New Releases

Ibibio Sound Machine

Pull the Rope

Merge

***Pull the Rope, the new record by Ibibio Sound Machine, casts the Eno Williams and Max Grunhard–led outfit in a new light. The hope, joy, and sexiness of their music remain, but, further honing the edge of their acclaimed 2022 album Electricity, the connection they aim to foster has shifted venues from the sunny buoyancy of a sunlit festival to a sweat-soaked, all-night dance club. Williams and Grunhard attribute this shift to a matter of collaborators, recording Pull the Rope with Sheffield-based producer Ross Orton (Arctic Monkeys, M.I.A.) over the course of two weeks. The way the pair wrote songs changed significantly—rather than Eno penning lyrics to music generated by Max and company’s jamming, Orton started with Eno and Max writing together before adding the band. With less time in the studio and a new way of considering how they built songs, the duo found making decisions about Pull the Rope’s sound quicker and more instinctual than before. In melding their songwriting process, Grunhard and Williams have, impossibly, pulled the trick of making Ibibio Sound Machine a tighter band than ever before, building out from their core in a way that highlights the electrifying group of musicians they play with. Rather than recording with the full band in the room, Pull the Rope was sculpted, elements added and shaped by Grunhard, Williams, and Orton along the way. As a result, Pull the Rope is a nimble, sleek machine that’s thrilling from the first note of the opening title track, Eno’s...

Adult Jazz

So Sorry, So Slow

Spare Thought

London-based four-piece Adult Jazz announce their first full-length album in a decade, So Sorry So Slow, out 26 April 2024 via Spare Thought. Alongside the announcement comes lovesick new single ‘Suffer One’ featuring Owen Pallett, a cautious excavation of self and sexuality, clambering across a gorgeously shapeshifting, filmic five-minutes. Containing some of the band’s most abrasive but gentle, beautiful and melismatic work to date, So Sorry So Slow has many defining characteristics: romance, panic, devotion and remorse, threaded together by an intentionally laser-focused love. It’s deeply personal, bruised and candid in its expressions of tenderness, and deeply pained in its concurrent reflections of ecological regret. Across its hour-long runtime, a delicate, frenetic energy and glacial heaviness coexist, the band pitting those paces against one another. In their richly experimental timbre, dancing strings and fluttering falsettos prang against a bed of brass drones like a wounded bird. Recorded in bursts at studios across London and in the band members’ flats, at Konk, on the Isle of Wight and in Sussex, So Sorry is unambiguous in its evolution. Sonically, there are sparks of the arrhythmic brightness that afforded the band’s critically acclaimed debut album Gist Is its cult adoration, for fans of Arthur Russell and Meredith Monk, but with a blossoming, melancholic darkness often overhead. Piano sprees and luscious string sections appear like low-hanging stars on a night-time drive, whilst plunging vocal distortions and humming brass loops resurrect heavy limbs in a bad dream.

Rincon, Dan

Spotlight City

Castle Face

Castle Face is proud to present Dan Rincon’s (OSEES, Wild Thing, Apache, Personal and the Pizzas) premier solo release Spotlight City. Artificial landscapes and melodies comprised of Moog Grandmother, Mellotron and a kinky Modular system span from beautiful and lilting to haunting and etherial. The album was a years long learning experience of getting all components and ingredients to link arms and blend comfortably. Wrangling was part of the process. Strings soaring and sines weaving. Sometimes in the atmosphere, sometimes in the Earth’s core, sometimes flanked by neon blur as it hums & weave patterns through a world imagined in vintage sci-fi pulp. “I was listening to a lot of solo Roedelius and Conrad Schnitzler records while writing this record and I’d say that both have been hugely inspirational on what I want to do as a solo recording artist. The way both of those of those artist pushed the early, chaotic electronic music into something more melodic is really inspiring to me, it’s not that dissimilar than trying to get melodies out of a modular synthesizer.” An absolute necessary slab for anyone a fan of CF, OSEES, Popol Vuh soundtracks , 8 bit video game accompaniment & 80s Tangerine Dream. Burn one and burn out.

Terminal Nation

Echoes Of The Devil’s Den

20 Buck Spin

***ON LIMITED RED / ORANGE MERGE VINYL!!! Since releasing the first Terminal Nation album Holocene Extinction in 2020, the USA’s simmering divisions have only widened, factions hardened, compromise disintegrated. The band’s incendiary new album Echoes Of The Devil’s Den epitomizes that boiling rage, once again appearing on the eve of a recurring nightmare election cycle of fossilized 20th century relics. The Terminal Nation battering ram has at its core outrageously heavy mid-paced riffing and bulldozing breakdowns, taken to new levels of extreme brutality, over which Stan Liszewski’s vocal venom radiates the seething anger of a population at wits end. Yet beyond that punishing substructure Terminal Nation’s songwriting chops have evolved considerably as evidenced on songs like “Embers Of Humanity,” which injects an epic heavy metal flair within its balladry, building to stadium-esque crescend. On single “Merchants Of Bloodshed,” the band splice in anthemic, bordering on radio-friendly, clean singing courtesy of Jesse Leach (Killswitch Engage), just one of many guest vocal appearances on the album. Lyrically, throughout Echoes Of the Devil’s Den, the band lash out with both the scathing societal critique for which they’re well known and also a more intimately reflective narrative that draws upon some massive personal upheavals endured in the preceding years. Forged in the fires of tribulation, Terminal Nation’s Echoes Of The Devil’s Den demolishes with the force of an erupting volcano, burning to ash the falsity of the age.

