THE C.I.A. - 'SURGERY CHANNEL'

Formats

• ITR368 - LP

  759718536812

• ITR368CD - CD

  759718536829

Details

“Step into a sick rhythm. And I mean sickly. Surgery Channel is a constructed world where everything is piercing and pinpointed. Every single word brings confrontation. With an intro as intimate and uncomfortable as this, The C.I.A. make you question what could be happening here…or what they’re after. Denée Segall (vocals, lyrics) is both haunting and seducing us at once with her voice. Something unhinged might be about to happen and they’re calmly dangling it over your head. Is it the possibility of dismemberment? Revenge? “There is something about Surgery Channel that is sterile and covered in dirt at the same time. Maybe it’s the feeling of simultaneous anger and defeat. Maybe it’s what comes after. Or maybe it’s about the ever-so-brief silent spaces between notes and words. Rhythm would be nothing without empty space. Words are rhythm at The C.I.A. “There’s nothing wishy washy about The C.I.A. or the way they sound. It’s all about precision and aim But really, it’s a warning... amplified by the suspense of tick-tocking drum machine beats that resemble a hospital room. Ty Segall (bass, percussion, back up vocals) and Emmett Kelly (bass, synth, back up vocals) have painted a jarring and dissonant landscape behind Denée’s story. Their basses could easily be swapped for bone drills and you might not be able to tell the difference. Emmett’s modular synth envisions an environment reminiscent of the instrument itself, a mess of wires and pulsing red lights. Ty’s subtle use of electronic and analog percussion fluctuates between the sound of a metal tray hitting the floor (“The Wait”), and the swish of an ultrasound scan (“Bubble”). “Both Surgery Channel and The C.I.A’s first self-titled record are ripe with straightforward conviction. However this most recent installment reveals a new side of their personality. Now The C.I.A. is communicating from an electrified, pulsating, metallic playpen that wants you to strut. Surgery Channel shows punks a new way to move while remaining loyal to the traditions of catharsis and social commentary. “This record is an astute observation and blunt critique. Both inward and outward. It is an exploration into how harshly intimate that process can be. It was written in 2021 by Denée Segall, Ty Segall, and Emmett Kelly. It was recorded at Harmonizer Studios and mixed at Golden Beat by Mike Kriebel.” —Sofia Arreguin

Tracks

1. Introduction
2. Better
3. Inhale Exhale
4. Impersonator
5. Surgery Channel Pt. 1
6. Surgery Channel Pt. 2
7. Bubble
8. You Can Be Here
9. The Wait
10. Construct
11. Under
12. Over

Press

Audio & Video

THE SEA URCHINS - 'STARDUST'

Formats

• 197210X - LP

  852545003905

Details

*ORANGE VINYL* Cutting their teeth as teens in a West Bromwich bedroom, The Sea Urchins were nothing like the heavy metal that seemed to fill every bar in the UK Black Country. Fringe haircuts, perfect trousers, suede jackets and infectious tambourines gave plenty of hints as to their youthful ambition, but nothing could fully prepare you for just how utterly spellbinding these songs would be. Compiling their fanzine-only flexi material with the full complement of singles for Sarah Records, Stardust runs chronologically from late 1986 to the middle of 1989, beginning with the singles split for Clare Wadd’s Kvatch and Matt Haynes’ Sha La La, before hitting the first of what would be an even hundred releases from the new label Wadd and Haynes would form - Sarah. The song that launched a legendary label and defined a sound, a scene, a place and time; “Pristine Christine” still rings out as immediate and magical today as it did on first listen. What a glorious jangly rush racing around the corners of pop’s history! The band would reach such heights time and again over the course of this three year burst. The melancholy swinging folk of “Everglade” and it’s wonderfully yearning vocal; the organ-fueled british invasion garage rock sing-a-long of “Solace”; the playful psych pop of “A Morning Odyssey”; the acoustic sweep of “Wild Grass Pictures”; the perfectly named “Summershine” leaving you with a ramshackle smile out on the dancefloor. All of it is just so filled with delicate humanity, yet somehow absolutely perfect. As Bob Stanley said about the shimmering ballad “Please Rain Fall” while bestowing it with NME Single Of The Week (an honor also bestowed upon “Pristine Christine”), “think of some variations on the word marvelous and you’re most of the way there.” In their time, they might have seemed wildly out of step, but it’s not crazy to say that things could have been very different for the likes of Radiohead, The La’s, and Oasis without The Sea Urchins.

