New Releases

Les Rallizes Denudes

Disque 4 - '76 Studio et Live

Temporal Drift

***Les Rallizes Dénudés returns with Disque 4 -’76 Studio et Live-, the latest in the ongoing series of official archival releases from the celebrated Japanese underground band.In 1991, Les Rallizes Dénudés released what would become the only official albums issued during the band’s lifetime: ’67-’69 STUDIO et LIVE, MIZUTANI / Les Rallizes Dénudés, and ’77 LIVE. What no one knew at the time was that Takashi Mizutani was already deep into preparing another record.Disque 4 reconstructs the track list Mizutani had put together for that fourth album. This includes the single “White Awakening," recorded in 1976 at the studio in Takadanobaba BIG BOX as part of the sessions that would become known among collectors as the “Virgin Demos.” Production and mastering of this archival release were handled once again by Makoto Kubota, assembling the album from the masters left behind by Mizutani, utilizing newly discovered tapes as additional sources.Prepared by Mizutani using a variety of formats, including U-Matic, open reel, and DAT, the tracks were originally labeled with working titles such as “Disque 4” and “Record No. 4,” indicating that Mizutani intended them for inclusion on a possible fourth album. The recordings were taken primarily from studio sessions that all seemed to have taken place around 1976, which aligns with the claim that Mizutani himself once made that “there exists an album of studio recordings made with the same members as ‘77 LIVE.” His notes also suggest an attempt to sequence the tracks as a vinyl LP, splitting them into...

Berliner, Cole

The Black Door

Drag City

***Guitarist/composer Cole Berliner’s (writing, arranging and playing highlights an album of rich-grained, acoustic, west coast parlor music and modern electro-acoustic instrumentals in the challenger tradition of Bert Jansch’s Avocet, Marc Ribot’s Saints and Jim O’Rourke’s Bad Timing. Cole’s ambient chamber folk gets into the spirit as it evolves, a growth continuing into speakers, ears and minds wherever it is played. Cole's been the driving force in the Drag City bands Kamikaze Palm Tree and Sharpie Smile, and has done work as a sideman with artists ranging from White Fence to Kimbra to Zendaya.

Essential Key

Sons of Freedom

Not Not Fun

Sons of Freedom is the culmination of a decade-long fascination with idyllic new wave library music. After retiring his ethnographic tropical ambient project Coconut Dealers in 2012, Konstantin Shkolnikov found himself drawn to a different muse: Essential Key. Across a series of self-released digital collections, the vision streamlined and solidified into a palette of soft rock licks, fretless bass, and 80’s drum machinery, in a sheen of velvet tape hiss. Inspired equally by Japanese prog, Patrick Cowley, AOR obscurities, and “the joy of life,” the album’s 10 instrumentals flow with cohesive leisure, warm and wood-paneled, spiked with sleek funk. It’s music for cruising, surfing, and soaring, on wind or water, in fantasies past or memories not yet made. Mastered by Jared Carrigan. Design by Britt Brown.

Secret Places Of The Lion

Saturn Fern

Not Not Fun

Recent works by West Mass ritualist Secret Places of the Lion have explored a fusion of orphic synthetics and MIDI machinery, but Saturn Fern documents the project’s primordial origins in dosed tarot electric guitar. Recorded across 2012 and 2013 between a garage deep in the desolate woods of Belchertown and a New Haven apartment above a North African garden café, the process was acidic, smoky, nocturnal, and improvised. Long-form guitar traced in FX and braided into loose loops, dusted with keys, the collection’s nine tracks were captured in single takes straight to a field recorder. In the artist’s words: “Field recordings from the deep field.” Mastered by Jared Carrigan. Design by Britt Brown.

Auscultation

IV

100% Silk

After six years of purgatorial sway, Joel Shanahan’s Auscultation project returns with a fourth full-length of dazzling, convex electronics: IV. His signature production touches have only heightened in the interim: iridescent synths; dexterous bass; slinky networks of pads and percussion; regal, rolling fog. Icy bangers of isolation and beauty crafted over long Pacific Northwest winters of endless rain. The album evolved fitfully, polished and shelved between bursts of inspiration and malaise. This push and pull gives the music a manic, mirror ball, mood-swing movement, tilting between reverie and regret and sweaty abandon. Seven songs of memory and mirrors, haunted by shadows of the past but dreaming of futures still liquid, and unions yet to come. Mastered by Alex Nagle. Design by Britt Brown.

Sniffy Linings

Issue # 2

Sniffy Linings

***The second issue of SNIFFY LININGS now with 20 more pages of reviews, art, interviews, gripes, praise, and advice. Featuring interviews with LAVENDER FLU, CELEBRITY HANDSHAKE, FINK, THE MARKED MEN, ITCHY & THE NITS, MIDNIGHT MINES, and OUTDOORSMEN. As well as over 70 reviews, comics, and more. 80 pages total. Featuring writers from: Terminal Boredom, Record Time, Conflict, Wipeout, Celluloid Lunch, The Bible and more

Oneida

I Can't Stand You

Ernest Jenning Record Co.

