Ah, Spring, sweet Spring. The sun is shining. Rain clouds are looming. Kids are playing soccer. People are selling their records. We’ve been getting flooded with used records the last few weeks. Also sorts of stuff, classic rock, indie rock, UK rarities. You name it! And there’s some great new stuff too! All in all a really great week to be buying records. Come stroll through for a dig.
Also, a couple of real nice chaps who also happen to work here are playing a show and releasing some new tunes on May 27th at our friend’s barber shop. So, if you’d like to see Slates, Switches, and Tee Tahs at Barber Ha, you’re gonna need a ticket, and we’ve got em. $15, cash only. Get em while you can.
…..pick of the week…..
Deathprod: Morals & Dogma
(Smalltown Supersound) LP
YES! This album is like, the bleakest, darkest, saddest ambient album. Super hyped for this to finally be released on vinyl, just in time for a beautiful May long weekend. Based in Oslo, Norway, composer Helge Sten has been crafting this music since the early ’90s, a deeply atmospheric, grainy minimalism that slows time down and explores the very particles of sound itself. The Deathprod concept arose in 1991 when Sten realized his complex array of homemade electronics, samplers, sound processing and analogue effects—cumulatively known as the “Audio Virus”—could add a musical dimension above and beyond the merely technical. Almost obsolete samplers and playback devices distort and transform sounds into unrecognizable mutations of their former selves. The virus breeds layers of complex and overlapping sonic debris, creating a kind of cellular composition. Sten is a founder member of Norwegian improvising group Supersilent and has produced records by Motorpsycho, Susanna, Jenny Hval, Arve Henriksen and others. In 1998, alongside Biosphere, he electronically transformed the music of Norway’s leading contemporary composer, Arne Nordheim. More recently he composed music for Harry Partch’s legendary invented instruments for the Cologne based Ensemble Musikfabrik. Now the core trilogy of Deathprod albums are released for the first time on vinyl. Cut to vinyl by Rashad Becker at Dubplates and Mastering in Berlin, they form Deathprod’s complete official canon. HIGHEST RECOMMENDATION!
File Under: Dark Ambient, Supersilent
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…..new arrivals…..
Actress: AZD (Ninja Tune) LP
Actress, real name Darren Jordan Cunningham, known to friends as Daz, returns with a new album, now on Ninja Tune and a new music system called AZD (pronounced “Azid”), a chrome aspect journey into a parallel world. An artist who has always preferred to make music than to talk about it, in AZD he has achieved another remarkable landmark, one which is as resistant to interpretation as it is demanding of it. The album is themed around chrome – both as a reflective surface to see the self in, and as something that carves luminous voids out of any color and fine focuses white and black representing the perfect metaphor for the bleakness of life in the Metropolis as suggested by Anish Kapoor’s Cloud Gate. Take lead single, “X22RME” (pronounced “Extreme”) which elegantly plays between the lines of Oriental classic rave and Balinese warehouse Techno machined in a Rotherhithe lock up welding the grooves into a seamless cracked joint. At the other end of the spectrum is “Faure in Chrome,” a byproduct or development from his collaboration with the London Contemporary Orchestra, in which he “repatterns” aspect of Faure’s Requiem into a piece which sounds like the very institution of classical music being encased in electronic ice and scanned through a high frequency bandwidth. In between are gems like “Runner,” a personal re-soundtracking of Blade Runner ” and “Falling Rizlas,” an alienated music-box ballad. It’s a remarkable piece of work, that harks back both to Actress’ previous productions and to earlier iterations of the (broadly conceived) “techno” project without being beholden to anything but Cunningham’s forward-facing, individual and disembodied vision.
