New Releases

Carlton Melton

Reason Beings

Agitated

Time to turn on and turn it up, theres a brand new Carlton Melton in the offing… its been a good couple of years since the West Coast space/sike travelers have dropped new music. ‘Phantomize beyond the window, into the portal, the panes of eternal returns, wooden spirals, roots into the realms of everything and nothing, the reason beings’ With Anthony Taibi fully ensconsed in the metaphorical Melton Dome, this four piece is ready to soar, go deeper and wider into the sike psyche than on previous recordings, now fully recording live with drums, bass, guitars and keys—recorded at 3D Light in Freshwater, CA by Anthony Tiabi in 2025, and mastered by the inimitable John McBain in 2026. We have a single LP of 40+ minutes spanning 4 tracks, that have textures, and waves and patterns to lull you into some fever dream of motorik psych! Touchstones like Träd, Gräs Och Stenar / Kandodo / Guru Guru / Eno & Fripp / Birds of Maya / Parson Sound come into view. There are moments of gentle ambience bordered by speaker shredding guitar soloing, whole passages of Krautrock inspired jams that have form and focus—you blink and your live flashes before you, the record ends, you want more. Carlton Melton masterfully blend hypnotic, long-form psychedelic jams with drone and Krautrock influences.

Black Meteoric Star

Wet

Dark Entries

***Wet is the fifth full length album by Black Meteoric Star and their 10th release. Black Meteoric Star is a project Rayna started in 2006 when she was living in Berlin that brought together her life long love of dance music culture with spiritual themes, drag, and her formative experiences of S/M culture Black Meteoric Star has always had an avenger quality in Rayna's life and creative work, and this iteration plays that role in response to the current political landscape. Wet celebrates the long standing shared history of electronic music and queer leather/SM culture and imagines a future where these two cultural expressions are re-connected. Electronic music and leather/SM are both ways that queer people have historically built community, created and shared knowledge, and kept each other safe. The current administration demonizes and villainizes queer people on the basis of a false moral framework of respectability, and its a trick. No amount of acting "respectable" will humanize queer people in the eyes of this administration and get us the rights we deserve. Revitalizing the connection between electronic music and queer leather/SM is a way to affirm the cultural power of both during a time when it has never been clearer that we keep each other safe. Rayna, a transgender woman with a deep commitment to all of these cultural forms, has a strong message to deliver with this album. She has been a DJ and producer of electronic music for over thirty years and has been producing community cultural...

Leimer, K.

At The First Clear Sound

Palace Of Lights

Some more new music made with a system of hand-drawn, modular passages rearranged in coherent and incoherent signatures.  The tracks of At the First Clear Sound are stubbornly absent of improvisation, solos, virtuosity, and compositional form while being full of naïveté, a harsh smoothness, an agitated calm, and inharmonic harmonics. Dazzled by the automatic nature of this modular technique Leimer worked quickly, choosing to respect his mistakes and question his choices. “As reliant as the music is on computers, samples, digital processing, and typing, this work is still rather imperfect, rather handmade. And, of course, my compulsion to work with infinitely pliant sound is now clearly bordering on mild psychosis.”  Technically, there’s never a final mix. K. Leimer founded Palace of Lights in 1979. Leimer’s work has also been issued by Autumn, First Terrace, Les Giants, Invisible Inc., Origin Peoples, and RVNG. His early cassette work is included in the critically acclaimed VOD box set ‘American Cassette Culture’ and is included in Cherry Red’s ‘Noise Floor’ series. Leimer has been actively producing music since the mid 1970s—his current catalog includes solo albums, soundtracks, installations, and collaborative albums with Savant, Marc Barreca, Tyler Boley, and Three Point Circle. We are told his work is included in the collection of The British Library.

Smug Brothers

Pinhole to Vortex

Anyway

Most bands spend their careers trying to make important records. Smug Brothers have always kept busy making records that become important to you when you least expect it. That's been Kyle Melton's secret weapon all along. While everyone else is chasing reinvention, fashion, or the Next Big Statement, Smug Brothers keep uncovering another impossible melody, another sideways guitar figure, another chorus that sneaks into your bloodstream and refuses to leave. Each album feels like finding a battered notebook filled with perfect pop songs someone accidentally left behind. Pinhole to Vortex is that notebook exploding into a universe. This isn't simply another collection of irresistible Midwestern indie rock. It's the sound of a band that's been quietly perfecting its own private language for decades and suddenly speaking it louder, wider, stranger, and with more confidence than ever before. Every song feels connected by invisible threads—garage rock rubbing shoulders with psychedelia, power pop shaking hands with dream logic, acoustic confessionals giving way to electric storms. The road to Pinhole to Vortex was anything but hurried. Recording began in June 2024, overlapping with sessions that would ultimately produce Stuck On Beta. Across four guitar/drums tracking sessions and an additional solo acoustic session, Melton and drummer Don Thrasher—along with bassist Kyle Sowash and guitarist Ryan Shaffer—recorded more than twenty-five songs, continuing to write new material almost until the recording machine stopped rolling. Like all the best Smug Brothers records, the album wasn't assembled according to some grand master plan—it evolved organically, song by song,...