G Version III

Scenery From Double Glazing

Digital Sting

***G Version III from Kyoto Japan arrives on Digital Sting via a correspondence going back a few years that grew out of mutual musical connections and a deep appreciation for the Jamaican sound system diaspora. G Version grew up with a love of Hip Hop, R&B, and Reggae and had a musical revelation at a Lake Biwako sound clash event as a teenager that was formative in spurring a deeper dive into Dancehall and soundsystem culture. After some time spent studying in the UK and returning to Japan, working at Jet Set records along with meeting heavyweight producer Element the beginnings of her future musical output began to take shape. Downtime during the pandemic provided the time to concentrate on production. G Version's sound has a retro futuristic feel, equal parts Dancehall history and esoteric dub leanings, particularly in tune with the more experimental branches of 80's-90's UK Dub and Steppers. Influences being stated G Versions sound is thoroughly distinct and imaginative, not content to conform to any obvious genre tropes. Also included in this release are two dubs of G Version tracks by Digital Sting mainstays Feel Free Hi Fi.

V/a

Time Splitters

Digital Sting

***Time Splitters is a various artist compilation created and produced by Richmond VA based Deskulling in collaboration with veteran Spanish Town JA artist I Jahbar between 2021 and 2023. This 21 track 50 plus minute Dancehall epic also includes other veteran vocalists such as G Sudden, RDL Shellah, Buddydon, and Darkchild plus newer talents such as Fearless, Longdon, Latty, King Kush and 1 Solar Boss. Alexander West who passed away in 2023 contributes an ethereal and heartfelt album closing performance on “Granny Grenade”. Time Splitters is a sprawling creation that captures a multiplicity of emotions, life complexities, spiritual evocations, and musical dimensions. Deskulling's eclectic productions are rendered to the perfect minimalism and provide a rich and varied platform for vocal performances that move between dark and light, sad and joyful, heavy and soft. A lot of work went into this release over a few years from many people during times of inner and outer complexities, turmoils, and tribulations. This release musically, lyrically, emotionally, represents life's spectrum fully. Thanks for listening.

Sub Verse / Sole Sister / Petticoats

Scaling Triangles

Zaius Tapes

"Before I made my home in & became Tanzania's #1 acknowledged periodontist, I was a busking girl throughout the UK. From early 1978 until the mid 80's I squatted everywhere; Glasgow, Cardiff, Manchester, Hastings & finally London. Music was our currency-mostly crude folk, DIY punk or amateurish, Klaus Schulze inspired synthesizer buzzings echoed off the walls wherever I chose to lay my hat. Admirers of records from this time know all too well that many compilations-mostly regional-flooded Britannia in those lean years, perhaps my favorite being one entitled Scaling Triangles. It was the first female forward collection I'd come across; three women artists, each tracking three songs. Only The Petticoats I was familiar with as she'd released a 7" ep on her own. The other two-Sole Sister, Sub Verse-seem to start & end here (Sub Verse contributes a track to the 'Compilation 1' lp on Starforce Studios-4th Wall ed). And as such, it is a diverse panorama of 'Le Beau Sexe' flexing wooly muscles. If this is from a particular scene I cannot say, but if you want taunt (Sub Verse), aggro (Petticoats) & free (Sole Sister) moving tracks, look no further. Fans of Young Marble Giants, The Flowers, Udder Milk Decay could do worse. Thank you Johan Klemp, it is so great to hear these songs so many years later. Now reissued on Tanzania's #1 recording label! And don't forget to brush your gums!"—Bupi Ramadhani (Tanzania's #1 acknowledged periodontist, Esnan Dental Center, Dar Es Salaam)

Winged Wheel

Big Hotel

12xu

***"Big Hotel, the sophomore effort of Winged Wheel, is an evolutionary document. Core members Cory Plump (Spray Paint, Rider/Horse, Expensive Shit), Fred Thomas (Tyvek, Idle Ray), Whitney Johnson (Matchess, Damiana), and Matthew J Rolin (Powers/Rolin Duo, solo) expand their lineup to include Lonnie Slack (Water Damage) and Steve Shelley (Sonic Youth), and instead of the entirely remote method utilized to create their 2022 debut No Island, the far-flung party convened in person in Kingston, NY for a long weekend of live studio recording. The results are undeniably compelling. The band’s signature cyclonic energy is simultaneously augmented and refined with the approach of real-time collaboration. After tracking three days’ worth of group improvisations, weirdly-born songs, and other spontaneous creations, the hours of material were edited with a similar intensity. Half-hour jams became three-minute ragers and fragments were looped into infinity, calling on the same spliced aesthetic as some of the most adventurous material by Can, Faust, or more recently the experimental production of the International Anthem camp. The stereo field has been torn apart and sewn together again, rerouted with strange and mesmerizing left turns. Vignettes of ambiguous construction, both tightly coiled and exploding, revolve around themselves, gathering intensity and mass, coalescing into something greater than the sum of its parts. 'Demonstrably False' swells into existence like a motorik tidepool, tossing fauna onto the shoreline where it sprouts legs with a steady gait lying readily in wait within them. The controlled frenzy of 'Sleeptraining' marks a determined dash to a patch...

