughout the 76 minutes of this self-titled record. Self-titled because this is who they are at their core; these are the flares and oscillations of their soul. They will be other things again, horizons will continue to rise and fade away in their path as they continue forward and upward—but this self-titled record is a pure vision at the heart of Bitchin Bajas.
2XLP $32.75
08/26/2014
2XMC $11.25
08/26/2014
***CHECK STOCK!!! Received a 7.0 rating from Pitchfork. For the Recently Found Innocent is many things—the fifth WHITE FENCE album, the first White Fence album to be recorded outside the bedroom fence (with live drumming!), the first White Fence record to be produced for Drag City. Plus also, a sophomore pump: the second time that TIM PRESLEY and TY SEGALL have met to record music (does anyone remember Hair?), this time pure and simply committed in the name of White Fence. Inevitably, the collision at the intersection of all these winding roads is a beautiful pileup of deep impacts, graceful lines and open space embodied in sound, White on White, compacted for your eyes and ears to believe. White Fence’s previous release, Cyclops Reap demonstrated a process being executed at the top of its game. For the Recently Found Innocent surges forth with fresh set of elaborately crafted songs, harmony vocalizations and trippin’ guitar tones that strike the face and viscera with an equal (easy) blow.
LP $21.50
07/22/2014
CD $13.75
07/22/2014
MC $8.50
07/22/2014
***MATTHEW YOUNG’s genre-bending, acclaimed 1986 release Traveler’s Advisory reappeared as a reissue on Drag City/Yoga in 2010 and quickly sold out. We now return to Young’s first effort, Recurring Dreams, dating back to 1981 and the apex of the Eno/Berlin schools’ influence over a myriad of American followers. Young created eight EMS/Rhodes pieces solo, subtly weaving in variable-speed Revox manipulation of traditional rock instrumentation with the lightest of touches. As anyone who has heard Traveler’s Advisory already knows, Matthew Young could never be a mere imitator. What all too often amounted to predictable schtick in the field of early ‘80s home electronica, Young made personal, delicate, discreet, and discrete. Wordlessly illustrating its titles—“Version, Inversion,” “The Forest Of Lilacs,” and “Mistral” (a strong, cold, northwesterly wind), Young conjures vivid, progressive tones of the unknown. Recurring Dreams requires repeat listenings to fully reveal its Bonsai-like qualities. Fans of Erik Satie, JD Emmanuel, private-issue new age or the more placid side of minimal synth should take note of this one. Drag City and Yoga Records are proud to reintroduce Matthew Young’s Recurring Dreams. (STREET DATE - 7/22/2014)
LP $19.75
07/22/2014
***BACK IN PRINT ON VINYL!!! Back in 1997, DAVID PAJO was a little over a half decade removed from the future sensation known as SLINT. Their second album had been released in 1991 when the band themselves were already defunct. During the next five years, David worked with PALACE BROTHERS, KING KONG TORTOISE, THE FOR CARNATION and STEREOLAB. All during that period, the idea of his own music was slowly simmering, building flavor like a good rage. He and former Slint-ite BRITT WALFORD had discussed a band called M —the significance lying in the letter’s position in the middle of the alphabet. A single under that name was released on Palace Records in 1996, and upon hearing it, there was no doubt that this fucker was one of the Slint boys. We were big fans of Tweez ; we jumped right on that shit and offered Dave a deal he couldn’t refuse—if he made a record, we’d put it out! The rest is…not only history, but somewhat out of print. David changed the name to AERIAL M , put out an album, two singles and a remix record, then changed the name to PAPA M and made a couple of double-albums, an EP and five or six singles. Now his self-titled LP is available again.
