New Releases

Thorn Wych

Aesthesis

Tompkins Square

***Thorn Wych makes instruments from tree branches; bowed strings, flutes and percussion that she runs through a chain of loopers, pitch bending glitches and delay pedals. Strange songs sung in tongues, mashed up chewed and spat out. As the adder weaves her way through the dirt and mycelium hum, we play in the mud and converse with insects.Aesthesis is Thorn Wych's debut LP that she recorded and mixed herself at home, often performing long improvised pieces, then later editing them down, cutting and pasting and overlaying other instruments.This album takes inspiration from such works as The Secret Book of John, the 1940 film The Thief of Bagdad, and Lata Mangeshkar's Meera Bhajans. She dedicates her work to the Divine Mother Asherah, Holy Spirit, Guardian of the Tree of Life.

Chat Pile

Who Loves The Sun

Flenser

In a world increasingly shaped by disposable content, Chat Pile answer with something defiantly real and organic, a mentality that permeates Who Loves The Sun, their third full-length record. Since the band’s formation just over six years ago, the Oklahoma City-based quartet Chat Pile has grown from a scrappy passion project into one of the defining heavy acts to emerge from the 2020s underground. Ray B. (vocals), L. Manhole (guitar), Stin (bass), and Cap’n Ron (drums) create a crushing, crass, and cathartic take on noise rock that captures a raw, undeniably human essence in an age marked by technological overreach and the cold state of society. Nothing about Who Loves The Sun feels synthetic. Whereas their debut album God’s Country depicted a particularly American flavor of dread, and the follow up Cool World showed a cruel planet defined by global systemic violence, Who Loves The Sun peels the skin back on how collective indifference defines this new century. Spanning imagery of coastlines devouring cities, dead-end jobs, and submission to data-driven inauthenticity, the album dissects the apathy-bloated state of 21st-century existence as a slow-motion apocalypse. As with much of Chat Pile’s work, Oklahoma City itself looms over the album like a character, its sprawling isolation, economic contradictions, and underlying sense of decay embedded in the fabric of the record. The perfect allegory for the thematic essence of Who Loves The Sun is the photo embossed on the record’s cover, where Devon Tower, a glassy, largely vacant monolith, looms high above the...

Todd, Blaine

Angle of Repose

Nudie Records

***Angle of Repose, the fifth solo record from Bay Area songwriter Blaine Todd, unfolds as a sequence of nine plainspoken and pared back transmissions from the uneasy edge of country music. Acoustic guitar, pedal steel, lonesome horns and fiddle wrap around these brief sketches of runners and restless figures moving through landscapes both psychic and geographic. Here are highway hymns of people who sense what must be done but seldom find the conviction to do it, sliding slowly downhill in search of a temporary resting point.Todd’s writing favors a kind of shrugging candor: jokes and idioms used as vessels for some bleaker truth. The world these songs inhabit is often stark, though not without romance—a place where insight comes easily while resolve remains elusive.Angle of Repose is less like a collection of songs than a stretch of road, punctuated by a sequence of vacant roadside motels offering short-sighted salvation.Blaine Todd is a songwriter and musician based in the San Francisco Bay Area. His work draws from country, folk, and experimental music traditions. In addition to his solo work, he has performed with Night Collectors, Real Life Rock & Roll Band, the Andrew Weathers Ensemble, Common Eider, King Eider, and Ecstatic Music Band. His solo recordings have been released by Nudie Records, Worried Songs, Perpetual Doom, Debacle Records, and Full Spectrum Records.

Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso U.f.o.

In A Not C

Vhf

More than 25 years after the start of collaboration with Acid Mothers Temple mastermind Makoto Kawabata (including the INUI series and the classic Kawabata/Youngs release) comes the first proper VHF LP by the prolific quintet. One of an occasional series of “minimalism” inspired LPs by the group, In A Not C is a not a barely changing drone, but a wild ride with the band in full flight, rushing along in a glorious swirl of psychedelic madness. Like the band’s well-known 2001 version of Terry Riley’s In C, the group uses a small cell of repeating sound as a jumping off point and then gradually revs up to maximum velocity. The current AMT lineup has produced a series of fun and unique variants on the band’s longstanding signatures, with the addition of vocalist/guitarist Jyonson Tsu and drummer Satoshima Nani providing a lightness and nimbleness of touch that resets the context of the band’s usual blazing electric guitar and burbling synth. Both sides here build to a multi-layered crescendo, with loops of Tsu’s gentle vocals competing with frenetic drums, whistling electronics, and guitar that alternates trebly feedback and soft arpeggios. Cut by Golden, pressed in Chicago at Smashed, first pressing on clear vinyl.

Rosnet, Jean-Emmanuel

Les Rivières Sont des Chemins qui Marchent

Not Not Fun

The third collection by French abstractionist Jean-Emmanuel Rosnet was developed during a residency in Thiers and the Dore Valley in central France, which was once a thriving hub of paper mills, workshops, and tanneries powered by the Dore and Durolle rivers. Inspired by the region’s abandoned factories, and visions of the workers who once animated these places, Rosnet sought to echo their gestures and rhythms, crafting mosaics of intimacies and disorientation with modular synth, tape loops, and elemental sounds: flowing water, clattering machines, resonant metal.The title translates as “rivers are roads that move,” alluding to the music’s muse of transience and absence, erosion and exploration, melancholy and drift. It’s art as deep listening divining rod, attuned to the traces of memory murmuring from cracks, rust, soil, and subcurrents. Eight glimpses through the veil, equal parts tribute and eulogy. Mastered by Jared Carrigan. Art and design by Jean-Emmanuel Rosnet.

