***A camera zooms in without crowding its subject. A song about someone else's damage helps you understand your own, and puts you on to new mysteries. Stars look like grains of sand. On Little Kid's new album and Orindal Records debut, A Million Easy Payments, the urgency in Kenny Boothby's voice matches the stakes of his lyrics, epic ballads and reveries that come at life from all angles and exposures, driving at and a little over the limits of self-reflection. The band's lilting folk rock arrangements carry Boothby's stories, occasionally lifting them skyward with flurries of cello samples, pedal steel, flute, and electric piano. It's a record of depression and frustration that doesn't stew in piety or aestheticize pain, that also explodes with life. Fragile and abundant. It's a record with blood in its veins. Little Kid is a Toronto-based collaborative project that has existed in some form since 2009, and is currently comprised of Brodie Germain (drums, guitar), Paul Vroom (bass), Megan Lunn (vocals, banjo, keyboard), Liam Cole (drums, percussion), and Kenny Boothby (vocals, guitar, piano, keyboards). A Million Easy Payments, like the three Little Kid releases before it, was tracked, engineered, and mastered by Vroom. Vroom's work renders a portrait of Little Kid's twin musical strengths—as a live act, a straight-ahead folk rock outfit, and as a group of creative, independent producers who want to mess things up. To that end, the record features several guest instruments: Eliza Niemi's cello, Anh Phung's flute, Seth Engel's percussion, Peter Gill's...
LP $20.25
02/23/2024
MC $9.75
02/23/2024
***REISSUED!!! “Never has electronic music sounded warmer or more human than Casiotone for the Painfully Alone. Owen Ashworth uses equipment that could be considered antique (SK-1 or MT-100 models of Casio keyboards) to provide a humming, squeaking, buzzing backdrop for his tales of pained love.” "That was taken from the 2003 press release for Twinkle Echo, the third album I made under the name Casiotone for the Painfully Alone. Originally released on German electronic label Tomlab Records, Twinkle Echo has been out of print for nearly a decade, slowly building a cult audience from a new generation of DIY & indie music enthusiasts, thanks in large part to the album’s availability on streaming services. I’d previously reissued vinyl editions of two later Casiotone for the Painfully Alone albums (2006’s Etiquette & 2009’s Vs. Children) on my own label, Orindal Records, but I had some hesitation about reissuing Twinkle Echo, partially because its hyper, overdriven sound felt so far removed from the music I make now with Advance Base, & partially because this music came from a difficult period of my life that I just didn’t care to revisit. I’ve finally come around to the idea, thanks to the encouragement of some old friends & new listeners. Twinkle Echo is a rawer & more lo-fi affair than the later Casiotone releases, with its fourteen brief, abrasive electronic pop tunes performed almost exclusively on the cheap, battery-powered synthesizers that gave the project its name. The new vinyl edition of Twinkle Echo...
LP $18.50
08/16/2024
LP COLOR $20.35
08/16/2024
***In 2021, Moontype released their debut LP Bodies of Water. A brand new Chicago band on a small independent label (Born Yesterday), the record made an outsized impact, capturing the attention of outlets like The New York Times, NPR, Stereogum and Pitchfork on the strength of the clear-eyed songwriting of the band's singer/bassist Margaret McCarthy, and the band's gauzy, math-y and full-hearted indie rock. In the years since the band have toured extensively and remained active in their hometown, sharing stages with artists like Frankie Cosmos, Pile, NNAMDÏ, Remember Sports and Finom.Following the 2021 release of Bodies of Water, the band underwent a recharging period of major and minor transformations. During that time, the band’s lineup grew with the additions of Patter’s Joe Suihkonen, whose other band the Deals has featured collaborations from McCarthy and Moontype drummer Emerson Hunton, and Andrew Clinkman of Spirits Having Fun.Moontype's mighty sophomore LP, I Let The Wind Push Down On Me was produced by Katie Von Schleicher and Nate Mendelsohn, and serves as a reinvention for the band—not just for their new and expanded lineup—but for how McCarthy navigates the changes in her own life and the messy feelings she sings about. It's a patient document of feeling things out, being easy on yourself, and finding the beauty in small moments.