LP $19.75
07/15/2014
CD $13.75
10/20/1997
***CHECK STOCK!!! Received a 7.7 rating from Pitchfork. BLACK BANANAS is JENNIFER HERREMA, NADAV EISENMAN, BRIAN MCKINLEY, and KURT MIDNESS. They work with their machines to play rock that’s progressive, experimenting and never less than super-exciting, fuckingly awesome amazing. They do it becuz it’s fun and it sounds rad. With eyes and ears out for the phases and strains of rock past and present, Black Bananas are on the lookout for a sound that mainly exists in their mind, an idea of sound to wrap around the tunes, a cattle-prod sneaking around the backside of your aural cortex. To jolt you into magical thinking. And to make you jump, and make your hair stand up. Yeah, Black Bananas’ production pays forward the psychotropic effect with ultimate line blur, but Electric Brick Wall is solidly composed of time-tested elements—the beat, the groove, licks, builds and bridges, fused together for projection as a new musical shred-spress to the stars. (STREET DATE - 6/24/2014)
LP $18.95
06/24/2014
CD $13.75
06/24/2014
MC $10.50
06/24/2014
***Five years after the second life of DEATH was started with the release of their revelatory 1976 album, For the Whole World to See, Death III slams the door on the vault with a powerful set of songs that bring equal amounts of rock and ethereal soul-searching, in high-fidelity, rich bottomed, studio-grade sound. Alongside songs from 1975, 1976 and 1980, Death III contains two songs from 1992, as the HACKNEY brothers reconvened nearly a decade after they’d stopped playing together. Death III serves as a companion piece of sorts to the A Band Called Death documentary, tracking the band’s movement from spiritual young rockers to older and wiser, bruised-but-undefeated brothers, in pure musical terms. David Hackney’s visual representation of Death was a triangle, where “spiritual,” “mental” and “physical” formed the three angles. With this in mind, For the Whole World to See is clearly the physical corner, with its undeniable proto-punk power; Spiritual–Mental–Physical explores the mental axis, with Death working through some of their influences—including The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, The Who and even ELO—in their practice space. Death III is the spiritual end of the portrait, bookended by the dreamlike rock visions of David Hackney that created and propelled the band called Death. (STREET DATE - 4/22/2014)
LP $19.75
04/22/2014
CD $13.75
04/22/2014
***CHECK STOCK!!! Received a 7.5 rating from Pitchfork. THE PURLING HISS sound is revered by discerning listeners for its devastational waves of guitar rock crashing atop sweet melodies and pile-driving rhythm tunes alike. The effect of these contrasts in the hands of MIKE POLIZZE touches buzzing pleasure centers for these listeners, more of them with every lick—people who like rock songs and like to sing along and don’t mind a little dirt for their trouble. No matter what the resolution is for Purling Hiss, the devastational waves come on with the same warm, cracked obsession they’ve had from the start. Mike Polizze bought his tape machine in 1999 and immediately ran himself around the bases. Skipping towards home he wound up in the outfield, crafting sounds, songs, and fragments to cassette for the next several years, never to be the same. It was when he moved to Philly around 2004 and joined up with BIRDS OF MAYA that he was crowned DIZZY, and things began to focus. He had access to all the instruments needed, Birds’ BEN LEAPHART drummed on a couple songs, and in 2006 a CDR called Dizzy Polizzy came together. Mike made around 50 copies, just for friends, lovers, and the occasional hate-fucker, with a cover he silk-screened hiss-self (represented on this here LP). A few beers and two years later, Purling Hiss became official and took off with three BERSERK albums released in quick succession (seriously, if you don’t own Hissteria, then wake up, “rocker!”) Capitalizing...
LP $19.75
04/22/2014
***REISSUED ON VINYL!!! Coconut Hotel hails from 1967, when it was recorded for International Artists in the wake of international success of The Parable of Arable Land. Too far out for its day (!), Coconut Hotel was eventually issued on Drag City in 1995 and features the original RED CRAYOLA at their most extremely experimental, while still retaining the air of whimsey (“One-Second Pieces”) that permeates all their releases. (STREET DATE - 4/22/2014)
LP $21.50
04/22/2014
CD $13.75
07/04/2007
***BACK IN STOCK!!! Received a 7.7 rating from Pitchfork. WOO is brothers MARK and CLIVE IVES. Emboldened by the success of the recent reissue of It’s Cosy Inside, Mark and Clive had a listen to hundreds of previously unreleased tracks recorded in the ‘70s and ‘80s to assemble their first new record in two decades, When The Past Arrives, out in March from Drag City / Yoga Records. With comparisons to Penguin Cafe Orchestra, Animal Collective, Cluster, and Brian Eno, WOO’s profile in the world of atemporal music has been growing for years. For the lucky few who know, like Fela, or Neu!, WOO has their own instantly recognizable vibrantly pulsing sound, a quiet sound of comfort and contentment. When The Past Arrives is a collection of deceptively airy jams, addictive, crystalline. Uncut called It’s Cosy Inside “the epitome of domestic bliss,” and Pitchfork observed the album “stakes itself on the premise that the most cosmic and revelatory experiences you’ll ever have will all happen between your house and the backyard.”
