THEE OH SEES - 'PUTRIFIERS II'

Formats

• ITR235W - LP (COLOURED)

  759718523515

• ITR235CD - CD

  759718523522

Details

*WHITE VINYL REPRESS. 300 COPIES UK*  What's the first thing that comes to mind when someone mentions Thee Oh Sees? Probably their riot-sparking live show, right? Visions of a guitar-chewing, speaker-smothering, tongue-wagging John Dwyer careening across your cranium, chased by a wild-eyed wrecking crew that drives every last hook home like it's a nail in the coffin of what one thought it meant to make 21st century rock 'n' roll? Yeah, that sounds about right. But it misses a more important point-how impossible Thee Oh Sees have been been to pin down since Dwyer launched it in the late '90s as a solo break from such sorely missed underground bands as Pink and Brown and Coachwhips. That restlessness extends to everything from the towering, thirteen-minute title track of 2010's Warm Smile LP to the mercurial moods of 2008's The Master's Bedroom Is Worth Spending a Night In. And then there's the home-brewed symphonies of Castlemania and the high-wire hooks of Carrion Crawler / The Dream, which dropped a second drum set among sunburnt organs, dovetailing guitars and rail-jumping rhythms. If one prefers a slightly more subtle musical awakening, there's always Putrifiers II, the latest in a long line of Oh Sees albums that expands the group's sound well past your friendly neighborhood garage band. So while the space-odyssey nods of "Wax Face" actually sound like they're meant to melt one's ears straight off, the record's full of deviant detours, from the poison-tipped string parts and Eno-esque engineering of "So Nice" to the groove-locked Krautrock inclinations of "Lupine Dominus." The most noticeable element may be Dwyer's melodies, however, as they reveal a softer side to his songwriting, one that makes perfect sense considering just how disparate his dust-clearing influences are. Scott Walker, The Velvet Underground, The Zombies and the experimental Japanese act Les Rallizes Denudes are but a small taste of what informed Thee Oh Sees this time around, as Dwyer returned to the multi-instrumental ways of Castlemania- full-band sessions for another record are already underway-and rounded out a fuller, drier sound with drummer / engineer Chris Woodhouse and special guests like Mikal Cronin (sax), Heidi Maureen Alexander (trumpet, vocals) and K Dylan Edrich (viola).

Tracks

1. Wax Face
2. Hang a Picture
3. So Nice
4. Cloud #1
5. Flood?s New Light
6. Putrifiers II
7. Will We Be Scared?
8. Lupine Dominus
9. Goodbye Baby
10. Wicked Park

Press

Audio & Video

SHANA CLEVELAND - 'MANZANITA'

Formats

• HAR159 - LP

  098787315905

• HARCD159 - CD

  098787315929

• HARCS159 - MC

  098787315943

Details

Second solo album by La Luz singer/guitarist Shana Cleveland. Manzanita is the common name for a kind of small evergreen tree endemic to California which has strong medicinal properties. It’s also the name of the brand new full length by visual artist, writer, songwriter, and musician Shana Cleveland. Subtle, powerful, and unafraid. We can’t actually tell you how much we love this record because you’d never believe us, so we’ll just say that it is her strongest and most personal album to date. These songs are as strong as the bricks in the Brill building, and seem destined to be covered by others in years to come. Where her previous record, 2019’s Night of the Worm Moon (Hardly Art) functions as a collection of speculative fictions equally inspired by Afro-futurist pioneers Herman “Sun Ra” Blount and Octavia Butler, Manzanita concerns the love that loves to love. “This is a supernatural love album set in the California wilderness,” Cleveland explains. The combinations of words and song structure are so strong throughout that one hardly notices Cleveland’s nimble fingerpicking on first listen, or how much is packed into the arrangements. The lyrics are satisfyingly direct, with the buoyantly whimsical descriptions typical of the 1960s New York School of poetry. It’s peppered with the kind of unexpected turns that make the words more modern, and in their spookiness they are more West Coast, as in “Mystic Mine,” with its “Mystic Mine Lane, cars rotting away/ I feel so relieved to be/ Back in the country.” So much of the pop music we love is propelled by those first blushes of infatuation and lust, but Manzanita concerns the kind of love that one can only experience with time, work, and devotion. Cleveland says: “The songs were all written while I was pregnant (side A) or shortly after my son's birth in that weird everything-has-quietly-but-monumentally-shifted state (side B),” she says. Moving to the country, starting a family, laughing for real at the same joke the thirteenth time you’ve heard it, surviving heavy shit (this is the first release since Cleveland’s successful treatment for a diagnosis of breast cancer at the start of 2022). This is a love album that’s somehow populated with the insect world, ghosts, and evil spirits. Sonically, Manzanita sits in a meadow similar to her previous solo records, set back and away from the genre-recombinant garage pop of her band La Luz. This is part due to the fact that there’s a different sonic palette in use here. While Cleveland continues to play guitar and vocals; Johnny Goss, who has recorded all of Shana’s solo material and early La Luz recordings, and Abbey Blackwell (Alvvays, La Luz) play the bass; Olie Eshleman is on pedal steel; and Will Sprott plays the keyboards, dulcimer, glockenspiel, and harpsichord—little of which would have been out of place on her previous two solo records—Sprott also adds layers of synthesizer infused with the sounds of the natural world. 

