CC DUST - 'SHINKANSEN'

Formats

• LSSN043 - 7"

Details

**SHIPPING FOR 21ST OCT** Shinkansen No.1 / New Ways is the second release from CC DUST, a new duo from Olympia, Washington featuring Maryjane Dunphe and David Jaques. Shinkansen No.1 introduces the record with a more industrial, harder edge than much of the group’s debut 12” (CC DUST – S/T), a fast paced, urgent song powered by by fast kick drums and Jaques’ bassline acrobatics. CC Dust opened every show on their recent European tour with this salvo, a dark energy that spirals upwards, with Dunphe’s vocal giving the production space to build into a crescendo. New Ways on the other hand, is perhaps Dunphe’s finest moment yet set to disc. Dunphe is a performer who battles restraint, her every vocal performance a tour de force and New Ways is one of the most emotional and transcendent performacnes imaginable. With a terse retraint in the verses, the chorus here erupts into an anthem for doomed youth, with every crack in Dunphe’s voice hitting the listener square in the chest. A light that casts shadow, CC Dust is doomed, romantic music anchored by Jaques’ live bass and the powerful performance values Dunphe has honed both in her punk group Vexx and in various film and performance projects. Musically, CC Dust’s precedents might be considered the European synth pop originators of the early 80s, there’s also an abundance of low-end hooks played on baritone and bass guitars that teases the ear like early New Order productions, but in Dunphe’s passionate vocal performances there’s a close-to-thebone reality that bypasses cool detachment. CC Dust play and write real songs lived. A desire for desire. What is it? How does it manifest? Is it all worth the tumult? CC Dust offer no answers as there are none, but they ask the right questions in a life-affirming way. Doomed, romantic, unanswerable and vital.

Tracks

SIDE A: Shinkansen No.1
SIDE AA: New Ways

Press

Audio & Video

WES TIREY - 'BLACK WIND'

Formats

• SCTR042 - LP

  646847647505

Details

On Black Wind, songwriter / guitarist Wes Tirey makes the case for quality over quantity. After a stream of wellreceived cassettes, he assembled a reserved trio and laid down the soft law on a single night. Whereas his previous releases were turned inward, this album opens out like Terence Malick meditating on prairie grass. The arrangements are spacious, simple structures of voice and acoustic guitar, with sparse backing from a telecaster and a trap kit. In addition to this fine album on Scissor Tail Records is a thematically linked book to be released by Cabin Floor Esoterica. Titled Melodrama Blues: Selected Lyrics of Wes Tirey, it collects writings from Black Wind and three past albums, all related via Tirey’s feel for a mythological americana, the threads of surrealist biblical imagery that underlie our cultural cosmos.

Tracks

1. All The Livelong Day
2. Sojourn
3. Lois
4. Final Voyage
5. I Wonder As I Wander
6. Black Wind

Press

?Tirey rides the river like Mark Twain, turning his adventures
into troubador stories with rich melodies and disorienting
noise.?
?KEXP

Audio & Video

TYVEK - 'ORIGIN OF WHAT'

Formats

• ITR296 - LP

  759718529616

• ITR296CD - CD

  759718529623

Details

Tyvek have long stood as one of the more steadfast and dependable punk institutions of the last decade. Each record has been great and has improved on the one before it without struggling to reinvent or overwrite their past. Line-ups and life events shift but the energy always comes through as new and raw as it did on the first single. Origin of What, their fourth album, is something of a departure, if a cryptic one—all the familiar elements are in place and yet a pervasive darkness that these strangely disjointed songs. Working again with Fred Thomas who recorded their most recent album, 2012 burner On Triple Beams, band members from the earliest incarnations to its most recent showed up for various recording sessions, with initial tracks captured quickly. Later, far more extensive editing, mixing and overdubbing ensued, resulting in a fragmented production style that slowly disintegrates the standard punk fare until it starts to resemble dub experimentation before decaying even further. Tyvek’s future, like its origin, is up for grabs.

