K.LEIMER - 'CLOSED SYSTEM POTENTIALS'

Formats

• POL03 - LP

  700261437675

Details

**INSTOCK NOW**Following the RVNG reissues of A Period Of Review (ranked the #7 reissue of 2014 by The Wire ) and Artificial Dance (ranked the #2 reissue of 2015 by The Wire ), Closed System Potentials, recorded in 1979 and originally released in 1980, finds its way back to vinyl in a Completely remastered and expanded edition. The LP includes two previously unreleased tracks, and the download card includes an additional two unreleased tracks, all taken from the original Closed System Potentials sessions. In their review of A Period of Review , Pitchfork said, “These pieces most closely evoke the work of Roedelius and Moebius in Cluster: meditative, wistful, lovely, giving off gentle glimmers of light. In trying to think if the closest American corollary for this set, the possibility emerges that Kerry Leimer is one of the lone examples of American kosmische music, that elegant hybrid that falls somewhere between the Velvets-style mesmerism of Can in the early ’70s and the placid tones of new age music that arose in the next decade. It’s a sound that applies to mid-’70s Cluster, Ash Ra Tempel, Popul Vuh, the second side of Kraftwerk’s Autobahn , and others.” K. Leimer founded the Palace of Lights label in 1979. Leimer’s early work was reissued by Autumn and RVNG in 2014 and 2015, and his early cassette work is in the critically acclaimed Vinyl On Demand box set American Cassette Culture . He has been actively producing music since the mid 1970s —his current catalog includes 16 still-in-print albums plus two collaborative albums with Marc Barreca . Leimer’s work is included in the collection of The British Library. 

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BLITZEN TRAPPER - 'LIVE AT THIRD MAN RECORDS'

Formats

• TMR378 - LP

  813547023186

Details

Under the stewardship of Sub Pop and Vagrant records, Oregon’s Blitzen Trapper is 8 studio albums deep into the a successful career as a modern folk-rock band, led by Eric Earley, dubbed by Paste as the “Tom Petty of the Northwest.” Earley’s songs read like stories you could’ve sworn you’ve heard before, and his band’s straightforward and every-so-slightly anthemic landscapes make for nearly universal likability — a real feat in these days of niche tastes and fragmented genres. Blitzen Trapper brought their (quite welcome!) Pacific Northwestern sensibilities, along with swampy and distinctly Floridian opener Lauris Vidal to whet our collective whistle, to the Blue Room Stage on March 16, 2016.

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BILLY GOMBERG - 'SLIGHT AT THAT CONTACT'

Formats

• SOD114 - LP

  600197511411

Details

Brooklyn-based multi-instrumentalist Billy Gomberg’s past work has released by labels such as and/OAR, Digitalis and Sunshine Ltd. In addition to his solo output, he operates in a variety of collaborative settings (including Fraufraulein, a duo with fellow label alum Anne Guthrie) and, over the course of the last five years, has carved out a niche for himself at the crossroads of electro-acoustic improvisation, ambient, and minimalist music. The beguiling Slight at that Contact brings to mind both the bucolic electronica of Microstoria and the expansive arrangements of Mirages-era Tim Hecker. “Medial” opens the record with a sea of vaporous, blooming tones set against an array of delicately percussive clicks and cuts. “Acute” further develops this, conjuring the cinematic atmosphere of a train station in a ruined, futuristic metropolis. Over the course of eight understated but nuanced compositions, Gomberg cultivates an intoxicating aural topography, a deep, expressive collection that offers considerable rewards to the attentive listener.

Tracks

1. Medial
2. Openness
3. Lifelike
4. Acute
5. Mammals On Stilts
6. Caprice
7. Spectator
8. All Right

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THE TYDE - 'DARREN 4'

Formats

• SPIRITUAL018 - LP

  096962271602

Details

A lazy decade since 2006’s Three’s Co. (Rough Trade) and after three failed attempts, Spiritual Pajamas brings you Darren 4, the new record from The Tyde. Songs of sea, sex and sand sprinkled with goodbyes, divorce, truthful situations and perhaps a few laughs. Joining Darren Rademaker on this journey are familiar members brother Brent Rademaker (Beachwood Sparks), Ben Knight, and Colby Buddelmeyer, along with new faces Bobby Rodriguez on keys, Richard Gowen (Jonathan Wilson, Vetiver, Nick Waterhouse) on drums, and Andres Renteria on percussion. Longtime friend and cohort Neal Casal (Chris Robinson Brotherhood, Ryan Adams & The Cardinals) also joins on guitar throughout, with very special guest Bernard Butler (of ’90s Brit legends Suede) on guitar and co-vocals on “The Curse In Reverse.” The songs are fleshed out with some lovely backing vocals from Paige Stark, Chelsea Larkin and Rachel Dean. “LA’s perennial coast and canyon outfit rinse the salt off with Darren 4, their first LP in a decade. Two decades in, led by the Zelig-like Darren Rademaker, The Tyde remain kitted out in a unique bouillabaisse of sound often imitated yet never duplicated. It’s not gossip if it’s true. Kooks take note..” —Justin Gage, Aquarium Drunkard