Jodorowsky, Adan

The Dance Of Reality

Finders Keepers

***2015 release. After a twenty-three-year hiatus, The Dance of Reality marked the triumphant return of Alejandro Jodorowsky, the visionary Chilean filmmaker behind cult classics El Topo and The Holy Mountain. In the radiantly visceral autobiographical film, a young Jodorowsky is confronted by a collection of compelling characters that contributed to his burgeoning surreal consciousness. The legendary filmmaker was born in 1929 in Tocopilla, a coastal town on the edge of the Chilean desert, where the film was shot. Blending his personal history with metaphor, mythology, and poetry, The Dance of Reality reflects Jodorowsky's philosophy that reality is not objective but rather a "dance" created by the imagination. Written, performed and recorded by Alejandro's son, the acclaimed actor, director and musician Adan Jodorowsky, Dance of Reality's original soundtrack expands from gossamer folk acoustic guitar themes and solo piano compositions to rich cinematic orchestral arrangements echoing the work of John Barry and Ennio Morricone combined with extrovert narrative traditional pieces executed in the vein of Nino Rota. This LP contains the sixteen original compositions that make up the score for Alejandro's seventh feature film which witness a return to the ABKCO film company who produced his underground classics El Topo and The Holy Mountain.

Stalin, The

Stop Jap

Survival Research

***Notorious Japanese punk bank The Stalin came after socialist activist Michiro Endo fronted short-lived punk band Jiheitai; The Stalin was formed June 1980 with guitarist Atsushi Kaneko, drummer Jun Inui, and bassist Shintaro Sugiyama. Antagonizing the state and challenging the strictures of Japanese society, debut album Trash was half-live, half-studio, and sophomore set Stop Jap was the major-label debut that hallmarked their popularity, with opener "Romantist" their best-known song worldwide. This is raw, uncompromising, and in-your-face punk from true Japanese innovators of the form—tune in and be amazed!

Vacation

Rare Earth

Feel It

"Vacation’s new album Rare Earth comes at a time when the powder keg of civilization as we know it is particularly vulnerable to the spark that swallows our very existence. Rare Earth is an album that exists on account of this fact; lyrically and sonically in meditation of it. It’s an album that evokes at once the ominous churning of the Bizarros, the drone & dirge of Screaming Urge, and the melodic cushion of the Replacements’ tender years. Nine albums into their discography, Vacation remain true to shrill atmospheric ambience in tribute to Pere Ubu while retaining the hard-edged accessibility that was signed, sealed, and delivered to sensitive degenerates by the likes of the Ramones and Guided By Voices. Rare Earth delivers all of this in a uniquely sparkling package; almost tactile in relation to their live experience. It’s this Cincinnati power-quartet’s most explosive album yet, out Spring 2024 on Feel It Records."—Amos Pitsch (Dusk, Tenement)

The Ar-kaics

See the World on Fire

Feel It

The Ar-Kaics are back with See the World on Fire, their first new album in six years. It’s also the first release from this newly-minted partnership between Feel It Records and the bands’ own imprint, Dig! Records; with Bachelor Records delivering a European edition. Expect eight new tunes of dark, moody, rollicking garage psych not altogether dissimilar from their previous output (across two LPs and a mess of singles). What you get here is the next chapter. All written and recorded in singer-guitarist Johnny’s bedroom / garage (pictured on the album cover), it’s a concept album based on the concept of making an album—on their own, from the brink. But don’t just take our word for it… “The Ar-Kaics out of Virginia are pretty groovy. They got THAT sound, man.”—Marc Maron

Bobby Would

Relics Of Our Life

Digital Regress

"I wish I could turn or turn back" "Sometimes it’s hard to resist the feeling that there was a crucial turn in life out of which everything else flowed. Maybe in our more reasonable frames of mind we can dismiss that thought and take our plans and intentions very seriously. But, there’s often a lurking conviction that, like the oak from the acorn or the movie from its opening scene, it is already all there. In the first moment of Relics of Our Life, anything could happen, anything could come next. But as the suspense is broken with the first notes, the world of the record springs up as both an internal experience and a landscape of which we will learn something, but definitely not everything. The songs induce a swimming sense of cycling repetition and variation where shifting details tilt the ground under us. The round and round doesn’t make us dizzy; like breathing the right way, it makes us both heavier and higher. "Pawliczek’s songs can be located in the company of the greats of Flying Nun Records – maybe the delicacy of The Great Unwashed with the heavy heart of The Verlaines and smartness of The Chills. But, ultimately, his interests are elsewhere – a heart-break song over an earthly lover feels like only the tipping point for longing and devotion that outstrips the personal. In this sense, Popul Vuh for their hymnal geometry and switched-on Palestrina, and Terry Riley for cosmic elation come to mind....

