KEVIN MORBY - 'HARLEM RIVER'

Formats

• WOODSIST071G - LP (COLOURED)

  655035047119

• WOODSIST071CD - CD

  655035047126

Details

GREEN VINYL PRESSING Harlem River marks the solo debut of songwriter Kevin Morby. Known for his work as the singer / guitarist for Brooklyn band The Babies and bassist for Woods, the Kansas City native and new Los Angeles resident calls the record “an homage to New York City,” his adopted home for the past five years. Harlem River features eight interweaving tales of tragedy and misfortune from a series of desperate characters playing out their dramas with the city as backdrop. A departure from some of the signature sounds of his better known projects, Morby’s solo material glistens with a haunting intimacy. He maintains that the songs are about other people, but it’s hard not to feel a piece of him in each one—a half-imagined, half-painfully personal world of lost love, addiction, violence and prayers for the departed. • Debut solo record from The Babies singer / guitarist and Woods bassist The album was recorded in Los Angeles in February and March of 2013 with producer Rob Barbato, who recorded The Babies’ second album Our House on the Hill and whose guitar and bass work figure prominently on Harlem River. It also features drummer Justin Sullivan (The Babies) as well as contributions from Will Canzoneri, Tim Presley (White Fence), Dan Iead and Cate Le Bon.

Tracks

1. Miles, Miles, Miles
2. Wild Side (Oh the Places You?ll Go)
3. Harlem River
4. If You Leave and If You Marry
5. Slow Train
6. Reign
7. Sucker in the Void (The Lone Mile)
8. The Dead They Don?t Come Back

Press

? Debut solo record from The Babies singer / guitarist and Woods bassist
? December US tour with Cate Le Bon; full US tour in January in the works

Audio & Video

LIAM KAZAR - 'DUE NORTH'

Formats

• WOODSIST103CV - LP (COLOURED)

  733102720414

Details

LIMITED EDITION COLOUR VINYL REPRESS ON THIS MODERN WOODSIST CLASSIC!! LIMITED LIME GREEN VINYL EDITION OF 500! Liam Kazar makes joyful rock songs so irresistible they feel timeless. Just ask Jeff Tweedy. “I love everything about Liam. His voice, his songs, the way he plays instruments, his smile, his cooking... Everything,” says Tweedy. ”Whenever I hear one of his songs for the first time I almost immediately start thinking to myself, ‘oh yeah! This song! I love this song.’ It’s a magic trick very few people can pull off: making something brand new sound like a cherished memory.” But on Kazar’s debut album Due North, out via Woodist and Mare Records, the album’s ten tracks are full of so much charm, wit, and heart it can’t be a sleight of hand. The Kansas City-based, Chicago-raised musician and acclaimed chef / founder of the Armenian pop-up restaurant Isfahan, describes the making of Due North as a personal revelation, where the more he wrote the more his songs showed what kind of artist he’s always wanted to be. While he’s consistently been a dream bandmate over the past several years, performing with artists like Tweedy, Steve Gunn, Daniel Johnston, and more, making his own songs presented a chance to finally find his own voice. But figuring out how to step out was a rewarding challenge. “This record kind of all stemmed from a conversation I had with Jeff,” says Kazar. “I showed him some of my earliest songs I was working on and he told me, ‘It sounds like you’re writing for the people in your bands, you’re not writing for yourself.’ He was completely right. I was not writing songs for myself.” With that needed insight, Kazar decided to start from scratch and write songs that felt like himself. “These songs totally blew me away the first time I heard them: they sound like David Bowie meets the Band,” says Mare Records co-founder Kevin Morby. Due North was mixed by Sam Evian at his Flying Cloud Recordings Studio in upstate New York. Along with drummer Spencer Tweedy and bassist Lane Beckstrom, Kazar enlists keyboardist Dave Curtin (Woongi), co-producer James Elkington on pedal steel, as well as Ohmme and Andrew Sa on backing vocals.

Tracks

1. So Long Tomorrow
2. Old Enough For You
3. Shoes Too Tight
4. Nothing To You
5. On A Spanish Dune
6. Frank Bacon
7. I?ve Been Where You Are
8. No Time For Eternity
9. Give My World
10. Something Tender

Press

Debut album by Kansas City-based musician, beloved by Jeff Tweedy and Kevin Morby

Bandmate of Jeff Tweedy, Steve Gunn, Daniel Johnston, and more

Featuring Andrew Sa, Ohmme, Spencer Tweedy, Lance Beckstrom, Dave Curtian, and James Elkington

Sounds like David Bowie meets The Band

Audio & Video

VARIOUS - 'OTTO'S'

