JOHN ANDREWS & THE YAWNS - 'COOKBOOK'

Formats

• WOODSIST101 - LP

  767870664816

• WOODSIST101CD - CD

  733102726621

Details

NOW AVAILABLE ON CD “John Andrews is picking flowers from each corner of his life and presenting you with an unusual bouquet. His imaginary band ‘The Yawns’ are back! Third time’s a charm. In hockey terms, they call it a ‘hat trick’ and you know who’s always wearing a ratty old hat? John Andrews. Three years in the making and we have Cookbook, the third, and most colorful record from your favorite New Hampshire based craftsman. “Unknowing folks usually assume he lives in New York City or Los Angeles but confer with John for five minutes and if he’s in the right mood he’ll talk your ear off about the granite state and the old, seedy colonial barn where he’s tracked his records with his weird and wonderful friends. “Take a listen to his previous effort, 2017’s Bad Posture. It was the grassroot slacker’s pie in the sky. His head was stuck in the past. He probably excessively listened to ‘Cripple Creek Ferry’ and he most likely wasn’t keeping up with household chores. Time moves on, but just look at him now! All grown up yet likely still feeling those growing pains. After a few more years of traveling we now have Cookbook, fresh out the oven…phew! About nine or ten new tracks, but who’s really counting? “The lyrics are simple and endearing, inspired by mid-century love songs. His inspirations are all across the board. If his subconscious was a bootleg taper, life would be the show. “At any rate, it doesn’t sound like a record made in New Hampshire, but make no mistake, this is a dyed-in-the-wool Yawns record, refreshingly straightforward yet full of character. It’s less of a crowded honky tonk, and more of an empty, poignant speakeasy. You can finally relax indoors after a weary day out in the cold. Have you ever seen that painting of dogs playing poker? It might as well be what they were listening to as the bulldog pushed his chips forward.” —John’s mom

Tracks

1. New California Blue
2. River Of Doubt
3. Ain?t That Right?
4. Try
5. Song For The Gonz
6. Early Hours Of The Morning
7. Easy Going
8. Johnny?s Cookbook
9. Keep On Dreamin
10. Thankyou

Press

Lo-fi psychedelic alt-country folk pop from
New Hampshire
For fans of Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, The
Shangri Las, The Mama?s And The Papas,
Carol King, and Peanuts cartoons

Audio & Video

ABRONIA - 'MAP OF DAWN'

Formats

• CFUL0228 - LP

Details

For their great third LP, this Portland OR sextet heads deep into the scalding sun of what feels like the Sonoran Desert. There is an edge to the fried guitar and the ever more massive drumming that evokes a parched ritual of psychedelic worship. Perhaps this has something to do with the fact initial rehearsals took place outdoors, during which time the Pacific Northwest was on fire (both in the forests and on the streets). When you know this fact, you can begin to appreciate the smoke as a compositional component. Abronia's line-up has not changed since 2019's The Whole of Each Eye(FTR 498), but their sound keeps evolving in terms of both depth and connection. The percussion achieves a true otherness here. Both Shaver's Big Drum, and the additions of pedal steel player Rick Pedrosa, create a central pulse that's impossible to resist. The bass and guitars, slither through the haze, raising up for massive strikes at times, just laying back and waiting at others. Different instrumental slices of this album might remind you of anyone from the Gun Club to Savage Republic to Amon Duul II. But Keelin Mayer's vocals are more of a presence this time as well. Occasionally, there's a way her voice combines with the coiling Eastern-tinged string parts and lazy propulsion that reminds of Grace Slick's pre-Airplane band, the Great Society. But she is just as likely to conjure up visions of Scream-era Siouxsee, surrounded by gauzy clouds of guitar. Still, the collective brunt of Map of Dawnis bracingly original. It doesn't really sound like anyone else. Abronia have developed a nuanced and totally addictive approach to creating song forms. I'm just hoping I'll get a chance to see them live some time soon. Music this good should be a fully immersive experience. --Byron Coley 2022

Tracks

Press

Audio & Video

SLOW DAWN - 'INTO THE MACHINE HAUS'

Formats

• CFUL0229 - LP

Details

Cardinal Fuzz (UK/Europe) and Centripetal Force (North America) are excited to announce the upcoming release of Slow Dawn’s Into the Machine Haus. The album is being presented in a 250 copy vinyl pressing and will be made available for preorder on April 1st. The official release date is May 13th. Slow Dawn is from Ottawa, Canada and have spent the past few years honing their craft with a series of self released titles, including 2020’s Experimental Farm, a rather angst-ridden and raw display of sonic power. They are led by guitarist Dan Druff, formerly of Holy Cobras, and are rounded out by Chris DiLauro on drums and Jesse Winchester (Masss) on bass and synthesizer. The band draws influence from the darker edges of the musical spectrum and places a majority of their energy on filling empty voids with as much sound as possible. Slow Dawn is a cacophony of reverberating distortion, swirls of echoing vocals, droning horns, and a steady din of plodding drums. Whether it’s Ottawa’s grim and cold winters or simply a sign of the times, the band’s sound is quite dystopian and is marked by a sense of solemn minimalism. It would be safe to say that with Slow Dawn, the glass is rarely half full. With six songs clocking in at about 22 minutes, Into the Machine Haus moves quickly and efficiently through a range of territories that include post-punk, psych, krautrock, noise, and even a little bit of goth. It’s a unique amalgamation of sound that demands attention. The band’s influences are easily read but integrated in a way that they escape the dreaded “sounds like” tag. And, to their credit, there are no wasted moments or frivolous meanderings. Their approach is straightforward, primal, and succinct. In the case of this album, less is definitely more. (Mike Mannix)