French Paddleboat

Fleeced At Golden Hour

Triple Crown Audio Recordings

In 1996, French Paddleboat (aka Scott August) released his first cassette Constantinople on his private press Canadian cassette label Granted Passage, followed up quickly by 1997’s Rome Loves Tan (Union Pole Cassettes / Catsup Plate Records) and then finally Conversions In Metric (Scratch Records). This all happened very quickly and simultaneously with his output as 50% of Kelowna’s Vote Robot (Scratch / KRAAK) and as drummer for the Nova Scotias (Cactus Gum / Bees Make Honey /Bacchanalian Revel International). As the 90’s vanished it seemed so did French Paddleboat, as Scott’s creative focus turned to visual art, small Vote Robot tours, and releasing albums for the Vancouver bands Destroyer and Ladyhawk. Then in 2024, while writer Joe Posset was researching the history of the Union Pole tape label he discovered a secret, Scott had never really called time on French Paddleboat. A record, started in 1999, had been carefully worked on with a squad of top-rate collaborators and was waiting for the right time to bloom. French Paddleboat’s Fleeced At Golden Hour is decades in the making, recorded between 1999 – 2019 the album grew from something that was originally “itchy and noisy” to “lush orchestrated calligraphy” through the act of collaboration. On Fleeced at Golden Hour Scott is joined by: Jon-Rae Fletcher, Darcy Hancock (Ladyhawk), Kim Koch, Ian Krist, Cary Pratt, Denver Rawson, Jordie Robinson, Joseph Shabason (Destroyer / Shabason & Krgovich), and Jason Zumpano (Zumpano). Wake the town and tell the people, Fleeced at Golden Hour,...

Fussell, Jake Xerxes

The Old Beloved Path

Fat Possum

***Jake Xerxes Fussell has established himself as a devoted listener and contemplative interpreter of folk songs, drawing from a deep personal reservoir of favorites. The Old Beloved Path, Fussell's sixth album, is raw and intimate, stripping away outside noise and settling into a hypnotic rhythm. Tradition and memory intertwine throughout.

Ruby Of Thanks

Before You Turn Into A Dog

Woodsist

Ruby of Thanks is the songwriting and home-recording project of Hudson Valley musician Andy Weaver. A fourth-generation New Yorker, Weaver is also a house painter and drummer whose work has included Widowspeak, Castanets, Wildflower, and Andre Ethier. With Ruby of Thanks, he turns toward something quieter: intimate, handmade songs that find beauty in ordinary life.Before You Turn Into A Dog is the project’s second full-length album. Split between solo recordings made at Weaver’s home in Kingston—where he played every instrument himself—and collaborative sessions with friends in Cairo and Catskill, the record values process as much as polish. Several songs preserve their very first complete performances, documenting ideas as they emerge rather than after they’ve been refined.“Hopefully it captures some spirit of creation,” Weaver says. “The idea of songwriting as a way to process events and create peace at home by working with your hands, making things. Self-recording as a response to capitalism in art.”That philosophy gives Before You Turn Into A Dog its quiet gravity. These songs dwell in everyday rituals and fleeting moments of transcendence, moving through love, depression, work, and the search for peace with remarkable patience and generosity. Weaver’s warm acoustic guitars, understated melodies, and homespun recordings never ask for attention—they earn it through honesty, intimacy, and careful craft.There are echoes of artists like Little Wings, John Andrews and the Yawns, and Hand Habits, but Ruby of Thanks resists easy comparison. Like the records that have long defined the Woodsist orbit, Before You Turn Into A Dog...

Krallice

Scour Order

Profound Lore

For their new album Scour Order, their sixteenth release, Krallice comes full circle and returns to Profound Lore (who initially released the band’s first three releases) with a new album that is raging and dark, dense but also expansive. One that slightly recalls the earlier phase of the band yet continues in the forward-thinking/next level singular sonic histrionics that the band have continued to expand and morph upon throughout the years. While the band have been experimenting more with their sound (band members switching roles, the band diving into more ambient and experimental territory etc.) over the last little while, Scour Order sees Krallice tether slightly back to more of a progressive black metal aura akin to the first four albums.

Blackshaw, James

Fractures on the Horizon

Amish

***Amish Records is proud to release the vinyl edition of Fractures on the Horizon, the latest album from British fingerstyle guitar virtuoso James Blackshaw. Originally digitally self-released on Bandcamp by James in February 2026, Fractures on the Horizon comprises two compositions totaling nearly 40 minutes of music. The title track—a sweeping 25-minute piece performed in an open tuning—finds Blackshaw at his most commanding, weaving hammered arpeggios and resonant melody into something at once technically staggering and deeply felt. The second piece, "Three Interlopers," shifts into hypnotic drone territory, rounding out the record with an unexpected and unsettling power.The album marks Blackshaw's second release since his return from a near-decade-long hiatus, following Unraveling in Your Hands, which arrived on Amish Records in 2025. Written, performed, and recorded entirely by Blackshaw, Fractures on the Horizon confirms his place as one of the most singular voices in contemporary acoustic music.“...the 25-minute title song might be his most boldly beautiful composition yet, a bravura performance for guitar alternating between slow, Aching melody and dazzling streams of strings” - UNCUT 8/10“These two compositions add up to a gorgeous odyssey, showing off not just Blackshaw's technical prowess but his ear for drama and dynamics. And when you realize the second track is an incredible drone exercise, your appreciation for Blackshaw might grow deeper still”. - Stereogum

Perennial

Modernism

Ernest Jenning Record Co.

Perennial is sharp, quick, ferocious, focused. Their bruising, bombastic sets come and go before you know it: all over but the sweating. 20 minute marathons, on stage and wax. On Modernism, the New England mod trio’s newest LP, that lightning-strike chic is devoted to a pocket-symphony rave-up — 10-songs built from all the keenest bits of The Who, The Blood Brothers, Otis Redding, Stereolab, MC5, Wilson Pickett, and Le Tigre. Op art to dance to. Mellotron loops bracket electric feedback squalls; freakbeat riffs tangle up beneath Stax/Volt hooks. The band’s deep, eccentric record collections, turned into a 1,200 second action painting. Formed in 2015 in Connecticut, Perennial is Chad Jewett (electric guitar and vocals), Chelsey Hahn (electric organ and vocals), and Ceej Wolf (drums). Focusing on both unforgettable live shows — frenetic, joyful dance-punk rites of spring — and studio-as-instrument modernist recordings, the band has built a cult of dedicated international aficionados, one sticky-humid basement show at a time. Touring tirelessly, they honed their Motown-via-Dischord sound to a keen, glossy point. With their longtime producer Chris Teti (The World Is A Beautiful Place and I Am No Longer Afraid To Die), Perennial has added layer after layer to their sharp mod collage: free jazz, ambient electronica, big beat, dub, Musique concrète, all within explosive 90-second sprints. Modernism is their best/catchiest/densest LP yet. The hooks pile high and stick fast atop dance floor strata of fuzz bass, tambourine, and Vox Continental organ jabs. Modernism marries the experimental to the ecstatic, the...