Tracks

1. Tip To Tail
2. Can?t Exist
3. Girl On A Bicycle
4. Gridlock
5. Mirror Image Of
6. Count Me In
7. Into The Outlets
8. Origin Of What
9. Real Estate & Finance
10. Choose Once
11. Tyvek Chant
13. Underwater 3

Press

Audio & Video

THE FLESH EATERS - 'FOREVER CAME TODAY'

Formats

• SV052 - LP

  855985006901

• SV052CD - CD

Details

In the wake of the star-filled A Minute To Pray A Second To Die, The Flesh Eaters’ frontman Chris D. assembled a leaner, meaner band to deliver his next unbound vision. Forever Came Today, the group’s third full-length album, was originally released on Ruby Records in 1982 and features Don Kirk on guitar, Robyn Jameson on bass, Chris Wahl on drums, Steve Berlin on sax and Chris D.’s unmistakable voice. “My Life To Live” and “Shallow Water” are masterfully wrought punk tunes, reverberating with heart-wrenching vocals that turn on a dime from desperate whispers to blood-curdling screams. “Drag My Name In Mud” dives deeper into full-throttle rock demonology, bluesy primeval swagger and obsessive imagery, inspired in equal parts by William S. Burroughs and Edgar Allan Poe. This first-time vinyl reissue has been carefully remastered and comes with lyric sheet. Forever Came Today is the perfect introduction to The Flesh Eaters’ dark sense of humor and positively bleak form of rock ’n’ roll.

Tracks

1. My Life To Live
2. A Minute To Pray, A Second To Die
3. Secret Life
4. Shallow Water
5. The Rosy Hours
6. The Wedding Dice
7. Hand Of Glory
8. Drag My Name In The Mud
9. Because Of You (Every
Legend Dies A Quick Death)
10. Tightrope On Fire

Press

Audio & Video

DRAKULAS - 'RAW WAVE'

Formats

• ZZZ147 - LP

  881970014712

Details

Drakulas present Raw Wave, a collection of songs told from the different points of view of various characters in a fictional metropolis in the not-too-distant past. A bustling city center not unlike Times Square in the ’70s filled with sin and sex is the backdrop where gangs, street preachers, sex addicts, pimps, prostitutes and pornographers live and work. People of this world describe the time period of these songs as the Raw Wave—a wave of new analog technology that hit the city, wiping away many of the mores and pretense of the past. Drakulas are from Austin, TX, and feature members of Riverboat Gamblers and Rise Against, amongst others. This is their debut LP, following a 7-inch on Red Scare. They pretty much nail the sound for which the Texas branch of the extended Dirtnap family is infamous—vibrant, high energy, and dangerously catchy. Raw Wave is tailor-made for fans of The Marked Men, The Dickies, and vintage-era Riverboat Gamblers / High Tension Wires. And then there are the lyrics: high-concept / low-brow weirdness that could only have come from the twisted mind of Gamblers frontman Mike Wiebe. Call it a super-group if you must, but don’t call it a side-project.

Tracks

1. I?m Getting Out
2. Sonny Tsu
3. Beta Max
4. My Name In Your Mouth
5. Headphones / Slit Throats
6. Neon Town
7. VHS
8. Venus Retreat
9. Fist Fight At Ponchos
10. Stepping On Glass

Press

Audio & Video

JOSEPH ALLRED - 'FIRE AND EARTH'

Formats

• SCTR043 - LP

  646847659690

Details

Joseph Allred fits the Guitar Soli realm perfectly, fully embodying the guitar loner typecast—he falls in line with Robbie Basho not only in his 12-string playing that has a leaning towards Eastern musical traditions and droning free form raga, but also in his educational background in philosophy and religious studies. Scissor Tail Editions decided to put out Fire An Earth after hearing only thirty seconds of the track “Leitmotif”—there’s a sincerity in Allred’s music and way of life that has been missing from the modern age for a long time. Allred has been quietly releasing records for years, painstakingly designing and hand-printing most of the packaging, never promoting any of them. He hand-painted the covers for Fire and Earth and letterpressed the back covers of Dylan Golden Aycock’s latest. Now inhabiting land that’s been in his family for two hundred years, he says he’s trying to find a place in the family legacy. In Fire An Earth, there is a searching and spiritual quality to the music, and also integrity.

Tracks

1. Discovery Of Fire (For Henry Flynt)
2. Holy Blue Window (For Daniel)
3. A Waltz For Winter
4. Leitmotif
5. Musica Humana
6. Song For Spring
7. Siegfried?s Dream
8. Useless Air
9. Song For The River

Press

Audio & Video