***Chicago's Axis: Sova hit the beaches of southern California with Ty Segall to make a total hi-fi classic. Often feral and consistently catchy, Blinded By Oblivion is lit up with interlocking drum kit + drum machine, adventuresome guitar, bass, and harmonic vocals on every song. Icy lyrical perspectives, rendered in a sunshiny natural paradise, transmit the fun and fraud of human polarities with urgency and an occasional eye roll. PLAY LOUD.
LP $24.25
10/06/2023
MC $12.75
10/06/2023
***Hitting flat and hard with their bass-drums-guitar and vocals alignment, Flat Worms use a buzzing combo of blunt force and surreal lyrics to hammer the absurdity of the status quo, as it deserves. Our social experiment continues to implode before our eyes; Witness Marks offers both critique and compassion, with songs that corkscrew through shades of exhilarating, dizzying and ambiguous spaces in between times of crisis and complacency.
CD $13.85
09/15/2023
LP $24.25
09/15/2023
MC $12.75
09/15/2023
***A retrospective collection of tracks released on MIKE DONOVAN's (SIC ALPS, PEACERS) San Franciso-based Folding Cassette label circa the early 2000s. Features tracks from BEAR KLAWS, KIT CLAYTON, NETMEN, BIG TECHNO WEREWOLVES, FREEDOM JAZZ, NAM, NVH/CHASNY, SKELETOR, ABK, BANANAS, MIKEY WILD, NO BOSS, and others.
LP $21.25
11/18/2022
***OOG BOGO are a four-piece rock band from Los Angeles and their new album is Plastic—an electrifying set of songs and sounds that just don’t stop, working like a machine that makes joy and endless flips and repetitions, whether in front of the turntable or out in the real world. In the past several years, Oog Bogo dropped two records that previewed this explosion in wildly divergent ways: 2019’s Oogbogo EP with wigged-out production, its contorted fun house mirror images pulling punk, psych and new wave in and out of focus in a chaotic procession of mutant tunes. 2021’s EP2 radiates a starkly different vibe, as chilled-out guitar-pop tunes conjure a flowing medley of plaintive echoes and atmospheres in a mellow mist of hiss. KEVIN BOOG recorded these records in a largely hermetic state: at home on 4-track, playing all the parts, slowly drawing out the sounds. The songs for Plastic were demoed this way too, as a starting point for a group interpretation—but when, for obvious ’20-’21 reasons, logistics prevented everyone from getting in the same room to even rehearse, the planned recording session at TY SEGALL's Harmonizer Studios took on a different shape. Starting off with only drummer THOMAS ALVAREZ (AUDACITY) to accompany him, Kevin realized that any obstacles to getting the record made were also opportunities, for something else that was also right to happen. Rather than reach for the design of the demos, he kept himself in the present moment, approaching every passage as fluidly as...
LP $25.75
07/08/2022
MC $10.50
07/15/2022
***Flat Worms on 45! Just a minute late for the 1-year anniversary of Antarctica, these two tracks, culled from the Antarctica sessions at Electrical Audio, jump up from the grooves with a rush to spur you after the extended fog and furor of our collective 2020–21 blip. It’s time again — get up! The dance move called “The Guest” is a bit like The Twist, but more like The Writhe actually. There’s some horror wrapped up in the song’s meaning, so you should feel no shame — consider it earned writhing on your part! Here, Flat Worms take a DEVO-esque passivity, looking in on the actions of the real people in this world. It’s pretty scary. Start flopping, and by the time that they get to the big rave-up at the end, you’ll be aligned in time. “The Circle” belongs to that tradition of 45 tracks that may or may not allude to the 45 itself. “Find the circle! Find the center!” might serve as both timely polemic and shameless self-promotion. Or maybe not. One thing we’re not ambiguous about — the acid-glazed lead guitar that hovers like a neon apparition above the thrashing rhythm section.Antarctica was a life sentence from what feels like a lifetime ago—“The Guest” 7" is the emphatic exclamation point that brings it all back to life.