Visiting Hour

Visiting Hour

Dig! Records

***"Where does the day end, and why must we lie still in images of past and present; amongst the multitudes of invocations brought forth on a Sunday afternoon; forever in contemplation of the wind and where it may lead. Now present, you find yourself wrapped in the warmth of indecision and possibility; as this record plays... as Visiting Hour takes you someplace familiar yet all the while unknown. For the sounds contained within this music are not all too distant, but this is not a mere regurgitation. This is a testament of truth; of passion built from years spent in the presence of one another. And with this release, the Richmond quintet has begun to plant a new seed in the sonic landscape of today, echoing the harmonious cacophony that is heard in Creation Record’s catalogue, while simultaneously blending the calming restraint of Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker with the visceral, untethered instincts of Lungfish. And surely it would be a great omission to neglect Red House Painter's imprint on guitarist Kevin McCormick’s foundations; listen to the conclusion on 'New Eyes' and note a similar amalgamated and reserved beauty found on Songs for a Blue Guitar or Old Ramon... And one returns to these themes throughout the record, for its consistency is pure in every form. This is an introductory offering from Visiting Hour… from Kevin McCormick, Ren Schwarz, Willy Anderson, Brendan Reichhardt, and Zack Rogers. This is to ease the load; for this world is an increasingly unforgiving place,...

Drin, The

I Lost My Way For Centuries

Feel It

***"Stories like drops of water—the water sounds like the water in Tarkovsky’s Stalker.Stories without beginning or end. Memories of memories, some are yours and some belong to others. Glimmering impressions of pasts, presents, and futures that might be or might have been come like watching a film on a broken projector. Maybe this isn’t the first, or the original, of this sequence and maybe it won’t be the last.A saxophone sings throughoutit is your Virgil in this musical expanse, endless and uncannythe journey must continue through each iteration: a burst or a flicker, a drop or a torrent.Stories of echoes, ballads of the spaces between spaces, a collection of recursive narratives. Bass, drums, keys, guitars, reeds, a bouzouki: these are your travel companions and their voices paint the world as it unfolds before you in all its strangeness, beauty, and terror. And you’ll realize, with their help, that you are perhaps more lost than found, that what appears simple is endlessly complex, that within the cosmic static there lies the hum of truth, that nothing is ever just anything.… and eventually you’ll realize that the road turns into itself after the first thousand miles."—Ben Michaelis

Ch’ahom

Anthropic Rites Of Sublimation

20 Buck Spin

German black/death cult Ch’ahom offer upon the altar of sacrifice their second album Anthropic Rites Of Sublimation, a concept album set in a fictional world inspired by the rituals, art and architecture of pre-Hispanic cultures. Continuing where their Ts’ono’ot EP ended, its story unfolds around a cenote of impossible dimensions whose cosmic call draws the lost and uncertain toward self-sacrifice. Four civilizations rise along its edge, each developing its own rites, hierarchies and monuments to transform the abyss’s fatal summons into a foundation for collective existence. Ch’ahom gives this imagined world form through cavernous death metal, bestial eruptions and feverishly progressive structures. Savage riffing coils through suffocating chambers of rhythmic conjuration while ancient instrumentation emerges from the tumult like echoes inside a buried temple. Anthropic Rites Of Sublimation moves like the cenote itself, drawing the listener inward through an ecstatic and ever-deepening sense of the unknown. Inspired by a deliberately literal interpretation of the death drive and its sublimation, Ch’ahom explores culture as a response to an irresistible desire for self-erasure. Mutilation, vicarious sacrifice, enslavement and willing surrender become the foundations of competing societies awaiting the cenote’s periodic opening. Ch’ahom transforms this dark fiction into an immense ritual of sound, portraying humanity through its terrifying ingenuity: creating faith, beauty and entire civilizations upon the edge of annihilation.

Jefferies, Peter

The Day They Let You Out Is The Day They Might Not Let You Come Back

Grapefruit

Grapefruit is proud to announce the first new album in 25 years from the legendary New Zealand singer-songwriter, Peter Jefferies. Known for his seminal post-punk bands Nocturnal Projections and This Kind of Punishment as well as his equally influential solo records such as The Last Great Challenge in a Dull World, Electricity, Elevator Madness, and Closed Circuit, Jefferies has been one of the towers of the New Zealand underground music community since the early 1980s.The Day They Let You Out Is The Day They Might Not Let You Come Back is a new masterpiece in an already staggering catalog. Only Peter Jefferies could take a quarter of a century off from songwriting and come back as if a moment hadn’t passed. If anything the world has given him even more to grapple with and his voice is as urgent and necessary as ever.

Early Moods

Ready For The Grave

Riding Easy

Elements of the past, present, and future coalesce within the spell cast by Early Moods. The Los Angeles band channel the sludge-born spirits of seminal doom metal and beckon them to attack even faster with a jolt of NWOBHM guitar-craft and a twist of thrash attitude. The quintet—Alberto Alcaraz [vocals, keys], Oscar Hernandez [guitar], Eddie Andrade [guitar], Elix Felciano [bass], and Chris Flores [drums]—transfix with otherworldly transmissions of cosmic and catchy heaviness. “Our sound is more honed,” notes Elix. “We’ve found our identity. I think it takes a couple of albums for most bands. This record isn’t too far removed from what we’ve done in the past, but the songwriting has certainly matured. You can hear the chemistry. You can feel the mood changes in specific songs and all of the dynamics. It’s really alive.” Originally formed by Alberto and Eddie, the musicians unlocked an uncanny balance between heavy and hypnotic on the self-titled Early Moods in 2022. The sound further crystallized on A Sinner’s Past [2024]. Along the way, they incited the applause of Angry Metal Guy, The Obelisk, and more. Hitting the road, the group shared stages with the likes of High On Fire, Candlemass, Pentagram, Coven, Lucifer, Pagan Altar, and more in addition to joining the bill of Desertfest. During 2026, they recorded Ready For The Grave at Cyan Sound Studio with producer Toshi Kasai [Melvins, Tool]. He invariably inspired them to level up. Ultimately, Early Moods deliver a body of work befitting of...