***"Absolute[ly] two new and fresh tunes from Oneida—the original, pioneering [please find less fraught term], Brooklyn DIY band now via Boston, Brooklyn and Queens (NYC real estate keeps 'em guessing). Recorded during a recent session at their new-ish rehearsal studio named (not by them) MALVINA PARTY JAIL (with additional recording at Deep Dive in Flatbush), these two stout, emotive and pungent [insert fragrant?] jams behold a band acting very much their age (almost 30) but also not really acting their age, because they are still at it and somehow have not become cynical and/or unpleasant to be around. So perhaps they are tunes that sound as if they are performed by fresh-faced 30 year olds with a few more things to prove.'I Can't Stand You (single version)' originated as a seed planted by the one and only Baby Jane and brought to redolent and chaotic fruition during an early take. It's rough, ready but also well mannered enough to appear on your neighborhood pirate radio station.We forget the name of the B-side b/c it's taken from an almost hour long jam from the same session (actually it's called 'Steel' b/c Barry plays steel guitar on it!)—and there are no lyrics (any ideas? please write the band care of Ernest Jenning)—but it is as robust and hard charging as the best of this band's storied catalog.Just because they're old doesn't mean they're good!"Beautiful artwork by the band's long suffering and talented designer of choice—Dan Schechter."

Om

Conference of the Birds (Reissue)

Drag City

***REISSUED!!! The second OM-ing, Conference of the Birds, also features Al Cisneros and Chris Hakius, with production by OM, originally released in 2006 on Holy Mountain.

Om

Variations on a Theme (Reissue)

Drag City

***REISSUED!!! The first OM album, Variations on a Theme, features Al Cisneros and Chris Hakius. It was produced by OM, and was originally released in 2005 on Holy Mountain.

Diabolic Oath

Unholy Barbaric Hymns

Sentient Ruin Laboratories

***American hallucinatory bestial occult metal sorcerers Diabolic Oath return with their brand new “Unholy Barbaric Hymns” EP, four new tracks of their staple and unprecedented fretless sonic destruction. Swathed in dissonance and liquefying into free-form chaos, the band's esoteric and ritual-like psychedelic extreme metal keeps evolving beyond new thresholds of aural mind-devourement, further transitioning their cryptic dogma of musical transformation through absolute technical tyranny into formal aberrations rarely observed before in the underground. Those familiar with the band’s personal sphere are well aware of the musical mastery harbored within this mystical human nuclear trident. Conventional stringed instruments hand-stripped of frets and transformed into psychedelic mind-weapons for sensorial depredation, percussions transformed into tribal war drums through the use of massively deep and bellowing shells that deflagrate like wrathful thunder shattering through the celestial vaults, and a triple, simultaneous vocal attack slithering through the cacophony like an infernal trifecta of interwoven snakes spitting venom and hissing obscenities from beyond the shreds of sanity. An absolute mind-war of psychedelic terror and primitive warmongering violence creating a tyrannical unison in which the mind is perpetually disarmed and deceived to submit the corporeal realm into an infinite sequence of chaos and destruction.

Record Time

Issue # 4 - 2026

Record Time

Record Time covers obscure, unusual, forgotten and neglected records: used records get passed over a hundred times, but should have bought for a bargain bin price because they are great, if not interesting. It’s also about the arcane knowledge and stories one learns when they fall off the edge of fandom to freak.The turmoil of the Gibbs family and the wonderful run of Bee Gees records when the brothers were at their personal worst; a hip hop through the Roxanne Wars, the longest running answer song spree ever; the splendid freakiness of Kentucky’s Sapat; The Frost and their horny masterworks; Finnish trash Smack’s hard rock perfection; guitar instro whizz Travis Wammack; a primer on the romantic darkness of the Mexican Bolero; Golden Earring and their struggle to crack the USA; the great 90’s garage punk label Bag of Hammers; the Allman Brothers Band on the skids; anti-punk songs by bitter old rockers; Japanese 70s teen idols Chaco & Hells Angels; steel band funk; country studs do rock & roll; Rocketship goes ambient; wretched music biographies; power pop zines; our 12x4 with Scott Derr, Erin Yanke, Joan Toledo, and Jello Biafra; and more!Contributors include: Pete, Fred de Vries, Stella Beratlis, Owen Maercks, Johnny Sunshine, Eric Davison, Laurent Bigot, William Tutton, Mike Trouchon, Eric Friedl, Jay Hinman, Bob Beatty Ryan Wells, and others.

Tiikeri

Punk on Tärkeää

General Speech

***The 5th 7” and third full EP from Finland’s Tiikeri is maybe their best yet. If this band is still unknown to you, They have spent the last 5 years keeping the torch of traditional Finn-punk burning. Playing in the tradition and simplicity of the late 70s punk roster dominating cult labels like Johanna and Poko Records, Poko Record’s “Pure Finnish Rock” slogan begs for a 2026 update with Tiikeri playing “Pure Finnish Punk”. This new EP sees Tiikeri at their most poppy and catchy yet without losing their punk edge, and objectively perhaps their strongest song writing. Bands like Vaavi with their song “Pogo Party” come to mind on this record, the bass runs would make JJ Burnell from the Stranglers envious, a fantastic artistic layout in Tiikeri’s now cemented punk style, and the production is the icing on the cake being the perfect fit for this style. Hard not to call this a perfect record in 2026.