LP $20.50
05/23/2025
***Beyond the Break, the second full-length album by Kristin Daelyn, is a statement of rare tranquility and wisdom, atmosphere and grace. In these eight compositions, the Philadelphia songwriter takes influence from solo guitarists like Leo Kottke and John Fahey as well as writers like Mary Oliver, whose poem “Patience” inspired the early single “Patience Comes to the Bones.” Through instrumental pieces that highlight her virtuosity as a player and elegant folk songs that showcase her gifts for tender pop melodies and emotionally incisive lyrics, Daelyn’s voice feels both urgent and timeless. Like a well-loved paperback passed between friends, her songs are open to reflection and personal annotation, designed to be of use. Recorded from the intimacy of her home studio with assistance from co-producer Jason Cupp, Daelyn’s elegant & virtuosic fingerstyle acoustic guitar & vocal performances are accompanied on several tracks by Dan Knishkowy of Adeline Hotel & Danny Black of Good Old War. Patrick Riley also contributed string arrangements to four tracks, including the album’s lead single, "Patience Comes to the Bones.” “Philadelphia indie folk artist + fingerstyle guitarist Kristin Daelyn is rooted in the comfort and simplicity of folk while weaving intricate guitar with poetic, intimate storytelling to create a tender world of melancholy and warmth.”—NPR
CD $10.00
02/28/2025
LP $18.85
02/28/2025
***Something About Living is an album of live recordings by experimental jazz composer/multi-instrumentalist Robert Stillman. The music was captured over the course of Stillman’s time as the solo support act for The Smile (Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood, Tom Skinner). The album weaves excerpts from various theater and arena shows along the tour’s North American routing into a seamless whole, creating a 40-minute program that represents an expanded version of Stillman’s ever-transforming live set. Something About Living is the product of a steady, on-stage evolution that happened over the course of the nearly 60 shows opening for the Smile across the EU, UK, US, Canada and Mexico. However, the creative origins of the set began in relative isolation during the pandemic, through Stillman’s work on projects like his multi-media installation Unseen Forces and his monthly broadcast for Margate Radio, both of which drew upon solo improvisation using saxophone, cassettes, Yamaha DX7 synthesizer, and effects.
LP $18.50
10/25/2024
***REISSUED!!! "Wednesday owes so much to our musical influences. The music we love is a big part of what brought us together. My bandmates Margo and Xandy both had infamous Asheville house show venues, Jake was in like a billion different bands which often played in their muggy basements and Alan was usually the one who brought the PA. Our immersion in music predated us trying to make songs together ourselves. Our common interests in noisey ‘90s guitars, good lyrics, and country music was quickly what permeated into our voice as a band. Most decisions in our songs are made by an amalgamation of all five of our inputs, which happens pretty naturally because of this thread of influences that ties us together. So when we got an opportunity for some recording time with Alli Rogers at Betty’s studio in Durham, NC we decided to record covers, and hopefully repay in part the huge debt we are in to the artists who contributed so much to the music we write ourselves. When I was thinking if there was anything that these songs have in common, the main thing I found recurring was the combination of sadness and humor. It’s effective as hell to combine the two emotions, making each other more intense by the contrast..."—Karly Hartzman. Features songs by Gary Stewart, Chris Bell, Roger Miller, Drive By Truckers, Hotline TNT, Greg Sage, Vic Chesnutt, Medicine, and Smashing Pumpkins. Originally released in 2022 as a merch and mailorder item. Pressed on...
LP $20.35
10/04/2024
***Hot on the heels of the singles and rarities compilation Advance Base Battery Life comes Vs. Children, the fifth album proper by CASIOTONE FOR THE PAINFULLY ALONE. Vs. Children continues the trajectory of 2006's Etiquette, which showed singer/songwriter OWEN ASHWORTH straying from the strictly electronic instrumentation of his earlier recordings.
LP $18.50
08/16/2024
***The fourth album from CFTPA expands Owen Ashworth’s color palette to include a small orchestra of pianos, organs, strings, flutes, pedal steel guitars, drums, drum machines, and synths. His strongest and most cohesive work to date. Features musical and production aid from DEAD SCIENCE, DEAR NORA, PAPERCUTS, and DEGENERATE ART ENSEMBLE.
LP $18.50
08/16/2024
***The Cool Cloud of Okayness was written amidst the skirmishes and shuffle of the seven years since her last song based album (although there has been a fascinating array of collaborations, tributes, rarities, and experiments released in the interim). Recorded by TJO at her home studio in Upper Ojai, California, a studio built on the ashes of the home lost to the Thomas Fire. Many of The Cool Cloud of Okayness’s nine tracks were developed in the time between the wildfire and the rebuilding, between lockdown and reopening. TJO, her partner (dancer, choreographer and frequent collaborator) Jmy James Kidd and their dog sheltered from the storms in the high desert of Southern California and the deep suburbs of Louisville, KY. In these locales were discovered the improvised bass guitar figures to Kidd’s dance which transformed into songs during pandemic isolation, then brought to the ensemble of drummer/percussionist Sheridan Riley (of Alvvays), multi-instrumentalist Walt McClements, and on a couple, guitarist Meg Duffy (of Hand Habits & Duffy x Uhlmann). They build and gleefully destroy and rebuild again. There is joy in the ensemble’s shared queer identity- an identity that refuses to be agreed upon. This record too challenges any easy genre or definition. This record is sculpture and portrait of times and loved ones gone past. It is spiritual and it is psychedelic. TJO’s deft production and rock-solid bass playing hold the center, and her spectral guitar and singing voice carry the message.
