New Releases

Smug Brothers

Gravity Is Just A Way To Fall

Anyway

Smug Brothers’ music has been cutting through the indie noise for more than two decades, driven by the ever-evolving chemistry of singer/guitarist Kyle Melton and drummer Don Thrasher (Guided by Voices, Swearing at Motorists), and their slew of highly collectible LPs, CDs, and cassettes.And yet, you don't need to own any of those to get an overview of the Columbus, Ohio, band’s insanely addictive, riff-driven catalog. Smug Brothers’ newest release, Gravity Is Just A Way To Fall, does that for you, arriving on the heels of both a new record (2025’s Stuck on Beta) and an increasing number of shows, festival spots, and Melton’s own recording finesse.Like Heartless Bastards, Cloud Nothings, or Times New Viking, Smug Brothers burst out of Ohio in the mid-2000s with a scrappy, lo-fi sound that only hinted at the head-bobbing greatness to come. Briefly a recording project with Darryl Robbins of Motel Beds, and since 2009 a full-fledged band, Melton and Thrasher have belted out Beatlesquese earworms, head-spinning sound collages, serrated stompers, hushed folk, dance-ready horn splashes, and more on their sonic journey.Thank the indie gods, then, that they’ve chosen a tight 13 songs for the LP version of Gravity – and a generous 31-track CD version – that showcase their mastery with a rotating cast of Ohioans (most of them sporting their own worthy musical projects, including Kyle Sowash, Brian Baker, and Marc Betts).I’ve been a fan since the very beginning, not just as a proud native of Dayton, Ohio, where they formed, but...

Leimer, K.

Atrophies For Piano

Palace Of Lights

Part of the early independent music movement that started in the late 1970s, K. Leimer and his label Palace Of Lights occupies a special and respected niche among electronic, experimental and ambient genres. His work is included in the Cherry Red Noise Floor compilation series and his early cassette work is featured in the critically acclaimed VOD box set American Cassette Culture. “I’ve always wanted to produce an album centered on the muted depth of sadness the piano offers, and this is almost that.” In nearly all his music, Leimer has relied on the density and layering of multiple timbres and voices to shape his compositions. With very few exceptions all the voicing on Atrophies for Piano originates from piano. Composed and recorded over a two-year period, the atrophies occupy sparse, gap-filled stillness, disassembled melody and patterns, and fluctuating, uncertain drones. Aided occasionally by treated strings, each piece seeks out edges of imminent collapse and harmonic decay. Six dark New Classical settings populate an atrophied sonic landscape possessed by an energetic melancholy. Issued on 180 gram white vinyl and various digital formats, Atrophies for Piano was mastered by Taylor Deupree with cover photography by Tyler Boley.

Pig's Blood

Destroying The Spirit

Dark Descent

Bestial death horde Pig's Blood are going scorched earth with their inaugural release under the Dark Descent Records banner. Destroying The Spirit sees the band reach a new level of relentless, blackened brutality. An unholy barrage of volcanic riffing and abyssal hostility, Destroying The Spirit is violence incarnate.Hailing from Milwaukee, Pig's Blood have spent the last decade-plus unleashing their unrepentant strain of death metal upon the underground. While often grouped under the banner of war metal, their sound stretches far beyond any single label.Drawing from the raw, militant fury of bands like Revenge and Blasphemy, the band fuses that chaotic savagery with a backbone indebted to early ’90s American legends such as Deicide, Order from Chaos, and Incantation.The result is a malformed yet deliberate hybrid—bludgeoning battle hymns delivered with a sharp, serrated edge. Through sheer force and conviction, Pig's Blood continue carving out their own brutal stronghold within the death metal underground.

Rhododendron

Ascent Effort

Flenser

Transformation, growth, and rebirth drive Ascent Effort, the latest release from Portland, Oregon trio Rhododendron. The title points upward, but not toward arrival. The record documents a period of change defined as much by instability as progress, where confusion and renewal unfold at the same pace. Formed in 2019 while the band’s members were still in high school, Rhododendron’s Ezra Chong (guitar, vocals), Gage Walker (bass), and Noah Mortola (drums) set out to push their musical limits without regard for genre boundaries or audience expectation. For Ascent Effort, the band joined the roster of The Flenser, aligning with a label that has long championed artists who work in tension rather than comfort. In the past seven years the trio has developed a sound rooted in technical precision and repetition. Drawing from the angular experimentation of underground rock in the 1980s and 1990s alongside elements of jazz, ambient, and progressive music, their compositions are deliberate with intensity. Riffs fracture and reform, rhythms lock into patterns only to break apart, and extended passages build pressure before shifting direction. Performing regularly in Portland, the band has cultivated an intense and loyal local following. The live setting hardened the material. Songs grew heavier, sharper, more physical through repetition and high volume. The material that became Ascent Effort was tested on tour before entering the studio. Written largely in sequence, the album traces a period of personal change and internal friction. Growth is not always clean; sometimes it grinds forward. Nothing resolves without cost. Confusion...

