Not Not Fun   Page 6

Pocahaunted

Make It Real

Not Not Fun

***NOW AVAILABLE ON CD!!! After a six-month hiatus, a complete line-up overhaul, a trip to SXSW, a UK/Euro tour, and a full year-plus of only playing shows and writing songs and amassing totemic objects, finally POCAHAUNTED return to the recorded realm with their first album since 2008. Time flies when yr having not not fun and all that. Make It Real collects seven of the band’s 2009 live staples for a 40-minute-ish collage of basement body music, garage dub damage, outsider funkadelic sprawl, voodoo rhythm workouts, duo femme soul vocal dynamics, dripping gold sweat, and dream fulfillment. Recorded barefoot and shirtless and direct to tape at Green Machine Studio in summer ’09 by M. GEDDES GENGRAS and featuring guest bamboo sax by jazzmaster ALEX GRAY (DREAMCOLOUR/DEEP MAGIC) and mastered by JAMES PLOTKIN. Black vinyl LPs in jackets with warped LA post-Parliament utopia artwork by vision wizard SPENCER LONGO.

Murray, Heather Leigh

Jailhouse Rock

Not Not Fun

***Vinyl reissue of HEATHER LEIGH MURRAY’s amazing 2006 cassette release on Fag Tapes. Remastered by PETE SWANSON (Yellow Swans) with all new artwork by HEATH MOERLAND (Sick Llama, Fag Tapes, etc).

Topaz Rags

Capricorn Born Again

Not Not Fun

***Grey clouds stay grey. Low light situations birth low-lit moods. It's all bummer clockwork. West Coast lurk-jazz triad TOPAZ RAGS return to vinyl with their debut long player, Capricorn Born Again, an eight-song comedown recorded/mixed from spring-to-fall of '09 via a complex 4-track/boombox assemblage method. Everything creaks and hisses, there's smoke in the air, players at the end of their ropes, lyrics washing over faded raga ballads, slinky electric piano bar depressions, shadow gauze cavern pop. The bell jar is half empty, obviously. Slow dive and sink in. Black vinyl LPs (mastered by PETE SWANSON) in jackets designed by AMANDA. Edition of 400.

Inca Ore

Silver Sea Surf School

Not Not Fun

***Eva Saelens’ life quest has taken her from Michigan to Oregon to Oakland back to Portland and back again, with several overseas explorations and inner journey road trips thrown in for good measure. Whatever path she’s on is long and winding and hidden in the shadow of overhanging cherimoya trees. Fortunately she maps her migrations with haunted, exotic breath-and-electricity sphinxes ranging from 2006’s Brute Nature Vs. Wild Magic to last year’s brainwashing Birthday Of Bless You LP. 2009 finds her offering up another psychic harvest unto the world, Silver Sea Surfer School, a new nine-song pipeline ride that floats through a whole new web of voice orbs and tape hiss and keyboard balladry. If anything, Silver Sea is Saelens’ weirdest hour, layered in abstract environments, whispers, distant poetry, free percussion loops, with sudden passages of heart-dissolving ghost-piano beauty (“Shine On From The Heaven Above,” “Adventure In Light”). Heavily impressive, and a brave pearl-dive into even more personal waters for the Inca Ore lifeforce. LPs come in jackets with art by Saelens, plus a full-color insert. Edition of 500 (40 on clear ocean-water vinyl, 180 on marbled blue/white, 280 on black).

Eternal Tapestry

Invisible Landscape

Not Not Fun

***REPRESSED!!! A brand new full-length from Portland, Oregon based psych trio ETERNAL TAPESTRY. Edition of 500, let’s do this thing.

Little Claw

Human Taste

Not Not Fun

***BACK IN STOCK!!! Brand new LP by this fiery Portland, Oregon art-garage trio. This is the LP edition of the CD released on Ecstatic Peace! Records. Comes with a double-sided 11”x17” poster.

