After the deluge last week, this is a nice reprieve from new arrivals. Plus, we’ve been getting some pretty great used stuff lately. Old original blues records and 80s thrash metal. Who could ask for anything more!?
Also, come on down to 124th Street tonight for Shop Culture, a fun little night to check out all the shops along 124th Street and maybe win some prizes!
…..pick of the week…..
Shooting Guns: Barnburner (Riding Easy) 7″
New vinyl from our Saskatoon buds! The EP’s tracks are culled from Shooting Guns’ soundtrack to the acclaimed horror-comedy film Wolfcop, which has taken in $30 million since its release in 2014. Wolfcop was the Netflix ‘Movie of the Week’ in April 2015. Hailing from Saskatoon, SK, in the heart of the Canadian prairies, JUNO and Polaris Prize award nominees Shooting Guns are hard at work fortifying the heavy end of the psychedelic spectrum, haunting the foggy moor between Sabbath-styled doom riffery and heavy pulse-riding kraut-rock. Shooting Guns scored the soundtrack to Canadian horror-comedy WolfCop and released the official soundtrack in 2014 in partnership with One Way Static, RidingEasy Records, and Cinecoup. Their sophomore LP, Brotherhood of the Ram, released in 2013 through RidingEasy Records was nominated for the 2015 JUNO Metal/Hard Album of the Year as well as the Polaris Music Prize. Their debut LP, Born To Deal in Magic: 1952-1976, was also nominated for the Polaris Music Prize in 2012.
File Under: Metal, Instrumental, Stoner, CanCon
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…..new arrivals…..
Dead Meadow: Howls From The Hills (Xemu) LP
Howls From The Hills was the second album from the Washington psychedelic/ stoner outfit and was originally released in 2001 on the Tolotta Records label run by Fugazi’s Jo Lally. Re-issued on CD on the bands Xemu Records label in 2007 the label now make it available on vinyl for the first time . Pressed on 140G vinyl, this initial pressing will be on orange and white swirl vinyl.
File Under: Indie, Psych, Stoner
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Four Tet: Morning/Evening (Text) LP
After releasing a surprise album under his Percussions moniker earlier this year, DJ/producer Kieran Hebden is re-activating his other project, Four Tet, for a new LP. The follow-up to 2013’s Beautiful Rewind is entitled Morning/Evening and will arrive in early July through Hebden’s own Text Records. As Hebden revealed over a series of tweets, the album is made up of just two songs: the 20-minute, 24-second long “Morning Side”, and the 19-minute, 53-second long “Evening Side”.
File Under: Electronic, Ambient, Techno
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Heartless Bastards: Restless Ones (Partisan) LP
Heartless Bastards have spent the past decade in motion, boldly pushing their unique brand of rock ‘n’ roll into new shapes over four acclaimed albums and nearly non-stop roadwork. Now, with Restless Ones, the band sets out once again, blazing a path to a place of shifting moods, seasoned songcraft, and unbridled spontaneity. Heartless Bastards’ fifth studio recording and follow-up to 2012’s breakthrough Arrow, the album finds singer/songwriter Erika Wennerstrom exploring as-yet-unvisited avenues of sound and sensation, her bravery and ambition readily apparent in the emotional timbre and the sheer physicality of her songs.
File Under: Rock
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Rush: Moving Pictures (Mercury) LP
In 2014 UMe/Mercury reissued Rush’s self-titled debut on heavy-weight vinyl in celebration of the album’s 40th anniversary. Now in 2015, let the Rush 40 celebration continue with ’12 Months of Rush’ reissues – in chronological order – starting with 1975’s Fly By Night on LP. During the ’12 Months of Rush’ campaign all 14 of the band’s Mercury albums will be remastered on 200-gram heavy-weight vinyl at legendary Abbey Road, all from original analogue masters. All LPs will also include a digital download code for a 320kbps MP4 vinyl ripped Digital Audio album download. Rush’s complex songwriting and musical virtuosity reached new heights on eighth studio album, Moving Pictures (1981) and it became the band’s biggest selling album in the U.S., rising to #3 on the Billboard charts. It remains Rush’s most popular and commercially successful studio recording. Moving Pictures followed a more radio-friendly format and includes several signature tracks, including “Tom Sawyer,” “Limelight,” “Red Barchetta,” and the band’s highly praised instrumental, “YYZ,” which is the IATA airport identification code of Toronto Pearson International Airport. The album cover is a monument to triple entendre. Movers are physically moving pictures, people are crying because the pictures passing by are emotionally “moving,” and the back cover depicts a film crew making a “moving picture” of the whole scene.