Mrs. Magician

Spiritual Hangover

Swami

San Diego’s Mrs. Magician has always bent surf music and punk into something delightfully off-kilter — sun-soaked, hook-heavy power pop with a lyrical fixation on life’s darker undercurrents. Their 2012 debut, Strange Heaven, was a nihilistic pop statement that grew into a cult classic. The 2016 follow-up, Bermuda, sharpened the edges with punchy, nervy songwriting. Both records were produced by John Reis (Rocket From The Crypt, Hot Snakes, Drive Like Jehu), cementing the band’s place in Southern California’s underground lineage.Now, in 2026, Mrs. Magician reemerges with their long-awaited third LP, Spiritual Hangover. Recorded at Dave Grohl’s Studio 606 and Singing Serpent Studios with producer Christian Cummings, Spiritual Hangover finds songwriter Jacob Turnbloom trading youthful nihilism for something more reflective. Where earlier records wrestled with existential dread through anthemic defiance, this new collection embraces uncertainty — an admission of ignorance in the face of the human condition, paired with a genuine longing for connection and understanding.The humor remains. The hooks are sharper than ever. But the perspective has shifted. These songs feel less like a declaration of dominance and more like a celebration of fragility — an acknowledgment that life is fleeting, confusing, and still worth enjoying.The album features Andrew Montoya (drums) and Mark Rivera (bass) of The Sess, Ian Fowles (guitar) of The Aquabats, and John Reis (guitar).Spiritual Hangover channels the bright urgency of late-’70s power pop through a distinctly Californian lens — warm, melodic, and irresistibly alive.“Super fun, well crafted, with great melodies. It gives me that late ’70s...

Sultans

Ghost Ship

Swami

Sultans Ghost Ship LP was originally released on Sympathy For The Record Industry in 2000. While RFTC looked for a new drummer, Speedo (armed with an 8 track tape machine and 3 microphones) devised yet another alias as “Slasher” and concocted this primordial ooze of moped scuzz, punk rock and roll. Ghost Ship was met with enthusiasm by those seeking blistering relief from the weak, whiny, wretched and wimpy wannabes du jour. The sound is full on, straight ahead with only starting gates and finish lines between songs. The band played some shows around California and would slightly evolve on their second LP Shipwrecked. Ghost Ship is Sultans at their most thuggish and hairiest. Taking inspiration from Australia’s Chosen Few, Ramones bootlegs, Misfits bootlegs and then challenging themselves to be as thrifty and impatient as possible, the songs are intentionally brief, similar and burly.After this was recorded these tapes lay dormant in a shed for over 20 years. When the tapes were recently unearthed it revealed unreleased songs recorded after Ghost Ship yet before the band’s follow up LP Shipwrecked. Some of these songs would later be absorbed by RFTC and re-recorded. These songs are included here as bonus tracks and offer no relief to the record’s unrelenting pace.

Guttersnipe

Extinction Burst!

Night School

Extinction Burst is the new invocation in album-form by Guttersnipe, Leeds’ premier and pre-eminent XFCER (XFCER: Xenofeminist crisis-energy rock) duo. Slamming at full speed to multi-dimensional oblivion, Extinction Burst is the most full, hi-definition lurid dream-mare yet spewed out by Uroceras Gigas & Tipula Confusa. Engineered and mixed by Ross Halden at Hohm Studio in Bradford and mastered by Rashad Becker, Extinction Burst follows 2018’s My Mother The Vent, which garnered universal critical adoration. Nevertheless, this long-awaited follow up is more extreme: it is wildness beyond reason, splitting new tears in the reality gauze, ultimate hallucination through sound ecstasy. 2026’s Guttersnipe are evolved, mutated by 8 years of touring together and with the labyrinthine network of groups both Guttersnipe members are involved with Tristwch Y Fenywod, Nape Neck, Petronn Sphene, Yexxen to name a few. On Extinction Burst, as with previous material, the duo are heavily augmented with technology. Tipula Confusa's drum kit triggers chasm-causing synth pulses with thumping low end attack.. Strafing from all over the stereo field the constant shatter of the cymbals and toms feel like Sunny Murray or Rashied Ali in full flight during a John Coltrane session in 1967. Uroceras Gigas’s guitar + synth storm is by-now similarly an instantly recognised tool kit in underground music. Switching from screeching guitar atonality to intricate riffs from the black metal/Voivod hinterland to ultra-distorted synth meltdown, it’s an utterly overwhelming, essential and vital pouring-out of the full emotional spectrum. Both artists vocalise, ecstatic and primal, drawn out or...

Wheelchair Sports Camp

Oh Imperfecta!

Alternative Tentacles

Wheelchair Sports Camp is certainly not your average hip-hop act. Hailing from Denver, CO, fronted by Kalyn Rose Heffernan—a wheelchair using, profanely queer and tiny rapper, with a very distinctly high-pitched sense of humor. Backed by her gimp Greggy on drums, the band combines fantastic beats with an absolutely face shredding live show. Playing shows everywhere they could, the band has expanded into performance art, museum takeovers, politics, prison tours, permanent installations, theater, film, and now the release of their newest album, “Oh Imperfecta!” on Alternative Tentacles Records. They bring together contributions from Jello Biafra (twice), Radio Pete (who happened to come up with the name Dead Kennedys when Biafra was a teen in Boulder, CO, and this is their first time ever collaborating musically), Kimya Dawson (Moldy Peaches), Oliva Jean, Junia-T, Amy Goodman, and some honorary WSC members: Qknox, Michelle Rocqet, Wes Watkins, RAREBYRD$, and many more; to create 11 absolute bangers.

