***Coming up on a decade as one of the country’s premier post-punk units, Patois Counselors show no sign of slowing down. In advance of its third album Limited Sphere, Patois Counselors drop One Night at the Daisy Chain to whet the appetites of those who crave only the finest in tense tunesmithery. Led by Bo White, the Counselors have swelled to a sextet; but for a band of this size, the music remains stripped of excess and White’s songs are given ample room to shine. As this session demonstrates, Bo writes some absolute gems. Recorded and mixed by Ian Rose at the Daisy Chain in Brooklyn, One Night captures the band in the midst of a short tour, firing on all cylinders, taking no prisoners and laughing all the way to the (blood) bank. One Night at the Daisy Chain functions as both a career retrospective and a teaser for the forthcoming LP. Highlights from PC’s previous albums (Proper Release / The Optimal Seat) get another lease on life as the band breathes fresh air into tracks like “Modern Station,” “Repeat Offender” and “The Galvanizer.” If new cuts like “Ranking Set,” “What’s The News” and “Fountain of UHF” are any indication, Limited Sphere will complete Patois Counselors’ hat trick of stellar full-lengths.
CD $11.00
03/29/2024
MC $11.00
03/29/2024
***"At the frayed bottom-edge of Indiana—just a moderate bike ride north of Louisville, Kentucky—multi-instrumentalist, artist and songwriter RYAN DAVIS’ Americana-noir soundwaves have been emanating for years in a myriad of forms. As driving force for the lauded STATE CHAMPION, long-running member of TROPICAL TRASH, administrator of the esoteric and excellent Cropped Out festival, and lone proprietor of the Sophomore Lounge label, Davis lays down his first proper ‘solo’ release with Dancing on the Edge, a rich, 2xLP tapestry of tunes that absolutely glows over seven expansive cuts. It’s a pure collage of modernity and heritage. Recorded in early 2023 with help both in-studio and remotely from peers like JOAN SHELLEY, CATHERINE IRWIN (FREAKWATER), WILL LAWRENCE (FELICE BROTHERS, GUN OUTFIT, JOHN EARLY), JENNY ROSE (GIVING UP), CHRISTOPHER MAY (MAIL THE HORSE), ELISABETH FUCHSIA (FOOTINGS, BONNIE "PRINCE" BILLY), and AARON ROSENBLUM (SON OF EARTH, SAPAT), Dancing on the Edge draws backup perhaps primarily from Davis' tight-knit drinking buddies-cum-cast of collaborators in EQUIPMENT POINTED ANKH (records on Astral Editions, Bruit Direct Disques, Torn Light)—a five-headed hive-mind from which he drew impetus for his own foray into more abstract and improvisational terrain these past few years under the ROADHOUSE alias. The results herein are melancholic, gentle, minimal yet colorful in mood: a lilting highway accompaniment of crisp instrumentation and a relaxed, amiable approach to vocals with rhapsodic wordsmithery. Fans of the aforementioned artists as well as those of Souled American, David Berman, Kurt Vile and Comes A Time-era Neil should all easily find bounty.
CD $11.00
02/02/2024
MC $11.00
02/02/2024
***On their third album, Al Karpenter merges its singular vision with a host of collaborators. In synchronicity with a recent CIA Debutante team-up, the Berlin-based group rises to the challenge of expanding its parameters. As Al Karpenter’s resident theoretician Mattin explains, “The last record was a result of the pandemic, introverted and low energy. The Forthcoming is a result of the possibilities of making music and touring again. We had such an amazing time on tour with Sunik Kim, Dominic Coles and Triple Negative, that at the end of our concert at Cafe Oto, we all played together.” Whether delving into manic plunderphonics with Sunik Kim on “A Brand New Brontophobia” [an intense fear of extremely loud, natural noises in the environment - dict. ed.] or accessing the hidden burrows that tunnel beneath polite society with anarchic rock-folk deconstructionists Triple Negative on the title track, Al Karpenter is revolving around its own matrix. “Poison Sun” throws the New York-based Coles into the mix and you feel as if you are seesawing between competing parties, attempting to soak up their atmospheres during each pass through. Mattin again: “The feeling of exuberance, chaos and fragmentation is confronted with the pleasures of collective music making. This record is outwards, full on and complex. Tiktok attention span meets electroacoustic and concrete techniques. This record is of today.” It’s about time—The Forthcoming is here, for ever more.