LP $20.35
04/26/2024
***Twenty-eight years into her kaleidoscopic discography, Songs for Peacock is the first album singer/guitarist/composer Tara Jane O’Neil has credited to just her initials: TJO. Recorded at home using primitive electronic instruments in addition to heavily effected electric guitar, bass & voice, Songs for Peacock is a collection of pop covers recalled from TJO’s youth, intended as a “mixtape” for her late brother Brian. Over twelve tracks & thirty-nine minutes, Songs for Peacock abstracts radio hits by the likes of Boy George, Bananarama, Leonard Cohen, Siouxsie and the Banshees & INXS, distilling earworms into thin wisps of dreamlike atmosphere, or stretching them into languorous psychedelic soundscapes. Songs for Peacock warps our collective musical memory to form a singular & cohesive body of work that defines TJO’s highly personal sonic landscape.
LP $21.95
11/03/2023
***Mia Gargaret is an ambient, (mostly) instrumental album by Chicago, IL singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist & producer Gia Margaret. Mia Gargaret was not the follow-up album that Gia intended to release after the critical success of her 2018 debut, There’s Always Glimmer. But after she suddenly found herself without use of her primary instrument, she had to rethink her methods, at least temporarily. Gia explains: “After having to cancel tours because of illness, I was unable to sing for nearly half of the year. This left me feeling like a shell of myself, so I turned to my synthesizer for comfort. These compositions helped me hold onto my identity as a music maker. At times this music helped soothe my anxiety more than therapy or anything else could.” Without singing or lyrics to steal the focus, the instrumental tracks on Mia Gargaret shine a light on Gia Margaret’s skills as a musician, composer & producer. Spare but immersive arrangements of synthesizer, piano & acoustic guitar simultaneously ache & soothe, building emotional landscapes that rise & recede like scenery through a train window. “I wanted to make something that sounded hopeful, which is a little ironic because I felt essentially hopeless during the entire process. I was making music to self-soothe. I had synth loops going while I walked around my apartment, forming my own daily soundtrack.”
LP $23.50
11/03/2023
***Ruth Garbus’s Alive People is a studio album full of underground anthems for sensitive people of all ages that happened to be recorded in a club with an audience of a hundred. In between the compositions are interstitial improvisations that happened on stage during the performance. These are not presented in sequence. It’s not a lesser copy of a moving experience. It’s an echoing recreation, traveling- out photons bent thru and into a pastel rainbow. Ruth was joined on stage at different points by collaborators: elie mcafee-hahn on synth and bass, Julie Bodian on atypical guitars, Julia Tadlock on voice and presence. Nick Bisceglia engineered, with Ruth’s two vocal mics taped together, the room split to its mid and sides, the pop filter a matte circle in front of the shimmering curtain.
LP $23.50
11/03/2023
***Blurring the limits between speed and slowness, Meg Duffy (guitar) and Greg Uhlmann (guitar) communicate in velocities, underwriting each other’s peaks and flurries as they ache toward a mutual horizon. These one-take improvisations, recorded in Uhlmann’s brothers’ house on a borrowed tape recorder, unfold like a game of truth or dare. Their constant motif is an unceasing return, a steady heartbeat they mutually commit to, knowing when one wanders off, the other will either follow or call them home. Here, flushness overrides order, each note saunters by like initials etched into tree bark: a devotion both passing and eternal. After playing in Perfume Genius and Hand Habits, Duffy and Uhlmann embarked on their first record together, Doubles. A testament to the wordlessness of their musical intimacy, Duffy and Uhlmann take up the guitar in order to make an imprint of the slowness and presence of their improvisational practice. They weave together a sonic meditation, embracing intuition and relying on trust. Side A of Doubles consists of two guitars in conversation: looping feelings, braiding sound, blowing kisses, and finishing each other’s sentences. Less of an echo and more of nod, the songs unfold in radical, mutual witnessing. Refraining from any over dubs or edits on the final tracks, the immediacy of the compositions makes it feel like we are in the room with them.
LP $23.50
11/03/2023
***Rooms With Walls and Windows is the first album by singer, songwriter and guitarist Julie Byrne. Blending psychedelic and traditional folk elements, Julie Byrne creates a highly personal and quietly mystical world that echoes the early work of Leonard Cohen and Vashti Bunyan. Rooms With Walls and Windows' twelve tracks were collected from two limited edition cassette releases, recorded between 2011 and 2012 by Jake Acosta in Chicago, IL. Each song was recorded live, with Julie accompanying herself on fingerpicked acoustic guitar or keyboard. Rooms With Walls and Windows was lovingly remastered for vinyl by Owen Ashworth and Matthew Barnhart.
LP $18.50
11/03/2023