DAMAGED BUG - 'HUBBA BUBBA'

Formats

• CF034 - LP

  819162014806

• CF034CD - CD

  819162014813

Details

BLACK VINYL LONG OUT OF PRESS FOR THIS DWYER BANGER! Recorded at home in the fall of 2013 with a variety of synthesizers, drum machines and assorted handmade electronics, Damaged Bug is Oh Sees mastermind John Dwyer’s latest bit of cracked pop alchemy. The project is the cure to the ailment of too much guitar for too long. Fizzing and sputtering like a glowing, temperamental cockpit control panel, Dwyer bunkered deep in a blinking laboratory, penning songs about the long arc of our travels across space and time. Propulsive beats and synthetic veneers coat laser-guided melodies reflecting off shiny metal surfaces while instrumental interludes pop in and out like breaks in the asteroid belt. A far-out side of our main man—nocturnal, hard-wired, and chrome-plated. Hubba Bubba features original artwork by Deirdre White.

Tracks

1. Gloves for Garbage
2. Rope Burn
3. Eggs at Night
4. SS Cassidinea
5. Catastrophobia
6. Hubba Bubba
7. Sic Bay Surprise
8. Photograph
9. Hot Swells
10. 1/2 an Airplane
11. Metal Hand
12. Wasteland

Press

Audio & Video

MY IDEA - 'CRY MFER'

Formats

• HAR143 - LP (COLOURED)

  098787314304

• HAR143CD - CD

  098787314328

Details

Hardly Art debut by new, NY-based duo Lily Konigsberg (of Palberta, solo work) and Nate Amos (Water From Your Eyes). This album follows a 2020 digital EP on Hardly Art that got good coverage at Pitchfork, Stereogum, and more. The closer you are to someone, the crueler you can treat them, but if they love you, they’re inclined to forgive you. My Idea’s Lily Konigsberg and Nate Amos forgive each other now, but they were in a bad way when they recorded CRY MFER — which is not to say their debut album is some kind of sonic bum out. CRY MFER proves you can still make pop music while spiraling, as evidenced by the existence of “Breathe You,” a bop all about fucking Nate constructed while “high as shit in my room making fun of Justin Bieber,” the vocals of which Lily tracked while “blindly sad” and “genuinely devastated.” They’re best friends now, and they were best friends when they recorded CRY MFER last year, but they didn’t know that yet. (“We definitely were like, oh, maybe we're in love?” Lily recalls; it was a confusing time.) CRY MFER is the sound of two people figuring out what they mean to one another “in the midst of,” quoth Nate, “a bunch of other chaos,” up to and including being drunk as skunks; when listening to the album, Nate can “smell” the aforementioned chaos. “Thank God we're not those people [anymore],” Lily, with the clarity of newfound sobriety, marvels. When not using the other party as an emotional punching bag, Nate and Lily used one another as a creative filter and sounding board. In life, as in art, they share a language, a hive mind, finishing each other’s sentences while lounging on Lily’s parents’ couch in the Hudson Valley. The duo joined forces in the Fall of 2020, when Lily, after a few years gobbing away in the punk trio Palberta, solicited Nate (who, at the time, was popping away as half of dance duo Water From Your Eyes) as a potential producer for her solo record; the subsequent songwriting competition that followed resulted in dozens of tracks and one EP, That’s My Idea. No strangers to productivity, Nate’s Water From Your Eyes recently released their fifth album, and Lily recently released her solo LP, both to high marks. CRY MFER is, true to the band’s vision, a beautiful mess of different sounds, completely and effortlessly genreless (though if pressed to label it, the band settles on “Truth or Dare Pop”). While a milieu of myriad styles, from folk to dance, the album’s main througH-line is truth, regardless of how much the expression thereof may hurt. Its lyrics aren’t “particularly diary-ish,” Nate says, they’re “a little more…” “Diarrhea-ish,” Lily jokes. It’s a reaction against the self-seriousness that runs rampant throughout indie music, which comes as no surprise when you learn the duo originally wanted to call themselves The Grammys (Why? Because when the two of them started working together, “we were like, we're gonna get a Grammy,” Lily says). They aren’t ashamed to admit they listen to Ariana Grande and Justin Bieber, in much the same way they aren’t ashamed to use a vocoder or lyrically play the heel. My Idea has only just begun, but already misery is in the rearview. CRY MFER is a punisher, to be sure, but it’s also a banger; reflecting on the time period during which it was recorded, Nate breathes a sigh of relief: “Oof. Well, we made it, and we got something out of it, too.” And so, dear listener, have you.

Tracks

1. Cry Mfer
2. Crutch
3. Baby Im The Man
4. Lilys Phone
5. Breathe You
6. Not Afraid Anymore
7. Yea
8. One Tree Hill (feat. thanks for coming)
9. I Can?t Dance Part 2
10. Pretty You
11. I Should Have Never Generated You
12. Popstar
13. Yr A Blur

Press

Initial LP run will be pressed on opaque red vinyl

Audio & Video

FIREBREATHER - 'DWELL IN FOG'

Formats

• EZRDR135 - LP

  603111748511

• EZRDR135CD - CD

  603111748528

Details

Gothenburg, Sweden trio Firebreather’s 2019 RidingEasy Records debut album Under a Blood Moon was a powerhouse that most certainly established the band’s incendiary potential. But none of us would be prepared for the suffocating onslaught that is Dwell in the Fog. While that album was in-your-face and raw, Dwell in the Fog rumbles and rages with a fury the band had only hinted at previously. Firebreather has a streamlined focus on driving, symphonic riffs in the vein of High on Fire, Inter Arma and their tour- and label-mates Monolord. The guitar and bass tones are, quite simply, entrancing. Paired with vocalist/guitarist Mattias Nööjd’s guttural yet melodic howls and drummer Axel Wittbeck’s groove based rhythms, their entire sound flows like thick, viscous lava. “The album is a cathartic journey inwards and a musical continuation from Under A Blood Moon, but with more emphasis on groove and feel,” Nööjd says. From the first notes of album opener “Kiss Of Your Blade” you’ll know exactly what he means. Like their preceding two albums, Dwell in the Fog was also recorded and mixed by engineer Oskar Karlsson at Elementstudion in Gothenburg. The band is joined by new bassist Nicklas Hellqvist on this album, who seems to have increased the thunder rumble tenfold. From the aforementioned album opener “Kiss Of Your Blade”, with its droning opening chords over a rollicking tom pattern, the band quickly shifts gears into a head bobbing, serpentine riff with a transcendent melodic hook. Elsewhere, as on the title track and “Weather The Storm” rapid-fire hummable riffs come and go in an ever-shifting mass of devastating swirling churn. It’s like the band has such an endless supply of great hooks that to, ahem, dwell for too long on any one would undo their constantly building momentum. That they somehow give each song, and the album as a whole, a streamlined and cohesive, monolithic groove is testament to their skill. And, proof that the album must be absorbed in its entirety to experience the overwhelming swaying and lunging low end growl that drives the band’s most captivating work to date. Dwell in the Fog will be available on LP, CD and download on February 25th, 2022 via RidingEasy Records.

Tracks

Press

Audio & Video