***Back in print from HARMONY KORINE, A Crack-Up At the Race Riots was originally published by Mainstreet/Doubleday in 1998. Korine’s first novel presents fragments of a portrait in multimedia: print, photographs, drawings, news clippings, handwriting, a poem, attempted diagrams, clip art—but mostly text, including hard-luck stories, off-and-on-color jokes, script-scraps, found letters, free rhymes, drug flashbacks and other missing scenes, exploring the world of show-biz with fingers prying in the cracks and feet set lightly in the black humours of the real ol’ world. This excretion of the danglers of public life would make William Burroughs sigh and turn the page, at least. A Crack-Up At the Race Riots also includes some other semi/attempted/quasi lists/scripts, a few letters from Tupac and a set of eleven suicide notes with room included for your signature. So that’s the book in a nutshell. I don’t know, maybe you had to be there. But it’s back in print, so be there now, what the fuck? Harmony Korine is the self-educated thirty-nine-year-old who wrote and directed the controversial films Trash Humpers, Mister Lonely, Julien Donkey-Boy and Gummo. His new film Spring Breakers was nominated for the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. Korine was raised in the carnival and lives in Tennessee with his wife and kid. 172 page softcover book. (STREET DATE - 4/16/2013)
BK $17.50
04/16/2013
***Drag City drops the sixth and latest DAVID GRUBBS pop album, The Plain Where the Palace Stood, which finds David once again twining together the diverse strands of his vast interests. Working with ANDREA BELFI (drums, electronics) and STEFANO PILIA (guitar) creates a sympathetic groupthink that David expects more and greater from in the years to come. The welcome return of his distinctive overdriven guitar tone is a highlight of the record. And C. SPENCER YEH (BURNING STAR CORE) plays some absolutely apeshit violin on two tracks. As in the days of GASTR DEL SOL songs float in idiosyncratic, exceptionally unhurried arrangements. The Plain Where the Palace Stood features vocals on just four of the eleven tracks, yet the album as whole flows—breathes—effortlessly alongside the most acclaimed releases of his extended catalog, not to mention those of his contemporaries and kindred artists—Oren Ambarchi, Scott Walker, Talk Talk, and Sunn O))). (STREET DATE - 4/16/2013)
LP $21.50
04/16/2013
CD $13.75
04/16/2013
***“Detroit is, as ever, a mystery wrapped in a wasteland. After Motown blew out of town, as if on the last chopper out of Danang, the volatile periphery remained intact—minus its binding barycenter. A young RICHARD RISTAGNO was there, naively participating in the riots that cancelled Detroit’s application to the echelons of the modern American cities. After hearing about the riots on the radio, he and his MIDNIGHT RIDERS garage band ventured into the periphery, only to get busted for looting. He would be detained again, a year or so later, by Selective Service. Narrowly escaping an uncertain fate in Vietnam, Ristagno served his time in sleepy zones like Fort Knox in Kentucky and German outposts. Returning to Michigan in 1971, without an education or a plan, he found work in the galley of an iconic banquet club named The Rooster Tail. While working the line, slopping sauce on overpriced hunks of meat, he plotted his first recordings. With two original songs in mind, he hit the phone book and found a vanity operation just over the border in Canada. He stamped out what was to be an initial pressing of 500 copies, nearly all of which were sent to radio stations nationwide. After the world failed to beat a path to his door, the initial pressing became the only pressing. He moved on... finding union labor at Wyatt Services, a steel treatment plant, he managed to accumulate the largesse for a more grandiose scheme. What Would It Be Like...
LP $19.50
04/16/2013
***It takes balls to let PURLING HISS get in your face. Their records are a half-corroded, screaming roar of high-end guitars crushed together, obliterating vocals and even drums with their singular assault. Well, if you’ve got balls, get ready to swing ‘em. With Water On Mars, Purling Hiss have broken out of the basement, run through the bedroom and are out in the streets, blasting one of the great guitar albums in the past couple minutes. It’s a tumble of hits and ragers, sewing together nine new Purling Hiss celebration laments out of their usual patches of distortion, singing melodies and unexpected production hoohah—but this time the unexpected part is how the guitars gleam so precisely as they pile upon each other, how they work alongside of the rhythm section rather than avalanching it. And how the songs embody a variety of Hiss-teric moods. Water On Mars is Purling Hiss’s first recording outside the fuzzy confines of MIKE POLIZZE’s inner rock utopia, where the first three albums and EP were constructed in solitude with a home-recording setup. Over the past couple years, Mike’s been working with a band and fine-tuning new songwriting ideas while playing shows all over the place. Now, Purling Hiss projects their sounds and ideas onto a new platform, with a visceral and soulful presence. Now there is a center to the Hiss maelstrom, with Polizze’s guitars slugging, sizzling and spiraling their way around the rhythm throb. Polizze lyricises like a poet of the disaffected, shifting from...
