***From STEVE HAUSCHILDT: “This new album was recorded in both Vancouver and Cleveland. I used almost 20 different instruments, from every decade from the 60's to the present, most of them synthesizers, drum machines and effects. This gives the album a much wider palette than my last, Tragedy & Geometry, and it also gives it a more classic/new sound, yet it is still a logical follow up to that LP. I also used some techniques in the studio where I controlled older instruments with the computer and this opened up new ways for me to explore their potential as well as their innate idiosyncrasies. I was very interested in the artificiality of vocal or choir-like sounds that emulate a person or group singing, and how this has evolved with the advancement of musical technology over the years. I also sang myself, and used a vocoder, not to sound robotic, but to remove the connotations of gender. Those sounds are androgynous because they carry both masculine and feminine characteristics. I was inspired to carry this idea into music mainly because of the work of Camille Paglia and Donna Haraway. I feel that the album in a sense treads the imaginary boundary between Nature and Artifice. It is postmodern, but not necessarily a post-Freudian statement on cyborg theory or feminism. Rather it is a musically mimetic domain where these ideas freely collide and coalesce.“ Exactly one year on from his last album, Steve Hauschildt returns with his most commanding work to date....
LP $19.00
11/13/2012
CD $14.00
11/13/2012
***NOW AVAILABLE ON VINYL!!! Presenting a new collaboration featuring OREN AMBARCHI on guitar, the electronics of ROBIN FOX, and both performing on various other instruments. The music on this album came about as the result of the two being asked to co-compose the soundtrack for a new production by renowned Australian contemporary dance company Chunky Move for their Connected production. "Chunky Move's artistic director Gideon Obarzanek was drawn to the organic and deeply musical qualities of Ambarchi's work and the digital, almost scientific quality of Fox's sound. Over a process of many weeks these two aesthetics were merged. Working both in the Chunky Move studio and Head-gap studio in Melbourne, new works were forged from both digital and analog sources." This release brings together two of the most extraordinary artist/musicians working in Australia today. Both are renowned internationally for their individual practices, and here they join forces to produce powerful music that fuses Ambarchi's legendary guitar sound with Fox's mathematically rigorous tones and textures. This fusion results in sound works that stretch in scope from the sublime and spacious to the intensely dense and foreboding. Treading a precarious line between music and abstract sound, between organic and inorganic tones, this collaboration is a must listen for anyone interested in contemporary soundworks.
LP $19.00
10/30/2012
CD $14.00
10/23/2012
***CHECK STOCK!!! Received a 7.5 rating from Pitchfork. Kranky was a bit surprised earlier this year when JESSICA BAILIFF contacted us and asked if we wanted to preview her new album for possible release. We had no idea she had even been working on an album, let alone had completed one, and we were rewarded with a listen to her most compelling album to date. After being in Europe for 5 weeks as a touring member of BODUF SONGS, Jessica Bailiff spent much of 2011, writing and recording At the Down-Turned Jagged Rim of the Sky in her spartan home studio. Sequestering herself through the hot summer months until finished, she then passed the tracks on to her friend ODD NOSDAM for final mixing. Down-tuned, distorted bass guitar adds a new color to her palette, but familiar ones also come into play: fuzzed and delayed electric guitar, organ, piano, cello, and drums. Noisy pop-tinged love songs nestle slyly in a bed of off-kilter lullabies and dark, metallic waltzes. No need to recycle descriptives like ‘lo-fi’ or ‘hushed vocals’—these are spurious words. This is another intimate collection of songs recorded entirely by Jessica at home, in a room next to where she sleeps. If you listen carefully, you might hear her dreaming.” No Export to Europe or the UK.
LP $19.00
10/02/2012
CD $14.00
10/02/2012
***BACK IN STOCK!!! From SCOTT MORGAN: “This album gets its name from an odd little ocean side park that borders industry and the Vancouver port authority and lays claim to being the birthplace of the city. In a way, Sketches from New Brighton it is a continuation of a dialogue with my environment that started with First Narrows (kranky 2004) and continued with the Strathcona Variations EP (Ghostly International 2009). It is not a rigorous ‘study’ per se, but more a series of sketches, loose interpretations of the spaces I inhabit as well as an acknowledgement of their influence on my practice. These are my impressions, a kind of sketch of New Brighton and the surrounding area in an abstract form.” This sixth full length album from kranky mainstay Scott Morgan sees his pulsing compositions gently unfolding in the understated fashion that has become his trademark. He designs a sonic architecture, slowly constructing, making subtle additions and subtractions, until an almost tactile virtual space is formed. Inside these spaces an aural feng shui is achieved, where less is more, where every element is in its place, and where maximum harmony is attained through the masterly placement of sound.