7" $10.50
06/18/2021
***2020, and the scene is now: world in flames, deserts in permafrost, everyone in their own corners, looking down into their hands. Nothing in common. We can all see that the way it’s happening isn’t working, and for a lot of us, that’s okay, as long as it doesn’t rock our boat, we’ll cope. But for people who are invested in the future, any future—like Flat Worms—they’re out there, full time living, playing to change minds. And they’re not alone. Antarctica is the third Flat Worms album in the past four years. It reflects a situation that’s dire, but not hopeless. Since the release of their 2017 debut LP—even since last year’s “Into the Iris” mini-LP—the sound of the trio has hardened, with the polarities of psych and post-punk smelted into a brutal cobalt alloy. No doubt they’re aided by the STEVE ALBINI-engineered sound rendered at Electric Audio, where the album was recorded and mixed (in collaboration with Steve Albini and TY SEGALL) in six days. The rest of the evolution is down to Flat Worms, whose world view and musical viewpoint pulse with a remorseless drive and a sense of collaborative unity. WILL IVY's cortex-scorching guitar leads are in united space with the full-body rhythm of TIM HELLMAN's bass and JUSTIN SULLIVAN's drums. Their social comment, bleak, yet earnest, is leavened with bone dry humor and caustic pronouncements; a vision of the chaotic, dysfunctional contemporary landscape that recalls the tragicomic expressions of 100 Flowers and the indefatigable recitations of...
LP $21.50
07/24/2020
CD $13.75
07/24/2020
MC $10.50
07/24/2020
***BACK IN STOCK!!! Six new songs from Los Angeles-based FLAT WORMS, which feature TIM HELLMAN, JUSTIN SULLIVAN and WILL IVY. The Into The Iris EP follows an LP on Castle Face (2017). Filled with anxiety and angst, Flat Worms summon perseverance in an apocalyptic era, passing through decrepit strip malls and surreal headlines. These songs were recorded by TY SEGALL in his home, and are now being offered on God? Records.
CD $12.00
02/08/2019
12" $14.50
02/08/2019
***Shampoo You is the third AXIS: SOVA album, following 2015’s Early Surf and 2016’s Motor Earth. With each succession, the Axis sound-shape we recall in our mind’s ear morphs in subtle yet definitive ways, allowing Axis: Sova to take its intended form before us, as different essences coming into clearer view in every listen. Now, with Shampoo You, the impact is unprecedentedly direct and connective, the amusement of rock-making turned thrillingly alive, in the present! The sharpened peaks of the landscape on the Shampoo You trip provide fresh pleasures for the listener—as we get into their neck-throttling dysmorphia anthems, we become glammy and physical, moving and transcending beyond our fallible body. Reality becomes a crystalline game to be mastered, as our mind vanishes beyond the fog that’s plagued our existence, the eternal night flashing blindingly into bright day. (STREET DATE - 11/16/2018)
LP $19.50
11/16/2018
MC $10.50
11/16/2018
***DYNAMITE MASTERS BLUES QUARTET are back. Keeenly is their 13th album since 1989, but the first one over a decade, and, in anticipation of a tour in North America, the third DMBQ album ever released outside Japan. It is an enormous sound of rock, just what the world needs to hear right now! DMBQ are SHINJI MASUKO, SHINJI WADA and MAKI. In the time since their last record, Masuko has been a member of BOREDOMS, playing guitars, noise, tape machine and turntables. For Keeenly, the first DMBQ record in a long time, the band recorded themselves, using vintage mics, analog tech, and lots of amps. In a tribute to the old-school hard rock that is their inspiration, they recorded live. This reflects the inspiration of nature as well—things like wind, water, sky, wild animals and human beings are all very influential to DMBQ. Their music is an attempt to bring a great noise of natural sound into the world, sidestepping the use of computers completely. In the 1990s, the sound of DMBQ was described as heavy psych rock, which is a kind of music that the band has great feeling for. However, their goal is get free from the constrictions of rock, using more abstract and imaginative elements, such as the use of noise and drone elements in their playing. Today, these intentions are fully integrated and evolved, and the pure electric force of the music is at an apex of expression.