Tracks

1. Nice To Know You
2. Ode To Islands
3. The Rights
4. The Curse In Reverse
5. Rainbow Boogie
6. Situations
7. It?s Not Gossip If It?s True

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DENNIS CALLACI - 'A BED OF LIGHT'

Formats

• SHR184 - LP

  759718118414

• SHR184CD - CD

  759718118421

Details

Over the course of 25+ years, Dennis Callaci has written and performed in the band Refrigerator, while also recording solo under such aliases as Paste, Puffy and other even poorer name choices. Callaci has also collaborated on records with John Davis, Simon Joyner, and others, but A Bed of Light is his first true solo album. Six of these nine tracks were recorded by Jarvis Taveniere (Woods and producer of Woods, Sunflower Bean, Martin Courtney), who also plays drums, bass and guitar. A Bed Of Light also features Simon Joyner and his current band, with recordings and overdubs done in Omaha by Mike Friedman and Joyner. Many of these tracks were recorded months after Callaci’s brother Allen, lead singer of Refrigerator, had a sudden harrowing sickness followed by a successful heart transplant. The record is equal parts pastoral and primitive stomp. Autoharp, lap steel, cello and violin are complemented by cranky electric guitars pinned to ten in the mix, primitive drum machines and phantom saxophones. This is not a solo auteur album, though Callaci did pull a half-Prince by writing, singing and playing on every song as well as doing the cover art and writing a piss take essay on the insert!

Tracks

1. Theresa Russell
2. Birthday Poems
3. S.O.S.
4. Keychain Trophy
5. Unlanding
6. Arc of a Diver
7. Faultline
8. Houdini
9. In Wait

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ROBERT POLLARD - 'NOT IN MY AIRFORCE'

Formats

• GBVI67 - LP

  655035086712

Details

Guided By Voices Inc. is more excited than a bucket of photoexcited electrons to announce the 20th anniversary reissue of Robert Pollard’s first solo album Not In My Airforce. Originally released by Matador Records on September 10, 1996, the album includes several songs that have become fan favorites and staples of GBV live shows throughout the years: “Psychic Pilot Clocks Out,” “Flat Beauty,” “Quicksilver,” “Get Under It,” and “Maggie Turns To Flies,” among others. Other album tracks have inspired a band name (“Release The Sunbird”), a music blog (“The Ash Gray Proclamation”) and a record label (“Prom Is Coming”). We’re pretty sure that at least one British nuclearmissile- equipped submarine has been named after “Parakeet Troopers,” but MI6 refuses to confirm. The vinyl version of the album includes a six-song seveninch single, which was the original plan in 1996, before the bean-counters insisted on combining the bonus songs with the CD and LP. These bonus songs (“Party,” “Did It Play?,” “Double Standards Inc.,” “Punk Rock Gods,” “Meet My Team,” and “Good Luck Sailor”) swelled the original release to 22 songs— not that there’s anything wrong with that. Everyone can agree that more Bob is good. The charming, good-looking, recordbuying public would like to hear NIMAF as both God and Bob originally intended. This is a landmark recording in the Pollardian corpus, in that it both presaged the flood of solo albums, side projects, collaborations, and line-up changes to come, and established the precedent that Robert Pollard, whether solo or in concert with his Dayton, OH, pals, is a flat-out miracle worker of songcraft.

Tracks

1. Maggie Turns To Flies
2. Quicksilver 3. A Girl Named Captain
4. Get Under It 5. Release The Sunbird
6. John Strange School 7. Parakeet Troopers
8. One Clear Minute
9. Chance To Buy An Island
10. I?ve Owned You For Centuries
11. The Ash Gray Proclamation
12. Flat Beauty 13. King Of Arthur Avenue
14. Roofer?s Union Fight Song
15. Psychic Pilot Clocks Out
16. Prom Is Coming
17. Party (bonus 7-inch)
18. Did It Play (bonus 7-inch)
19. Double Standards Inc (bonus 7-inch)
20. Punk Rock Gods (bonus 7-inch)
21. Meet My Team (bonus 7-inch)
22. Good Luck Sailor (bonus 7-inch)

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K.LEIMER - 'RE-ENACT'