Tracks

1. Cling Film
2. Summershine
3. You're So Much
4. Pristine Christine
5. Sullen Eyes
6. Everglades
7. Solace
8. Please Rain Fall
9. A Morning Odyssey
10. Wild Grass Pictures
11. Day Into Day

Press

Audio & Video

JOHN FIZER - 'TREASURE MAN'

Formats

• SCTR059 - LP

  719104892663

Details

Barely saved from obscurity by a series of chance events, John Fizer’s only recorded album Treasure Man will finally see the light of day. Forty-five years in the making, while for the last twenty-nine years Fizer has been “living rough” couch surfing, sleeping in play structures, friend’s backyards and more recently his old Volvo station wagon. Fizer is currently residing in a nursing facility in Northern California. Below is the story of how this never before heard album came to Scissor Tail’s attention. “I used to walk my daughter to school and passed the original Peet’s coffee every day. Across the street was Berkeley’s beloved John ‘Treasure Man’ Fizer playing chess, doing crosswords and waiting next to the treasure tree which he had filled with gemstones and various magical trinkets. To this day any child passing by is welcome to choose a treasure. Over many stops with my daughter I got to know John, a fountain of love, intelligence and humor and as quirky and feisty as can be. We became friends. Eventually he showed me a few old cassettes of cassettes of cassettes in poor condition of him performing and asked if I could make them sound better. I agreed to take a listen. Such amazing songs! “So I proceeded to remaster the cassettes while continuing to ask John at least four times over several months if he had the original master studio recordings. The answer was always no. About the time I finally had his cassette sourced recordings sounding as good as they could be and he popped up with a 15 inches per second 1/4’ half track, state of the art analog master reel-to-reel recorded at the legendary Mountain Ears recording studio in 1977 with some very fine studio musicians including Ray Bonneville, Brad ‘Honeyboy’ Hayes, Erik ‘Bobo’ Johnson and Brian ‘Sluggo’ Brown. John had found the original reel! “It had been residing for decades in the bowels of John’s old 1980 Volvo station wagon, which also serves as his home, and was covered in strangely beautiful mold but that was the day I knew the world would hear John’s music the way it was meant to be be...big, fat, analog. The next few years were spent cleaning and remastering the album with some of the worlds finest restoration specialists.” – James Johnson (producer

Tracks

1. Lady Lying Lovely
2. Good Morning Glory
3. Moonlight On My Window Sill
4. I Call For You
5. Sleeping Goddess
6. Give It All You Got
7. Tibetan Bells
8. The Web
9. Outside The Pale
10. Trainsong
11. Think On These Things
12. Send Out Love

Press

Unearthed, unreleased recordings from
onetime member of the legendary Ray
Bonneville Blues Band and contributor to
Folkways compilation Original Folk

Audio & Video

GUIDED BY VOICES - 'LA LA LAND'