Windy & Carl With Optigan Conservatory

Windy & Carl Meet Optigan Conservatory

Kranky

Windy & Carl Meet Optigan Conservatory is a purposefully misleading title for the first collaborative work from four friends who met close to thirty years prior. All active participants in Michigan independent music circles since the early ’90s, Windy & Carl are well-known for their foundational contributions to drift and guitar-born ambient sounds, with songs characterized by deep connections to the natural world and a hard to pin down yet impossible to miss emotional vulnerability. Optigan Conservatory is another duo, made up of Frank Rotondo (leader of Detroit area free music ensemble Laughing Gas) and Fred Thomas (songwriter and producer most often associated with his band Saturday Looks Good To Me), who have been making minimalistic and time-defiant electro-acoustic sounds since 2016. The album came together almost effortlessly in a very short timeframe, but the idea had been building steam for many a year.In the last days of 2024, Windy & Carl and Optigan Conservatory got together, falling into a mode of sound creation that was almost hyper-natural. Without any discussion outside of the usual stream of jokes and chatter, the quartet set up and started communicating. Added to Windy & Carl’s hovering augmented chord voicings and vaporous guitar drones were electric piano and synth bedding from Frank & Fred. After the initial sessions, all involved parties took time to consider what they’d made, adding new layers and editing the pieces into more definitive articulations. A beautiful and hermetic energy larger than the sum of its parts is captured in...

Dragnet

Dragnet

Total Punk

***After an 8 year absence Gary Wrong comes barreling out of the wild’s of Alabama with his new project DRAGNET. New collaborator Matt Leary standing at his side laying down the licks and making the beats, while Gary’s throbbing baselines do the driving. Trudging the empty beer cans and filthy muck, that line the murky swamp floor, behind their beat-up airboat while slinging Gary’s signature harsh vibes. They shout in unison about the end of the world on lead single ‘Para-noid.’ Bummer punk with a bit of sunshine slipping into the sludge courtesy of some catchy hooks. Pulsing, hypnotic, and 100% TOTAL PUNK! 12” out on TOTAL PUNK on August 7th, but get your preorder in now. Limited to 300 copies!

Spread Joy

III

Feel It

***"Are your shoelaces tied? Have you stretched? Good. Spread Joy’s new record will have you up and moving before your brain can even comprehend what the body is doing – fuck you, Renè Descartes! As always, the band’s rhythmic hivemind is more locked-in than your local synchronized swim team.The good news is that III isn’t a pure adrenaline rush. You see the band in lineage to the kinds of post punks who never let being smart as hell keep them from having a good time. The B52s and Talking Heads and Suburban Lawns of the world knew that any highbrow lyricism would wash down better with hefty doses of killer melodies and Spread Joy bears this lineage well.As always, it’s a full-bodymind workout with Spread Joy: don’t say you weren’t warned."—Annie Howard

Wild Magnolias, The

They Call Us Wild

Jackpot

Coming on the heels of Jackpot Records' vinyl reissue of The Wild Magnolias' S/T debut LP, Jackpot proudly announce the band’s follow-up record, They Call Us Wild. Championed by critic Robert Christgau as creating “the most boisterous recorded party I know,” the band released this funk masterpiece in 1975, but now with a psychedelic streak running deeply throughout it.While the first album (which was also the first commercially released record by a Mardi Gras Indian group) declared "Smoke Your Peace Pipe (Smoke It Right)", They Call Us Wild is a different type of "elevated" sonic celebration.Vocals echo and drip; saxophones and keyboards swing from each other’s arms, and the omnipresent multi-layered percussion, which The Wild Magnolias were known for, showcase why they continue to be one of the most sampled bands of all time (they have been sampled by everyone from Nas to Public Enemy to Jungle Brothers).With producer Philippe Rault at the helm once again, he continued to capture the dense magic within the band, but on They Call Us Wild, they are taking a darker, more haunted approach with their music. The smokey interplay on songs like “Injuns, Here We Come”, with its jazzy piano/bass meltdown (courtesy of Erving Charles Jr. & Wilson Turbinton of the legendary New Orleans funk band The Gaturs), solidified them as a band rather than capturing a moment...even though the celebration in the studio is still going just as strong. The band also takes itself to new sonic territory, for instance, slowing things...

1-800 Mikey

In Yun

Goner

Bedroom powerpop with hooks on speed dial—1800 MIKEY—is the lo-fi garage pop project of Michael Barker. On any given night in his home of Sydney, Australia, you might find Barker gleefully wailing away on stage with any number of local underground garage punk stalwarts including Gee Tee and RMFC. And it seems he’s everyone’s secret weapon for a reason—his joy on stage is infectious and it comes across in his music. Barker’s own project leans more into the pop side of the garage punk spectrum—with great results.In Yun is the third 1-800-MIKEY album and the first on Goner Records. And in terms of songwriting it’s a strong step forward. And while the basic formula here is the same—melodic bass lines, crunchy guitar riffs and catchy sing-a-long vocals—there is more going on here. The sound is just as immediate, but also more dynamic and nuanced. Lead single “Me and My Only” is a high speed collision of distorted city rock guitar riffs and heart-on-your-sleeve poptastic vocal hooks. If that seems like familiar territory, “K Style” and “Falling in Love” are more reminiscent of British noise poppers the Shop Assistants and the Pooh Sticks. And the earworm guitarwork anchoring “Pleasant Morning” and “Faery” is fresh and catchy—good luck getting them out of your head.It’s fun and sincere and adorable and it totally rips.

