★Drag City
A Shaw Deal
Some things take a long time. And some things are meant to last. But how you know that, or learn how to find out, that’s a more intangible thing. That’s A Shaw Deal – intangible. A communal meeting place for two old friends and their different musics. A Shaw Deal is the first album by Geologist and DS. They go back a long ways – back before Highlife, before Shaw joined White Magic – back to the early childhood of Animal Collective. Basically, Doug Shaw touched down in NYC around 2003, and he and…
Snowbug
After the high times and critical-mass arrangements of the previous two records, Snowbug exuded a breezy, spare, morning-after vibe. Edified by all manner of world-folk, classic Brazilian pop and the first volumes of the Ethiopiques comp, the Llamas recorded in London with Fulton Dingley and in Chicago with Bundy Brown and Jim O’Rourke engineering at Electrical Audio and John McEntire mixing at Soma. Snowbug is an understated, underrated gem.
Lollo Rosso
The remix album, with marvelously creative EDM remakes from some of the best powerbook players of the day: Mouse On Mars, Jim O’Rourke, Kid Loco, Schneider TM, Stock, Hausen & Walkman, Cornelius and The High Llamas themselves. In addition to showcasing this emerging new generation of digital masters, the treatments here also highlight an oft-undersung aspect of The High Llamas’ sound – the influence of Krautrock.
Cold And Bouncy
Having passed – at least figuratively – through hundreds of years over the course of their previous two albums, the good ship High Llamas docked, fully loaded, into a congenial present moment for once in its life. O’Hagan’s continued work with Tim Gane and Stereolab caused a healthy dose of electronica to spike the Llamas’ already heady brew, creating an apex of late 90s-style neo-exotica. RIYL: Mouse On Mars, Oval, Grand Royal, Dots and Loops.
Hawaii
The High Llamas discover America – yes, it had been done before, but not via their envisaged pilgrims’ passage. Energized by the breakthroughs of Gideon Gaye, they went all-in, producing a wide-screen epic further exploring their unique agenda. The reference points multiplied, stretching through realms of classic pop and jazz, soundtrack music, exotica and neo-Americana, while charting a journey through musical landscapes of abiding lightness.
Gideon Gaye
This brave foray into conceptual art music produced a jaw-dropping reset on the 20th century pop perspective. The High Llamas engaged songwriting and production with an eye toward filmmaking. Digging through ephemera of choice vintages with post-modern zest, they struck a rich vein they could call their own – a kind of gothic Americana, formal aspects pushed to extremes. The spirit of discovery here can be vibrantly felt over 30 years later.
Santa Barbara
*1st ever LP pressing!* For The Llamas’ 1992 debut, Sean O’Hagan, working the sextant to navigate a post-Microdisney course in the musical world, posted them up as a guitar pop band (RIYL: NRBQ, Big Star, Steely Dan), with nine exquisitely crafted examples of the oft out-of-step sound. Had there been no more after this, Santa Barbara would still be sought-after buried treasure by the perennial waves of voyagers seeking these sweet, jangling spices to this very day.
We Will Be Wherever the Fires Are Lit
begin form here...
begin from here...our world lives when their world ceases to existbegin from here...with hopes, between silent skies, while world breathes again and the fever subsidesbegin from here...and to those who strike blowsbegin from here...while we keep goingbegin from here...while we mourn, we also fight
We will be wherever the fires are lit!
We will be wherever the fires are lit, a sort of sequel to Tashi Dorji’s first DC release Stateless, takes the torch and storms forward, with t…
Lifetime
Sun Araw’s tenth studio album, Lifetime, continues to investigate space as a motionless field against which many motions are observed! Stasis: wheels within and wheels without! “Dripping Magnetizations! Arcs of Slowing Rotations!” Two LPs at 45 RPM. Mixed by Cameron Stallones & Jake Viator, Mastered by JJ Golden. Please enjoy this adventure in sound.
