MILK MUSIC - 'FIRST DEMO + 1'

Formats

• LG2 - 12"

  731199495352

Details

Milk Music was conceived in the late aughts as brothers Alex Coxen (guitar, vocals) and Joe Rutter (drums) drove around the Northwest jamming on tunes in a shitty old Volvo. Inspired by music that their friends were making, the young brothers rented a space, enlisted first bass player Eric Yates, and wrote the songs on this record. Side A begins with the blistering “Nervous Wreck”—in and out of tune at the same time, fast but somehow feels slow—totally fucked. “Beluga” conjures a deranged image of a mystery whale, as the listener imagines the brothers as Ishmael and Queequeg leaving their hometown of Port Townsend, WA behind on their epic coming-of-age hunt for revenge and white blubber. “No Life” finds this newly hatched band laying down the mood and sonic foundation that would define them up to this present day. “Ripped” ends side A with racing, lysergic skate-rat rambling over a thumping mudslide of scuzz. Side B begins with “Pipeline,” an absolutely massive, almost unbearable eight minute bong-toke of a song. Bonus crucial early track “Violence Now” wraps it up with a brutal sonic speed-bag to the groin, leaving the listener reeling and dazed, coughing in a fog of their own crotch smoke. Recorded by Sam Stabler (Sex Vid) in the practice space in 2009 and mastered in 2022 by Randy Randall. On two hundred gram vinyl with a sturdy tip-on sleeve for one’s consideration. Includes a poster.

Tracks

1. Nervous Wreck
2. Beluga
3. No Life
4. Ripped
5. Pipeline
6. Violence Now

Press

For fans of H?sker D?, Meat Puppets and
The Wipers

Audio & Video

OSEES - 'INTERCEPTED MESSAGE'

Formats

• ITR380CD - CD

  759718538021

• ITR380 - LP

  759718538014

• ITR380B5 - LP (COLOURED)

  5060446127988

Details

#49 MOJO AOTY 2023 **LTD AQUA BLUE VINYL IN STOCK** “A pop record for tired times. Sugared with bits of shatterproof glass to put more crack in your strap. At long last, verse / chorus. A weathered thesaurus. This is OSEES bookend sound. Early grade garage pop meets protosynth punk suicide-repellant. Have a whack at the grass or listen while flat on your ass. Heaps of electronic whirling accelerants to gum up your cheapskate broadband. Social media toilet scrapers unite! Allow your 24-hour news cycle eyes to squint at this smiling abattoir doorman. You can find your place here at long last. All are welcome from the get go to the finale…a distant crackling transmission of 80s synth last-dance-of-the-night tune for your lost loves. Suffering from Politic amnesia? Bored of AI-generated pop slop? Then this one is for you, our friends. Wasteland wanderer, stick around. Love y’all. For fans of Teutonic synth punk and Thee Oh Sees (who the fuck are they?)” — John Dwyer

Tracks

1. Stunner
2. Blank Chems
3. Intercepted Message
4. Die Laughing
5. Unusual & Cruel
6. The Fish Needs A Bike
7. Goon
8. Chaos Heart
9. Submerged Building
10. Sleazoid Psycho
11. Always At Night
12. LADWP Hold

Press

MOJO - TOP 50 ALBUMS 2023 Iconic rockers return with Teutonic synth punk sound

Audio & Video

INFINITE RIVER - 'SPACE MIRROR'

Formats

• BMR133 - LP

  607287013312

Details

“The band is comprised of four badasses of Michigan underground sound: Gretchen Gonzales (Universal Indians, Slumber Party, Terror At The Opera), Warren Defever (His Name Is Alive, ESP Beetles), Joey Mazzola (Detroit Cobras, Sponge, Sugarcoats), and special guest Steve Nistor (Sparks, Ural Thomas, Seedsmen To The World). The instrumental combo has already played in London, the Bay Area (where they accompanied some of Harry Smith’s “Early Abstraction” films), and to packed houses in Detroit. Their debut, Prequel (Birdman) released at the start of 2023, received many fine notices; this album was recorded at the same time and in the same home studio in Birmingham, Michigan. “Space Mirror is so good. Each unnamed track flows into the next. It’s subtle, often quiet, and beautiful, to be sure. But it’s expansive and hard to pin down. Part of the reason is that the Michigan way is allout. You can’t get on the smallest stage here without fully committing. That’s why we not only gave you the single best album of the peak rock era (rhymes with “pun mouse”), but the mind-melding depths of Emeralds (to use two Ann Arbor reference points). This here is an Infinite River, after all: We have the perfectly crafted harmonic noise guitar stylings of Gretchen Gonzales. And the expert drone of Warren Defever on tambura and harmonium. Steve Nistor’s percussion veers from imperceptible to all-encompassing. And Mazzola is such an adept stylist that it’s easy to mistake his emotive slide guitar work here for a full-on pedal steel. Fans of Barry Walker, Jr. and Henry Flynt will find much to enjoy here. “Everyone’s seen that panel by now, multiple times, originally printed in late 1986 in the fourth issue of Alan Moore’s Watchmen: A blue guy with a dot in his forehead sits on a boulder on the moon looking back at Earth, apparently exhausted. “I am tired of Earth, these people. I am tired of being caught in the tangle of their lives,” the original caption states. And now with meme generators you can change it so it’s about how you don’t want to go to work, or something cool about capitalism, whatever. My setup here is that if that meme could talk (and we’re not talking its excellent HBO adaptation), Space Mirror is exactly what the soundtrack would be. It’s expansive, exquisitely rendered, and carries with it an unexpected emotional depth.” —Mike McGonigal