File Under: Rock, CanCon
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Tame Impala: Currents (Modular) LP
Restocked with plenty of copies! Much has changed since Tame Impala first emerged with an EP of dusty home recordings in 2008. By and large Kevin Parker’s approach to recording has not, though the sound coming out of his home studio has vastly expanded, as has the number of people anticipating the fruits of his labor. Tame Impala’s third album is titled Currents, and on it Parker addresses a blindingly colorful panorama of transition in the most audacious, adventurous fashion he’s yet to capture on record. Dense with heady lyrical introspection, musically the most playful, bold and varied Tame Impala record to date, Currents is Parker putting down his weapons and embracing change as the only constant – sonically, thematically, and personally. Musically, Currents sounds like the work of a player on top of his game and having a blast, Parker indulging his whims and unafraid to dive down the rabbit hole after an idea. Again operating as a one man studio band, Parker’s resultant record calls to mind contemporary hip hop production, Thriller, fried ’70s funk, the irreverent playground Daft Punk presented on Discovery, swathes of future pop and emotional ’80s balladry, all filtered through a thoroughly modern psychedelic third eye. A genre-bending soundscape fueled equally by curiosity as it is consciousness, it’s exhilarating new territory for Tame Impala. Lyrically the record finds Parker in a very different place in 2015 to where he was seven years ago. Transitions in life, relationships, perspectives, mindsets – Currents maps Parker’s evolution through these and finds him a brand new person. In parts of both 2010’s Innerspeaker and 2012’s Lonerism Tame Impala sounded like a guy on the outer wanting in, now that he’s found himself on the inside Parker’s turned the spotlight in on himself. Stopping to reflect on the road behind, where he finds himself currently, and the road ahead, Currents spans a tumultuous time. The first track from the record to be unveiled, “Let It Happen,” is a perfectly encapsulating preview of what lies ahead. Coming in just short of eight minutes, “Let It Happen” traverses a swag of sonic terrain in its duration. The drums and Parker’s vocal introduction lull the listener with a sense of familiarity, until it all sweeps up into a cosmos once populated only by French robots, with insistent melody, broken machine loops, synthetic orchestration, surfing vocoder and a shredding guitar outro. Typically, initial Tame Impala recordings saw Parker’s vocal hidden beneath a layer of psychedelic fuzz, drenched in reverb, lyrics ambiguous. Currents finds his voice front and center, so no bones are made about his intent. Sketched out in planes, cars, hotels and homes since the completion of Lonerism in 2012, pieced together over the later part of 2014 and early 2015 at home in Fremantle, Western Australia, Currents was written, performed, recorded, produced and mixed by Kevin Parker. Tame Impala presents Currents, a soundtrack to life’s turbulent flow.
File Under: Rock
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Titus Andronicus: The Most Lamentable Tragedy (Merge) 3LP
The Most Lamentable Tragedy is the fourth studio album by Titus Andronicus and the band’s debut for Merge Records. A rock opera in five acts, it will see its release in July 2015 on triple LP. The central narrative of TMLT (“a work of fiction,” claims singer/songwriter Patrick Stickles) concerns an unnamed protagonist whom we meet in deep despair. Following an encounter with his own doppelganger (an enigmatic stranger, identical in appearance though opposite in disposition), long held secrets are revealed, sending our protagonist on a transformative odyssey, through past lives and new loves, to the shocking revelation that the very thing that sustains him may be the thing to destroy him. TMLT was produced by frequent collaborator Kevin McMahon and Titus Andronicus guitarist Adam Reich. The core band is rounded out by the long-standing rhythm section of Eric Harm (drums) and Julian Veronesi (bass) plus rookie guitarist Jonah Maurer. Joining in throughout are pianist Elio DeLuca and violinist Owen Pallett, beside a cast of guests representing some of New York’s most exciting bands (The So So Glos, Baked, Bad Credit No Credit, Lost Boy?, etc.). TMLT is both the crown jewel of the band’s discography and the legend that contextualizes their entire body of work. It reveals that Titus Andronicus are what hardcore fans have said they are for years, and what the world must now recognize them to be: not merely the greatest rock and roll band of this era, but one of the greatest rock and roll bands of all time.