File Under: Elecrtonic, Techno
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Childish Gambino: Awaken, My Love! (Glassnote) LP
In tomorrow… Awaken, My Love! is the third album from entertainer extraordinaire Childish Gambino aka Donald Glover and first since 2013. As Childish Gambino once again sheds his skin, Awaken, My Love! is a sonic evolution. It has been described as R&B meets Pink Floyd, and an amalgam of rock, funk, and soul influences. It is the groundbreaking next step from the multi-talented artist following the genre blending STN MTN / Kauai mixtape and the twice-Grammy nominated rap album, Because The Internet. Features: • 2 x heavyweight 45 RPM LP box set • Exclusive booklet • Virtual reality headset • Glow in the dark cover • Instructions to access exclusive virtual reality live performances from the PHAROS Experience
File Under: R&B, Psych
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Cindy Lee: Malenkost (w.25) LP
In tomorrow… Cindy Lee is the brainchild of singer/guitarist Patrick Flegel. While some may know Flegel from his time spent in Canadian experimental indie band Women, Cindy Lee has spent the past four years crafting songs that push and pull in opposing directions – from tales of tragedy laced with haywire distortion to moments of breathtaking beauty. On Malenkost, Flegel combines everything that makes Cindy Lee so essential: heart-wrenching romantic pleas, rough shards of noise and twilit ballads. Featuring the lo-fi pop single “A Message From The Aching Sky,” Malenkost sounds like Deerhunter playing The Supremes or vice versa. Superior Viaduct’s imprint W.25TH presents the first of many Cindy Lee releases. Spectral and timeless, the music of Cindy Lee is hauntingly familiar yet of another plane, a magical collision of Brill Building hooks and uncompromising No Wave. “Cindy Lee is intensely dark and cathartic, an eerie fever dream of fleeting, utterly heartbreaking classic girl-group melodies … one of the best things we have heard all year.” —Gorilla Vs. Bear
File Under: Indie Rock, Psych, Women, Lo Fi
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Alice & John Coltrane: Cosmic Music (Superior Viaduct) LP
In tomorrow… John Coltrane transformed the inner architecture of jazz, throughout the mid-1950s and 1960s and long after his premature death at age 40 in 1967. No other American musician could be said to be at the spiritual center of the ‘60s musical universe as Trane influenced Albert Ayler, La Monte Young, Jimi Hendrix and everybody in between. Cosmic Music, originally self-released by Alice Coltrane in 1968 and later issued by Impulse!, features two tracks (“Manifestation” and “Rev. King”) by John Coltrane’s legendary final quintet that were recorded in San Francisco on February 2nd, 1966 and two more (“Lord Help Me To Be” and “The Sun”) from Alice Coltrane’s very first session as a bandleader, recorded six months after her husband’s passing. “Manifestation” opens with the group already in mid-flight: Trane’s fierce tenor leads the way with Pharoah Sanders’ blistering sax and Alice’s powerful chords hearing his call. On “Rev. King,” Trane introduces a lyrical theme and then the composition erupts into fiery incantations, while Jimmy Garrison’s bass throbs alongside the propulsive, gravity-defying drumming of Rashied Ali. Foreshadowing her majestic debut, A Monastic Trio, “Lord Help Me To Be” brings Alice’s celestial piano playing and inspired improvisations to the foreground with Sanders, Garrison and drummer Ben Riley rumbling in tow. “The Sun,” a meditative ballad with subtle urgency, perfectly closes the album’s contemplative circle. As John Coltrane recites on the final track, “May there be peace and love and perfection throughout all creation.”
File Under: Jazz
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Deathprod: Treetop Drive (Smalltown Supersound) LP
Based in Oslo, Norway, composer Helge Sten has been crafting this music since the early ’90s, a deeply atmospheric, grainy minimalism that slows time down and explores the very particles of sound itself. The Deathprod concept arose in 1991 when Sten realized his complex array of homemade electronics, samplers, sound processing and analogue effects—cumulatively known as the “Audio Virus”—could add a musical dimension above and beyond the merely technical. Almost obsolete samplers and playback devices distort and transform sounds into unrecognizable mutations of their former selves. The virus breeds layers of complex and overlapping sonic debris, creating a kind of cellular composition. Sten is a founder member of Norwegian improvising group Supersilent and has produced records by Motorpsycho, Susanna, Jenny Hval, Arve Henriksen and others. In 1998, alongside Biosphere, he electronically transformed the music of Norway’s leading contemporary composer, Arne Nordheim. More recently he composed music for Harry Partch’s legendary invented instruments for the Cologne based Ensemble Musikfabrik. Now the core trilogy of Deathprod albums are released for the first time on vinyl. Cut to vinyl by Rashad Becker at Dubplates and Mastering in Berlin, they form Deathprod’s complete official canon.