Tracks

1. A Ghost
2. Bloom
3. Faces in the Firelight
4. Mystic Mine
5. Light on the Water
6. Quick Winter Sun
7. Bonanza Freeze
8. Gold Tower
9. Babe
10. Ten Hour Drive Through West Coast Disaster
11. Evil Eye
12. Mayonnaise
13. Sheriff of the Salton Sea
14. Walking Through Morning Dew

Press

#13 SHINDIG! AOTY 2023 ~
9/10 one-page Uncut review / 5 Star Shindig review / RIYL: Robert Wyatt, Opal, Nilsson, Kevin Ayers and his Whole Wide World, Norma Tanega, Jessica Pratt, Julie Driscoll, Michael Nesmith, Sibylle Baier

Audio & Video

GABOR SZABO - '1969'

Formats

• EBL!!!-011LP - LP

  8016670151791

• EBL!!!-011CD - CD

  8016670151784

Details

Ebalunga!!! is coming back with a new long-awaited reissue of LP by the famous Hungarian guitarist, originally released in 1969. Deluxe 6-sided Digipak CD with a booklet and Gatefold Vinyl comes with long, exclusively written inner notes by the famous researcher and biographer Douglas Payne. “Gabor Szabo exploded onto the American jazz scene in the early sixties. His unusual approach and unique sound brought something startling and new to jazz. With Chico Hamilton, Charles Lloyd and Gary McFarland, Szabo offered something few in jazz had ever heard before: guitarist as enchanter and conjurer and musician as storyteller and mesmerist. Once Szabo declared his independence in 1966, he also proved how seamlessly jazz can blend the Beatles and Bacharach with Latin and Indian styles. The guitarist released a string of albums on Impulse that challenged many assumptions about jazz and stand out today as some of the most radical, yet appealing music of the period. But the times were woefully a-changing. Szabo biographer Károly Libisch considers the year 1969 a “turning point” for the guitarist. The spell Szabo weaved in the press was beginning to wane. The blizzard of coverage he generated in the previous few years began to trickle off. Perhaps the rise of rock – and rock-guitar heroes – tamped down the guitarist’s exotic allure and faddish charm. Then, too, Szabo’s erratic behavior started attracting poor notices and hastened the demise of his storied quintet, featuring guitarist Jimmy Stewart and percussionist Hal Gordon, in late 1968. Now, both Gabor Szabo, the artist and businessman, needed a hit. 1969 was his response to the call of 1969. The album was released in August 1969, initial reviews were positive. Cash Box raved that Gabor Szabo 1969 “is magnificent music, and an album that deserves great success” while Record World called it “luscious guitaring” that features “lots of contemporary material, which he makes completely his own.” Gabor Szabo 1969 never did find the success it was seeking. But it remains a lovely listening experience that finds the guitarist at his melodic best at an important crossroads in his recording career. “

Tracks

Press

Audio & Video

GABOR SZABO - 'DREAMS'

Formats

• EBL!!!-003LP - LP

  8016670138877

• EBL!!!-003CD - CD

  8016670138860

Details

The long-awaited reissue of rare Eastern and psychedelic Jazz LP by the famous Hungarian guitarist, originally released in 1968. The first time, extended Edition with 2 bonus tracks: radio version of Fire Dance / Ferris Wheel from single 7” 1969. Deluxe 8-sided Digipak CD and Gatefold Vinyl come with long, exclusively written inner notes by the famous researcher and biographer Douglas Payne. Remastered by Martin Bowes at Cage Studios (UK). Gabor Szabo was one of the most original guitarists to emerge in the 1960s, mixing his Hungarian folk music heritage with a deep love of jazz and crafting a distinctive, largely self-taught sound. Born in Budapest, on March 8, 1936, Szabo was inspired by a Roy Rogers cowboy movie to begin playing guitar when he was 14 and often played in dinner clubs and covert jam sessions while still living in his hometown. He escaped from his country at age 20 on the eve of the Communist uprising and eventually made his way to America, settling with his family in California. He attended Berklee College (1958-1960) and in 1961 joined Chico Hamilton’s innovative quintet featuring Charles Lloyd. Urged by Hamilton, Szabo crafted a most distinctive sound; as agile on intricate, nearly-free runs as he was able to sound inspired during melodic passages. Szabo left the Hamilton group in 1965 to leave his mark on the pop-jazz of the Gary McFarland quintet and the energy music of Charles Lloyd’s fiery and underrated quartet featuring Ron Carter and Tony Williams. Szabo initiated a solo career in 1966, recording the exceptional album, Spellbinder, which yielded many inspired moments and “Gypsy Queen,” the song Santana turned into a huge hit in 1970. Szabo formed an innovative quintet (1967-1969) featuring the brilliant, classically trained guitarist Jimmy Stewart and recorded many notable albums during the late ’60s. The emergence of rock music (especially George Harrison, Eric Clapton, and Jimi Hendrix) found Szabo experimenting with feedback and more commercially oriented forms of jazz. During the ’70s, Szabo regularly performed along the West Coast, hypnotizing audiences with his enchanting, spellbinding style. From 1970, he locked into a commercial groove, even though records like Mizrab occasionally revealed his seamless jazz, pop, Gypsy, Indian, and Asian fusions. Szabo had revisited his homeland several times during the ’70s, finding opportunities to perform brilliantly with native talents. He was hospitalized during his final visit and died in 1982, just short of his 46th birthday.