LP $17.75
03/19/2013
CD $13.75
03/19/2013
MC $10.50
03/19/2013
***THE HOWLING HEX are back in town—you can feel them in the air, man! The Best of The Howling Hex is a new album of new music by a new incarnation of The Howling Hex, now broadcasting as a band from the big town of Denver, Colorado. After years staked out in the border country of southern New Mexico, guitarist and leader NEIL HAGERTY is back in the phonebook, giving The Hex an urban soapbox on which to stand for the first time in their ten years of re-re-revisionist history. Mile high style seems to be a good match for the mercurial back-road attire of The Howling Hex. For this new album, the wide-opens spaces and New Border rhythms of recent albums have been telescoped and accelerated into a high-stepping, uptempo night on the tiles. Kicking the beat with New Border funk is a rhythm section complete with drummer, last heard on a Howling Hex record back in 2007. Also redux is the functionality of the “ditty”—most recently experienced on Earth Junk. The Best of The Howling Hex includes seven shortish songs that weave the wild spirits and far-flung textures of Wilson Semiconductors into tightly compressed sing-songs, before turning the jam out to bring the levee home. Hagerty’s guitar tone is an alien wonder, and the careening beat of the band unleashes him to fill solo spots with fervor. No Export to Europe. (STREET DATE - 2/19/2013)
LP $19.75
02/19/2013
CD $13.75
02/19/2013
***BACK IN STOCK!!! Received a 7.0 rating from Pitchfork. As children, the music of The Everly Brothers touched DAWN MCCARTHY and BONNIE PRINCE BILLY; it touches Dawn’s children and the little ‘prince’ within Bonny today, and makes them dance and sing. The Brothers’ harmonies make the hairs stand up—they enervate and inspire. Beyond the visceral impact of any one song, any “So Sad” or “Devoted to You” that rings out from the radio on any given day, there is also the tracks that The Brothers trod over the course of several decades of singing together and making records. They didn’t stand still and neither did their songs. And so, What the Brothers Sang is no mere gesture of nostalgia; these new versions rethink The Everly Brothers for the audience of listeners today, people who naturally might have no knowledge or experience with those songs. What the Brothers Sang is made with deep respect for, is inspired by The Everly Brothers, but it pays tribute by being a record that only Dawn and Bonnie could make, and only in the room with the players that had come to join them. Their duets are a sensuous display of give and take that includes everything that’s resonating in the room, every surface that’s being pressed or rubbed or hit is a part of the action. Their harmonies are in the tradition, but they are their own, not cutting-on-the-dotted-line of Everly magic. No Export to Europe. No CD export to Hong Kong, Japan, or...
LP $21.50
02/19/2013
CD $13.75
02/19/2013
MC $10.50
03/05/2013
***REISSUED ON VINYL!!! The second album released under his own name from APPENDIX OUT driving force ALASDAIR ROBERTS, and his broadest work to date. A twelve-track masterwork of folk, dirge and rock songcraft, delivered with rakish wit, passion, and Robert's soaring imagination. Produced by RIAN MURPHY.
LP $19.50
01/29/2013
CD $13.75
04/22/2003
Received a 7.2 rating from Pitchfork. January 22, 2013 marks a new day in history, in which we are joined on our journey through this life by the new album from ALASDAIR ROBERTS & FRIENDS entitled A Wonder Working Stone. A collection of varied new epics, Alasdair’s latest is by turns metaphysical, cosmological, phantasmagorical, topical, personal and universal. This is Alasdair’s most ambitious, fully-realized work to date (an extraordinary claim following the incredible excursions made on his recent releases Spoils and Too Long In This Condition). A Wonder Working Stone continues Alasdair’s long-standing love affair and deeply creative interaction with the traditional music of has native Scotland (and beyond), offering an idiosyncratic and nuanced radicalization of that tradition. Indeed, he questions the very notion of ‘tradition’ in the modern age, with songs addressing topics such as mortality (as ever), life, love, sex, faith and history. There is a meditation on loss—the losing of self, of the music of the nation?—that is belied and ultimately denied by the lively nature of the work. The arrangements of A Wonder Working Stone are dense with the music of friends, realizing the lifeblood of community, and throughout the album, they are presented with raucously cinematic flair. In the middle of it all, Roberts delivers his unique ‘scordatura’ finger style guitar and distinctive tenor vocals with the backing of a core group of among Glasgow’s finest musicians—BEN REYNOLDS (electric guitar), SHANE CONNOLLY (drums), RAFE FITZPATRICK (fiddle, rap), STEVIE JONES (bass) and with special guest...