Formats

• GBVI117 - LP

  733102728038

• GBVI117CD - CD

  733102728021

Details

**CD OUT OF STOCK** La La Land doubles down on the intricate proggy-pop displayed on Guided By Voices’s last album Tremblers And Goggles By Rank. On a hot streak of critical acclaim, Robert Pollard continues expanding his songwriting towards extremes of prettiness, heaviness and poeticism. As always, unforgettable hooks are everywhere. But with thsi latest, it seems Pollard is playing with the extremes of his abilities as a songwriter, emboldened by the power of this lineup now on their fourteenth album together since 2017. The prettiest stuff is prettier than ever (“Queen Of Spaces”) and odder, more complex songs like “Slowly On The Wheel” combine minimalism, whimsy, and cinematic inclinations. There are the exquisite power pop bangers that fans come to expect like “Ballroom Etiquette” and “Pockets.” Tracks like “Instinct Dwelling” and “Caution Song” effortlessly display a cranked-up weight and complexity most bands could never muster. Celebrating forty years in 2023 with their thirty-eighth album, GBV has lately been garnering rave reviews from Rolling Stone, Stereogum, Brooklyn Vegan, Uncut, MOJO, Shindig, Paste, Popmatters, The Quietus and many more

Tracks

1. Released Into Dementia
2. Ballroom Etiquette
3. Instinct Dwelling
4. Queen Of Spaces
5. Slowly On The Wheel
6. Cousin Jackie
7. Wild Kingdom
8. Caution Song
9. Face Eraser
10. Pockets

Press

Indie-rock juggernauts continue on their
current hot streak of critical acclaim

Audio & Video

DEAD SEA APES / BAND WHOSE NAME IS A SYMBOL - 'PANTHEON OF F*****Y'

Formats

• CFUL0258 - LP

Details

*BLACK VINYL* long time in the making but good things always come to astral travellers as transatlantic soul mates Dead Sea Apes and The Band Whose Name Is A Symbol are joined together on black vinyl for the first time. Two artists that for over the last ten years (& longer) have spent their lives creating music that defies easy categorizations – psych rock / kraut rock /minimal / maximal /avant /free are phrases that only give you fleeting glimpses of what each artist represents. What we do know is that via a sprawling range of sound that is always uncompromising these two artists have pushed each other into a stunning realm of alchemy. The Dead Sea Apes create a hypnotic pulsing sound that weaves an ecstatic line starting from a raw minimal buzz and hum that takes in eastern modes and entrancing minimalism. The music is at once dissonant and hypnotic, rich with unfurling drones that dynamically ebb and flow as a searching interplay between instruments slowly emerges from a sparse open field and builds with the tension of a looming thunder storm. The Band Whose Name Is A Symbol recording is a live recording from the farmland in Richmond this year when Mr Cardinal Fuzz journeyed across the Atlantic Ocean to have his brain well and truly fried by these Ottawa Acid Punks. For this show TBWNIS was expanded to a 9 piece with the addition of Saskatoons Christopher Laramee (Shooting Guns, Wasted Cathedral, The Switching Yard..) and Mrs.Carol Lane (Resin Scraper / Beld). TBWNIS emerged to play as the Sun set over the never-ending Horizon and the Mozzies came out to play – And proceeded to lay down a barrage of high energy, free flowing ecstatic blues – like an endorphin spike into your cortex that felt like your head was sandwiched between the amplifiers as wave after wave of unrelenting free flowing orgasmic energy exploded within. Take note I was on some home made cookies that had me well and truly blasted as I merged with the universe and the vibrations emitting from the stage – it was a good place. 500 pressing – Black Vinyl with a Brett Savage Sleeve design based on the famous and much loved Bootleg label - TAKRL Love and thanks to Mike Coulis for all the efforts in putting on the live show and recordings

Tracks

Press

Audio & Video

HUMAN HAND - 'TREMOR'

