COACHWHIPS - 'HANDS ON THE CONTROLS'

Formats

• CF025 - LP

• CF025CD - CD

  819162012918

Details

Castle-Face Records is proud to announce the release of Hands On The Controls, on vinyl for the very first time, by the late, great sweat-n-fun factory Coachwhips. If you're unfamiliar, pull up a chair - helmed by John Dwyer (currently of Thee Oh Sees) from 2001-2005, they were fast, nasty, unintelligible, brutally and primally basic. A telephone through a guitar amp, half a drum kit, a shitty Casio organ, and primal speed-trash riffs never sounded so good. Hands On The Controls was their first studio album and criminally never came out on vinyl - we're here to remedy that. Dwyer has kindly opened the crypt and added 6 never-before released tracks to sweeten the deal, we've remastered the tracks for maximum bludgeon, cleaned up the artwork and even added some period photos from his own personal collection. Early ditties like "That Bitch Is Gonna End Up Dead", "N.Y.C. L.O.V.E." and my girlfriend's personal favorite, "Look Into My Eyes When I Come" will leap off of your turntable, do all of your drugs, and will almost certainly get you in trouble. 

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RICHARD YOUNGS - 'SUMMER THROUGH MY MIND'

Formats

• BING089 - LP

  600197008911

• BING089CD - CD

  600197008928

Details

Richard Youngs presents his debut recording for Ba Da Bing Records, and the label is looking forward to a long relationship. For Summer Through My Mind, Youngs pushes himself into a challenging new sphere yet again. A renowned musician with over 40 albums to his name, he goes somewhere he never has before—to the heart of American music. Summer Through My Mind is a country music album, warped through Youngs’s ambidextral mind. A warning: it’s not like any country album one has heard before. There are familiar elements scattered about—slide-guitar, heartfelt vocals, dark lyricism— but these pieces exist like alienated rocks from a planetary explosion of long ago. The discomfited guitar lines create patchy connections, and Youngs’s unmistakable singing seals things right up. The album draws together a story Youngs wrote as a child, involving bad people and dark spirits (“Story of Jhon” which has a vocal contribution from Simon Joyner), with some lyrics written by his own six-year-old son. In a rare chance to see him perform outside of Europe, Youngs will be playing select US dates in 2013, including the Hopscotch Festival in Durham, NC, and at the ISSUE Project Room in New York.

Tracks

1. Mountain of Doom
2. Misjudgement
3. Spin Me Endless in the Universe
4. Summer Through My Mind
5. The Future Is So Different Today
6. Story of Jhon
7. Binary Stars Over Venice
8. Goodbye Oslo Rose

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THE DEAD C - 'ARMED COURAGE'

Formats

• BING087 - LP

  600197008713

• BING087CD - CD

  600197008720

Details

With nary a praising documentary, coffee table photo book or tribute band to their name, The Dead C are nonetheless one of the most respected, longest surviving groups in the history of rock. Still sporting the original band members (Michael Morley on guitar / vocals, Bruce Russell on guitar, Robbie Yeats on drums) from their first assemblage in 1987, The Dead C’s renown has a lot to do with their stubborn unwillingness to compromise in any form. With a varied and challenging discography, the band has never released an album requiring later apology. No The Elder. No Diabolus in Musica. No Trans. Each release demands appraisal on its own merits and exists separate from any temporal trends in underground music, save for whatever influence they’ve had on others. Armed Courage reaffirms their epochal career. With two side-long tracks, the record epitomizes the elements which elevate The Dead C to a level of worship. Compositions assemble and pivot, colliding new landscapes while undermining their very foundations. The Dead C exists on an intuitive sphere, with music never over-thought, yet rewarding when contemplated. 2013 marks the first time The Dead C has ever appeared on the cover of a magazine, and how appropriate that it was in The Wire, the only international music rag to celebrate anti-traditionalism. It is easy to view this as a highpoint of recognition, but the real achievement happens whenever that cognitive switch flips in the listener’s head, and they suddenly think, “I get it”—because from that point on, the promise of future satisfaction is guaranteed. • Follows their July 2013 Wire cover story

Tracks

1. Armed
2. Courage

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RZA & YOKO ONO - 'GREENFIELD MORNING/SEED OF JOY/LIFE IS A STRUGGLE'

Formats

• CHIM017 - 10"

Details

RZA performs live with Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band in Los Angeles in 2010. • Limited edition of 1,000. •Beautifully pressed one-side 10" vinyl with a Yoko etching on the flip side. •Packaged in a clear plastic sleeve. •Proceeds to benefit Children’s Literacy Society