CD $13.75
01/22/2013
2XLP $21.50
01/22/2013
***Avan songstress AZITA has returned from wherever she goes when we can’t see her, and as always, she’s bearing drifts of music that shock us out of our reverie and into hers. The sounds of her new Year are bright, bold, surrealistic, playful—among the best songs you’re gonna hear in this or any other annum. Azita’s stance going back through the years has been bold, to say the least. It’s possible that audacious is a better word for it. Or worse—but extremity is part of the essence of her expression, whether in the form of extreme punk theatre with BRIDE OF NO NO and THE SCISSOR GIRLS, the electronic sounds on her solo debut, Music For Scrambled Brains, or the far reaches of piano pop music that she has surveyed on her albums Enantiodromia, Life On the Fly, How Will You? and Disturbing the Air. Whichever direction Azita is flying off into, she moves with preternatural conviction. Of course, this is just what we see down here on the ground. From her perspective, Azita’s just doing what she does and it’s totally normal. That’s what makes her such a compelling freak in our eyes—excuse me, artist—there’s a difference in gravity, and even among her peers in Chicago’s music and arts scene (of which she was voted 2011’s best singer-songwriter by the Chicago Reader), Azita stands apart. Why are we not surprised that these songs of Year were conceived for an avant-garde theatre piece? Azita has collaborated previously with playwright...
LP $19.75
11/20/2012
This year, long term collaborators DAWN MCCARTHY and BONNIE PRINCE BILLY present you with a Christmas gift—a new holiday single, “Christmas Eve Can Kill You,” backed with “Walking the Dog.” From the Seeger Sisters to Elvis, Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard and beyond, there is a remarkable musical tradition of decking the halls and fa-la-lala- la-ing from singers and pickers of all stripes. In addition to singing in the season, the two sides of the single also offer a forecasting of Bonnie and Dawn’s 2013 album release covering Everly Brothers songs to their hearts’ content.
7" $6.00
11/20/2012
***2012, the year that was and still is, even! That was/is when we wrapt up the ’slaught of SIC ALPS 7" records that had only begun to pour forth in the fall of ’011, before we finally guve in and gave the greatest gift a Sic Alps punter would want—a record whose sides don’t end after one song! But having lain Sic Alps upon you, the band and we are back to short-play madcaps here—they’re just more fun, aren’t they? For this time around, Sic Alps are positively in the company of like-minded men and incredibile men to boot! Yas, yas: our under-pop prodigies are hanging out next door to, on the lit’ral other side of the record from their prodigal hero ZARJAZ, the TRONICS’ leader so recently covered on Sic Alps’ “Pangea Globe” 7"EP. That’s right, the still-innovatin’ uber-legend of the British post-punk scene has stepped from the woodwork of the internet, where his recent Zarjaz and FREAKAPUSS outputs lurk, and into the grooves of a vinyl record for the first time in flipping dog’s ears! So, “Here Today, Here Tomorrow” is the vinyl debut of Freakapuss, a new classic in the somehow-unchanged-yettotally-new vein, using a bit of guitar, congas and percussion (courtesy of STEVE DORE), and acid-tongued vocals to do the trick. A raw and incessant performance—delightful! Sic Alps handle the flip with a true singles side: a last-minute-deletion from their recent long-player (too strong—it was meant to live alone) called “New Trawgs III.” It’s in the powerful...
7" $6.00
11/06/2012
***BACK IN PRINT!!! Received an 8.8 Best New Reissue rating from Pitchfork. REISSUED!!! As we steer ourselves away post-haste from the (semi-arbitrary watershed) year 2000 (or 2001, if you’re that kind), many among us are still unsure of which stance to prefer: that of the forward-looking visionary elite or the historically-informed cult of the sentimentalist. Confusing times, but timely times for the reissue of ROYAL TRUX’s 1998 “masterpiece” (according to many, though we are inclined to believe that all of their releases were equally masterful), Accelerator. This album split the difference and intersected both angles to create an ass-kicking music machine that still confronts today with its dialed-out production values rendering ten tunes of glittering platinum hooks and colored by numbers with hooligan-outfitted choruses.
LP $17.25
10/09/2012
CD $13.75
10/09/2012
***BACK IN STOCK!!! Received a 8.0 rating from Pitchfork. If there be just one TY SEGALL record to encapsulate this brave ol’ year, Twins is that very one. In fact, Twins just might be the blast that ends it all—or the explosion that launches a brave new evolution? The songs of Twins are haunted by ghosts, shadowed by the other that we’ll never see, struggling to rise above. A fury of rock ensues: songs rigged to explode on a dime, fired from a cannon into the stratosphere. They fuse together into one multivarious projectile, a bullet from a gun marked yin and yan.
LP $24.25
10/09/2012
CD $13.75
01/15/2013
MC $8.50
10/09/2012
***CHECK STOCK!!! Received a 7.9 rating from Pitchfork. For the second flight of the shadowy witch-god brothers, RANGDA have changed their status from False Flag to Formerly Extinct! Upon examination, there’s reason beyond their rhyme-free wanderings. Since the last album, see, Rangda have been all around this world as the wise men and the fools alike in lands both high and low. They’ve seen the young and invest-less kneel amp-side, waiting for musical succor, then in the next town over they’ve felt the cold chill of being left for dead and seen their music dubbed “so wrong it must be Rangda” strictly for some local pen-lifter’s personal chuckles. How we can even claim that Formerly Extinct displays a greater fluidity than the well-oiled zero-to-60Khz hairpins of False Flag is a matter of debate around DC corporate HQ. It seems to depend on how you define the semi-metallic element of sound sometimes called “sharp.” False Flag featured a tune called “Serrated Edges,” which made sense in the knife-flying arc of that album. Sharp is a claw-like quality in generous supply on Formerly Extinct as well—a graphic picture in sharp focus, perhaps with cleaner edges yet unmistakably gruesome subjects. While False Flag found these slingers in a whirlwinded shred-fest, each trying to out do each other with what they brought to the Rangda lair (er, recording studio), Formerly Extinct blossoms like the home-grown hybrid of a three-headed beast well-practiced in its body. A lean ’n’ amazingly mean, greased-up, child-eating machine. Born to...