V/a

Endangered Species Vol. 2

Dark Entries

In their countless years of deep digging, Dark Entries has uncovered many curiosities, oddball Italo and synth-wave creatures too rare to live, too funky to die. Dark Entries’s conservationist efforts began with 2020’s Endangered Species Vol 1. Six years later, we are finally treated Endangered Species Vol 2, an even more ambitious effort which features eleven specimens previously deemed extinct, now safely preserved on vinyl. Things kick off with an extended mix of Palazzo di Danza’s “Play That Song For Me,” a lavishly produced German-Italo number propelled by a slinky bassline. Russian Olga Vosconyan’s “Cars” delivers what might be the moodiest song ever produced for a car commercial. Fuzz Dance maestro Alexander Robotnick appears with a previously unreleased male vocal demo version of “I Wanna Believe,” a legendary track that would later appear under the name Gina & the Flexix. Canadian industrial royalty Dwayne R. Goettel (Psyche) and cEvin Key (Skinny Puppy) team up on the horror-sampling hit-heavy blaster “Bastards.” Belgian EBM progenitors à;GRUMH... report for duty with a slab of machine funk on “The Army.” UK DIY stalwarts Khmer Rouge bring Krautrock-inflected minimalism with “Take Me (Across the Floor Tonight) In Dub.” Endangered Species Vol 2 comes housed in a sleeve designed by Eloise Shir-Juen Leigh, and includes a 16 page booklet featuring liner notes, lyrics, and photographs of each featured project. Please assist Dark Entries in their efforts to preserve the rarest of beasts (and beats).

My Face Is Dancing

s/t

Positive Elevation / 577 Records

***Positive Elevation, the imprint dedicated to electronic experimentation and avant soul, proudly presents MY FACE IS DANCING, the debut release by a unique family collective led by Federico Ughi.More than an album, My Face Is Dancing is a celebration of family, spirit, creativity, and freedom. It marks the first officially released collaboration between Federico Ughi and his sons—young artists Alberto Ughi, Martino Ughi, and Benjamin Ughi—alongside other members of the family. The recordings that form the foundation of this project were captured at different moments throughout the children's lives, documenting their growth and artistic evolution between the ages of two and ten.Musically, the album reflects Federico Ughi's lifelong journey across improvisation, hip hop, jazz, and experimental electronic music. Its atmospheric textures and cinematic sensibility are also informed by his years performing and touring internationally with Tobias Wilner's Blue Foundation between 2012 and 2019, an experience that deepened his exploration of electronic sound design, song form, and immersive sonic landscapes while remaining rooted in spontaneity and improvisation.Rooted in deep spiritual inspiration, My Face Is Dancing is an expression of connection across generations. It celebrates who we are, where we come from, and the invisible forces that guide us forward. Drawing strength from family roots while reaching toward the unknown, the music embraces both ancestral memory and cosmic possibility. It is spiritual music in its purest sense—a reflection of love, curiosity, imagination, and the belief that creativity can connect us to something larger than ourselves.The album originates from a series of improvisational...

Pearson, Michael

My War On Wilshire: Black Flag vs. the Wilshire Federal Building... and the Vex

Bazillion Points

***On July 4, 1983, Los Angeles hardcore punk band Black Flag invaded the terrace of the Federal Building on Wilshire Blvd. Young punk-with-a-camera Michael Pearson captured indelible color images of the band exploding like fireworks against a backdrop of California skies, palm trees, rippling U.S. flags, and the Marlboro cowboy. Behind the frenzy of band members Rollins, Ginn, Dukowski, and Stevenson loomed the imposing modernist infinity of the Wilshire Federal Building, landmark home of the IRS and the FBI. Later that month, Pearson caught Black Flag again, this time with suffocating intimacy at the infamous and truly dangerous hole-in-the-wall Vex club. Seen for the first time in MY WAR ON WILSHIRE, Pearson’s snapshots preserve a precarious and vivid moment in Black Flag’s campaign of conflict—portraits of a band confronting reality at the breaking point.

False Flag

Art School

FYJFY

***False Flag's third release on vinyl, 10th release on FYJFY, Art School takes you on a trip that celebrates and mourns, laughs and cries, winds up and winds down, smiles and frowns. Every song is unique in its own way, it is a celebration of freedom and community in punk rock. First pressing of 500, lyric sheet included, and released by FYJFY, a local record label run by punks in San Francisco.

Surprise Privilege

Hard Listen

FYJFY

***Surprise Privilege's third release on vinyl and the 9th release on FYJFY. Probably the best album you'll hear this year (from Surprise Privilege). It's about 30 minutes of 14 songs straight from the heart, man. Some of it's fast, some of it's slow, some of it is angry, some of it is technical, all of it is excellent. See for yourself! San Francisco punk rock, man! First pressing of 500. Includes a lyric sheet.