File Under: Dark Ambient
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Deathprod: Imaginary Songs From Tristan Da Cunha (Smalltown Supersound) LP
Based in Oslo, Norway, composer Helge Sten has been crafting this music since the early ’90s, a deeply atmospheric, grainy minimalism that slows time down and explores the very particles of sound itself. The Deathprod concept arose in 1991 when Sten realized his complex array of homemade electronics, samplers, sound processing and analogue effects—cumulatively known as the “Audio Virus”—could add a musical dimension above and beyond the merely technical. Almost obsolete samplers and playback devices distort and transform sounds into unrecognizable mutations of their former selves. The virus breeds layers of complex and overlapping sonic debris, creating a kind of cellular composition. Sten is a founder member of Norwegian improvising group Supersilent and has produced records by Motorpsycho, Susanna, Jenny Hval, Arve Henriksen and others. In 1998, alongside Biosphere, he electronically transformed the music of Norway’s leading contemporary composer, Arne Nordheim. More recently he composed music for Harry Partch’s legendary invented instruments for the Cologne based Ensemble Musikfabrik. Now the core trilogy of Deathprod albums are released for the first time on vinyl. Cut to vinyl by Rashad Becker at Dubplates and Mastering in Berlin, they form Deathprod’s complete official canon.
File Under: Dark Ambient
Do Make Say Think: Stubborn Persistent Illusions (Constellation) LP
Do Make Say Think has been widely celebrated as one of the preeminent instrumental rock bands of the 90s-00s. Stubborn Persistent Illusions is the group’s first album in eight years – and a brilliant addition to one of the most consistently inventive and critically praised discographies in the ‘post-rock’ canon. They have a well-earned reputation for imbuing their instrumental music with soulful and emotive narrative power that doesn’t rely on obvious tropes or bombastic dynamics. Among the band’s special strengths is an ineffable naturalism that avoids anything too woolly, proggy, purist or clichéd, while remaining a fundamentally guitar-driven group whose ornate four- and six-string interplay balances rockism, pastoralism and electronic-influenced post production in a class of its own. Stubborn Persistent Illusions is built from this distinctive toolkit, at once familiar and as fresh as anything DMST has committed to tape. A short Bhuddist poem about boundlessness and recurrence informs this profoundly imagistic listening experience, amplified by the beautiful commissioned paintings of the deluxe gatefold album art. Stubborn Persistent Illusions testifies to the idea that an honest conviction in the communicative power of cerebral instrumental rock need not imply pretension, escapism, faux naiveté or nostalgia. Do Make Say Think enter their third decade with a new album that helps reaffirm the promise of genuinely emotive, narrative, restorative and life-affirming instrumental rock music – and will surely rank among their best.