Formats

• CFUL0248 - LP

Details

*HEAVY BLACK VINYL*The Human Hand live combo comprises Joe Hollick (Wolf People - Jagjaguwar Records, solo), Karl Eden (John Peel favourites tRANSELEMENt) and Jonathan Dickin (MUMS, Honey Spider, Bleak) Joe and Karl met at an Acid Mothers Temple show in 2012 before realising they both lived minutes away from each other in neighbouring sleepy Lancashire Pennine villages. They performed a number of shows together as a wig-out loose improv duo channelling heavy motorik grooves, Anatolian suffused lead lines, a general layer of Northern skuzz tied together with Joe’s signature guitar work. Early HH recordings were juxtaposed by being captured at extremely low volume due to necessity as the only available opportunity was to work on material late at night to avoid waking their young children. Human Hand were augmented and given a live makeover by the addition of Jonny (MUMS, Honey Spider, Bleak) on drums, a former student of Karl’s and all round music and literary geek. The trio recorded their debut LP “Tremor” in a hasty 8 hour session, with a vinyl release on Cardinal Fuzz recordings in the UK, and Feeding Tube in the US, due September 2022. About “Tremor”: Tremor is the debut album from Human Hand: a core-trio and broader collective based in the shadow of Pendle Hill, Lancashire, UK. Recorded during two days of post-lockdown cathartic noise. Tremor was created using instant composition, 4 track tape manipulation and immediate overdubs. 500 copy vinyl release due September 2022 via Cardinal Fuzz (UK) and Feeding Tube (US).

Tracks

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Audio & Video

PLASTIC CRIMEWAVE SYNDICATE - 'SPACE ALLEY'

Formats

• CFUL0255 - LP

Details

Plastic Crimewave Syndicate has finally returned with a wide-ranging/raging new album — recorded two years ago in an expansive, benevolent alleyway in the midst of a dark, diseased, claustrophobic time of global chaos. The new PCWS album, entitled "Space Alley," boldly travels into the relatively unexplored malevolent terrain of free doom, space/noise punk, and darkly dubbed-out library/soundtrack grooves (call it 70's crooked-cop show/freak-funk, if you must). This is all capped off with a sidelong, (beat of the) earth-harvesting modal exploration of synthed-out kraut-throb. With new bassist Rob Rodak (Dead Feathers) aboard, and guests like sax-skronk legend Taralie Peterson (Spires That in the Sunset Rise), flautist Sara Gossett (Spiral Galaxy), and synthlord Will MacLean (Protovulcan), new influences have seeped into PCWS's dystopian vision. The Syndicate have opened for revered deities like Nik Turner, Loop, Simply Saucer, Chrome, and Josefus; but now a more diverse and groovy array of past underground sounds like Skin Alley, Sound of Imker, Here and Now, Mann/Sharrock, Black Sun Ensemble, Parson Sound, and Schizo have influenced PCWS's journey. Recorded by Eric Block (Rhys Chatham, Sick Gazelle) of Rec Rooms studios, and mastered by Monster Magnet/Desert Sessions guitar god JP McBain, the mind-fry level is set to 11 ½ on Space Alley!

Tracks

Press

Audio & Video

BLOOD QUARTET - 'ROOT 7'

Formats

• CFUL0239 - LP

Details

Pioneer of the New York No Wave with the bands Mars and Don King, Mark Cunningham has been part of the Barcelona music underground for almost 30 years, performing solo, with his own groups Raeo, Convolution, Aleatory Grammar and Bèstia Ferida, as a member of Pascal Comelade´s Bel Canto Orchestra and Superelvis, and in countless local and international collaborations. Blood Quartet was formed in early 2015 in Barcelona from a fortuitous collaboration between Cunningham and Catalan underground rock trio Murnau B An outstanding musical treat that starts from the instrumental base of the modern jazz quartet and takes it to the territory of experimentation and electronics. Blood Quartet sound more luminous and rhythmic than ever, diving into uncharted terrain. This results in an exceptional range of genres that play with the form between the classic and the contemporary, and that extend the creative spectrum of the band towards new styles, such as krautrock and North African music. The result of this process has given rise to nine themes, each one baptized with the title of a literary work by some reference writers of the members of the quartet, in order to add more roots of meaning, more shadows of influence.