LP $35.50
08/11/2023
***A collaboration between the Spanish Cabalists, Al Karpenter & French Rosicruanists, CIA Debutante, was not specifically foretold in the Fama Fraternitatis, but read between the lines, friend. That is where the truth lurks. The bilious Marxist splatter of the former, coursing alongside the dystopian surrealism of the latter, is a nefarious seance gambit born in the ether. Many voices are heard-fractious, cryptic, suffused, fading one into the other, the results often as hazy as the most bewitching pastis. Don't look now, but all the tables are levitating. Is that a spirit trumpet in the distance? Am I hearing the channeled moans of a ghost, or did someone miss last call (so eerily similar in their discontent)? The plachette is moving so fast across the ouija board, it's making a blabber-mouth out of my fingers. I had no idea anyone spilled this much verbiage in the afterlife. The crackle & whoosh of electronics fill the air. A cape is not required, but considering these Mandrake-like shenanigans, it couldn’t hurt. But then I am the one being charmed. Al Karpenter / CIA Debutante are the beguilers. Trance-medium discourse never sounded so preposterously spot on. File alongside fabled, like minded alliances such as; Ash Ra Temple & Timothy Leary, ‘Seven Up’, Brigitte & The Hansen Experience, ‘Frau Hansen Am Bass’, the Shadow Ring, ‘Lighthouse’.—Tom Lax (siltbreeze)
LP $35.50
08/11/2023
***"Recording the Strapping Fieldhands at Bernie's was our (Tommy Jay & Myself) first rewarding attempt at recording a band live in a club setting that i can recall. It was great fun working with this crew of magical musical misfits in what now seems a long passed epoch ago. I'm very happy they chose to use a bit of said endeavor for this record and will always cherish the memories of my times both here in mythical Harrisburg Ohio and Olde Philadelphius with these wandering minstrels in perilous search of the Golden Fleece while enduring the ensuing trials by fire water & the fickle nature of fame. Long passed perhaps are the days when rose petals were scattered at their feet, but these petrified remains of their copious output will baffle marveling aural anthropologists for millenniums to come! Zeus Bless the Strapping Field Hand & all who sail with them! May we once again share quahogs amid peatbogs somewhere down the sandy path to netherness."—mRep
LP $26.95
06/09/2023
***"All the way from Sydney ever/never presents you with a masterpiece for our current times. It has the aura of a great classic record, avant-garde meets melodic intensities and contemporary poetry while inviting the listener to the urgent need for collective reflection. A fantastic array of players with complex instrumentation offer us intricate narratives and multilayered soundscapes: Maeve Parker (flute, poetry, xylophone, and keys), Lyn Heazlewood (guitar, fan, vocals, and accordion) Sabina Rysnik (guitar, vocals, and keys), and Andrew McLellan (bass, vocals, electronics, and piano). Marcus Whale plays saxophone guest on 'Fantasy in Facsimile'. I was already incredibly excited about this record since Andrew McLellan's Cured Pink album Current Climate (also published on CD by ever/never) is for me, one of the best records of the last decade. Experimental no-wave dub as its best. The expectations have not only been met but astoundingly exceeded. Witness K, is a different affair altogether from Current Climate. Sparse but thoughtful. Recitations punctuated by sparks of shoegaze interventions make the mood serene but with a constantly menacing undercurrent. The compositions, the playing, and the production are masterfully accomplished; clear, precise, and beautifully executed. Think if the Shadow Ring finally play with their idols ZNR, and together they invite Florence Shaw and Roland S. Howard to do a non-commercial city pop record to be produced by Mica Levi. This album cuts through the confusing digital entropic reality, in order to give you the necessary space to reflect while wandering subtly through field recordings, poetry, and...
LP $31.95
03/03/2023
***Composer and singer Donna (née Parker) Allen is prolific, and fast. Music pours out of her, and vinyl is unequal to capturing the flow. Accordingly, ever/never is honored to present Parker's First Song Diary as a limited-edition cassette. We first encountered Donna’s work through Chronophage, one of the defining guitar bands of the past decade and a rare bulwark of political radicalism and artistic independence in the U.S. underground. As singer and songwriter for that band, Donna favors an accomplished fingerstyle technique on guitar, unpredictable changes, and a winding melodicism with few parallels in contemporary rock music. The ’Phage suggests a great, lost band of the high SST era, restless and open and committed to its personal vision. Since moving to New York in 2021, Donna has linked arms with the city’s anarcho-punk scene, written about avant-garde and dissident art of the late 20th century, and produced reams of solo piano music. Her song diary is a return to the intense, personal songwriting she practices with her main band. True to its title, it reminds us of the intimacy and spontaneity of an earlier home-recording era, when the cassette was an easy and immediate way of sharing ideas with kindred spirits. One is a blend of spare solo pieces for guitars, keyboards, and vocals and fully arranged band pieces. At times, its instrumental sections recall Neil Young and Richard Thompson, Lou Barlow and the Harrisburg Players. At others, these tracks hint at Donna’s love of ‘80s UK pop, which her...
MC $9.75
03/03/2023
***Philadelphia’s Kilynn Lunsford had been conceiving her first solo album since she was a young teen. Growing up through the MTV era of Missy Elliot, Timbaland and the Swing Mob collective, and drawn towards its “sometimes ridiculous, but overloaded” qualities, she found herself returning to that state of emerging adulthood when the moment for a solo record finally arose. The image of Britney Spears being recorded in an empty field somewhere in her native West-Philly—“like Alan Lomax recording Betty Boop near the Delaware water gap”—provided a key 'mental mood image’ for what would eventually become Custodians of Human Succession. As if Blackout was re-imagined by Throbbing Gristle, Lunsford’s debut straddles unclear boundaries between electro-pop, post-punk and the avant-garde; it delves into those liminal spaces between pop culture and experimentalism, between city and country, between verse and chorus. Written over four years, drafted during long car rides from work, hewn out first thing in the morning or last thing at night Custodians…is Lunsford’s first work since the dissolution of her former project, noise-punk outfit Taiwan Housing Project in 2021. Being now uninhibited by the democratic needs of a band writing and jamming in the practise-room, choosing to ‘go solo’ liberated her songbuilding process. While some arrangements would be hammered out for weeks, sometimes it was a loose, “off-the-cuff” take that could make the final cut: “Wanting to combine irreconcilable elements”, Lunsford explains, “we would set up for hours and then do one take, always allowing for the aleatoric to come through”.
LP $26.95
11/18/2022
One hundred miles north of New York City is a post-industrial hardscrabble up-and-down town called Kingston that currently lies somewhere in-between. Kingston is where Rider/Horse came to exist, and where they now call home. Before the Rider/Horse team-up, Cory played guitar and sang in Spray Paint, while Chris was a hired gun for the likes of Trans Am, Les Savy Fav and Scene Creamers.
LP $26.95
11/18/2022
***BACK IN PRINT!!! Final limited pressing. "Murk and mystery are the keys to MOSQUITOES’ unique ability to suck the listener into a wormhole that pulses with menace. Little is known about this new-ish UK unit, but all signs point to an intriguing future. The proof resides within the grooves of Drip Water Hollow Out Stone, Mosquitoes’ 5-song 12” EP on New York City’s fearless Ever/Never Records. Yes, the record’s title functions as a concise explanation of a timeless natural process—but it also reveals the name of each track, small gestures that gradually erode the listener’s sense of physical bearing. The murk radiates and pervades. 'Drip' tosses you into the deep end and taunts you to try to swim. Strangled vocal cries and seemingly random guitar/drum patterns suggest the disorienting tactics of avant-rock legends US Maple. There is a disturbing logic afoot, even as the sounds seem to disappear into a maelstrom of their own making. 'Water' quite literally buzzes with a malevolent grace as rhythms click and sounds reverberate like deep-sea sonar. 'Hollow' channels the throbbing and whirring anxiety of latter-day Sightings, an all-too-rarely seen influence on contemporary noisemakers. It’s a testament to Mosquitoes’ peculiar aesthetics that they can hold their own in such rarefied company. On the flip, Mosquitoes’ put their heads down and burrow deep into into the listener’s skin. 'Out' is an amorphous mass of distended sonics featuring short-circuiting guitars, unpredictable sound-swells and stuttering vocals attempting to communicate in an unspoken language. A perfect place-setting then, for the molten...