Angelyne

Driven To Fantasy

Dark Entries

LA goddess Angelyne’s neon-draped sophomore LP Driven to Fantasy steers its way to Dark Entries as part of the ongoing celebration of our 15th anniversary! "Who is Angelyne? Angelyne is a voluptuous, blonde, self-made star who drives a hot pink Corvette; wears her clothes short and tight, and is influenced by Barbie and Marilyn Monroe.” In 1984, a series of billboards popped up in the LA area featuring the lone word “Angelyne” along with a mysterious woman posing provocatively. The campaign created an instant stir, making her one of the first icons who was "famous for being famous", and it led to the recording of her second solo LP. Released in 1986, Driven to Fantasy features 8 tracks of bubblegum-hued new wave with a distinctly LA flavor. On sassy titles like “Sex Goddess”, “Skin Tight”, and “Flirt”, Angelyne fused the glam and grit of southern Californian punk with flashy synth-pop style. This will be the first time that this cult record will be in print since its original release, and comes on pink Corvette-colored vinyl with a 2-sided poster featuring lyrics. Angelyne is more than just a billboard or a rock star; she’s been an actress, a visual artist, and even a political candidate. Celebrate a true Hollywood legend with this historic reissue.

April March / Kelley Stoltz

April March Sings Kelley Stoltz

Agitated

Four special tracks recorded by April March and Kelley Stoltz, whereby April sings Kelley Stoltz songs in French and also in English. Mixed and mastered by Warren DeFever at Third Man. Pressed on red vinyl. April March: "I was in Nashville with Olivia Jean on a little break from shooting our 'Allons Y' video at Third Man. I got in her car and she cranked up her playlist. Out jumped 'Double Exposure'. I went bananas right there in the passenger seat. 'Kelley Stokes!', she smiled wide. It reminded me of something I'd heard in a dream. I went around singing songs from Double Exposure for a few weeks zeroing in on 'Are You My Love' and 'Your Face'. I thought to myself cover-wise there's nothing to add here, they're perfect as is but maybe some French versions would be a kick so I asked for an intro. A few months later I was in San Francisco kicking out the Bonne Mamans with Kelley in his studio. Lucky me and thanks to Agitated Records lucky you too. Kelley Stoltz: “Like almost everyone in the world I was dazzled by April March's take on 'Chick Habit' back in the late 90s. It was such an up feeling and joyful sound in the music and vocals. At odds with the manly wails and bleak outlooks that were standard song fare of those days. You can develop a crush on the voice in your speakers, you know! I did anyway. I was...

Woodstock 99

99 Ta Life

Sorry State

***Woodstock 99 follows up 2022’s Super Gremlin with another deep dive into Cleveland’s hallucinogen-soaked hardcore underbelly. While Woodstock 99 typically delights in obliterating your expectations, you could get through almost the whole A side of 99 Ta Life thinking they’ve made a conventional (for them, at least) hardcore punk record. And their hardcore chops have only sharpened since Super Gremlin, with brilliant, memorable riffs, powerful and confident playing, and uniquely demented vocals. However, even at their most straightforward, you never know where Woodstock 99’s songs will go, darting between parts in ways that surprise you on the first listen, but sound perfectly natural once you’ve acclimated to the group’s cracked logic. While that logic colors the hardcore tracks on the A side, on the B side, Woodstock 99 charges headlong into the void. “99 Problems” is a psychedelic ramble that wanders through a succession of modes before a sudden explosion brings the track to an abrupt end. Closer “Za Rat King” is the masterpiece, though, an eight-minute journey composed and performed with the assistance of artificial intelligence where a hooky four-bar phrase haunts a glitched-out universe encompassing a dizzying parade of genres and musical traditions. Like a lot of Woodstock 99’s music, it really interrogates the boundary between genius and idiocy. So strap in, grab Woodstock 99’s hand, and follow as they lead us even further down the rabbit hole.

Darts, The

Boomerang

Alternative Tentacles

***ON LIMITED BLOOD ORANGE VINYL!!! The Darts can’t stop, won’t stop! Hot on the heels on last year’s groundbreaking album Snake Oil, The Darts have returned guns blazing with a brand-new album, Boomerang! While on a break from their intense international touring schedule, the band stopped at Station House Studio in Los Angeles to work with producer Mark Rains (Hooveriii, Death Valley Girls, Hunx and His Punx) with the mission of capturing the band’s raw rock spirit. From the opening chords of “Hang Around,” listeners are launched into an explosive garage party, with the Farfisa organ bringing a carnival and snarky gang vocals adding to the fray. The band doesn’t let up from there. With Nicole Laurenne on vocals and Farfisa, Christina Nunez on bass and backup vocals, Meliza Jackson on guitars, and Mary Rose Gonzales on drums, the tight lineup fuels the album’s themes of resilience and empowerment. Each track on Boomerang packs a punch, drawing the listener into a world of infectious hooks and soaring riffs. “Boomerang is a reference to the fact that, right after we released Snake Oil, we turned right around and went back into the studio to do a whole new full-length album! I can’t stop writing songs! But ‘boomerang’ also refers to a lyric on the album that describes toxic people and things that keep coming back into your life despite your repeated attempts to fling them as far away as possible. This album is my manifesto about finding strength—the kind...