Lakis, Lauren

Deadlights

Riding Easy

Lauren Lakis makes songs that are steeped in darkness, but inside of them is a sense of hope. They are propelled by the possibility of emerging on the other side feeling less alone and fully transformed. On her debut album Deadlights, set for release on Riding Easy Records on May 8, 2026, she conjures a shifting reality—one defined by both distortion and clarity. Indebted to shoe gaze and ’90s alt rock, its 10 tracks are filled with ethereal vocals, melodic guitars, and a heavy low end. It’s inspired by groups like Deftones and Hole, powerful bands that explore the emotional bottom but are able to rise from the depths. Lakis was born in Baltimore, where she was raised by her single mother. As she grew up, she lost multiple family members and friends to addiction. She became an actor and a photographer, trying to capture the human experience with each endeavor. Her travels led to stints living in Prague and Tokyo, before she moved to Los Angeles. In 2016 she endured a horrible breakup, and then her mother was in a car accident that left her paralyzed. Though Lakis was already singing in a band at the time, these life-altering events motivated her to focus on writing and recording her own music. “When you're in a place of total surrender, you are able to get out of your own way and finally do the thing you want to do,” she says. After the car accident, Lakis’s mother’s health deteriorated, and...

Primitive Ring

S/t

In The Red

PRIMITIVE RING consists of Bert Hoover (bass/vocals), Charles Moothart (guitar/vocals), and Jon Modaff (drums). The Los Angeles power trio formed in September 2024 when Hoover and Moothart came together seeking a new creative outlet. In 2025, the band released four 7"s on four different labels (Greenway, In the Red, Reverberation Appreciation Society, and Fuzz Club UK). They hauled amps and drums into bars to hone the sound of the newfound brotherhood that is Primitive Ring. Rock and roll is in its essence a primal experience, and the name reflects that. Three individuals collide and egos rattle, shedding layers and growing new limbs. Archetypes flash to the rhythm of a freight train and the crown is passed hand to hand like a good luck charm, symbolic and communal. Rock and roll is for the people and Primitive Ring is for the taking. At least it will be when the band's debut LP is hurled into the future via In the Red Recordings.Primitive Ring is 11 tracks coming in just under 42 minutes. It was recorded by Mark Rains in December of 2025 at The Station House in Echo Park. The album is the genesis story of a lightning bolt flashing in the eternal drama of creation and destruction. The album showcases the distinct writing styles of each member, but the overall aesthetic is a woven tapestry demarcating the timeless meridian. The record is the spawning of a collective vision. This is something we all share, and we must remind one another...

My Heart, An Inverted Flame

My Death Is More Beautiful Than Your Life

Crucial Blast

A wave of lunar heaviosity, My Death Is More Beautiful Than Your Life is the sophomore album from the duo of drummer Andee Connors (A Minor Forest, Common Eider, King Eider, P.E.E., J-Church, aQuarius recOrds) and synth / electronics / vocalist Marc Kate (I Am Spoonbender, Never Knows), delivering another slab of their signature tectonic synth-doom. In spite of what appears to be a spare sound pallette and dispensing with the use of guitar and bass, MHAIF's sound is utterly immense and wrought in dark emotional intensity, sprawling across nearly eighty minutes of morose slow-motion grandeur. The ten songs lumber through the duo's signature haze of electronic luminescence and earth-shifting percusion, crafting each one into a massive slab of ultra-heavy glacial drift. It would be too simple to describe this as "drone metal"—My Heart, An Inverted Flame evoke a moonswept ambience that offers something more lush and radiant, lending moments of dreamlike beauty to the gravitational crush. Likewise, this transcends the banner of doom metal; while Connors flattens everything in sight with his colossal sledgehammer drumming, the blown-out electronic textures of Kate's synthesizers and FX delirium pulls the sound into a kind of cosmos-devouring psychedelia, with swells of saturated cinematic majesty billowing across the rupturing percussive dirge.The drums thunder in the deep, laying down monumental backbeat awash in swirling, squealing, searing electronic noise and howling Berlin School-esque melodic forms. But they also roll and stutter monstrously, Connors rending the blackness with sudden bursts of seemingly freeform power as often as...

Dead Bob

Nothing Changes Everything

Wrong

***Exactly three years after the debut album, Life Like DEAD BOB continues to mine the archives of old and new demos that JOHN WRIGHT has created over the years, including two of the last songs demoed for NOMEANSNO with brother ROB WRIGHT.Whereas Life Like was primarily a solo project of John, since the formation of the live band the gang, FORD PIER, BYRON SLACK, KRISTY LEE AUDETTE and COLIN MACRAE take a far more active role in this record.Nothing Changes Everything is a 35 min. 8 song release that takes you on Bob's journey and keeps you wondering, “Where the f**k is this going next!” Balls to the walls and head in the clouds, you're in for a treat.With a couple years under their belts and return of SELINA MARTIN to collaborate on another song, Dead Bob takes it to the next level.

DOA

Take On The Tyrants - The Very Best of Punk Rock's Most Enduring Band

Sudden Death

***DOA Celebrates 48 years of playing punk rock with a new release—Take On The Tyrants. This double LP is a collection of the best material that the Godfathers of Hardcore have released on over 18 studio albums. The songs range from political to funny to dramatic. DOA have proven to be punk rock's most enduring band having played over 4,500 shows in 50 different countries on 5 different continents. As DOA leader and founder Joey Shithead Keithley has often been quoted as saying: "The tried to stop us and they failed miserably! Ha Ha!!!" So enjoy this release, it it a non-stop barrage of punk rock mayhem and crazy fun.