Vansuut

Mari

General Speech

***Based in Sanjo City, Niigata Prefecture, VÄNSUUT’s second 7“ is just like their first. It’s undeniable that VÄNSUUT is heavily influenced by Finnish punk, but their punk rock, played with pure passion without getting too bogged down in “Finnish punk” conventions, is truly one-of-a-kind. You could call them “Japan’s representatives of Finnish punk in the 2020s”, but “punk rock embodying the melancholic youth of clumsy adults who can’t grow up” fits them even better. 4 Track EP. (Jacky Crust War).

Csihar, Attila / Balazs Pandi / John Wiese

Annihilation of Samsara

Helicopter

***For decades, Attila Csihar, Balázs Pándi, and John Wiese have each occupied positions within the global landscape of experimental music, operating across extreme metal, free improvisation, noise, electronic abstraction, and forms that resist stable categorization altogether. Annihilation of Samsara marks the first trio recording by these three artists, a convergence that feels less like the formation of a conventional group than the surfacing of a latent structure that has existed beneath overlapping histories for years. The roots of this collaboration can be traced back to 2005, when Csihar and Wiese first shared space as members of Sunn O)))’s European tour. Csihar had already become one of the defining voices in experimental metal through his work with Mayhem and his increasingly abstract vocal practice within Sunn O))), where voice became atmospheric matter, ritual vibration, and psychic architecture. Wiese, meanwhile, contributed electronics to Sunn O))) during a period in which the group’s sound expanded beyond amplified drone into destabilized zones of psychoacoustic and environmental density. Balázs Pándi emerges from yet another vector within this constellation. His work across free jazz, noise, and avant metal has established him as a fluid and physically responsive drummer. Equally capable of overwhelming density and microscopic restraint, Pándi approaches percussion not simply as rhythm but as environmental force. What emerges across this recording is not fusion in any conventional sense. The trio does not synthesize its respective histories into a unified style. Instead, the album operates through coexistence and gradual transformation. The album’s title, Annihilation of Samsara,...

Concealed Class

No Obituary

Helicopter / Troniks

***Concealed Class emerges without introduction or transition. No Obituary, released by Helicopter/Troniks, marks the debut recording by Charlie Mumma and Matt Purse, two artists whose respective histories in extreme music and noise have consistently pushed toward states of structural and perceptual overload. Mumma, known through his work in Sissy Spacek, Sewer System, and Unexamine, projects that each approach collapse through different formal languages ranging from imploded grindcore to dense electronics. Purse, through Unsustainable Social Condition, has developed an equally uncompromising practice grounded in raw electronic saturation and pressure. Concealed Class strips these tendencies down to their most hostile and concentrated form. Electronics rupture and fold inward at extreme volume thresholds while scorched frequencies and unstable feedback systems continuously destabilize any fixed orientation. The recording rejects progression in favor of sustained pressure. What distinguishes the project is the precision embedded within its density. Beneath the violence of the surface, layers of distortion repeatedly collapse and reform into new configurations of presence and absence. There is no closure offered here, no ceremonial framing of destruction, no distance between event and aftermath. Concealed Class does not document from the outside, it exists entirely inside the burn. The result is absolute electronics, stripped of ornament and left fully exposed.

Bastard Noise

Dismantling The Sardonic Cataclysm That Drowns Us All

Skull Records

***American noise heavyweight BASTARD NOISE returns with anew album consisting of a single long form track of deep space with geographic attacks and dual vocals. Limited edition digipak of 500 copies. Includes a 4-panel pull-out lyric poster.

Pure Motorised Instinct

At Last I'm Leaving the Earth

Dark Entries

Pure Motorised Instinct drives over to Dark Entries with At Last I’m Leaving the Earth, an LP of industrial-tinged ambient and new age. When legendary industrial outfit Nagamatzu went dormant in 1991, band member Stephen Jarvis moved forward with Pure Motorised Instinct, a name he pulled from a line in George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead. Throughout two cassette albums—1991’s Between Intimacy and Elsewhere, and 1993’s Everything Is True—Jarvis pushed the Nagamatzu spirit in new directions. At Last I’m Leaving the Earth collects 9 tracks from this era, which are appearing on vinyl for the first time, along with 3 additional tracks on a bonus CD. The material here sits between the brooding and the optimistic, the claustrophobic and the soporific. Jarvis’s digital synths are pushed so far into tape-scuffed terrain that they talk and squawk analog-like, scurrying with vibrant curiosity. The late-night vibes peak on pieces like “Vincent V,” with its reverb-drenched digital drum machines, or “Geek,” which taps into a wide-eyed proto-vaporwave zone. At Last I’m Leaving the Earth is Black Lodge ambient for the empty set.