Low End Activist Meets Seekersinternational

In Muzikon

Digital Sting

***Digital Sting returns after a bit of a hiatus with an across-the-globe collaboration featuring two of contemporary electronic music's most mysterious and prolific figures. Berlin-based, UK- born Low End Activist meets British Columbia-based, Philippines-born SeekersInternational for a seamless merger of their distinct but eclectic styles. SKRSINTL's woozy abstracted dubwise and dancehall psychedelia drips in, pooling and merging into Low End Activists minimalist and precision delivered bass bin pressure. Both artists' music spends some of its time in the hazy edges and ambience between sounds with hints of the activity, atmosphere and noise of the larger world present in the individual sounds themselves. An aspect of this record rides like a distilled essence of a merger between VHS era soundtracks, dusty live sound system tapes and classic era grime instrumentals but avoids the trap of obvious nostalgia. What is created through collage, deconstruction and refinement is in its whole very now. Like all things SKRSINTL and Low End Activist the continuum is honored and the momentum is always pushing forward.The records come in double-sided silk screen printed DJ Jackets, with Obi Strip style stickers and hand stamped white labels printed and assembled by Digital Sting.The artwork for this release was created in collaboration between SKRSINTL and Digital Sting.Mastered by Alec Ness and Greg Reierson. Vinyl run of 330 copies.

Burkett, Joshua

M/B/Too/4T/&M

Futura Resistenza

***Long before Spotify algorithmically ruined discovery, Joshua Burkett was wandering the New England underground with nothing but a guitar and enough patience to make tar smells feel like deja vu. This compilation LP is your time machine back to when "knew someone who knew someone" was the only distribution network you needed. Free Folk for the eternally lost & happily found.

Nowhere Flower

Peace Channel

Soft Abuse

Nowhere Flower, Lila Jarzombek’s solo music project, returns with a highly anticipated third full-length, Peace Channel. This time around finding a befitting comrade in Soft Abuse, a label that has served as a welcoming home to over two decades worth of like-minded sonic travellers. Peace Channel offers a continuation and evolution of her homespun wanderings through the pursuit of minimal bedroom perfection. One key difference from past releases is the use of a Tascam 4-track as opposed to digital recording. The switch made for a freeing experience, with the tactile functionality of the machine creating more space for experimentation and discovery. Despite, or perhaps in spite of the learning curve of navigating the new gadget, which inevitably leads to problems, surprises, and many happy accidents along the way, the album comes across with the ease and flow of a seasoned practitioner.With this in mind, Jarzombek described the album’s process as feeling more akin to making a painting or collage. A feeling that comes across distinctly upon first listen, and one that’s most fitting given her artistic practice. The warbling and fluttering of UK or NZ DIY-style Casiotone electronics are met with rambling guitar lines and slurred vocalizations. Tracks like “Behind Glass” and “Hallowed Out” have a somehow epic-yet-quiet catchiness. Back-to-back gems “Shared or Shattered” and “Formed By Water” display the layered and building approach to 4-track aided improvisation. One of the album’s defining moments is the inclusion of the winding acoustic piece “Ur Picture;” a mesmerizing ode to Mope Grooves’...

My Heart And Inverted Flame / Earth Jerks

Smile Denied - Split

Computer Tapes

***Long threatened, long promised, long in the works cosmic sonic ritual featuring the hypnotic, ambient primitivism of San Francisco faux-fisa droner Earth Jerks and the crushing monolithic rhythmic sound-scapery of California / Oregon doom-synth duo My Heart, An Inverted Flame.My Heart, An Inverted Flame is the urban/rural duo of Andee Conors and Marc Kate (formerly of A Minor Forest and IAMSPOONBENDER respectively). Synths and drums living somewhere between the doomiest of Doom and glaciers cutting through the Earth’s surface to create the grandest of canyons, My Heart, An Inverted Flame exists solely to remind the listener that all is for naught, the world is cruel and vengeful, and that you are smallest speck in this massive omniverse.Earth Jerks is the long running solo endeavor of Christian Dixon, (of Death Sentence: PANDA!, COPS, OTIOXI, etc. etc. etc.). Primitive organ chording peppered with a smattering of tremolos, delays and fuzzes, Earth Jerks does it’s best to straddle the world of the smart drone and the caveman drone. For fans of Eliane Radigue and Pebbles and Highs in the Mid-Sixties comps. Minds should expand, knuckles must drag.Pro-duped cassettes, with hand stamped labels and covers.Limited to 100 copies

My Heart And Inverted Flame / Earth Jerks

Smile Denied - Split

Tumult

***Long threatened, long promised, long in the works cosmic sonic ritual featuring the hypnotic, ambient primitivism of San Francisco faux-fisa droner Earth Jerks and the crushing monolithic rhythmic sound-scapery of California / Oregon doom-synth duo My Heart, An Inverted Flame.My Heart, An Inverted Flame is the urban/rural duo of Andee Conors and Marc Kate (formerly of A Minor Forest and IAMSPOONBENDER respectively). Synths and drums living somewhere between the doomiest of Doom and glaciers cutting through the Earth’s surface to create the grandest of canyons, My Heart, An Inverted Flame exists solely to remind the listener that all is for naught, the world is cruel and vengeful, and that you are smallest speck in this massive omniverse.Earth Jerks is the long running solo endeavor of Christian Dixon, (of Death Sentence: PANDA!, COPS, OTIOXI, etc. etc. etc.). Primitive organ chording peppered with a smattering of tremolos, delays and fuzzes, Earth Jerks does it’s best to straddle the world of the smart drone and the caveman drone. For fans of Eliane Radigue and Pebbles and Highs in the Mid-Sixties comps. Minds should expand, knuckles must drag.Hand-numbered CD edition of 100 copies with stamped arigato covers and printed inserts.Pro-duped cassettes, with hand stamped labels and covers.Limited to 100 copies