Segall, Ty

Chrome

Drag City

***In the spring of 2025, right around the release of Possession, Ty Segall started hearing voices, calmly at first, but soon screaming: “Get the band back together!!!”Immediately, his mind began working, creating, collecting and collat- ing riffs for songs, an album that he and the band—Ben Boye, Evan Burrows, Mikal Cronin & Emmett Kelly—will come to all call Chrome.Chrome—the element, not the album—is shiny, reflective, resistant to corrosion. Chrome the album’s got that too: in hard-springing rock strung with lyrically allusive passages moving furtive and bleak through labyrinthine paths in the darkness. Joining social phenomena and autobiographical dream imagery in song-sequenced, head-snapping flashes, hitting left/right hemispheres fast and furiously. In massive riffs and thudding power in the rhythm core, twin-guitar attack and parry, tightly arrayed lines of fuzz distortion, keyboard textures of bright and thickness. All mixed immediate and flexible, colorful and clean, spicy-sweet, with Ty’s vocals of vinegar and sand, wine and grains of silver nitrate, pointing the way. That’s Chrome.

Faun Fables

The Transit Rider

Drag Cty

***Arriving right on time for its 20th anniversary, Faun Fables’ musical theater work The Transit Rider returns in a lovely 2xLP vinyl edition that dimensionally burnishes the bristling performances and elevated chamber/cabaret folk sounds of the original CD-only release. At once a work of theatre, allegory and autobiography, The Transit Rider amplifies Faun Fables’ distinctive electroacoustic wash of Anglo-European folk sounds, shimmering allusively from traditional to Kurt Weill to folk-rock and back again. This new 2xLP edition features revamped artwork with previously unseen photos of the original show.

Great Lakes

Fear of the Fear

HHBTM

***Fear of the Fear is the 9th album by Great Lakes, my long-running band and recording project. I think of it as my Memphis Record, since the bulk of it was written and recorded there. Like 2022's Contenders, Fear of the Fear was mixed by Luis Leal. In fact, while thematically it is very different, aesthetically it could almost be considered Contenders II, even though 2025's Don't Swim Too Close came out in between. It features two musicians I've been working with for nearly 20 years, drummer Kevin Shea and vocalist Suzanne Nienaber. It also benefits from the contributions of two of my favorite go-to multi-instrumentalists, David Gould and Petter Folkedal. Some talented Memphis-based musicians grace the record, as well, including Leah Keys, Andrew Geraci, Seth Moody, and John Whittemoore. Finally, my old friends Kyle Forester and Steve Silverstein each play on a few songs. Fear of the Fear is a collection of songs mostly about the death of my close friend, Ryan Trammel. As such, it deals thematically with loss and grief. A very personal album, it touches on feelings of anxiety, brokenness, and the role of the subconscious in our lives-be it subconscious memory or subconscious knowledge/wisdom ("there is a truth we have known without knowing it" is how I put it in the album opener). This is an idea I find especially potent. Maria Montessori wrote that as babies we are as smart as we are ever going to be. When I read that in one of...

Bitchin Bajas

Isle Peaks

Drag City

***In the wake of the acclaimed Inland See, the on-growing analog ecosystem being animated for ten albums now by Bitchin Bajas boasts new high energy views. Isle Peaks speaks of directions in beats of time, weather and the heart to wherever coast they found themselves when they got it all laid out. Sourced from Inland See sessions, these cuts were subjected to further edits and tweaks, with electroacoustic textures of sampled kalimba, field recordings, autoharp and EWI to activate and transport divergent quadrants of the Bajas cinematic universe. The first two songs were previously released digitally on Qobuz in Jan ’26. “Watch your Step” has been added to balance scales and acidity for the Isle Peaks vinyl edition.

Rusty

s/t

Just Add Water

***This Rusty album is proof that the well is truly bottomless. There's still unheard gold out there waiting to be discovered. It's 54 years late but worth the wait! Ex-Sheephouse, Blitzkrieg and future National Flag members. Recorded in 1972 in Switzerland during a year-long stay. After returning to London, the band pressed up just 25 copies to send to labels in the hope of getting signed only to have some of the tracks released by a library music label in 1974 in bastardized remixed and sped-up forms. Rusty supported the likes of Dr. Feelgood, Brinsley Schwarz, Hawkwind, Barclay James Harvest, Colin Blunstone, and Climax Blues Band but, until now, their music has never been widely available. These incredible UK glam-tinged original recipe power pop gems are finally getting a well-deserved wide release as they were originally intended to be heard. Painstakingly restored and remastered by GRAMMY-nominated engineer Jessica Thompson. Expansive liner notes by Plastic Crimewave from fresh interviews with band members Danny Edwardson and Seamus Sell. Edition of 500 copies on black vinyl.

Totalitar

s/t

Prank

***Swedish Punk legends TOTALITÄR return with their first new album in twenty years! Nine rampaging tracks, crafted with their trademark sublime innovation, where something beautifully and wonderfully simple as D-beat hardcore is innovated on, changed up and perfected again and again. That's the brilliance of Totalitär, their world renowned old master innovation, and this welcome return finds them in fine form, encased in distortion with Poffen's shouts firing an abrasive volley of anger and reflection at the state of the world. Recorded and mixed by Kenko at Communichaos in 2025/2026.

