JACOB ARANADA - 'WAR PLANES'

Formats

• SPEAKEASY006 - LP

  810096653307

Details

Jacob Aranda is a Mexican American Bay Area singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, luthier and member of Bay Area psych-folk group Tarnation. His new album War Planes is his second solo album. Aranda’s first solo full-length album, Great Highway (2018), was described by critics as “timeless” (KWMR), “full of beautiful, mellow countryscapes” (Bay Bridged), and “charming, warm and melancholic, with elements and influences that range from classic country to Southwestern-influenced folk” (Sound Thread). Born and raised in a Latino household in rural Illinois, the culture of Aranda’s upbringing and the necessary resourcefulness of rural living birthed in him an artistic desire to express himself through music. While his first album was an expression of hopelessness and longing, War Planes is fundamentally an album about healing intergenerational trauma and doing so through art. The album feels like a next chapter with elements of rebirth and reflection. Songs of hope, such as “Sing A Song, Say A Prayer” and “Glass Building” demonstrate movement forward, while tracks such as “Dream Of Mexico” and the title track “War Planes” represent a way to look back into underlying issues and the inherited trauma that had once made Aranda feel so alone. Produced and engineered by Desmond Shea (Tarnation, The Court And Spark) at SF’s legendary Hyde Street Studios, War Planes features the talents of friends and Tarnation bandmates, Paula Frazer (bass, vocals), David Cuetter (pedal steel), Sam Berman (drums), Patrick Main (piano, vocals), and Meryl Theo Press (vocals). Also joining the sessions were musicians Alisa Rose (violins), Jason Loeks (upright bass), and singers Karina Denike (Dance Hall Crashers), Michael James Tapscott, Lydia Walker, and Sara Gallagher (banjo, vocals). Aranda went into the studio listening to a lot of early Waylon Jennings and Gene Clark. Ultimately, the vulnerability and softness of the songs, as well as the influence of Frazer and Shea, steered the album away from its country influences into a more psychedelic, ethereal space. Ry Cooder’s Paris, Texas soundtrack and Cowboy Junkies’ Trinity Sessions were the two most influential albums of Aranda’s youth. The vulnerability captured in War Planes brought him back to those formative years, and the sounds that gave him comfort through a turbulent childhood. Written by Aranda and crafted throughout four years of tragedy, pandemic, death, and loss, the album is lovingly dedicated to his father, immigration rights activist Mario Aranda, who was lost to COVID-19 during the recording of the album.

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ACID ROOSTER - 'FLOWERS AND DEAD SOULS'

Formats

• CFUL0269 - LP (COLOURED)

Details

"Flowers and Dead Souls" is the second full-length studio album by Leipzig-based trio Acid Rooster, featuring six instrumental tracks that explore the depths of freethinking psychedelic music. From very quiet, spherical melodies to space jams and driving songs, the album contains a variety of different emotions and styles that are reminiscent of the spirit of German kraut and psych rock pioneers. The album was recorded in May 2022 with a 16-track tape machine in combination with an analog mixer at Völker Studios in Bamberg, which gives the whole thing a very warm and lively sound. Due to the pandemic, part of the band had to deal with serious health problems, which is why the production of the album had to be postponed again and again.Working on the individual pieces was therefore a kind of therapeutic healing process. This can be clearly seen in the rather positive mood of “Flowers and Dead Souls”. However, the album also contains moments that express the challenges and hopelessness of the time. This polarity is also reflected in the title of the album. Solid Orange Vinyl LP presented in a reverse board finish sleeve and with a A4 Mettalic Risoprint insert

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MARINA ZISPIN - 'LIFE AND DEATH - THE FIVE CHANDELIERS OF THE FUNEREAL EXORCISMS'

Formats

• LSSN088 - LP

  5060446127827

Details

‘Life And Death - The Five Chandeliers Of The Funereal Exorcisms’ pulls back the veil unto a nocturnal scene populated by shadows, embers burning coldly in the underworld. Marina Zispin is your guide, siren and protector both. Marina Zispin is the negative space between musicians Bianca Scout and Martyn Reid. Love And Death is the duo’s debut release, five chandeliers of melancholic, vibrant synth pop twinkling in the inky blackness. Both originally hailing from the North East of England and forming a musical partnership before lockdown, Bianca Scout and Martyn Reid initially worked remotely. Having relocated to South London and Newcastle respectively, Marina Zispin was born in earnest after the duo could begin writing and practising in the same space. Bianca Scout is a celebrated musician and dancer with a number of solo and collaborative works in her discographywhile Martyn Reid is a mainstay of the UK noise and power electronics scene, most recently with solo project Depletion. Marina Zispin largely eschews both Scout’s deconstructed approach to song and Reid’s focus on visceral, noise- based productions; the result is a new entity, the underground pop star that exists only in darkened dreams. Marina Zispin, then, is an avatar cajoled, nurtured and directed by Scout and Reid. Analogue electronics redolent of the early 80s Cold Wave and Synth Pop era form the base of the Zispin worldview, with Bianca Scout donning the Marina disguise, embodying the character over five songs of swooning drama, playful melodic interplays and tear-stained, doe-eyed sentiment. Flowers In The Sea opens with an austere 4/4 beat and hypnotic synth parts before Scout/Zispin floats in across the lagoon. Scout’s vocal tone is an instant winner, sweet like honey pouring down over the cold, robotic productions and stereo-panned synth work. We can almost see the petals drift into the horizon before being pulled under by the artist’s sadness. Ski Resort bursts out with a Jacno-inspired bassline and backing that could have been buried in a French disco in 1982 (think Stereo or Linear Movement) before Scout’s narrative details frivolousness and regret before a magical shift for the final coda into major key. Backworth Gold Club closes Side A, a mysterious rigid beat and minor chord synth arpeggios swimming in space, floating and obscure. On Side B, Hymn carries the tone on, church-like synths holding down the pattern for Zispin/Scout to float above in a flowing gown of reverb. The marriage of Reid’s cold musical backbone and Scout’s effortless vocal and co- production is in full flow here, the vocals at times rising to the rafters of this nocturnal place of worship, at other points they’re fuzzy samples cutting in and drifting out or sung with an extreme autotune, abstract and perfect in the moment. Surprise Party is the most straightforward pop bullet, Scout/Zispin’s vocal peering out more from the fog, perhaps revealing more than usual: vulnerability, maybe, the wandering muse of the artists behind the veil or just another layer of mystery behind the enigma? Marina Zispin’s Life & Death - The Five Chandeliers Of The Funereal Exorcisms ends as it began, scintillating in obscurity, leaving everything unanswered but open.

Tracks

1. Flowers In The Sea
2. Ski Resort
3. Backworth Golf Club
4. Hymn
5. Surprise Party

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