Ravi Shavi

Wild Rock Dove

Almost Ready

***RAVI SHAVI trade in the post-punk skronk from last year's limited vinyl release Erase America for the skronk post-funk of Wild Rock Dove. There’s long been a thread of Eno running through Ravi Shavi’s work, and if tracks like opener “Peace of Mind” conjure Roxy Music, the chaser “Fresh Hell” could have been ripped from the No New York comp. Longtime guitarist Nick Politelli scatters Will Sargeant-style licks across the album like Necco Wafers drenched in reverb. He finds a foil in Chuck Perry, who has fleshed out the band’s live sets for years and brings his slinky, shapeshifting tone to the forefront of several tracks, including title cut “Wild Rock Doves”.The band's sixth release on Almost Ready Records marks six years sober for frontman and songwriter Rafay Rashid. Firmly in control of this art-damaged chaos, Rashid turns his gaze from white liberal hypocrisy in “New Brown Neighbors” to his own sordid past on “Misbehave”. Rashid’s songs are rooted in his experience as a naturalized citizen, specifically as a Pakistani-American and uniquely as a trickster- fuckup that never fully earns White America’s praise as a model immigrant or scorn as a hatta-clad terrorist.In this distinct space he has a co-conspirator with songwriter and guitar-player Shahjehan Khan–formerly of The Kominas and most recently flexing his acting chops in cult streaming hit Deli Boys. The two offer the band’s first song in Urdu, the album-closer, “Halaat”. Loosely translated to “circumstances” and finding a sonic bridge from South Asia to West Africa, the...

Cracked Actor

Nazi School

Last Laugh

***"If you’ve encountered CRACKED ACTOR before, it is most likely from their appearance on the fifth installment of Killed By Death, where the title track of this LP appeared in all its revved-up, trashy glory. Sourced from a 1981 EP of the same name, 'Nazi School' emerged from the same degenerate ectoplasm as fellow East Coast goons the DICTATORS and NERVOUS EATERS. Sleaze-forward raunch’n’roll, with killer tone loaded with swagger. Naturally, the big question to be answered is how the rest of the material stacks up. For me, it’s a bit of a mixed bag. There are some unsurprising throwaways—the cover of 'Judy in Disguise,' the five-minute-plus 'All Day Sucker'—and a gross-out, ultra-cringe track called 'Jailbait Judy,' scraping at the very bottom of the barrel. But the best of the rest packs a mean hook. 'Epileptic Fit' could easily make the KBD cut, and 'Slow Down' sounds like it was snipped from a DMZ rehearsal tape. Twelve cuts in total, mostly good, just keep the barf bag handy."—Matt Casteel (MRR)

Dorothy

Not Responsible

Mighty Mouth Music

***Long before Ru Paul took drag to the ultimate degree, in 1984 international recording artist Laurice created Dorothy. Dorothy was very 1950s Marilyn Monroe — glamorous, outrageous, blonde, blue-eyed and extremely sexy. Her music was very 1980s New Wave. On this four song EP the boisterous track "Not Responsible For Loss Or Damage", written by Laurice, is a catchy 1980s romp through schadenfrude and retribution. Dorothy does not claim any responsibility for her lover’s obvious mistakes. "Come Up And See Me Sometime", also written by Laurice, is a really wickedly amusing take on famous Mae West’s quite shocking sayings heard in many of her films. "Sex Bomb", another Laurice composition, is literally Dorothy’s explosive reaction to a very ardent pursuer melting her heart. Very funny indeed. "Anyone Who Had A Heart" is a New Wave Dorothy version of Bacharach and David’s number one hit song. Its a triumph for Dorothy. Don’t miss this terrific one of a kind Dorothy EP. Its music history in the making. Enjoy.

Le Motel

Pozo de Agua

Constellation Tatsu

***Brussels-based producer, composer, and field recordist Le Motel has developed a distinct body of work rooted in environmental sound, collage, and immersive electronic composition. Across releases, collaborations, and audiovisual projects, his music blends ambient textures, rhythmic experimentation, field recordings, and downtempo electronics into transportive listeningexperiences.Le Motel is also the founder of the Brussels label Maloca Records and has become known for projects that incorporate recordings gathered through travel and collaboration. His acclaimed release Odd Numbers / Số Lẻ drew from recordings made in Vietnam and explored the intersection of ambient composition, documentary sound, and experimental electronic music. Pozo de Agua continues Le Motel’s exploration of atmosphere, texture, and place through a fluid palette of ambient electronics, organic detail, and layered sonic environments. Most of the tracks were created outdoors or in transit, primarily on trains, emerging from what Le Motel describes as “a very natural and emotional process” of translating feelings, memories, and passing thoughts into sound. The album treats environmental sounds — ripples, water drops, movement, and air — with the same importance as traditional instruments, allowing elements to drift in and out like ocean waves while forming subtle polyrhythms and overlapping textures.Working at the intersection of ambient, experimental electronic music, balearic downtempo, and new age-inspired sound design, Le Motel creates music that feels both intimate and expansive. His approach combines processed acoustic elements, environmental recordings, and soft electronic structures into compositions that reward deep listening while maintaining an understated emotional pull.For listeners drawn to exploratory ambient music, environmental...