V/a

Crawling The Walls

Agitated

A cheap price compilation CD of rare, unreleased, forthcoming, and brilliant tracks from the UK's Agitated Label (and some friends). Like a massive bag of pick-and-mix for your next party. Features cuts from Straight Arrows, Kelley Stoltz, Carlton Melton, oldboy, Headland, Laurel Canyon, Catatonic Suns, Last of Easy Riders, Icarus Line, Blamers, and many more. Bonus CD is a collection of “Radio Shows” by Agitated pals The Hawk and KBCD radio! Edition of 500.

Melingo

Ufa!

Calar Music

***"For the first time on vinyl, Melingo's 2000 album Ufa! takes listeners on a captivating journey through the gritty streets of Buenos Aires. The album captures the essence of the urban landscape and the stories of an array of characters, including Jack The Ripper, Count Dracula, dealers, hustlers, trans love, and much more. Ufa! delves much deeper than its predecessor, Tangos Bajos, as it solidifies Melingo's collaboration with tango lyricists Luís Alposta and Enrique Cadícamo across ten tracks. Melingo's partnership with the iconic tango poet Enrique Cadícamo becomes profoundly significant when he sets to music Cadícamo's poem 'Siga Cochero,' written at the age of 19 in 1929. This particular composition gains newfound relevance and preservation thanks to Melingo's intimate collaboration with Don Enrique. The album also features renditions of beloved songs such as the Uruguayan Alfredo Zitarrosa's 'El Violin De Becho,' a chamamé, 'Las Flores Del Paraguay,' and the enchanting lullaby 'Sin Luna,' all exquisitely mastered by Myles Boisen."

Long Knife

Rip City Bonerpunk Classics Vol. 1

Tko

***"Portland, OR's LONG KNIFE have spent the last 10+ years turning out some of the most well-crafted and unrelenting hardcore punk in North America, fusing the speed and ferocity of first wave USHC, the barely restrained chaos of Japanese hardcore, and the guitar heroism of classic Hard Rock to devastating effect. And with three albums, numerous 7"s and compilation appearances to their name, this is a band that's never been content to rest on their laurels. If you, woefully ignorant poseur that you are, somehow missed the memo, and are now desperately clamoring to own the band’s long out of print EPs, TKO Records has got you covered. Rip City Bonerpunk Classics Vol. 1 compiles all of Long Knife's 7” tracks, including 'Possession,' 'Sewers of Babylon,' and 'Night of the Hunter,' as well as songs from their split 7” with Japanese Hardcore legends Forward and several previously unreleased covers. The assembled material featured on Rip City is some of the most incisive, hard-hitting, and musically interesting Hardcore Punk available today. Whether you pine for the unhinged guitar wizardry of G.I.S.M., the pummeling neanderthal churn of Motörhead, or the frenetic lunacy of United Mutation, Long Knife delivers. Grab a copy while you can, or don’t and wish you did later.

Homeless Cadaver

Champale Wishes and Cadaviar Dreams

Iron Lung

***What started out as an exciting career kick off back in 2019, with the Fat Skeleton EP on Iron Lung Records, HOMELESS CADAVER continued to write with the intention of making more records and finally playing a show but the 2020 police had alternate plans for the band. We don’t need to get into the details on that but they’re out now and picking up where they left off. Before the break they had recorded most of these four songs intended for a release on a Southern Californian label (details also withheld here, NDA blah blah blah) but the label didn’t have the patience to deal with the mess so HC was dropped and the world moved on. Well kinda, it was early 2020, so I guess you could say the world moved… in. Anyway, the band finished the songs late last year and sent them to us so here we are, offering stripped down, juvenile thug synth KBD inspired garage stains about hustling, dating and excessive pleasures. Speaking of excessive, at one point during the Champale Wishes and Cadaviar Dreams completion phase the band did up some deluxe horn and string arrangements to accompany the EP. And then laughed really really hard when they threw them directly in the trash because “that shit sucks” and “what are we Juliards?”. They certainly have a way with words... 200 copies of black 70gr vinyl housed in a hand cut and assembled, silk screened glue pocket sleeve. Recorded in their rehearsal shed....

Klonns

Crow

Iron Lung

***As a child my mother told me not to play with incendiaries but I just loved the way things looked as they exploded and burned. All that searing heat and crackling destruction made me thirst for more, for bigger, for total annihilation. That is how KLONNS feels too. Crow is four chunks of aural dynamite come together to form an EP chock full of explosive Japanese HC in the vein of the greats like Bastard, Lip Cream of DEA.

Klonns

Heaven

Iron Lung

***Heaven is the culmination of many years hard work and careful consideration of all the modern methods of outsider and extreme music being funneled into one comprehensive overview of Japan’s underground culture as KLONNS sees it. Since their 2016 inception, they have drawn inspiration not only from their allies in the punk/hardcore scene, but also their friends from other scenes such as techno, experimental music, industrial/noise, hip-hop, etc. A united creative community of forward thinking maniacs centered on pushing culture in a positive direction. The “NEW WAVE OF JAPANESE HARDCORE” has never sounded more necessary. No Export to Japan.