Carrellee

Carrellee

Young & Cold / No Coast

***Carrellee was mixed largely by Maurizio Baggio (Boy Harsher, Sextile), with some additional production from Matia Simovich(Riki, Patriarchy) and mastered by Josh Bonati (Slowdive, Drab Majesty) the album significantly expanded her palette and following. Online music site Post-Punk describes the songs as having “eerie allure, as her soft, whispering vocals glide over scorched synths and sharp beats. Think Crystal Castles or The Knife after a hard night out, or Ladytron with a little more edge." The album’s biggest single “Captain” has been streamed over a million times on Spotify since its release. Carrellee also spent much of 2024 and 2025 touring Europe and the US as the backing vocalist and synth player for IAMX. In 2026, Carrellee will perform at Terminus Festival in Calgary and Coldwaves Festival in Chicago, as well as headlining a 30 date US Tour this Spring. She will co-headline a Fall US Tour with darkwave post-punk Dutch artist Bragolin. LP is on limited edition smoke colored vinyl. Cassette version features 5 bonus remixes from IAMX, Bragolin, OMAR DOOM, INHALT and Brood Faye!

P.E.E.

Now, More Charm And More Tender

Tumult

P.E.E. — short for Potentially Egregious Error, sometimes just Pee — formed in San Francisco in 1993 whenguitarists and vocalists Jim Stanley and Kelly Green recruited drummer Andee Connors, then active in JChurch and A Minor Forest, and eventually bassist Tiber Scheer, who would later play in Lowercase. Theybecame fixtures of the Bay Area DIY underground, sharing stages with Boys Life, Jimmy Eat World, Drive LikeJehu, Three Mile Pilot, Heavy Vegetable, and Track Star, and opened for Cheap Trick and Neutral Milk Hotel.They were Noise Pop regulars.Their 1996 debut, Now, More Charm and More Tender, came out on March Records to favorable reviews, withcomparisons to Velocity Girl and Archers of Loaf. The songs are fast, hook-laden, and strange — grind pop withgenuine melodic instincts, several clocking in under 90 seconds. The best way to describe them: imagine allyour favorite bridges from all your favorite songs, strung together one after another, each one moreunexpected than the last. Every track has a million different parts, and somehow it all holds. The bandcompleted three US tours before disbanding in 1999 as members moved on to other projects.For most of the next two decades they were largely forgotten. Then, in 2023, YouTuber 108 Mics released amini-documentary called "A Band Called Pee," which included a full band interview. That video, combinedwith growing attention on Rate Your Music — where Now, More Charm now ranks as the sixth-highest ratedmath pop release on the site — brought a new generation to the record. Original pressings started selling...

Osees

OFF COURSE

DEATHGOD CORP

We went back to an older method of writing for this one. We jammed and jammed and jammed. I took the tapes home and ironed out some mutant tunes. We went back into the studio and burned them to tape live and then I took it home to Stu-Stu-Studio and did the vocals and bought in Tom Dolas & Brigid Dawson to put the finish on. Spice is always nice. Mixed it all up in the cauldron and thus we have a strange brew indeed Floating in the smoke we have: A couple long jams, a couple short jams and a finale that’ll dump a bucket of ear worms on you (reminiscent of “the axis”?) Dip your toe in organ rock and roll So without further ado We present to you “OFF COURSE” An album wondering where the fuck are we and how did we get here A signal dispatched out into the darkness We are here We are alive And we are together CHEERS NO EARS JPD/DG/OSEES

Skate Death

You Break It You Buy It

PNV

***Straight reissue of this 1985 20 song LP from Anchorage, Alaska's finest, Skate Death. With a name like Skate Death, it will not surprise you to hear that the group played meat and potatoes brash American hardcore. And coming from Alaska, you can hear the focus and prolific songwriting that often come out of an off the beaten path scene. Fans of roughneck 80s skatecore will eat this one up.

Guided By Voices

Crawlspace Of The Pantheon

GBV Inc

Guided By Voices’ last album Thick Rich And Delicious (October 2025) was lauded by NPR’s All Things Considered and picked #1 on Magnet Magazine’s Best Albums Of 2025. The single “We Outlast Them All” from this latest, Crawlspace Of The Pantheon, is an anthemic victory lap on album #44 from the indie rock stalwarts.Robert Pollard told Rolling Stone: “ ‘We Outlast Them All’ could be our ‘We Are The Champions’ but it’s not necessarily about us. It’s about anyone who perseveres over a long period of time.” On Crawlspace Of The Pantheon: “I worked much more diligently on this set of lyrics. I chiseled away at lines and sections and phrasings...I wanted them to have an overall emotionally conceptual feel. At times it feels somewhat autobiographical.”Guided By Voices will not be on tour in 2026. Pollard recently told Magnet: “Why would we stop playing live and make these kinds of records? I don’t know. We do what we wanna do.”“Pollard is the greatest rock lyricist of all time.” —Dennis Cooper

Maureens, The

Don't Give Up

Meritorio

***The Maureens are the soundtrack of the perfect late-summer evening, but that feeling works just as well in October or February. Their guitar-driven pop exudes a warm, timeless atmosphere while daring to take quirky turns: fresh and catchy, yet also steeped in intense melancholy, resulting in a sound entirely their own. Five albums and around seventy songs later, Maureens are celebrating their fifteenth anniversary this year—an adventure that began in the Utrecht music scene. The band members now live across the country, but their signature sound remains intact: the songs of singer/guitarist Hendrik-Jan de Wolff are infused with a love for melody and harmony, evident in every arrangement. Their previous album Everyone Smiles received remarkably positive reviews, including coverage in OOR and four stars in de Volkskrant. For their fifth and most recently recorded album, Don’t Give Up, they returned to the studio with Frans Hagenaars. Most of the record was recorded live in a remote wooden cottage in the Belgian Ardennes, giving the songs a raw, immediate energy. Once again, they are writing a new chapter in their quest for the ultimate song. Maureens have performed in living rooms and major venues like Paradiso and TivoliVredenburg, toured Spain, and closed a show at the legendary Cavern Club in Liverpool. Their hunger for writing new songs and playing in new places remains as strong as ever.