LP $21.50
09/18/2012
CD $13.75
09/18/2012
***The fifth album from San Francisco’s beloved SIC ALPS. Aiming for the toppermost of the poppermost, Sic and the gang wave their mangled wand—and lo! The hits just keep on a-comin'. Self-titled just it's just their selves. This could be the album of the year—doesn't matter what year you're reading this either. Sic Alppeal is eternal.(STREET DATE - 9/18/2012)
LP $17.25
09/18/2012
CD $13.75
09/18/2012
MC $8.50
09/18/2012
***CHECK STOCK!!! Received a 7.4 rating from Pitchfork. The musical journeys of CAROL KLEYN continue with the reissue of Takin’ The Time, her eclectic second album, originally released in 1980. Eight years after writing her first songs and dropping out of college to pursue her passion as a street musician, Carol was still following the love, making music and magic as she roamed free up and down the California coastline. The harp that BOBBY BROWN gave her back in 1971 was still her main axe whenever she played, and the primary instrument she used on her debut album Love Has Made Me Stronger. That record had been self-produced, and Carol sold copies wherever she played, but for the production of Takin’ The Time, Bobby Brown stepped into the producer’s role. He had already produced two incredible albums for himself (The Enlightening Beam of Axonda and Bobby Brown Live) and in the studio, he succeeded in marrying his sound to Carol’s, producing a sleek, light vibe that conveyed all the hope and joy that Carol’s songs held within themselves. Carol played with a band for the first half of the record, while the other half embraced the more familiar solo setting that her audience knew and loved. These were smooth sounds for a new decade that included concerns about the environment and an ever present prayer for peace.
LP $19.75
08/21/2012
CD $13.75
08/21/2012
***CHECK STOCK!!! Received a 7.0 rating from Pitchfork. SIX ORGANS OF ADMITTANCE as an electric entity is not without precedent, BEN CHASNY regularly performs with a full, electric band, often cascades an electric guitar solo in the middle of an acoustic jam, and has recorded entire sides of electric drone. This element goes all the way back to 2002, when a short-lived rock version of Six Organs (with the members of COMETS ON FIRE) toured the West Coast and etched a few demos to tape before moving on. Ten years later, with the idea to record new songs as a full rock band firmly entrenched in his mind, Chasny warped over to TIM GREEN’s Louder Studios witm members of Comets On Fire as his backing band. He emerged with Ascent, the rollicking realizationof the Six Organs full band experience.
LP $21.50
08/21/2012
CD $13.75
08/21/2012
***BACK IN PRINT!!! There comes a time in a man’s life where he has to take stock, and it is good that if during the time of stocktaking, he can look back with friends (and his brokers) by his side. This isn’t just true of men, but princes as well. On Now Here’s My Plan, BONNIE PRINCE BILLY circles back to six of his tunes, plucked from such notable years as 2009, 2005, 1996, 2001, 2003 and 1998. These new takes were played with BEN BOYE, VAN CAMPBELL, EMMETT KELLY, DANNY KIELY, and ANGEL OLSON, all of whom are Wolfroy Goes to Town players and veterans of Bonnie ‘Prince’ tours of recent vintage. What’s more, this EP was recorded by STEVE ALBINI, the engineer of record on the very first Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy album back in 1996! The recording was made at Electrical Audio in Chicago.
CD $11.25
07/24/2012
12" $12.75
07/24/2012
***BACK IN STOCK!!! Philosophy/Religion. Where God Is Good was the first step in a more ornate and sophisticated direction for OM, Advaitic Songs achieves a level of composition that would’ve been impossible to foresee. There remains the singularity of purpose that is the core of all OM records, but no single reason can account for this comprehensive nature of their evolution. On this album the core primary sound of OM remains, yet everything reaches further and becomes more of itself. Whatever drone-doom camp that OM had previously been placed in has been decimated by the sheer imagination and expansive quality of this recording. For a band that has continually followed its own course, and stood alone in its sound and approach, Advaitic Songs for certain, is the band’s most focused, progressive document.