Generacion Suicida

Hombre Nuevo

Vitriol Records

***The new LP from LA’s Generacion Suicida is released along with a bunch of shows, a tour and various LA shows before then. The new record Hombre Nuevo is ten new songs and the first album to be released following Regeneracion in 2021.

Opera De Nuit

Opera de Nuit

Dark Entries

Opéra de Nuit emerge from their long slumber to grace Dark Entries with the frostiest of reissues. Formed in 1982 in Valréas in the southeast of France, Opéra de Nuit only released 3 records throughout their career: EPs in 1984 and 1986, with a full LP following in 1988. But devotees of dark music will need no introduction to this band, who are almost definitional of the coldwave genre, and whose rabid cult following has each record readily trading for three-digit prices. Opéra de Nuit’s sound is pure hellish heaven: frigid synths, jangly guitars, and sorrow-laden vox. Check out the pummelling desperation of “Annabella,” the uber-brooding vibes of “Boris Transylvania Camp,” or the elegant anthem “Karen Lloyd” (and don’t forget to watch the video!). This reissue collects their entire newly remastered discography - thirteen lucky tracks. This reissue marks the first time that their work will be reissued on vinyl and digital, and is presented in gatefold jacket with lyrics and photos. Whether you’re new to the genre or a veteran of the coldest waves, Opéra de Nuit brings the essential sound of immortal despair.

lowercase

Kill The Lights (2026 Vinyl Reissue)

Phonograph Records

***lowercase’s Kill The Lights, originally released on indie-noise label Amphetamine Reptile Records is back in print for the first time since its release in 1997. The 2026 reissue by Phonograph Records features a rich remaster of the original LP. The driving, melodic, heavy, dirge of Lowercase has aged well, continuing to resonate with fans today.

lowercase

The Going Away Present (2026 Vinyl Reissue)

Phonograph Records

***The Going Away Present is Lowercase’s 3rd and final LP, originally released by Vern Rumsey of Unwound on his Punk in My Vitamins in 1999. A sought after and highly collectible LP in the post-rock/slow-core/indie world, the beautifully remastered Phonograph Records 2026 reissue sees lowercase continuing to build on their themes of driving, solemn, melodic repetition.

Guilty Razors

Complete Recordings - 1978

Born Bad

***Guilty Razors, Parisian punk band (1975-1978). To understand something about their somewhat linear but very energetic sound, we might need to talk about the context in which it was born and, more broadly, recall the boredom (a theme that would become capital in punk songs) coupled with the desire to blow everything off, which were the basis for the formation of bands playing a rejuvenated rock music; about the passion for a few records by the Kinks or the early Who, by the Stooges, by the Velvet mostly, which set you apart from the crowd. In 1975-76, French music was, as almost always, in a sorry state; it was still dominated by Johnny Hallyday and Sylvie Vartan. Local rock music was also rather bleak, apart from Bijou and Little Bob who tried to revive this small scene with poorly sound-engineered gigs played to almost no one. In the working class suburbs at the time, it was mainly hard rock music played to 11 that helped people forget about their grueling shifts at the factory. It makes sense that the four+1 members of Guilty Razors, who initially amplified acoustic guitars with crappy tape recorder microphones, would adopt punk music (pronounced paink in French) naturally and instinctively, since it combines liberating noise with speed of execution and—crucially—a very healthy sense of rebellion. Anything that could challenge authority was fair game and of course, strikes for just about any reason would lead to increasingly frequent truancy (with a definitive farewell to education that...

Lay, Shannon

Past The Veil

All The Best

***"Shannon Lay’s seraphic voice and fingerpicking has long been a guiding spirit—a compassionate steward of tender hearts and minds. For the last decade, her music has tendered a retreat from one’s worries, and created a refuge out of delicate and minimalist arrangements. With her new studio album, Past the Veil, she proffers the same care and understanding, and a similar emotional timbre, but from an entirely different sonic vantage point. Rather than weaving a safe cocoon in which listeners may hide out, Past the Veil rips it apart, offering a bold invitation to move through our discomfort and uncertainty. It is the sound of rebirth. It is a chance to stand up, join together, and maybe even dance."—Erin Osmon. Co-Written and Produced by Rob Shelton at Altamira Sound in Alhambra, CA.

Hayes, Liam

Dancing Backwards

Weird Vacation

A brand new album from acclaimed American musical artist Liam Hayes (Plush). Liam Hayes is an acclaimed American musical artist known for his songwriting and uncompromising approach to making records.Hayes’ songs are recognized for their exquisite melodies, poetic lyrics and distinctive vocals. He’s released seven albums, two singles and a soundtrack, and applies his craftsmanship to a variety of genres from orchestrated pop to stripped down rock. Comparisons to Brian Wilson, Laura Nyro, Carole King, Harry Nilsson, Badfinger (and even Prince) are numerous. His music takes the best of radio and stellar classic pop records of the 60’s and 70’s and brings it into the present.Along with making records Hayes has appeared on screen performing his music in High Fidelity (directed by Stephen Frears) and A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III (directed by Roman Coppola) which he also wrote the soundtrack for.His latest album, Dancing Backwards, sees Liam stepping through the shadows in his life and into a new musical day.Reunited with legendary arranger TOM TOM 2084 (Chi-Lites, Phil Collins), and in this, their first production for Hayes are TOM’s son, Terrence Washington and multi-instrumentalist / producer / arranger Vincent Carlo.