Stoltz, Kelley

If You Don't Know Me, Buy Now

Dandy Boy / Agitated

***Kelley Stoltz is an American songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and DIY innovator whose career stretches back to the late 1990s, when he began self-recording lush, psych‑tinged pop and garage rock in his San Francisco home studio. Born in New York City in 1971, and raised in Michigan, Stoltz has released a remarkable catalog of albums on labels including Sub Pop, Third Man, and Castle Face Records often playing all of the instruments himself and drawing comparisons to the melodic craftsmanship of the major 60’s pop auteurs and the quirkiness of lesser known 80’s power-pop & new wave.After issuing his 18th album, La Fleur in 2024 to critical notice, he returns in 2026 with his 19th full‑length release, If You Don’t Know Me, Buy Now, a collection that continues his long exploration of hook‑laden psych‑pop, introspective lyrics, and richly textured arrangements that both honor his influences and push his sound forward, reinforcing his status as one of the most prolific and singular voices in underground rock.Often compared to everyone from Alex Chilton to Brian Wilson, Nick Lowe to Martin Newell- Stoltz is a pop chameleon. His constant reshuffling of the deck finds him in a constant flux of creativity. If You Don’t Know Me… weaves through his brand of sardonic and playful humor and vulnerable, introspective late night musings. The lead off track and first single from the album, "Competitive Bastard” is a groovy reflection of a musician throwing his hands up at the music industry and the notion of working for exposure...

Drags, The

Set Right Fit To Blow Clean Up

Total Punk

***We are wrapping up the DRAGS REISSUE campaign with the band's final album 'Set Right Fit To Blow Clean Up.' Misunderstood by the garage turkey purist at the time of its 1999 release (yours truly among them) for being too "rawk!" Oh the follies of youth because in retrospect it's The Drags crowning achievement !!! It's crazy what confusion some wah-wah and oscillation could cause the adrenaline fueled brain of a teenage turkey back then!After Stop Rock & Roll Keith Herrera left to be replaced by Ron Skrasek (Scared of Chaka) on drums. Scott Derr of Monoshock was brought on as a second guitarist/ noisemonger and in house engineer for 'Set Right Fit.' RECORDED IN A BARN FOR MAXIMUM FIDELITY!!! The band added some heft to their sound, the tight quick shots got stretched out a bit, some sonic muckery was added, and we even got some drunkenly fried country twang on 'Jet Lag.' Sure their hair might be two inches longer but despite my teenage protestations it still sounds like THE DRAGS!!! AND IT FUCKIN RIPS!!!! Put on your FM SHADES because 2026 is the Year of The Drags and they are finally Set Right Fit to Blow Clean Up!!!10% MORE BARN THAN THE ORIGINAL AND 100% TOTAL PUNK!!limited to 350 copies with art by the legendary Art Chantry.

Boay, Andy

So So So We See & Trenches In The Sun

Does Are

Recorded in 2005 - 2006 and shared in limited fits and starts over the last 20 years, this is the music of a teenage Andy White, one year before he started the group Tonstartssbandht. Originally two separate albums, reissued now as a 2xLP, on vinyl for the first time."A lot of nice fans got pissed at me a couple years ago for taking this off my bandcamp page so I realized that I should probably reissue it.""A 16 year old in Florida with an interest in New Weird America, learning how to use Garageband, doing his best to mix, never even heard of 'mastering'. Listen close for Beach Boys, Faust, Animal Collective, Comus, Blue Gene Tyranny, Sunburned Hand of the Man. For fans of the youthful spark. Stay honest, don’t be ashamed."

Ipek Eginli / Jad Atoui

Clouds Carry Me To The Sky Every Morning / Ghost Sectors

Purplish Records

IPEK EGINLI:The sonic narrative immerses you in the journey of being carried into the sky by the clouds, with all of its emotional elements and physical sensations. You let yourself feel as you're elevated to the unknown, learn to let go along the way—moment by moment—worry less about what’s left behind. You look around to the vast nothing and come to understand that loss and freedom can coexist. You return lighter than ever, just like a cloud.In the piano, prepared strings and unprepared strings create two distinct characters with percussive sounds and left-over pitches that shape into different modes.While live electronics from modular synthesizers get triggered by the piano sounds, through improvisation, the pieces travel between atonality and poly-modality and explore rhythmic structures that desire to burst out of their structured-ness.JAD ATOUI:"Ghost Sectors" is an album made entirely from modified hard drives, with all sounds and tones generated by the drives themselves. Each track is a live take, capturing raw and mechanical sounds. The hard drives were built after I received a commission from Yarn/Wire, transforming the motors and needles into instruments capable of producing tones and rhythms. These custom instruments were crafted with the help of mechanical engineer Sevag Babikian. Ghost sectors are forgotten memories, like those in HDDs, that remain present but are no longer accessible. They exist in the background, hidden, much like people, places, or ideas that time and brutality have left behind.