Rural France

SLOTHS

Meritorio

*** Rural France is the project of Tom Brown (Teenage Tom Petties) and Rob Fawkes, who began writing songs together after both moving from London to rural Wiltshire and starting families. What started as a casual way to meet up soon turned into a band built around Tom’s scrappy slacker pop songs and Fawkes’ melodic, jangly guitar lines.After releasing their debut on Half-a-Cow Records, the duo recorded two lo-fi albums in a garage—RF (2021) and Exacamondo! (2024)—both released by Meritorio Records and warmly received by the DIY indie community for their short, melodic songs inspired by the spirit of Guided by Voices, Teenage Fanclub and Pavement.Their fourth album, SLOTHS (out May 8 via Meritorio), sees the band expanding their sound. Mixed by Rob Slater, it’s their clearest and most expansive record yet, adding organ, horns and mellotron while keeping the jangly, scruffy charm that defines Rural France. The songs reflect on getting older, time passing, and the strange realities of adult life—thoughtful, melodic indie rock with heart and humor.

Deafkids

CICATRIZES DO FUTURO

Neurot Recordings

The Brazilian duo DEAFKIDS returns with a vital and combustive new album, CICATRIZES DO FUTURO (SCARS OF THE FUTURE). This nine-track sonic assault forges a path beyond the conventions and boundaries of static musical genres. Here, electronic fury and feverish organic percussion collide with a relentless Latin American punk spirit."Conceptually, the album is a visceral diagnosis of a world intoxicated by its own fictions of power, tracing the anatomy of a systemic grand deception and exploring its mechanics of psychological, social, and material domination, the indelible marks imprinted on bodies and minds and it's catastrophic consequences. It is a journey from the poisoned and addicted collective psyche to the desperate search for an antidote, while the future seems to be already cursed by the very forces that pretend to build it. Yet, for all its thematic weight, CICATRIZES DO FUTURO is hypnotically danceable - physical and ritualistic music that demands body movement as a form of mental cleansing. The album doesn't just reflect a fractured and violent world — it breathes desire to live and resist through new sonic paths.""Our music comes from the perception of the environmental, political, and moral toxicity that permeates our realities under such conditions. In the context of the album, the scars are those of a brutally stolen past reflected in a wicked future. A permanent mark of violence is also a memory that will never be silenced!"

Pinky Tex

The Singing Angel From Devil Rock Canyon

Rocks In Your Head

***Born in the ashes of WWII, the only girl of seven children, they called her Pinky. She grew up in the windy plains of the Texas panhandle, singing in the church choir and dreaming of being on the stage one day. Just 18, she met the love of her life and soon married rodeo cowboy Cole Tex. Sharing a common thirst for adventure, they traveled the country roads together. He wrote the songs and Pinky sang them, performing in small roadhouses and honky-tonks all over the southwestern states. These are some of the few recordings that still exist.

Francis Of Delirium

Run, Run Pure Beauty

Dalliance Recordings

The epitome of a modern artist, Jana Bahrich does most things herself, no matter how painstaking—writing, producing, directing, often hand painting t-shirts the day of shows when the band have run out of merch. This has helped give her band Francis of Delirium a unique identity, with her rock confessionals breathing a new life in to the genre and her paintings creating a striking design aesthetic.Released as she was finishing high school, 2020’s single 'Quit Fucking Around’ was a great introduction and it remains one of her most enduring songs. Shortly after it’s release, she signed to artist-first indie Dalliance Recordings (Gia Margaret, HighSchool, lilo) and three EPs—All Change (2020), Wading (2021), The Funhouse (2022) and a striking debut album - Lighthouse (2024)—on and Jana has Francis of Delirium flying.While the EP’s fizzed with promise, her debut album Lighthouse landed its punches. Seeking a more vulnerable and open sonic palette, she wove in pop elements to create anthems that celebrated heartbreak and love. Lead singles ‘Real Love’ and ‘First Touch’ were the first tracks she made with an outsider - working with GRAMMY winning producer Catherine Marks (boygenius, The Killers, Wolf Alice)—while the rest of the album was produced by Jana herself and day one collaborator Chris Hewett. The critics were impressed too—“Bahrich’s choruses, almost every one, are lumpin-your-throat gorgeous.” NME; “Jana Bahrich seems too young for this tremendous debut’s ambitious anthems.” Uncut; “A rewarding experience that captures a talented, young artist at the crossroads between adolescence and adulthood." Paste.Live,...