12" $26.95
07/29/2022
***BACK IN PRINT!!! Final limited pressing. MOSQUITOES are back and they are deadlier than ever. On Minus Objects, their second 12” EP for Ever/Never Records, Mosquitoes challenge the abyss to a staring contest. Utilizing deep-sixed static dub imperatives over postpunk’s skeletal remains, the enigmatic trio feint & parry, duck & weave, zig & zag like they were born to slip out of your grasp and into your bloodstream. Within Mosquitoes’ all-encompassing buzz, we find a distant link to Mars’ furious caterwaul, a direct connection to the frizzle-fried no wave of Sightings, and a tense granularity that recalls Radian’s studies of disintegration. As the title implies, Mosquitoes create entrancing music using methods of subtraction. Paradox runs rampant over these nine tracks as Mosquitoes gesture towards the intimate, while retaining their forbiddingly alien textures. “Minus Object Four” overwhelms with resonant vocal hum, while “Minus Object Eight” is as desolate and haunted as any Burial track. Few bands can be convincingly accused of pushing the decrepit body of rock music into the future. Mosquitoes do so by hiding the corpse in a deep chamber where shadows lurk and mysteries abound. Elusive, unnerving, sense-scrambling—this is Mosquitoes’ modus operandi. They are a short-circuit made manifest, a cipher without decryption, a riddle without words. Mosquitoes transform the incidental movements of playing electric music (amp hum, string contact, cymbal brushes, ambient clatter) to conjure beguiling rhythmic structures. The initial impression is haphazard, but soon the mastery, and the majesty, become glaringly obvious. Mosquitoes have so thoroughly harnessed control of their...
12" $26.95
07/29/2022
***"The Ruby double 7” was made in loving commemoration of Carl Robert Talbot who was murdered by corrections officers inside the Whalley Avenue jail in New Haven, CT on March 21, 2019 around 7AM. Rob was a magnificently special person, which anyone who knew him knew plainly as fact. The conditions that he was forced to live under and the circumstances in which he died speak volumes to the degradation and humiliation all of us must endure in our current state of affairs. I wish I could say that this record is a celebration of Rob's life but that would be a lie; it is full of heartache, suffering, bitterness and hostility towards a system that dehumanizes even the gentlest among us. Ruby was culled together over a few months entirely from initially improvised tracks made on a variety of second rate guitars—a cheap plastic parlor guitar, a broken banjo, an upside down Strat and the Cowboy Guitar. Most of the rest of the instruments and amplifiers used in overdubbing were thrift store finds and roadside junk. It seemed the only way to honor a man who lived a life almost entirely pieced together from the odds and ends the rest of us left behind. Though the recording process was mostly filled with sadness, a bit of joy peeked in every now and again. At times it seemed like every time I worked another marvelous oddity would occur—an unintended yet wonderful sound would find its way to the tape, never...
2X7" $18.50
07/29/2022
***Fresh off scoring the Sundance nominated short film, The Rifleman (2021), Los Lichis confidently stumble back with their most recent sojourn into the sub underground popular culture milieu with a new 12’’ EP for ever/never records. Enigmatic only because the world is blind and deaf to certain wave lengths, Los Lichis, one of Monterrey, Mexico’s proudest exports bring to you their latest transmission Small Mole & The Flavor Trio. Like a train lurching out the station that can’t decide if it wants to leave or maybe just sit at home and watch the world crumble on television. Providing a perfect soundtrack for transiting to funerals or weddings or birthdays or really anywhere at all, this strain of Raga (Mexican) will surely bring you back home feeling lighter and brighter than when you left.
LP $30.45
03/04/2022
***"Hello, friend. I hope all is well with you. I am writing to let you know that my new album, Reunion, is now available in a limited vinyl edition on the ever/never label. After working with a backing band for the last two records, I decided to return to writing and recording alone in the studio, the way I made A Sudden Shift ten years ago, and the way I did for nearly 20 years before that. I started tracking for Reunion at the tail end of 2019 with my engineer, Gregg, at a beautifully appointed studio in Connecticut. That proved a slow and expensive process, and of course it ground to a halt when the pandemic struck in March 2020. I thought I’d make the best of it, start over and try fleshing out the songs at home on the Mac, so that when the world opened up again I would have a detailed blueprint for the album, and I could go back to the studio and track all of it quickly and methodically. Instead, I wound up making the entire record at home. Gregg’s mix and mastering job made these homemade tracks go bang, and thanks to his finesse, it is the best-sounding record I’ve made so far. Last night when we listened to the test pressing of the album at e/n’s offices, a friend remarked that 'Anita, Sing' is an adult contemporary track. I winced, reflexively, but of course, she was right: the song is based on...
LP $26.95
03/04/2022
***Tiptoeing in, stealth-like, CIA Debutante’s Music For Small Rooms 12” on Ever/Never Records tempts the listener with secrets and their inevitable spilling out into the open. Over the course of several releases, the France-based duo has shown a real gift for delving into the particulars of paranoia, seeding their songs with threats disguised as hooks. On its perfectly succinct new EP, CIA Debutante refines this method, as each of the six tracks plays like dystopian theme songs for closed-circuit television dramas. From the gradually increasing disquiet of “Nuclear Holiday” to the full-on terror of “The Face” (“There’s a blank spot/where the face should be”), CIA Debutante are well-versed in navigating the eternal eddies of existential doubt. With molten electronics accompanying a resigned vocal, “Sinkhole” really does feel like the planet is opening up beneath you, but perhaps you don’t mind as much as you’d have expected. “Faulty Appliances” is a kitchen sink nightmare and even elicits a couple chuckles as it wraps up the leftovers. If you find yourself routinely menaced by everyday objects, then you are primed and ready for the sounds that CIA Debutante pipes into Music For Small Rooms.