LP $21.50
03/18/2014
CD $13.75
03/18/2014
***BACK IN STOCK!!! Received a 7.6 rating from Pitchfork. Sometimes it’s best to see the world in black and white. Shades of grey are for p*****s, right—and NEW BUMS have ridden the hard road all the way to this, their album debut. They’ve played around and they’ve hit the singles scene (haven’t you turned up “Slim Volume”? 7"EP of the year, man!), but Voices in a Rented Room tells their whole life story and probably more of yours than you’d care to admit. The voices are two, spinning harmonies both heavenly and salt-pickled. Picking their direction and floating along on a pair of acoustics, New Bums are the sound of old drunk America, dancing out of the shadows, coming forth again to stand in the light, in the hopes of repopulating those sad old single-occupancy hotels before they’re all torn down. New Bums is the grudging match-up of DONVAN QUINN (SKYGREEN LEOPARDS) and BEN CHASNY (SIX ORGANS OF ADMITTANCE, COMETS ON FIRE, 200 YEARS, RANGDA). They didn’t like each other at first, but now make sweet and sour music together over the light of the magical Sterno (if there’s anything left in the can, that is!). The ideas go back and forth between Ben and Donovan in what seems to be a true partnership. Their songs are all that: songs, with lyrics set in a space to speak to the human buried in you. People’s music, with all the stark confessions, tall tales, bleak humors and punch lines that the...
LP $21.50
02/18/2014
CD $13.75
02/18/2014
***BACK IN STOCK!!! Received a 7.3 rating from Pitchfork. Dub is a spiritual, abstract, visceral, mystical thing. Finite and Infinite at the same time. Deeply rooted in the earth and embracing outer space. Don’t be fooled by names, Dub has come and gone. Dub is a ghost, a duppy. A duppy of a childhood guppy. Flushed and thriving in the sewers and the swamps. Here you will find versions of the Dream River songs that have been killed and resurrected, spilling tales of the other side of life in a language conceivable only if you let yourself be taken there.
LP $19.75
01/21/2014
CD $13.75
01/21/2014
***The album that initially prompted Clint Simonson of Destijl records to track down MICHAEL YONKERS and get this whole legend thing on wheels was 1973’s Borders of My Mind, recorded in the living room of JIM WOEHRLE, Yonkers’ former bandmate in MICHAEL AND THE MUMBLES and the MICHAEL YONKERS BAND. Woehrle had to quit the MYB shortly before Microminiature Love was recorded, because of his school and work schedule, but the two were fortunately able to make this privately-pressed LP a little ways down the line. The songs were recorded at Jim’s apartment using a full-track mono, one quarter-inch reel-to-reel tape recorder, using only one bi-directional ribbon microphone. Mic placement was extremely critical, because only this microphone was used to capture Woehrle’s transcendent piano, Yonkers’ plaintive guitar playing, and the two’s arcing vocal harmonies. Plus, one can hear the very real sounds of the phone ringing and natural reverb, along with the occasional post-production psychedelic flourish—making this an unjustly-unheard classic for lovers of homespun astral folk. Fans of Ed Askew, Fred Neil, Mij, Tim Buckley, and Bill Fay, take note! The original art and labels have been faithfully reproduced and with a similarly sensitive remastering job, the tracks shine brightly.
LP $20.85
01/21/2014
***There’s yet another musical color revealed on the uber-rare private press, Michael Lee Yonkers, which was home-recorded in 1971–72, while MICHAEL YONKERS was working in an unheated, hundred year-old warehouse. He ran the forklift and drove the truck for the company, hauling extremely heavy loads of industrial surplus and scrap metal. His co-workers almost exclusively listened to country and western music, which inspired him to create and perform an oddly countrified set on weekends, when he would play in coffeehouses and at house parties. Yonkers would do an acoustic set of original “country” and “rock” music for the first part, then he would get out an “electronic music machine” that he had built himself and play “electronic music” (quotes all added by Michael himself). Michael Lee Yonkers is a recording of some of the “country” songs he was doing at the time, as well as a few songs he wrote for the children at the house parties (like “Mrs. Jennings Fruit Fly Farm,” recorded live, where you can hear the kids going nuts). The tracks were recorded on a variety of tube-type, reel-to-reel tape machines, which give them a unique analogue sound that begs comparisons to outsider hillbillies like Peter Grudzien, Holy Modal Rounders and The Legendary Stardust Cowboy, as well as beloved longhair outlaws like Townes Van Zandt and Kris Kristofferson (ok, even one St. Johnny Cash too). The original art and labels have been faithfully reproduced and, with a discreet remastering touch, the tracks sound better than ever.
LP $20.85
01/21/2014
***In the group of celestial beings that was THE SOURCE FAMILY, AQUARIANA stood out with an almost angelic vibration. Even before she became one of FATHER YOD’s 13 wives, her presence was exceptional to all who met her. She was among the first to join The Source Family’s brotherhood, and she brought her youthful energy, bright with laughter and joy, to all the activities within the household, starting with morning mediation and on through the day. In ’73 and ’74, the music was pouring out of the Father House, with the releases Kohoutek, Contraction, Expansion and All Or Nothing at All credited to Father Yod and THE SPIRIT OF ‘76, with additional recordings Penetration: An Aquarian Symphony, To the Principles for the Children, I’m Gonna Take You Home and Savage Sons of Ya Ho Wa credited to YA HO WA 13, the group of talented young men who formed the nucleus of The Source Family’s house band. The wild spirit of these records is the essence of The Source Family myth. But there were many members of their brotherhood, and many of them were sisters. After all this male energy had gained release, Father felt it was time to project the female energy they had on the next release. Plans for Aquariana’s album were started, but this was during a time of upheaval and movement for the family that resulted in them moving from their base in Los Angeles to Hawaii. It was there that Father passed over in 1976....
