…..news letter #969 – buuurrrrr…..

Yow! It’s like winter out there! Well, the last few weeks have been pretty hectic for new releases, and so a bit less in this week is a nice reprieve. And then next week is the third and final RSD Drop.. unless you are going to count Black Friday RSD…

And this week, if you missed it in last week’s news letter, we are shifting our pick up days to make it a bit easier for those of you working all week. We’ll now be here for pick ups Tuesday – Friday 11 – 5 and Saturdays 11 – 4.

As always, big thanks to everyone who’s been hitting up our webstore and placing orders! It’s getting competitive around 5pm when we post up fresh used stock. If you haven’t hit up the WEBSTORE, MAYBE YOU SHOULD! If you can’t figure out the site, or don’t like to use computers, you can always call the store and we can do an order over the phone. We’ll be at the shop 11-5 Tuesday – Friday & Saturday 11-4. Stay safe!

Oh ya… if you don’t follow us on Instagram, WHY NOT?! And now you know.

CHECK OUT OUR WEBSTORE!!! 
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…..pick of the week…..

SHIRTS!!!!!!
Before all this lockdown we were running low on sizes and had been working on getting a fresh batch of shirts made up for Record Store Day in April… I think you have an idea what happened there. AND THEN we sold out of all of our smalls and mediums on the few things we did still have. So FINALLY, we’ve replenished our swag department, and we really went to town, 3 new T’s and a new sweatshirt. All up for purchase now on the website. And our totes and last few sizes of older shirts are up there too. 

File Under: Swag, Shirts
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…..new arrivals…..

Neko Case: Furnace Room Lullaby (Anti) LP
2000’s Furnace Room Lullaby represented a quantum leap in confidence for Neko Case. Allowing herself to stretch out in the studio, to write her own material and explore new sounds, this album saw the first glimmerings of the torch country noir that would come full force in later albums. It is positively brimming with an explosive talent on the verge of bursting out. Backed by her cast of Boyfriends, including folks like Brian Connelly (Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet), Evan Johns, Bob Egan (Freakwater), Dallas and Travis Good (The Sadies), and Ron Sexsmith, Neko takes you through the sometimes desolate and resigned, sometimes pissed off, and sometimes haunting and harrowing Carnival Ride of Love that’s doing its best to make gibbering, addled casualties out of all of us. Furnace Room Lullaby is a testimonial to the whole maddening, irresistible struggle. Remastered from the original analog tapes, this stand-alone offering of Furnace Room Lullaby on black vinyl had last been in print for Case’s stunning 2015 vinyl box set, Truckdriver Gladiator Mule.

File Under: Folk, Country
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Beverly Glenn-Copeland: Transmissions (Transgressive) LP
Beverly Glenn-Copeland’s music radiates with beauty, compassion, and a belief that change is always possible. He’s paved a unique path for himself—beginning his career with a series of jazz-inflected solo albums in the early 1970’s, he spent over 20 years as a beloved children’s television writer and performer (on Canadian show Mr. Dressup, Sesame Street, and Shining Time Station). In the ’80s, he taught himself how to make electronic music. Viewed by some among the canon of synth pioneers, he came out as a trans man in 2002. Since returning to the stage in his mid-70’s, his decades of genre-defiant recordings have now been assembled on this career-spanning compilation, showcasing the many ways Copeland transmits his messages of care to the world. The track listing of Transmissions follows a non-chronological path, hopping from one era to the next with the same logic as his joyful live performances. It opens with the operatic electro-pop of “La Vita” from Copeland’s 2004 album Primal Prayer, then immediately time travels back to “Ever New,” a mesmerizing synth mantra from his 1986 cassette release, Keyboard Fantasies. The past and present are represented simultaneously with Copeland’s 2019 live re-imagining of his tranquil 1970 single “Color of Anyhow,” before pulling listeners back into the rushing current with the tricky time signatures of “River Dreams,” his first new song in 15 years. Whether this collection is your introduction to Copeland’s music or just the latest way you’re celebrating it, Transmissions is the perfect overview of a multi-faceted artist whose praises should be sung for lifetimes to come.