LP $26.95
11/19/2021
***Brisbane-born, everywhere raised, Cured Pink have released their fourth and likely final full length album ‘Current Climate’, an album eight years in the making, compiling recordings from 2012-2020. Between 2008 and 2016, Brisbane's Cured Pink rounded a few orbits to make "strangeness that you’ll have to hear a few times before boxing." (Dusted Magazine, 2016). Once the solo exhibition of Andrew McLellan (Enderie, Soft Power, Greg Boring, Witness K) Cured Pink changed pipes with the addition of Glen Schenau (Per Purpose, Bent, Sky Needle), Mitchel Perkins (Per Purpose, Guppy, Psy Ants) and Stuart Busby (the Deadnotes, Threads) to become "a Rube Goldberg machine, primitive industrial vibes of the wondrous kind” (Terminal Boredom, 2013).
CD $6.00
10/22/2021
***CYANIDE TOOTH is back. We don’t know what transpired since he was last picked up on radar, but Tentative Identity is a whole new ballgame in an entirely different arena. After upgrading in the afterlife, Mr. Tooth (aka Creamo Coyl of Spin Age Blasters on WFMU) expands his parameters and takes aim at the fences. As the album opens, we seem to be in familiar territory as a curious transmission comes beaming in from a distant land (New Jersey), but then a jackhammer beat drops in like a flaming hot meteor and all of a sudden—we ain’t in Kansas no more. Someone keeps trying to interrupt, but once the slice/dice session is concluded, we’re trapped in the library and all of the synth manuals are checked out. Is the window smashed, or has it been lifted slightly to let the air in?
MC $7.50
10/22/2021
***The worm never stops turning at MaxE HQ, so as we make another trip thru the solar system on Spacefish Mirth, Ever/Never presents Perfect Mixer/Matchless Pair. Before you ask—Yes, it’s good. Yes, you will enjoy this ravishing ear-tickle of a release. Past meets future. Beats in space. Time falls fast and twists into a funnel cloud of distortion. Perfect Mixer/Matchless Pair is a funhouse reflection in an abandoned amusement park. Perfect Mixer/Matchless Pair is a suicide ride into the vanity mirror universe. Perfect Mixer/Matchless Pair is a cassette and digital download available on Ever/Never Records in the year 2021 and beyond.
MC $7.50
10/22/2021
***One hundred miles north of New York City is a post-industrial hardscrabble up-and-down town called Kingston that currently lies somewhere in-between. Kingston is where Rider/Horse came to exist, and where they now call home. Before the Rider/Horse team-up, Cory played guitar and sang in Spray Paint, while Chris was a hired gun for the likes of Trans Am, Les Savy Fav and Scene Creamers. When normal life forced them to press pause, the construction of Select Trials became an almost daily obsession/meditation for the duo. Recorded, assembled and mixed by Chris, with sounds from a makeshift dub zone set up in the (shuttered-at-the-time) venue Cory owns, Select Trials is a pitch-perfect distillation of C & C’s mithering. “Tremolo Harm” is a high-tension wire that leads into the horizon-vanishing tones of “Chime Inn.” Other tracks, like “Guns In The Snow” and “Prawn Ranch,” radiate with drum-driven menace, echoing Big Black’s foreboding clang. “Sleeping In The Box” drills deep into the salt of the earth, searching vainly for sustenance, while “Today’s Gains” hurts like a weary back after a long shift. Finally, “Nitetime White” pulls down the shades and blots out the sun. With Select Trials—the debut album from Rider/Horse—Ever/Never Records brings you a doozy for the ages.
LP $30.45
10/22/2021
***Four years into PREENING's existence and the Bay Area trio hasn’t shown any signs of stagnation–they remain committed to the urge to move forward, to push themselves and their audience. Thus, the restless and relentless motion of Preening’s new 12” EP on Ever/Never Records, who also released 2018’s excellent Greasetrap Frisbee 7”. Preening sounds more than ever like no one but themselves–MAX and ALEJANDRA's duel (sic) vocals and sax/bass interplay is masterfully augmented and driven by SAM's all-hands-ondeck drumming. “Twinning” exemplifies all of these aspects, achieving a head-spinning velocity occasionally interrupted by sections that mimic drips and chimes amidst the cacophony. This is dance music for sleep-deprived geniuses and those who love them. “Rapt Fashions” demands to know “Whose body is this anyway?” And then, to drive the theme of dislocation home, the EP ends with a wigged-out “Extortion” dub mix by ANDY HUMAN (of The World / Naked Roommate / Reptoids) & BRETT EASTMAN (Reptoids). Dragged Through The Garden proves that Preening and Ever / Never continue to deliver the goods, and then some.
12" $24.95
02/05/2021
***"I met Elin Engstrom and JJ Ulius in February this year. They had played in London the night before and I had really enjoyed the gig. The following day I decided to go out and maybe buy some records. It was in Low Company (a now defunct and much missed record shop in Hackney Downs) that I met them preparing to head for the airport and back home to Gothenburg. We were introduced and I said how much I had liked the show, and straight back, almost without blinking, JJ Ulius said, ’What did you like about it?’ I wasn’t simply being polite; I did really enjoy what they did. But I guess I was blithely expecting the conversation to follow the path of least resistance, and all of a sudden it wasn’t. He had a look in his eye like the question was serious but also not, teasing me slightly, but also wanting more than a platitude in reply. At the time I think I half-arsed something about Elin’s use of contact mics and the way the songs seemed to appear out of noise and clatter when you weren’t expecting it. This seemed to serve as a place-holder and the conversation petered out in a friendly way. Then they went home and so did I. So what do I really think? I’ve been lucky enough to live with this new LP for a couple of weeks now and it’s still unpacking itself, revealing new angles and facets all...