Odd Clouds

Deceiving Illusion

Not Not Fun

***BACK IN STOCK!!! A thousand years ago, in 2006, Michigan moonlighters ODD CLOUDS drizzled down their LP opus, The Cavernous End. Within the sphere of open-eyed freeform organized psych-jazz sprawl, nothing compared. Years later that album still kills, but not much has followed in its wake (there have been some loose tapes but those roll in a cruder basement fuckaround vein). So we are personally xxtremely pleased to be able to finally offer up the band’s latest album-length affair, Deceiving Illusion. A six-song spelunk into the deranged group brain responsible for noise scene mainstays like Fag Tapes and Tasty Soil Records, Illusion rumbles through a hall of mirrors of zones/styles, from freaky garbage punk to robot throat games to motorik brass meditations to unhinged ‘70s German commune beardo psych-blazers. The journey is the destination and all that. Abuse yr Illusion. Black vinyl LPs in stunning 4-color pro-silkscreened jackets with artwork by CHRIS POTTINGER and JAMIE EASTER, plus a double-sided photocopied insert. Edition of 400.

Wet Hair

Dream

Not Not Fun

***BACK IN STOCK!!! When Iowa City freak-out free-rockers RACCOO-OO-OON called it quits last year it left a bummer scar in the Midwest underground scene. But time is a great healer, and so are new bands. So out of the ashes of the RAC pack comes WET HAIR, a synth-punk-trance duo composed of keyboardist/vocalizer SHAWN REED and keyboardist/drummer RYAN GARBES, and Dream is the band’s debut vinyl full-length after a series of increasingly shredding limited-edition cassettes on their own Night People label. Piling together an unlikely trash heap of Suicide-style drum machine beat-bops, zone-droned krautrock keys, and fucked up outsider crooning, the LP’s four tracks careen across a spectrum of moods and mangled melodies. Wet Hair’s cult electric annihilation has never gleamed with such razor-edged weirdness; this is their dream made real. Black vinyl LPs in jackets with artwork by Reed and Garbes, plus a pro-printed full-color 11x11 insert.

Topaz Rags

Tarot Harem

Not Not Fun

***The debut vinyl release by this downer drug-jazz trio featuring members of POCAHAUNTED and ROBEDOOR. Two sides of bleak piano and post-beatnik ruin. Packaged in hand-silkscreened sleeves with die-cut backs. Released in an edition of 250 copies.

Goslings

Occasion

Not Not Fun

***LIMITED QUANTITY BACK IN STOCK!!! The Occasion album from this reclusive Florida moss-metal family. Crushing and hypnotic music, packaged in six-panel metallic ink wallet paks. Mastered by JAMES PLOTKIN.

Goliath Bird Eater

Blood Venus

Not Not Fun

***Few folks are as Zen/epic about stoner metal riffing as BOBB BRUNO, and GOLIATH BIRD EATER is the project that proves it. A perfect union of Sleep-style drones and Sabbath-heavy amplifier roars, Blood Venus is over an hour of pure black leather headbang anthems. Flawless for Southern Lords, obsessive Boris collectors, and old-school high school heshers. Members of POLAR GOLDIE CATS and WIVES.

Robedoor

Unsummoning

Not Not Fun

Andra Ljos

Megalithic Statues of Vishapakar

Not Not Fun

The fourth album by Vilnius-based composer Aleksandra Evseeva aka Andra Ljos is as runic and ritualistic as the Bronze Age monoliths for which it’s named: Megalithic Statues of Vishapakar. Found mainly in the Armenian Highlands, vishaps are cigar-shaped slabs of stone carved with fish heads or snakes, depicting a sacred serpent of Armenian folklore thought to protect sources of water from drought and ruin. The music evokes a similarly arcane and devotional air, between raga, séance, and 4th world hallucination. The track titles allude to significant vishap discovery sites, spanning lakes, bays, mountains, and temples. Wood block percussion wobbles beneath lattices of looped keys, golden organ, synthetic strings and flutes, distant birds, muffled voices, and the soft wash of restless waters. Evseeva’s muse may be mined from her Armenian heritage but the songs conjure a mood more elusive and expansive – pensive pastorals for a land of long shadows and ancient fears, strewn with cryptic relics swiftly dissipating into myth.