Meketa Power Electronics

Covenant Obedience

Matism Records

***Formed in 2024 in Southern California. MEKETA Power Electronics is Steven Meketa (apartment 213) power electronics-noise band. MPE creates eerie electronics while screaming the gospel. Steven shares his faith via his art which was inspired by a conversation he had with his long time dear friend, mentor and M. P. E. collaborator Dwid Hellion. Dwid encouraged Steven to share his faith via Whitehouse/Merzbow style noise and the rest they say is history. A 7 track ear blaster packaged in a cardboard letterpress cover from Spare Organ. Mastered by David Cheppa at Plush Vinyl. 100 units in black cover variant and 100 units white cover variant. Includes a 4.25 x 4.25 x 8.5 folded cardboard insert for lyrics and liner notes.

Loosey

A Retrospective: 2023-2025

Tko

***LOOSEY is a New York City band to its core. Made up of a mix of NYC transplants and tri-state area natives, this multi-cultural, multi-gendered and multi-faceted band is committed to one thing and one thing only, big bang rock ‘n’ roll. You know, the kind meant for loud singalongs, iced down suds, and reminding the world about the importance of a fuckin’ good time. In an age of darkness, upheaval and uncertainty, we all need a little celebration– we all need a lot of Loosey.Loosey is pure Glam jubilation—mixing the big stomp of Slade, the classic Power Pop of Teenage Fanclub, and riffy Pub Rock like AC/DC into a single DIY-driven package. The band excels at creating finely-crafted, hard-rockin’ confections with an undercurrent of punk grit but most importantly, Loosey is fun—something sorely missing in the overly serious arenas of Punk, Indie Rock and the like. Audiences responded immediately, bringing hand claps and their best dance moves to shows previously dominated by mosh pits and stage dives. AtFeaturing 10 tracks including the new banger “Oblivion Monster,“ A Retrospective: 2023-2025, is a snapshot and a catch all to hearing one of the most exciting new rock ‘n’ roll bands of the 2020s.

Ex Voto

Don't Look Back 1982 - 1990

Phantom Chord

***Loving reissue of unsung death rock heroes Ex Voto's 1990 12" EP Don't Look Back paired with a cavalcade of unreleased 80's material. The 80s SoCal death rock scene was anything but organized, hence a group like Ex Voto, who had been around in some form or another since 1982, making their vinyl debut in 1990. The group's Anglo influences are all fairly apparent—Sisters of Mercy, Alien Sex Fiend, Joy Division and the like—but the group puts the same distinctly Southern Californian spin on the sound as their peers Kommunity FK, Christian Death or VooDoo Church. There are even shades of EBM, anticipating the industrial boom of the dawning 90's. Highly recommended for any 80s gothic gourmands.

Sleeves, The

The Sleeves

12xu

***The Sleeves are the duo of Jack Cooper and Tara Cunningham, both likely known to you as one half of Modern Nature. Following an all-instrumental Mossy Tapes release last November, Cooper and Cunningham have recorded 10 new songs showcasing their vocal and guitar interplay with only the faintest echoes of prior efforts (individually or collectively), representing a fully realized leap forward from their largely improvised debut.'The Sleeves' is a somewhat counter intuitive take on the guitar/vocal duo formula (provided you think there is such a thing) though it's not nearly as simplistic as "the space between the notes"—it would be the height of exaggeration to say an album this simultaneously expansive and incandescent is unprecedented. But it doesn't happen nearly often enough, either.

Alvarius B.

Malarial Dream

Abduction

***Alan Bishop's solo persona appears again from his now 15-year-old home of Cairo where it was recorded in and around many other projects over the past few years. And unlike his more recent singer/songwriter material, Malarial Dream drifts closer to latter day Sun City Girls (Mister Lonely / Funeral Mariachi ) amidst a melodic Middle Eastern and beyond psych-warped folk setting. Mostly instrumental and, except for two obscure covers, original compositions that feature a cast of extraordinary players: Adham Zidan, Aya Hemeda, Cherif El Masri, and Morgan Mikkelsen (The Invisible Hands), Maurice Louca and Sam Shalabi (The Dwarfs of East Agouza), Amelie Legrand, Asher Gamedze, Eyvind Kang, Hana Al Bayaty, Huda Asfour, and Sammy Sayed. LP Limited to 500 copies. Produced by Alvarius B. and Adham Zidan.

Go Hirano

The Habit

Black Editions

***For more than three decades, Go Hirano has developed a quietly enthralling sound world on the peripheries of the Japanese underground. Emerging in the 1990s, Hirano released three albums with the revered PSF Records label and established himself as an artist with a unique sense of melody and atmosphere that was both entrancing and intimate. His work, largely recorded at home and in the field, de-emphasized technical perfection in favor of an unvarnished immediacy that imbued the quiet moments of daily life with a dreamlike splendor. On The Habit, Hirano brings together recordings that span decades of his playing the piano and other instruments on a daily basis. The core of the album was recorded in 2020 at Pianola Records in Tokyo, while other pieces draw from recordings dating as far back as the late 1980s. Through this span of years, a coherent vision emerges, marked by patient, subtle engagement with repetition, space, and resonance. Hirano works with a restrained palette—piano, pianica, wind chime, percussion, and synthesizer—to develop simple melodic figures that gradually shift in harmony and texture. Spacious piano chords expand through soft synthesizer tones. Near-imperceptible rhythmic frameworks intertwine with tranquil phrases that drift and merge with the sounds of the world around them. This synthesis of music and the environment in which it is created is critical to Hirano's approach. Rather than isolating the music from its surroundings, he embraces the atmosphere of the moment, the room in which each piece is played, capturing the subtle sounds and...

