SPIKE IN VAIN - 'DEATH DRIVES A CADILLAC'

Formats

• SCAT71 - LP

  753417007116

Details

Death Drives A Cadillac was Spike In Vain’s second album, never officially released and unheard in its final form until now. Like many hardcore bands circa ’84 and ’85, the group was ready to further expand its palette and ease off the thrash tempos. Recorded roughly a year after Disease Is Relative with a bigger budget, the album is even more wide-ranging, and the songs are more fleshed out. “Despair grew inside her, I grew inside her. She named me Spirit Death, and this is my song” sings Chris Marec, the vocalist on half of this LP. Though less “young” than their debut, that album’s darkness lingers, but here has a more removed, observational quality, with many songs sung in character or in the third person, along with a tendency for anthropomorphic allegory. It has a bit less to do with screaming for death to come than with a growing resignation to being the other, a recognition of inescapable alienation and its relation to childhood trauma. —all with a heaping side of absurdity and a sense of wonder at the gradually unfolding endtimes. That said, many of the tracks wouldn’t be out of place on the debut, and some feature exotic tunings. Bits of roots music come into play as well—gospel, blues, and country figure to some extent in a third of the songs, sometimes in convoluted, Beefheart-esque ways, and at other times toying with genre archetypes as a cat does a mouse.

Tracks

1. Too Cool
2. Abysmal Child
3. Spirit Death
4. Dogsleds In Heaven
5. Rattlesnake?s Wedding
6. Escape From The Zoo
7. Lady Luck Is Dead
8. Valentine?s Day
9. Big Black Locomotive
10. Party In The Ground
11. Totem Fields
12. Gospel Motel
13. Count Basie?s Ghost

Press

Audio & Video

REFRIGERATOR - 'SO LONG TO FAREWELL'

Formats

• SHR205DE - DELUXE LP + CD

  733102719913

• SHR205 - LP

  733102720018

Details

The twelfth studio record by Refrigerator expands the line-up to five with the addition of Mark Givens from WCKR SPGT on second guitar. Along for the ride are guest appearances by legendary singer Claudia Lennear (vocals on the first single “Broken Glass Shore”), Shrimper Records stalwart Franklin Bruno, and the additional hand of Scott Solter, who mixed the record, which rests in a gorgeous sleeve with artwork by Jean Smith. The lovely live bleed of a band playing together in one room— guitars spilling onto the drum tracks, cymbals biting into the feedback from the amps—captures the live sound of Refrigerator as never before on record as caught by engineer Steve Folta. There are two physical versions of the record, one on black 160 gram vinyl, as well as a deluxe edition, available on green and white swirled vinyl that couples a bonus CD with six tracks to a fifty page Bamboo Dart Press chapbook that features drawings, short stories, photographs, lyrics and essays by the band, in an edition of 150 copies.

Tracks

1. Broken Glass Shore
2. Drink Ourselves To Death
3. David Jove The Acid King
4. Tulsa
5. Time Well Wasted
6. Another Ghost Town
7. Corvette Winter
8. All The People I Lied To Are Dead Now
9. Greyhound Sundown
10. Part Time Lover Part II
11. From Eternity To 4AM
12. Masks In The Morning
13. I Could Be Anything
14. Jealousy Is Gone

Press

Audio & Video

MARC BARRECA - 'THE SLEEPER WAKES'

Formats

• ST56 - LP

  759159940353

Details

Scissor Tail presents the first vinyl issue of Marc Barreca’s 1986 album The Sleeper Wakes, originally only released on cassette by the Seattle electronic ambient label Intrepid. Marc Barreca has been creating and performing electronic music since the mid-1970s. His 1980 album, Twilight, reissued on vinyl in 2016, was one of the earliest releases on Palace Of Lights. Recent releases include Shadow Aesthetics (2018) and three collaborations with K. Leimer. Previous reissues include work on the acclaimed VOD box set American Cassette Culture, the Cherry Red compilation of seminal U.S. electronic music and the 1983 cassette Music Works For Industry. His work is also included in the collection of The British Library.” The Sleeper Wakes has been out of print for many years and Scissor Tail is very happy to remaster and reissue this great work that was ahead of it’s time, employing analog treatments of sampled sounds arranged in a very interesting and intuitive way.

Tracks

1. The Sleeper Wakes 2. Viaduct
3. Parliament Of Birds
4. Tempting Bridges
5. Out Delphi
6. Games With Shifting Mirrors
7. League Of Wind
8. Patience
9. Night And The Compass
10. The Blue Gate
11. Beyond The Mounds
12. Delusion

Press

Reissue of cult electronic artists 1986
album

Audio & Video

DUNBARROW - 'III'

Formats

• BFTRS022LP - LP

  4046661705218

• BFTRS022CD - CD

  4046661705324

Details

Every Dunbarrow album has a hauntingly classic sound of, in the band’s own words, “an eerie rawness.” But their third album feels like you’ve discovered a mysterious half-century old recording tucked away in a decrepit abandoned mansion. Perhaps there’s a note attached, begging its courier to beware. Alas, whoever possessed the tape apparently never survived. ...that is to say, it feels like there’s a solemn story to this album, not just in the lyrics, but in the sound itself. Much like the eponymous debut of Black Sabbath, the band uses subtle sound effects to dramatically set the scene for its mostly clean tones and masterful use of open space for which the band has become known. But unlike their first two albums, this one does see the band branching out just a bit into heavier, more distorted guitars. The result is a much more in-your-face sound, while retaining the Haugesund, Norway quintet’s masterful proto-metal sound. The album opens with the sound of falling rain as Lønning and Eirik Øvregård’s guitars seep into the speakers like funereal bells and haunted drones on “Death That Never Dies.” Drummer Pål Gunnar Dale slams down three snare beats as bassist Sondre Berge Engedal slinks in harmony over it all. Andersen’s crisp vocals paint a bleak picture of dark perdition until the band slips into a swaggering piano-led coda reminiscent of “Sabbra Cadabra.” The 7-minute psychedelic folk masterpiece “Turn In Your Grave” is the album centerpiece, replete with mournfully shimmering Mellotron and bleak folkloric lyrics. Its hypnotically spinning guitar notes and old European parlando-rubato singing hearken to dark early Steeleye Span with a sinister edge. “In My Heart” perfectly showcases the band’s penchant for folk based, yet head-banging riffs that break with tradition that has stilted modern heavy music. “I think with this record, we have managed to create our own unique sound with its own Dunbarrow tag,” says the band. With that sound comes the perfect artwork: A cover illustration from the early 1900’s by artist Harry Clarke from his work for Edgar Allen Poe’s Tales of Mystery and Imagination.

