Silver Current

Magic Fig

s/t

Silver Current

***ON LIMITED BLUE MARBLE VINYL!!! Bursting forth in a bouquet of dreamlike hooks, choral vocals and Moog pitch-bends, Magic Fig’s debut proves that the technicolor heart of San Francisco’s psychedelic lineage is still beating and as vivid as ever. Featuring alumni from the Bay Area’s best and brightest pop, psychedelic and garage bands (The Umbrellas, Whitney’s Playland, Almond Joy and Healing Potpourri among them) Magic Fig’s debut is full of sonic fireworks, top-shelf musicianship, hooks abound and a distinctive melding of prog rock and pop joy reminiscent of the ’60s / ’70s Canterbury greats. Produced by Joel Robinow of Once and Future Band.

Green Milk From The Planet Orange / Fuckwolf

Let's Split (裂けても)

Silver Current

A limited edition, full-length split album celebrating a 2024 co-tour of Japan by underground cracked-psych purveyors Fuckwolf from San Francisco and legendary prog-benders Green Milk From The Planet Orange from Tokyo. Green Milk stretch a live performance of one of their extended signature jaw-droppers “Concrete City Breakdown” relentlessly across an entire side of Let’s Split while Fuckwolf delve into a six-part abstract song cycle, ranging from stoned incense burners to blown out fuzz rippers, echoes of Faust Tapes, Les Rallizes and ’70s midwest outsider proto-punk abound. Green Milk From The Planet Orange formed in Tokyo in 2001 and continue to tour,record and perform some of neo-psychedelia’s most ambitious and masterfully performed rock music. Fuckwolf formed in San Francisco in 2002 and most recently released the critically lauded underground scuzzy art-rock gem of 2022 Goodbye, Asshole on Silver Current Records.

Sonic Youth

Live In Brooklyn 2011

Silver Current

The final U.S. show, a triumphant and blistering bookend to the storied career of one of the most influential bands in rock music, featuring a unique and expansive eighty-five minute set list that spans Sonic Youth’s nearly three decade catalog. Mixed from multitrack by longtime live engineer Aaron Mullan and mastered and cut by Carl Saff.

Mammatus

Expanding Majesty

Silver Current

Eight years in the making, Santa Cruz, California’s reclusive sons of tectonic riffage Mammatus return with Expanding Majesty, a sixty-nine minute magnum opus of kaleidoscopic guitars, soaring analog synths, wall-of-amps fuzz bass and one hundred feet drums. Four side-long pieces unfold across a double album in unstoppable riffs that span the meditative and joyful un-earthed flight of ’70s kosmische godfathers like Popol Vuh and Tangerine Dream to the kinds of sub-surface thunder pioneered by Melvins and Sleep.

Howlin Rain

Under The Wheels Vol 5: Live From Pioneertown, Ca

Silver Current

Coming in hot for the final show of the crazy year of 2021 and with an impressive new line up, Howlin Rain hit Pappy & Harriet’s in Pioneertown California full of adrenalized confidence, deep grooves and their signature, expansive guitarmony-laden jams. Captured on multi-track, Live From Pioneertown is Howlin Rain’s highest fidelity live album since 2014’s Live Rain. This latest entry to the Under The Wheels live series showcases songs from The Dharma Wheel as well as two fan favorites from 2008’s Magnificent Fiend. Available in a vinyl one-time “handmade” edition of 500, all jackets screen-printed by Monolith Press and signed and numbered by Howlin Rain bandleader Ethan Miller, also available on CD and digital.

Fuckwolf

Goodbye, Asshole

Silver Current

Goodbye, Asshole is the first studio album by San Francisco scuzz-wave merchants Fuckwolf—its a rat’s nest of deep grooves, lost ’70s rock riff intentions and art punk damage. These conundrums of time inform Goodbye, Asshole, but they are hardly romanticized in its music. The band, Eric Park (bass, vocals), Simon Phillips (drums) and Tomo Yasuda (guitar) sound blazing and scuzzy, a tight low-fi energy blasted onto tape at renowned Bay Area indie studios summarizing the last twenty years of San Francisco’s wild artistic soul – one that is now hard to find much evidence of in the city itself, but impossible to miss in the band’s sound. Fans of OSEES, Pink Fairies, late ’70s NYC, Emotional Rescue-era Stones, trashy post-punk dub and solvent-huffing rejoice!

