Latest release: 15 Jul 2016
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THE GARBAGE & THE FLOWERS - 'THE DEEP NICHE'
Formats
GY6-2 - LP
600197676219GY6-2CD - CD
600197676226
Details
If you were a certain type of music fan in the mid-’90s, you may have heard tell of an incredible, incredibly hard-to-find double-album by The Garbage & The Flowers, Eyes Rind As If Beggars. Each jacket was hand-painted, and all 300 copies sold out in a flash. Thankfully, the great Bo’Weavil label reissued it in 2013. If you haven’t heard it, please do listen…OK, you heard it now? You’re welcome! The group was Helen Johnstone, Yuri Frusin and Paul Yates—an inspired trio who emphasized lyrical collaboration and sound manipulation as part and parcel to their melodies. They didn’t last long as a group, but luckily, they got a lot of their songs recorded. The Deep Niche is music they made before Eyes Rind and it is every bit as revelatory. Johnstone sings over raucous and raw instrumentation. It’s real rock, the real real thing. Torben Tilly joined just in time to contribute some keyboard to the track “29 Years,” although he mostly was their guitarist. Just in time, too, because The Deep Niche presents a band fresh to playing with some massive tools—The Tools Of Rock, natch. These songs are every bit as powerful as what you hear on Eyes Rind As If Beggars. Believe it
Tracks
1. St Michael Of The Angels
2. Sandy Skies
3. 29 Years
4. Moonlight In Paris
5. Eyes Of Johanna
6. Blue For You
7. Hieronymus Bosch
8. Crocodile Tears
Press
Audio & Video
CONNECTIONS - 'MIDNIGHT RUN'
Formats
AW084 - LP
711447008411
Details
Connections came out of Columbus, Ohio, at a rush, releasing two stellar LPs and several singles in their first year. They felt like the wind rushing through the open window of a car hurtling down the highway at 90 MPH. In the second year, they firmed up their sound and shook off some of the bedroom- lo-fi-Oh (as in Oh-hi-O) for the almost radio-friendly Into Sixes, which earned the band continued praise in Pitchfork, AVClub, Stereogum and more. And like the previous two records, Into Sixes wound up on a plethora of “Best Of” lists (Village Voice, Still Single, etc.) as well as on the pages of ESPN. They took a year off to record a single for Chicago’s tasty HoZac label and a play handful of shows including several sold-out NYC dates. Midnight Run kicks the murk of basement four-track recordings from the soles of the five members’ collective shoes with the sound of two guitars that growl as if they are echoing out of the propellers of a B-12 bomber. After the gentle hiss for the opener “Raise Awareness,” which echoes the early power pop of the Shoes or Cars played through a 1987 Mustang’s tape-deck, “Month to Month” shatters the windshield as singers Kevin Elliott and Andy Hampel stand atop the chorus like they just conquered a Two-for-Tuesday slot on your local classic rock station. From there, the record rolls over the speakers with a great band getting greater, flexing sinewy guitar with Hampel’s and Elliott’s majestic melodies. From the continued sing-alongs of “Kate and Everyone Else” and “Chorus Got Laid” to the nervy-clappy twist of “Lisa” (chorus: “Lisa, you’re so Lisa”), Midnight Run finds Connections matching a sound as big as their propensity for melodies. —Randy Lugosi
Tracks
1. Raise Awareness
2. Month 2 Month
3. Weapons
4. Kate
5. Most of Summer
6. Gross Lake
7. All In All
8. Keepers
9. ABCDE
10. Too Late for Heartbreak
11. Oh Lisa
12. Moore?s Nautilus
13. John From Cincinnati
14. Fourth
Press
Audio & Video
WRITHING SQUARES - 'IN THE VOID ABOVE'
Formats
SB181 - LP
655030118111
Details
Writhing Squares is the inner-city Kosmische skronk perpetrated by Kevin Nickles (Ecstatic Vision) and Daniel Provenzano (Purling Hiss). Hailing from the scenic sewers of South Phila, the duo’s short but sweet resume includes a much-heralded self-released seven-inch and a couple cassette outings, but In the Void Above is the longstanding promissory we’ve all been waiting for them to deliver. Utilizing a formidably small gamut of sounds (reeds, voice, electronics, bass), the end result is like a collision of Blurt, Hawkwind (United Artists era) and Uli Trempte’s Spacebox, where the ensuing sonic boom is as vibrant as it is dense. Look for Writhing Squares to tour throughout 2016, maybe even comin’ to your house for supper, soon!
Tracks
1. Unknown Drone
2. Astral Trane
3. Lava Suit
4. I Can?t Fall Off A Mountain
5. Balloon To The Moon
6. What Does Orion See
When It Looks Back At Me?