File Under: Post Rock, Instrumental
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Arnold Dreyblatt: Propellers in Love (Superior Viaduct) LP
In tomorrow… Arnold Dreyblatt has been called “the most rock ‘n’ roll of all the composers to emerge from New York’s downtown scene in the 1970s.” Dreyblatt founded The Orchestra Of Excited Strings in 1979, harnessing unusual tuning intervals to an exuberant performance style. Propellers In Love, the Orchestra’s second album – originally released in 1986 on the Stasch imprint, in conjunction with the contemporary art space Künstlerhaus Bethanien – develops Dreyblatt’s rhythmically exacting exploration of the glittering resonances and overtones generated by an ensemble of uniquely-altered stringed instruments and drums. On Propellers In Love, simple song titles – “Odd & Even,” “Harmonics,” “Bowing” – belie intricate harmonic structures. Dreyblatt’s modified instruments – a contrabass and miniature piano fitted with piano wire along with violin, all tuned in just intonation – undergo the Orchestra’s rapid, staccato attacks. Sparkling timbres dance above interlocking rhythmic patterns moored by sparse yet propulsive percussion (“Pedal Tone Dance” and the title track). Throughout, the Orchestra’s perpetual motion achieves a tremulous and exquisite density. Thirty years since its initial release, Propellers In Love remains a peerless work of second-generation American minimalism. This first-time domestic release is recommended for fans of Glenn Branca, Ellen Fullman and Charlemagne Palestine.
File Under: Avant Garde, Experimental
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Endless Boogie: Vibe Killer (No Quarter) LP
New York’s ’60s influenced garage rock act Endless Boogie (no better described than their own name) return on No Quarter Records with their fourth studio effort Vibe Killer. The first single LP of their tenure, the concise six track affair was produced by the band’s own Paul “Top Dollar” Major and recorded at Gary’s Electric in Brooklyn. As on the band’s 2013 album Long Island, guitar nomad Matt Sweeney again joins Endless Boogie’s killer core of Marc Razo (bass), Harry Druzd (drums), Jesper Eklow (guitar) and Major (vocals, guitar). The LP’s accompanying download card also includes the CD-only track “Whilom” plus two further bonus tracks.
File Under: Psych
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Extremity: Extremely Fucking Dead (20 buck Spin) LP
In tomorrow… Gestating in the twisted bowels of the Bay Area for six years, only now, in 2017, has Extremity dislodged itself from the musty climes of obscurity to contaminate the American death metal cesspool. Like a jaundiced plume drifting up from a fetid swamp, on Extremely Fucking Dead the four-piece infects their audience with odiously oozing intentions. From the grisly gore metal of “Crepuscular Crescendo” to the Bolt Thrower ravaged plunder permeating “Bestial Destiny”, Extremity presents a simultaneously studied and loosely devastating specter of death metal cited from the genre’s many epicenters in America, Scandinavia, the UK and beyond. The veteran lineup of Shelby Lermo (Vastum), Aesop Dekker (Worm Ouroboros, Ludicra, Agalloch), Marissa Martinez-Hoadley (Cretin, Repulsion) and Erika Osterhout (Necrosic, Scolex, Trepanation) stirs the salaciously sanguine death and grind sewage on this debut to a crepitating clamor of cacophonous cruelty.
File Under: Metal
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Farah: The Only Ones (Italians Do It Better) LP
In tomorrow… The enigmatic FARAH is back with her third 12-inch EP on Italians Do It Better. Picking up where “Law Of Life” left off, she alternates between Farsi and English asking: “Can you touch the dying sun?” Features a guest appearance from JOHNNY JEWEL on vocoder. Five unreleased tracks. 17 minutes of music. Pressed on 180-gram transparent copper vinyl in an edition of 500 copies.
File Under: Disco, Synth Pop
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Jon Gibson: Two Solo Pieces (Superior Viaduct) LP
In tomorrow… For his second album, Two Solo Pieces, Jon Gibson forgoes the dense, multi-layered timbres of Visitations in favor of simple textures and tone. While Two Solo Pieces serves up further evidence of Gibson’s centrality to American minimalism – witness its inclusion in Alan Licht’s famed Minimal Top Ten list – this profoundly intimate record also reveals the beauty of enclosed spaces and infinite harmonic vistas. As its unadorned title suggests, Two Solo Pieces consists of a pair of side-long tracks featuring the composer alone. While “Cycles,” an iridescent improvisation on organ, achieves a downright eerie sense of expansiveness, Gibson’s captivating alto flute on “Untitled” draws the listener inside the instrument itself. The photo on the album’s back cover – a seated Gibson surrounded by cascading rows of organ pipes and the vaulted ceiling in Manhattan’s Peace Church – offers a striking visual complement to these gorgeous recordings. Originally released in 1977 on Philip Glass’ Chatham Square imprint, this first-time vinyl reissue is recommended for fans of Anthony Moore, Roberto Cacciapaglia and Terry Riley.