Oh Sees

The Chapel, Sf 10.2.19

Silver Current

AVAILABLE AGAIN!!! The OH SEES at the peak of their prog obsession, super jammed out and totally dominating. The Chapel, SF 10.2.19 is a fifty-three minute, beautifully recorded, hi-fi-delity live explosion of orc puke and kraut-gone-punk rock dominance by one of the rippingest bands of the 21st century. Two record set on limited orange/red cloud colored vinyl with side D etching and faithfully (re)created TMOQ-style bootleg album art. Originally released for RSD 2021.

Lattimore, Mary & Growing

(Color) Gainer

Silver Current

Critically acclaimed harpist and experimental composer Mary Lattimore and big amp ambient pioneers Growing have united for their first collaboration: Gainer. Remastered here from its original release (previously digital only), Gainer is now available for the first time on vinyl in plush packaging including UV spot gloss “invisible ink”-style jacket printing. Comprised of two side-long pieces, Gainer is less a meeting point of harp and drone guitars and much more a singular creative group vision made up of elemental movements, electrically charged flow and a symphonic aura by three masters of contemporary ambient and experimental composition. Gainer is rumored to be the first record in a series of collaborative albums by Lattimore and Growing. Based on the premiere statement at hand, let’s hope it shall be so!

Lattimore, Mary & Growing

Gainer

Silver Current

Critically acclaimed harpist and experimental composer Mary Lattimore and big amp ambient pioneers Growing have united for their first collaboration: Gainer. Remastered here from its original release (previously digital only), Gainer is now available for the first time on vinyl in plush packaging including UV spot gloss “invisible ink”-style jacket printing. Comprised of two side-long pieces, Gainer is less a meeting point of harp and drone guitars and much more a singular creative group vision made up of elemental movements, electrically charged flow and a symphonic aura by three masters of contemporary ambient and experimental composition. Gainer is rumored to be the first record in a series of collaborative albums by Lattimore and Growing. Based on the premiere statement at hand, let’s hope it shall be so!

Robinson, Chris & Howlin Rain

Sucker / Death May Be Your Santa Claus

Silver Current

***AVAILABLE AGAIN WITH LIMITED BLACK LIGHT COVER ART AND GLOW IN THE DARK NEON GREEN VINYL!!! Silver Current Records releases Chris Robinson and Howlin Rain’s studio-recorded debut together in the form of a special limited edition 7-inch of two sleazy, rip-roaring Mott The Hoople covers: “Sucker” and “Death May Be Your Santa Claus.” Originally released for RSD 2022. “In 2019 CR came and sat in with Howlin Rain in San Francisco at a performance at the Chapel and we played ‘Sucker’ and it was a blast. As the pandemic came in the following year, sit-ins and live gigs were a thing of the past for a while and we turned our heads toward the studio for these kinds of endeavors of kinship and collaboration. CR chose one more of his favorite Mott songs and we were off to the races!”—Ethan Miller

Howlin Rain

(Color) The Dharma Wheel

Silver Current

Presenting Howlin Rain’s grand-scale new studio album: The Dharma Wheel, a six-track, 52-minute dive into a joyous fantasy realm. A sonic travelogue of prog funk, psychedelia, bygone West Coast jam music and watermelon rock. The triumph of a working band!

Howlin Rain

The Dharma Wheel

Silver Current

Presenting Howlin Rain’s grand-scale new studio album: The Dharma Wheel, a six-track, 52-minute dive into a joyous fantasy realm. A sonic travelogue of prog funk, psychedelia, bygone West Coast jam music and watermelon rock. The triumph of a working band!