CD $14.00
09/11/2012
2XLP $24.00
09/11/2012
***CHECK STOCK!!! Received an 8.1 rating from Pitchfork. Scant information exists in the historical record for early 1990ʻs Bristol, England trio DREAMSCAPE. Internet searches reveal almost nothing, and their entire discography consists of one 7” single and a four-song EP, with a second four song EP having been recorded but never released. The groupʼs members were REBECCA RAWLINGS, SCOTT PURNELL, and JAMES GINGELL, the latter two also being the driving force behind the Sarah label stalwarts SECRET SHINE. The first four songs on this album comprise the unreleased EP that was to be named Greater Than God, a title that was used later by Secret Shine for a Sarah extended play. Tracks five through eight come from their only 12” release, the Cradle EP on the La-Di-Da label. As a bonus, the final track is the only remaining demo of what was to be a series of new recordings, which never came to fruition. There are a few small glitches from the original source tape on this last track, but it was decided to leave it as is when mastering instead of fudging corrections. The songs are perfectly constructed pop vignettes, soaring, atmospheric confections that are wholly in tune with the current wave of shoegaze revivalists. The group had no drummer, instead opting for an Alesis SR16 drum machine. But rather being a shortcoming, this was certainly a strength as the solid, unwavering repetition lets the guitars and vocals radiate in the stratosphere above. That aural pleasures such as these...
LP $19.00
08/21/2012
CD $14.00
08/21/2012
***CHECK STOCK!!! Received a 7.3 rating from Pitchfork. Oh Holy Molar is the second album from UK trio FELIX. The group produces a bewitching, minimal chamber pop that works as the perfect framework for singer/songwriter LUCINDA CHUA’s oblique and emotionally immediate stories of superstition and searching for protection against bad omens. As a follow up to their debut You Are The One I Pick, the band return with a collection of songs with a sound stripped back to its very core. Something is said to have "teeth" when it has the ability to make an impact. This record certainly has "teeth", and sharp ones at that. The album was recorded in a vast, spooky 1940s cinema in Nottingham, England, now converted into a studio. After recording was completed the band discovered that underneath the live room lay an abandoned Dental Laboratory. "Oh Holy Molar" indeed. Since the release of the first Felix album, pianist/vocalist Lucinda Chua, also an accomplished photographer, has been working on a number of projects, most recently with Wallpaper* in Detroit. Guitarist CHRIS SUMMERLIN has been recording and touring with his new band KOGUMAZA. The group is completed with the recent addition of drummer NEIL TURPIN who, when not performing with Felix, can also be found touring the world with French composer Yann Tiersen.
LP $19.00
05/01/2012
CD $14.00
04/24/2012
***This is the first CD issue of GROUPER’s 2011 self released two part album subtitled Dream Loss and Alien Observer, comprised of songs written and recorded over the last four years. A chronological order informs the thematic trajectory of the dual release. Dream Loss is the first album and is a collection of older songs, while Alien Observer is mostly made of newer songs. Each is meant to stand solidly on itʼs own, and also as a satellite in the otherʼs system, subjects on either side of the waterʼs surface, on either side of a trick mirror; at times reflecting one back to the other, at times looking straight through to the other. Enough has been written about Grouper in the past few years that there is no need to wax poetic here. Suffice it to say that LIZ HARRIS has created an exquisite sonic universe where she is the sole inhabitant, and we should consider it a privilege to listen in. (STREET DATE - 4/17/2012)
2XCD $16.00
04/17/2012
***CHECK STOCK!!! Received an 8.4 Best New Music rating from Pitchfork. This is the second album from LOTUS PLAZA, the solo nom de plume of LOCKETT PUNDT, better known as the guitarist in DEERHUNTER. Pundt has penned a number of the best songs on the last two Deerhunter albums, and his first album, The Floodlight Collective was a tour de force of guitar pop smarts. He has the uncanny ability to build soaring, melodic gems from simple musical phrases; a möbius strip of a guitar line and repeating clipped drum roll in “Strangers;” a tribal drum beat holding down the foundation on “Out of Touch;” two acoustic guitar chords and a slight bit of snare as the basis for “Dusty Rhodes;” a series of slowly descending piano chord scales on “Jet Out of the Tundra.” There is a wide variety of songs and moods here, from unabashed rockers such as “White Galactic One” and “Monoliths,” acoustic laced introspection on “Dusty Rhodes” and “Black Buzz,” to the lysergic electronics of “Remember Our Days.” Spooky Action at a Distance is a wide angle view of what should be the zeitgeist of contemporary guitar pop.