Formats

• PoL01.2016 - CD

  700261444260

Details

Following a few years of back-catalog recovery, K. Leimer has completed work on his first new solo album since The Grey Catalog. These ten new tracks follow an emergent arc, a refinement of the techniques he has used since Permissions. Highly tactile, with an emphasis on subharmonics, Re-enact sketches an antediluvian soundstage of deteriorating fragments scattered among still-recognizeable artifacts. This multitude of points-of-collapse in textural, timbral, harmonic and rhythmic relationships, continually folds in on itself to reveal moments of inner coherence and cognition. Embedded throughout with a wealth of digital and analog detail, Re-enact sets a new post-ambient direction for Leimer’s work. K. Leimer founded Palace of Lights in 1979. Leimer’s early work has recently been reissued by Autumn and RVNG, and his early cassette work is in the critically acclaimed VOD box set American Cassette Culture. Leimer has been actively producing music since the mid 1970s – his current catalog includes 17 albums plus two collaborative albums with Marc Barreca. Leimer’s work is included in the collection of The British Library.

Tracks

1. All That Follows
2. Forward Masking
3. Ordinary Music
4. Motion Study
5. Beside. On. After.
6. Folded Object
7. New Misfortunes
8. Re-enactment
9. Backward Masking
10. In Memory, In Error

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REDD KROSS / SIDE EYES - 'SONGS THAT CHARGO TAUGHT US'

Formats

• ITR293 - 7"

Details

“Two generations of defiantly insolent rock & rollers collide together with smashing results on a slyly titled split 7-inch, Songs That Chargo Taught Us, an homage to Charlotte Caffey (The Eyes, The Go Go’s). “In this corner, the rising young Southern California contenders, The Side Eyes, belt out their amped-up version of “Don’t Talk to Me,” a sordid classic by Caffey’s prescient late’70s punk trio with D.J. Bonebrake (X, the Knitters) and Joe Ramirez (Black Randy & the Metro Squad) the Eyes. “In the other corner, longtime champions of power-pop supremacy and glam-punk anarchy, Redd Kross unexpectedly transmogrify of “Screaming,” an early obscurity by the Go-Go’s. “As Iggy Pop would say, Side Eyes lead singer Astrid McDonald has a right to sing a proto-riot-grrl anthem like “Don’t Talk to Me,” with its lurid lyrics that sound like a pulp-novel heroine’s sullen reply to an unseen kidnapper. The daughter of Charlotte Caffey and Redd Kross’ Jeff McDonald, the 21-year-old front woman already has a preternatural presence as she stalks back and forth onstage and belts out her vocals with charismatic assurance and melodic ferocity. Astrid’s head-banging bandmates — rampaging guitarist Kevin Devine and ominously rumbling bassist Chris Devine — give “Don’t Talk to Me” a bit of a thundering hard-rock makeover, thrashing out the riffs in convulsive waves of volume and power, even as drummer Nick Arnold maintains the original’s throttling punk pace. “Redd Kross emphasizes how fiercely bratty and fast ‘n’ furious the early Go-Go’s were with a savage new update of “Screaming,” which was co-written by Caffey with fellow Go-Go’s guitarist Jane Wiedlin. Guitarists Jeff McDonald and Jason Shapiro (Celebrity Skin) juice up the song’s wicked sidewinding riff with metallic crunch, and yet Jeff and his brother-bassist, Steve McDonald, also bring out the hook that was buried in the Go-Go’s 1979 live version (as documented on the 1994 compilation Return to the Valley of the Go-Go’s) by emphasizing the melody with close sibling harmonies. If anything, Redd Kross’s version is even more poppy than the Go-Go’s’ original.” —Falling James

Tracks

1. Redd Kross ? Screaming
2. The Side Eyes ? Don?t Talk To Me

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MONOLORD - 'LORD OF SUFFERING / DIE IN HAZE'

Formats

• EZRDR069 - 10"

  603111715117

Details

Swedish trio Monolord drop a limited 10â€? EP, 2 new tracks; picking up where their 2015 album Vaenir left off. They kicked of their first ever North American headlining tour this week, two months across the US, with support from Beastmaker (Rise Above Records) and Sweat Lodge (Brutal Panda). Metal Sucks hailed Monolord's Vænir as, "far and away one of my favorite doom releases of 2015 so far, possibly even of the past few years. There's just something about the way these guys construct riffs that sets them apart from the pack, and the production style they've chosen -- clear and concise, but still massively powerful and raw in tone -- perfectly underscores what they're doing." Noisey calls it, "a sludge-doom offering with guitars like chainsaws, bringing to mind Matt Pike's epic tone on The Art of Self-Defense. The massive, ten-ton brick of a record relies on a blues groove though, and not long-stroke, droning nonsense. Heavily treated melodic vocals bring to mind Ozzy during 'Planet Caravan,' and add to the mysticism and darkness surrounding the release. This is one massive record."   LIMITED EDITION VINYL RELEASE  

Tracks

a: LORD OF SUFFERING?

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