LP $24.95
02/05/2021
***The world may have shifted in significant ways since 2018, but Patois Counselors remain one of the finest bands plying their trade since Proper Release, their debut album, was lavished with all manner of year-end praise from such respected sources as YellowGreenRed and the Bandcamp editorial staff. Recording once again for Ever/Never Records, The Optimal Seat doesn’t alter the formula, but throws enough curveballs at the listener to keep them on their toes. Patois Counselors are specialists, and their expertise lies in the ability to craft a perfect nervous hook, to sculpt their anxious music into addictive hybrids of post-punk pop. Patois Counselors songs overflow with so many winning ideas that it can be easy to gloss over just how succinct and satisfying the end result is. Following that logic, The Optimal Seat is a proper release that delivers what an album once promised—twelve songs of tense songcraft stuffed with enough flavor to keep your lips smacking, and your fingers snapping, long into the night. Head Counselor Bo White leads his band through a tangle of needling guitar lines, deft rhythms and adroit synthesizer flourishes like a wellseasoned vet. All of these elements are present and accounted for in the confident kicker “Realities/Series Of Viceroys.” “Don’t Stop The Rattle” flirts with the anthemic while establishing the push-pull dynamics of Patois Counselors. Alternating frantic verses with moments of lucidity, “Probably No One” highlights a compelling undertow that continues throughout the album. “Let Beauty Be” effortlessly executes the kind of rousing...
LP $23.25
11/06/2020
***“Following up their initial cassette release ‘Tropical Income Tax’, Providence/NYC based holiday hypnotherapists Hand Of Food have returned and invite you to luxuriate in a perverted idea of paradise with their debut LP, ‘Swimming Mindlessly’. Despite coming from noise rock and damaged electronic backgrounds, the band sits in an odd nether region somewhere between a brutalized ambience or conceptual exotica, while at times dipping a toe into the self-help section. The record plays like the warped audio brochure for a struggling resort town, luring you in with motivational rhetoric and a transparent facade of tranquility. Although your instincts tell you something is off and the regional jokes are all lost on you, an all-inclusive vacation deal this good hasn’t landed in your inbox in a while so you go ahead and book the trip anyways. The opening track Sign Of The Lemon would have you believe everything is fine—lush pads, chimes, and 100% real flutes commingle harmoniously—you made the right choice. As your stay progresses similar instrumentation takes a more anxious turn. A professional voice-over artist or possibly the cruise captain interjects to insist that everything is ok, but hazy ambient atmospheres lead to reflection on the flight over, to all the decisions that led you here, and ultimately, regret. Doing your best to keep those spirits high, Chelo’s By The Sea whisks you away to the on-site cocktail lounge for some of the resort's complimentary entertainment, an evening with ‘legendary’ resident crooner Publicity Dave. But by the...
LP $23.25
11/06/2020
***"When Budokan Boys (Jeff T Byrd and Michael Jeffrey Lee) reunited in 2019 to record their new album, they were in bad shape. Byrd had recently lost his father, and Lee his brother. They decided the new album would need to address these losses—that it would be a 'death record'—but that it might explode the satire of their previous releases and move toward something heavier, more cosmic and more mysterious. The resulting album, So Broken Up About You Dying, is part danse macabre, part grotesque séance, and 100% manic memorial. The program boasts a dreamy, saxophone-spiked overture, a weeping-and-wailing Greek chorus, soliloquies by a number of unstable characters, an absurd, murderous climax, and a mind-bending denouement (featuring guest vocals by Lenka Soukupová). The dearly departed would be proud. So Broken Up About You Dying is the third full-length from expat duo Budokan Boys. Currently ensconced in Europe, Byrd and Lee follow up their previous albums (Dad Is Bad and That’s How You Become A Clown) with their vinyl (and CD) debut, courtesy of NYC’s Ever/Never Records. On ...Dying, Budokan Boys hold your hand and hit your funnybone with a hammer while you prepare to face the uncertain future. Come come, the Magic Mountainawaits…"— e/n
CD $7.75
10/02/2020
***Five years into their long strange drip, the duo of Maximum Ernst continues to confound, perplex, confuse and refract. Foetal returns yielded guitar/drum scramble in service of improvisational incongruity and radical reimaginings of alt-world smash hits by Faust, Snatch and Easy Cure. A link with Old Master horn maestro and official NYC gem Daniel Carter emerged and soon thereafter a CD and live cassette popped a few eardrums just right, so tight. Further uncharted territories were conquered and liberated as Maximum Ernst furiously and fitfully would-shedded. Woodn’t you? Quit playing. That was the advice of one medical doctor and also a licensed quantum mathematician; but still the daft, disappearing duo of Maximum Ernst gestured, rudely, NAY and thus, this newest release finds itself in your hands, begging for a vigorous clean. “Un Menace Natural” welds together extra-dimensional birdsong, soothing bursts of noise, the timbre of waves on a nonexistent beach and uncanny, unnerving shrieks smeared into beguiling patterns. It builds, it ebbs, it flows, it knows. It knows everything. It’s like if Jon fucking Hassell and Black fucking Dice had a fucking Baby. “Hallmark Of A Crisis Period” is a cut-up tour de force that shivers with unhinged delirium and barely-concealed malice. Imagine William S. Burroughs interpreting a Whitehouse “banger” as being live-mixed by Nurse With Wound. Imagine it, you fool! Despair not, heathen, as Maximum Ernst has imagined it for you.And it is as glorious as a sunset must be to a hanged man.Rejoice, for you have entered the...
12" $21.50
10/02/2020
***Strange connections—Bilbao meets Japan via Berlin on a record that will put you in a constant state of WTF. ASMR rock? Post-internet punk? A political manifesto in times of generalized madness? After his acclaimed 2017 destructo-punk single on Munster Records, AL KARPENTER now delivers his mature, complex debut LP on the world's premier record label for adults, New York City's Ever / Never. Al Karpenter is an elusive figure. On this record, he comes off like "Che" Guevara fronting Suicide in the year 2020: In halting, quivering tones, he warns us not to fall asleep, even as he slips into a dream state; he reminds us that we must not give up hope even in these times of collective self-destruction; then he shakes our very core with an agonizing scream. There is no resignation, no giving-up, and no mourning for a lost future in his work. Instead, Al Karpenter pits the burning energy of the present moment against older underground musical forms, playing things "wrong" as a technique for exposing the fundamental wrongness of consensus reality. His record is a puzzle, a conundrum, at once conflictive and erotic, violent and beautiful. Yellow Green Red's Matt Korvette described Al's debut single as ”Very deconstructed and cuckoo, as if one of Fushitsusha’s psychic jams was condensed into a couple minutes of indigestion"—a perceptive appraisal, seeing as Al is now joined by time-bending drummer and percussionist SEIJIRO MURAYAMA, whose early credits include Fushitsusha’s Double Live. Further strange connections include key players from Bilbao's...