Tracks

1. Summer Session #1
2. Summer Session #2
3. Summer Session #3
4. Summer Session #4
5. Summer Session #5
6. Summer Session #6
7. Summer Session #7

Press

Audio & Video

SONIC YOUTH - 'LIVE IN BROOKLYN 2011'

Formats

• SC55X - 2xLP (COLOURED)

  795154138531

• SC55 - 2xLPs

  795154138517

• SC55CD - 2xCDs

  795154138524

Details

#24 UNCUT REISSUE OF THE YEAR 2023 #46 THE WIRE RESSIUE OF THE YEAR 2023 The final U.S. show, a triumphant and blistering bookend to the storied career of one of the most influential bands in rock music, featuring a unique and expansive eighty-five minute set list that spans Sonic Youth’s nearly three decade catalog. Mixed from multitrack by longtime live engineer Aaron Mullan and mastered and cut by Carl Saff. On August 12, 2011 Sonic Youth played their final US show on an outdoor stage overlooking the East River at the Williamsburg Waterfront in Brooklyn. Fitting that their storied career would bookend with a panoramic view of New York City where it all began 30 years before, having left in their wake one of one of the most powerfully influential careers in rock music. Following incredible sets from Kurt Vile and Wild Flag, the band took the stage. As the sun went down over the city, Sonic Youth ripped through a 17 song set that spanned from deep cuts off their first studio album and highlighting many other albums all the way through to their last, like a band with everything to prove. Or as Brooklyn Vegan’s Andrew Sacher said at the time: “While most bands who are thirty years into their career are either fading away or living off of the nostalgia of their older material, Sonic Youth continue to sound and perform as fresh as ever.” Steve Shelley explains the uniquely career spanning set list of Live in Brooklyn 2011 and how it came to be, as well as the importance of outdoor NYC summer shows in Sonic Youth’s legacy: “This show was a culmination of a run of really special outdoor summertime shows in New York City for us, starting in ’92 with Summerstage in Central Park when we played with Sun Ra. For the Williamsburg Waterfront show I wrote out the set list to present to the band and it was a lot of material we hadn’t played in a while, a lot of deep cuts, so I wasn’t sure if everybody would feel like doing it. After worrying about which songs the band might say yes or no to, I threw those concerns out the window and I just made a list of songs that I thought would be a great set. We practiced the week of the show at our space in Hoboken and put the set together. First we’d try and make sure we had a guitar in the song’s tuning, then we’d try to remember the arrangement and try and put it together, sometimes re-learning bar by bar. In the end I think the whole song list made it through. Even as early as ’86 and ’87 we stopped playing ‘Death Valley 69’ and ‘Brave Men Run’ with any regularity. We’d just get excited about new material coming into the set and songs would get ‘retired’ and wouldn’t get played again for years. So on this particular night in Brooklyn a lot of those retired songs and deep cuts got dusted off and played for this show. It turned out to be a pretty special event with a really special song list.” The band would go on to fulfill a contracted festival run in South America a few months later but, by then, the group’s center was severed beyond repair and the festival appearances didn’t hold the same kind of weight. “The stage was facing the East River from the Williamsburg, Brooklyn waterfront, and I recall the sun going down in the west during our set. It was a pretty magical, if kinda weird day. Fitting, somehow, that our ‘last show’ should be in New York City, our home and where it all began…” Lee Ranaldo The Williamsburg Waterfront show would fondly become referred to as ‘The Last Show’ by fans and band alike, equally for its triumphant high energy performance, its unique and expansive set list and locale. Newly remixed and remastered, Live in Brooklyn 2011 is presented for the first time on 2xLP, 2Xcd, August 18, 2023.

