***Sicko, the newest full length studio album from BEAST NEST is all this and more; subtle, vulnerable, complex, chaotic, and beautiful. These sounds hold up mirrors to the self and serve as vehicles of discovery, accountability, and actualization. If the sound of Beast Nest on Sicko can be summed up in one word it would be “empowering”—an apt description for the very person who creates these worlds for us to discover. Sicko is BASU's strongest work yet and a masterclass in contemporary and timeless electronic music. Pressed on pink vinyl.
LP $22.25
01/21/2022
***The strange and alien worlds Headboggle opens up throughout the album are a complex mix of Gedalecia’s mischievous sense of humor, love of pure sound, and quirky melodic sensibility inspired by his studies of ragtime and classical music. Whereas previous LPs were more improv-based in their arrangements, “Digital Digital Analog” refines Gedalecia’s decades of research into synthesis through a highly focused and refined compositional lens.
LP $20.50
11/05/2021
***“Nightmare In Paradise” by Tyler Holmes was written in the wake of a violent trauma that Holmes and tour mates experienced on their last night in Puerto Rico at the end of an otherwise blissful tour. Holmes stayed behind with longtime collaborator and friend San Cha to care for their injured bandmate, taking shifts sleeping on a hospital floor and staying with friends in downtown San Juan. Upon returning stateside, Holmes experienced intense PTSD, bouts of agoraphobia, and extreme ongoing stomach pain. The symptoms drove them to composition as a survival tool and means to process extreme dark thoughts, anxieties and emotions. Initially the project began as acoustic guitar demos sounding like Hole’s MTV Unplugged performance remixed by Tricky, the songs eventually morphed into the electro-acoustic aquarium that the album contains now. Despite the album’s violent and chaotic conceptual underpinnings, “Nightmare In Paradise” is the culmination of many years of toil, struggle, scrapping and re-editing, crying and singing, ultimately rebirthing the most complex and nuanced musical offering yet from Bay Area artist Tyler Holmes. “Nightmare In Paradise” is Holmes’ most refined and deliberate distillation of concept and composition working in a complicated and refined harmony. Through even more delicate and nuanced vocal presentation across the twelve songs, beds of layered acoustic guitar, minimal electronics, cello and woodwinds, Holmes has refined their hybridization of Electronic / Folk / R&B and Modern Black Classical music to a feverish crescendo on “Nightmare In Paradise”.
LP $21.35
03/26/2021
***For his Ratskin Records debut, Japanese underground music legend KAZUYUKI KISHINO aka KK NULL of ZENI GEVA fame unleashes Great Attractor. Null's newest full-length album blends two ”live”performances into a cinematic, sonically diverse sandstorm of electronic chaos. Great Attractor pulls from numerous compositional and sonic strategies, including Japanese harsh noise, “high-speed” industrial, dance music, free-jazz and musique concrete.
MC $7.75
12/27/2019
***“Don’t take your physical abilities for granted, for you can lose them, with a snap of the neck,” DAX PIERSON chants, as the manipulated vocal loop meets dense, orchestral synthesizers and undulating drones that escalate into a triumphant, cinematic beat for “A Snap of the Neck,” the album’s powerful opening track. Genre wise, Live In Oakland defies categorization; seamlessly blending elements from hip hop, dance music, experimental electronics, and free improv/radio art into an idiosyncratic electronic style.
MC $9.25
09/06/2019
***Chancletas D’Oro, XUXA SANTAMARIA’s third release and second full-length LP, is a loose concept album focused on exploring femme and womxn narratives drawn from both history and works of fiction. Side A employs re-imagined myths, fables, and original fictional narratives to create songs that challenge or obfuscate the received ideas around feminine agency, motivations, and desire.
LP $19.95
09/06/2019
***Dig a Pit is an autobiography based on a personal experience of intimate partner violence. It focuses on the psychologically damaging impact of narcissistic abuse, an elusive form of emotional abuse rooted in manipulation, control, and well-concealed cruelty and humiliation. Each song examines different stages of recovery from processing feelings of vengeance, confusion, misguided desire for the abuser, to the practice of accepting and healing. The tracks present an eclectic journey through multiple genres. First Single “Betrayal Internalized” showcases traces of bedroom pop and ambient electronic music. While second single “Exorcism” includes elements of trap and horror film soundtrack music.
MC $9.25
09/06/2019
***AB-RA-CA-DEB-RA— the sophomore album by BIG DEBBIE brings to mind religious pagan celebrations as much as the 1980's industrial, goethe clubs, with subtle nods to Chris & Cosey, DAF, Einstürzende Neubauten, and so much more it’s own sound. Big, sexy noise you can move to! AB RA CA DEB RA saw a cassette release on Ratskin in early 2015 and sold out within a month of it’s release and has been re edited and remastered for LP. “Mouth Wide Open” starts the album with seething distortion and skullcracking drums—it’s a post-asteroid-impact Mad Max wasteland child of Flipper, Chrome and Suicide. (And this, notes Debbie, is one of the “upbeat” tracks.) “Mouth Wide Open” was recorded live to cassette 4-track, says Debbie, and the song also features Portland’s similarly uncompromising TERROR APART, who’s here to help really push this song into the red.
LP $19.95
03/15/2019
***BACK IN STOCK!!! Oakland. Freak Faith Folk. Let the spirit ride. Oakland’s SPELLLING (CHRYSTIA CABRAL) took the Bay Area scene by storm her first two years as a performing artist, with her demo version of Pantheon Of Me charting at Bandcamp’s #7 album of 2017. Pantheon Of Me demo received glowing reviews from Pitchfork, Tiny Mix Tapes, KQED, and was named one of 2017's top new local artists by the East Bay Express. Now Ratskin Records is proud to release Pantheon Of Me fully remastered on a 12-inch LP. Pantheon of Me combines dark freak-folk, neo-soul, industrial, and pop sensibilities into forty-two minutes of haunting, elegant dark vocal forward futuristic electronic music. Cabral recently released a 7’’ single and new album on Sacred Bones Records, but Pantheon Of Me is her first full-length album. “Listening to it feels like searching through a pitch-black house for secret performances that slowly reveal their process. It’s nonlinear textures recall Geidi” Primes-era Grimes, with dashes of New Weird American mysticism and divine soul.....”—Jenn Pelly, Pitchfork
LP $21.85
03/15/2019