Tracks

1. Galatea?s Guitar (Gabor Szabo)
2. Half the Day is Night (Gary McFarland)
3. Song of Injured Love (Manuel de Falla)
4. The Fortune Teller (Gabor Szabo/Louis Kabok)
5. Fire Dance (Manuel de Falla)
6. The Lady in the Moon (Gabor Szabo, from Zoltan Kodaly)
7. Ferris Wheel (Donovan)
8. Fire Dance (single edit) ? from 7″
9. Ferris Wheel (single edit) ? from 7″

Press

Audio & Video

MUSLIMGAUZE - 'EMAK BAKIA'

Formats

• AKT00LPGOLD - LP (COLOURED)

  710473186605

Details

*GOLD VINYL*Emak Bakia – long out of print masterpieces from 1994. Even in the huge Bryn Jones' discography Emak Bakia really stands out of albums from the period due its rather unique (house-music related) sound and short, by the standards of Bryn Jones, tracks. Like a crossmix between Psychic TV (circa Towards Thee Infinite Beat) and Muslimgauze's trademark percussion and eastern vibes. Re-mastered and with new stunning artwork. Released by Other Voices Records VOX 57 LP Marketed and distributed by Kontakt Audio

Tracks

Press

Audio & Video

MUSLIMGAUZE - 'UZI'

Formats

• AKT01LP - LP

  710473193313

Details

BLACK VINYL W. POSTER Muslimgauze's gem from the late 80s. Cinematic, minimal, noisy, hypnotic, and gloomy. Probably not so overtly Middle Eastern as his later works, though definitely bearing an influence. Backed by electric drones percussion forms a living, breathing atmosphere of impending menace. For a strange reason, this album was missed in VOD's Chasing The Shadow Of Bryn Jones 10xLP Box-set. Now you have a chance to complete your Muslimgauze discography! Originally released in 1989 through Parade Amoureuse 

Tracks

Press

Audio & Video

NEUTRAL - 'THE LAST TALE OF LOVE'

Formats

• IF-112LP - LP

  8016670152408

Details

Infinite fog Production presents Neutral's (last?)come back. Just a year after the grandiose "The World of Disbelief", Ash has finished the recording of "Last Tale of Love", the album that most probably will stay the last album of the project. After 1,5 years of delays and waiting we are honored to present this beautiful record in physical form. "Last Tale of Love" it's the same inimitable Neutral as always - dark and beautiful songs with unforgettable melodies, bitter-sweet poetry, and heady soft deep voice. This time a beautiful decoration on the album is the voice of guest artist Alena Ka Boo. Notable that the last album includes 2 early songs of the project "...To The Endless Play" and "Last Tale Of Love". Songs that are well-known by fans through live shows and CDs live recordings in Königsberg but first time as studio versions. Limited edition black vinyl with printed inner sleeve - 250 copies. Mastered by Johnny (Kratong, Romowe Rikoito).

Tracks

Press

Audio & Video

SCOTT SESKIND - 'S/T'

Formats

• EBL!!!-015LP - LP

  8016670158776

• EBL!!!-015CD - CD

  8016670158783

Details

psychEbalunga!!! is thrilled to announce the first official reissue of the self-released, self-produced, and self-titled 1985 LP Scott Seskind. The album is a lo-fi singer-songwriter jewel. Don’t miss it. “Authentic and personal, at times it reminds this writer of luminaries such as Jackson C. Frank, PF Sloan, Skip Spence, and Phil Orchs while never feeling derivative. The songs are melodic and haunting, fueled by existential woes, political angst, and good ol’ fashioned love. Scott’s rich voice has an unpretentious gravitas, his simple-yet-effective guitar playing ranging from delicate fingerpicking to angry bashing. Created at home on a Tascam 4-Track Portastudio, the recording features few frills and is all the better for it. Unlike most mid-80s records it sounds like it could have come from any time since the late ’60s onwards. As a testament to its greatness, and despite the late recording date, it even gets a nod on Patrick Lundborg’s “Acid Archives” compilation website, Lysergiawhere it’s described thus: “Late phase downer-loner folk and singer-songwriter trip, mostly acoustic, some tracks with a small band.” – Andrew Ure for Ugly Things.