LP $19.00
04/03/2012
CD $14.00
04/03/2012
***Right on cue, the third annual report from Chicagoʼs DISAPPEARS is submitted for your consideration. Following up on the acclaimed Guider album released just over a year ago, and with new drummer STEVE SHELLEY now fully integrated into the group, these songs were again forged into proper shape during live shows before heading to the studio and the tape machine. Never ones to dither or be indecisive, itʼs a full-bore assault from the opening track to the last as Disappears attack these new songs with their usual relentless determination. Itʼs a sinister proceeding—debut Lux was preoccupied with death and endings while follow up Guider with protection—but Pre Language finds the band speaking on, of all things, love. Direct allusions to Philip K. Dick, James Baldwin, and Joan of Arc sit side by side with songs about the lows of life and the characters that permeate it. Recorded in Hoboken New Jersey at Sonic Youthʼs Echo Canyon West studio and mixed with JOHN CONGLETON, Pre Language finds Disappears at their most potent and focused. The band has finally stepped into their own world and the results are thrilling. (STREET DATE - 2/28/2012)
LP $19.00
02/28/2012
CD $14.00
02/28/2012
***PLEASE CHECK STOCK!!! The first new recordings from the amazing WINDY & CARL in more than three years. Eight stellar new tracks to aid your dreams. Received a 7.4 rating from Pitchfork.
CD $14.00
02/14/2012
2XLP $24.00
02/14/2012
***BACK IN STOCK!!! Received a 7.3 rating from Pitchfork. A WINGED VICTORY FOR THE SULLEN is the first installment of the new collaboration between STARS OF THE LID member ADAM WILTZIE and composer DUSTIN O’HALLORAN. The duo agreed to leave their normal home studio comfort zone and develop the recordings with the help of large acoustic spaces, and to hunt down a selection of 9ft grand pianos that had the ability to deliver extreme sonic low end. Other traditional instrumentation was used including string quartet, French horn, and bassoon, but always juxtaposed is the sound of drifting guitar washed melodies. The recordings began in one late night session in the famed Grunewald Church in west Berlin on a 1950s imperial Boesendorfer piano and strings were added in the historic East Berlin DDR radio studios along the River Spree. One last final session in a private studio deep in the norther cusp of Italy on a handmade Fazioli piano, and the final mixes took place in a 17th century villa near Ferrara, Italy, with the assistance of FRANCESCO DONADELLO. All songs were processed completely analogue straight to magnetic tape. Their secret to harvesting new melodic structures from the thin air of existence was for the duo to push themselves to live dangerously, realizing that clear thinking at the wrong moment could stifle the compositions. The final result is seven landscapes of harmonic replicating ingemination. In “Requiem for the Static King Part 1” (created in memory of the untimely passing of Mark...
LP $19.00
01/03/2012
CD $14.00
09/13/2011
***NOW AVAILABLE ON VINYL!!! Received a 7.8 rating from Pitchfork. This new TIM HECKER release is composed of sketch pieces recorded in 2010 in preparation for what would become the Ravedeath, 1972 album. All of the compositions are piano driven and minimal in nature. This is not a new Tim Hecker album, but rather a peek behind the curtains into the working process. That these pieces stand on their own as compelling soundworks is a testament to the fact that Tim Hecker is at the absolute top of his game at the moment, and has been for years. Nine tracks in all.