LP $19.95
12/17/2013
***Dateline, December 2013. Ten years after the sinister first stirrings of THE HOWLING HEX, Drag City finally gets the picture as to the truthiness of it all: All-Night Fox needs to live on as a vinyl LP in the 21st century! All-Night Fox was released in early 2005, after a series of vinyl-only LPs introduced to the world the wide range of The Howling Hex. But when All-Night Fox appeared, it was in the then-popular CD format only. Ah—as in so much of life, meaning comes after the moment of impact. Deeply grooved and stomping, alive with a triple-headed vocal attack, aloft on clouds of reverb, All-Night Fox should be heard from every possible angle. This hi-fidelity vinyl pressing from the Quality Record plant will ensure a superior playback for years to come! (STREET DATE - 12/17/2013)
LP $19.75
12/17/2013
CD $13.75
03/01/2005
***Drag City presents the first domestic release of any kind from the Japanese singer-songwriter EIKO ISHIBASHI—and the first vinyl release of any kind on this already-accomplished performer. Eiko is a singer-songwriter, producer and session musician, focused on piano, but adept on drums, flute and vibraphone as well. Since 2006, she has released four pop albums and a solo piano album, all of which have been highly rated by the Japanese press. She plays at least a hundred gigs a year, including big rock festivals and European tours With an understanding of band dynamics developed through her many live shows and recordings, Eiko’s delicate, precise compositions are arranged with a dramatic-yet-humorous prog-pop sound. Eiko plays piano, vibraphone, and flute as well as nylon-string guitar, a first for her, on Imitation of Life. The flowing backgrounds she has conceived for her light, sweet melodies are captured by producer JIM O’ROURKE with a lively sense of play, which matches Eiko’s lyric concept. The lyrics in this album embody a science fiction story which brings the album to a challenging new level. Features backing from Jim O’Rourke, TOSHIAKI SUDO, TATSUHISA YAMAMOTO, and ATSUKO HATANO, as well as contributions from several guest musicians including jazz master AKIRA SAKATA. (STREET DATE - 11/19/2013)
LP $19.75
11/19/2013
***CHECK STOCK!!! Received a 7.9 rating from Pitchfork. Back working as a trio MAGIK MARKERS return with their first new album since 2009’s Balf Quarry. Surrender To The Fantasy kicks off with that hoary old trope of punk records, the song about the Chesapeake Valley Runoff and the mating cycle of crabs. After that kind of in-your-face Attenborough- core, where could the record go? Nowhere but everywhere, all the creepy outposts of American detritus from other times, when hitchhiking and h-bombs were still hot, viable new ideas, and on beyond zed-bra. “Acts of Desperation” is Shaggs-meets-Stones color commentary on driveway laying, your mom’s Merit Ultra-Light 100’s and the lengths we’ll go to filch a feel of some arcane notion of greatness. Here PETE NOLAN has nixed his kit and Straps Field Handily into a galvanic psych lead. No lame attempt to smoke nutmeg for this jam; it scored real weed. (STREET DATE - 11/19/2013)
LP $19.75
11/19/2013
CD $13.75
11/19/2013
***REISSUED!!! Glimmer twins NEIL HAGGERTY & JENNIFER HERREMA keep on truckin' with their eighth album of the dwindling 1990s. Ten new songs showcasing their love for classic rock and an acute ability to fuck it up nicely. A "right on and rock on" to that. (STREET DATE - 11/19/2013)
LP $17.75
11/19/2013
CD $13.75
11/19/2013
***CHECK STOCK!!! Received a 7.8 rating from Pitchfork. Finally! After 15 years, MICK TURNER has turned in the big rock record we always knew he had in him! Don’t Tell the Driver is a different kind of record from all the Mick Turner records—not just his own, but the ones he’s done with DIRTY THREE, BONNY BILLY, CAT POWER, FUNGUS BRAINS and VENOM P. STINGER put together. Don’t Tell The Driver is a consolidation and development of everything he’s done up until now, streamlined and presented under the sophisticated umbrella known as the rock opera/concept album. Don’t Tell the Driver is inarguably the first post-rock rock opera of our times—by an artist running out of time. It wouldn’t be a rock opera without a vague/indecipherable theme of wonder and disenchantment, and indeed, Don’t Tell the Driver delivers in spades on that account. Like all the best masterpieces, Don’t Tell the Driver came together slowly, spurred by life experiences and aided by the meditation that only time brings. Over the last four years, Mick put together the pieces at Big Moth Studios in Melbourne, working his magic with aquatic guitar-and-drums chemistry, augmenting the tracks with melodica, piano and Fender Rhodes, and then bringing in the vocalists and other additional players when the tracks were ready for them. Replete with classic epics and timely reprises, Don’t Tell the Driver is an inspired and focused collection of Mick Turner music that reaches for new borders without sacrificing the dizzy wandering and painterly stillness...