2XLP $23.50
11/16/2018
***The spiny tingle of excitement, the building anticipation of ritual! Chord progressions in the key of the heart! THE CAIRO GANG's music is a refreshing dip in the pools of classic youth-pop, with songs of star-crossed breakthroughs and guitars cross-talking with a bejeweled ennui and a sly sting that appeals to a higher order. Is it something in our head or maybe in the skies above? Yet, the stars aren’t going to save us, they’re destined to glitter dispassionately as we go down again—and rise up again. The untouchable stands outside, removed by necessity from the castes of our world. This remove makes him the most reliable narrator in tracking the way of things between people. Throughout Untouchable, EMMETT KELLY is such a narrator, made bemused and dizzy by the sights swirling around him, the fraying sense of connection and people’s need so keen to be self-aware that we write our own autobiographies before we should ever be called to witness, publish our diary pages and call them entertainment. As these instincts develops into interrelationships, contradictions abound for our singer. Dwelling in the head while noticing things—or waiting to notice things—and lyrical to the bitter-sweet end, The Cairo Gang serve up sweet-and-sorrow reveries of Untouchable, a breathtaking series of entanglements and attempts to break free, a trace of dolor wafting through their dancing riff-works.
LP $19.50
03/24/2017
CD $13.75
03/24/2017
MC $10.50
03/24/2017
***Just a little more than a year since last transmission and suddenly the rotation to Motor Earth signals a new day in the life and anti-life of AXIS: SOVA! We expect our music to reinforce perceptions of time as an arrow bolting forward, one way, into the future. But where’s the symmetry in that? Everything else in physics is two-way traffic; that’s the Faustian Universe that Axis: Sova scans for its rock. Where past, present and future are all pulling together, known together—as if we could get a clean link to that other hemisphere in our brain. We’re at the edge of the edge, how much further to the fringe? The fuzzing, burning film stock of Early Surf was like a solarized sound of discontent and not-belonging, a state of dissonance within a state of reverberating vocals, circulatory systems of guitar and test-tube rock beats. The mix was TWEAKED, slaved over in an endless night. Motor Earth trips that trend further, rife with percolating boogie, suicidal punk shredders and cavernous rock, but this time, it’s a planet cleared of sonic brush so as to cleanly reflect the star it orbits and the moon it mirrors. (STREET DATE - 10/14/2016)
LP $19.50
10/14/2016
MC $10.50
10/14/2016
***There is no sweeter cry than a cry of love, and no greater love than a love of music. Like mercury through our clutching fingers, it is here and gone and spikes the blood like poison—and the CAIRO knows, he’s flown all ‘round this world, sewin’ seams and sowin’ seeds in the name of that most rare, that sweet, and on the wind, melody. When he ”Goes Missing”, bet on it—that with guitar in hand and cry from deep in his chest, he’s in search of a place to beat his feet, and play the music again. Playing with other artists over the years, EMMETT KELLY has exhibited an encompassing approach to music which lends flexibility to THE CAIRO GANG's song-style. He’s a harmony singer of supreme skill, bringing not only a sweet and supple voice but also a tremendous sympathy to the singing of it (as anyone who’s caught Cairo onstage with the Bonnie ‘Prince’ will ever know). Now a couple albums and tapes and singles and things into it he’s making streamlined music for the ears, constructing with a heavy hand in order to have a heavy impact with more than just sounds, but songs, and beaming them in on bright bolts of sunshine so as to be valued by our walnut-sized pleasure centers. Gone Missing isn’t just an awesome, awesome-sounding record of guitar pop that rocks, of songs sweetly hung with candified hooks; also it’s a new report from the side of the road. (STREET DATE -...