Bosse-de-nage / Deafheaven

Deafheaven / Bosse-de-Nage (2026 Mix)

Flenser

Bosse-de-Nage and Deafheaven’s landmark 2012 Split has been newly remixed and remastered and returns to vinyl and cassette for the first time in 14 years. Featuring new artwork by photographer Dylan Hausthor, the long-awaited reissue breathes new life into an essential early collaboration between two acclaimed Bay Area metal bands. Formed in 2006, Bosse-de-Nage first encountered Deafheaven at one of the latter’s earliest shows, held at a now-defunct art gallery in San Francisco’s Mission District. Deafheaven’s demo had just begun making a splash online. “Their performance was amazing; it was clear right away that they were a force to be reckoned with,” Bosse-de-Nage recalls. At a time before blackgaze and post-black metal had fully cohered into recognizable movements, the bands recognized something familiar in one another. They began playing shows together and formed a friendship that has endured ever since. The exact genesis of Split has been lost to time. Arriving just over a year after Deafheaven’s 2011 debut Roads to Judah, neither band can remember who first proposed the collaboration, only that the idea made immediate sense. Deafheaven contributed a cover of Mogwai’s “Punk Rock / Cody,” while Bosse-de-Nage contributed the original “A Mimesis of Purpose,” which marked their first collaboration with Astrid J. Smith, arranging and performing strings. Released by The Flenser in 2012, Split became an early milestone for the label and both bands. “We’ve been looking forward to this project for a while,” Deafheaven vocalist George Clarke said at the time. “It’s very exciting to be...

Truly

Twilight Curtains

Bang

***First time ever on vinyl, Twilight Curtains presents a long-overlooked chapter in the legacy of Truly, the acclaimed Seattle band formed by songwriter Robert Roth alongside Hiro Yamamoto, co-founder of Soundgarden, and Mark Pickerel, founding drummer of Screaming Trees. Originally released in 2000 as a CD-only collection, Twilight Curtains gathers rare, unreleased and alternate recordings captured between 1991 and 1997, documenting the band during its most creative and exploratory period. More than simply another Seattle group, Truly forged a singular sound that blended heavy psychedelic rock, grunge-era intensity, damaged pop and expansive melodic textures. Featuring the contributions of three key figures from the Pacific Northwest underground, this collection offers a fascinating glimpse into the band's evolution through alternate versions, lost recordings and previously unavailable material. Twilight Curtains finally makes this missing piece of the Truly catalogue available on vinyl.

Flower Travellin' Band

Satori

Munster

***REISSUED!!! Originally released in 1971, Satori is Flower Travellin' Band's groundbreaking masterpiece and one of the most visionary albums of the early heavy rock era. It fused hard rock, psychedelia, progressive music and traditional Eastern influences into a sound unlike anything heard before. Unlike many rock albums of the era, Satori is structured as a continuous musical journey, with its five tracks presented as interconnected movements rather than conventional songs. The band's powerful rhythm section, extended guitar passages, and the commanding vocals of Joe Yamanaka create an atmosphere that feels both intense and hypnotic. Recorded during a period when Japanese rock was developing its own identity, Satori drew inspiration from Western hard rock and psychedelia while incorporating a unique sense of space, improvisation, and spiritual exploration. Over the decades, the album has gained international recognition among collectors, musicians, and fans of vintage heavy rock, often cited as an overlooked classic that anticipated elements of later hard rock, stoner rock, and heavy metal. More than fifty years after its release, Satori remains as one of the most influential and forward-thinking records in Japanese rock history. Includes an insert.

Frogs, The

My Daughter The Broad - 30th Anniversary Edition

Foreign Leisure

***Originally released by Matador Records in 1996, The Frogs’ opus My Daughter The Broad is returning to vinyl after nearly 30 long years away—and it’s now expanded to a double LP with a whopping eight bonus tracks of Frogs mania. It’s “one of the funniest albums ever made” according to Magnet.Formed in Milwaukee in 1980 by brothers Dennis and Jimmy Flemion, The Frogs lit up the underground with their fearless sense of absurdism. On one hand, they composed pop-centric masterpieces inspired by glam and classic British pop. On the other, they maniacally created what they called “Made-Up Songs,” fully improvised bits of largely acoustic pop jingles that were, more often than not, accompanied by lyrics that would make your mother blush.Some of those “Made-Up Songs” were collected for 1989’s classic It’s Only Right and Natural, which led The Frogs to the vaunted halls next door to fame: They were beloved by Kurt Cobain, taken on tour by Pearl Jam, produced by Billy Corgan, sampled by Beck. It was a whole thing. A feature-length documentary on the band has been in the works for nearly a decade, and will see the light of day soon.So it was decreed in 1996 that another set of “Made-Up Songs” would be collected—the Flemion brothers had more than a thousand of them at this point—and the chosen 22 became My Daughter The Broad, named as a nod to their admirers in Mudhoney, who had recently released My Brother The Cow.My Daughter gathers some of the...

Bug Bath

Too Much Heaven

Transylvanian Recordings

***Nostalgic bliss is alive and well in the music of Bug Bath. Fuzzy anthems that combine the gritty charm of underground punk and alternative rock from the 90's with the catchiness of early 2000's emo. Presented on super limited 180 gram colored vinyl.

Soda Pop

s/t

Transylvanian Recordings

***Infectiously catchy emotional indie rock. The type of music that gets stuck in your brain with the only reprieve coming from giving in & listening to it over & over. Recommended for fans of Taking Back Sunday, Saves The Day, Hot Water Music & Circa Survive. Presented on super limited 180 gram colored vinyl.