CD $13.75
11/19/2013
2XLP $23.75
11/19/2013
***The third in a string of awesome full-length adventures from Chicago’s CAVE is Threace—an album that appeals on all levels: animal, abstract and alien, and all at once; one multi-colored-circa-2013 grab-bang. Threace is a real “back to the lab” kind of album for CAVE —with a few more guitars and a few less keyboards on board, the band is energized and ready to try things in a new way. All CAVE music grabs at your ears and the soft tissue within, and yet this time, it’s just so much more super-crystalline, bottom-booting and all-spacious than ever before. Recorded on a 1" 8-track Scully machine that may or may not have spent some quality burnin’ time at Muscle Shoals, Threace was half-planned and half-jammed using different mic placements, building up from a basic set of as few mics as possible. Then, they got out the razor blade and used it to cut tape (and realities) together into a metro-musical albumen that’s only started to flower in this world. Known for playing with rolling funk minimalism; Threace finds the band inhabiting their cut-up aesthetic with tremendous ease and fewer reference points than before. They access new depths of meditative stasis, and then torpedo the dream and turn on a dime to ride the riffs again. It’s no wonder that they spent such quality time on the sounds, because the writing now has the close fit of a second skin. From exotica to erotica to rock ‘n yuh, the songs are lived in,...
LP $17.50
10/15/2013
CD $13.75
10/15/2013
MC $8.50
10/15/2013
***Coming down from the ALPS-aintop recently, our boy MIKE DONOVAN broke away from the medicine show where they preached ol’ testament SICness. Something in the forest was calling. Signals emanated from the old dark hollow, with portraits of the Old Masters stacked in silence, collected the dust they are owed. Transistorized tunes echoed from inside a mossy log, crackling and rambling in the air of watery sunlight and tensed moon mist alike. Transfixed, Mike washed his hands in muddy water and wandered on to the oracle. And this is Wot he/she said... Here is a mysterious man, cheerful and dark. You don’t want to get in too deep but it’s too late. It is Donovan’s way this time around, and he’s flying the flag himself. Wot’s the name of this bolt from weed-ridden left field, the most hands-down, top-up debut alb. rolling ’round in 2013. Rife with riffing TUNES! Of course, Donovan’s debut comes following a distinguished run of tunesmithing for noise-popster poster boyz SIC ALPS, so he’s well prepared to go the solo route with a sac fulla songs. But shedding Sic skin so cleanly while still retaining the thing called “essence.” Lyrically, Mike’s sharpened the lead for a less random line drawn in the sand—but he’s still alit on allusive trips, lost in crystal canyons, turning a phrase with an acid flick of the wrist-watch. In this life, there is a brooding pregnance as he intones over some front-porch 21st-century j’accuse-tic blues with a blur of bygone, half-plugged,...
LP $19.75
10/15/2013
CD $13.75
10/15/2013
MC $10.50
10/15/2013
***CHECK STOCK STOCK!!! Named # 1 Album of the Year by MOJO. Pitchfork Best New Music. 8.5!! ***The fourth studio album from BILL CALLAHAN. In the song-world of Bill Callahan, the present realities tumble ecstatically like cloth in the wind—sheets and flags and clothes. These things borne aloft are not simply physical details in the landscape, but the contours of an emotional one as well. Bill’s a cartographer way out there, tracing the coastlines, telling the tales he has discovered along the way. Some seen in life and others in mind’s eye, they float down Dream River with humble eminence. The river that was once deemed not too much to love, that once freed convicts and their guard in a still and silent moment, is now a Dream River, fished in a variety of depths, viewed in panorama. This is a waterway tha twinds across the landmass, a ribbon that touches and changes and feeds and gives to and takes from many lives as it rolls to the ocean. Bill and the beaver alike are riding high on this Dream River. Lyrically, Bill tugs at the loose strands of a scene and unspools ’em until he comes to the knot. Or if he’s out of doors, he ruffles through the chaff that makes up the haystack, looking for something hard and sharp. The days of the all-needle haystack are gone, but Bill still finds something that gets beneath the skin, even when surveying moments of easy contentment. He pans out...
