CARLTON MELTON - 'MIND MINERALS'

Formats

• AGIT047CD - CD

  5060446121870

• AGIT047R - 2xLPs

  5060446121863

Details

The new Carlton Melton album “Mind Minerals” will be released on February 2nd 2018. This will be their first full length release since 2015’s widely lauded “Out To Sea” double opus, itself a languid drifting of drones and psychedically enhanced riffmongering. Sure, there’s been some long EP releases since.. Hidden Lights in 2017 (featuring the immeasurable drone sike float on “Rememory”) and Aground in 2016 (a companion, the Desert Island weather beaten psych-flow follow up to Out To Sea), now its time to soak up.. Mind Minerals. Mind Minerals finds Carlton Melton in fine fettle, all the songs were recorded and engineered at El Studio in San Francisco by Phil Manley on September 3rd and 4th 2016 (except 'untimely' - recorded at the Dome by Brian McDougall), the studio setting suits them -- a logical progression from a weekend’s recording out at the Dome. Under Manley’s watchful ear/eye, Carlton Melton have created a futurescape soundtrack.., a “3001 Space Odyssey”. The drums are more pounding and direct than before, the constantly re-assuring bass creates a helping hand to propel you through the clouds of static and shards of electrifying guitar dazzling your horizon. Synths help soothe the sharp edges and lull you into some out of body experience whilst and orchestrated calamitous scree pulls you back…. This is a breathless, yet deep breathing album. It demands full immersion.. Searing guitar piercing the drone with relentless power, the core trio of Carlton Melton; Andy Duvall (drums/guitar), Clint Golden (bass guitar), and Rich Millman ( guitar/synth), have some alchemical bond that’s helped them create a post –rock / psychedelic / freeform organic slab of American Primitivism / space drift , this is unashamed head-music from the melting pot of Northern California.. 5 decades ago this album would have been released on the ESP Disk Label or even Apple.. there would have been no helter skelter if the desert Hippies had locked onto these vibes, plug in, turn on, tune out..float free.. Carlton Melton can provide your own aural microdose to reset your Mind / Psyche!! Andy Duvall plays juno synth on 'the lighthouse' special guests - Phil Manley - juno synth on 'snow moon' and 'sea legs' / Guitar on 'eternal returns' and 'psychoticedelicosis'. John McBain - guitar on 'electrified sky' and 'way back when' / synth/mellotron/guitar on 'atmospheric river'. All songs mastered by John Mcbain at JPM mastering. Cover artwork is “Walls” (2013) by Andy Vogt 

Tracks

Untimely
Electrified Sky
The Lighthouse
Eternal Returns
Snow Moon
A Basketful of Trumpets
Sea Legs
Way Back When
Climbing The Ladder
Atmospheric River
Psychoticedelicosis

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Audio & Video

CARLTON MELTON - 'WHERE THIS LEADS'

Formats

• AGIT055 - LP

  5060446124741

• AGIT055CD - CD

  5060446124758

Details

Nestled deep in the forests of Mendocino County in Northern California, huddled under the protective shade of towering redwoods and within earshot of frothy waves crashing against the Pacific coastline, squats a geodesic dome that has served as crucible for the experimental genius of Carlton Melton. Nature and Man operate under different logics. But here, Carlton Melton wholly entrusts this idyllic environment with the task of inspiring and guiding their musical improvisations. The Dome has been the ideal setting to facilitate their creativity. Without forcing a specific dynamic or theme, the band inhabits its womb-like confines to improvise, explore, dream. Their music draws on psychedelia, stoner metal, krautrock, and ambient atmospherics to convey, above all else, a mood. A prickly guitar melody will float lazily, a wall of dissonant feedback will resolve into a hypnotic drone, or a colossal riff will exhume the soul of Jimi Hendrix. One hears Hawkwind or Spacemen 3 jamming with Pink Floyd at Pompeii. Indeed, Carlton Melton have one foot in the ancient world and one tentacle in deep space. They are both the pack of proto-humans drumming with femurs in Kubrick’s 2001 and the film’s inscrutable monolith hinting at the universe’s mysteries. The “Stoned Ape” theory holds that early hominids ingested psychedelic mushrooms that provided an evolutionary boost to their brains, helping them blossom into Homo Sapiens. Imagine such cavemen trippin’ balls, their nightmarish visions sending them into feverish bouts of rage and then gentle moments of introspection. They very well could have heard the music of Carlton Melton rattling inside their skulls, first driving our ancestors mad then upward into a higher realm. Andy Duvall (drums, guitar), Clint Golden (bass), and Rich Millman (guitar, synths) have yet to play Pompeii, but they have already wowed crowds at European festivals such as the Liverpool International Festival of Psychedelia, Roadburn, and Desertfest Antwerp. Live, they are jaw-dropping. On record, mind-altering. In fact, with each album, Carlton Melton adds a subtle new element, synapses firing new neural connections. In 2020, they release new full-length Where This Leads, marking ten years of the band’s working relationship with their UK label Agitated Records and five years of recording with Phil Manley in his El Studio in San Francisco. With Where This Leads, the band rewires the listener’s mind. “Smoke Drip Revisited” is a ticklish acid flashback, “Porch Dreams” a dabbling in country psych, and “Closer” a driving, freak-out of guitar heroics. One senses that the group is conveying a message that cannot be expressed verbally but only suggested through synth sighs, walloping rhythms, and soaring solos. Would Carlton Melton therefore be a group of stoned apes dizzily grasping for meaning or telepathic futurists communicating to us through crude man-made instrumentation? Well, lower the stylus to find out. - Eric Bensel, Paris July 2020