V/a

Himba Hymn: Ghosts Of Namibia's Skeleton Coast

Sublime Frequencies

***Recorded live on location, this is a style of music unlike anything you have ever heard before and the first album of the Himba people's music ever released from northwest Namibia. From the album's producer and recordist, Ian Brennan: "The Namib desert is the oldest in the world. Therefore, the driest. Italian-Rwandan photographer, Marilena Umuhoza Delli and I had come to record with possibly the most photographed people on earth, the Himba—to listen rather than gaze at them as if on display. To share their voices as a counter to their visual objectification, particularly the inappropriate eroticization of the women who customarily go topless throughout daily life. We had to stress multiple times that we did not want the musicians to don touristic tribal costumes—quite possibly the first music project in history that urged performers to cover-up rather than pleading with artists to expose more flesh. But it was to no avail. When the assigned hour arrived, the men all ditched the baseball caps and soccer jerseys that they routinely wear. And for the women, the reality is that they almost without exception keep their torsos bare, even in winter. We had to acquiesce. Forcing the issue would have only been the flipside of inauthenticity. The featured, traditional instrument is the Cattle Gun. It's rarely found these days and therefore, costly. Made from the lengthy horn of an Oryx and coated in mud, it is blown, resulting in a breathy, rattled tone. Via the use of live looping on three...

Belexum

s/t

Transylvanian Recordings

***A wild and wicked, frenetic and frantic, deadly death metal album. Featuring members of Cloak, Mystic Priestess, Eteraz & All Your Sisters. Recommended for fans of classick Gorguts, Immolation & Sacrilege! Presented on 180 gram vinyl!!

Guilty Strangers

Revenant

Transylvanian Recordings

***Spellbound Gothic Rock from the city of Angels. An infectious and mesmerizing exploration of gloomy melancholic music. Featuring a lineup composed of members 45 Grave & Egrets on Ergot. Recommended for fans of Siouxsie and the Banshees, Cocteau Twins & Lydia Lunch. Presented on 180 Gram vinyl.

Chisel, The

Deconstructive Surgery

La Vida Es Un Mus

***JAPANESE PRESS SLEEVE EDITION! "Explosive new music from The Chisel bringing the edifying and restorative powers of the great British folk tradition back to the table for a staggering next pint. Just when you thought you were fucking full, your mouths been winched open and gallons of shards of broken glass guitar, thick bass, and burning howling bilious guts gets poured down your maw. The speed of UK82, the terror of punk, the solid mass of Oi!. Like a bar stool breaking through a bus stop, there'll always be THE CHISEL." (Jonah Falco)

Squirrel Bait

Skag Heaven

Drag City

***REISSUED ON VINYL!!! What’s new for the first time in over a decade? Squirrel Bait's self-titled 12” EP and Skag Heaven in the black. In ’85-’87, their screamin’ teenage psycho dilemmas stood way out in the emerging field of metal damaged hardcore punk. “Kid Dynamite” would ring in your head like a #1 single that had just unseated “Sun God” from the vaunted top spot. Every week. Anthems for the freaks!It happened fast. After a couple of records, guitarists David Grubbs and Brian McMahan split for Bastro and Slint (and Gastr del Sol and The For Carnation, respectively) With Grubbs went bassist Clark Johnson, original Bait batterie mate Britt Walford joined McMahan in Slint. Leaving only the stuff of legend: records eternally exploding with youthful feels through all the endless winters and summers of hearts and minds.Repressed, Squirrel Bait can now continue to dialogue with the young in the creation of new useful and unforgettable experiences. For the children of tomor- row as well as your own damn selves, get copies now.

Squirrel Bait

Squirrel Bait EP

Drag City

***REISSUED ON VINYL!!! What’s new for the first time in over a decade? Squirrel Bait's self-titled 12” EP and Skag Heaven in the black. In ’85-’87, their screamin’ teenage psycho dilemmas stood way out in the emerging field of metal damaged hardcore punk. “Kid Dynamite” would ring in your head like a #1 single that had just unseated “Sun God” from the vaunted top spot. Every week. Anthems for the freaks!It happened fast. After a couple of records, guitarists David Grubbs and Brian McMahan split for Bastro and Slint (and Gastr del Sol and The For Carnation, respectively) With Grubbs went bassist Clark Johnson, original Bait batterie mate Britt Walford joined McMahan in Slint. Leaving only the stuff of legend: records eternally exploding with youthful feels through all the endless winters and summers of hearts and minds.Repressed, Squirrel Bait can now continue to dialogue with the young in the creation of new useful and unforgettable experiences. For the children of tomor- row as well as your own damn selves, get copies now.

Men With No I.Q.'s (aka M.N.I.)