7. The North
Press
Audio & Video
BUILDERS - 'BEATIN HEARTS'
Formats
GY6-1 - LP
Details
Bill Direen is a legend of the New Zealand underground. He has written and produced poetry, novels and a slew of recorded material. Weaned on garage bands in the late ’60s, Direen started producing seven-inch records in the early ’80s, all of them stunners. These releases—Six Impossible Things, Die Bilder, Soloman’s Ball and High Thirties Piano—were self-financed and distributed though Flying Nun (and recently reissued by the benevolent Unwucht label). Beatin Hearts is Direen’s ultimate, unforgettable debut album, not to mention Flying Nun’s first full-length album release. All seventeen tracks are brilliant short pieces of energy, harmony and spite. Anyone with an appreciation for Flying Nun’s early recordings can find its genesis here, the dawning of one of the greatest music scenes to ever exist.
Tracks
1. 1,000,000 Hearts
2. Moderation
3. Bedrock Bay
4. Same Old Story
5. Heartbeats-A-Go-Go
6. Blue Sand Lonely
7. Dirty & Disgusting
8. Alien
9. Accident
10. Wanganui With A White Face
11. Magpies
12. Outer Date World
13. Evidence 14. Inquest
15. Magazine 16. Kicks
17. Friend
Press
Audio & Video
MARC BARRECA - 'TWILIGHT (REMASTERED & EXPANDED)'
Formats
PoL05 - LP
700261437866
Details
Marc Barreca has been creating and performing electronic music since the mid 1970s. Following recent vinyl reissues of Barreca’s 1983 cassette Music Works for Industry via the RVNG spin-off Freedom To Spend, and a compilation of early cassette tracks on Vinyl On Demand’s acclaimed American Cassette Culture, Palace of Lights has reissued the artist’s first album for the label. 1980’s Twilight was one of the earliest releases on Palace of Light, and is part of an ongoing program of documenting the roots of the Pacific Northwest independent impulse. This remastered and expanded edition includes one previously unreleased track on the LP and an additional six bonus tracks via the enclosed download card. Twilight struck out in a distinct direction, taking steps into the ambient and industrial while carrying along a phonographic sensibility. Using sounds derived from a variety of acoustic as well as electronic sources, Twilight foreshadowed the diversity and pliability of sampled, industrial and lowercase musics, ensuring the album was remarkably prescient and remains resiliently fresh to this day. Textura (reviewing Tremble) said “Barreca’s lava-like soundworlds are heady constructions whose sounds spill forth in thick clusters and collectively present themselves as heaving conglomerations of shape-shifting sound... a word like organic is less applicable than geologic, given the immense tectonic force with which its material convulses.” Barreca’s work is included in the collection of The British Library.
Tracks
1. Xenophobia
2. Moonlight Dome
3. Fish Culture
4. Memory Paths
5. Suburbs
6. Oleo Strut
7. The Dream Time
8. Commerce And Industry
9. School For Whales
10. The Wendigo
11. Music From The Greylands
12. Industrial Landscape
13. League Of The Wind (previously unreleased)
14. The Blue Gate (previously unreleased)
15. Ghost Map (digital only bonus track)
16. Color Balance (digital only bonus track)
17. Current Piece #1 (digital only bonus track)
18. Tempting Bridges (digital only bonus track)
19. Games With Shifting Mirrors
Press
Audio & Video
BOSS HOG - 'BROOD STAR'
Formats
ITR302 - 12"
759718530216
Details
New York City’s most dangerous rock ’n’ roll band is back with Brood Star, a four-song maxi-disco 12-inch, distilled, vivisected, surgically altered, bound, spindled, remixed and mutilated into a tantalizing amuse-bouche for their forthcoming full-length album, Brood X. Boss Hog has traveled to the edge of the physical realm and the far side of human comprehension to bring back an unprecedented listening experience. Brood Star is a scalding hot treat, broiled by cosmic rays and ripped from the furthest reaches of the audible universe. Primitive, raw, punk rock’n’roll, re-imagined for a New World, it swarms like prehistoric insects rising out of deep hibernation. Listen to Brood Star now. Feel it unfold inside your brain. Succumb to your future—a world without war, a world without pain. Do not attempt to adjust your stereo. Boss Hog was formed in 1989 by Cristina Martinez and Jon Spencer. The band has released three disturbed and sexually incendiary studio albums and as many EPs, along with numerous slashing, unparalleled singles, on the world’s most important record labels, including Amphetamine Reptile, In The Red, and DGC / Geffen. Boss Hog is internationally known as New York City’s most provocative and original rock ’n’ roll band.
Tracks
1. Witchita Grey
2. Booty Force
3. Devious Motherfucker
4. Disgrace