Negatives

Whole Lotta Shakin'

Iron Lung

***In the early days of punk amidst the gritty pop riffing and cocaine blasted glam holdovers of CBGB, Max’s Kansas City and the like, Negatives sauntered into life as an anti-poser power trio who enjoyed writing music that was anything but pop. Consisting of reconfigured fallout from The Erotics and Inside Out (no, not that Inside Out), they employed a jagged, machine tight, hyped up guitar centric new wave approach to skewer what little public actually saw them with biting tracks about drugging, paranoia, anxiety and the mindless contentment of standard humans. Big city shit… Without much support, they managed to gig for about 6 months or so before disappearing into the hazy annals of the “me decade”. They did manage to track a few songs and release this lone EP that was all but lost until a lucky thumb met a curious eye in a New York record bin. With some help from friends, we were able to rescue this incredible EP from obscurity and we are beyond excited to offer this KBD monster to you now, freshly remastered from the original and finally in a picture sleeve. 500 copies on black 70gr vinyl housed in a 12 pt reverse board custom ILR silver lined glue pocket sleeve. Originally recorded in a now long defunct rehearsal studio in midtown Manhattan around 1979/1980. Exact dates are unknown as the master tapes were lost a long time ago. Recut and remastered by John Golden in 2023. Art by Jensen Ward.

Sect Mark

Self Obliteration

Iron Lung

***Self Obliteration is defined as any behavior that is harmful or potentially harmful towards the person who engages in the behavior. It is also applied to the potential at a communal or global level for the entire human race to destroy itself through the technological choices made by society and their possible consequences. Keeping that in mind and applying that knowledge toward writing fucked up hardcore you can start to see into the world of Sect Mark with all its darkness and anger being the driving forces. There is no beauty left in that world, no light. And in that world this is pure poetry: “Eat the broken stones, the old picutres of the churches; the pebbles of gone floods, loaves scattered in the gray valleys.”

Buchanan, Raeghan

The Secret History of Black Punk: Record Zero

Silver Sprocket

***Delve into the largely overlooked footprint that Black punks have on the underground music scene in a new archival publication brought to you by Raeghan Buchanan and Silver Sprocket. The Secret History of Black Punk: Record Zero by Buchanan is an illustrated roll-call for punk, post-punk, hardcore, no-wave, and experimental bands from ground zero ‘til now. A starting point for anyone curious, another reference for those who devour all genre-related things, or a cool artifact for anyone in the know. This book is part of an ongoing series that covers musicians like Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Poly Styrene, Don Letts, Minority Threat, and many others. From LA to London, from the early 1900s till today, Buchanan examines and presents narratives to show how Black musicians shape (and are shaped by) the world we live in. 64 full-color pages. 6.625" x 10.187" with spine.

Faun Fables

Family Album

Drag City

***REISSUED ON VINYL FOR THE FIRST TIME!!! Happy 20th birthday to Family Album, the third recording of Faun Fables and the first one released on Drag City. These songs belong to sons and daughters, entwined and orphaned, domesticated and feral; to all the family vines unraveling from a ball of yarn. In this family album, runaways graze the wild together, a mother finds her courage playing the piano, dogs become thieves and wolves, and a son is taken too soon. Fourteen-year-old nymphs sit dangerously at the crossroads, a younger brother tries to find his place, packs of girls defeat fear with a march, and the nightly adventures of the household mouse are spied upon. Edition of 500 copies.

Battlebeats

Meet Your Maker

Sweet Time

***The latest from Bandung, Indonesia's slum king of garage rock, formed by Andresa Nugraha in 2019. A ripping blast of Teengenerate-inspired trash action.

Six Organs Of Admittance

Time Is Glass

Drag City

***Once again, Six Organs of Admittance showcases the intricate tangle of fingers on the fretboard and flash of lens flare slicing the air, as the future arcs 360 degrees around to become a part of the past as well. Oscillations in this glass bowl ripple outward eternally, but are rooted on the ground where all the creatures are moving and communing; humans too. An intimate cosmic expression, file under: rural-industrial psych, ecosystem goth.

Einsturzende Neubauten

Rampen (apm: alien pop music)

Potomak

***Einstürzende Neubauten present their new album Rampen (apm: alien pop music) . Since the band was founded on April 1, 1980, Einstürzende Neubauten have been shifting the parameters of mainstream and subculture to make the inaudible audible—perhaps the unheard as well. This experimental field research, spanning more than four decades, is now entering the next stage. In its 44th year of existence, the band is going back to its roots while redefining itself. It's a change in self-image, for which the Berlin quintet plus one has created its own genre—alien pop music.

Ambarchi, Oren / Johan Berthling / Andreas Werliin

Ghosted II

Drag City

***An utterly unique guitar/bass/drums triad: the guitar sounds like anything but a guitar; bass and drums simultaneously insistent and relaxed. Telephathic group-think opens a window to fresh fields of fusion: funk-jazz…

O'Neil, Tara Jane

The Cool Cloud of Okayness

Orindal

***The Cool Cloud of Okayness was written amidst the skirmishes and shuffle of the seven years since her last song based album (although there has been a fascinating array of collaborations, tributes, rarities, and experiments released in the interim). Recorded by TJO at her home studio in Upper Ojai, California, a studio built on the ashes of the home lost to the Thomas Fire. Many of The Cool Cloud of Okayness’s nine tracks were developed in the time between the wildfire and the rebuilding, between lockdown and reopening. TJO, her partner (dancer, choreographer and frequent collaborator) Jmy James Kidd and their dog sheltered from the storms in the high desert of Southern California and the deep suburbs of Louisville, KY. In these locales were discovered the improvised bass guitar figures to Kidd’s dance which transformed into songs during pandemic isolation, then brought to the ensemble of drummer/percussionist Sheridan Riley (of Alvvays), multi-instrumentalist Walt McClements, and on a couple, guitarist Meg Duffy (of Hand Habits & Duffy x Uhlmann). They build and gleefully destroy and rebuild again. There is joy in the ensemble’s shared queer identity- an identity that refuses to be agreed upon. This record too challenges any easy genre or definition. This record is sculpture and portrait of times and loved ones gone past. It is spiritual and it is psychedelic. TJO’s deft production and rock-solid bass playing hold the center, and her spectral guitar and singing voice carry the message.