LP $16.00
12/06/2011
CD $9.75
10/11/2011
***CHECK STOCK!!! Received a 7.4 rating from Pitchfork. Perhaps the least prolific and quietest of the three members of Cleveland trio EMERALDS, STEVE HAUSCHILDT is usually found at their live performances playing the serious scientist as foil to the other two members more animated stage presence. As a teen, Steve bypassed the typical young music fan obsessions over punk and hardcore musics, drawn instead towards mid-late ‘90s techno/electro-revivalism and finding himself alone in an electronic universe of his own choosing. Steve has always considered himself more of an artist than a musician, and sees his work both in group and solo settings as much a visual experience as it is an aural one. The title Tragedy & Geometry is an ambiguous but subtle reference to Melpomene (Muse of Tragedy) and Polyhymnia (Muse of Geometry), or more specifically the collision/overlap of what they invoke. The opening track is also a direct reference to “Polyhymnia, Muse of Eloquence”, the painting by the French artist Charles Meynier on display at the Cleveland Museum of Art. The album is a treatise on the idea that technology is becoming more disposable as it's becoming more accessible, and how this circumstance has a more evident/direct effect on the interpersonal, i.e. relations, with others in the so-called 'Age of Information.' What results is a gorgeous, flowing, floating world of post-kosmische musik, Steve Hauschildt’s first widely available release, and his first major statement as a solo artist.
CD $14.00
11/15/2011
2XLP $17.25
11/15/2011
*** CHRISTINA VANTZOU is an artist, musician, and composer. She was born in Kansas City, studied at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore (1997-2001) and moved to Brussels in 2003 where she currently resides. Christina is known for her work with THE DEAD TEXAN (kranky) as well as in a variety of creative mediums including video, drawing, and animation. After various collaborations and a short tenure as a touring member of SPARKLEHORSE in the summer of 2007, Christina began composing the music for this album. She worked in isolation over a three year period using synthesizers, samples, and her voice. Then, a long distance collaboration with MINNA CHOI, director of MAGIK*MAGIK ORCHESTRA transformed the sprawling 45 minute single track into a score for a 7-piece orchestra, resulting in a two day recording session with Magik*Magik at TIny Telephone studios in San Francisco. The album was finally mixed in Brussels with production assistance from ADAM BRYANBAUM WILTZIE (STARS OF THE LID). While these works certainly orbit in the same musical galaxy as those of Stars of the Lid and The Dead Texan, Vantzouʼs compositions are more grounded and concerned with the terrestrial as opposed to the extra-terrestrial symphonies of the former, and are full symphonic movements as opposed to the shorter pop structures of the latter. These works also draw parallels to a number of late 20th century composers who concentrated on layering the string sections of orchestras while steering clear of bombastic brass and percussion elements. What becomes...
CD $14.00
10/25/2011
***BACK IN STOCK!!! Exile is the new CHARALAMBIDES album. Five years in the making, it was recorded between 2006 and 2010 in various locations in New Hampshire, western Massachusetts and New York City, mixed at Black Dirt Studios, and mastered at Sand with PAUL GOLD. The group remains the core duo of CHRISTINA and TOM CARTER, with contributions on one track by the string section of HELENA ESPVALL and MARGARIDA GARCIA. Deeply imbued with the full historical spectrum of american folk and blues song form, Exile is a tapestry of suppliant invocations directed at the heart of the unseen spiritual forces surrounding us. Dense arrangements and thickly-overdubbed tracks sit side-by-side with material that ranks among the sparest and most skeletal the group has recorded, giving Exile the psychic scope of their classic Market Square album while building on the refinements of the more recent Likeness and A Vintage Burden releases. (STREET DATE - 10/04/2011)
CD $14.00
10/04/2011
2XLP $24.00
10/04/2011
***CHECK STOCK!!! Received a 7.5 rating from Pitchfork. IMPLODES is a Chicago quartet that has coalesced around guitarists MATT JENCIK and KEN CAMDEN in the last few years, with the group settling on their current lineup in 2009. The group has been hunkered down in a secret location, hard at work honing their craft, and occasionally venturing out for for signs of intelligent life in the real world, as well as the increasingly frequent live show. The first pronouncement from the group was a 2009 self-titled cassette, followed by a solo album from guitarist Ken Camden on Kranky entitled Lethargy & Repercussions in early 2010. "Implodes is all kinds of big guitar damage: shoegaze fuzz blasts, sparkly drone, slicks of tuneful sludge, distortion so thick it obscures the keyboards, the vocals, and even the drums."—Chicago Reader
LP $19.00
04/26/2011
CD $14.00
04/19/2011
***NOW AVAILABLE ON VINYL!!! Itʼs been five years since the last BELONG long player, as the duo works slowly to organize their sound works. Both the time invested, and the wait, have been well rewarded with this return. Common Era shows extraordinary progression from that first album of dense, scorched earth instrumentals, hints of a new direction having been revealed on the Colorless Record EP from 2008 which contained covers of four should-have-been classics from the original psychedelic era. The new material has such common pop elements as “songs”, vocals and drum machines, but the results could hardly be called conventional and are like little else happening on the current “scene”. The songs themselves are akin to radio transmissions received from another time and place, just as likely to be the future as the past, or even from a contemporary alternate universe. They are both passionate and dispassionate, grey yet technicolor, ghostly and palpable, distant yet immediate, grainy and focused. Upon listening these conceptual contradictions are dismissed with ease, as the recordings reveal that they fit all of these descriptors simultaneously, an extraordinary balancing act. No Exports to Europe of the UK.