File Under: Pop, New Age, Electronic
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Death: Leprosy (Relapse) LP
No extreme metal artist has come close to touching Death in scope, influence, or simply quality. The group of Floridian metal musicians led by Chuck Schuldiner started small, but would eventually develop a legendary sound: one that not only set the standard for the musical and conceptual approaches that would later define nearly all of extreme metal, but which also followed a clear narrative path in its development from raw and primal to complex and cerebral. Originally released in 1988, Leprosy was a pioneering album, building upon the thrash sounds of Metallica and Slayer but adding a previously unheard level of raw extremity. These songs are the roots of an entire genre: death metal. While this was only the second record Death released, it immediately cemented them as heavy metal icons.

File Under: Metal
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Death: Scream Bloody Gore (Relapse) LP
No extreme metal artist has come close to touching Death in scope, influence, or simply quality. The group of Floridian metal musicians led by Chuck Schuldiner started small, but would eventually develop a legendary sound: one that not only set the standard for the musical and conceptual approaches that would later define nearly all of extreme metal, but which also followed a clear narrative path in its development from raw and primal to complex and cerebral. Death’s legendary 1987 debut Scream Bloody Gore is more than just an untouchable album – upon its release, it was positively genre-creating. Scream Bloody Gore founded the quintessential death metal sound, with more tormented riffs, screams, and leads than the world had ever imagined, and established Schuldiner’s inimitable phrasing and songwriting style as the most singular voice in the burgeoning genre. Today, the album is viewed unanimously as one of the all-time most important cornerstones of death metal.

File Under: Metal
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King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard: Nonagon Infinity (ATO) LP
LIMITED TRI-COLOR VINYL!!! Nonagon infinity opens the door,” sings STU MACKENZIE, frontman of Australian psych-rockers KING GIZZARD & THE LIZARD WIZARD. It turns out, though, that once the door’s open, it never closes. That’s because the Melbourne septet has ingeniously crafted what may be the world’s first infinitely looping LP. Each of the nine, complex, blistering tracks on Nonagon Infinity seamlessly flows into the next, with the final song linking straight back into the top of the opener like a sonic mobius strip. But far from a simple conceptual experiment, the album is both an exhilarating shot of adrenaline and a remarkable feat of craftsmanship, the result of painstaking planning and an eye for detail years in the making.

File Under: Psych
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Thurston Moore: By The Fire (Dreamday Library Series) LP
Transparent orange vinyl. This is Thurston Moore’s seventh solo album, and features musicians Deb Googe (My Bloody Valentine) on bass and backing vocals, Jon Leidecker aka “Wobbly” (of Negativland) on electronics, James Sedwards on guitar, and Sonic Youth’s Steve Shelley, as well as Jem Doulton, alternating on drums. “Hashish”, the first single from the album, is described by Moore as “an ode to the narcotic of love in our shared responsibility to each other during isolation.” The song includes a video with footage from The Thurston Moore Group’s tour in early 2020 in Europe, as well as footage of Thurston quarantined in his home during the past few months “with respect to the sacred healing truth of nature.” Prior to isolation during the COVID pandemic, Thurston worked in recording studios in North London until the third week of March 2020 to complete this album for release on September 5, 2020. While the musicians may not immediately tour, Thurston was adamant to release By The Fire in 2020, and with Daydream Library, has released this quote: By The Fire is music in flames. 2020 is our time for radical change and collective awareness and Thurston Moore has written nine songs of enlightenment, released to a world on fire. Taking a cue from Albert Ayler’s “music is the healing force of the universe,” this recording offers songs as flames of rainbow energy, where the power of love becomes our call. These are love songs in a time where creativity is our dignity, our demonstration against the forces of oppression. By The Fire is a gathering, a party of peace — songs in the heat of the moment.

