SPECTRE FOLK - 'THE BLACKEST MEDICINE VOL II'

Formats

• WOODSIST050 - LP

  655035045016

Details

Pete Nolan was Spectre Folk before drumming and strumming in Magik Markers was his main gig, and will be Spectre Folk long after he shuffles off this mortal coil. The main benefit of ghost-folk is: you can play it way after you're dead, and while you're alive the Spectre can haunt any decent willing body with a gift for the unreal. This time around, fellow Michigander Steve Shelley (Sonic Youth) runs drums, Peter Meehan (The Grey Lady) glues guitar and Aaron Mullan (Tall Firs) slithers bass, creating an alchemy the Spectre hasn't floated since the days of basement wig-wearing in the short-lived Norman Bates era. The band entered Echo Canyon West with the intention of recording a 7-inch of the up-tempo version of "The Blackest Medicine," the title cut from the 2007 home-fi Woodsist debut. After several sessions, they emerged with a four-song studio collage monster that won't fit in your locker and smells like smoked banana peels and undies blowing down an alleyway. A vibraphone, piano, and a plate reverb unit the size of a Brooklyn apartment were all employed by the Spectre like Uri Gellar used spoons-inappropriately, desperate and bent. They physically turned the two-inch reel of tape over so Meehan could put subliminal backwards masking under his Erkin-Koray-worthy guitar solo on "Fourth Dimension Refs," and Nolan put the Temple Screamer to good use on tracks one and two, using samples of Shirley Temple Black's "Good Ship Lollipop" as vocoder harmonies on choruses. Oh yeah, it's full of burning psych-pop jammers, too! Earmarking Nolan's longstanding but unspoken obsession with personal hygiene, "Keep Your Teeth Clean!" is a krauty suite that betrays Shelley's and Mullan's recent stint as the rhythm section for Neu! Their teutonic influence has the effect of putting the dreamy psychfuzz exhibited on last year's Compass LP through a blender? with a frog... that spills out into a wide open Milky Way head zone. You can't snuggle with this record, so strap yourself in and feel the Gs! Fearless as a lemming, Nolan has created a private universe here, a Society of the Spectre-cal, if you will, and his gift is his freedom. Let's have a drift. -Elisa Ambrogio (Magik Markers)

Tracks

1. The Blackest Medicine
2. Keep Your Teeth Clean!
3. Sold Your Eyes to the Moon
4. Fourth Dimension Refs

Press

N/A

Audio & Video

U.V. RACE - 'HOMO'

Formats

• ITR205 - LP

  759718520514

• ITR205CD - CD

  759718520521

Details

2007 saw the first recording from Melbourne, Australia's The UV Race-a self-released tape featuring four songs of primitive thud, minimal assemblage and high-energy expression. Over the next three years the band has continued to show dedication to these themes with a string of cassettes and singles and their 2009 self-titled debut fulllength, and their sophomore album Homo delivers on the promise of these early releases. Working again with Eddy Current Suppression Ring guitarist Mikey Young at the recording and mixing stages, The UV Race developed the songs over several sessions. Their willingness to explore is clear, from the psychotic bedroom confessional of "Girl in My Head" with its confident teenheat swagger, to the seven-minute closer "Homo," where nods to the Ramones enclose a psychedelic freak-out reminiscent of the closing minutes of The Stooges' Funhouse. In between, the band explores influences ranging from their Australian proto-punk and garage fascinations to American country, Krautrock and UK post-punk, citing the Velvet Underground and the Saints as influences. ? Recorded by Eddy Current Suppression Ring guitarist Mikey Young

Tracks

1. Girl in My Head
2. Burn That Cat
3. Lost My Way
4. Inner North
5. Nazicistic
6. Down Your Street
7. Slow Mo
8. Low
9. Always Late
10. Homo

Press

N/A

Audio & Video

RUBBLE - 'THE FAREWELL DRUGS'

Formats

• LBV10 - LP

  697410001019

Details

Rubble's debut album is a modern Texas psych project seven years in the making. And no, we don't mean tepid jangle psychedelia from kids whose roots go all the way back to buying a Pebbles box-set in 2006-this is the hard stuff made by grown men who know better and can't help themselves. The Austin band was formed in 2003 by King Coffey (Butthole Surfers) and Bobby Baker (ST-37, Baby Robots). Tom Carter (Charalambides) played guitar for a while before handing the keys over to Shawn David McMillen (Ash Castles on the Ghost Coast, Warmer Milks, plus his solo albums on Tompkins Square). Rounding out the fivesome is Matt Turner (Quttinirpaaq) and Craig Stewart (Sex Organs of Emittance). Rubble makes music where Texan icons Josefus and Stick Men with Ray Guns hold equal reverence; where covering Joe Byrd & the Field Hippies and songs from the Cruising soundtrack makes perfect sense. Over the past seven years they have toured Texas with Tr?s Gr?s och Stenar and Comets on Fire and shared the stage with Sun City Girls, Acid Mothers Temple, Rusted Shut, Sic Alps and many more. The Farewell Drugs is a diverse album of high-speed squalls, slow stomps that go from the lower mantle to the inner core, and anthems to the stratosphere. The MVP moments come from Ralph White (of solo and Bad Livers fame) on kalimba and violin.

Tracks

1. Cigarette Rabbit
2. It?s So Easy
3. You Can?t Ever Come Down
4. Tom of Midland
5. Old Dominion
6. While Melt
7. On the Road South
8. Kangchenjunga
9. Southside Ashes
10. Grey at Grace

Press

N/A

Audio & Video