Growing

(color) Diptych

Silver Current

It’s not easy to summarize any band whose career has stretched over two decades. In the case of Growing, though, it’s all in the name: since 2001, the core duo of Kevin Doria and Joe DeNardo have been making vibrating, explorative experimental music that is in a forever state of evolution. In that time, they have amassed a hard-to-define and influential body of work, and Diptych sees the band operating at the height of their “big amp ambient” powers. Diptych is a masterclass in slowly undulating ambient drift, and quite possibly the definitive headphone album of the year. Guitars that sound like organs pointed at the heavens are cut with subtly damaged electronic moves, the end result being a record that is at once ecstatic, transportive and gritty.  Ambient and new age music have become part of the larger indie vocabulary. Things were different over twenty years ago in the Olympia, Washington punk community where Doria and DeNardo got their start. Both veterans of aggressive music by the time the band began, Growing emerged like a rainbow at the other end of the heavy music tunnel: loud as ever, but with a sonic and aesthetic position that ran counter to punk rock norms.  Created over the past year and a half, Diptych extrapolates on Growing’s formative drone-based work, showing a unit in full control of a language that they have built and reconfigured over time. The music here continues to be an intuitive outgrowth of a friendship that...

Growing

Diptych

Silver Current

It’s not easy to summarize any band whose career has stretched over two decades. In the case of Growing, though, it’s all in the name: since 2001, the core duo of Kevin Doria and Joe DeNardo have been making vibrating, explorative experimental music that is in a forever state of evolution. In that time, they have amassed a hard-to-define and influential body of work, and Diptych sees the band operating at the height of their “big amp ambient” powers. Diptych is a masterclass in slowly undulating ambient drift, and quite possibly the definitive headphone album of the year. Guitars that sound like organs pointed at the heavens are cut with subtly damaged electronic moves, the end result being a record that is at once ecstatic, transportive and gritty.  Ambient and new age music have become part of the larger indie vocabulary. Things were different over twenty years ago in the Olympia, Washington punk community where Doria and DeNardo got their start. Both veterans of aggressive music by the time the band began, Growing emerged like a rainbow at the other end of the heavy music tunnel: loud as ever, but with a sonic and aesthetic position that ran counter to punk rock norms.  Created over the past year and a half, Diptych extrapolates on Growing’s formative drone-based work, showing a unit in full control of a language that they have built and reconfigured over time. The music here continues to be an intuitive outgrowth of a friendship that started in...

Howlin Rain

Under The Wheels, Vol 2

Silver Current

On Under The Wheels, Vol. 2, Howlin Rain’s trademark rock ’n’ roll bombast and intricately woven, extended improv passages swirl into a distinct form of storytelling, expressed through spiraling energy and a near constant flow of form and melody. As a companion to its Vol. 1 predecessor, this latest offering is also drawn from North American coastal tours in 2018 and 2019 that came in support of the band’s most recent studio album, The Alligator Bride. Curated by Howlin Rain founder Ethan Miller, it presents favorite song performances selected from different shows along the way.  “The last time I saw Howlin’ Rain ignite a stage—at New York’s Brooklyn Bowl in the summer of 2018—I could never have imagined the profound silence that surrounds me two years later. In a world without the sustenance and sacrament of live music, my long, loud memories from that night—Howlin’ Rain bringing The Alligator Bride to life in a rush of joy and cascading guitars—have been big medicine, keeping me sane and psychedelicized. Now there is a record from that tour to prove I wasn’t dreaming—and spread this band’s cleansing might until we can all meet again in true, electric communion.”  —David Fricke (MOJO / Sirius XM Radio / Rolling Stone)

Howlin Rain

(colored) Under The Wheels: Live From The Coasts, Vol 1

Silver Current

Under The Wheels Vol 1 is the first in a new series of limited edition Howlin Rain live albums, intended to be a direct exchange / conversation with fans. A no-rules, anything goes series culled from multi-track live recordings made on the road.  Volume 1, Live From The Coasts, leans heavily to the bands more expansive and improvisational side and is the first of a two-part curation of the band’s personal favorites of East Coast and West Coast performances in 2018-19 (Volume 2 and second Live From The Coasts LP due out in Fall 2019.)  “My intention with the live series is to open a spigot between the fans and these captured live adventures and to leave it open as an ongoing conversation about our spiritual dance together.” —Ethan Miller