Glass, Philip

Music With Changing Parts

Superior Viaduct

Philip Glass, the great American composer, was already in his mid-30s before his first album appeared, and then only because he produced the double LP himself. Music With Changing Parts was the inaugural release on his own Chatham Square imprint in 1971.At this point, Einstein on the Beach, Glass’ first opera, was still five years away. Yet in Changing Parts, one can already hear much of his vocabulary in full bloom: the buoyant arpeggios, the melding of electronic and acoustic instruments, the elongated drones of human voice, the primary emphasis on pulse (an interest he shared with fellow composer Steve Reich) and the ecstatic potential inherent in repetition.The album features the original Philip Glass Ensemble—the composer himself, along with Jon Gibson, Dickie Landry, Art Murphy, Steve Chambers and Robert Prado—playing Farfisa organs and woodwinds as well as Barbara Benary on electric violin.As Glass describes in his memoir Words Without Music, he secured a $500 interest-free loan for the recordings’ initial release from the Hebrew Free Loan Society—an organization intended to help immigrants from the Old World upon arrival in the US. Though Glass was merely the grandson of immigrants, the venture wasn’t far off the society’s charter as Changing Parts helped usher in a new world of sound that would become known as Minimalism.Chatham Square went on to release albums by other composers in Glass’ circle, including Gibson and Landry. The label was named after the Manhattan intersection where Landry had a studio and the ensemble rehearsed.Born in Baltimore in...

Godthrymm

Projections

Profound Lore

With their third album Projections, UK doom metal juggernaut Godthrymm have completed their Visions Trilogy begun with 2020’s their Reflections debut album and followed with 2023’s acclaimed Distortions. During the band’s discourse since the release of Reflections, Godthrymm have been recognized as the new emerging band from the UK to bring back the glorious aura of early-mid ‘90s UK doom metal, most notably formulated by the Peaceville Three (My Dying Bride, Paradise Lost, Anathema). As expected, considering the band was formed and helmed by UK doom metal veteran Hamish Glencross (ex-My Dying Bride / Vallenfyre / Solstice) and features doom metal drummer extraordinaire Shaun Taylor-Steels (ex-My Dying Bride / Anathema / Solstice). So in this sense, the classic UK doom metal DNA has already been implemented within their sonic fabric. Projections sees Godthrymm continue to develop and broaden their sound even further, building upon the cornerstones of Distortions. Now with an expanded lineup which includes keyboardist co-vocalist Catherine Glencross, bassist Bob Crolla and new second guitarist Kris McLaughin, Projections is their most layered, varied and complex release yet, all while still upholding the colossal emotionally charged heavy doom backbone that has defined the core of the band’s sound.

Joyner, Simon

Tough Love

Grapefruit / Sophmore Lounge / BB* Island

For over 30 years, Simon Joyner has been an anomaly--a wholly independent artist focused solely on his craft. The Omaha-based singer-songwriter began releasing music in the early ‘90s and has walked an unbroken line ever since. Joyner’s songs of quiet joy and heartache have impacted different generations of fellow artists, showing up as overt influence in acts like Bright Eyes or Kevin Morby, and as flickers of shared perspectives in the Lenkers, Oldhams, and Molinas that followed.Tough Love, Joyner’s 19th studio album, continues this upward trend. While intrinsically linked to the personal grief of 2024’s Coyote Butterfly, the autobiographical album Joyner made in the wake of his son’s death, this new album explores the concept of tough love as a dichotomy applied to various fictional relationships including romantic, familial, and political. This balancing act comes through in vivid portrayals of everyday heartache and in the exploration of political rage and the betrayals of the American Dream.One of the marvels of Joyner’s catalog is how his patterns don’t repeat but transform. Knowing nods to Cohen, Dylan, and the Velvets have been part of his songwriting since the early lo-fi days, but the ways these touchstones get infused keep changing. While Joyner’s ragged acoustic songs are in the spotlight, they’re prodded by electric guitars and imbued with experimental tendencies. Rock songs split the difference between minimal grooves learned from Loaded-era Velvet Underground and the ecstatic rhythmic weirdness of Can. By the time we arrive at the penultimate track, “Anniversary Song,” the ghost...

Son Palenque

Ricon de Africa

Electric Cowbell

***The legendary Afro-Colombian group Son Palenque, founded and directed by singer and composer Justo Valdés, celebrates over four decades of musical history with the release of their new album Rincón de África. It marks an important milestone in the band’s 40-year recording career and stands as a vibrant testament to the living musical traditions of Colombia’s Caribbean coast. Musically, the album moves across several traditional and contemporary Afro-Caribbean styles. Listeners will hear the driving rhythms of champeta in songs such as “Rincón de África,” “Chapeto,” and “Novia de Barranquilla,” alongside traditional forms including chalupa, sexteto, and bullerengue in tracks like “El Puente de Palenque,” “Anaito,” and “Mina Toto.” The result is a dynamic recording that bridges ancestral rhythms with the modern Afro-Caribbean sound that Son Palenque helped pioneer.The vinyl version contains 12 tracks, including 10 previously unrecorded compositions, written by key members of the group including Justo Valdés, Pánfido Valdés, and Enrique Tejedor.Pressed on limited green vinyl.