LP $19.00
03/22/2011
CD $14.00
03/22/2011
***NOW AVAILABLE ON VINYL!!! For Waiting, For Chasing was originally issued in a limited pressing by the Stefan Németh (Radian) curated Mosz label in 2006. This is the first time it is being made widely available in North America and elsewhere, and also the first time it is being issued on the vinyl LP format. As Mosz eloquently stated at the time of release, “...it is not about the process or the media, which have been used. It is about how elements and structures are put in a detailed relation to each other, ending up in a slow-moving, breathing organism. Filaments of percussive elements condense to polyrhythmic elements, layers of sound, instruments and field recordings merge to build up a mystic parallel, not so much fictional world.” Perhaps the most skeletal and minimal of all of the works in the Pan American canon, it may also be the most compelling.
LP $19.00
01/04/2011
CD $14.00
11/16/2010
***BACK IN STOCK!!! The highly anticipated follow-up to 2007’s Cryptograms album which launched DEERHUNTER into the stratosphere of hype. Whether or not that was or is deserved is entirely subjective. Microcastle was recorded over the course of a week at Rare Book Studios in Brooklyn, New York with NICOLAS VERHES in April of this year. The album was recorded as a four-piece consisting of BRADFORD COX, LOCKETT PUNDT, JOSHUA FAUVER and MOSES ARCHULETA. "Saved by Old Times" features a vocal collage by COLE ALEXANDER of the BLACK LIPS, and the album also features two songs with lead vocals by guitarist Pundt— "Agoraphobia" and "Neither of Us, Uncertainly." Includes a bonus LP with an entire second album of material titled Weird Era Cont.
2XCD $16.00
12/07/2010
2XLP $30.00
02/23/2009
Mcbride, Brian
Effective Disconnect (music Composed For The Documentary “vanishing Of The Bees”)
Kranky
***CHECK STOCK!!! Received a 7.1 rating from Pitchfork. From BRIAN MCBRIDE (one-half of the STARS OF THE LID): “When George and Myriam approached me to compose for their film they suggested I concentrate on four different themes: the gloriousness of the bees, the endurance and hardships of traditional beekeepers, pesticides and the holistic nature of non-industrial agriculture. I was especially intrigued with the idea of combining some of their mournful aspirations with something more serene. Composing began in May of 2009. I had decided to start fresh not using anything that I had already recorded. Preparing the music for the film, I knew that I needed to provide more built-in changes in the structure of the pieces to give George and Myriam more flexibility. As I worked, I purposely distanced myself from the more continuous architecture employed in my previous recordings in favor of several mini-suites. In the thinking about the music, I hoped that the pieces would do justice to the ‘gloriousness of the bees’ theme, striving for a more overt hopeful quality. But old traditions die-hard and the hopeful side of the music was eventually more subsumed by the lamentable. I should also mention that if you have seen the film, this record will not contain all the music used and scored for this film. I am incredibly honored to be a part of this project even if the final compositions turned out to be more appropriate for a different and more forlorn film. I know you have...