Tracks

Press

Audio & Video

CHIP KINMAN - 'THE GREAT CONFRONTATION'

Formats

• ITR363 - 2xLPs

  759718536317

• ITR363CD - CD

  759718536324

Details

“Ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus is attributed with the quote ‘The only constant in life is change’ and nothing sums up Chip Kinman’s latest creation—or his entire career—quite as well. Like each of Chip’s musical incarnations, The Great Confrontation seemingly has no connection whatsoever to the work that preceded it...unless the listener is savvy enough to spot the deeply buried but always present through lines. “The tracks on this album are wildly alien in every applicable sense of the word. The opener, ‘Let’s Go, Dark Shark’ sets the scene with drippy, space age chirping that slowly degenerates into slo-mo sludge like an astronaut running out of oxygen. ‘Ciao Raggazzi’—not to be confused with Jay And The Americans’ ‘Good Bye Boys, Good Bye (Ciao Raggazzi, Ciao)’ is a derailing train of a song. The vocals are spoken in Italian and presumably, snatches of conversation sampled from a Mafia crime film. ‘Speaking of crimes, Chip murders a couple of standards in cold blood purely for his own amusement. Both are traditional and absolutely unrecognizable. ‘Round About Danny’ is his take on the Irish ballad ‘Danny Boy’, written in 1913 and recorded relentlessly through the years by everyone from Judy Garland to Conway Twitty. The other’s a gospel hymn, ‘Will The Circle Be Unbroken’, originally performed by The Carter Family in the 1920s. “Imagine both songs sans vocals, filtered through a particle accelerator beam shot by a rogue robot from a 1950’s sci-fi B movie. Then pretend they got reinterpreted by a hippie in a ratty flea market cape who borrowed a Moog synthesizer so he could emulate Rick Wakeman from the prog rock band Yes. The hippie not only had no working knowledge of playing a synthesizer, he was tripping his brains out on Owsley’s premium LSD. “This album is all a huge departure from anything he’s ever done—but for Chip, that’s normal. I’m sure of this because I’ve known him since 1977, witnessing all his musical mutations and in many cases, the sources that inspired him to prolifically create original, cohesive and boundary-pushing sounds. As the old saying goes, what he’s done consistently is often imitated but never replicated.” —Pleasant Gehman 

Tracks

1. Let?s Go, Dark Shark
2. The Great Confrontation
3. Golden Robot
4. My Predominantly White Family
5. The Abolition Of The Concept Of
Performance
6. Ciao Raggazzi
7. San Francisco Fog 1977
8. Round About Danny
9. I Can Count To 19
10. Pop Become Art Become Pop
11. Will The Circle Be Unbroken

Press

Debut solo album by roots rock guitarist,
known for his work with his brother
Tony Kinman in The Dils, Rank and File,
Blackbird and Cowboy Nation

Audio & Video

CAROLINE NO - 'S/T'

Formats

• GY12-2 - LP

  600197612217

Details

“Caroline No’s third album was built around a set of songs I was writing in the summer of 2019. I built the songs around real events, but looped these narratives into stories from song histories. The result is like an intersection of Brill Building characters such as Carole King and Neil Sedaka with the bedroom fanaticism of historical music projects like Virgin Insanity. After a year of playing the songs live in various formations, we aimed to record in the Australian summer. We knew Jim [White] (Dirty Three, Crime & The City Solution, Venom P. Stinger, etc) was going to be in Melbourne, and soon after he arrived in Australia, we met at Mick [Turner]’s (Dirty Three, Venom P. Stinger, etc) studio. Nick [Imfeld] and Mick engineered, with Ian [Wadley] (Small World Experience, Mad Nanna, etc) on bass, Jim on drums, Mick, Dee [Hannah] and me [Caroline Kennedy] on guitars, and Dee and me singing. The sense of intuitive knowledge and performance was exhilarating as we played. We spent two days in the studio, and when we listened back later, it seemed a compelling representation of what had happened, captured live. “The band on this album are artists I grew up with. We were friends first, and engaging with the material, there was no formal structure to follow. Our interpretive approach meant the songs grew from simple structural frames and narrative poetics into full sonic landscapes, engaging across pop, folk, psychedelia and improvisation. Caroline No became—for this iteration—a shifting sonic space tied to intimacy, musical conversation and relationship, expressed in an open improvisatory way. The sound of the record is the result of trust, responsiveness and mutual knowledge. “The name Caroline No was an imaginary character through much of the work, arising from the Beach Boys’ melancholic paen to encountering a past lover who has cut her hair off. My idea was for Caroline No to become the locus for an ongoing composition project where I would write back into songs’ history the perspective of patriarchal song’s subjects. “This is a recuperative project of easeful making; attempting reclamations of lost narratives, exploring love, loss and the psychedelic of the everyday.” —Caroline Kennedy

Tracks

Press

Australian singer / songwriter joined by
members of the Dirty Three, plus others.
For fans of Brill Building-era Carole King
and Neil Sedaka, music projects like
Virgin Insanity

Audio & Video