Foreign Body

Libertine

Brutal Panda

***Foreign Body play raw, hideous, and vulgar music. Emblematic of the seedy underbelly of yesterday’s New York City– where sex workers walked the streets freely, rubble and decay were prevalent, drugs were readily available and every businessman’s briefcase contained a loaded gun, the quartet spin Musou black yarns that polite society would rather have swept under the rug, soundtracking them with jaw-clenching and furious mid-tempo punk exploding with fresh ideas. And even though Foreign Body drips with a loathsome mix of hatred for modern living and a desire for its immolation, they’re also one of music’s most promising faces.Libertine is wholly relentless album with unflinching portrayals of vice, perversions and glorified excesses. Their sophomore full-length was recorded by Matt Russell (REZN, Oozing Wound) and produced by Matt Ibarra of Rectal Hygienics.

Crazy Clue

Where The Dregs Dwell

Beach Impediment

***Crazy Clue's Where the Dregs Dwell is ten blasts from the unraveled gaseous mass of 80s HC a la NOTA, Rebel Truth, and Pig Children, the thumping bloodwart of the modern greats like Dawn of Humans and SHIT, and the hysteric touch of Totalitar in some kind of Scandi-wegian pogo tinged open faced sandwich. Featuring the greatest mind of 21st century traditional hardcore Mr. Bobby Cole (Annihilated, Total Con), and the Vanda-Young of distorted guitars, Mike and Jonah from Canada, Crazy Clue’s Where the Dregs Dwell is ten tracks of ear damaging fizz thud clunk and squeal, paved with anguished cries and dotted with gloriously wrong sounds, cheap techniques, and luxury results. When there’s no more room in hell, where will the dregs dwell?

Sin Offering

Guilty

Beach Impediment

***There is no other verdict. You were born with the mark on your forehead. You have always known that you are to be expelled from their circle. And the door will creak; it will be heavy; you will struggle to cross the threshold. You will feel their eyes on your back, and it will be like this even when you reach where it is sylvan. You will smell ash; you will find your veil is burning. The leaves underfoot will be dead. You will walk along the riverbank, and your skirts will catch on the brambles.There is, somewhere else, innocence. Sin Offering offers only Guilty, their debut 12” EP for Beach Impediment Records, Sound Grotesca, and Side Two.Guilty, named for Georges Bataille’s Le Coupable, is stitched from discarded fragments of metallic punk, deathrock, doom metal, and post punk—think Tožibabe, the Dead Relatives, Potion for Bad Dreams-era Void, Paul Chain Violet Theatre, and Danse Macabre. Or: vocals many have described as “girl Rozz Williams” + the Simmons SDSV + Will Heggie’s bass on Garlands + Mick Mars by way of Randy Uchida. Lyrically, Guilty fixates on the uneasy proximity between prohibition and violation, drawing from the Pentateuch and the Gospels as much as from nineteenth and twentieth-century literature of abjection (Mary Shelley’s Mathilda and Colette’s L’ingénue libertine).Elizabeth Siddal, sketched as Ophelia, opens her mouth to speak: “All changes pass me like a dream, / I neither sing nor pray; / And thou art like the poisonous tree / That stole my...

Peebles, Ann

Tellin' It

Fat Possum

***Ann Peebles was at the height of her fame in 1975 when she cut the album Tellin' It—she had scored her biggest chart hit the year before with "I Can't Stand the Rain," and Tellin' It reflected the kind of hard-edged but soulful groove that had taken Peebles to the upper reaches of the charts.Earlier this year, recovered from the Hi Records vault and untouched for decades, the tapes were sent to Nashville Tape Transfer for their first listen in fifty years. From there, every step stayed close to home: Remastered by Clay Jones, lacquers cut at Take Out Vinyl, plated and pressed right in Memphis at Memphis Record Pressing.The first vinyl pressing in 50 years.

Added Dimensions

Added Dimentions Demo LP

Hozac

***"When Sarah Everton and her husband hoofed it to rural Virginia some years back, that spelt the unofficial break-up of her Philadelphia trio Blowdryer, and she proceeded to hole up for the great plague that we’ve all pretended to forget. Some of those 'late period' Blowdryer songs were sitting around from a direction Everton had been plotting in which she’d attempt Carole King doing Electric Eels-style songs. Added Dimensions—triumphantly named after a plus-sized clothing store her mother frequented back when stores really had names like that—was the result.Those first 2022 home-assembled recordings might not have fully nailed the Tapestry / God Says Fuck You hybrid (keep trying!!), but they weren’t far off, and there was some real 'buzz' that year, as we say in the industry, about her sharp, minimalist punk cassette tape debut. Added Dimensions’ short and aggressive pure-DIY songs then were particularly influenced, and still are to some extent, by The Urinals and Wipers. Everton’s themes centered around hating her job, being depressed, the indignities of masking and how exhausting it is/was, drugs ('Default Mode'), hating the music industry ('Wirey'), and social media/internet bullshit ('You Got My Number'). Themes everyone can rally around!For years, dating back to her time in Reading/Bleeding Rainbow in the late 00s/early 10s, it’s been Everton’s voice that’s been a primary calling card. Not because it’s operatic or snotty or bratty or overwrought, but because she brings a clean, melodic and still tuff set of pipes to each track, a thoroughly natural voice with...

Graphic Violets

Endless Parade

Hozac

***Just a little over a year since Rob Garcia (Product Placement, Telepathic, Reading/Bleeding Rainbow) debuted his Graphic Violets project with the six-track Immune from Evil cassette, he’s back, this time with Endless Parade, a full-length album out on HoZac Records.Immune from Evil was all about living through a terrible moment in history, and unfortunately, things have only gotten worse. That’s what Garcia’s concerned with on Endless Parade, 13 songs that ruminate on that downward trajectory.Endless Parade is about realizing you’re stuck in a vicious cycle, a neverending loop of control, addiction, fear. The search for happiness winds up at a dead end. All attempts to assign meaning are futile. Nothing works.Garcia’s themes are heavy, it’s true. But the music isn’t a drag. With Endless Parade, Garcia puts his spin on the Dunedin sound for the present moment: jangly, pop-oriented, self-aware and thoughtful, but without a trace of treacle. He found kinship in the sounds of Tall Dwarfs, Swell Maps, Wire, and Psychic TV, and in the message of Sly Stone’s “There’s a Riot Goin On.”Graphic Violets is Garcia’s return to music after some time away.In the four years prior to working on the cassette, Garcia didn’t write any music. He moved multiple times, worked jobs that weren’t the right fit and lost people who were close to him. Life kinda sucked.Playing drums for longtime collaborator Sarah Everton’s Added Dimensions project set him back on the path toward music.And once he started writing again, he couldn’t stop.Garcia wrote, played and recorded...