LP $21.75
07/10/2020
***Just when you thought that the density of his discography couldn’t possibly accrue any more weight, Ever/Never Records drops the latest OBNOX magnum opus on your dome like a two-ton wrecking ball. A sprawling double LP, Savage Raygun distills everything Obnox excels at into a potent potable and even adds some new spirits to the concoction. As always, Obnox (aka LAMONT THOMAS) supplies a heavy brew smoky with an intense flavor and bright with a zest you can’t forget. Obnox’s fourth full-length for Ever/Never, Savage Raygun is twenty songs thick, and each one is primed for maximum damage. This double-shot is a veritable Whitman’s Sampler of multiple methods to slay the discerning listener. Soulful cuts such as “Supernatural” and “Blessed Black Soldier” are like ‘90s R&B turned on its head and spun til it can’t tell down from up. “How To Build A Bum” is a hip-hop slammer, a golden age throwback, a basketball jersey that gives you confidence when you sport it. “Return Fire” utilizes scratchy funk to approximate the aftermath to a shoot-out, blazing towards the state line. “Misery” continues with the ‘70s vibe, sounding like the lull between disco bangers. “Hawkwindian Summer” is more than yet another award-winning pun by Thomas as it cruises by like a Ford Escort blasting psych rock from in-the-red and shredded speakers. “She (Was About That Life)” adds a vintage sheen to Obnox’s trademark lo-fi scorch and throws an extra dollop of swing on top. “Cut Me A Switch” is another hip-hop...
2XLP $35.25
07/10/2020
***It only took 23 years but the first long-playing record by THE CHINESE RESTAURANTS is finally here. The Chinese Restaurants is the long-term partnership founded in 1996 by artists LF RESTAURANT (aka RICHARD PAPIERCUTS) and KEITH RESTAURANT. The duo follows three core principles: (1) Never rehearse; (2) Never discuss what you do; (3) Never do the same thing twice. Over the years, LF and Keith have performed with a revolving cast of friends and fellow players, including erstwhile members of BROKEN TALENT, COUNTRY TEASERS, BILLY BAO and ROCKET NO. 9. Instant Music is a concise monograph of the project’s many facets and contradictions, spanning free improvisation, reductionism, Third Stream, primitive rock, punk aesthetics, non-cochlear sound, plastic soul, and ASMR hypnotics in just under 30 minutes. The six-song LP was conceived, recorded, and mixed over three days in the group's spiritual home of Bridgeport, Connecticut, where they were joined by longtime friend and associate MALCOLM RESTAURANT and jazz reedsman ERIK ELLIGERS. The tracks apparently consist of spontaneously composed first takes, overlaid with improvised overdubs and mixed in a single afternoon. The only previously performed song on the record is "LFO," a rudimentary blues that first entered the band's repertoire in 1997 and is here given an expansive treatment in the style of Philip Cohran or the 1970s Arkestra. The record comes packaged is an exquisite gatefold that offers clues to the Restaurants' process and their queasy, unsublimated relationship with visual art. Limited edition, one-time pressing of 200 copies.
LP $31.95
11/01/2019
***BACK IN STOCK!!! "When Charles and Josh tapped me to spill some ink for this project, I couldn’t say yes fast enough. Culled from Charles’s vast personal collection, the contents herein abide no formality and as such, ushers forth an insider’s take into Jim’s frantic, restless genius you’ll not likely find again. Timelines? What are you, some kinda cop? It’s fresh ears all around on this one, folks, none of this material has seen the light of day till now. It twitches, it grunts, it flares, and it soars. It ain’t no one type’ve nothin’, unless that’s Loaded. In my king fu village, this pivotal document to the blood spilt across the floor of an iconoclastic career is right up there with the Velvets, Caught Between The Twisted Stars, Beefheart’s, Grow Fins & those Blorp Essette comps. Who knows if the official vaults will ever be opened? And even if, what you’d likely get is the known entities anyway, trussed up in new boots ’n’ panties. This is mud fresh from the private swamp. And as you’ll soon find out, Jim could make it crackle."—Tom Lax, Philadelphia, PA 3/15/19
2XLP+12 $43.75
10/04/2019
***BACK IN STOCK!!! Fiercely independent and furiously articulate, TAIWAN HOUSING PROJECT is the kind of band they don’t make anymore. Whether sweating it out in a dark basement with tomorrow’s noise-rock elite or tearing up the stage opening for yesterday’s no wave heroes, Taiwan Housing Project exude confidence, purpose and poise. But the dominant theme for THP is fire—the kind that burns deep in the gut; the kind that burns the dead growth gone; the kind that sparks violent and necessary change. Singer/guitarist KILYNN LUNSFORD is the kind of hellraiser that your momma warned you about. Leading her band into the fray, Lunsford wields her voice like a dagger and her guitar like a broadsword. Her trusty lieutenant is guitarist MARK FEEHAN, who once drew serious blood in ‘90s attack unit HARRY PUSSY. Feehan coaxes sounds from his guitar that veer from eerie vines of feedback to gutbucket wah-wah stomp, perfectly complimenting the rhythm section’s slam and throb. Live, the four members of Taiwan Housing Project engage in a ritualistic frenzy that borders on the hypnotic.