Howlin Rain

Under The Wheels: Live From The Coasts, Vol 1

Silver Current

Under The Wheels Vol 1 is the first in a new series of limited edition Howlin Rain live albums, intended to be a direct exchange / conversation with fans. A no-rules, anything goes series culled from multi-track live recordings made on the road.  Volume 1, Live From The Coasts, leans heavily to the bands more expansive and improvisational side and is the first of a two-part curation of the band’s personal favorites of East Coast and West Coast performances in 2018-19 (Volume 2 and second Live From The Coasts LP due out in Fall 2019.)  “My intention with the live series is to open a spigot between the fans and these captured live adventures and to leave it open as an ongoing conversation about our spiritual dance together.” —Ethan Miller

Wooden Shjips

Shjips In The Night: Live In San Francisco, June 8, 2018

Silver Current

***Available again in limited supply!!!  Now entering their 13th year of drone and dirge drug-boogie, the Wooden Shjips, one of the linchpins of the neo-psychedelic movement of the new millennium, continue to expand on their concept of the eternal and infinite riff, ever higher and outward, year after year.  Their first official live album, Shjips In The Night: Live In San Francisco, June 8, 2018 is as much a summation of their journey so far as it is an ultra-saturated, full color snap-shot of their peak live powers at present. At once cosmic and heavy, dream-like and searing in equal measures (and often all at once), this is the capture of a single live performance, multi-tracked at Slim’s in San Francisco by Eric Bauer and Damien Rasmussen and in a unique creative twist, was mixed by the band’s friends and colleagues in underground psych rock, Heron Oblivion, who hand out the Nitrous balloons and bring their own subtle (and not so subtle) enhancement of the show’s dark but kaleidoscopic color palette to the Shjips’ universe through performance mixing and post-production effects worm-holes, all the while keeping the Shjips’ long time band chemistry and natural sonic power at the forefront of the listener’s experience.  Shjips In The Night is a career-spanning set that includes performances of songs from their first EP to their latest V out last year on Thrill Jockey.

Earthless

From The West

Silver Current

On the eve of the release of Black Heaven, their debut for Nuclear Blast Records, Earthless turned in this incredible live performance in San Francisco on March 1st, 2018, captured and released on vinyl by Silver Current Records. Since their inception seventeen years ago, this band has become an icon of 21st century heavy music and a cult unto themselves. On From The West the band’s signature high-volume drive and unbridled horsepower create an almost mantra-like repetition as a framework for infinite improvisation. That, and beer-can crushing, fist-pumping riffs and solos delivered by an unstoppable rhythm section. This album is a complete, hypnotic, psychedelic experience in a way that remains totally unique to the band’s virtuosic expression. A live album that captures the band at peak powers and a quintessential fan piece from one of the best live rock bands in the world. Album tracks includes looser, rawer versions of Black Heaven favorites, a nearly twenty minute version of their instrumental titan “Uluru Rock,” and a blazing cover of Led Zeppelin’s “Communication Breakdown.” The album jacket is also a meticulous reproduction of the band’s favorite TMOQ (Trademark Of Quality) Zeppelin bootleg.

Howlin Rain

The Alligator Bride

Silver Current

***BACK IN PRINT ON VINYL!!!  On June 8, Oakland, California’s Howlin Rain return with The Alligator Bride, their fourth album of swampy, ragged, unapologetic rock ‘n’ roll. Led by Ethan Miller (co-founder of psych rockers Comets On Fire and Heron Oblivion), the band recorded the album with Eric “King Riff” Bauer at the Mansion in San Francisco, direct to tape, in one or two takes. It’s their first release on Silver Current Records, the artist-run label owned by Miller, and gleefully indebted to classic rock formations like the Grateful Dead’s Europe ‘72 and Free’s masterpiece of atmospheric, minimalist blues, 1969’s Fire And Water. “The guiding principle for The Alligator Bride was to create ‘Neal Cassady Rock,’” says Miller. “Which is to say, high energy, good-times adventure music, driving the hippie bus, shirtless and stoned, up for four days straight, and extremely fuzzy around the edges.” It’s a fitting vision for the band: torn between eras, fuzzed out but full of soul, an epic perspective on what’s come before and what lies ahead, woven into a cosmic tapestry of riffs, rhymes, and resonant frequencies.