CD $13.75
07/24/2012
2XLP $27.75
07/24/2012
MC $8.50
01/22/2013
***BACK IN PRINT!!! Born from a similar, natural need for stillness as well as agitation, LAETITIA SADIER (STEREOLAB, MONADE) delivers her follow-up solo LP, Silencio—an album exploring the individual connection to a deeper self placed in a broader environment, in a similarly fresh kind of way. The album opens with “The Rule of the Game,” a song inspired by Jean Renoir’s 1939 film La Regle Du Jeu, thematically taking the ruling classes’ responsibility for the rise of fascism as its focus. “Auscultation to the Nation” comments on the monetary system, literally translated from a rant by a France Inter phone-in listener who questioned the political legitimacy of our monetary leaders. Who needs leaders when you have friends and cohorts? Silencio features some exciting collaboration: “Next Time You See Me” is a new jammer with former Stereolabber, TIM GANE; and musical drifter-man JAMES ELKINGTON provides writing for two tracks, “Fragment pour le future de l’homme” and “There Is A Price To Pay For Freedom (And It Isn’t Security),” in addition to recording and playing on much of the record. Of more concern is the singularity of Laetitia Sadier. That voice, the one that reaches you and wraps you up each time you hear it. Calm, direct. Cool and hot. If you’re unable to attain an inner connection with yourself, Laetitia will connect to it, for you. Silencio is your human modem.
LP $21.50
07/24/2012
CD $13.75
07/24/2012
***CHECK STOCK!!! Received a 7.0 rating from Pitchfork. There’s a new muse at the house of BLUES CONTROL. Yes, mother nature! Now located in the Woodstock of east Pennsylvania, Lehigh Valley, Blues Control conceived Valley Tangents far from the madding crowds they’d previously swarmed with and composed among. Could this be the reason for the homegrown, natural feel of the music, with the metronomical hissing of summer mosquito-bots behind their signature Debussy via Guaraldi qua Bley qua Hornsby pianisms, and the playful juxtapositions of a full spectrum of rock colors: stadium, industrial, psych and prog (to name just a few)? And yet, Blues Control’s shape-shifting qualities could lead us to type them as a mystic lounge act, with spacey guitar leads, a clarion synth and the punch of real drums. Only to suddenly discover they were instead playing inside a world music bag, wrapping their mellow drug-mospheres around a crisp keyboard center, evoking heat and nature with waves radiating from seemingly formal western scales! The exotic and the classical, wedded together with a freedom the old masters couldn’t imagine. Of course, man has always yearned to smoke the grass on the other side of his society’s fence—like McCartney in the jungle playing his staid English beats while running through ebony and ivory scales, Blues Control are liable to superimpose the British blues over new waves just to feel the juice run down their legs. Upon hearing Valley Tangents, long-time listeners will surely attest that the band are increasingly capable of...
LP $17.75
06/19/2012
CD $13.75
06/19/2012
MC $8.50
06/19/2012
***BACK IN STOCK!!! Received a 7.1 rating from Pitchfork. A collection of the early music of SILVER JEWS back in print for the first time in forever. Early Times contains all the tracks from the band’s Dime Map of the Reef 7-inch and The Arizona Record 12-inch, documenting the telepathic counter-intuition between DAVID BERMAN, STEPHEN MALKMUS and BOBBY NASTANOVICH, who went into such specific different directions later in life. “Trillion Story Walkup” aficionados and apologists know that there’s loads more from these muddy wells, enough so that Drag City might well get around to another dose, another couple sides of Silver Jews early times before too long.
LP $21.50
06/19/2012
CD $13.75
06/19/2012
MC $8.50
06/26/2012
***BACK IN PRINT!!! This classic recording from the LP era is back on vinyl. In 1970, MAYO THOMPSON (once-and-future leader of THE RED KRAYOLA) recorded Corky’s Debt To His Father. Walt Andrus’ Texas Revolution label released the record-but just barely, selling a few hundred LPs with no promotion to speak of. Includes a 7-inch single featuring the instrumental “Woof” which was recorded at the same sessions but not released until a Red Krayola 2004 compilation.
CD $13.75
09/27/1996
LP+7" $25.75
06/12/2012
***BACK IN STOCK!!! The first-ever authorized reissue of GARY HIGGINS’ highly-sought 1973 Red Hash album. Eleven haunting tracks of folk-pop played on acoustic and electric guitar and arranged with percussion, cello, flute, piano, organ, bass, mandolin, and Higgins’ transcendent vocals. Includes two unheard bonus tracks—“Don’t Ya Know,” an early ‘80s home recording, and “Last Great Sperm Whale,” a 1975 track featuring Higgins and three of the Red Hash players. Includes bonus 7-inch of the once-CD only bonus tracks "Don't Ya Know" and "Last Great Sperm Whale.”
CD $13.75
08/29/2005
LP+7" $25.40
06/12/2012
***CHECK STOCK!!! Received a 7.9 rating from Pitchfork. DOPE BODY formed in December-of-2008-Baltimore as an experiment in musical instincts, jamming and writing the simplest one-part / one-riff / one-minute little jerk-off songs that were the first thing to come to mind (most ended up on their first tape 20 Pound Brick). Natural History is Dope Body in possession of what might be their most COMMERCIALLY ACCESSIBLE album ever— especially if your idea of “commercially accessible” is Half-Machine Lips Moves, Psychic, Powerless…, or “Salad Days”-era punk.
