***On his second album as DAR, Chicago songwriter Aaron Osbourne conjures a strangely triumphant celebration of life and love from beyond the casual boundaries of personal loss. Forging a complex path from grief to healing through self-spun yet ultimately collaborative music, there's some objectively tough stuff here. But the record never wallows in despair, nor asks you —the listener—to join in its trials. It’s a rock record. A really *good* rock record. And even furthermore, against all odds, a distinctively joyous one. In the spirit of K Records’ ramshackle heartbreak and the damaged baritone of Ted Lucas, Osbourne’s own idiosyncratic yowl lights the path from song to song with a fiery combustion of charm and dread. An unlikely landscape of acoustic guitars, toy pianos and digital brass surges into the foreground of normal rock shit to touching effect. Recorded by Jim Marlowe in Louisville at End of an Ear studio with the help of longtime friends and collaborators Jenny Rose & Ryan Davis (Equipment Pointed Ankh, Roadhouse Band) over the course of two years, 'A Slightly Larger Head' is the album that Osbourne deemed "essential to my survival…it was necessary." Savor the ride and keep going.
LP $26.95
02/23/2024
***"At the frayed bottom-edge of Indiana—just a moderate bike ride north of Louisville, Kentucky—multi-instrumentalist, artist and songwriter RYAN DAVIS’ Americana-noir soundwaves have been emanating for years in a myriad of forms. As driving force for the lauded STATE CHAMPION, long-running member of TROPICAL TRASH, administrator of the esoteric and excellent Cropped Out festival, and lone proprietor of the Sophomore Lounge label, Davis lays down his first proper ‘solo’ release with Dancing on the Edge, a rich, 2xLP tapestry of tunes that absolutely glows over seven expansive cuts. It’s a pure collage of modernity and heritage. Recorded in early 2023 with help both in-studio and remotely from peers like JOAN SHELLEY, CATHERINE IRWIN (FREAKWATER), WILL LAWRENCE (FELICE BROTHERS, GUN OUTFIT, JOHN EARLY), JENNY ROSE (GIVING UP), CHRISTOPHER MAY (MAIL THE HORSE), ELISABETH FUCHSIA (FOOTINGS, BONNIE "PRINCE" BILLY), and AARON ROSENBLUM (SON OF EARTH, SAPAT), Dancing on the Edge draws backup perhaps primarily from Davis' tight-knit drinking buddies-cum-cast of collaborators in EQUIPMENT POINTED ANKH (records on Astral Editions, Bruit Direct Disques, Torn Light)—a five-headed hive-mind from which he drew impetus for his own foray into more abstract and improvisational terrain these past few years under the ROADHOUSE alias. The results herein are melancholic, gentle, minimal yet colorful in mood: a lilting highway accompaniment of crisp instrumentation and a relaxed, amiable approach to vocals with rhapsodic wordsmithery. Fans of the aforementioned artists as well as those of Souled American, David Berman, Kurt Vile and Comes A Time-era Neil should all easily find bounty.
2XLP $31.45
11/03/2023
***GUB—debut full-length from the two-headed beast of Beau Wanzer / Champagne Mirrors—is a low-boiling cauldron aswirl with glurpy synthscapes, hypnotized rhythms and eerily dubbed-out electronic discharge. A timeless collaboration from two of Chicago’s finest exports.
LP $23.50
11/03/2023
***"The first solo album by Ryan Weinstein (Cairo Gang) is truly a world of its own. Under the name Coffin Prick (the singular version of Coffin Pricks, his group with Chris Thomson), Weinstein has built a musical ecosystem filled with rhyming sounds, hypnotically hermetic production, and a rhythmic gravity that keeps everything in orbit. Crafted entirely at his home in Los Angeles, Laughing is simultaneously isolated and welcoming, as if Weinstein is both reflecting his environment and opening it up for everyone to explore. So many compelling sights and sounds await if you choose to accept Weinstein’s invitation and enter the universe of Laughing. Fiery guitar accents, spaced-out synth patterns, random sounds captured while dog-walking, and the echoey missives of Weinstein’s voice all dart around the stereo space like electrons circling a nucleus. That nucleus consists of his dazzling bass and drum structures, which form the heart of nearly every track here. He consistently finds loops that stick in your brain, sometimes sounding like post-punk from outer space, other times evoking classic dub shot through with helium or doused in gasoline. Take a ride on 'Ricochet in Limbo,' a piston-firing workout in which Weinstein’s slashing guitar cuts through synth detonations like a motorcycle in a minefield. Slide down 'Smooth Rubber Ailment,' a funk-skimming jam whose chilly beat and blurry vocals suggest a haunted house dance party. Climb the rising stairs of 'The Guild of Cowards,' a slow-burning instrumental that evokes the 1980s without sounding the least bit dated. Jump on...