Howlin Rain

s/t

Silver Current

Never before issued on vinyl, Silver Current presents Howlin Rain’s self-titled 2006 debut album, originally on CD only on Birdman Records! Formed in 2004 in San Francisco, the band features Ethan Miller (Comets On Fire, Heron Oblivion), John Moloney (shaman leader and percussionist for Boston’s Sunburned Hand Of The Man) and Ian Gradek (bassist, iron worker, banjo-picker and world traveler). For a group of musicians who spend most of their time playing napalm-wrecked avant-rock or underground improv, this is an opportunity to downshift and ease into some classic good-time jams—some yin to the more experimental yang of their better known projects.  They draw from the resonance of The Dead, The Allman Brothers, Richard Brautigan, Exuma, Terry Reid, Golden Earring, CSNY (as well as Neil Young and Crazy Horse), Bob Dylan, Blue Cheer, CCR, Simon and Garfunkel, Randy Holden, White Heaven, Jimi Hendrix, Joe Walsh and anyone who’s played piano on an album without actually knowing how to. They’re equal parts dust, groove, folk, rock, dirt, mercury, earth, beer, watermelon, the Eel River and the great land that surrounds it. Howlin Rain came together with the intention of making a good, old-fashioned, free-wheeling rock album with a bared soul and a body that hangs joy, hysteria and darkness on the same rambling bones. They play unfiltered music in all its grit and all its glory; music to beat the steering wheel of your van to or sing along with while drinking whiskey in the bathtub with your dog on a Saturday...

Odyssey Cult, The

Vol. 1

Silver Current

2017 finds Ethan Miller (Feral Ohms, Howlin’ Rain) in an extended creative burst of projects both musical and literary, and yet he was able to find the time to complete The Odyssey Cult, a highly personal, sprawling two-volume, solo electric guitar project. Four years in the making and his first solo instrumental guitar-oriented release, self-described as “amp melt and high volume ambient,” it is as indebted to the great minimalists and loop pioneers as to guitar-oriented Krautrock, cult film soundtrack music and the great feedback-riding, amp destroyers of the ’60s to present. Miller used Homer’s The Odyssey and Joyce’s Ulysses as abstract guides to create his own epic sonic narrative from an overload of information and material. A journey, an epic poem, a meditation, a long, rich dream that loosens all sense of space and time—ultimately confusing history, moment and self.

Odyssey Cult, The

Vol. 2

Silver Current

2017 finds Ethan Miller (Feral Ohms, Howlin’ Rain) in an extended creative burst of projects both musical and literary, and yet he was able to find the time to complete The Odyssey Cult, a highly personal, sprawling two-volume, solo electric guitar project. Four years in the making and his first solo instrumental guitar-oriented release, self-described as “amp melt and high volume ambient,” it is as indebted to the great minimalists and loop pioneers as to guitar-oriented Krautrock, cult film soundtrack music and the great feedback-riding, amp destroyers of the ’60s to present. Miller used Homer’s The Odyssey and Joyce’s Ulysses as abstract guides to create his own epic sonic narrative from an overload of information and material. A journey, an epic poem, a meditation, a long, rich dream that loosens all sense of space and time—ultimately confusing history, moment and self.

Feral Ohms

S/t

Silver Current

Feral Ohms is a power trio from Oakland, California, led by Comets On Fire / Howlin Rain / Heron Oblivion guitar and voice fireball Ethan Miller along with animal drummer Chris Johnson (Drunk Horse / Andy Human) and the loudest bassist in fifteen counties, Josh Haynes (Nudity). The band turns the spatial pyrotechnics and expansive spirit of classic psychedelia inside out, dragging it through the punk rock era kicking and screaming and boils it down into a series of explosions that start at needle drop and end when the record does. They blast pure action and outlaw rock’n’roll joy through relentless, violent musical force, blowing the doors off psychedelic rock and letting loose the raw, wild, high speed feedback wail of something massive careening off the rails and into your ears. This is FO’s debut studio album. Recorded by Eric “King Riff” Bauer (Ty Segall, White Fence, Heron Oblivion), Phil Manley (Earthless, Wooden Shjips) and mixed with scorched Earth policy by Chris Woodhouse (Thee Oh Sees, Fuzz)