LP $24.25
09/17/2013
CD $13.75
09/17/2013
***Return of the Silkie, 1983’s third chapter in the as-yet unfinished saga of the nomadic West Coast harpist, CAROL KLEYN, offers a slice of the wild and free utopian dream that changed so many lives in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Pure and simple, harp and vocals, accompanied only by scattings of harbor seals and sea lions, this loosely woven concept album includes gentle reminders that life is short—take it in while you can—and, along the way, try to preserve the magnificence of this world for the next generation. Sentiments and music as hauntingly true today as the day they were first sung and recorded. Carol’s lyrics close with: “there’s a storm over paradise and it’s we who decide... just how long we shall live... or when we shall die...”. The instrumental that follows, and closes this album, reiterates that message with the cries of sea lions in the background, as the “Silkie” returns, perhaps by choice, to her underwater origins. Thirty years later, Carol resides on an island in Puget Sound, where she walks amongst the eagles and the sea lions, and is guided by the beauty and the changes she observes along that beach, in the sky and on a distant Mt. Rainier. Her children now grown, Carol’s focus—her music and her performance—return to issues regarding global warming, pollution and the politics interconnected to those perils. Of greatest concern to her today, is that the heat wave we’re now experiencing has only just begun. That being said,...
LP $19.50
09/17/2013
CD $13.75
09/17/2013
***MAGIK MARKERS put the ‘sense-and-sensibility’ back into ‘sensuality’ with “Ice Skater,” which radiates the mystic allure and cool remove of the best of them pretzel people ’n cold-water dancers. There’s always been that starched-collar, puritanical undercarriage to the MM vibe, right? Well here, it melts all over you with a winsome melody, bloodless disco beat and nu-romance synths blearing in pastel flares behind. The B-side balances the new Markers scale with a blast of freejams based on the chords of . . . well, no chords. Ca-lassic Magik! “Machines” will definitely remind you of nights spent tits-up with these guys playing the soundtrack to your fucking fucked life, you fuck. The sound of the rejuved Markers’ trio features JOHN SHAW’s bass guitar holding it down while ELISA and PETE let it loose. Cymbal stutter and rippin’ guitar tonez will definitely abrade your ears, if you still got ’em, that is. Here’s a pair of teasers that are bound to tweak your thirst-buds into full revolt. (STREET DATE - 9/17/2013)
7" $6.00
09/17/2013
***BILL CALLAHAN returns with two dub versions of songs from his forthcoming Dream River album to be released September 17th. (STREET DATE - 8/20/2013)
12" $11.25
08/20/2013
***BACK IN PRINT!!!!! Received an 8.2 rating from Pitchfork. Five short years into the TY SEGALL expedition, we’re farther and farther out with each and every record. And to every record, a tour—or three or four. But enough with the endless noise! Let Ty feel the wind though his hair this year! Time is short and life is precious. It’s already sorted that the boy’s of two minds; they come lightning-bright and thunder-dark. Either way you slice it (his brain), a storm is brewing as the hemispheres clash together and the songs pour forth. For Ty, coming down off the Twins trip was twice as far as it ever had been before, and in the pools of water and light that stood silently after the gale, he was a changed man. Well, the same young man, really—but different too in the days between then and now, naturally, and with more changes and big jumps ahead. A plan quickly evolved: before he checked out of his SF Mission digs and headed down the coast for a new way of life, Ty fired up the machines, hit play and wrung a last helping of blood from his rock, creating a new set of songs to translate his mind-current. Between two minds, between two places, beyond Twins, Sleeper envisions a world of haves and have-nots, but the currency that separates them is psychic. Class is determined by where your head goes—and Ty puffs the pied pipe, leading you back to what you forgot...
LP $24.25
08/20/2013
CD $13.75
08/20/2013
MC $8.50
08/20/2013
***The VENOM P. STINGER retrospective is on! One of the roughest groups of the ‘80s is back in print on vinyl and for the first time ever on CD, and still nice and hard and rough and wild on either format. File under: punk rock/noise rock/free-of-constraints rock. If you think of Venom P. Stinger simply as the proving ground for 2/3rds of the DIRTY THREE first, then you’re seriously missing it, and fuck you. It was the mid-’80s and everything was going fine. The music underground was its own world, not related to the orbit of commercial music that rained bullshit down onto the overground. Nobody down below had any great plans, they were just playing in bands. Melbourne had launched the career of the legendary Birthday Party, but that lot were long gone and there were loads of other interesting and great things going on. Like SICK THINGS for instance. DUGALD MCKENZIE and MICK T URNER were part of that extremely raw and intense band, whose “Committed to Suicide” had changed so many lives. Mick had played as well in THE MOODISTS and was in FUNGUS BRAINS and some others. Also on the scene was JIM WHITE, who was playing in several bands, including PEOPLE WITH CHAIRS UP THEIR NOSES and the FERAL DINOSAURS. It was a small group of people playing in bands like these back in mid-’80s Melbourne and probably only a matter of time before you played in the same band together. And so, they did....