LP $21.50
05/22/2012
CD $13.75
05/22/2012
***BACK IN STOCK!!! Received an 8.2 rating from Pitchfork. Known for rock and roll both savage and incisive and pastorally acidwinged, TY SEGALL and WHITE FENCE have collaborated on a set of songs that accelerate wildly from where we last found them. Hair squares their guitar-fringed traffic with purple flashes, escalating every song before multiple explosions rock the frame during their penultimate joust. Goodby Bread and Is Growing Faith are both amazing records in their own right, but neither has the dual-turbine speaker-breakers to be found on Hair. Chanting to and from the dome with your living soundtrack, providing the Hair-dressing for your psychic salad are Ty Segall & White Fence-builder TIM PRESLEY, with SEAN PRESLEY and MIKAL CRONIN along for the frantic carpet ride. It unrolls from within and in between them and electricity takes many forms, plunging from rock trips to acoustic strollers to poppy reveries to freak-downs at side’s end. Hair gets tangled deep in clouds of guitars and drums and counter-riffs and percussion and noise, then pressed flat and combed back with vocal harmonies and compression.
LP $21.95
04/24/2012
CD $13.75
04/24/2012
MC $8.50
06/26/2012
***We was spending time with SIC ALPS the other day—staying inside, playing sides—and we got on a Tronics run. Sic Alps ain’t collectors or anything…they know their stuff, but not to the point where they live in a museum. Be that as it may, those old Tronics singles are all right by the stereo, pretty much like a part of the décor. And the same goes within the Sic sound as well. Maybe a secret weapon we’re revealing here, but they’ve got more rocks just like it in the quiver, don’t worry. And it’s not like you’re gonna find any of those originals for less than like a hundred pounds of flesh and blood, shit. We did hear tell of a couple of reissues just recently—power to you, living in a world of affordable Tronics recs! But enough about Tronics! We’re not talking about them, we’re talking about a sweet and hot mini record of Tronics songs deuced and reduced by the one and the only Sic Alps! Yeah. So here’s a day’s Sic time put in one night, four songs worth—blathered and slaved over, and tinted in the mix for awesome effect. Some beats get softened, some are solidified with march-force pressure, tempos run a bit faster/slower in general…all informed by a fire/passion for the game that those guys and these guys play. Like when the Stones covered Chuck. Love backed by force indeed. “Pangea Globe” it’s called. (STREET DATE - 4/24/2012)
7" $6.00
04/24/2012
***REISSUED ON VINYL!!! In this wake of BONNIE PRINCE BILLY’s soul-affirming (shattering?) Master and Everyone, the ‘Prince’ took a year or so to gather himself before The Letting Go. Stock was taken and a bunch of “greatest” Palace songs were rerecorded in best classic style, with a crew of Nashville studio wreckers smoothing down the edges. The result: another 15-song journey through the past, this time squeezing through the present as well. Four songs from the Lost Blues lineup confirms them as all-time greats. Also M.I.A. on vinyl since 2005 or so.
CD $13.75
03/30/2004
2XLP $20.85
04/24/2012
***Scotland’s MAIRI MORRISON and ALASDAIR ROBERTS team together on a new album of primarily traditional Gaelic and Scottish songs. Urstan presents a spirited and innovative musical re-imaging the numbers and includes one original tune each from Mairi and Ali. There’s fastidious notes included in both Gaelic and English, but the compulsive rhythms and moods conjured by the band will leave you little time to read while the music plays—Urstan is a physically absorbing experience, filled to abundance with color and the love of life. (STREET DATE - 3/27/2012)
LP $19.75
03/27/2012
CD $13.75
03/27/2012
***Toward The Low Sun is the first DIRTY THREE album since 2005’s Cinder. Returning to the basic formula for the band, the labor and decision-making is divined evenly and democratically as they improvise themselves into the heart of the moment. The sounds of traditional music are glimpsed in WARREN ELLIS’ violin while MICK TURNER and JIM WHITE blow clouds that envelop the picture. Each take the lead as the untidy trio trip lightly and jazzily from etude to still life to exploding the air into ames around us with just a violin, electric guitar and trap kit. Don’t shade your eyes! Look Toward the Low Sun and you will know once again the burn of the Dirty Three. The crusty troika are back, for the first time ever on Drag City Records. (STREET DATE - 2/28/2012)
LP $17.25
02/28/2012
CD $13.75
02/28/2012
***CHECK STOCK!!! Received a 7.0 rating from Pitchfork. SOPHIA KNAPP’s Into the Waves is unlike any record you have heard in the past or will hear in the future. Upon listening, much like Alice in Wonderland, you are transported to a new sonic realm—dazzling and uniquely pop but with its own set of rules. Some elements of the landscape are warmly familiar: Sophia’s voice appears first and foremost—sensual, emotive, relaxed, and loaded with personality. Baroquely fingerpicked guitar, smooth piano, crystalline synths, and a down and dirty rhythm section complete the picture. Aspects of this place bring to mind melodic psych pop of the ‘60s, Tropicalia ballads, chilly New York dance records of the ‘80s, the seduction of Stevie Nicks or Françoise Hardy—but make no mistake, Into the Waves is a pop vocal record of our time. Into the Waves is Sophia’s first record outside of CLIFFIE SWAN/LIGHTS, the Brooklyn based rock band that she has performed in over the past five years alongside Linnea Vedder. A blend of acoustic and synthetic instruments frame Sophia’s cinematic song structures this time around, in contrast to the electric/analog paradigm of Cliffe Swan. The mystical elements of Cliffe Swan continue to flow through this record, as do Sophia’s signature harmonies and layered vocal arrangements. Gentle ballads here are underlined with hip shaking grooves and sparkle sounds, and the lyrical content is more detailed and intimate. Tales of love, magic, and transformation rub shoulders with themes of alienation and loss. The mysterious words, studded with...