Tracks

Press

Feature in current SHINDIG!
For fans of Jackson C. Frank, PF Sloan, Skip Spence, and Phil Orchs while never feeling derivative.

Audio & Video

RICHARD OLSON & THE FAMILIARS - 'S/T'

Formats

• CFUL0267 - LP

Details

Black Vinyl (Full pressing Black Vinyl) Welcome to the debut album by Richard Olson & The Familiars, A LP full of dreamy harmony laden melancholy and, dare we say it, Singer Songwriter Pop Music – though Pop Music in the sense that each track is a gorgeous ear worm that you can wrap yourself in and within. Richard was a member of the now-legendary Eighteenth Day Of May, before forming The See See who would then evolve into the much loved and revered The Hanging Stars. On Richard’s debut LP we are treated to a record full of lush harmonies, acoustic guitars and strings as well as Richards most personal and reflective writing, Songs that are full of a hazy warmth and yearning that superbly capture the feel and sound that lies somewhere between The Byrds (think Easy Rider) and The Clientele. The plaintive gorgeousness of opening track ‘I Can’t Help Myself’ reflects the heart-rending, deep feeling that flows throughout the whole of Richard Olsen and The Familiars debut LP. Richard has a great, expressive voice, capable of switching from harmonious and melodic to world-weary within a single song. Air is especially affecting and effective - gorgeously near-ambient kaleidoscope vibe of whispered vocals with pedal steel and slide guitar. ‘I’m A Butterfly’ blends a sumptuous bouncy riff with harmonica and tambourines into hazy dream of pop perfection. Inside Sunshine is the perfect song to close the LP, lilting into the sunset as Richard creates an wonderous retro hued filter - a filmic paean to love with Luke Barlow’s flute playing adding to the trance created.

Tracks

Press

Audio & Video

NAUJAWANANA BAIDER - 'KHEDMAT BE KHALQ'

Formats

• CFUL0266B - LP

• CFUL0266 - LP (COLOURED)

Details

*AVAILABLE ON BLACK OR CLEAR VINYL* Iconoclastic Afghan-American street music project Naujawanan Baidar makes its long anticipated return with "Khedmat Be Khalq," its third album and first new release in three years. Originally planned as a "studio debut" in the classic sense, a veritable avalanche of setbacks tangled and delayed the recording process over a span of several years as compounded tragedies - both international and personal - disrupted the project's intended transition from simply being a ramshackle demo/home-recording outlet for founder N.R. Safi (The Myrrors, et al) into a properly working band. At the end of the day the process of assembling what would eventually become "Khedmat Be Khalq" became a lot like that of the previous two releases: gnarled and sun-baked tracks cut up and collated into a blown out collage of sound. If there is any obvious difference this time around it is perhaps to be found in the increased focus of the material. Whereas the group's previous two projects ran the gamut from sparse acoustic improvisations to tape-loop-inspired noise, "Khedmat Be Khalq" presents a more unified hybrid of Afghan folks styles and electric energy, further exploring Safi's "maximalist minimalism" approach. Tape-saturated and over-amplified Afghan rubab, armonia, and ghichak meet pounding multi-layered rhythms that at times hint at 1970s-1980s industrial music or the heady throb of German krautrock groups like Faust or Amon Düül. Perhaps nowhere is this unique combination more striking than in Naujawanan Baidar's swirling re-arrangement of the Afghan folk classic "Raftim Az Ayn Baagh" that closes the album. The rubab melody that serves as the song's core is warped into something that in all honesty wouldn't sound particularly out of place spun between early Savage Republic and Crash Worship. Lyrically the album moves away from the more abstract and impressionistic style of Safi's earlier material towards a concrete attempt to address the struggle of the Afghan masses from the complicated perspective of the international diaspora. The songs here work to draw out and examine the contradictions and challenges faced by a people once again locked in the talons of a sociopathic religious fundamentalism, connecting the country's position to the current global fight against imperialism, militarism, and resurgent fascism, and attempting to recover obscured historical fragments and lessons surrounding the proud radical history of Afghanistan's diverse population over countless decades of intensive struggle. It is here that Naujawanan Baidar's "street music" aesthetic blossoms into a sort of avant garde agitprop - a militant soundtrack angling at a revolution.

Tracks

Press

Audio & Video