LP $19.00
10/26/2010
CD $14.00
10/26/2010
***CHECK STOCK!!! Received a 7.9 rating from Pitchfork. Lasted is the third album by THOMAS MELUCH under the alias BENOIT PIOULARD. Thomas has toured throughout North America and Europe since his last record, the process of which has had a marked impact on the development of these songs as lyrics and structures have been scrapped, tweaked and reworked in the live setting. As with previous albums it was recorded and mixed in domestic isolation, this time throughout the rainy season in his current home of Portland, Oregon. While the extent of the dreary climate’s influence on the results is left to the listener’s discretion, what is certain is that Thomas has a preternatural ability to weave disparate sound components into a cohesive sonic tapestry, mixing a varied palette of field recordings and percussive elements along with melancholy melodies to create songs that recall—and are akin to—vespers of long-buried memories.
LP $19.00
10/12/2010
CD $14.00
12/07/2010
***CHECK STOCK!!! Received a 7.2 rating from Pitchfork. The fourth BODUF SONGS extended play was created using MATHEW SWEET’s standard recording set up of a single microphone and a small array of instruments, but it comes with a few surprises—most notably the prominence of electric guitar, bass and stomping drums on a few tracks. All of the elements that make his previous sound creations so arresting are still present; the impeccable song structures, the minimal approach, the delicate yet dominant singing. The album opens with the naked sound of the hammers of an old upright piano striking strings, an apt metaphor for the lyrical content which is just as raw and exposed. Mathew broadens his vocal approach here, exploring range and employing some unpredictable, well-placed harmonies. This Alone Above All Else In Spite Of Everything is effectively a concept record, and makes for a dramatic journey. Mat states "There is a theme that runs through each song and the track order is paramount to that - it's a hugely important part of making a record work." So pay attention.
LP $19.00
09/07/2010
***DISAPPEARS are that rarest of musical things, a 'rock' band affiliated with Kranky. But at least they are a rock band and not some less than reasonable facsimilie, because let's face it; most bands using that descriptor would not sonically intimidate your grandmother if she were alone in a dark alley. And deliver the granite the Disappears do from the opening chords, delivering scuzzy, driving rhythms that certainly imply a threat of ill will. Drawing on a combined reverence for reverb, heavy tremolo, distortion, delay and repetition, Disappears play minimal rock music inspired by krautrock, punk rock, the mid ‘80s New Zealand scene, and a bit of everything in between. And in their minimalist approach the band finds their real strength, hammering home chord structures that are tried and true and can and do remain fresh in the hands of the right talents such as these. As a wise man once said, "keep it simple stupid." (STREET DATE - 4/13/2010)
LP $19.00
04/13/2010
CD $14.00
04/13/2010
***NOW AVAILABLE ON VINYL!!! JONAS REINHARDT continues his cosmic flight inward on this latest release. The instrumentation from his debut album expands here to include acoustic drum patterns, guitars, and woodwinds alongside synthesizers and electronics. Together, these voices seamlessly twist and meld into a singular aural journey. This is music of the spheres for an electronic era where new age visions are re-imagined through a lens of experimental rock. The titular concept behind the album, drawn from ideas of the post-war avant-garde, refers simply to the human capacity to audition sound and fill in blanks where the composer leaves space for interpretation. Jonas explains: "Each of the songs is meant to engage the listener's innate power of audition to fill in intentionally left blanks. These occur throughout the recording where there is either diminished narrative resolution or explicit sectional movement meant to provoke an auditory response." The result is a mesmerizing journey to cracked and digitized moonscapes where Reinhardt's transparent relationship with instruments, sound, and form are made whole and hints of a beat-centered future are just around the corner. (STREET DATE - 3/30/2010)
LP $19.00
03/30/2010
CD $14.00
03/16/2010
***“KEN CAMDEN plays guitar. While those four words might imply something extremely limiting, Ken's playing and execution are anything but. His work seamlessly melds elements of modern composition, kosmische musik, eastern modal themes and academic electronic works; in other words, a good amount of the things we love here at kranky. All of the pieces were recorded in real time with no overdubs, with the exception of Jupiter which was designed and recorded as a duet for two guitars. While this process may not result in the technical perfection that many strive for, it leaves in the idiosyncrasies that give sound recordings their life and their soul, that make them unique to the individual and the moment. Each final mix was chosen from multiple versions of each composition for the qualities inherent in the specific selected take. What results are six intoxicating, structured atmospheres perfect for headphones and a deep recline into an enveloping chair.” (STREET DATE - 3/30/2010)
LP $19.00
03/30/2010
***CHECK STOCK!!! The fifth full-length release by SCOTT MORGAN under the LOSCIL moniker. The album begins and ends with the sound of rain recorded by Scott in his back yard, precipitation being a constant presence in his home city of Vancouver. Many of the other sounds on the album are derived from these same recordings, processed and combined with other harmonic sounds to create the textures and drones. Something completely new to this release would be vocals, of a sort, a first for any loscil composition, contributed by DANIEL BEJAR on the final track. JASON ZUMPANO is the only returning performer from past collaborations, he is responsible for the piano parts. KIM KOCH and ROBERT SPARKS make appearances on violin and bass recorder. The cover photos for the album were taken from the backseat of the family car by Scott's newest collaborator, his 4 year old daughter SADIE. Received a 7.5 rating from Pitchfork.