File Under: Indie Rock, Sonic Youth
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Tom Petty: Wildflowers & All the Rest
(Warner) 3LP

During Tom Petty’s final interview with the Los Angeles Times, as the triumphant 40th anniversary tour with the Heartbreakers was coming to an end, he announced that his next big focus would be to finally revisit his 1994 masterpiece, Wildflowers, co-produced with Rick Rubin and Mike Campbell. Wildflowers in many ways changed Tom’s creative life – as a recording artist, collaborator and band leader – while a profound, personal crisis transformed the stories and emotional thrust in his songs. Tom ultimately wrote more songs than he could release at the time. In fact, Tom, Rubin and Campbell completed the album as a double CD with 25 songs, nearly two hours of music, but his label advised restraint. Released on November 1, 1994, Wildflowers – a single CD with 15 songs, still more than an hour in length – was Tom’s most acutely confessional album to date. The resurrection of Wildflowers has been a long time coming. In a 2014 interview with Rolling Stone Tom detailed his plans for the reissue, telling the magazine, “I broke through to something else. My personal life came crashing down, and it derailed me for a while. But I was at the top of my game during that record.” Then again in 2016 on SiriusXM’s Tom Petty Radio, he discussed his desire for a Wildflowers tour to coincide with a reissue. Tom had always intended to release the second half of the album – a collection he named All The Rest, featuring ten songs from the Wildflowers recording sessions that were left off the original version and five unreleased tracks (different versions of four other songs would appear on the soundtrack to the 1996 film, She’s The One). Wildflowers & All The Rest, the long-awaited Wildflowers reissue and comprehensive collection, is curated by Tom’s daughters, Adria and Annakim Petty, and his wife Dana Petty, who call it, “Many, many hours of pure sonic joy.” It also involves Heartbreakers Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench, and was produced by Tom’s longtime engineer and co-producer Ryan Ulyate. Together they stewarded the warmth Tom created through his music and relationship to his fans. Tom Petty released 16 studio albums and over 180 songs over the course of his 40-year career. Wildflowers was the first album of a long-term renaissance. It was Petty’s fastest selling album and was certified Triple Platinum only nine months after its release. The album was always deeply significant to him. As proof, five of the 18 songs performed at his final live concert at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles came from the album. Wildflowers – his solo masterpiece, a personal triumph and the album Petty needed to make at that moment, at any cost – is finally here as he intended it and beyond. This triple vinyl edition contains the original 1994 Wildflowers album (remastered in 2020) with 15 tracks across two LPs while a third disc features All The Rest, the 10 songs from the Wildflowers sessions that were left off the album, five of which are previously unreleased. It also includes lyrics to all the songs on Wildflowers & All The Rest.

File Under: Rock, Pop
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Tom Petty: Wildflowers & All the Rest
(Warner) 7LP

During Tom Petty’s final interview with the Los Angeles Times, as the triumphant 40th anniversary tour with The Heartbreakers was coming to an end, he announced that his next big focus would be to finally revisit his 1994 masterpiece, Wildflowers, co-produced with Rick Rubin and Mike Campbell. Wildflowers in many ways changed Tom’s creative life – as a recording artist, collaborator and band leader – while a profound, personal crisis transformed the stories and emotional thrust in his songs. Tom ultimately wrote more songs than he could release at the time. In fact, Tom, Rubin and Campbell completed the album as a double CD with 25 songs, nearly two hours of music, but his label advised restraint. Released on November 1, 1994, Wildflowers – a single CD with 15 songs, still more than an hour in length – was Tom’s most acutely confessional album to date. The resurrection of Wildflowers has been a long time coming. In a 2014 interview with Rolling Stone Tom detailed his plans for the reissue, telling the magazine, “I broke through to something else. My personal life came crashing down, and it derailed me for a while. But I was at the top of my game during that record.” Then again in 2016 on SiriusXM’s Tom Petty Radio, he discussed his desire for a Wildflowers tour to coincide with a reissue. Tom had always intended to release the second half of the album – a collection he named All The Rest, featuring ten songs from the Wildflowers recording sessions that were left off the original version and five unreleased tracks (different versions of four other songs would appear on the soundtrack to the 1996 film, She’s The One). Wildflowers & All The Rest, the long-awaited Wildflowers reissue and comprehensive collection, is curated by Tom’s daughters, Adria and Annakim Petty, and his wife Dana Petty, who call it, “Many, many hours of pure sonic joy.” Also involved are Heartbreakers Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench, and it was produced by Tom’s longtime engineer and co-producer Ryan Ulyate. Together they stewarded the warmth Tom created through his music and relationship to his fans. Tom Petty released 16 studio albums and over 180 songs over the course of his 40-year career. Wildflowers was the first album of a long-term renaissance. It was Petty’s fastest selling album and was certified Triple Platinum only nine months after its release. The album was always deeply significant to him. As proof, five of the 18 songs performed at his final live concert at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles came from the album. Wildflowers – his solo masterpiece, a personal triumph and the album Petty needed to make at that moment, at any cost – is finally here as he intended it and beyond. The Deluxe Edition 7LP box set reissue of Wildflowers contains 54 tracks, 8 unreleased songs, and 24 unreleased alternate versions. In addition to the 15-track original album (remastered in 2020 on two LPs), the deluxe edition contains the album All The Rest (10 songs from the original Wildflowers sessions), a double LP of 15 solo demos recorded by Petty at his home studio, and an additional double LP of 14 live versions of Wildflowers songs recorded from 1995-2017. The deluxe packaging includes a 60-page book, an introduction by Rick Rubin (the original producer), an essay by David Fricke, a complete track-by-track, and rare photos and specially commissioned illustrations.