LP $19.75
06/23/2015
CD $13.75
06/23/2015
***In the beginning was the guitar, electric. Like the monoliths of old, standing tall at crucial, evol points in our “civilization.” In those days before the Axis, SOVA was a youngster. He moved to the music. He set the clock to the rock. The axe was an instrument wielded by heroes, and looking at them, he could imagine his hands on their necks. He knew he was capable of handling them. He anticipated getting into jams with them, and getting out. Some years down the line, Early Surf s the second full-length trip into the AXIS—a journey that’s landed on a couple 7”s and, most recently, a gnarly cassette along the way—but SOVA’s been playing and recording for awhile now; thus, the issue of getting sounds from within his head all the way out of there and into the mix is less a battle and more a way of life. To go ALL THE WAY at any given phase, AXIS: SOVA was brought home, and to a variety of locales, where recording and re-recording and mixing and remixing could potentially reach the infinite. It’s there he got really down into it, collaging riffs and inspirations, scraping and scrapping the blown-out waves from his amps to make SONGS. Tweaking the minutia with headphones, AXIS: SOVA fought and fucked the cassette tape limits in order to get a slice of weirdo bedroom vibe-cake, with a mega-bent guitar focus, to make Early Surf. (STREET DATE - 2/17/2015)
LP $19.50
02/17/2015
***BACK IN PRINT!!! Received a 7.4 rating from Pitchfork. With the release of WAND’s Ganglion Reef , GOD? continues to highlight the expansive sounds of new music currently altering minds from east of west to west of east. Recently, Jack Name, David Novick and White Fence were called upon for long players to travel into the heart of the flaming orb of un-/non/(ultimate)-realities (they’re out there)...and now, from GOD?’s hand-lips to your head-hand, Wand! The fluctuating gravity of their sound achieves total Wand-hood by jamming senses, sounds and vibes through the circuits—and like magic: plays of light and dark (and heavy!) for today’s (and tomorrow’s) mind-ears. From beneath the glassine surface dost emerge: Ganglion Reef.
LP $21.95
08/26/2014
CD $13.75
11/25/2014
MC $8.50
11/25/2014
***If you like the taste of pure, uncut gnarly, full of fire, fury and fun! then GOD? knows you’ll dig running into RUNNING. Their Asshole Savant and Vaguely Ethnic LPs are simply the BEST at music that’s unhearable once it’s been heard even for a second. And especially after it’s been heard for a half hour! The same is true of this single but even MORE SO—it cuts thickly into the ears and breaks on through to the other mind, which is instantly oxidized by the penetration of their spinning wheels, plates, cones, strings, drumsticks, uvulae, etc. Equal parts shamble-dance and noise-pop, Running drive relentlessly while shouting their HI-larious lyrics (we think) with vigor from the bottom of a well of cheap ‘verb. With serriform guitar racing with the vocs for most-fucked sounding and the bass and drums driving savagely forward—like “Totally Fired,” for example—find us a song with singing that better unites listener peril with lively dancefloor antics! These are musical high times and jinx to boot. If you haven’t yet, start RUNNING! (STREET DATE - 7/22/2014)
7" $6.00
07/22/2014
***GOD? is the fire and ice this summer. With a storm of riffage played with precision and fury, ZATH’s “Black Goat Razor” will ride like a dark horse of the apocalypse to the top of your singles play list throughout the hot months, and whatever remains of time beyond. Zath is made of three men; ZACK WEIL, SETH SHER and DAN BROWNING, all of whom have an existence outside of the howling maw of rage/despair that is Zath. In fact, they’re all pretty busy musicians in other Chicago bands. Guitarist and singer Zack plays in OOZING WOUND and was previously in CACAW; drummer Seth makes music as SYNE and PSYCHIC STEEL and also played in COUGHS and GA’AN; bassist Dan works hard in CAVE as well. Zath’s songs are a bottomless well of incalculable feeling, rendered with thrusting ability and immaculate precision. (STREET DATE - 6/24/2014)
7" $6.00
06/24/2014