Formats

• MOOK01 - LP

  198003177543

Details

Otto’s is the first release from Mookin. It is a compilation album of ten songs from multiple artists. We’re trying to make compilation cool again, and have thought long and hard about how we can reimagine them. What we’ve come to is a conceptual approach that allows artists to share their music in an interesting and engaging way, and in turn helps them stand out. Otto’s was an old pub, now shut down, with a small stage where musicians would occasionally play. If it weren’t for ten songs that had been recorded there, this place would be forever forgotten. Otto’s wasn’t a particularly popular pub, nor a very well-known one. It was a darkly lit, dodgy place, the regulars sat on their stools and the bar staff weren’t very welcoming. Everyone knew everyone and you were the stranger. The plan is to never mention that Otto’s is fictional. We want to create a sense of mystery around the album and blur the lines of reality and fiction. We’ll be releasing on all digital platforms alongside a limited run of 200 gatefold LPs. 

Tracks

1. GO CHI MINH - Leatherman
2. DAVE O?CONNOR - Where?s Our Empathy?
3. ARECIBO - Sentient
4. THE WEST - Telegraph Creek
5. WATSON - Don?t Know What To Do
6. MEAT - Burn The City
7. FLAME PROOF MOTH - The Pen Song
8. DIE MARTIN - Eternal Pancake Frowning
9. WHITE CIRCLES FEAT. IMOGEN PARKER - Gammy Leg
10. TANNIS LURKIN - Robin?s Drums

Press

Audio & Video

BELL ORCHESTRE - 'RECORDING A TAPE THE COLOUR OF THE LIGHT'

Formats

• ERATP155LP - LP

  3700551784875

• ERATP155LE - LP (COLOURED)

  3700551784929

Details

Erased Tapes are immensely proud to announce the reissue of the debut album Recording a Tape the Colour of the Light by Bell Orchestre. To honour the original recordings the album is also seeing its first vinyl repress since it was released in 2005. Originally formed in 1999 whilst studying at university, the first music Bell Orchestre made was live scores for contemporary dance performances. A few years later, the studio sessions for Recording A Tape.. took place simultaneously in the same studio as when Arcade Fire were recording their eponymous debut album Funeral. The two Montreal-based bands took turns to record their albums but due to the growing interest in Arcade Fire, Bell Orchestre was put on hold as band members Parry and Sarah Neufeld quickly became occupied with Arcade Fire’s busy touring schedule. “The Bell Orchestre album was almost done, but it kind of sat there. We were just sitting on this album that we were really proud of, but we didn't have anyone to pay attention to it” Parry told Pitchfork in 2005. The album was released to critical acclaim and has since received cult status among fans. Bell Orchestre is a collaborative instrumental group based in Montreal. Its six members come from wildly divergent musical backgrounds, and the unlikely chemistry that results from their collaboration is the very thing that sustains their connection. It’s as if the group as a whole has tapped into a very particular, very distinct energy: like that of an approaching storm. In many ways, Bell Orchestre is the sum of not only its parts, but the sum of its influences and inspirations. Among those influences can be listed such diverse artists as Lee “Scratch” Perry, Arvo Pärt, Charles Mingus, and Talk Talk. But ultimately they work together to create something that none of them has quite heard before. Bell Orchestre has been known to retreat into the woods to make and write music: from a residency at the Banff Centre for the Arts, to the forests of Quebec and Vermont, and back to their hometown of Montreal. The specifics of time and place, the elemental forces at work outside, and those forces that exist inside, all come into play within Bell Orchestre’s musical process. This particular music could be made by no one else at no other time in history. The experience of listening to Bell Orchestre, whether live or recorded, is almost that of experiencing a form of synaesthesia: the result is a collage-like construction of not just sound, but visual elements as well. From a herd of elephants to that approaching storm on the horizon, from a quiet forest in the country to ice forming on a city street, from watching vapour trails disappear in the sky to watching the changing light of dusk through a window. The result then is not so much cinematic as it is evocative: Bell Orchestre have not just written the music to the film – they have created an invisible film that only comes to life in the listening

Tracks

1. Recording a Tunnel (The Horns Play
Underneath the Canal)
2. Les Lumi?res Pt. 1
3. Les Lumi?res Pt. 2
4. Throw It on a Fire
5. Recording a Tunnel
6. The Upwards March
7. The Bells Play the Band
8. Recording a Tape... (Typewriter Duet)
9. Nuevo
10. Salvatore Amato
11. Recording a Tunnel (The Invisible Bells

Press

Reissue of debut album from Montreal band (Arcade Fire members) Richard Parry and Sarah Neufeld