LP $21.50
02/28/2012
CD $13.75
02/28/2012
***Rooted in the same dark earth as Wolfroy Goes to Town, the two songs that make up the“The B-Sides for ‘Time to be Clear’ 7" single reach higher peaks, as sides of singles always should. Ever the trail-razer, BONNIE PRINCE BILLY hops into something funny here: a three-song 7" single with its head chopped off! Rather than try something silly like put the songs on a larger format, the b-sides are accorded the space they need to rock and groove while the A-side exists in our head, an echo of the epic, endless album that was Wolfroy Goes to Town. Starting with a familiar weary tone and limping gait-lessness, “Whipped,” quickly ascends to heights of emoting vocals not encountered throughout the entire album that preceded it. The comfy bob-and-strut of 21st century honky-tonk gives “Out of Mind” a sweet jukebox feeling, again creating a safe place for naked expression to occur in short order. Yes, the pleasures are fairly immense here, in the way that only two songs can provide.
7" $6.00
02/28/2012
***BACK IN PRINT ON VINYL!!! JIM O’ROURKE’s Halfway to a Threeway 12”EP back to set turntables a-spinnin’! Fans of his Eureka and Insignificance albums (not to mention Jim’s tomfoolery as part of the Loose Fur band) will appreciate the analog pressing of these four slices of the pop music party-pooper combination of folk, classic rock,, smooth jazz and a bit of the old avant-garde to help communicate the twisted ways of the misanthrope that made Jim such a perennial in the fickle world of record sales.
CD $11.25
08/31/2009
12" $17.75
02/21/2012
***Back from the abyss, DAMON & NAOMI with GHOST fills an empty space in the continuously flowering discography of Damon & Naomi. It was back in 1995 that DAMON KRUKOWSKI and NAOMI YANG first met Ghost. They felt an immediate kinship and soon plans were afoot to collaborate in some way—but it wasn’t until the year 2000 that they encountered MASAKI BATOH and MICHIO KURIHARA in the studio. The sonic trip they embarked upon was a revelation for all concerned. Alongside Kurihara’s singular guitar style, Batoh increased the peace in the mix, placing colorful and organic sounds within the dreamy conceptions of Damon & Naomi, mixing an ever-greater sense of deep space into the already massive songs. A shared sympathy for folk music informed the session as well. This in no way prefigured the back-to-folk movement of the coming decade, as the natural qualities of Damon & Naomi with Ghost exist out of time, today as then. It makes this record sound just as new today as it did old a decade or so back. This is part of the magic of Damon & Naomi with Ghost. In the years since then, Kurihara has become a part of Damon & Naomi, touring and playing with them on all their recordings. (STREET DATE - 1/31/2012)
CD $13.75
01/31/2012
LP+7" $17.25
01/31/2012
***BACK IN STOCK!!! THE HOWLING HEX, Wilson Semiconductors: one guitar, four songs, a multitrack recording unit. Out of the desert and into the mountains, The Howling Hex are at large once again, upping the ante by lowering the body count this time around. Recorded and mastered at Sonic Ranch in the tiny township of Tornillo, a border town in El Paso County, Wilson Semiconductors is a pure strain of The Howling Hex—a Hex of one, one NEIL MICHAEL HAGERTY, who did everything on the record after the writing, which was shared in spots with longtime Hex-mate MIKE SIGNS. Alone at the wheel don’t necessarily want for company though—with time and space on his hands, Hagerty rolls out elegant norteño bass lines and then vocals and guitars that mesh like homemade gears with the beat. Despite the unbending pace, something seems to be melting as if the merry-go-round done broke down—but that’s just the sound of you hearing the music, a common by-product of The Howling Hex listening experience.
