NILS FRAHM - 'GRAZ'

Formats

• ERATP143LP - LP

  3700551783519

• ERATP143CD - CD

  3700551783526

Details

Erased Tapes debut. Wait, what? How? Anyone who has seen the trail blazing sonic pioneer live will know Nils likes to deadpan a joke. Graz is in fact the first studio album he recorded for the label back in 2009, that somehow remained a secret… until now. Nils Frahm has quietly changed the musical landscape, reincarnating the centuries old figure of a pianist-composer for a new generation of music fans. As Nils’ word-of-mouth popularity grew and grew, so did the pop-culture profile of his instrument. He founded Piano Day with a team of like-minded friends in 2015 to help that process, some years releasing an album of piano recordings to celebrate one of humankind’s greatest inventions. Graz is one such record; an unheard snapshot of a young Nils recorded at Mumuth, the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz, in 2009 as part of the thesis Conversations for Piano and Room produced by Thomas Geiger, which received an award in the Classical Surround Recording category at the 127th AES Convention in New York. Whilst at the time it was decided to keep the grand piano recordings from the Graz sessions locked away and instead focus on his close mic’ed, dampened piano explorations which would become his acclaimed studio album Felt in 2011, two of the pieces — most notably Hammers — lived on as part of his live set, and were expanded on and re-recorded as part of his breakthrough 2013 record Spaces (a collage of field recordings from concerts which broke the Fourth Wall and included audience coughs). Over his mercurial career, Nils has pushed and pulled at the boundaries and parameters of his prolific work like that. He’s physically changed his piano (the softened prepared strings of Felt) played with a modified body (Screws recorded with 9 fingers and a broken thumb) played with scale (Solo recorded on the 3.7 metre high Klavins M370) and with the different layers of formats (last year’s Tripping with Nils Frahm nested his studio setup inside a live performance, concert film and live album). Now with Graz he has found the final frontier for play: time itself and his own discography. Graz is a moment of time at the very beginning of Nils’ quiet revolution. The essential genius is already evident; the harmonic language of classical, and the immediacy of jazz. Nils seems to pull down each idea moment by moment, gently, to not scare away the muse. He describes: “sometimes when you hear a piano, you might think it’s a conversation between a woman and a man. At the same time, it can hint at shapes of the universe and describe how a black hole looks. You can make sounds that have no relation to anything we can measure.”

Tracks

1. Lighter
2. O I End
3. Because This Must Be
4. Kurzum
5. And Om
6. Hammers
7. Crossings
8. About Coming and Leaving
9. Went Missing

Press

Audio & Video

YO NO SE - 'TERRAFORM'

Formats

• SBR087 - LP (COLOURED)

• SBR087CD - CD

Details

**‘Santa Muerte’ coloured vinyl version **Yo No Se return after a 5-year hiatus since their last album, Soma. Their new album Terraform continues on from the dystopian world created in Soma but this time taking the narrative to the stars. Terraform explores the ideas of making a fresh start on another planet but the same problems creep in…. Greed, corruption and hate. Exploring more of a grunge feel along with some hard psych the band recorded with Dom Mitchison (as well as Alex doing guitars and vocals at home), mixed with Ali Chant and mastered again with grunge godfather, Jack Endino. The band have toured across Europe in support of Soma in the last 5 years and gained a reputation for their loud and energetic shows. The album has 3 drummers under its belt and countless breakdowns on the road. With the pandemic kicking in just as the band started touring, they had plenty of time to finally record (and find another drummer). Terraform is a record 5 years in the making due to sheer bad luck. Hopefully, their luck will change as the band are already working on their follow up record. The first single Black Door approaches the subject of corruption amongst 'leaders'. The idea comes from Boris Johnson getting Brexit 'done' to forward his own career without thinking about the impact it will have on peoples lives. We’ve had enough and we're ready to tear down the establishment. The idea being that these problems we now face will follow us wherever we go unless we stamp them out, here, on earth. The artwork for the cover is by renowned sci-fi artist Bruce Pennington.

Tracks

1. Black Door
2. Santa Muerte
3. Pilot
4. Misery
5. Mosquito
6. Slaughter
7. Hairy Chin
8. Feast Of Lies
9. Hold Fire
10. Nectar
11. Terraform

Press

Audio & Video

CUB SCOUT BOWLING PINS - 'CLANG CLANG HO'