Tracks

Press

Audio & Video

GUNSLINGERS - 'SUPREME ASPHALT DOSER'

Formats

• CFUL0256 - LP

Details

Have no fear, you amphetamine lovers, speed freaks and sonic maniacs, have no fear not to find among these 7 uncompromising tunes the illuminated fever of what constitutes the band’s DNA in its wildest incarnation, the alchemy of a unique style beyond the genres, the irreverent dreams calcined by a sound blowtorch, by the electro shocks overheated in the traumatized adrenalin ; have no fear, you counter-cultural worshippers and hygiene opponents, you zealots of the subtle oversaturation, of the plastic from beyond the grave monstrously remodeled in deformed oddness… Have no fear, you proto-punks, Gunslingers knows no homeland, Gunslingers is everywhere for no one and nowhere for everyone. _ Opaque Dynamo ” Once again Gregory Raimo drops a hydrogen bomb of an album on us leaving alla you pampered pooches in such shock that you can’t even run home to the comfort of your mother’s boobies. Hard overdrive rocknroll is once again in store, and it’s played to such a fever pitch that those usually daft comparisons to the velvet Underground and Stooges that I have made these past fortysome years sound even more banal than they usually have.. So out-there powerful that alla those eighties hopes of ours (Halo of Flies, the Australian bands) sound pattycakes in comparison. Maybe High Rise with a tad of LSD March added? Hey Raimo, if you read this tell us how we can get a copy for ourselves. ” _ Chris Stigliano, Blog To Comm

Tracks

Press

Audio & Video

SECOND LAYER - 'COURTS OR WARS'

Formats

• 197211 - LP (COLOURED)

  852545003912

Details

* 200 RED VINYL FOR UK* Adrian Borland and Graham Bailey might be better known as members of legendary post-punk group The Sound, but the two were childhood friends and had been playing together even earlier in The Outsiders, and continued their deep musical rapport as a duo, creating these intense and engaging songs as Second Layer at the same time as their higher profile band output. Combining their early recordings, including the 1979 Flesh As Property EP and 1980 State Of Emergency EP, Courts Or Wars takes its title from the first song that served as the pair’s introduction to listeners. Right from the beginning you are enveloped in what The Quietus described as, “a monochrome worldview morbidly obsessed with the dehumanizing effect of war, nuclear weapon annihilation, and the fracturing and negation of the self within an increasingly distorted and technologically mediated society.” Where The Sound fit snugly next to Echo And The Bunnymen, Second Layer had far more in common with the pulsing menace of Suicide. Borland’s familiar vocals and sense of melody hold a connection to his other songwriting, but within these songs he takes far more risks in his guitar work to suit the subject matter. What really drives everything is Bailey’s propulsive bedrock, formed by his homemade pre-drum machine rhythm generators, creating an innovative mechanical approach that somehow inserts a jittery neurotic touch that merges perfectly with his electronic layers driven by the wasp synth, various unique effects boxes or tape loops. Adding in Bailey’s own distinctive bass playing, the results feel personal and experimental, pointed and harsh, while also bracingly accessible and covered in dark manic energy. Over forty years later, these recordings feel shockingly appropriate. In painting a bleak reality and frightening future, there is real desperate beauty here.

Tracks

Press

Adrian Borland and Graham Bailey from The Sound

Compilation including early and sought after EPs Flesh As Property and State Of Emergency, plus two previously unreleased tracks and more

Features 'Courts Or Wars' which was recently sampled by The Chemical Brothers on their upcoming single 'No Reason To Live'

Audio & Video

NIGHTTIME - 'KEEPER IS THE HEART'