File Under: Avant Garde, Minimalism
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Helium: Dirt of Luck (Matador) LP
Led by Mary Timony (Ex Hex, Wild Flag, Autoclave), Helium was one of the most important rock bands of the ‘90s, and finally their influential output is being released on vinyl after a decade of being out of print courtesy of Matador Records. In addition to the reissues of breakthrough 1995 debut The Dirt Of Luck (featuring stellar cuts “Superball” and “Pat’s Trick”) and revered 1997 swan song The Magic City (bundled on a double LP with the No Guitars EP), Helium will also release a brand new collection of rarities, b-sides, and unreleased demos on a 19-track double LP (with 5 bonus downloads) titled Ends With And.
File Under: Indie Rock
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Helium: Ends With And (Matador) LP
Led by Mary Timony (Ex Hex, Wild Flag, Autoclave), Helium was one of the most important rock bands of the ‘90s. No history of American indie should be written without a chapter on Timony, who managed to straddle multiple worlds – among them Boston’s college-borne rock realm and Dischord’s DC-based DIY scene – over the course of her early career. In the Boston band Helium, Timony took center stage, playing rock and roll that was anything but straightforward. Ends With And collects the band’s singles and compilation tracks. Early singles like the liberatory “Hole In The Ground,” from their second 7-inch, and the churning “XXX”-“OOO” diptych, from the Pirate Prude EP, show how immediately Helium’s aesthetic was established; later offerings like the swirling “What Institution Are You From,” off 1995’s Superball EP, and the crystalline “Puffin Stars,” from a 1994 Kill Rock Stars compilation, show Timony’s fluid ability to move between sinewy rock and refracted pop. The collection also contains previously unreleased material including the spindly “Golden Bridge,” the last song Timony wrote for Helium, and buyers can also download rarities including an early version of The Dirt Of Luck’s music-box fantasia “Lucky Charm” and an up-from-the-vaults live version of the slashing (and previously unreleased) “Green Chair.”
File Under: Indie Rock
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Helium: Magic City + No Guitar (Matador) LP
Led by Mary Timony (Ex Hex, Wild Flag, Autoclave), Helium was one of the most important rock bands of the ‘90s, and finally their influential output is being released on vinyl after a decade of being out of print courtesy of Matador Records. In addition to the reissues of renowned 1995 debut The Dirt Of Luck (featuring stellar cuts “Superball” and “Pat’s Trick”) and revered 1997 swan song The Magic City (bundled on a double LP with the No Guitars EP), Helium will also release a brand new collection of rarities, b-sides, and unreleased demos on a 19-track double LP (with 5 bonus downloads) titled Ends With And.
File Under: Indie Rock
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Johnny Jewel: Home OST (Italians Do It Better) LP
In tomorrow… The soundtrack to critically acclaimed Flemish director Fien Troch’s fourth film Home. Side A features pop music from Chromatics and Symmetry with Johnny Jewel’s ambient score on the flip. Fourteen songs. Pressed on 180-gram white vinyl and housed in gatefold jackets.
File Under: Electronic, OST
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Johnny Jewel: A Beautiful Now (Italians Do It better) LP
In tomorrow… The soundtrack to director and writer Daniela Amavia’s first feature film starring Abigail Spencer, Cheyenne Jackson, Collette Wolfe, Elena Satine and Sonja Kinski. Features music from Johnny Jewel, Desire, Chromatics, and Glass Candy. Pressed on 180-gram red vinyl and housed in gatefold jackets. Edition of 1,000 copies.