Companion Rises (Twig Harper Remix)
6OOA’s 2020 opus is reunmanaged by sound composer Twig Harper, whose remix goes places no other remix record could dare under his unlimited brief. In the process, it affords the wizard of Six Organs, Ben Chasny, the chance to re-present the record in a form as insane as the world into which the record was, and is headed. A soundtrack to California chaos, done two ways, sometimes at the same time! RIYL: Electronic, New Age, Modern Classical
Earthly Pleasures
Veteran electronic music composer Jill Fraser’s new work takes stock of generations and lifetimes of memory, speculating on how the spirit of our songs might be interpreted after we’re gone. With her 1978 Serge Modular, Prism Modular and Ableton Push 3 in the circuit path, she recomposes a stack of American revival hymns, making new creations for the future. A fluent meditation upon mortality and rebirth amid numinous infinities of dimensional sound.
Hav
Whitney Johnson, alter-ego of psychoacoustic voyager Matchess, debuts with a new composition that meditates on the duality of the human body. An instrument that collates awesome sensory pleasures, allows us to feel, and, best of all, to hear music, it’s also forever wearing on its slow death march. Using sine waves, marimba, viola, Arp Odyssey and Halldorophone, Whitney radiates healing waves to soothe and heal our flawed, but inspiring system.
Stena
Whitney Johnson, alter-ego of pyschoacoustic voyager Matchess, crafts an encompassing work of psychoacoustic music with two separate releases. On Hav, an LP under her own name, Whitney compassionately radiates healing frequencies to inspire inspired response with an extended composition for sine waves, marimba, viola, Arp Odyssey and Halldorophone. As Matchess, she presents the cassette Stena, reanimating fading waves with a collage of found sounds, frequency experiments and new music compositio…
Home of the Demo
Anthony Moore's post-Slapp Happy output, for years an underrated-to-outright unknown quantity, achieves another dimensional plane with this third archival release from his personal tape library. Home of the Demo triangulates upon the art-pop qualities found in his previously unreleased OUT (1976, officially issued 2020) and the new wave-adjacent Flying Doesn't Help (1979, reissued 2022), finding Anthony's early/mid-'80s compositions drifting into the actual mainstream, just moments before it beg…
Tamper
Originally released by Extreme in 1991, Tamper holds a significant place in Jim O'Rourke's discography, as it represents one of his early ventures into the realm of electro-acoustic music
The Source Family
First authorized CD reissue of this album, originally issued by Higher Key in 1974. "The legendary and ultra-rare Father Yod And The Spirit Of '76's second album fully remastered and presented in the original full color sleeve. Includes new notes from various family members especially written for this release. The extremely positive & instructive nature of the Contraction period lyrically is amazing. Father is like a marine taking a beachhead in WWII and we were the beachhead. Our previous 'Pavl…
Jinxed By Being
What might appear to be the most unlikely collaboration of 2024 proves also to be one of the most invigorating listens of the year! Shackleton & Six Organs of Admittance are in full aural/metaphysical alignment in their mutual effort to become Jinxed by Being. On first listen, it becomes immediately clear that this fusion of Shackleton's bass-heavy cosmic dread and Six Organs' ritual folksong makes total sense. Longtime listeners know that both Shackleton and Six Organs of Admittance have been u…
The Peel Sessions
Unearthed from the neolithic tar that eventually swathes all history, Aerial M’s early-98 Peel Session is once again among us
Have One On Me
2024 repress on vinyl; Deluxe 3LP box version with an 8-page, large-format lyric booklet and printed inner sleeves. For various reasons Have One On Me, Joanna Newsom's new triple-album defies the notion of fast-turnaround appraisals. Apart from sheer abundance of music here, it's also very dense and scrupulously laboured over, not only by Newsom herself but a select band of fellow musicians and arrangers - not to mention ace mixing engineers Jim O'Rourke, and Noah Georgeson (best known for his w…
Push Comes To Love
Reknowned modern artist and Krayola kollaborator delivers a soundtrack for every man: love, sex, death, and sweet sweet pop music.