Formats

• BING177 - LP

  600197017418

• BING177CD - CD

  600197017425

Details

Eva Louise Goodman’s Nighttime project locates itself on a musical tree planted on the British Isles, perched atop the branch of folk leaning into sixties rock. Her upstate New York environs don’t stray far from that image. With tempered percussion, floating mellotron, and singing that evokes Bleecker & MacDougal on a fervent Saturday afternoon, her new album Keeper Is The Heart reaches deep into the essence of musicians such as Vashti Bunyan, Sibylle Baier and Pentangle, breaking down the decades into a sound thoroughly and bizarrely modern. Through her years performing with Mutual Benefit, Goodman fell in love with life on the road and the collaborative energy of a band. In this third Nighttime album, she channels these experiences into her own music. The creative journey from writing to recording to mixing drove her deeper into a sense of self while expanding her sound. In the process, she put aside lo-fi origins and challenged herself to achieve the same intimacy with a bigger production. Like most paths of self-discovery, the journey started with displacement. In October 2019, Goodman set out to record the album on her own, while cat-sitting at a friend’s empty Brooklyn apartment. Rather than recording, she was drawn to the overgrown garden, where she spent her days listening to music and reading old journals. Charlie Megira, The Incredible String Band and Roy Montgomery invoked the spirit of the album, as she realized that a new, more collaborative approach would be necessary to bring the songs to life. In March 2021, after a pandemic year immersed in sound experimentation and writing, she entered the upstate New York studio of recording engineer Rick Spataro (Florist). Together, Spataro and Goodman dove into creating the album, recording one song a day, letting the spark and excitement of spontaneity be their guide. “I've always been fascinated with ‘automatic’ arts,” Goodman says, “where things are created intuitively and without premeditation, from the subconscious.” In this light, they worked with abandon–pushing through the heaviness of songs written years earlier with the same energy as songs which were not yet fully developed. Taking chances, improvising, they sought to strip away pretense, and elude perfectionism at all cost. Among their experiments, the duo manipulated tape speeds–slowing or speeding up different instrument tracks, imbuing passages with altered perspectives. Improvisation was the key in track five, ‘The Way,’ a song about “the magical act of carving out a path through life, amidst all possibility.” After a long day of recording, the song was feeling heavy and uninspired. As night fell, Spataro picked up the Stratocaster and, in one take, laid down a rolling, roiling guitar line that defined the track. This spirit of surrender weaves through the album. “Break free from time, and sink in the pool of the mind,” begins ‘Garden of Delight’, an energetic highlight, propelled by 60’s-era organ and Jefferson Airplane-esque vocals. The song was accidentally deleted after the first day of recording. By luck or fate, the one surviving file captured the song’s loose and free-wheeling essence. Inspired, Goodman encouraged her circle of collaborators to work similarly: “I gave everyone trust and total freedom to contribute as they felt called to, encouraging an intuitive approach of simply improvising, playing through the song a few times and then sending over the results.” Synth, cello, violin, saxophone and flute all appear, but often in unconventional ways. Keeper Is the Heart reflects Goodman’s process towards greater creative freedom. The first words she sings: “Lift the veil of all of this hate/To see the fear at its base.” Her last lines: “We’ll follow the fates across the great expanse of time/To the source of the light within our mind.” In between is a work of art awash in personal awakenings that revel in the freedom of intuition, the lifting of veils, and the beauty of transformation. As Goodman states, “What is it you find when you look inward to see beyond, past your fears, to your heart's true desires?” 

Tracks

1. Veil
2. When the Wind is Blowing
3. Curtain is Closing
4. The Fool
5. The Way
6. Garden of Delight
7. Ring of Fire
8. Spring, You Come Again
9. Feeling the Weeks
10. The Sea

Press

Third album from the New York singer/songwriter who previously played with Mutual Benefit.