File Under: Electronic, Pop, OST
Night Jewel: Obsession (Italians Do It Better) LP
In tomorrow… Nite Jewel returns with a five-song teaser to an upcoming full-length. 20 minutes of music pressed on 180-gram pink champagne vinyl in an edition of 500 copies.
File Under: Electronic
OST: Singles (Legacy) LP
Yikes, the timing on this one is rather unfortunate… The 25th anniversary of Cameron Crowe’s groundbreaking 1992 romantic comedy, Singles, is being commemorated with the release of a newly expanded and remastered edition of the film’s integral Original Motion Picture Soundtrack. The 2LP edition features the album’s original 13 tracks newly mastered and freshly pressed across four sides of collectible 12″ vinyl plus a bonus CD of rarities and unreleased tracks included as a special insert. The newly expanded edition of the film’s soundtrack was produced by Danny Bramson and Crowe and mastered by Mike Piacentini at Battery Studios, New York and includes liner notes – and a track-by-track description of the album’s music written especially for this collection by Crowe. The newly released bonus CD (included with the 2LP-set) features previously unreleased recordings by Chris Cornell, Mike McCready, Mudhoney, and Paul Westerberg in addition to rarities such as Cornell’s 1992 EP Poncier (debuting an early rendition of “Spoonman”) and tracks from the film not included on the best-selling soundtrack album first released on June 30, 1992. It also includes “Touch Me I’m Dick,” the signature track from Singles performed by Citizen Dick (a fictional band created for the film featuring frontman Matt Dillon backed by Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder, Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament). 25 years ago, the film Singles and its soundtrack worked together to bring the underground Seattle music scene to the forefront of mainstream consciousness. The album was among the first top-selling movie soundtracks of the 1990s to showcase new material from emerging contemporary acts including Alice In Chains, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden – while Paul Westerberg, in his first solo recordings outside The Replacements – contributed two songs and provided the score for the film. Smashing Pumpkins were also featured on the soundtrack with the song “Drown.” “The album itself was always designed to be sort of an anti-soundtrack, more like a souvenir and a simple mix-tape of some of Seattle’s finest,” said Cameron Crowe. “It really is and was a tribute to those hard-working bands that welcomed me to their city with open arms, and the music so many still love so much. Anyway, here we are now revisiting ‘Singles,’ the film, as well as the soundtrack you hold in your hands, expanded with a special tip of the hat to the fans of the original release. Included are unreleased and raw elements that helped shape the experience of making the movie back in 1991. Hope you enjoy the trip back as much as I did – Viva Seattle!” The expanded edition of Singles: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack is cause to celebrate anew the radical rock sounds that radiated out of the American Northwest a quarter century ago and changed pop music forever!
File Under: Grunge, Rock, OST, RIP
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Priests: Nothing Feels Natural (Sister Polygon) LP
In tomorrow… Nothing Feels Natural is the first full-length by Washington, D.C.’s PRIESTS. Recorded in the fall of 2016, the record is the culmination of two years’ writing, touring, tweaking, and refining. Throughout that time the band has carved out an existence on its own terms,performing mostly all-ages shows booked via a network of like-minded artists both within and outside punk communities. The album represents a major step forward for Priests. It’s the bands most stylistically diverse set of songs to date, expanding on their lo-fi post-punk bona-fides with ideas drawn from pop, R&B, and industrial noise. Thematically, Nothing can be understood as a series of vignettes—nine stories that crystallize into a bigger picture about the economics of human relationships, the invisibility of feminized labor, and the dual purpose of art for both the group and the individual. The album will be the first full-length LP released on Sister Polygon Records, the label that Priests founded and operate. Priests are Daniele Daniele (drums), Katie Alice Greer (vocals), G.L. Jaguar (guitar), and Taylor Mulitz (bass). Formed in 2011, the band has proven a valuable force for strangeness in a city that is increasingly terraformed by norms. More significantly, they’ve helped to raise the general standard of show-going at home through cassettes and singles released on Sister Polygon, including music by bands like Sneaks, Snail Mail, Pinkwash, Cigarette, Downtown Boys, and numerous Priests-affiliated groups like Gauche and Flasher. Still, even amidst thriving hometown creativity, Priests possess a singular gravity. They are physical and combustible, urgent and visceral.