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JONATHAN RADO - 'LAW AND ORDER'

Formats

• WOODSIST070 - LP

  655035047010

• WOODSIST070CD - CD

  655035047027

Details

Jonathan Rado is a songwriter, a staid performer, an evangelical producer; the 23-year-old California native’s solo project, fashioned on brief sabbatical from his main project, Foxygen, is a deliciously self-conscious piece of esoteric apocrypha. Like character games, or symphonies of nonsense imitation-language, his records are cathartic, designed only to liberate the body and break the awkwardness of obsessive, existential silence. Alone in a bedroom, the holy land where he’s been experimenting with recording since junior high, Rado laughs nervously and eats his fingernails, awestruck by the sublimity of the aural world. The smallness of his own anemic voice confounds the babe agape, and only by adopting the task of genre does he transcend his own limitations to stand comfortably at the precipice of sound. On his debut solo album Law and Order, the San Fernando Valley and the Lower East Side flirt over muddy coffee, get married over corned beef, and give birth to a Motown drum beat—but something is amiss. For example, there is no bass line on LA-psychedelic-dance-jam “Seven Horses,” and not a single hand clap satisfies the droning singer’s gently repetitive request, “If you feel it all, clap your hands.” “Hand in Mine” sounds like an idea Johnny Cash had while sleepwalking through a fever dream. The zonked-out guitarist settles back to warm Christmas sleep but dreams only of synthesizers. “Looking 4a Girl Like U” is an opium den, and there in the running shower Prince stands, sultry. He kaleidoscopically unbuttons his soaked, sequined shirt for six consecutive minutes, screaming “baaaaaby” and ego-dancing. On “I Wood,” a folk spasm of paranoid schizophrenia, Rado’s Bob Dylan vowels pile so heavily upon a White Fence-minor progression that Tim Presley actually materializes on “Faces” to turn off the water and steamy distortion. “All the Lights Went Out in Georgia” is a self-loathing diary entry thrown into a fire, and “Pot of Gold” gets too drunk, freaks out and starts hitting on everybody. So Rado wraps up the album and apologizes to everyone, promising not to invite that guy over anymore. Crafted by a serious conductor of gracelessness and good-humored imperfection, this album champions simplicity, catchiness and cranberry-plush playfulness, without ever maliciously satirizing the material of inspiration. Rado enters familiar musical forms with the most appreciative irreverence and, stretching out on a big burlesque bed, he bends brass platitude until it sounds Rado-y and golden. —Jaclyn Cohen • Debut solo album from Foxygen member • Guest appearance by White Fence’s Tim Presley • Vinyl includes digital download card

Tracks

1. Seven Horses
2. Hand in Mine
3. Looking 4a Girl Like U
4. Dance Away Your Ego
5. I Wood
6. Faces
7. Oh, Suzanna!
8. All the Lights Went Out in Georgia
9. I Wanna Feel It Now!!!
10. Would You Always Be at Home
11. Law and Order
12. Pot of Gold

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SALLY DIGE - 'FORGET ME / LOSING YOU'

Formats

• LSSN019 - 7"

Details

Statuesque Vancouverite Sally Dige is emblematic of a restless spirit flitting in and out of view, an apparition just out of reach. On "Forget Me"the idea of self is brought into focus then blurred as Dige intones a dark hymn to self-erasing. Over an emotionally wrought 4 mins, post-punk bass lines and moody synth-leads edge the author into willed obscurity from view. On the edges of the song are hints at a fractured, fragile character: "I'd rather go alone / and not be missed by anyone." Is it auto-biographical? Or a character impeccably acted? On the other side "Losing You" proves that Sally Dige never gives too much away. Here she wears the mask of a jaded lover watching the physical and moral collapse of someone once loved, confronted with something unrecognisable. Melding an Italo Disco skeleton with dark analogue synths, in many ways the music is similarly an eroded form once recognised, now perverted into a propulsive, strange new language. This is pop music approached from an enchanted angle. Progressing from early synth-punk beginnings to fully-fledged DIY autonomy, Dige presents a vision out of sync with time and place yet in tune with a deep disconnect that is felt in the pit of the stomach. Sally Dige emerged in 2012 with a now sold-out 7" on Fabrika Records and a portfolio of videos that expanded her artistic narrative. Now relocated to Berlin, Dige is currently working on her debut album.

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