Audio & Video

MAN... OR ASTRO-MAN? - 'DISTANT PULSAR'

Formats

• CHK7078 - 2x7"

Details

***“The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. ''We are a way for the universe to know itself. Also, y’all are really going to love this latest Man...or Astro-Man? record. There’s definitely some sick new jams on this one.”—CARL SAGAN. Contrary to popular belief, Pulsars aren’t really stars—or at least they aren’t “living” stars. Pulsars belong to a family of objects called neutron stars that form when a star more massive than the sun runs out of fuel in its core and collapses in on itself. This stellar death typically creates a massive explosion called a supernova. The neutron star is the dense nugget of material left over after this explosive death. We presently have five (5) of them for sale. Contact Astro HQ if you wish to inquire about purchasing a Pulsar (not a star). Pertaining to level 1-C operation personnel only, please note: The counter-back, cross-dimensional vector analysis will relegate the following mechanical device in an advanced reconstitution state within itself when all factors considered in Fig. A.613 are in a state of synchronous phase occurrence. Unnecessarily optriculating any diagnostically challenged auto-burst, ionically charged reversal, or any other predetermined encoding vectors inversely positioned to subtrancontaneous articulation, will cause the immediate redux of excessive dimensional system pressure in all spectral areas within the static margins. The algorithmic blink comparator is to be monitored at maximum rapid succession mode in order to differentiate any binary marker variation. Possible overload vorticity will generate counter-emissions against the potentiometer intermittent spectrum when raised to final loop approach. Further perturbation upheld at the synthetic modulation point will determine any further gradation of draft and various class form drag. Strict adherence to the relation between the outmost perimeter positioning to both the base honing signal point and situational determined impulse ratio is crucial for obtaining full inversion within the ultimate rate of intake. Please handle with caution.

Tracks

Press

Audio & Video

SKULL PRACTITIONERS - 'NEGATIVE STARS'

Formats

• ITR369 - LP

  759718536911

• ITR369CD - CD

  758718536921

Details

Hard-hitting new collection succeeds the trio’s rampaging 2019 In The Red Debut EP Death Buy! Proving once again that “power trio” isn’t just a descriptive handle from the distant past but a louderthan- God 21st-Century reality, the devastating New York band Skull Practitioners bow Negative Stars, their first full-length album for In The Red Records. The eight-track collection is the second release for Los Angelesbased trio—guitarist Jason Victor, bassist Kenneth Levine, and drummer Alex Baker—who collectively produced the record, with Ted Young engineering (and Baker handling engineering on vocal sessions). Brooklyn Vegan said, “If you dig early ’80s L.A. dusty punk like Gun Club, X and Flesh Eaters, or the many works of Jon Spencer, you will want to check out these four ripping, ripped-up tracks.” Rock And Roll Globe described the music as “Gun Club fugues played by anxious Amphetamine Reptile Records ghosts deciding they’d prefer to continue to walk the earth.” Negative Stars is the culmination of years of work in New York’s clubs and studios. “I don’t like to say the date we started working together,” says Levine, “but the second Bush was still president.” At the time, Victor had already established himself as the dazzling co-lead guitarist for Steve Wynn and the Miracle Three; when Wynn revived his ’80s L.A. Paisley Underground consortium the Dream Syndicate in 2017, Victor took the guitar chair previously occupied by Karl Precoda and Paul Cutler. Baker had only recently arrived from Cincinnati. With their album finally complete and the pandemic lifting, Skull Practitioners have begun to take to the stage more regularly: in 2022 they have played shows with Lydia Lunch, Live Skull, the Art Gray Noizz Quintet, and In the Red label-mates the Wolfmanhattan Project (Kid Congo Powers, Mick Collins, and Bob Bert). They plan to get on the road in the near future.

Tracks

1. Dedication
2. Exit Wounds
3. LEAP
4. Intruder
5. What Now
6. Fire Drill
7. Ventilation
8. Nelson D
CD-only tracks
9. Death Buy
10. Grey No More
11. The Beacon
12. Miami

Press

#47 THE QUIETUS AOTY 2023 ~
NY-based power trio's debut full length
summons early '80s LA dusty punk / For fans of Gun Club, X, Flesh Eaters / CD includes debut EP as bonus tracks

Audio & Video