AMOR/LEMUR - 'AMOR/LEMUR'

Formats

• LSSN076 - 12"

Details

“The earth shall rise again...” AMOR/LEMUR finds the Glasgow quartet AMOR in partnership with Norwegian improvising ensemble LEMUR to hopeful and ecstatic effect. Conceived before the onset of Covid 19 but finished during spring lockdown, their eponymous EP is the most loose, alive and elevated recording in AMOR’s catalog. AMOR/LEMUR takes the template of throbbing avant disco expanded upon on previous recordings for Night School and lifts it into new territories, with new tonalities and unexpected turns on the journey. More than anything, the expanded, near- cinematic expression of human connectivity feels like a lightning new energy to grasp in the dark. Following a revelatory concert in Glasgow in January 2020 wherein the two sets of musicians met and performed together for the first time, a recording session was arranged the following day, resulting in the most elevated permutation of AMOR’s art to date. Each track was built upon a rhythmic bedrock of percussion and drums performed by Paul Thomson and samples/synthesizer by Luke Fowler. Thomson used bamboo Javanese gamelan (most notably on For You) and scrap metal, as well as traditional percussion and drums while Fowler incorporated processed ambient field recordings recorded in enclosed acoustic spaces around Glasgow. Singer/pianist Richard Youngs contributes some of the most bright and mindful work of his career. Acoustic bass player Michael Francis Duch, whose lush playing as ever provides the elastic spine to each song, scored the string parts for LEMUR on piano at home in Norway. The addition of swelling strings and drones fills out the AMOR sound significantly, lending a sonorous tone to 8 minute, epic closer For You or an ascending melodic introduction to Stars Burst that feels like a new morning dawning on a world saved from certain death. With the circumstances of lockdown forcing the musicians to work differently, a thread of optimism and utopia grounded in the moment weaves through these tracks. Unravel reveals a spine tingling vocal from Youngs. It’s a song about the simultaneously grounding and ecstatic effect of love, feeling connected to others. It’s a simple message, “I’m finding myself in your smile, always unravels me” speaks of ego death, the dissipation of the material into a nirvana of pure energy, the power of surrender. This isn’t a quasi-religious message, this is the power of each other, a love song to connection in a temporary age of isolation. Stars Burst is a play on the inner and outer cosmos, with narrator Youngs exploring wonder to a pounding galloping rhythm and snake-charming synth. It’s an open dance, with the group locked in together for the wild ride. Fear is the centerpiece of the record, starting with drones and scraped overtones before swirling synth notes filter upwards to meet reverberating minor chords. Over 8 minutes of tight but loose playing, Youngs is the shaman instructing us to use Fear as a celebration of the moment, embrace it and jump into the unknown. The only way to overcome your fear is to feel it, use it as an energy. The use of the studio as an instrument throughout side 2 is particularly important, with the dubbing and mixing prowess of engineer Paul Savage (who mixed unattended due to lockdown restrictions) and tape manipulations performed by Jason Lescallet coming into play. For You closes out with a largely instrumental, evolving composition that uses many of the abstract and novel aspects of this permutation to aid the trance. It’s massive, an unfurling creature with unexpected tonalities and serious heft.

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FOX FACE - 'END OF MAN'

Formats

• ZZZ163 - LP

  881970016310

Details

Thinking about a fox face may give many warm, fuzzy feelings, but don’t forget that foxes have teeth.While Milwaukee quartet Fox Face may not bite one’s face, their new album End Of Man might just melt it off. Featuring players drawn from various corners of the Brewtown music scene, Fox Face came together organically ahead of the recording sessions for their November 2017 debut album, Spoil + Destroy. Main songwriter Lindsay DeGroot (The Olives) started working on her songs with multi-instrumentalist Lydia Washechek (Static Eyes). Eventually fellow Olives member Mary Hickey joined up on bass, and the final piece of the band was found with the addition of drummer Christopher Capelle (Midwest Beat, Long Line Riders). Spoil + Destroy was one of the best garage punk albums of 2017-2018, taking on science deniers, misogynists and other jerks with songs anchored by fiery guitar playing and rock-solid ensemble playing. End Of Man bumps up the furious guitar sound of Spoil + Destroy a few more notches. It’s not hard rock, per se, but the album’s sound edges in that direction. And one can tell that Fox Face has been playing together for several years now, because these recordings are tight AF. There’s no filler or extraneous padding; the arrangements and playing make for a cohesive whole, and lyrically the songs are direct and to the point while still remaining universal enough to be met on personal terms by the listener. End Of Man may not be a party record … at least, once letting the lyrics filter past the lizard brain enjoyment of the blazing riffs. But art is not supposed to be all fun and games. Standing up and speaking truth may not be the easiest path for a band or its listeners, but there is much to be said for catharthis. Anyone feeling despair and helplessness about the current political and societal breakdown should find some common ground to rage along with these new songs from Fox Face.