Sumos

Luck

Meritorio

***Sumos are a scuzz-pop quartet from Manchester, UK. The project began as a bedroom recording outlet for Joel Sloan and Kyle Tarbuck after a hiatus from playing together in a previous band. After laying the groundwork for their first EP, Weird Summer, the group expanded into a four-piece with the addition of Kyle’s sister Siobhán McKnight on bass and Andrew Kilroy on drums. Their debut album, Surfacing, was released in 2023 via Meritorio Records and Safe Suburban Home. Part of the UK DIY scene, Sumos have shared stages with like-minded acts and label-mates such as The Planes, Teenage Tom Petties, Dignan Porch, Perennial, Oort Clod, Special Friend, Stuart Pearce, Park Safely, and Hugs of the Sky. Sumos’ sound is built on a foundation of melodic indie rock and noisy power-pop. Key influences include Husker Du, The Lemonheads, Pixies, P.S. Eliot, The Beths, Mikal Cronin, East River Pipe, and Mike Krol.

Mad Iris

s/t

Ba Da Bing!

Toronto’s Mad Iris has been playing live in the local underground scene since 2023, blending noise rock, punk, and shoegaze into a sound that honors influences like Sonic Youth, Pixies, and the Breeders. Their self-titled debut album covers desire, obsession, longing, and grief, taking place in basements, night buses, and gas stations, with gum stuck to desks and drinks spilled on sticky floors. Throughout the record, distorted vocals crash and ascend in unison with thrashing drums, plump basslines, and staticky guitar overdrive, lurching between restraint and eruption.A Mad Iris song teeters on disaster, shifting from gritty feedback to intentional sloppy haze, like the sound of a tape machine overheating. Strong, sparkling production is complemented by a wall of noisy visuals: videos that emulate a worn VHS tape, scrapbook show flyers, and alleyway photoshoots. “Our visuals are an integral part of the band’s style,” says bassist Ela Hinatsu, who shares lead vocals with guitarist Kaiya Rosie, often on the same song. With a deliberate sound, style, and presence, Mad Iris goes beyond being a band, becoming more of an art project.Opening track, “Silver Nails”, sets hushed, breathy vocals floating over a screechy guitar line, played by Patrick Muldoon, before collapsing into distorted, whiny grit and greedy screams, ending the track with a guitar solo from producer / mixer Ximuna Diego, who, with his own musical expertise, is the secret to Mad Iris’ signature distorted sound. The album oscillates between sweet and bitter, pretty and dirty, lust and shame. “Poor Baby” is...

Vic Bondi And His Issues

s/t

Alternative Tentacles

The title of Vic Bondi’s 27th release, Vic Bondi And His Issues, might come off as self-deprecation but in reality, it’s closer to diagnosis. Nearly four decades after helping define politically literate American hardcore, Bondi is less interested in nostalgia than in accountability: personal, historical, and national. Asked what keeps him making music, Bondi kicks it straight: “A beating heart, a tin ear, and raw stubbornness.” That might sound like a joke, but there’s a truth to it. Stubbornness, in Bondi’s case, has always meant refusing to let power go unexamined. Written in Seattle and recorded over two days at Soundhouse Recording Studio, both the sound and the lineup are lean and deliberate. Immediate, enthralling, and crafted with razor precision, its name (bestowed by Jello Biafra) winks at confession while pointing squarely at the culture.Bondi’s political lens was formed early. The son of a U.S. Navy captain, he moved twenty-two times before turning eighteen. “When you grow up military, you move every two years or so, whether you want to or not,” he says. “So, no matter how formidable your father might seem, someone else is actually calling the shots in a way that affects you directly, especially if you’re a kid.” That instability, he explains, “predisposes you to a healthy skepticism about authority figures.” Bondi has been mining that skepticism for decades, emerging as a founding force behind Chicago’s early-’80s hardcore movement with Articles of Faith. Following the 1985 breakup of Articles of Faith, Bondi spent time in Jones...

White Heaven

Next to Nothing

Black Editions

***Black Editions presents the expanded and definitive edition of White Heaven's brilliant third album Next to Nothing. Originally released in 1994 by Tokyo's Noon Disk, the full album was only ever available in a limited vinyl pressing of 250 copies. Since then, it has become one of the most sought-after artifacts of the '90s Japanese underground and is regarded as a highpoint of Japanese psychedelic rock. Led by vocalist, songwriter and conceptualist You Ishihara, the album finds the group in a phase of refinement. Taking a more intricate and open approach, the music is buoyant and light yet at the same time, nocturnal and introspective. Next to Nothing marks the first time guitarists Michio Kurihara and Soichiro Nakamura appear together on record after having separate turns as lead guitar on the group's first two albums. The pairing is revelatory as they weave luminous melodic lines, sometimes in parallel, sometimes opening into sustained intricate counterpoint. Bassist Koji Shimura and drummer Ken Ishihara shuffle and swing in parallel with a fluid, sinuous rhythm, while flourishes of synthesizer, mellotron and the introduction of Go Hirano on keyboards and piano deepens the group's sound with orchestral colors and a soft cinematic haze. Across the album, clear, shimmering guitar tones and gentle chord progressions are layered with bright arpeggiated figures and darker minor-key passages. The songs develop through gradual changes in tone and dynamics as Ishihara's voice reveals a gentle yearning and wistfulness. An extended version of Burt Bacharach and Hal David's "The Look of...