File Under: Punk
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Daniel Romano: Modern Pressure (You’ve Changed) LP
Daniel Romano is an Ontario-based artist, poet, musician and performer of international acclaim. A genre-defying student of musical experimentation and a brilliant multi-instrumentalist, Romano is acutely well versed in the languages of melody, shape, lyric construction and song arrangement. Apt in its title, Modern Pressure will surely prove to be his most explorative endeavor to date. The twelve tracks pick up where Mosey left off, boldly asking, “What age is this? What blooming weight do we carry through these stolen streets?” Written in observational scrutiny beneath the overcast atmosphere of 2016, the record vigorously tackles the present-day heaviness we contain in the jotting bones of our guilty expressions. It pleads for the restoration of empathy and resonance, to fill the empty chamber once again. The recording phase for Modern Pressure took place in a minimalistic cabin in secluded Finnsäs, Sweden over the month of August 2016 (with additional string and horn players being added at Baldwin Street Sound in Toronto, ON in October, 2016). Engineered by long-time collaborator Kenneth Meehan, the fevered pace of work lent itself to the unrestrained and undeviated nature of the songs themselves.
File Under: Folk, SSW
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Woods: Love is Love (Woodsist) LP
In tomorrow… “Wisdom comes with age, so it’s no surprise that Woods have grown more sage in the twelve years since they formed, expanding from sylvan drum circles into increasingly elaborate, transcendent psychedelia.”- Pitchfork “We walked down streets and crammed onto trains, our faces masks of fear. Unsure how to react, we, collectively, did not react. We grieved for a country and an ideal we never thought would die. We grieved for a loss of certainty. We argued about what we thought would happen. We preached understanding. We advocated for anger. Some people said that we’d at least get some incredible art, other people said that was a small view of a world we were quickly realizing we’d misunderstood. Everyone was right. Everyone was wrong. Art made in precarious times matters as much as we let it matter. But what are we looking for from the art we enjoy? Escapism? A reckoning with harsh reality? A temporary shared hallucination? Music can heal because it presents the pain of being human as universal. Love is Love was written and recorded in the two months immediately following the election, but it’s not a record borne entirely of angry, knee-jerk reaction to what America is becoming. Instead, it’s a meditation on love, and on what life means now. Taking cues from last year’s City Sun Eater in the River of Light, it feels very much like a record made from living, shoulder to shoulder, in a major city: weaving psychedelic swirls of guitar between languid horns reminiscent of the best Ethiopian jazz—Love is Love is a distinctly New York record. It is a document of protest in uncertain times and an open-hearted rejection of cynicism in favor of emotional honesty. It is bright, and then, unexpectedly, a little dark sometimes too. There will be parts of life where we will watch as events unfold and we will feel helpless. We will not be sure of the future. On good days, we’ll have each other. On the bad ones, we’ll turn to the art that helps us feel something. Love is Love is a document of the new world we live in, proof that light can come from despair and hope is still possible. We just need a little help remembering it exists.”- Sam Hockley-Smith
File Under: Indie Rock
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Various: Hightlights of Vortex (Etats Units) LP
In tomorrow… The brainchild of visual artist Jordan Belson and electronics polymath Henry Jacobs, the Vortex Experiments ran from 1957 to 1960, first at San Francisco’s Morrison Planetarium and later at the SF Museum of Art. The very name of these events announced their aim: a swirling totality of sensory experience. Around Belson’s richly-colored visuals – making use of the planetarium’s entire dome and featuring luminous, sharply geometric imagery projected through an array of devices – Jacobs ringed a system of roughly 40 multidirectional loudspeakers, each of which could be precisely controlled to produce, in the words of one reviewer, “a living theater of sound and light.” A landmark recording in the history of electronic tape music and an engrossing artifact of proto-psychedelia, Highlights Of Vortex gathers recordings designed for the Vortex system by Jacobs and collaborators David Talcott, William Loughborough, and Gordon Longfellow. Source material including free improvisation, field recording,classical Indian instrumentation, West African polyrhythms and musique concrète is transmogrified through tape manipulation, atomizing swathes of reverb and delay, and other live and recorded effects, making dramatic use of the monumental Vortex soundsystem. An unprecedented marriage of image and sound, Vortex Experiments exercised immeasurable impact on the imagination and practice of countless experimental visual and sonic artists so this album is a must for fans of such visionaries as Stan Brakhage, Tony Conrad, and Jack Smith. Limited edition of 500 numbered copies on clear vinyl.