Riviera Gaz

Catacroma

Vampire Blues

Multi-national trio Riviera Gaz (Gustavo Riviera of Forgotten Boys, Paulo Kishimoto of Pitty, Forgotten Boys, and Steve Shelley of Sonic Youth) have pieced together a psychedelic collective consciousness where fuzzy riffs, glam rock energy, fearless studio experimentation, and Can-inspired grooves all melt together to form new unstable elements. The group’s second album Catacroma elevates their sound even further, intentionally avoiding sterile digital recording crutches and instead using extensive editing and mixing to shape the songs into sprawling cosmic experiences. The album is a hall of fun house mirrors where killer songs break apart and come back together organically, never taking expected turns and always ending up somewhere even more interesting than where they began.

Xelta

B.D.S.M.

Körperspannung

Bézier’s Body Tension / Körperspannung enters its second year with ‘B.D.S.M.’, the debut recording from XELTA—a new collaboration between vocalist and performer Sharlese Metcalf and producer Bruno Coviello, known for his bliscord project and former work alongside Light Asylum and more recently composer for the film’s soundtrack ‘My Brother’s Killer’—which recently premiered at SXSW.This EP is five tracks of precision-engineered industrial, EBM, and darkwave. The music carries the body-first ferocity of Front 242 and Nitzer Ebb—pulse-driven, commanding, relentless—but filtered through something distinctly femme: a leather-gloved hand on the frequency dial. Think the dancefloor of a Chicago Medusa night, 1987. Think ritual. Think consent as choreography.B.D.S.M. opens the record with a power exchange already in motion. Metcalf's vocals arrive as commands—spoken, precise, syncopated against a delay echo that throws each word back like an afterimage. Coviello's production doesn't accompany her; it responds. Call and response as dominance and submission, built into the architecture of the music itself.EXQUISITE S3RVIC3 is the record's most visceral moment—percussion that punctuates the air like a crack of leather, rhythm used not as framework but as sensation. There is genuine playfulness here beneath the intensity, a knowing wit running through the whipcrack and chain. It hurts in the best way and knows it.MYY KONTROLL offers a brief reprieve—not a release, but a change of register. The pace pulls back, the approach becomes more deliberate, more methodical. The intensity doesn't leave; it migrates into melody and rhythm and texture, held there with a tighter grip than anything that...

Altarage

Cogwheel

Sentient Ruin Laboratories

***Basque experimental death metal behemoths Altarage return to crush the earth under their gargantuan hooves of dissonance. Packing in a staggering one hour and fourteen minutes of tectonic extreme metal upheaval, their seventh full length album "Cogwheel" not only represents the longest, and most imposing work in their career, but also their most defiant and visionary. Since 2015, and across six genre-defining full length releases and the spawning of countless imitators, Altarage have brilliantly and mercilessly ploughed through the barriers of convention and tradition, setting in motion one of the most revolutionary ruptures in recent death metal history, and redefining the very architecture of heaviness and of their long standing dual mandate of destruction through transformation, and transformation through destruction. "Cogwheel" reinvents this dismal trajectory once again, representing yet another rift in Altarage's enigmatic and oppressive conquest for innovation. Tempos slow down, forms sprawl, deconstruct and convulse. Abstraction and morphing compositional frameworks expand. Echoes of Swans, Sunn O))), Scott Walker and Godflesh accrete into structural elements while lyrical themes and concepts mirror this process of rehumanization, shifting from the supernatural and the imaginary, to real, blood-pumping societal struggle that embodies the very notion of suffering and anger inside the cogwheel of transactional industry slavery. And at the center of all of this, always them: the riffs. The eternal centerpiece and engine to Altarage's tyrannical decade-long conquest. Colossal, implacable, inescapable uranium-depleted hammers of creation and destruction, demolishing and flattening everything in their wake. Conventions and their vestiges, wiped off the earth....

I Will Die In This Jean Jacket

Hang From A Cloud

Swami

I Will Die In This Jean Jacket is a testimony of how the lines between commitment and attachments are often blurred. It is the new gloom-punk project from Jim Blaha (The Blind Shake, Green/Blue). Blaha has collaborated with luminaries including Michael Yonkers, John Reis, Shannon Selberg, Dale Flattum and Zak Sally and has released records on Goner, Castle Face, Dirtnap, Hozac, Feel It, Slovenly and Swami. On Hang From A Cloud he concludes over three years of artistic solitude by heading back into the basement to create in an even deeper state of isolation. Formed in Minneapolis this past December, the late-night sessions gradually revealed a concept: capturing the feeling he had from the mixtapes a friend used to make during their teenage skateboarding years—where late ’70s post punk sat comfortably alongside the more exposed underground sounds of the ’80s and ’90s and every song seemed to come from the same hazy, imaginary city somewhere far, far away.Recording onto a 1/4” tape machine and mixing everything down to the all important cassette, Blaha emerged with an indiffussable sound. Hang From A Cloud is a long-lost pirate radio transmission from an alternate 1980s universe. The album is entirely analog by design. Guitars, vocals, drums, drum machines and bass all captured on cobbled together equipment in a cinder block bunker on a frigid midwest, winter night. There is a one dimensional resonance with a sheen of distortion and rust that is betrayed by the direct and simplistic beauty of the songwriting. Hang...

