JENN CHAMPION - 'SINGLE RIDER'

Formats

• HAR104LP - LP

  0098787310412

• HARCD104 - CD

  0098787310429

• HARCS104 - MC

  0098787310443

Details

Fans of Jenn Champion (formerly “S”) have praised her open-hearted lyrics, expertly-deployed melancholia, technical skill, and willingness to forgo conventions, but mostly they’ve praised her for making albums they could cry to. With the release of Cool Choices in 2014, Champion made what many considered the best record of her career, and a lot of people cried to it. On Single Rider, Champion brings with her all those skills and vulnerabilities, but it is not a record for wallowing: it is a record for intense eye contact on the dancefloor. “Sometimes you are sad and you just want to dance about it,” said Champion. Side B of Cool Choices presaged Champion’s agit-pop transformation. “Let the Light In” and "Tell Me" signalled her move toward a more electronic sound, but it was the digital single “No One” (2016) that marked the clear delineation. “I feel like a door got opened in my mind with electronic and digital music. There was a room I hadn’t explored before and I stepped in,” said Champion. While she’d initially intended to follow Cool Choices with “a rock record - guitar, a lot of pedals, heavy riffs,” plans changed. “I couldn’t pull myself away from the synthesizers and I realized the record I really wanted to make was more of a cross between Drake and Billy Joel than Blue Oyster Cult.” Soon after the release of No One, Champion’s publishers partnered her with Brian Fennell, aka SYML, and the two co-wrote the song “Leave Like That” (featured on SYML’s Hurt For Me EP). The pair hit it off, and with nearly all of Champion’s Single Rider demos completed, the timing was perfect--she was looking for a producer. “I guess you could say I pursued Brian.” Fortunately, Fennell was open to being pursued and the two spent the next five months working on Single Rider. “In the studio with Brian, I was more open than I had ever been.” With Champion’s vision and Fennell’s expertise, the record evolved from synthy roughs to a hi-fi dance album. Despite the new direction in her sound, emotion cuts through on Single Rider in the classic Champion style, weaving simultaneously pleading-and-incensed vocals into anthemic pop songs. Champion wants her listeners to see that the rooms are all on fire and she has not given up. Taking a double “fuck you” approach to the world, to the patriarchy, all the things which screw you up and hold you back, she is dancing right on out of the disappointment apocalypse with her middle fingers in the air, and you can follow if you want to.

Tracks

1. O.M.G. (I?m All Over It)
2. Coming For You
3. You Knew
4. Holding On
5. The Move
6. Never Giving In
7. Mainline
8. Time to Regulate
9. Bleed
10. Hustle
11. Going Nowhere

Press

Audio & Video

LAVENDER FLU - 'MOW THE GLASS'

Formats

• ITR320 - LP

  759718532012

• ITR320CD - CD

  759718532029

Details

The new Lavender Flu album Mow The Glass was recorded in the living room of a small house on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. One can hear it in the music: the Oregon coast, the dream life of an Axolotl, the open sound of a band playing to an audience of endless water, sun, and sky. A bald eagle flew by the window every few hours as if to remind the band where they really were. Still, the laughter was real, the freedom was magic, and the tambo was sprinkled like sugar. Heavy Air , the previous album, was a home recording project. The songs started with Chris Gunn (The Hunches) on a guitar or a synth or a bowl of cereal and were built up from there. A rotating cast of friends and family helped flesh out the material. It could have been made in deep space or at the bottom of the ocean. Transmissions from a bedroom at the bottom of Pill Hill. This new album is a reflection of the live experience. Four people playing together; working within the template of pop classicism. thirty-five minutes of music. This time, the Flu comes out of the water and spends a little more time on land: pop kicks, psychedelic derangement, beauty, spells cast via hate raga and rocker . The band moves backward, forward and sideways; often within the same piece. The music breathes. It doesn’t deal in nostalgic regression or self conscious futurism. It just sounds like the Lavender Flu.

Tracks

1. Follow The Flowers
2. Dream Cleaner
3. Leaking Past
4. Reverse Lives
5. Ceiling Of Skin
6. Like A Summer Thursday
7. Raga Called Erik
8. You Are The Prey
9. Floor Lord
10. Just Like Anything
11. Distant Beings
12. Demons In The Dusk
13. Ignorance Restored

Press

Latest psych / pop derangement from
Chris Gunn (The Hunches)

Audio & Video

KOOLAID (HOLY SUNSHINE!) - 'KOOLAID (HOLY SUNSHINE!)'