LP $17.75
07/19/2019
***BACK IN STOCK!!! In just a few short years, KRYSSYI BATTALENE, the mastermind behind HEADROOM, has moved mountains and crossed oceans with her epic guitar-playing. In addition to MOUNTAIN MOVERS, her Headroom project enables Kryssi to further explore the outer reaches of her hypnotic state (some folks call it Connecticut). Following Head In The Clouds, last year’s triumphant debut on Trouble In Mind, Headroom’s new 12” EP on Ever/Never Records is just the front-lobe massage you didn’t even know you were craving. While recalling the towering grace of Bardo Pond, Headroom carve out their own space within the fertile crescent of modern American psychedelic rock. “New Heaven” opens the proceedings, and you’d be forgiven for imagining the title an oblique reference to Headroom’s HQ—New Haven, Conn. As guitars arc towards the sky, Battalene’s voice gets the chopped-and-screwed treatment, as if to remind you that we are always on the precipice of something new, something unpredictable. “City Lights” is an earthbound meditationwith lovely, reverb-soaked vocals and on-the-verge-of-feedback guitars that echo Les Rallizes Denudes, a key influence on Battalene and her cohorts (which include notable artists like Stefan Christensen). But they manage to maintain their cool, extending the ache until it turns into the sublime. Side Two of New Heaven is devoted to “Skyliner,” a patiently building exercise in sustained psych mode as guitars, synths and voice ride the rhythm section to the outer limits. This is definitely a slow ride, but maybe don’t take it so easy. On...
12" $17.75
02/08/2019
***"For nearly ten years, songwriter and sound-sculptor GEOFFREY BANKOWSKI has been digging secret tunnels through recorded sound with his project, QUIETUS. Like all the best home-recording artists, Bankowski seizes the limitations of his medium and shapes them into brand-new spaces with a physics and logic all their own. Bankowski's songs are deceptively simple, relying on no more than two or three chords, without bridges or choruses, building tension and momentum from subtle dynamic shifts and bursts of noise that serve as settings for his idiosyncratic narratives and plaintive singing. It passes for rock 'n' roll but comes closer to a sort of ambient-country music, populated by ghostly woodwinds, electronics, and voices that huddle around the bar band at the end of world. Each Quietus record lights the music from a different angle. This fourth untitled volume lets a touch of light in through the shades. A couple of the songs scrape the periphery of pop music, emphasizing vocals (Geoff's, but also ALEJANDRA FOERG's, who lends an eerie touch to 'House Finch' redolent of Gene Clark's 'Silver Raven'), jauntier rhythms, gorgeous clarinet passages by STEVE GOLDSTEIN, and JOSEPH HARM's quarrelsome lead guitar, which, implausibly, recalls both John Morton in the Electric Eels and Robbie Blunt on The Principle of Moments: the secrets in the attic, the return of the repressed. Recommended to listeners of Pink Reason, Leonard Cohen, U.S. Saucer, Cowboy Junkies."—-e/n
LP $17.75
09/28/2018
***"It only takes a few bars into RAGTIME FRANK's fuzz opus 'Bo 1969' to figure out how Frank likes his toast—slathered in sizzling distortion, like hot butter bubbling up from the depths of the earth itself. Pile a duo of hammering drummers on top and you’ve got the makings of a lip smackin’ sandwich that should satisfy all manner of sonic overload junkies. Containing all the hipshake and earthquake action that anyone could crave and then some. Let’s call it Lo-Fi Big Beat. This is basement Gary Glitter, stripped of any negative connotations. Phil Spector is calling from prison demanding to know how these Aussie weirdos managed to upstage him from the flipside of the equator. After a handful of LPs on the much-missed Negative Guest List label, Ragtime Frank, key player in THE LOST DOMAIN, comes roaring back with a primal authority. The formula is deceptively simple but devastatingly effective: pair a towering Bo Diddley beat with supremely-fried Link Wray guitars. Just add liquor. And some hollerin’. Stir. And then shake a tail feather. Four songs of greased lightning on a 12” courtesy of NYC’s Ever/Never Records; perfect for your next eviction party."
12" $17.75
09/07/2018
***BACK IN STOCK!!! Here we have it. PATOIS COUNSELORS and their debut album Proper Release. Eleven slashes, eleven perfectly nervous trips to the well. And this North Carolinian band has landed in a welcoming hangar—New York City’s always-adventurous Ever/Never Records. It is readily apparent from lead-off cut “Disconnect Notice” that Patois Counselors bends towards the arch of Pere Ubu’s storied catalog, but instead of tripping on cracked street waves, they are on their front porch watching the sunset with a lukewarm beer clutched tight and wondering, “What next?” No Cleveland junk sunset for Patois Counselors, there’s a different kind of graveyard haunting these woods. Patois Counselors have given us an embarrassment of riches for a confederacy of dunces. The album title comes off as ironic maybe even a hint of the erotic, but to interpret any manner of cynical bluff into PC’s full frontal attack is to admit a lack of imagination on the listener. Don’t let Patois Counselors’ easy Southern charm distract you from the detailed, focused intensity of its sound. Guitars buzz and clang in queasy unison, synths channel inherently melodic cicada hum, many of the songs containing noisy interludes streaked with melody. “Last Heat” vacillates menacingly, as “Get Excitement” slinks around with the pent-up humid sway of deep summer. “Repeat Offender” smacks you back awake with rapidfire Devo moves and yet another chorus to write home about. “Making Appts” takes those sideways electronics steps that Parquet Courts occasionally indulges in and teaches it the proper...
LP $17.75
06/01/2018
***PREENING is a band that is literally bursting with ideas. Their music is chockablock with tension and pressure—gaskets blowing; pipes exploding; circuit boards fizzling out. A trio comprised of some of the Bay Area’s most active underground musicians, Preening are poised to cement themselves as one of their scene’s most crucial exponents of non-trad punk. Within Preening’s tumultuous music, elements careen and collide—sax bleats; bass lines access spinal nerve-spots; drums poke and pound. On this release, the trio blast through five cuts of controlled chaos, exuding a nonchalant confidence in their mission. (STREET DATE - 2/23/2018)
7" $9.25
02/23/2018
***When we last checked in with urban troubadour Richard Papiercuts, he was leading his band through the ambitious pop of IF, his debut for Ever/Never. A major statement from an unknown artist, IF was ripping with drama and daring listeners into a twilight world rife with lust, life, and the many contradictions contained within such four-letter words. Now three years wiser, Papiercuts has shed some of the mystery to confront the camera dead-on. Twisting the Night is a glossier production, timeless while conjuring the flickering pop-surrealism of ‘80s music videos and the grandiose maximalism of Peter Gabriel, INXS, and Tears for Fears, but on a 20 hour studio time limit. Over the course of TTN's four songs, Papiercuts and his crack band sculpt stately tableaus that hew toward the dark side of pop while avoiding cliches and sentimentality. 'There’s no correction, no distortion / in the way your voice cuts through the air': So begin the lyrics to opening cut 'A Place to Stay,' which serves as a re-introduction to Papiercuts’s soundworld, this time around avoiding obfuscation and willing to meet the listener halfway. 'Starless Summer Night,' an epic, seven-minute centerpiece, is described by Papiercuts as a 'lucid nightmare' in the tradition of the Elevators and Tom Verlaine, but where apocalyptic dread mingles with the everyday anxieties of fatherhood. This is big pop music for big hearts and minds. But the hit on Twisting the Night is 'The Riddle,' a shimmering anthem that whorls about like a mirage, seducing the...