File Under: Avant Garde, Early Electronic
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…..Restocks…..
Alabama Shakes: Sound & Color (ATO) LP
Aphex Twin: I Care Because You Do (1972) LP
Buena Vista Social Club: s/t (World Circuit) LP
Nick Cave: Skeleton Tree (Bad Seeds) LP
Alice Coltrane: Monastic Trio (Superior Viaduct) LP
John Coltrane: A Love Supreme (Impulse) LP
Crass: Feeding of the 5000 (Crass) LP
Miles Davis: Birth of Cool (Columbiaa) LP
Bob Dylan: Bringing It All Back Home (Columbia) LP
Bob Dylan: Freewheelin’ (Columbia) LP
Bob Dylan: Highway 61 Revisited (Columbia) LP
Bob Dylan: The Times They Are A Changin’ (Columbia) LP
The Fall: Dragnet (Superior Viaduct) LP
The Fall: Slates (Superior Viaduct) 10″
Flaming Lips: Oczy Mlody (Warner) LP DLX
Guided By Voices: Bee Thousand (Scat) LP
Jimi Hendrix: Are You Experienced (Reprise) LP
Billie Holiday: Lady In Satin (Columbia) LP
Hot Snakes: Audit In Progress (Swami) LP
Jay Som: Everybody Works (Polyvinyl) LP
King Gizzard: I’m In Your Mind Fuzz (Castle Face) LP
King Gizzard: Quarters (Castle Face) LP
KMD: Bl_ck B_st_rds (Metal Face) LP
Liquid Liquid: Optimo (Superior Viaduct) LP
Charles Mingus: The Black Saint & The Sinner Lady (Superior Viaduct) LP
Moondog: s/t (Columbia) LP
Oh Sees: A Weird Exits (Castle Face) LP
Oh Sees: Floating Coffin (Castle Face) LP
Oh Sees: Help (Castle Face) LP
Oh Sees: Mutilator Defeated at Last (Castle Face) LP
Oh Sees: Putrifiers (In The Red) LP
Oranssi Pazuzu: Karmokolginen (20 Buck Spin) LP
Oranssi Pazuzu: Kosmonument (20 Buck Spin) LP
Oranssi Pazuzu: Muukalainen Puhuu (20 Buck Spin) LP
Porcupine Tree: Coma Divine (Kscope) LP
Radiohead: A Moon Shaped Pool (XL) LP
Ty Segall: Lemons (Goner) LP
Shobaleader One: Elektrac (Warp) LP
Stereolab: Transient Noise Bursts (1972) LP
Sufjan Stevens: Carrie & Lowell (Asthmatic Kitty) LP
Tool: Lateralus (Zoo) LP
Townes Van Zandt: Live At The Old Quarter (Fat Possum) LP
Kurt Vile: B’Lieve I’m Goin’ Down (Matador) LP
Kurt Vile: Childish Prodigy (Matador) LP
Kurt Vile: Smoke Ring For My Halo (Matador) LP
Various: Guardians of the Galaxy (Hollywood) LP