Audio & Video

GLANDS OF EXTERNAL SECRETION - 'NECK PILLOW'

Formats

• SB193 - LP

  655030119316

Details

It’s astonishing to think that the most recent vinyl full length outing from Glands of External Secretion was the splendiferous Reverse Atheism 2xLP (Butte County Free Music Society, 2011). Not that they’ve been dormant—the BuFMS CDR series and a smattering of 7-inchers and lathes have seen to that. No one’s sitting around the twiddler, waiting for their name to be called. But it must be said: the Glands’ sublime warmth and withering wit really crackle when the tone arm slips the needle down into the grooves on the olde timey record playing machine. Then, just like that, a mysterious huckster lures our heroes to Long Beach, CA in April of 2022, where, it was promised, they could record voices and set down séance tracks in the haunted rooms aboard the Queen Mary. You gotta admit, that’s a pretty good gig. But the would-be higgler’s ruse did not come to pass. The Glands were sold out for a warehouse full of Burns & Schreiber’s Pure B.S.! LPs and the duo found themselves thrust into the Siltbreeze cabal. But fate can also be serendipitous. The label, known for its propensity for bringing meat pies to a cake fight, immediately insisted these recorded tracks get the vinyl treatment. And here we fuckin’ are. If unfamiliar, Glands Of External Secretion are the duo of Barbara Manning (28th Day, World Of Pooh, SF Seals) and S. Glass (Bananafish Magazine, many things BuFMS). Since 1992, they’ve been snatching victory from the jaws of indifference with a pluck that only the most dedicated can intuit. In this world, victory isn’t awards, champagne, and ass-pats. It’s full of gut-flushing probiotics, stores of “the good fats,” one must watch for bones, and there’s gristle. The footing is always unsure. Cut-ups, processed reality, and recollections of memories you never had are all part of the landscape. A hungry tortoise, swinging loveseats, Lowrey organs, kitchen implements, Who stories, Spandau Ballet crooners…. this ain’t the set of a Doritos commercial, friend. If the Puppet Wipes’ Meemaw and Pop-Pop made music, it might come close to the aural delights found on Neck Pillow. What higher commendation could you ask for? Looks like Siltbreeze hits the jackpot again.

Tracks

Press

Audio & Video

THE BABIES - 'OUR HOUSE ON THE HILL'

Formats

• WOODSIST064CV - LP (COLOURED)

  655035026411

• WOODSIST064CD - CD

  655035026428

Details

BACK IN PRINT ON RED VINYL. EDITION OF 300, A TEN YEAR ANNIVERSARY EDITION!!! ***Received a 7.8 rating from Pitchfork. After their first full-length album on Shrimper, a demos EP on New Images and scores of singles on domestic and international record labels, The Babies’ second album Our House on the Hill is their Woodsist debut and the first with new bassist Brian Schleyer. While the band was originally conceived as a side-project outlet for Kevin Morby and Cassie Ramone—along with drummer Justin Sullivan—to trade song ideas and play house parties, the project grew into a full-time affair. The Babies spent much of 2011 touring the US and abroad, all the while writing new material, both in their home of Brooklyn and during a two-month sojourn in Los Angeles. In February 2012, the band swapped their usual environs of Brooklyn’s Rear House recording studio and spent two weeks in Los Angeles working with producer Rob Barbato (Darker My Love, The Fall, Cass McCombs). The increased time and focus allowed them to explore musical directions only hinted at on their first album. Our House on the Hill features hushed dirges, melancholic traveling odes and squealing rave-ups, all made cohesive by Morby’s and Ramone’s captivating songwriting and lyrical themes. Organ, piano, saxophone and even strings enhance the aural atmosphere, which finds the band finally realizing a sound that can be called their own. Simple yet thoughtful; familiar yet haunting. Sweet but somber.  “… married throughout the entire record are those otherworldly harmonized ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ by Kevin and Cassie that’ll make the stubble on your spine take notice if you are still one of them folks in need of oxygen to breathe. The switchblade knives and butterfly stitches that paint the heartache and conflict throughout this long-player will sharpen you for your next lovelorn argument, stumbling bar-brawl between you and a reflection of your 17-year-old self in the face of a tinfoil-plated locket or for the working stiffs, that 3 A.M. Saturday drive home from the bad side of the tracks back to the sad side.” —Dennis Callaci • Sophomore full-length from Brooklyn band lead by Kevin Morby (Woods) and Cassie Ramone (Vivian Girls) • Recorded in Los Angeles with producer Rob Barbato (Darker My Love, The Fall, Cass McCombs)

Tracks

Press

Audio & Video