Tracks

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Audio & Video

PAPIR - 'JAMS'

Formats

• PSYCHOBABBLE117LP - 2xLPs

  4046661693416

Details

Papir’s latest offering “Jams” is a collection of improvised pieces from a few studio sessions in early 2020. What for many bands can be an exercise in meandering, Papir are masters of musical conversation, weaving musical textures with ease and spontaneousness.Papir are a trio from Copenhagen who deals less in songs and more in audible dreamscapes. Their psychedelic music is explorative, evocative and organic. For a band who jams heavily on every record, what can one expect from this purely improvised album? “Jamming has always been an essential part of Papir. Jamming in the rehearsal room, jamming in the studio, collectively jamming live and getting in to a common zone of rocking outbursts, ambient soundscapes, repetitive trances or whatever comes through. Sometimes it can just feel like hard work of even trying to get into the zone. But mostly it’s just good times and fun, and I guess that’s why we do it. It’s all about musical energy! So why haven’t we released a pure jam record before you might ask? Well, that’s a great question and all we can say is that we don’t really know, but this time we went all in on the jams. This record is a product of the jams we did during our recording sessions in The Black Tornado Studio last year. So is this the raw uncensored version of Papir? No, not really. There are always choices to make, so we picked out the best jams for you. Hope you will enjoy it!” - Nicklas Sørensen (guitar)

Tracks

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Audio & Video

MARINERO - 'HELLA LOVE'

Formats

• HAR135 - LP (COLOURED)

  098787313512

• HARCD135 - CD

  098787313529

• HARCS135 - MC

  098787313543

Details

**YELLOW PAN DULCE COLOURED VINYL** Hella Love, the Hardly Art debut from Marinero, is an album about closing a chapter. It’s Jess Sylvester’s grand farewell, and love letter to his hometown and the place he grew up, The San Francisco Bay Area, before relocating to Los Angeles after finishing his debut release. Using the moniker Marinero (which means “sailor” in Spanish), Jess Sylvester was drawn to this name as a means to honor his parent’s stories -- his father, a sailor, and mother, a Mexican-American who grew up in San Francisco. This record blends many worlds from beginning to end, and as you go deeper it hits harder. It’s his goodbye to The Bay. Pulling sonic influences from classic Latin American groups and international composers from the 60’s & 70’s: Los Terricolas, Ennio Morricone, Esquivel, Carole King and, Serge Gainsbourg Hella Love finds Sylvester fusing classical arrangements with a variety of different genres, evoking a sonic nostalgia blended with other contemporary artists like Chicano Batman, Connan Mockasin, and Chris Cohen. The album was written, played, and produced by Jess Sylvester with help from Bay Area engineer Jason Kick (Mild High Club’s Skiptracing) at Tunnel Vision and Santo Recording in Oakland, California. On the standout single “Nuestra Victoria,” Sylvester shares “It’s my way of talking about gentrification in SF, or specifically the Mission where my mom and family grew up. The song is about a bakery, or panaderia called La Victoria, and was a place where my mother and tias went growing up, a place I also went to that is no longer there.” It was one of the oldest Mexican-American businesses in SF and I wanted to honor it”. “Through the Fog” highlights Sylvester’s exploration of his influences from the Tropicalia movement, weaving bossa rhythms with lush percussion and orchestration. Using SF’s infamous fog as a metaphor for “tough times”, Sylvester expands that it is a dedication to his friends and family who have helped him get through substance abuse issues, heartbreak, and other painful experiences. “There are a few easter eggs in the lyrics for Bay Area folks or people who have followed my music in the past but it’s mostly about getting through something difficult with the love and support from the homies and fam.” The album’s title track, “Hella Love,” summarizes both of his parent’s stories of how they ended up in the bay. The first verse is about his father’s voyage out west as a sailor during the late ’60s while the second verse follows his mother’s experience moving to The Mission District when she was a young girl. It’s difficult to classify or generalize about Marinero’s music or identity. To him, it’s important to let his music do the talking. “I’m Chicanx, a bay native, biracial, and I’ve luckily gotten to travel and spend time in Mexico and I feel like my personality and specific musical tastes come through on this album. More than these generalizations we often make, I’m just a human who can both fear and love, and I’m just hoping to connect with others to share optimism and experience joy and laughter, even if for a moment.” Lean your ear to the ground because Jess Sylvester has been many things and will continue to share his journey. It is clear this gifted creator has more to say. -Luz Elena Mendoza

Tracks

1. Fanfare
2. Through the Fog
3. Minuet for the Mission
4. Nuestra Victoria
5. Luz del Faro
6. Outerlands
7. Beyond the Rainbow Tunnel
8. Hella Love
9. Maritime
10. Isle of Alcatraz
11. Frisco Ball

Press

8/10 UNCUT, **** MOJO

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