Swami John Reis

Navajo White

Swami

Navajo White is a color. It’s the color of an off white, interior, house paint. Throughout his teens into adulthood, John Reis was as a house painter by trade. The soiled walls of evacuated apartments was his canvas. Here he would cover up the residue of life’s stains with a fresh coat of the beige, human white-out that is Navajo White. Amongst the vacated, drywall chambers littered with the scant detritus of a fleeing existence is where this record began. It started as road noise, a repetitious hum of a fictional dialogue. A languageless, argument of noise that took shape as a disconnect between two people. They are both barricaded by an impenetrable surface tension that harbors the distortion of their prolonged isolation from the world beyond their self imposed exile. For all that can’t be solved or thrown away here’s a thick coat of Navajo White to cover our tracks as if to say “we were never here and this never happened.” This is the fifth Swami John Reis album and features Jason Kourkounis (Hot Snakes, Delta 72, Night Marchers) on drums as well as contributions from Rick Froberg (Hot Snakes, Drive Like Jehu, Obits) on guitar, Gar Wood (Hot Snakes, Tanner, Night Marchers) on bass, Joe Guevara (Jejune, Swami and the Bed Of Nails) on piano and keyboards and Rob Crow (Pinback, PLOSIVS) and Jacob Turnbloom (Mrs. Magician) on backing vocals. Taking musical cues from later period Wipers, the more low key Saints songs, early recordings of The...

Odyssey Cult, The

Vol. 3

Silver Current

“The Odyssey Cult Volume 3 ignites visceral fires of fuzz, pumped-up motorik, shimmering noise and hazy vocals, just in time to send up the last intoxicating smoke of summer. As for those of us still piecing our skulls back together after the ecstatic ’90s-pummel of Ethan Miller’s previous project (the zonked supergroup of Orcutt Shelley Miller), we forgive ourselves for not anticipating this, a meltdown-psych re-fusion of Ethan and Ben Flashman, two of the principals in Comets On Fire, the premier purveyors of early-aughts American guitar mayhem. “Featuring Ethan Miller (Howlin Rain, Heron Oblivion) on guitar, loops, vocals, Ben Flashman (Comets On Fire) on bass, Steve Shelley (Sonic Youth) on drums, Anthony Taibi (Carlton Melton/White Manna) on keys, Zoh Amba on sax and Brigid Dawson (OSEES), Paula Frazer (Tarnation), Inna Showalter (Magic Fig) on vocals. “Miller and company layer psychedelic murk of the highest order into a neon rock monolith, its components spanning coasts and generations of musicians. Depending what angle you look at it, Volume 3 glitters with facets reflecting all corners of sonic psychedelia, fusing the best of all post-hippy/punk eras, complete with earworms that sound equally great by the pool, on headphones, or blasting in the sled cruising down the 5, the 10, or whatever freeway of your dreams. Whether or not you’ve heard Orcutt Shelley Miller, Comets On Fire, Tarnation, or the OSEES, this LP stands out like a life buoy (or, occasionally, a shark fin) in a sea of wax.” —Tom Carter

Cuticles

More Joy

Siltbreeze

With the breakout enthusiasm for the Cuticles debut LP, 'Major Works' back in 2023, Siltbreeze could hardly wait for a followup, & here it is. Entitled 'More Joy' it more than lives up to its name. The ensuing years have seen some changes however; gone is Lisa Preston (Nux Vomica, The Portage) & in her place has come Albert King (keys 'n git ) + vocalist & poly instrumentalist/whip snapper, Folina Vili. So the names have changed, but the attack is still rapid fire, gnarled pop corkers, 21 this time to be exact. Should you be totally unfamiliar, imagine an enlightened Dunedin Sound on Adderall; the chassis might resemble 80's Doublehappys or Goblin Mix, but that hemi'd combustion is firing straight up Cuticles 2026 horsepower. Warts & all, never looking back, 'More Joy' is roaring straight for thine skull & you could do worse than hop on & enjoy the ride. It's a doozy.

Arnocorps

Big Noodle Energy

Alternative Tentacles

Alternative Tentacles Records is proud to present Big Noodle Energy, the new double A-side from ArnoCorps.There are bands that are funny. There are bands that are heavy. There are bands that build genuine community around a shared, joyful mythology. ArnoCorps has spent 25 years being all three at once—and doing it better than anyone.The premise is this: ArnoCorps are Austrian expat action hero musicians. Their ancient alpine folklore, heroic legends of survival, strength, and defiance, has been brazenly exploited by Hollywood and, as this release makes clear, by Japanese megacorporations. The band exists to reclaim those legends and deliver them the way they were meant to be heard: as Action-Adventure Hardcore Rock 'n' Roll. If those legends happen to bear a striking resemblance to the filmography and commercial work of Arnold Schwarzenegger, that is a matter for the press to foolishly debate.Here's what is not up for debate: ArnoCorps is a real band, with a real catalog, a ferocious live show, and a global audience that has been showing up with face paint, camouflage, and smiles for over two decades. They have earned a perfect 10/10 from the BBC. Kerrang! called them enough to leave Manowar sweating in their loincloths. Metal Hammer said they were the most fun live show you could imagine. Alternative Tentacles does not sign gimmicks. We sign bands.Big Noodle Energy features two new tracks. "Alinamin Bui” is the world’s first song sung entirely in Japanese with a ballsy Austrian accent. It is a driving anthem of...