Tracks

1. Vessels 2. SWF
3. Slow Burn
4. Luminol
5. Fan The Flames
6. Johnson Death Farm
7. There?ll Be Some Changes Made
8. Haunt You
9. We Do Nothing
10. Not Your Home
11. End Of Man
12. Reprise

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GAVILAN RAYNA RUSSOM - 'SECRET PASSAGE'

Formats

• W25-14 - LP

  857661008308

Details

*150 COPIES ON BLUE VINYL FOR UK*Growing up in deindustrialized Providence, Rhode Island of the 1970s and 1980s provided NYC-based composer and interdisciplinary artist Gavilán Rayna Russom access to derelict subterranean spaces including the mile-long East Side Rail Tunnel. The tunnel’s reverberant darkness would produce distinctive sensory effects and host Russom’s formative experiences of interpersonal connectedness, liminality, transgender identity, anti-capitalist desire and state repression. Secret Passage—an absorbing, memoiristic work by Russom, whose synthesis-based practice fuses information and expression into organic wholes—draws on memories of “unsupervised autonomous zones where I tasted the possibilities of a world without surveillance,” as she writes in the liner notes. Inspired by “this beautifully neglected place,” the music resounds with ghostlike echoes and raw pulsations. Russom utilizes synthesizers, field recordings and voice to illustrate hallucinatory revelations of the city’s lightless undercarriage. Each track of Secret Passage, originally released as a limited cassette on Voluminous Arts, is dedicated to a friend—entwining personal liberation with collective discovery. The East Side Rail Tunnel has been inaccessible since the 1990s, the result of urban development and gentrification.

Tracks

1. A Place For Us Among The Ruins
(For Alyson)
2. Shotgun Hits With Boys Who Drum On
Metal (For Cheyney)
3. Ghosts Wail In Us (For Mike)
4. Sarafina Calls Because The Police Are
Beating People (For Brian C.)
5. Fireworks (For Brian T.)

Press

Recommended for fans of Cosey Fanni
Tutti, Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe and GAS

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VARIOUS - 'MAGGOT BRAIN ISSUE #3'

Formats

• MG004 - BOOK

Details

We’re back to print and stoked to bring you a Super-Packed special issue of our arts and music quarterly 'Maggot Brain’! For our cover story, we dive into the genesis and continued import of our namesake, with a lengthy feature by Detroit music journo Ana Gavrilovska on the mind-melting fifty year-old Funkadelic masterpiece 'Maggot Brain.’ We also have rare photos of the White Stripes live at Paychecks Lounge in Hamtramck Michigan from 1999 by noted photographer Doug Coombe.There’s a mini-roundtable discussion on gay rights pioneer Morris Knight and San Francisco's brilliant hippie queer activist pranksters the Cockettes and the must see pages with Rachel Leah Gallo's eight-page bio-comic on the delightful and obscure kitchen-folk singer Connie Converse. • Dynamic photographs by Mike Galinsky from the late 1980s to early 1990s indie/underground music scene. • RJ Smith dives deep on Fortune Records in a review of the 'Mind Over Matter' book. • Murat Cem Mengüç documents the impromptu art show that sprung up around the White House at the start of the Black Lives Matter movement. • Andy Beta on Brazilian composer, anthropologist, and musician Priscilla Ermel's gorgeous work. • Instagram sensation Tara Booth in an intimate interview with Amy Gillfeather. • Joshua James Amberson goes deep on poet Lydia Tomkiw and her stunning new wave band Algebra Suicide. • Michael Gonzales on 1990s neo-soul singer Ephraim Lewis. • Robert Gordon on Memphis' primitivist aesthete Tav Falco -- an excerpt from the final chapter to 'It Came From Memphis.' Also Featuring: Luc Sante on an unknown 1960s garage rock band! Australia's brilliant Stroppies! Reviews of cassette tapes! Dreams about Sam Elliott! A killer poem written by a fifteen year-old! Fiction by Mairead Case! Art by Nathaniel Russell, Davin Brainard, the Philadelphia Wireman, and Marc Bell! Tweets by John Brannon! Unseen photos of Detroit punk pioneers L-Seven!

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BILL FOX - 'SHELTER FROM THE SMOKE'

Formats

• SCAT77 - 2xLPs

  753417007710

Details

Scat Records offers up a definitive vinyl edition of Bill Fox’s debut solo disc, Shelter From The Smoke, back in print after more than half a decade. Originally self-released in 1997 and reissued the following year by SpinArt, both previous versions featured different tracklists. This edition includes all songs from both versions, as well as the two tracks from a scarce 1996 Scat 7-inch.Fox began his musical journey in early 1980s Cleveland with The Mice, who fused punk energy with British-Invasion-style songwriting and harmonies. He infamously dissolved the group on the eve of a European tour, then dropped out of the scene altogether, with an unfinished Mice LP in the can. In the early ’90s, he began a series of home recordings which revealed a growing preference for acoustically based music, and formed the basis for Shelter From The Smoke as well as the follow-up Transit Byzantium (also being concurrently reissued). Shelter also includes four electric tracks recorded with Fox’s short-lived band The Radio Flyers. After a 1998 tour, Fox once again dropped out of music.Fox is one of those rare musicians who really does not enjoy the limelight, even having declined an interview with Joe Hagan of The Believer, who went so far as to fly to Cleveland in hopes of meeting him. That and his refusal to “be on the internet” has probably only helped the growing cadre of music fans who sees his solo albums as mysterious, lost classics. Or perhaps they just delight in the ringing sound of Fox’s perfectly pitched voice or his deft lyricism. Either way, Fox’s two solo albums are jewels not to be missed by anyone who enjoys traditional songcraft or iconic vocalists.Bill FoxShelter From The Smoke 

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