Potential Threat

Singles And Demos 1982-85

PNV

***Collection of singles and demos from this mega crucial UK hardcore outfit. With their 1982 debut EP, it would be easy to peg the group as a standard issue Riot City/No Future style punk outfit, and truthfully, "Vice Squad meets Discharge" isn't too far off base. However, whereas so many UK groups of that era folded after a single or two, Potential Threat continued into the mid-80's--UK hardcore's nascent "crust" era—and were able to keep up with the ferocity of emerging group's such as Sacrilege, Concrete Sox, Heresy and the like. Few groups were able to bridge generations of punk like that while maintaining a sonic ferocity and politically militant stance, and if only for that 80's punk devotees might give them respect. Thankfully, in addition to great principles, the group also left behind an array of top notch recordings, as evidenced by this collection.

No Crisis

What's Done Is Done - 1982-1987

PNV

***Compilation of all studio material from No Crisis, the seminal first wave HC punk outfit from Huntington Beach circa 1981-1987. Collector scum may know this group's infectious 1982 12" "She's Into The Scene," an infectious slab of HB struttin' thug punk on par with Posh Boy or Frontier's hardest hitters from that era. Beyond that handful of anti-parent bashers, though, the group has about a dozen seldom heard tracks from various contemporaneous sessions that never received the vinyl treatment...Until now! Punkenvomit is proud to present the definitive collection of this cult OC punk brigade, including the 1982 12" and all known studio sessions.

Gichard

Chins For Lefty

Night School

Chins For Lefty is the debut album and first recording by Gichard, a new duo chronicling the absurdities of end-stage capitalism and mouldering social rituals from their vantage point in Glasgow, Scotland. Recorded primarily in the band’s home studio straight to tape, Chins For Lefty combines gorgeous, ramshackle melody, DIY kosmische punk, drum machine + synth and, in vocalist/lyricist Lisa Jones, an absurdist commentator on the human condition as it navigates the anxieties of the modern world. Instrumentalist Chas Lalli’s swirling music accompaniment stitches an evocative mix of musical styles, the ragged wind beneath the lyrics’ wings. Although the duo first collaborated in their previous group Dragged Up, their disparate musical and artistic backgrounds make for an alluring mix in Gichard. Lalli has spent the last 20 years in the Glasgow underground, most notably in the noise rock group VOM, while Lisa Jones’s practice was in poetry and spoken word. Beginning as co vocalist in her previous band, in Gichard her lyrics are centre stage; the vision concocted alongside Lalli amounts to a total world-build. Chins For Lefty scans almost like a novel, with each track elucidating a skewed universe that bears only some resemblance to the one you and I partake in. Like all works of fiction Gichard’s songs are rooted in reality and the lived experiences of its authors, but here characters are exaggerated, social mores and habits are pulled apart to reveal their inherent alienness. Universal emotions are laid bare, the bright light of anxious examination searching...

Pentagram

High Voltage - Live At Spotsylvania '78

Riding Easy

This is an extremely rare recording when the band was a 5 piece with 2 guitar players.“Live at Spotsylvania” captures Pentagram performing an all-night backyard concert in Spotsylvania, Virginia, at bassist Martin Sweeney’s mother’s house, in front of roughly 500 fans camping out for the weekend. Recorded around 1978 during the band’s short “High Voltage” era, the show began at 1 a.m. on a foggy night and featured rare songs with a raw, powerful performance. The audio blends a low-level board mix with ambient mic recording for surprisingly strong sound quality. A memorable moment came when a firecracker went off perfectly on the beat during the heavy second half of “20 Buck Spin,” echoing through the trees. – Bobby LieblingRecorded in 1978 in Spotsylvania at Martin Swaney’s backyard. The audio is a great recording for being outdoors and cleaned up by mastering guru Nick Townsend.Vocals – Bobby LieblingBass – Martin SwaneyLead Guitar – Paul TrowbridgeLead Guitar – Richard KuehtDrums – Joe Hasselvander

Allred, Joseph

The Old Gods

Carbon

***Joseph Allred is a Tennessee-based guitarist, singer, multi-instrumental composer, and visual artist with deep roots in the Upper Cumberland region of Tennessee and Kentucky. Their guitar playing draws from diverse musical styles including Appalachian folk, bluegrass, blues, flamenco, and classical guitar, as well as from folk iconoclasts John Fahey and Robbie Basho, figures of the 20th century avant-garde like Albert Ayler, Derek Bailey and Henry Flynt, and the musical traditions of India, Iran, and the Arab world. They have released music on Feeding Tube Records, Worried Songs, Scissor Tail Editions, AKTI, Island House, Blue Hole Recordings, Garden Portal, Reverb Worship / Future Grave, and their own Meliphonic Records imprint.