LP $21.50
08/20/2013
***The VENOM P. STINGER retrospective is on! One of the roughest groups of the ‘80s is back in print on vinyl and for the first time ever on CD, and still nice and hard and rough and wild on either format. File under: punk rock/noise rock/free-of-constraints rock. If you think of Venom P. Stinger simply as the proving ground for 2/3rds of the DIRTY THREE first, then you’re seriously missing it, and fuck you. It was the mid-’80s and everything was going fine. The music underground was its own world, not related to the orbit of commercial music that rained bullshit down onto the overground. Nobody down below had any great plans, they were just playing in bands. Melbourne had launched the career of the legendary Birthday Party, but that lot were long gone and there were loads of other interesting and great things going on. Like SICK THINGS for instance. DUGALD MCKENZIE and MICK TURNER were part of that extremely raw and intense band, whose “Committed to Suicide” had changed so many lives. Mick had played as well in THE MOODISTS and was in FUNGUS BRAINS and some others. Also on the scene was JIM WHITE, who was playing in several bands, including PEOPLE WITH CHAIRS UP THEIR NOSES and the FERAL DINOSAURS. It was a small group of people playing in bands like these back in mid-’80s Melbourne and probably only a matter of time before you played in the same band together. And so, they did. Venom...
12" $15.00
08/20/2013
***The VENOM P. STINGER retrospective is on! One of the roughest groups of the ‘80s is back in print on vinyl and for the first time ever on CD, and still nice and hard and rough and wild on either format. File under: punk rock/noise rock/free-of-constraints rock. If you think of Venom P. Stinger simply as the proving ground for 2/3rds of the DIRTY THREE first, then you’re seriously missing it, and fuck you. It was the mid-’80s and everything was going fine. The music underground was its own world, not related to the orbit of commercial music that rained bullshit down onto the overground. Nobody down below had any great plans, they were just playing in bands. Melbourne had launched the career of the legendary Birthday Party, but that lot were long gone and there were loads of other interesting and great things going on. Like SICK THINGS for instance. DUGALD MCKENZIE and MICK TURNER were part of that extremely raw and intense band, whose “Committed to Suicide” had changed so many lives. Mick had played as well in THE MOODISTS and was in FUNGUS BRAINS and some others. Also on the scene was JIM WHITE, who was playing in several bands, including PEOPLE WITH CHAIRS UP THEIR NOSES and the FERAL DINOSAURS. It was a small group of people playing in bands like these back in mid-’80s Melbourne and probably only a matter of time before you played in the same band together. And so, they did. Venom...
LP $21.50
08/20/2013
***What other film director has a) created avant-garde films and was part of Kenneth Anger’s inner circle, b) directed critically acclaimed and cult-adored horror films like Night Tide and Games, and c) directed episodes of Charlie’s Angels and Dynasty? The answer can only be CURTIS HARRINGTON. Nice Guys Don’t Work In Hollywood is a fast-paced view of Harrington’s journey through the kaleidoscope of the movie business, acting alternately as personal memoir and cultural history from a veteran of the entertainment business. In addition, Harrington was living as a gay man in Hollywood and the book gives a rare peek into the hidden world of what was then an elite subculture. What sets this memoir apart is Harrington’s unusual career trajectory. Starting in 1940s avant-garde heyday, Harrington made several deeply intuitive and evocative films which were heralded by the likes of Maya Deren and Anaïs Nin. Against all odds, he then became a Hollywood insider, working as assistant for the infamous Jerry Wald. As a director, he made the cult classic Night Tide, worked in the Roger Corman stable, and helmed several of his own distinctive horror films including Games and What’s the Matter With Helen? In the 1970s and 1980s he began what he called his descent down the “slippery slope” of television work and soon found himself directing episodes of Charlie’s Angels and Dynasty. Nice Guys Don’t Work in Hollywood chronicles this strange arc with wit and campy style. It is both a serious study of film aesthetics, and...