File Under: Rock, Pop
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Sigur Ros: ( ) (Krunk) LP
( ), Sigur Ros’ celebrated 2002 album – and for many people especially in the US where it remains their biggest selling work – is the most quintessentially Sigur Ros record of their career to date. It’s the only album where Jonsi sings entirely in the wordless lyrics of Hopelandic. This desire to elide meaning and allow the listener to bring their own interpretation to the music extends to the eight songs, all of which are nameless. The music is broadly split into two halves, divided by a critical 36 seconds of silence. The first half of the album is lighter and more optimistic, the second bleaker and more melancholic, culminating in the thundering climax of “Untitled #8.” ( ) was recorded at the band’s studio Sundlaugin in Mosfellsbaer outside Reykjavik, co-produced with Ken Thomas, who also helmed their breakthrough second album, Agaetis Byrjun. Completely out of print, the vinyl album now comes in its full Grammy-nominated artwork, including die-cut sleeve and spot UV varnish inner bags.

File Under: Ambient, Indie Rock
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Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith: The Mosaic of Transformation (Ghostly) LP
West coast composer, artist, and producer Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith has chartered a pioneering career with multiple critically-acclaimed albums since 2015. Following the release of The Kid in 2017, Smith focused her energy in several directions. She founded Touchtheplants, a multidisciplinary creative environment for projects including the first volumes in her instrumental Electronic Series and pocket-sized poetry books on the practice of listening within. She’s continued to explore the endless possibilities of electronic instruments as well as the shapes, movements, and expressions found in the physical body’s relationship to sound and color. It is this life-guiding interest that forms the foundational frequencies of her latest full-length, The Mosaic of Transformation, a bright, sensorial glide through unbound wave phenomena and the radiant power discovered within oneself. “I guess in one sentence, this album is my expression of love and appreciation for electricity,” says Smith. While writing and recording, she embraced a daily practice of physical movement, passing electricity through her body and into motion, in ways reflecting her audio practice, which sends currents through modular synthesizers and into the air through speakers. Not a dancer by any traditional definition, she taught herself improvisatory movement realizing flexibility, strength, and unexpectedly, what Smith calls “a visual language” (the term was introduced to her by filmmaker Sean Hellfritsch) stemming from the human body and comprised of vibrational shapes. Understood as cymatics, as she says, “as a reference for how frequencies can be visualized,” much like a mosaic. Smith describes her first encounters with this mosaic; “the inspiration came to me in a sudden bubble of joy. It was accompanied by a multitude of shapes that were moving seamlessly from one into the other…My movement practice has been a constant transformation piece by piece. I made this album in the same way. Every day I would transform what I did yesterday…into something else. This album has gone through about 12 different versions of itself.” As it has arrived, in a completed state, The Mosaic of Transformation is a holistic manifestation of embodied motions. Smith’s signature textural curiosity that fans have grown to adore pivots naturally into a proprioceptive study of melody and timbre. Airy organ and voice interweave with burbling Buchla-spawned harmonic bubbles. “The Steady Heart” quivers to life, peppering blasts of wooden organ between winding vocal affirmations. As with a body, moving one portion requires a balance and counterbalance; here, subtle tonal twitchy signals fire in conjunction with coiling arias to create a mesmeric core. When the beat arrives at the midway mark, a swooping and jittery waltz, a sense of stasis in motion, a flow state, is sonically achieved. As soon as it syncs, it disappears back into the swirling ebbs of electric force. Other tracks stray into more ruminative physical realms. “Carrying Gravity” is built around string-like pads that expand and contract like a solar plexus, becoming taught and then loose. As the breath interacts and is focused upon, suddenly, the nervous system engages, delicate arpeggios cascade, akin to becoming aware of the transmission of energy happening between muscles and the mind. If the record could be summarized in a single movement, it is the 10-minute closing suite, a rapturous collage called “Expanding Electricity.” Symphonic phrases establish the piece before washes of glittering electric peals and synthesized vibraphone helix into focus. Soon, Smith’s voice grounds it all with an intuitive vocal hook, harmonized and augmented by concentric spirals of harp-and-horn-like sounds. Smith’s music doesn’t capture a specific emotion as much as it captures the joys of possessing a body, and the ability to, with devotion and a steady open heart, maneuver that vessel in space by way of electricity to euphoric degrees.