Formats

• GBVI104 - LP

  733102720315

• GBVI104CD - CD

  733102720322

Details

Cub Scout Bowling Pins hop in the “Magic Taxi”, turn on the AM radio and time travel forty to forty-five years back in time. The project is mysteriously presented, but it’s a thinly-veiled alias of the ridiculously prolific and talented Guided By Voices. Minus the usual punk and prog influences, there are strong whiffs of bubble gum, psych and soft rock with sugary doses of ornate baroque pop. Long renowned scholars of rock, the Ohio players have occasionally worn their influences on their sleeves, but this time they seemingly have their jackets on inside out. Perhaps conceptually similar to how GBV went tongue-in-cheek “country” backing Cash Rivers & The Sinners in 2018, but Cub Scout Bowling Pins is a thousand times subtler, like an eccentric cousin of GBV with the craziness knob turned up by 10%. And while Cash Rivers discs trade hands among collectors on Discogs for hundreds of dollars, Cub Scout Bowling Pins’ debut 7-inch Heaven Beats Iowa was recently spotted for sale for no less than $10,000. On their debut long player, America’s newest hit-makers dip into retro-futuristic weirdness, side-by-side with whimsical sophistication and candy-coated technicolor complexity. In the flip-flop world of Summer 2021, transistor radios will vibrate with the sweet and hooky “We” and “Nova Mona” while “© 1-2-3” will “climb” the “charts”. “Ride My Earthmobile” spins like an even-more demented 13th Floor Elevators. Is that Jimmy Webb or Lee Hazlewood hidden behind the latest issue of “The Telegraph Hill Gazette”? “Schoolmaster Bones” chortles with a groovy pretzel logic, while “Space Invader” and “Magic Taxi” beckon with jangling guitars, shimmering strings, mellotrons and vintage synths. Following three critically-lauded GBV albums recorded in quarantine in 2020, is this a light-hearted detour, a midlife crisis or just good clean Pandemic fun? Cub Scout Bowling Pins beg the questions: exactly what drugs are they taking? And where can we get some? Clang Clang Ho! FMD carries more Guided By Voices-related releases; ask your salesperson for details.

Tracks

1. Magic Taxi 2. Flip Flop World
3. Casino Hair Wife
4. Ride My Earthmobile
5. Schoolmaster Bones
6. Eggs, Mother? 7. Strange Walk Home
8. Nova Mona
9. The Telegraph Hill Gazette
10. Everybody Loves A Baboon
11. ? 1 2 3 12. Sister Slam Dance
13. It?s Marbles 14. Space Invader
15. Human Car 16. Competitor
17. She Cannot Know 18. We
19. Roll Up Your Nose
20. What Crawls Also Flies Over

Press

Guided By Voices side-project goes for
bubble gum, psych and soft rock with
sugary doses of ornate baroque pop

Audio & Video

SONNY AND THE SUNSETS - 'NEW DAY WITH NEW POSSIBILITIES'

Formats

• RIYH005 - LP

  733102721381

Details

“It was before Covid, I had this big free empty studio in the hills, I was supposed to be painting, that was my initial plan, and I just began making songs on an old guitar, songs about being alone, songs about failed men, some dark tales of longing. I was reading some old western paperbacks, and I would go on these walks in the hills, come inside and write these kind of lonesome country songs. Then the pandemic began, and everyone was alone now, and it felt like it had been strangely prescient to write about being alone,” speaks Sonny Smith about the birth of his new record. It sounds like it’s part of a genre that should have happened: a sixties teen country music that merged with sixties pop. New Day With New Possibilities, the latest “country” offering by Sonny And The Sunsets, is clearly a companion piece to the cult loved third Sunsets release Longtime Companion, the laid back country record which marked the beginning of the Sunsets as an explorative project and not just locked into one sound. New Day With New Possibilities joins with a kind of Michael Hurley homegrown sound but also leaning into Chelsea Girls baroque strings sound as on “Driftin” and “The Lonely Men”. Pedal steel maestro Joe Goldmark lifts the record into Doug Sahm and Buck Owens territory.

Tracks

1. The Lonely Men
2. Earl & His Girl
3. Ring My Bell
4. Driftin
5. Ride The Dark Trail
6. Love Obsession
7. Just Hangin Out By Myself
8. Keep Talkin Bout You
9. Palm Reader
10. I?m A Leaker
11. I?m A Dog
12. The Letter

Press

For fans of Michael Hurley, Chelsea Girls,
Doug Sahm, Buck Owens, Bill Callahan,
David Berman, Hank Williams

Audio & Video

TOBACCO CITY - 'TOBACCO CITY, USA'

Formats

• SCTR57 - LP

  735202346990

Details

Tobacco City is about simplicity. Simple songs and melodies built around nostalgic and blue stories. Built out of a mutual love of classic and cosmic country, the members of Tobacco City bring their psychedelic and folk influences to the exploding genre. The result is a feel good sway that fits into modern urban modes and passes by the shrewdest of classic country heads. Quickly gaining traction in Chicago playing with new country icon Orville Peck and psychedelic tastemaker Ty Segall, Tobacco City seems to fit in wherever good music resides regardless of the genre. “Hailing from Chicago, the musical project of Chris Coleslaw and Lexi Goddard leans ably into traditional country blues and honky-tonk shuffles. With a forthcoming Tobacco City full-length on the horizon, the group has shared two new tracks; the first of which is the amber-hued “Blue Raspberry,” a languid, steel guitar draped duet that recalls Emmylou Harris and Gram Parsons at their most incandescent. Hanging in the air and gleaming like a curtain drawn against the day, the B-side, “Never On My Mind,” finds Goddard front and center amidst a slow sashay of the prosaic. Another dollar for the juke after a long day’s work—drinking for one.” —Aquarium Drunkard

Tracks

1. Blue Raspberry
2. Tobacco City Waltz
3. AA Blues
4. Never On My Mind
5. Neon Lights
6. Half In The Bag
7. LSD
8. Brother

Press

Audio & Video