Tracks

1. The Stars Are Dying
2. Butchery
3. Waylay
4. Dezebelle
5. Smoke Drip Revisited
6. Crown Shyness
7. Three Zero Two
8. Porch Dreams
9. Closer

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Audio & Video

MEGAN SIEBE - 'SWAYING STEADY'

Formats

• GY11-8/SHR206 - LP

  733102720117

Details

Megan Siebe is a multi-instrumentalist, songwriter and arranger from Omaha, Nebraska. She’s cut her teeth as a member of bands such as Simon Joyner & the Ghosts, The David Nance Group, Cursive, Sean Pratt & the Sweats, The Jim Schroeder Sextet, and many others, touring nearly non-stop for the last decade. She’s also written string arrangements for albums by Refrigerator, John Davis, the Renderers, Dennis Callaci, L. Eugene Methe, Justin Townes Earle, and Anna McClellan. But all the while she was writing her own intimate, finely-crafted songs in secret, only breaking them out around the occasional Nebraska campfire amongst friends. A break from touring in other bands these last fifteen months has allowed Siebe more time to focus on a powerful cycle of songs she’s had brewing for some time. Grapefruit and Shrimper are proud to join forces to release Megan’s humble yet astonishing debut. Swaying Steady is a gorgeous collection of literate and evocative singer-songwriter, country-tinged, melancholy pop songs about relationships in crisis, bad seeds, family, and emotional endurance. For fans of Lucinda Williams, Harry Nilsson, Elyse Weinberg, Nick Drake, and Sibylle Baier.

Tracks

1. Easy Street 2. Window
3. Photographs 4. Pile
5. Over My Head
6. Hard To Be Blue 7. Elder Tree
8. Whispers 9. Worthy
10. Weathered Skin 11. The Basics

Press

For fans of Lucinda Williams, Harry
Nilsson, Elyse Weinberg, Nick Drake, and
Sibylle Baier

Audio & Video

MOUTH PAINTER - 'TROPICALE MOON'

Formats

• CFUL0199 - LP

Details

"Great second LP by this Portland OR trio. I became aware of Mouth Painter by following the pedal steel work of Barry Walker Jr., who is akin to the new BJ Cole in terms of being thee underground eminence on his instrument. The rest of the trio features flautist/vocalist Valerie Osterberg (who also contributes songs) and bassist Jason Willmon. Together they comprise a band whose sound is exceedingly hard to pin down. There are rootsy elements to the vocals, but these are offset by floating guitar clouds straight out of Mike Cooper's recent work. Valerie's flute inventions add a slight French prog flavor as well, while Jason's bass highlights the music's sheer rockiness of the music's brunt. There also many, small but flipped-out instrumental details. The music moves through genres with elegant grace, touching bases with country rock, psychedelia, new age cloud surfing, and even the kind of exotica the late Patrick Lundberg always claimed as one of the real roots of “higher key” music. Triopicale Moon is all that! The lyrics mix geology, poetry, gambling and much else into a suite of tunes that gently sprawl across the sonic map like a previously undiscovered continent. The music has a vague psychedelic haze everywhere you look, but apart from a few spots, the psych impact is not overt. It lingers in the dark corners more than at the forefront. A shadow peeking out from a lot of places you wouldn't expect. This subtlety is probably the album's secret weapon. Slipping in the needle when we don't expect it, then letting the hallucinations flow like easy water across the parched earth. Nice stuff!" (Byron Coley)

Tracks

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