CD $14.00
03/02/2010
2XLP $24.00
03/02/2010
***CHECK STOCK!!! Received a 7.0 rating from Pitchfork. 2010 was a busy year for the DISAPPEARS. They finally saw their debut album Lux released, they did a fair amount of touring, and they recorded this new album. Having worked these new songs into proper shape in the live setting, they went into the studio and ripped through the recordings, using the first take on all but one of the tracks. And Disappears are so much about the NOW and not the THEN that they recorded over the same reels of tape that they used for their first album. “Guider” means to control or influence, which is what all the songs ended up being about in one form or another. This is a heads down, blinders on, damn the distractions, forward driving, controlled squall. Drop the needle, turn up the volume and surrender to the delicious. No Export to UK or Europe.
LP $19.00
01/18/2010
CD $14.00
01/18/2011
***FELIX is the musical duo of LUCINDA CHUA and CHRIS SUMMERLIN, who make their home in England. The focus of the album is Lucinda's askew stories, and the subtle conversation between her piano and the guitar accompaniment of Chris Summerlin, an intuitive discussion that speaks volumes by not saying too much and while never stepping on each other's lines. The songs themselves are delicate and spare chamber pop. They are understated and deceptively simple, but deliver an emotional impact that mere decibels cannot. Lucinda's tales of woe concern the banality of domestic life, small animals, and the desire to keep the forces of the world at bay. You Are the One I Pick may be an album of small charms, but they come with a frequency rarely found, and are myriad in number. (STREET DATE - 11/03/2009)
LP $19.00
11/03/2009
CD $14.00
11/03/2009
***BACK IN STOCK!!! This is the second solo album from DEERHUNTER frontman BRADFORD COX following his debut Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel from early 2008. The band’s track “Sheila” received a Best New Music tag from Pitchfork. The full album joined in on the BNM tag with an 8.2 rating. No Exports outside of North America.
LP $19.00
10/20/2009
CD $14.00
10/20/2009
***A few things have changed for ADAM FORKNER since his last WHITE RAINBOW album from 2007, Prism of Eternal Now. The success of Prism… finally catapulted Forkner's White Rainbow project from the deep semi-obscure trenches of the West Coast psychedelic/noise underground into the fickle arms of a slightly wider audience. In a perhaps misguided reaction to the ever-widening trend of musicians trading in a pound of adventurousness for an ounce of "accessibility", Forkner has turned White Rainbow into an even more spontaneous and open-ended musical project and has shaped this new double album into a dense, lengthy exploration of the relationship between hypnotic, circular, fourth-world drum rhythms, acid-boogie guitar, and drifting sheets of fuzzy psychedelic drone. The tracks on New Clouds are a tug-of-war between stasis and change, the desire to meld the meditative effects of a near static drone with the uplifting trip of free-flowing compositions. Slowly melting fluorescent sunsets morph into drapes of psychedelic fog, rumbling over cacophonous rhythms. (STREET DATE - 10/20/2009)
CD $14.00
10/20/2009
2XLP $24.00
10/20/2009
***The debut full-length release by TIM GRAY under the name of ETHERNET. Tim states: "Based on my research and experience in using sound for induction of meditative states, I set out to apply trance-inducing sonic effects to drone-ambient music. I recontextualized the deep bass kick sound used in techno dance music as a subdued hypnotic pulse to accentuate the textures. An unprocessed analog Roland TR-808 was used for this pulse, as well as binaural beats and spatial effects processing to create music to facilitate deep meditation. I blended layers of synthesized textures with organic field recordings made in Central Japan in '00-'01, and Northern California between '03-'08. The intent of the album is to produce an introspective sonic environment conducive to self-healing work and voyaging into new states of awareness." While Tim's description may read as somewhat dry and technical, the sonic landscapes that he composes are anything but. He sculpts textural washes of sound to create immersive, constantly shifting aural psychedelic environments. Hazy, gaseous atmospheres that are alternately arid and humid float above, in and around the muffled pulses used as rhythms. The experience is not unlike that of landing on an alien planet, stepping out of a spaceship, and surveying new terrain.” (STREET DATE - 10/06/2009)
CD $14.00
10/06/2009
***Marlone is the second album release from the oddly monikered duo TO KILL A PETTY BOURGEOISIE. They are a pop band of sorts, in that their songs can worm their way into your head and not leave, but they are certainly not a group to be lumped in with the top 40 prattle that dominates the airwaves nor the mediocrity that smothers the interwebs. Quite different from their other releases, Marlone is a more organic and open work, allowing breathing space for the songs to unfold and evolve; witness the slow, sinister burn of both “Villain” and “Turritopsis.” And in quite a change of pace for the group, they even deliver a straight ahead pop song with the brisk romp of “In People's Homes.” What they assuredly are is a group that continually explores the union of the light and the dark, the sweetness of the female voice set against the salty backing tracks, always searching for the fine balance between the calming and the equilibrium challenging.