12" $17.75
01/04/2018
***“Last time we checked in with DAN MELCHIOR, he was Playing The Greys. What has he been up to lately? Melchior is as aesthetically restless as he is endlessly creative, so in between recording an album with Austin TX art-punk trio Spray Paint and a myriad of tape and vinyl releases, Dan found the time to gift Ever/Never with another classic slice of Melchiorcore (please, shoot the messenger for that one). Road Not Driving is a 12” EP that covers a fair amount of ground during its runtime. 'I Got A Feeling' starts out as a feel-bad ode to, well, feeling bad, and then finds itself truly sinking into the muck as the track distorts beyond all reason, until coming around full circle at the conclusion. Climate change has got us all down, but at least you can commiserate with the guitar slicks and (gulf jet)stream-of-consciousness lyrics of 'Another Oil Spill.' In the icily observant 'Cold Town,' Dan’s previous locale of the lake-effect Midwest pokes its head through the (grey) clouds. The storm clouds hover over side two’s 'Relics,' which finds Dan casting about for some kind of connection. Those bleak months—half a year really—can weigh a man down but they leave plenty of time to come up with creative ways of dealing with the isolation. Yet, when connection comes in the form of 'Bus Stop Ghouls,' perhaps it’s preferable to be alone after all. Melchior closes out this potent dip into his stewing brain with the title track and...
12" $17.75
12/01/2017
***After a mind-boggling seven LPs and nine EPs in six years, you’d be forgiven for thinking that you could safely ignore OBNOX’s newest full-length opus Murder Radio. You’d be wrong. Dead wrong. Coming hot on the heels of 2017’s other ‘Nox platter (Niggative Approach courtesy of 12XU), Murder Radio is another deep dive into the humid underground lair that Obnox (aka LAMONT "BIM" THOMAS) calls home. Along with the usual stacked roster of utility players, Thomas is joined on Murder Radio by steady new drummer STEVE MEHLMAN (PERE UBU) and the divebombing, corkscrewing guitar of CHUCK CIESLIK. Murder Radio finds Obnox pressing their foot down on the metaphorical gas pedal for another trip around the turntable. While kaleidoscopic cuts like “Movimiento” and “The Movement” are an attempt to combine curb-level justice with radical politics, “Woe Is Me” finds Thomas gifting doubters and naysayers a kiss-off to hum to themselves as he leaves them in the dust. “I Hate Everything” is yet another stellar example of Thomas’ by-nowpatented soaring psych-rock gems while “Enter The Hater” focuses the fuzz into a punk attack. Side-closer “Bangaar” comes riding in on a classic hip-hop clip and sounds like a perfect combo of Eric B & Rakim, The Beastie Boys and Stereolab. It wouldn’t be an Obnox record without an ode to the Great Green God in the Ground and Murder Radio doesn’t disappoint—Side Two opener “Sun Doobie” will stone you until you become a believer. “Deep” is exactly that, so strap on...
LP $17.75
10/13/2017
***HOUSEWIVES are: Industrious music for industrious people. A few years ago, London, England’s Housewives, in the finest of post-punk traditions, began making an intensely focused racket. Their debut took the form of a five-song limited-edition cassette put out by Faux Discx. This self-titled EP had a startling power and hypnotic force that is all too rare in this era of practiced disaffection. Instead of pretending to be bored by this evershifting world, Housewives' approach revealed a microscopic attention to detail. Despite their using the traditional instruments of rock n’ roll, Housewives invert these powerful totems to their own ends. This is music that earns its praise from such high priests of refusal as Charles Hayward (This Heat, Camberwell Now). Like an Adam Curtis documentary, Housewives' music that takes on social constructs, looking for a way to disassemble these ridiculous structures. Delivered at a volume-enhancing 45 rpms, Housewives’ 12” EP is a diamond-hard gem of post-punk.
LP $17.75
05/19/2017
***STEFAN CHRISTENSEN has been a staple in the New Haven, CT scene for the last decade, playing in, among many others, ESTROGEN HIGHS, EHRGEIZIG, PERMANENT FEELS and MEDICATION; recording Sex, Worn Leather, Pieces of Fruit; collaborating on the C/Site label and with the venue Popeye’s Garage. And while it would seem that Stefan has always lived a shark’s life—I’ll drown if I stop swimming—it is really only in the last year that he has entered his most prolific phase. All that other stuff has been… practice? In the prior twelve months, Stefan has released two full lengths and a pair of EPs on cassette via the esteemed labels Loki, Night People, and C/Site. American Pastoral Again is the debut vinyl outing from this eponymous artist issued by ever/never records. Channeling Gate, Jim Shepard, Crystalized Movements, and Shakey himself, the twelve minute title track consumes the entire A-side in a melancholic dirge. It is backed by four quick blasts that introduce elements of pop, noise, and more dirge. With varied approaches, Stefan’s songs are written from a unique and developed voice. A unifying thread through these works is the careful craftsmanship, each song tailored perfectly—knowing when to let it breathe, when to ramp up tension—for the most impact. Had Stefan cut his teeth in a more insular scene, in a more glamorous town, he’d have been a hitmaker, but we are thankful that was not the case. As American Pastoral Again demonstrates, he is onto something much more fulfilling and unforgettable.
LP $17.75
09/23/2016