Dupree, Alex

Talking to the Dog

Scissor Tail Editions

“Hank Williams once said that writing a song is just talking to the dog. That little piece of absurdist wisdom has become a title and guiding principle for Alex Dupree’s latest LP.“What does it mean? Hank was likely just promoting his then-hit single “Move It On Over” to a radio interviewer. But Alex’s answers veer quickly into the mystical and visionary. He is a poet of rare composure and grace, and maybe for the first time in his 20+ year career, he’s found the band, the chords, and the arrangements to inject an almost inconceivable richness of color into his musical ideas.“The result is a legitimate mid-career masterpiece that announces Alex as a talent capable of equaling the brilliance of Cass McCombs, Bill Callahan, Neko Case, Ryan Davis, Joanna Newsom, Will Oldham, and other leaders of modern song.“You can throw a rock at Talking to the Dog and anywhere it lands you will find something inspired and kinetic. “Voyager Blues” channels the blurry but assured ecstasy of Jim Sullivan’s U.F.O.. “New Meaning” has a fucked up, hearty wistfulness to it that lives somewhere between the tender, booze-soaked domesticity of Music from Big Pink and the wiry, cosmic range of Gene Clark’s No Other. And “Zodiac” rides the hallucinatory astral plane that David Crosby blissfully floated on throughout If I Could Only Remember My Name.“You might think I’m crazy to compare a relatively unknown forty-something year old songwriter’s output to some of the greatest guitar-led songwriter records in collective memory. I’m...

Darlynn

Dyke Den

Dark Entries

***Dark Entries is proud to host Darlynn’s debut album, Dyke Den. Darlynn is an Oakland-based duo composed of Daria Lourd (aka Bored Lord) and her wife, vocalist Jaelynn Walls. Dyke Den is a lesbian love story about two creative individuals finding each other and themselves through effusive and contemplative sonic avenues. Created in their home over the course of two years, this album speaks to the journey of Daria and Jaelynn’s romantic relationship as well as their evolving combined creative impulses.On Dyke Den, Darlynn display their influences—from Janet Jackson and Sly & the Family Stone, to Frankie Knuckles and Larry Levan—in a sophisticated, fully realized, and overtly queered fashion. Joyous dancefloor moments are abundant. Tracks like “Make Yr Move” and “Like A Summer” celebrate deep house vibes a la Alleviated Records, while sultry R&B moves are flexed on “Girl 2 Girl” and “Alright With Me.” But longing and yearning exist within this joyous arc, and the question arises: “How can I get you to love me?” More than an idealistic narrative of girl meets they/them, Dyke Den paints a portrait of love in all its multifaceted moments: the bids for commitment, the stagnation of years going by, the wormholes of desire. Yet the album maintains its thesis of hope. The sweet, layered harmonies of closing song “Love Letter” display the power of life partnership: “My whole life is a love letter to you.” Dyke Den features artwork by Hailee Va in a sleeve designed by Eloise Shir-Juen Leigh. Darlynn’s final...

Grandma Love

Grandma Love

Constellation Tatsu

***Setting aside the dread-soaked UK atmosphere of his Karkossyn moniker, Tavis Hitchcock introduces Grandma Love. In stark contrast to his previous work, Grandma Love welcomes listeners home for a warm, hearty stew just before the streetlights come on. Drawing from childhood nostalgia, Cornish summers, and family day trips, Hitchcock pulls the plug on a reservoir of mood and atmosphere that sits somewhere between post-club sofa lounging and early morning coffee mug steam.Following his appearance on Northfield Records' Gilbert Road EP with the track "A2," this self-titled debut album dawns the opening chapter in the Grandma Love story. Filled with field recordings, delicate percussion, washed-out pads, and fragments of home-video VHS recordings, the album opens a time capsule of lost memories, coastal daydreams, and a longing for a time washed far away with the tide.

Sachi's Mirror

Talking in a Different Way

Constellation Tatsu

***Talking in a Different Way is the debut full-length release of sachi’s mirror, the creative alias of multi-instrumentalist, producer, and composer Shaina Pan. Melding disparate elements of ambient, electronic, dream-pop, and avant-garde classical, Pan beckons us into sonic worlds equally enigmatic and emotive.Across a collection of self-produced songs and vignettes that began to take form during a month-long residency in Vallejo, CA in the spring of 2025, she explores a theme of constant and quiet evolution, posing the question: What are we if the world we were born into no longer exists? How do we relate to one another and ourselves? Using field recordings and looped textures as sonic blueprints, she patiently constructs dimly lit, spiraling paths that simultaneously churn inward towards memory and outward towards the cosmos.Pan studied violin performance at Indiana University and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, specializing in contemporary classical music. After nearly two decades of performing in classical ensembles, Pan left the path to becoming a symphony violinist, burnt out and frustrated by a culture of rigidity. She settled in Oakland where she eventually began writing and performing in post-punk quartet Juicebumps.Emboldened by her peers in the Bay Area scene, she found herself shifting towards composition and improvisation, using her violin, voice, and laptop to explore electroacoustic composition. From those efforts emerged room to receive, her 2025 debut EP on Cone Shape Top Imprint. Talking in a Different Way arrives one year later on Constellation Tatsu, a woozy 35-minute spell sparkling with the same...