CD $14.00
09/22/2009
***NOW AVAILABLE ON VINYL AGAIN!!! Certainly not a group to rest on their laurels (especially difficult when they have new songs burning a hole in their collective back pockets), DEERHUNTER delivers five new tracks on this extended play. This is not some stop-gap release between albums, or mere leftovers from their most recent Microcastle album, but an all new session. The band loves the EP format and thinks it does not get the respect it deserves. Hell, some bands arguably work best in the EP format, think Cocteau Twins or My Bloody Valentine, and now maybe we should add Deerhunter to that list. That's certainly not to say their albums aren't great, but with 2007's Fluorescent Grey EP and this new one, a lucid argument can be made that minute for minute, and hook for hook, their two EP's can't be matched for visceral energy and pop smarts.
CD $9.25
06/08/2009
12" $12.00
06/23/2009
LP $19.00
07/15/2008
CD $14.00
10/29/2002
***BACK IN STOCK!!! The Avec Laudenum originally released on the Belgian Sub Rosa label in 2000 (and again by Kranky in 2002) from cosmic sound explorers ADAM WILTZIE and BRIAN McBRIDE. Recorded via mail between the home ports of Chicago and Austin, the record is a hypnotic foray into the realm of drones, drifts and dreams. Groovy, brilliant and transcendent. One time pressing of 1,000 copies. On tour beginning April 15th.
LP $20.25
04/15/2008
CD $14.00
10/29/2002
***BACK IN STOCK!!! Note new price. One of the latest “true queer art punks” to emerge from the cracked pavement of Southern suburban sprawl, ATLAS SOUND is the solo moniker of DEERHUNTER frontman/provocateur BRADFORD COX. Here on his debut album, Cox/Sound moved out of dank nightclubs filled with eternal existential drone punk, and relaxed at home in his Grant Park, Atlanta bedroom. And this is, essentially, a bedroom album, a collage, mixing the garage rock and ambient electronic influences previously explored with Deerhunter in a new context, with newly explored recording techniques, mainly laptop based, learned with guidance from Kranky artist NUDGE’s BRIAN FOOTE. The results are songs of melancholy and mania.
CD $14.00
02/19/2008
2XLP $30.00
02/16/2023
***BACK IN STOCK!!! Another Minnesota slow-down from the frozen prairie's coolest trio. Fourteen tracks of sparse and drifting space pop soothe, floated on the beautiful vocals of ALAN SPARHAWK and MIMI PARKER, and anchored by ZAK SALLY's dreamy bass.
CD $16.00
02/05/2008
2XLP $30.00
08/30/2011
CD $14.00
06/03/2007
CD $14.00
05/15/2007
***BACK IN PRINT!!! Note new price. The second full-length outing from Atlanta’s DEERHUNTER, and their first for Kranky. Twelve tracks recorded during two very different one-day sessions that explore the hypnotic states induced by ambient and minimalist music via the klang and propulsion of garage rock. Also included is the tracks from the brand new four-track Fluorescent Grey EP. Both releases scored Best New Music on Pitchfork.
2XLP $24.00
04/17/2007