Faun Fables

Mother Twillight

Drag City

***REISSUED ON VINYL FOR THE FIRST TIME!!! Mother Twilight is the second Faun Fables album. It has since been noted by Scottish author R.J. Stewart as a work containing true artifacts of the oral underworld tradition. Dawn and Nils made a hand-assembled first pressing and peddled it to nearly every bar and rural hall across North America from 2001–2003. Drag City reissued the CD in 2004. Edition of 500 copies.

Universal Cell Unlock

Quasimodo The Streetsweeper

Psychic Sounds

***"What remarks can recall the pampered page when the subject shines through so many shaken seams? The remarks are for the producer of Quasimodo The Streetsweeper, the mysterious, though constantly revealing, CF, presenting himself here as UNIVERSAL CELL UNLOCK. CHRISTOPHER FORGUES of BROWN RECLUSE ALPHA, MARK LORD, KITES, and author of blazetastic comic books—ever checkout Power Masters? What remarks could remain after all that? However, one still finds this fresh pile of inviting and mature music, coated in the haunting haze of digital reverb. What premeditated remark could recharge reminisces of New York more than the city’s newly appointed director of rodent mitigation? The lost legend of Tony Conrad running up the steps of a Manhattan church to meet the mysterious mad one playing the bells in the spire, Charlemagne Palestine. The bristles from the machines of swirling repetition that push parking brush to the side are repurposed here as pluckphonic metal keys, mined for their rich harmonic content. There are strategies taken from the decidedly unfocused on New York musical tradition of American and global capital-N Noise music. An invitation to a closed eye head bob is quickly revoked with a shock call to attentiveness. There’s an attentiveness here. Across forty minutes of percussion music, with some stark electronic accouterments along the way, the focus on the form and compositional aspects is forgotten only to let the sounds build and interact without pesky human interruption. That’s the remark to recall: remarkable music with new surprises pushed through."—Ben Kudler

Deschenes, Annie-Claude

Les Manieres De Table

Italians Do It Better

***The debut solo ablum from Annie-Claude Deschenes (of the Montreal bands Duchess Says and PyPy). Inspired by the pioneers of electronic music, Les Manieres de Table is as danceable and melodic as it is disquieting and dystopian. The album proposes to set the table differently by deconstructing the social codes of politeness, and draws from a wide range of influences, notably Steve Reich’s minimalism, Kraftwerk’s synthetic textures, Herbie Hancock’s stylistic diversity and experimental cinema’s unconventional approach to narrative. Pressed on 180-gram ivory white vinyl.

Diabolic Oath

Oracular Hexations

Sentient Ruin Laboratories

***The abysmal alchemists of lysergic black/death abominations Diabolic Oath are back with their most warped and devastating work to date. On their new sophomore full-length uncreation Oracular Hexations, the band's staple approach of using completely fretless stringed instruments and a triple simultaneous vocal attack to depredate the listener's psyche, reaches truly majestic and catastrophic forms. Their technically daring and transformative approach to the usually dogmatic "war metal" craft has metastasized as a highly divergent and enigmatic mutation within the genre itself, where the crushing heaviness of the riffs concocted to their unconventional creation has resulted in an alternate reality of bestial black metal unbound with truly unseen and unthinkable auditory monstrosities. Shapeless, formless and free of any boundaries, the six lengthy spells contained within Oracular Hexations assume an almost globulous, chimeric form, appearing horrendous and misshapen to the listener as they morph and four-dimensionally sprawl like a sensorially annihilating mass devouring the psyche. The gnarled and grotesque nature of chords and musical structures created evoke a sense of disorienting and otherworldly disembodiment, becoming a fertile ground for degenerate forms of ritualism and esotericism that weave an unsettling conceptual canvas rife for the propagation of the absurd. Unbound with cryptic and abstruse mutterings about cosmological, multi-dimensional and impossible states of being, Oracular Hexations is an hallucinatory convergence between technical, crushing and flesh-scouring musical genius and truly grotesque forms of composition and storytelling. An indissoluble dualism between primeval destruction and inscrutable bewilderment which will test the psyche and flesh of those subjected...

