ELIZA NIEMI - 'PROGRESS BAKERY'

Formats

• TAR118 - LP (COLOURED)

  5061041820816

• TAR118CD - CD

  5061041820823

Details

*TRANSPARENT YELLOW VINYL* *CD DELAYED* Kneading dough is tricky – you should know how it’s supposed to feel. If you try too hard you could make it worse. It’s a beautiful practice – creation with a gentle touch, to work at something so it can be left alone. “If it’s too drawn out it’s awful. It’s easy to give too much.” Dance in the mirror. Contemplate your veiny hands. Who do they remind you of? You begin by mixing flour and water. “What happens when your people die? Why’d they move the rock to the other side of Ulster Park?” Eliza Niemi asks two seemingly unrelated questions in a rising melody with guitar accompaniment, like fingers playing spider up to the nape of your neck. Gentle pressure. Strands of gluten form to bind the mix. A new question lingers in the binding. When she admits “but I don’t know how to tell if I’m feeling it or not,” that question surfaces through the text. It is reiterated throughout the album. When I’m working with dough I think the same thing to myself. On Progress Bakery, her second album as a solo artist, Eliza knows to leave some questions alone – to let juxtaposition and tension be the proof. It doesn’t have to be hard. The feelings and revelations they provoke rise in the heat. The smell is sweet. Crispy on the outside and soft all the way through. She playfully slip-slides through words and sounds and images, delighting in surprise, skimming ideas like stones cast across clear water, touching down briefly with uncommon grace. The question provoked between those opening lines resurfaces in the strands between songs – “Do U FM” is fully formed and beautifully layered, while “Novelist Sad Face” is a short, acapella rendering of gentle curiosity. What is holding these ideas together? Some songs demand more, seem to carry a whole load – eventually the skipping stone will halt to sink and resume its idle duty – while others drift in and out of focus, the way thoughts and dreams become interwoven before the mind is sunk into true sleep. Music and words don’t always have to interact. Where she decides to keep them apart gives a new contour to where and how she puts them together. The kind of thing you’re supposed to take for granted with songs and their singers comes alive in Eliza’s hands – the little miracle of mixing, kneading, stretching, and stopping.  So often on Progress Bakery, Eliza teases out truth and meaning by asking questions. “Do I wanna be crying?” “Do you want me good or do you want me bad?” “Do I need an eye test?” “I’m writing songs in my head while you’re going over stuff with me — is that cruel??” In “Pocky” Eliza ends with a question that feels to me like the actual biography, succinct and revealing: I don’t wanna be made to see I just wanna ask “what’s that?” Grace that ought to be rare, but in its care and precision is offered humbly, with great generosity, and without announcing itself. Eliza’s simple, miraculous music is given further form and shape by a group of collaborators – invaluable guest musicians Jeremy Ray, Evan Cartwright, Steven McPhail, Kenny Boothby, Ed Squires, Carolina Chauffe, Dorothea Paas, Louie Short, and Avalon Tassonyi. Together with Louie Short, who recorded, mixed, and produced the album along with Jeremy Ray and Lukas Cheung, Eliza has cultivated a richness in sound and texture that prods and provokes the ticklish ear. Barely audible guitar tinkering, a brief lo-fi field recording of trumpets, the harmonic clicking of a looped synthesizer, a flourish of reeds, a child’s conversation, each uncanny sound perfectly placed, rippling out under a soft breeze. Lay in bed alone at night and ask aloud to the stillness, “What were you doing at the Albuquerque Airport? What were you doing there??” And hear your question answered by a dream of swelling, undulating cellos. Try to grasp at the melody and structure. It’s not an answer (if there could be one), but it moves deeper, closer to the weird layer of fleeting moments and disconnected images, barely perceptible at its core. Wait for the dream reel to click into place. Eliza took me for a ride in Nicole (her beloved Dodge Grand Caravan) and told me she’d been thinking of the album as an embodiment of transition – and I think every transition, known or unknown, carries the weight of new meaning, skittering off the surface tension of life as you know it, creating ripples, sometimes bouncing off and sometimes breaking through. There is a trick you can use to tell if a dough is glutinous enough. You’re supposed to stretch it out as thin as you can without breaking it and hold it up to the light. If you can see through, even if it renders the world murky and uncertain, you should leave it alone. I love this trick. It’s one that Eliza seems to know intuitively: work gently and ask questions and don’t always expect answers, and when you can, take a glimpse at something new, and then leave.