Hinely, Tim / Eric Eggleson & Friends

Where The Wild Gigs Were Vol. 2 - Another Trip Through America's Underground Music Venues

Hozac

***Tim Hinely and friends are back with another immensely entertaining volume of their acclaimed Where The Wild Gigs Were series delving into the fascinating stories behind some of the best-loved, sometimes-legendary, and not-soon-to-be-forgotten music venues across the USA. With his co-hort Eric Eggleson, they’ve assembled another knockout cast of underground luminary contributors; some new on this volume, and others returning with more war stories, and its packed with the sordid tales that keep those wild memories alive. Chock full of original newspaper ads, obscure flyers, and vintage snapshots, this second volume turns up the heat with eye-popping and/or jaw-dropping entries for The Rat (Boston), Madame Wong’s (and Wong’s West, LA), Cathay de Grande (SF), X-Ray Cafe (Portland), The Island (Houston), The NO Bar & Grill (Muncie), Bacchanal (Philadelphia), Coney Island High (NYC), Jabberwocky (Syracuse), The Keg (DC), Churchill’s Hideaway (Miami), WC Don’s (Jackson, MS), and so many more no longer with us. 241 pages, paperback. 1st edition of 500 copies

Modern Apartments

Light On Water

Dark Entries

Modern Apartments arrive on Dark Entries, with Light on Water, an LP featuring 8 cuts of instrumental cosmic-kosmische analog synth workouts. Modern Apartments is Ryan Ambridge, the musician and producer best known for his work with dark synth projects Linea Aspera and Lust Pattern. While both of those outlets lean towards the greyscale and robotic, Ambridge wanted to explore a more colorful palette with Modern Apartments, a livelier, looser sound. The medium of film plays a major role here; Ambridge works as a projectionist, screening archival prints of 35mm and 16mm films, and the textures and temporality of the medium fed directly into the Modern Apartments aesthetic. But it isn’t all blurry edges and fuzzy optimism on Light on Water. Says Ambridge, “Regular beats from old rhythm boxes and the sharp angles of post-punk found their way in. The contrasting imagery from those old film prints, of dense cities and open countryside, is reflected back in the dialog between looser sounds and rigid stylistic choices.” This tension shines through on tracks like album opener “Completely,” which pairs the icy minimalism of John Foxx with the meandering grooves of Cluster, or the eponymous “Light on Water” which leans even further into the sun-bleached vibes of Roedelius. Artwork for this record was designed by Eloise Shir-Juen Leigh. Light on Water is perfect late-summer listening, as the last gasps of seasonal radiance fade into autumnal splendor.

Fruited Planes

Dismal Nitch

Dot Dash Sounds

***"Fruited Planes are a contemporary Portland, OR band. Their debut cassette release––Introducing The Moth Eggs (2024 Curly Cassettes)––introduced the sound they’ve now honed on Dismal Nitch, their first vinyl release. Dot Dash Sounds, a NY label run by Tom Hyland (WFMU dj) was smitten enough by the cassette to get this LP out. This is guitar music first and foremost. The album production is aces! Think back to the halcyon days of smogged out sunsets in Los Angeles circa 1967-68/ 1981-84, the soundtrack to those lysergic fueled happy hours, Fruited Planes nails a perfect nexus of the former era via The Seeds/Love/LA nuggets and the latter via The Rain Parade (David Roback era), Gun Club, X, 100 Flowers, with the melodic hooks of the Kendra led Dream Syndicate locked in arms with the first coupla Green On Red LPs and you’re getting the vibe. Now, add a heaping dose of Dan Tracey’s TVP’s via Kevin Ayers’ calypso hiccups and some bratty treble UK Messthetics soaked barks updated for the modern miasma of deception and gaslighting epoch we’re all muckin through.The band is comprised of subterranean lifers Seth Bender (Marzipan/Pernicious Knifs), subunderground connoisseur Scott Derr (Monoshock/Black Jack Records/ Terminal Waste Band/ et al.), Michael Henrickson (Jackie-O MF/Evolutionary Jass Band/Eat Skull) and Jason Willmon (Mouth Painter/Barry Walker Unit). These gristled veterans can tear up it live too! They’ve got enough of that barn rock guitar juke joint swagger that would make the Panther Burns rubber neck. Hell, I’ve seen and heard them...

Marca Diaboli

Labyrintomb

Sentient Ruin Laboratories

***Chilean​/Austria​n​ occult rock/post-punk necromancer Marca Diaboli emerges with its first hexation—"Labyrintomb", a grave-born spell book of primeval shamanic rock musick invoking evil spirits and dark forces from beyond the flesh.​ Sordid and decaying in formal aesthetic, yet enchanting in its bewitching magnetism, the eighteen-minute debut offering sees influences from bands like In Solitude, Negative Plane, Bauhaus, Amebix and The Devil's Blood sublimating into the nightsky like ​cursed invokations howling from a witch's cauldron.​ Its subterranean production quality and deteriorated lo-fi aesthetic are surely black metal derived, revealing an evil origin and nurturing a nauseous presence of death that permeates every note played.​ Yet its restless vibrancy and hypnotic melodies unearth a primeval seduction impossible to restrain. Cobweb-clad sepulchers, moldy, dripping ruins and bygone graveyards reanimate across its five rapturous spells into a cathartic moon-lit trance, as the frenzied ritual burns cryptic offerings in the night, ​unto the marvel and immensity of death.