***With all thanks to GOD?, DAVID NOVICK has cycled back around for his second album release in less than a year. The reason for this rush-release? It’s AWESOME! Your Sister’s Hand stands distinctly from his debut, bringing the deep-country campfire folk vibe in from the great out-of-doors, where the shape of the sound is more defined—more pronounced, forward and colorful in arrangement, all of which allows the songs to shine brighter. In the water running in the creek speak all the voices of the world, yet it requires a certain kind of ear to hear them. Your Sister’s Hand was recorded in a room in San Francisco, but manages to convey a message from way out there in the pasture, which means David’s ability to conjure atmospherically is growing. Endlessly falling in love with a crumbling world, David’s songs reach towards the sight of eternity, but the textures of electric and acoustic guitars add contrast as they sooth and bristle next to each other and somehow opening the vista ever wider. Drums and vocal harmonies (either by David or CLAIRE PLUMB) leave ghostly thumbprints on the images. It’s a lonely sound; photographs of light pinned to the wall in an insolated room—but hardwood floors and songs bring life. A hallway party, groovin’ tea and whiskey. We get to dream again. Our friends are here, we are here, burgeoning.
LP $17.75
03/18/2014
***CHECK STOCK!!! Received a 7.1 rating from Pitchfork. GOD? Records re-presents the debut of DAVID NOVICK! His self-titled album is officially a reissue, though the original was pressed in an short edition, for only one hundred souls. David and his bandmates in SAN FRANCISCO WATER COOLER put it out as the third release on their Sun Sneeze Records, and the copies were sold or handed out at shows. The Novick solo sound captures the hissing water of youth, loosely hanging around the neck of “pop” in a braid twisted with folk and experimental and psychedelic artifacts that come on with a distinct aroma. If you’ve enjoyed hanging around the San Francisco Water Cooler, this here is a bit more lo-key than those songs. Busting out of the gate fleetly, like Lindsey Buckingham of the no-budget (and no-Nicks!) set, David Novick flashes through seven ambitiously built songs recorded in his Santa Cruz bedroom a few years ago, using Tascam four-track and eight-track cassette machines. In order to create the shifting moods of weird creepy beauty, and the bright and shade of the album, David used mostly acoustic guitars, some percussion, and his own vocals, augmented with touches of electric guitar, organ, trumpet, harmonica and synthesizer. David Novick isn’t long, but it’s at least twice as deep: a late night burner to watch the fire to, projected into space with your best friends. Breathe, and flip the side.
LP $19.75
10/15/2013
***BACK IN STOCK!!! Restoring a lost gem to the crown of WHITE FENCE, God? is bringing the first, self-titled, White Fence album back to the vanguard. White Fence originally came out on San Francisco’s Make a Mess label; the CD is currently in print on Woodsist. TIM PRESLEY’s been building a White Fence he can be proud of since back in 2010; his fourth trip to the other side of the fence just dropped and new pop music horizons continue to shimmer invitingly in all the music that he makes. If you walked into the party when the second album was playing or even the new one, those’re probably a great place to start too. But this first record is a REALLY good place to start. Tim’s a veteran of a few bands before White Fence, like DARKER MY LOVE, and he’s made records with TY SEGALL and THE STRANGE BOYS too, but his own thing is very special, as you may know—a foolproof and ever-morphing approach to writing songs by bringing the freshness of lysergic ‘60s visions into the present day. This pressing returns White Fence to the LP shelf for the first time since the Saladin daze of 2010, when too few copies were made and they all went away. Now it is back, with all the bells and whistles intact (insert! stickers!) that made it such fun to ride in once upon a time not so long or so recently ago, either. It’s a perfectly balanced two-sided...
LP $19.50
07/16/2013