Tracks

1. Do U FM
2. Novelist Sad Face
3. Green Box
4. Dusty
5. The Linda Song
6. DM BF
7. I TrieD
8. Melodies Like Mark
9. Wildcat
10. How U Remind Me
11. Pocky
12. Bon Tempiii
13. PT Basement
14. Albuquerque II
15. Mary's

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FEARLESS IRANIANS FROM HELL - 'DIE FOR ALLAH'

Formats

• BR08 - LP (COLOURED)

  038161000812

Details

**ON NUCLEAR GREEN VINYL** The classic Fearless Iranians From Hell Die For Allah LP is now back in print after a twenty-five year hiatus. Remastered and repressed on nuclear green vinyl, this hardcore punk arsenal also includes all tracks from their literally explosive Blow Up The Embassy 7-inch debut. FIFH was a mysterious Texan monstrosity formed in 1983 by Iranian expat (and modern day hashashin) Amir Mamori, who gathered to his side various mutants and apocalyptic freaks from the San Antonio punk rock blast zone, even throwing in two Butthole Surfers rejects for good measure (including none other than the notorious Anus Presley himself). The subsequent recording sessions were a chaotic affair, as guitars were rarely in tune and the drums were seemingly scavenged from the trash. It was all directed by Amir who, with fanatical focus, would inspire the band on to victory from behind a stupifying cloud of hash smoke. The resulting releases were widely praised; from places like Maximum Rock n Roll and the Village Voice in the US, to Sounds and New Musical Express in the UK. They were even cited as forerunners of the musical genre known as Taqwacore. After touring the US in the late ’80s—and leaving in their wake crowd turbulence, police intimidation, and even bounties being place on the heads of the members—the band disbanded in 1989 upon the death of the Ayatollah Khomeini (may Allah have mercy on him). “We’re stoned as shit, and we’re ready to roll.” - F.I.F.H. ’87

Tracks

1. Die For Allah 2. Deathwish 3. What?s The News 4. Life Inside Iran 5. Iranians On Bikes 6. Simple Life 7. FIFH 8. Blow Up The Embassy 9. Theme 10. Iranian Klan 11. Ultraviolence 12. Chant 13. Land Of The Free

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Audio & Video

STUART PEARCE - 'ALL THIS VAST OVERPRODUCTION'

Formats

• SSH051 - LP

  199066223659

Details

Stuart Pearce release All This Vast Overproduction March 28th via Safe Suburban Home Records. File under: Cont. Rock for mass consumption by relatively few A mash-note to the transatlantic indie underground scenes of the 1980s-90s, ATVO sees SP traverse the musical coalface; exploring every nook and cranny; every crag and every surface perused; all in service to create a contemporary rock recording assured in purpose and astute in praxis. Covering sonic territory drawing beyond the now-established post-punk references, ATVO builds on ‘23s Red Sport International by allowing melody the opportunity to play a more prominent role, as well as the introduction of new sonic textures in the form of acoustic and twelve-string guitars, pianos and vocal harmonies, whilst the inclusion of odd-time signatures and darker timbres drawn from Post-Hardcore offers a welcome contrast to ATVO’s lighter moments, as the listener embarks on a vast journey through the kaleidoscopic terrain unfolding via medium of stereophonic sound over the course of 40 or so minutes. 15 songs are featured, drawn from 19 recorded across Erbistock Mill, JT Soar and Klang-Bop Studios, covering subject matter ranging from the usual rants about the prevailing trends, neurotyp. conventions, social media’s role in the decay of society and failed attempts at unionisation in the contemporary workforce, along with more narrative driven works covering successful revolutionary momentum and the würmhole that brought neoliberalism into being. SP pair unbridled enthusiasm with unlimited ideas; they know their worth and are happy to prove it. Who knows, maybe one day Our Band Could Be Your Life?

Tracks

1. Easy Now! 2. Rope 3. The Bosses Are Stealing Yr Days! 4. Rule O' Threes 5. Sisy Fox 6. Ex-IRA Voice-Actor 7. W?rmhole 8. Hardcore Parcel 9. The Trouble With Being Born by E.M. Cioran 10. Fuck No; I Jangle! 11. N8 Musik! 12. This Infinite Hotel 13. Go Virus! 14. An Empty Notebook (Full of Ideas) 15. Dances w/ Starships

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