Formats

• KXLP004 - LP

  5060446122006

• KXCD004 - CD

  5060446121993

Details

Following their (Global Tyranny) incarnation the artists occasionally known as Koolaid return in their new guise of (Holy Sunshine!) to question the burning answer of our time: reality is a put-on? Who or what is The New Agent? Who or what are The N.W.D.F.? Where is The Canyon? Does The Canyon even exist? Can the Circuit Break? If you can grok 7 Up then is it possible to get 8 Up? Is it really just a choice between Turn On or Turn Off? ...and where did the hippies really come from? Cause suddenly they were just there... CIA / FBI / LSD / Gettin' High / Monterey Pop / Vietnam / Timothy Leary / Groovy, Man... It's a whirlwind double-tryptamine blast thru Acid Rock, West Coast Tech, Surf Sitars, Post Punk Junk, 808 FolkBuzz, 303 PulseBeat, Backwoods Reverb, Unplugged No-Wave, Twin Jag Attack, Secret Agent Men... and A Sample Storm of unwitting guests such as Allen Ginsberg, Ralph Malph, The Ambrosia Singers, Art Linkletter, Herbert Marshall McLuhan, and Doctor Leary hisself. Peter Fonda says "WOW". Koolaid themselves say "did you hear the one about the love and peace movement being a test-tube baby birthed in a secret military lab in the heart of hippie heaven?" We hadn't. But could it be that Koolaid (Holy Sunshine!) are hinting that the Classic Rock Music of the late 60s & early 70s was created to brain-wash the human population of Planet Earth? When confronted with this possibility they replied "Well, it may be true or it may not, but we just wanted to kick out the jams & get it on."

Tracks

1/ The New Agent 2/ Canyon 3/ F.B.R. vs C.E.A. 4/ MK?d 5/ Turn Off 6/ Circuit Break 7/ Turn On 8/ Demons Out 9/ The N.W.D.F. 10/ 8.UP!

Press

Koolaid: Putting the harmala with caapi since 1999.

Audio & Video

WARP TRANSMISSION - 'PROCESS ULTRA'

Formats

• CC-06CD - CD

  5060446122334

• CC-06 - LP

  5060446122327

Details

Creepy Crawl is proud to unleash the second release from Tampere, Finland’s heavy psych over-lords – Warp Transmission. The previous release – the amazing Tamám Shud, was a reissue of a demo/rehearsal/whatever cassette – this is their first album proper – recorded and produced by the band themselves and then expertly mastered by the legend that is John McBain, former member of Monster Magnet / Hater / ETC From the arctic circle comes the freshest and least revivalist take on stratospherically exhilarating psychedelic rock since “Spine Of God” was released in 1991, or “Relaxing With” in 1995… turned up, turned on and blasting out of your speakers, this throbbing over-blown riff monster could be the blast of guitar spuzz we need… a furious slab of unrelenting and unforgiving psychedelia. This debut album proper from Finland’s Warp Transmission will stand up along side the afore mentioned debuts by Monster Magnet and The Heads, as well as the Stooges / Hawkwind / Blue Cheer / On Trial / early Nebula / Union Carbide Productions.. ,, it really is an almost untouchable single LP of speaker gashing, amp blowing, phaser shredding scree… you get to the end?? You simply put it back on again,,,this WILL be one of the albums of the year for us. Label disclaimer: this is not Stoner Rock, or, indeed Shoegaze…. This is Warp Transmission, primitive-heavy..primordial ooze rock! Limited edition first pressing of 500 LP on black vinyl comes with CD of the album and Insert. CD in nice digipak!

Tracks

1: Ultra Thrust
2: Cast Into The Process
3: Wipeout
4: The Insect
5: Crash Like Waves
6: The Stranded
7: Quicksilver Mindstream

Press

Audio & Video

KELLEY STOLTZ - 'NATURAL CAUSES'

Formats

• B&L001 - LP

  8437018437016

• B&L001CD - CD

  8437018437023

Details

Picture yourself in front of your record collection, deciding which one you'll listen to next. You finally choose 'Kilimanjaro' by Teardrop Explodes; you haven't listened to it for a long time. In that moment, you notice that your partner placed your 'Face to Face' copy in an incorrect slot. It goes with you to the record player too. A few minutes later, you corroborate that both Cope and Davies made prevailing, lucid and brilliant records. And you dream thinking how would they sound together, in an hypotetic alloy that feels almost impossible straight away. There are only fourteen years away from one record to the other, but they seem made in different centuries, different planets. We find the answer at the Electric Duck studios in San Francisco, Kelley Stoltz's base of operations. A Detroit-native, Kelley was an adolescent moved by post-punk and English new-age, and became an adult falling in love with the extensive pop legacy from the 60s. Both references define one of the strongest, most talented discographies of the last years. Filtering and tying those sounds together with freshness and distinction is what makes Kelley an unique composer. Stoltz gets ostentation and histrionics out of the best 80s pop and supplies it with outstanding melodies and sense of humor. What Brian Wilson doing a cover by Wire's 'The 15th' would feel like.

Tracks

Press

ONE page review in Q mag: **** 'Cosmic Cult hero dazzles on eclectic 10th LP' MOJO review and more...

Audio & Video