LP $17.75
12/06/2011
CD $13.75
12/06/2011
***Drag City presents reissues of the avant-garde DIY label Groovy founded by PETE SHELLEY (BUZZCOCKS) and FRANCIS COOKSON. Surrealism raised its willfully mutated head on the third Groovy release, Hangahar, credited to SALLY SMMIT AND HER MUSICIANS. Claiming to be the soundtrack of the film Hangahar, the album was inspired by a casual demonstration of a made-up sung language. A full-blown recording session captured this previously unheard quantity, the better to wake the world to its allure. The Groovy gang broke out the oscillator and any other synth devices they had on hand (along with a kitchen cabinet full of impromptu percussives) to back up the operatic overtones of the mysterious eponymous chantueses via drones, riffs, chanting and, with reverb pots fully open, loads of ominous atmosphere throughout. Despite the deep feeling of synchronous accord throughout this recording, it has proved to be something of a path not followed for the once and future SALLY TIMMS of eventual MEKONS fame.
LP $19.50
12/06/2011
***Drag City presents reissues of the avant-garde DIY label Groovy founded by PETE SHELLEY (BUZZCOCKS) and FRANCIS COOKSON. As of 1981, a sea-change was signaled with the Buzzcocks’ break-up, Pete Shelley’s subsequent solo career and energy going to other projects. However, even as these events were unfolding, recordings were made on a porta-studio at Pete’s place that further realized the Groovy direction. After the pubs closed, Pete brought back a motley crew of usual suspects and special guests, broke out the synths, drums and what-have-yer attitude, resulting in a wealth of additional material that provided private listening pleasure for the Groovy alumni over the years. Culled from Francis Cookson tapes, these pieces make a fourth Groovy installment entitled STRANGE MEN IN SHEDS WITH SPANNERS that features a bent towards more disciplined rhythm pieces scored with a very purposeful array of synthetic sounds—truly the lost next new wave of Groovy, finally crashing on our ready shores in 2011.
LP $21.50
12/06/2011
***CHECK STOCK!!! Received a 7.7 rating from Pitchfork. 200 YEARS is none other than those straw dogs of skull counting (and flowers!), BEN CHASNY (SIX ORGANS OF ADMITTANCE) and ELISA AMBROGIO (MAGIC MARKERS) Yep, that’s what they called them back in grade school—and that’s where the storm clouds started massing. It would be years and many cold dishes of revenge before this unique version of socialization would blossom into the music that both are rumored for today. They still don’t lie, but the debut 200 Years LP sounds like they’re figuring out a way to build around the smoking holes, instead of the rough old craniometry count down. If destruction is a type of construction, then you can say we here at DCHQ knew they had it in ‘em the whole time! Like magnets, or Voltron, apart these two have wreacked havoc with electricity and enemies, but when joined create a force of absolute cohesion and power. Quiet-like, though! 200 Years is to a listening experience like seeing is through a dirty window—you can’t see anything clear out there but the light. And that’s more than you got in the room. Sonically, it’s basically Ben and Elisa with guitars, Elisa’s voice, Ben’s guitar alone, the breath of a harmonium, the faintest strains of piano. There’s more playing in the mix than just that, but it’s like that ol’ dirty window—the sounds are more not there than they are there.
LP $19.75
11/08/2011
CD $13.75
11/08/2011
Roberts, Alasdair & Karine Polwart / Wright, Drew
Wright, Drew / Roberts, Alasdair & Karine Polwart
Drag City
***This split 7" record is being released in tandem with the compilation album Whaur the Pig Gaed on the Spree: Scottish Recordings by Alan Lomax 1951–’57. The A-side of the single is ALASDAIR ROBERTS’ own arrangement and performance (with renowned Scottish singer KARINE POLWART) of “Captain Wedderburn’s Courtship,” a traditional ballad included on Whaur the Pig… from the mouth of an octogenarian farmer named Willie Mathieson. The flipside features another young and talented traditionally-minded Scots singer, DREW WRIGHT, who turns in an interpretation of the classic Scots border ballad, “The Dowie Dens O Yarrow.” (STREET DATE - 11/08/2011)
7" $6.00
11/08/2011
***CARLOS PAREDES was once almost hit by the famed Fado singer Amália Rodrigues, while performing at her home. Rumor has it that this was her reaction whenever she was deeply moved by someone’s artistry. Paredes was one of the greatest Portuguese guitarists, and a symbol of the Portuguese culture—not simply a great composer, but one of the men behind the world-wide understanding of his instrument and his country. The Portuguese guitar is an instrument that dates back several hundred years. It was built according to different standards around the country, but by the time Paredes began playing it, it had been generally agreed upon the construction: a short-necked, wide-bodied instrument with twelve-strings strung in six courses comprising two steel strings each. It has a distinctive tuning mechanism and it is most notably associated with the traditional Portuguese popular music known as fado. Carlos Paredes, “the Man with the ousand Fingers,” passed away in 2004, after a long, ten-year fight with a disease that tragically prevented him from playing his instrument in those final years of his life. His musical voice has never really been stilled—but this reissue of the Guitarra Portuguesa and Movimento Perpétuo LPs marks the first time they have ever been released in the United States and the first time they have been repressed anywhere, since 1983. The artwork for both records is a near-perfect copy of the 1967 and 1971 originals, complete with original Portuguese liner notes (and English translations for the unfortunates among us who do...
LP $20.85
11/08/2011