Dreamin' / Can't Resist It

Nuthin' Records

***Ltd. to 200 reissue of what was, for 40 years, the only ‘M.N.i.’ *record* [indie micro-release out of Jackson, Miss., 1985] — now the 1st 7” in the Cult 45s series. And it’s already pretty much sold out from the label (nuthin’)Accidental No-Wave or [as seen in MRR back in the day] Speed-Funk on the A-side. Unbridled and UNPAVED Street-Rock on the flip. Both former M.V.P.’s of WFMU’s deceased ‘Beware of the Blog’

Lost Cherrees

Blasphemy

PNV

***Collection of early material from this iconic first wave anarcho punk outfit. The post-Crass school of politically infused British punk can sometimes veer so far into experimental territory that the brash and direct sound foundational to the movement becomes obscured by more indulgent musical tendencies. Thankfully this sickness never infected Lost Cherrees catalogue, which maintained a firm footing in the parallel street punk sound of the era. In other words, the group was as comfortable with the somber political diatribes as they were fist pounding pogo anthems, all unified by the infectious and unique dual femme vocal attack. This collection of early EPs originally released on Conflict's Mortarhate/Fight Back labels showcases a tuneful, politically incendiary punk group at the height of their powers.

Vanilla Muffins

Where Were You in 1995?

PNV

***Previously unreleased 11 track session from 1995 from the Swiss masters of Sugar Oi! Recorded between their first and second albums at the legendary RMS studio in London (known for producing records from Damned, Special Duties, Chaotic Dischord and countless others), several of these tracks were released on compilations at the time, but never before have they been presented as a single album as featured here. For those unfamiliar with the Vanilla Muffins sound, as their "sugar oi!" banner suggests, the group plays infectious punk with a Cocksparrer inspired knack for melody, and an aptitude for pre-punk glitter rock and power pop. This early session delivers a particularly high energy dose of boot stompin anthems.

Violet Thrones

Dance Of Infinity

Violet Thrones

***From the perpetual fog of San Francisco Violet Thrones emerge. Drawing from the deepest wells of gothic tradition and the experimental underground their sound occupies a space between Gothic rock and dark jazz. The five points of this dark star sharpened into, Steve Jaeger (bass), Sammy Valentine (strings), Kaden Owens (drums), Doug Graves (keys), and Violet Basso’s voice fuel the bands eternal flame. Features the tracks "Dance Of Infinity" backed with "Forever In Bloom."

Owen, Maisy

Dark On A Sunny Day

Tompkins Square

***"Maisy Owen, a Nashville native, has been surrounded by music and the art of songcraft just about all her life. First came the viola at age nine, then guitar where she embraced fingerpicking, soaking in influences from Nick Drake, Bert Jansch, Mazzy Star and David Olney. Raised in a musical family, her father Gwil Owen is an Academy Award-nominated songwriter.Maisy’s unique sound, musical truth and stirring vocals inhabit Dark On A Sunny Day, her debut album, produced by Robin Eaton (known for his work with Jill Sobule and co-writer of 'I Kissed a Girl')Drawn to melancholic melodies and dark poetic imagery, her first single 'My Youth Is All For You' was released as a 7” and gave Maisy a chance to explore her visual side / love for abandoned houses with an accompanying video. Her second single, 'On My Way Down' was recently featured as KCRW's 'Today's Top Tune.'Often spotted around Nashville playing bars or cruising around in her beloved pickup, Maisy is that special talent in a city awash with singer-songwriters. While folks thus far seems to have different takes on who she might sound like (for us, it's some of our favorites; Vashti Bunyan, Anne Briggs, Tia Blake...), pinning that down is a fool's errand. She is Maisy... a singular talent, and one worth watching.""Drawing on the moody intimacy of Nick Drake, the folk finesse of Bert Jansch, and the hazy dream-pop glow of Mazzy Star, she’s carving out a sound all her own."—KCRW"A finger style that is...

Roxanne, Ana

Poem 1

Kranky

“I wanted to travel / Home into somewhere,” Ana Roxanne breathes across an eerie suspended drone on “The Age of Innocence”. “I wanted to try / And go very far.” These are the first words we hear on Poem 1 and reintroduce an artist who’s in a conspicuously different phase of her life than she was when her debut album, Because of a Flower, sprouted nearly six years ago. Heartbroken and reflective, Roxanne surveys the transformations that followed and displays a new-found boldness. Her voice is naked, vulnerable and alive, no longer shrouded in tape noise or looped and echoed beyond recognition beneath layered electroacoustic textures. Throughout the course of Poem 1, Roxanne displays her skill as a singer and songwriter in the classic sense, using the limited instrumentation simply to accent her exposed tones. Muted piano phrases and plucked bass notes languidly trail her anguished siren song on “Berceuse in A-flat Minor, Op. 45”, making each word count.On “Keepsake” meanwhile, she sounds as if she’s alone in an abandoned bar, stroking the dust off the piano’s keys as she inventories her emotional scars. There’s a smell of old whisky in the air, but Poem 1 is a remarkably sober album; never wallowing in self pity, Roxanne finds catharsis in the logic of her expressions, twisting out the edges of her memories into surreal, cinematic asides. “Untitled II”, the album’s pronounced, uninhibited centerpiece, delivers on the Lynchian promise that’s been present since her first EP, 2019’s ~~~. “[I] always picked...