BK $18.75
06/18/2013
***CHECK STOCK!!! Received an 8.0 rating from Pitchfork. REISSUED!!! 1998, and according to the press, ROYAL TRUX were back in action. The Virgin era, regarded as a wilderness period by some, were brought to a definitive close with the release of Accelerator back on Drag City and Domino in April of that year. Unbeknownst to their former handlers at the major label, the combination of wack-ass knob twisting and crowd-pleasing singalongs reflected some absurdly inverted sense of What People Wanted, and reaction to Accelerator was loud and fevered. A European tour was required ASAP, and a band was quickly assembled. Several slots were filled with Drag City players: AERIAL-M’s DAVID PAJO (also late of SLINT, TORTOISE and STEREOLAB) on bass, and Drag City utility man RIAN MURPHY drafted in to sing and play tambourine. The X-factor was drummer JON THEODORE. Recruited from the Oberlin, OH group GOLDEN, he brought incredible chops into play, but his bright sound and personality would be dealt with in typically Darwinian Trux fashion. In advance of the tour, several domestic shows were scheduled, and the players arrived at Royal Trux’s rural Virginia ranch ready to rehearse, only to be told that a recording session was the first order of business. Given the powerful response to Accelerator, an EP would be needed soon—and with a long European tour impending, what better time than the present? In short order, the three songs were recorded, along with a fourth, a cover of Dire Straits’ “Money For Nothing” which...
CD $12.00
06/18/2013
12" $13.75
06/18/2013
***Received a 7.6 rating from Pitchfork. in the past year or so, SCOUT NIBLETT’s house was the one on the block that you could often hear Rollins screaming out of the speakers at the top of his lungs “And at the end of the day, all you have is yourself and your mind!” Inside, you’d find her studying her birth chart. It revealed that the time was ripe for accessing emotional freedom through self reliance. Such a potent and liberating time...but before the liberation comes, there’s the resistance: the forces of nature that hurl breakdowns and shatter attachment. Indeed, stripped of partnerships both musical and personal, self reliance became survival technique for Scout. Revisiting Rollins’ proclamations felt like checking in with an old friend, the friend who doesn’t want anything from you, the friend who forces you to see your own strength. And thus, It’s Up To Emma. Over the course of 46 minutes and nine songs, It’s Up To Emma simmers, storms and cascades through an alinear tale of domestic emotional crises, all of which are immaculately rendered in Scout’s distinctive songwriting style. The dark news that the record brings is good news for Scout’s fans, who look to her to get under the skin and, as if in a trance, live through these songs in an attempt to get everyone a bit of clarity.
LP $24.25
05/21/2013
CD $13.75
05/21/2013
***Orange Sunshine! Blue Diamonds! Black Potatoes! “She’s On Top” is a 12" single, a B-12-booster shot extract straight from the heart of SIC ALPS to the inner lining of your own poor broke-crippled ripcage ribself. This is how the other half lives, laughs and loves! It’s fun and exciting, a picture from the airplane! Sic Alps are like you. They’re your friends—the better, smarter, faster, stronger ones! When they get back from their run, they’re friendly and will show you how the guitar works. Whoops, they picked it up and three songs fell out. Time for a single! A 12" single, to show the world the steel-plate resolve and wide, sparkling decks of the good ship Sic Alps. These three guns is all they need. And now they’ve maneuvered into the power position! “She’s On Top” will send you up shaking, laughing so hard you’re crying, and how you come down depends on your chemistry! Shards of pop...we may need pincers. And the video’s gonna kill! “Carrie Jean” is a noirish creeper, another one about girlish allure etc. LOOKOUT, it’s comblicated. Now, “Biz Bag”...whoa. Blew the door open, jet-blast style, finishing with a bitter kiss ‘n’ giggle. What’s in this one? A new genre: power-brisk. And it’s all wrapped in a gay 12" single sleeve inspired by and incorporating a Digger’s photograph. (STREET DATE - 5/21/2013)
12" $13.75
05/21/2013
***A cult with a cult following? Well... when the original cult was a proto new-age/wellness organization led by a dude with a great big hippie-god grey beard whose interests included fresh organic food, yoga, tantra, chakra, gita and all the rest of that good ol’ spiritual stuff rolled into one new kind of belief often expounded upon in performances of home-made rock music, it’s no wonder that a new group of enthusiasts would turn up in the years following the diaspora of the original believers. Such is the case with FATHER YOD and THE SOURCE FAMILY. For at least the last couple decades, the cult around The Source Family cult has enjoyed the music of YA HO WA 13, whose nine albums with Father were a major part of the story. Recorded during an eleven-month span during 1973 and ‘74, pressed on their own Higher Key label and sold in The Source Restaurant for $10 apiece at that time, these recordings continue to fascinate listeners to this day, and have been reprinted multiple times, including a massive box-set version of the whole catalog made in Japan in the mid-1990s. In 2007, the release of ISIS AQUARIAN’s book The Source: The Untold Story of Father Yod, Ya Ho Wa 13 and The Source Family, opened the doors on the mysterious and influential doings of The Source Family—and now the Spring of 2013 sees a definitive documentary film on the subject, entitled The Source Family. For the soundtrack to The Source Family...
LP $17.75
05/21/2013
CD $13.75
05/21/2013