File Under: Ambient, Electronic
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Sure Fire Soul Ensemble: Impeach the President (Colemine) 7″
“Impeach The President”, originally released in 1973 by The Honey Drippers as a protest song advocating for the impeachment of Richard Nixon became more famous for its drum breaks than the song itself… sampled in over 700 songs (according to Whosampled.com). Fast forward to 2020 with our country as divided as ever and this song’s anthem as relevant as ever. So with Jake Najor on drums, Kelly Finnigan on vocals, and San Diego’s The Sure Fire Soul Ensemble holding it down, Colemine Records is proud to present “Impeach The President”!!

File Under: Funk
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Mike Taylor Trio: s/t (Audio Clarity) LP
Mike Taylor died, probably by his own hand, at age 31 in 1969, having realised a fraction of his potential as a composer and player, and written for the New Jazz Orchestra, singer Norma Winstone and the rock band Cream. Cream’s singer and bassist Jack Bruce and Ron Rubin (occasionally) are on acoustic bass here, with Jon Hiseman on drums, a line-up that highlights the close links between 1960s Britain’s creative rock and R&B scenes and the jazz of the time. Taylor is a highly rhythmic pianist whose dense chord clusters often travel in tandem with Hiseman’s sensitive and flexible percussion. His handling of standards such as All the Things You Are is enigmatically fascinating, while his own rhapsodically wayward Just a Blues is a lot more than just a blues. And the improvisation against Hiseman’s brushes and Bruce’s emphatically voluble bass on While My Lady Sleeps is the kind of extended long narrative on a standard that Bill Evans was feted for. A unique and very affecting set. -John Fordham

File Under: Jazz
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…..Restocks…. 

Badbadnotgood w/ Ghostface Killah: Sour Soul (Lex) LP
Sarah Davachi: Cantus, Descant (Late) LP
Elevator: Darkness – Light (Blue Fog) LP
Elevator: August Extra (Blue Fog) LP
Fugazi: The Argument (Dischord) LP
Fugazi: Steady Diet of Nothing (Dischord) LP
Fugazi: In on the Killtaker (Dischord) LP
Husker Du: Zen Arcade (SST) LP
Laraaji: Ambient 3: Day of Radiance (Glitterbeat) LP
My Morning Jacket: The Waterfall II (ATO) LP
Slint: Spiderland (Touch & Go) LP
System of a Down: Hypnotize (American) LP
System of a Down: Mesmerize (American) LP
System of a Down: Toxicity (American) LP
System of a Down: S/t (American) LP
Silvia Tarozzi: Mi Specchio e Rifletto (Unseen Worlds) LP

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