Kramer, Bonner / Thurston Moore

They Came Like Swallows

Silver Current

Two giants of alternative / experimental music join creative forces for the first time in their storied, nearly fifty-year careers. A startlingly cohesive union that burns through landscapes of primitive outsider rock, avant-garde composition, progressive ambient and further locales boldly and beautifully unnamable. Bonner Kramer (previously known as Kramer) decoded the sounds of Galaxie 500 as producer on all of their records as well as producing Low, Will Oldham and Urge Overkill’s hit single “Girl, You’ll be a Woman Soon” for the Pulp Fiction soundtrack, to name just a few of his over three hundred and seventy producer credits listed on Discogs. He is the proprietor of iconic indie label Shimmy-Disc (a one-time home to Daniel Johnston, Ween, Boredoms and John Zorn’s Naked City among countless others), and an esteemed recording studio mastermind. Thurston Moore is a founding member of Sonic Youth, and responsible for Chelsea Light Moving and a massive and varied solo career, and remains an era-and genre-defining composer, cultural critic, prime mover of all things cool, and one of the most iconic, singular guitarists in rock music’s long tail, the keystone of the explored tension between rock and noise.

Anenon

Dream Temperature

Tonal Union

Saxophonist, producer and composer Brian Allen Simon explores darker hues, transposing waking and altered states under his studio veil Anenon. On the deeply evocative new album ‘Dream Temperature’, he shifts electronic processing to the foreground, introducing digitized wind instruments and unworldly atmospherics, not heard since his innovating mid-late 2010s output.A longtime Los Angeles resident, born and raised, Brian Allen Simon has expressively operated under the moniker Anenon, releasing the highly revered ‘Petrol’ (2016), ‘Tongue’ (2018) and the viscerally beautiful ‘Moons Melt Milk Light’ (2023), in a line of unwavering musical dialogues. While the penultimate album was a deliberate, reductive, entirely acoustic detour that was born out of a want to unplug, ‘Dream Temperature’ sees Brian primed with a newly discovered wind synthesizer as his central compositional tool, alongside acoustic piano and tenor saxophone. The entirety of the album’s electronics are triggered by Brian’s lungs, generating otherworldly synths modulated by expressive breath control, channelled through the laptop as the core processing chamber for added textural components and field recordings.A free floating and heavy emotional resonance marks 'Dream Temperature' from beginning to end, invoking the feeling of waking up, still heavy from a night of half-remembered dreams, and continuing one’s day in this state. Simon maps out the album's spatial voice early on the statement title track, a deep, yet compact cut, generated from digital saxophone rasps that whistle by in close proximity, along with haze filled textures and sub bass. There is a sonic oscillation of urban grit and pastoral drift...

P.E.E.

I Win Me Over

Deathbomb Arc

***Hailing from the Bay Area in the 90s, P.E.E.'s brand of sloppy and complex pop punk was manic and completely loving. These recordings were originally made for an album that would later get completely re-recorded before release. Yet these raw, lo-fi versions remain some of the most vibrant material the band ever set to tape. Deathbomb Arc is very excited to release them for the first time! Recorded on 4-track reel-to-reel by Gar Box.

Sleeveens, The

National Anthem

Goner

A Dublin-born, stylistically-restless but fundamentally punk troubadour, Stefan Murphy emerged in the early 00s under the moniker The Mighty Stef, which became a full-band concern around 2007, wrapped up in 2016, and was followed by a short stint as Count Vaseline. Then, in 2019, Murphy met a gentleman by the name of James Mechan, who happened to be Stiff Little Fingers’ guitar tech. That last part is relevant, as any current convert to the band we’re discussing here can testify. And so is the first part, as Mechan wanted to record Murphy at his Nashville studio. Those plans were derailed by the pandemic but not forgotten when Murphy moved to Nashville in 2022. Work commenced, the pair were joined by Ryan Sweeney (of Cheap Time) on drums and Eli Steele (Sweet Knives) on lead guitar. The result was The Sleeveens, named after an Irish slang for “trixter”…not the earthly type responsible for a plastic Aztec death whistle on your exhaust pipe but rather the otherworldly one that temporarily vanishes the keys to the vehicle.  The Sleeveens’ debuted on 7-inch with 2023’s “Give My Regards To The Dancing Girls” on Sweeney’s Sweet Time label and “UFO’s” b/w The Four Tops’ “Bernadette” on Interstate 94 Recordings in 2024, followed by their fantastic self-titled LP on Dirtnap Records the same year, which gained traction on independent radio thanks to bangers like “Metallica Font” and “Aretha Franklin”. An official Gonerfest 22 inclusion, the band has also shared stages with G.G. King, Schizophonics, Total Hell,...

Geraldi, Phil

Rural Deceased Undiscovered

Not Not Fun

California composer Phil Geraldi’s vinyl debut both refines and refracts his signature muse of interstitial Americana across 11 melted glass mosaics of processed guitar, decayed radio glow, and Harmonia synth horizons: Rural Deceased Undiscovered. He describes his vision for the pieces as “multilinear,” rearranging classic radio songbook elements like hooks, choruses, and emotional cues into unfamiliar topographies of “alien country.”Shards of acoustic guitar and pedal steel flicker in long shadows of amplifier hum and airwave static, like the scrambled broadcast of some heartland station along a desert highway. It’s music both rustic and placeless, warped by weather and technology, shimmering like northern lights over the badlands.Mastered by Jared Carrigan.Sleeve design by Jo Minor and Matt GoldbergInsert design by Anthony Boruch-Comstock.