LP $23.50
06/23/2023
***The duo of Mark Anderson (Bancho Taste / Mysteries of Love) and Mark Sadgrove (Mazda Hatchback / Mysteries of Love) take the wheel and don the louvres to serve up a paean to landlocked listlessness, hoons in souped-up saloons and wide-eyed, drunk teen wandering. Recorded both on the road and in typical bramble-brained fashion at Dom Studious in Koenji (with help along the way from Leighton Craig), this LP was mastered by Forbes Williams and follows on from recent releases on Kasual Plastik, What Lies Beneath and Cost of Living.
LP $23.50
06/23/2023
***"ARBOR LABOR UNION are no strangers to the power of transmutation. The Atlanta quartet has alchemized their sound since 2016’s distortion-soaked I Hear You (via Sub Pop Records) into a mystical concoction of Punk-informed weirdo Southern Rock, they lovingly refer to as 'Transcendental Twang.' Their latest offering, Yonder, renews their vows to mainstay influences like The Allman Brothers, Minutemen, Neil Young, and Lungfish, but wields them in newly contemplative ways. Yonder is the more introspective, nocturnal yin to 2020’s New Petal Instants’s brightly kaleidoscopic yang, without sacrificing any joy or playfulness. Produced by newly enlisted bassist and longtime collaborative producer ROB SARABIA,Yonder journeys into noticeably cleaner and more robustly inward-facing sonic territory than we’ve ever heard from ALU before. Fearless captain and vocalist/guitarist BO ORR lyrically examines excavating the depths of your inner world with light-hearted optimism and curiosity. Lead single 'Always Wear Your Shadow Hat' is a winding ode and instructional guide to the freedom of embracing both the light and the dark aspects of oneself. But they are not sending listeners into this process blind; the challenges of this shadow integration are mirrored in the dizzyingly off-kilter interplay between lead guitarist BRIAN 'BRAIN ATOMS' ADAMS and percussionist BRYAN SCHERER. While Arbor Labor Union is clearly untethered from the confines of the physical world and conventional thought, Yonder finds them deeply grounded in humble sincerity; providing a conduit between a cosmically-connected consciousness and a very human, earthly earnesty."—Autumn James
LP $23.75
01/13/2023
***Another debut 12" of country-fried art rock from some of Europe's finest (and friendliest) freak-punx. Step aboard the autobahn-bound UFO for a splattering of infectious guitar tunes w/ influences ranging from the Trux to the Teasers 'n' beyond. "The good doctor is finally back to flip us on our backs and give us the old one-two-three-four, following a cassette I only knew about and listened to death and onto rebirth after hanging with the boys in Marseille. These new-age space cowboys take us to the other side of the galaxy with a space shuttle of punk-fuelled psychedelic country… and drop you off into a black hole. The riffs bring the good news of the apocalypse to the new world from the one they left behind. US Maple lightsaber guitars fighting in a Uranium Club? Singer running out of oxygen. References aren’t required anymore, just like when you hired VHS from the local video store. Take the risk, take the plunge, form an opinion yourself… get your money’s worth, tell me to go to hell and stop reading this. If Captain Beefheart kept playing punk music and joined Marbled Eye or something, wearing modern, youthful clothes with an iPhone to hang out with some of the deranged, loveable, lust-for-lifers of Leipzig, maybe it would sound like this, but only after pulling him apart and putting him back together as Robocop with a Country Teasers bumper sticker on his metal arse. Why hire VHS when you can see their amazing video clips,...