Tracks

1. Brave Men Run (In My Family)
2. Death Valley ?69
3. Kotton Krown
4. Kill Yr Idols
5. Eric?s Trip
6. Sacred Trickster
7. Calming The Snake
8. Starfield Rose
9. I Love Her All The Time
10. Ghost Bitch
11. Tom Violence
12. What We Know
13. Drunken Butterfly
14. Flower
15. Sugar Kane
16. Psychic Hearts
17. Inhuman

Press

#24 UNCUT REISSUE OF THE YEAR 2023
#46 THE WIRE RESSIUE OF THE YEAR 2023
Document of last U.S. show by iconic rock band
Eighty-five minute set list that spans their nearly three decade career

Audio & Video

GUIDED BY VOICES - 'SELF-INFLICTED AERIAL NOSTALGIA'

Formats

• SCAT87Y - LP (COLOURED)

  753417087019

• SCAT87 - LP

  753417008717

Details

**INITIAL BATCH SOLD OUT TAKING RESTOCK ORDERS**Self-Inflicted Aerial Nostalgia was Guided By Voices’ third album, self-released by the band in 1988 in a pressing of 500. While both of the band’s earlier albums exhibit strong songwriting and plenty of vision, it is here that the GBV sound really begins to coalesce. While Devil Between My Toes is rife with contrasts, variety, and dark psychedelia, and its follow up Sandbox is a cohesive ’60s-influenced affair, Self-Inflicted Aerial Nostalgia marries the two approaches to outstanding effect. Unsurprisingly, recording began before Sandbox was even done pressing. These sessions would yield an aborted LP titled Learning To Hunt, but after personnel changes and second thoughts, Robert Pollard shelved most of the tracks, dismissing them as too similar to those on Sandbox. Fair enough, as many of Pollard’s more recent songs were simply on another level than previously. Here are the first of the classic Pollard slow-burners, often built on a simple melodic or rhythmic figure that circles itself ever outward, accumulating heft, variation, and inevitability as the song evolves into something unexpected yet inevitable. It’s the aural equivalent to watching a butterfly grow out of its cocoon. A few things are unique to this particular LP. Original powerhouse drummer Peyton Eric returns for nearly half the tracks, while engineer and lead guitarist Steve Wilbur shines at his brightest, resulting in some of the most thoroughly rocking GBV songs to ever be cut to lacquer, such as “Earful o’ Wax,” which simply explodes out of the speakers when the solo section begins. On the other end of the spectrum, you get Pollard recording perfect pop gems at home with just voice and guitar, which would become a calling card on later GBV albums. There’s simply a tremendous variety of material, all strung together in such a way that the album is all of one piece, a mosaic.

Tracks

1. The Future Is In Eggs
2. The Great Blake Street Canoe Race
3. Slopes Of Big Ugly
4. Paper Girl
5. Navigating Flood Regions
6. An Earful O? Wax
7. White Whale
8. Trampoline
9. Short On Posters
10. Chief Barrel Belly
11. Dying To Try This
12. The Qualifying Remainder
13. Liar?s Tale
14. Radio Show (Trust The Wizard)

Press

Reissue of key cult rock and roll band?s early release
Has been out of print for 20+ years

Audio & Video

CHRISTOPHER ALAN DURHAM & THE PEACETIME CONSUMERS - 'KICKS OR MACABRE'

Formats

• SAB104 - LP

  733102728212

Details

“Hark! DIY sleaze-rock henchpersons, ascend from your cellars and rejoice...Midwestern anti-folk hero Christopher Alan Durham (The Bibs, All Gone Recs) arrives on high horse in full-length mode with a band of merry menaces in tow. Following a string of cassette and 7-inch releases for labels like Spacecase and Soft Abuse (whom are also responsible for the gift in hand), Kicks Or Macabre is CAD’s first LP outing under his own name, and we’re all the better for it. “Recorded in and around modern-day Detroit, the record certainly has that street-walking cheetah energy that one might expect from a protagonist presumably raised on the teet-to-mouth diet of Destroy All Monsters youtube vids, vending machine snacks, trucker speed ’n’ malt liquor laced with the ever present back-and-fore ground pollins of our patron Jim Shepards, Pussy Galores, Gibson Bros and countless other unscrewed basement saints who shook, rattled and rolled before us...but wait, there’s so much more. “Durham and his trusty Peacetime Consumers (ex-Quilt Boy /Roachclip cohorts) conjure up a thicker-than-usual, borderline soulful junk sick blooze that slinks and swaggers like a lean-drunk Flamin’ Groovies or Gulcher / Richie-era KV if you traded his happy-go-lucky, confidently carefree dopiness for the frantic urgency of a paranoid loner whose slumlord is putting the screws to him, and look... there ain’t enough grass left in that bag to even pack a bat... “But the band plays on, and if Durham’s long-running development as a mainstay in the American sub-underground proves to hit its peak with Kicks, we should consider ourselves lucky to have ever had such good seats in this, the theater of his own strange little lower-middle-class tragedy songs, often reflecting less on the overarching and impossibly big / bad times than they do on the smaller, more understandable, more feelable good ones. “Even luckier for us, he may have only just begun.” —Ryan Davis, 2023

Tracks

1. Newest Thing
2. Dizzy Land
3. Bite Down
4. Suburban Girl
5. Shoot Through Me
6. Party Store Suicide
7. C Street Blues
8. Turn To Jade
9. Trips

Press

For fans of Jim Shephard, Pussy Galore,
Gibson Brothers, Flamin? Groovies, Gulcher
/ Richie-era Kurt Vile

Audio & Video