Caruso

Kitten

General Manager

North Carolina’s Caruso, aka Matt DeBellis, presents his third full-length, originally recorded in 2003 and the second LP reissue under the General Manager imprint. Unlike the array of loops, found audio, and wall-of-sound aesthetics of 2011’s Pink Cloud, Kitten plays lighter, dancier, and goes far beyond the accessible into the infectious.  This LP sees DeBellis making actual *songs* out of the disjointed pop fragments that appear on his first two singles—2001’s “Titles Are For Babies” from UK label Crustaceans and Reptiles, and 2003’s “You Heard Me” from another UK label, Pickled Egg. Kitten’s sonic connection with the UK is immediately clear on first listen; the guitar tones and thick layers of reverb reference numerous bands from London labels Creation and Too Pure, both seminal fixtures of the 90s English alternative scene.  This reissue was re-mastered for vinyl by British producer and sound engineer, Guy Fixsen, of My Bloody Valentine, Moonshake, and Slowdive fame. Much like Moonshake’s music, these songs hinge on highly-danceable hooks and lush landscapes of electric guitar. The beats harken back to early 00s drum machine freeware, Hammerhead, replete with the ubiquitous TR-808, TR-909, and standard samples like “Funky Drummer.” But beyond the carefully constructed pop scaffolding, Kitten’s undiscovered gems truly take shape with DeBellis’ soft, crooning harmonies. Lyrically, the album is an unapologetic ode to gay love. DeBellis’ vocals bring a nuanced intimacy to the record that‘s equal parts nascent sexual power and vulnerability. On “Anyone There?” he quips, “He’s so fucking hip, but what does he...

Caruso

Pnk Cloud

General Manager

Originally a 2011 digital release, Pnk Cloud is the first of two LP reissues on the General Manager label from Durham, North Carolina’s Caruso, aka Matt DeBellis. Here, his love for the abstract edge of the shoegaze spectrum (noise, loops, washes of sound) culminates. DeBellis’ music is known for its genre fluidity. Regarding his second single, “You Heard Me,” Maarten Schiethart of Pennyblackmusic described him as “a chameleon...one moment he pleases the electronic Mille Plateaux community and then swiftly pursues in a fashion that will make Twisted Nerve fans' "ears drip with indie ooze.” Heavily inspired by Jefre Cantu-Ledesma’s 2010 ambient drone masterpiece, Love is a Stream, DeBellis‘ album mixes sonic textures with a wide array of found sounds and melancholic piano melodies. On “Side 1,” Bending guitar loops weave through (actual) call-and-response phone recordings from DeBellis’ stint at an American Airlines call center: ”I’m in Satan’s kingdom right now / And how can I help you get back up from there, sir?” Eventually, the guitar loops devolve into drones and morph slowly into a white-noise-enveloped vocal cacophony. Departing from these varied sound collages, “Side 2” is a long, engaging and hypnotic piece that incorporates layered guitar drones with unedited street noise and voices of passersby during the 2010 “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear” in Washington, D.C. Pnk Cloud was mastered for vinyl by Warren Defever, whose own music and production mirrors this recording’s sonically playful editorial approach.

V/a

Brown Acid - The Eighteenth Trip

Riding Easy

If one survived trips one through seventeen with one tiny speck of psychedelic sunshine intact, Brown Acid - The Eighteenth Trip will be the coming of age nightmare. Vintage underground ’70s hard rock, coming at one from bizarre angles, local scene wasteland America when everybody was out for themselves and the drugs went bleak. The guitars kill, the attitude is twisted, even the sex is headed down the wrong road. Real people, no compromise, pure and potent. Get stoked, take The Eighteenth Trip and know that the artists will get paid for this soul pulverizing! Here’s just some of the tracks included: Back Jack out of St. Louis, Missouri in 1974 launch the trip with “Bridge Waters Dynamite.” It’s an invocation to rock flashing on Mark Farner whooping up a Grand Funk crowd, then getting to the point quickly with berserk guitar assaults. Heavy riff with power chord stalks beneath as one takes their advice… get loose and blow up the past. Smokin’ Buku Band dropped Riding Easy’s jaw with the audacious track “Hot Love,” coming on like some fractured fever dream burlesque of Led Zep, moves out of Hollywood in 1980. Swooping elongated vocals above, a total Zep chord move at the end of each verse. Writer / producer Steve Shauger aka Shag Stevens gets a brilliantly messed up sound quality here, the ideal polar opposite of slick. The extended guitar break is an epitome of serendipitously crude virtuosity, simply outrageous! Nothing better than an angry two chord guitar...

49th Parallel

49th Parallel

Lion Productions

***BACK IN PRINT ON NEW COKE BOTTLE GREEN VINYL!!! Note new price. In the spring of 1969, 49TH PARALLEL had a hit in with ‘Twilight Woman’, a lovely song that sounds like a poppier version of what bands like Tomorrow were doing in England. That success led to the release of 49th Parallel’s only album. All hyperbole aside, it is easily one of the top Canadian rock albums of the psychedelic era. The album is strong throughout—from the pulsating psychedelia of ‘Lazerander Filchy’ and the ultra-strange  ‘(The) Magician’, the shimmering beauty of 'Twilight Woman', to the quintessential slashing guitars punk edginess of ‘Now That I'm a Man’ and ‘(Come On Little Child &) Talk To Me’. DAN LOWE’s Lowe's blazing fuzz guitar work stands out on ‘Missouri’ and also when matched by organist Jack Velker's brilliant work on ‘Eye To Eye’, ‘Talk To Me’ and ‘(The) People’. Limited edition of 200 copies.