LP $21.95
08/12/2022
***The debut full-length of Link Wray-scented desert guitar wreckage from GABE KARABELL (LUMPY & THE DUMPERS, FRIED E/M). "ACE OF SPIT has been playing regular gigs around South St. Louis for the last five years. Typically you’d find the band inside a basement, burned-out warehouse, or one of the dive bars that still permits smoking, mangling a Sanford Clark or Link Wray cover—perhaps closing out a punk bill because the city ran out of 80s-style hardcore bands. 'Oh, it’s that Spaghetti-Western band again...'" "All that went away in 2020, so Ace of Spit hid out in a basement and wrote this, their self-titled debut full-length (following a scant scattering of home-dubbed, hand-distributed demo cassettes in editions of don't-even-try), which probably would’ve stayed buried deep inside The Sinkhole if their cohorts at Sophomore Lounge hadn’t fortuitously (if not bizarrely) decided to take interest in the sessions' unbridled stink 'n' spirit." "The songs on Ace of Spit chug with a free-wheeling swagger, swaying loosely on the rails and yearning for a time of tweed Fender amps and warbled tape echo. Dragged through the decades, hamstrung by digital distortion and the band’s musical ineptitude (perhaps "enhanced" with the help of available studio substances), small fragments of these undefined and impressionistic eras still shine through from the cracks in the tracks." "Was any of it real, or just a nostalgic dreamland? Some imagined place and time you long for while being punished by a Dumpers super-fan in the Arizona desert? Dreaming of Apollo Bay...
LP $23.50
08/05/2022
***NOW AVAILABLE!!! "...Let’s just say that the year is 2003, and we’re finally meeting the protagonist of this story, a young aspiring post-post-post-punk musician playing guitar (and burning CDRs) in his suburban Kentucky bedroom. Born Michael Andrew Turner, he will cycle through a series of punk names (all gates open), the informal (Mikey Turner), the literary (M.A. Turner), the androgynous (Ma Turner), the mystical (Mazozma). Thanks to the internet, his musical practice can now easily be influenced by, let’s say, the American and European avant-garde theater of the 1950s, the global avant-psychedelic rock underground of the late 1960s, the singer-songwriter outlaw country of the 1970s, the hardcore punk of the 1980s, and from the 1990s both the Lollapaloozoid MTV grunge iceberg tip (with the punk/indie underground massive beneath the water) and the weirdo Bananafishfood noise from San Francisco and Japan and Europe and everywhere else. Not only that, he can start his own band that plays music influenced by all of those things all at once, make prolific recordings of said music, and send it all right back onto the internet (via CDR, cassette, sometimes even vinyl and CD) to create a living subcultural feedback loop. Mikey has indeed done all of that, and is still doing it, non-stop for almost 20 years now, but he did it first in 2003 with a band he called Warmer Milks, a strange and powerful little combo formed in the college town of Lexington, Kentucky. I think a band like Warmer Milks could...
2XLP $31.45
08/05/2022
***Over the last decade-and-a-half, C JOYNES has ploughed a singular furrow through solo guitar, with a body of work incorporating English folk-tunes alongside North & West African music, and lifting proto-minimalist and improvised techniques from the European classical and avant-garde traditions. His new release, Poor Boy On The Wire, is his first full album dedicated wholly to the electric guitar. Through a typically wide-ranging set, Joynes exploits the instrument’s potential by placing intricate parlour music alongside overdriven garage blues throw-downs, wiry electric folk and the brittle ringing tones of free improvisation. However, these explorations of the tones and timbres of close-mic’d guitars and amplification retain an overall coherence and unity through the deliberate use of a limited palette of budget instruments and vintage equipment.
LP $23.50
08/05/2022
***“An extremely dynamic and creative release — Roadhouse combines acoustic and electronic music with a strong balance to invoke the complexity and confusion of a growing planet earth.”—Delroy Edwards, 2021
LP $23.50
08/05/2022