File Under: Rock, Indie, Rock Opera
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Various: Rastafari: The Dreads Enter Babylon 1955-83 (Soul Jazz) LP
Soul Jazz Records new album Rastafari: The Dreads Enter Babylon 1955-83 charts the many links between reggae music and the Rastafarian religion. Spanning nearly 30 years of revolutionary music and featuring the music of Count Ossie, Johnny Clarke, The Mystic Revelation of Rastafari, Ras Michael and The Sons of Negus, Bongo Herman, Roy Ashanti (The Congos), Earth & Stone, Mutabaruka and many more, this is an in-depth look at some of the most unique and righteous music ever made and comes complete with a 40+ page outsize booklet, containing exclusive photography and extensive historical and contextual sleeve notes. The new religion of Rastafari emerged in Jamaica during a time of intense political and social change in the 1930s. The first stirrings of anti-colonialism and workers’ rights were in motion, while Marcus Garvey’s Back-to-Africa movement was beginning to wane. But the pivotal catalyst to the birth of the Rastafari faith was the crowning of a black king in Africa in 1930. One of the earliest mentions of Ethiopia in Jamaican music can be found on mento singer Lord Lebby and the Jamaican Calpysonians’ 1955 recording ‘Etheopia’. In the song Noel Williams, aka Lord Lebby, discusses Ethiopianism, the political movement that calls for a return to Africa for black people. The 1960s saw the emergence of the first Rastafarian music on record with Count Ossie’s Rastafarian drummers. The visit of Haile Selassie to Kingston in 1966 was like an electric current throughout Kingston’s music scene – many of who had become adherents to the Rastafari faith. By the 1970s Rastafarianism become practically synonymous with reggae, as many roots reggae artists became known throughout the world, led by the success of Bob Marley and The Wailers. At the source of the music of Rastafari is the figurehead master drummer and leader Count Ossie, who first bought the deeply spiritual nyabinghi and burro rhythms heard and played at sacred Rastafarian grounation (reasoning) sessions into popular Jamaican music through his many collaborations and performances with artists – from The Skatalites to The Folks Brothers – and producers – including Clement Dodd, Prince Buster and Harry Mudie. At the start of the 1970s Count Ossie formed the Mystic Revelation of Rastafari with saxophonist Cedric Brooks, which immediately became the most significant group of the Rastafari faith, bringing together authentic rasta nyabinghi drumming together with spiritual and avant-garde jazz influences of Sun Ra, John Coltrane and Albert Ayler into a truly unique and groundbreaking sound. As ‘roots reggae’ artists in the 1970s continued to spread the word of Jah (God) in their music, Rastafari reggae became the ultimate rebel sound throughout the world.
File Under: Reggae
…..restocks…..
Ryan Adams: Live at Carnegie Hall (Blue Note) Box
Arcade Fire: Funeral (Merge) LP
Arcade Fire: Neon Bible (Merge) LP
Arcade Fire: Suburbs (Merge) LP
Dr. Dre: Cronic 2001 (Interscope) LP
Dr. Dre: Cronic (Death Row) LP
Drive Like Jehu: s/t (Hedhunter) LP
Earth: Hex (Southern Lord) LP
Earth: Primitive and Deadly (Southern Lord) LP
Flying Lotus: You’re Dead! (Warp) LP
Fu Manchu: King of the Road (At The Dojo) LP
Grizzly Bear: Shields (Warp) LP
Grizzly Bear: Veckatimest (Warp) LP
Grizzly Bear: Yellow House (Warp) LP
Have A Nice Life: Unnatural World (Flenser) LP
Daniel Johnston: Hi How Are You (Eternal Yip) LP
Love: Forever Changes (Rhino) LP
Ministry: Twitch (Music on Vinyl) LP
Ministry: Land of Rape & Honey (Music on Vinyl) LP
Monolord: Vaenir (Riding Easy) LP
Nirvana: Unplugged in New York (Geffen) LP
Of Monsters & Men: Beneath The Skin (Republic) LP
Portishead: PNYC: Live (Go Beat) LP
Portishead: s/t (Go Beat) LP
Red Hot Chili Peppers: Blood Sugar Sex Magik (Warner Bros) LP
Shannon & The Clams: Sleep Talk (1-2-3-4 Go!) LP
Tragically Hip: Road Apples (Music on Vinyl) LP
Tragically Hip: Up To Here (Music on Vinyl) LP
Ween: Chocolate & Cheese (Plain) LP
Ween: 12 Golden Country Greats (Plain) LP
Ween: The Mollusk (Plain) LP