New Arrivals
About To Choke
His only album for Capitol Records (originally released in 1996) was another exceptional batch of songs. An edgy slice of country-folk showing his unique version of Americana that was usually several things at once: his craggy voice, raw honesty, an acoustic guitar (or a piano) and an outrageous imagination. Vic Chesnutt was a rare kind of artist and definitely one of the most relevant songwriters of the last 20 years.
Bengt
Bengt is the new solo recording by Mats Gustafsson and is dedicated to Bengt Nordström. Mats Gustafsson plays a plastic alto sax. A classic Grafton sax. The type of sax that was used by Charlie Parker, Ornette Coleman and Bengt Nordström. Nordström is best known having produced Albert Ayler´s first recording Something Different!!!!!! on his Bird Note imprint. It is in his own role as a sax player Bengt was truly inventive. Bengt was playing solo sax improvisation already in 1962 (!!!) Nor…
Grey onion
"For this new Latitudes release All Tomorrow's Parties mainstay Alexander Tucker joins forces with Dean Garwood, resulting in three terrific stretched out jams. Perhaps it's got something to do with the fusion of prog influences with jazz and psychedelia, but stretches of this bring to mind the Canterbury scene of the '60s and '70s from which Robert Wyatt and Soft Machine came to prominence. 'Golden Dome' slips into a bluesy cello riff (if that's not too much of a contradiction in terms) that lo…
Hexplore Superfluidity
Stargate is something in between pre-sleep Tetris Effect and Trance music in slowmotion: gated soft synth arpeggios smoothly modulate towards brutal supersawed patterns, disintegrating into ecstatic vocals. You are opening the doors of an Ibizia club at 5 am, the foam is all around and your eyes start twisting, your brain is gently stretched & pitched down. You are locked into the longest build-up ever. Unique, truly inspired, 100% uplifting music from the "Dawn of the Cryonics": watching …
The Painted River Of Regrets
Issued as an edition of 500 copies in a full color book bound sleeve with 180 gram vinyl. 3 Decades of sound tracking the secret psychedeli-sphere has found Edward scoring an imaginary film. Edward’s music for the movie flows with measured, stygian force; the groaning rises punctuated by that old black magic that only Ka-Spel can conjure with the smallest of sounds permeating every wave. Loops trill and sigh within virtuoso keyboard cameos. A myriad of miniature minuets thread backwards …
You Are The One I Pick
"Nottingham duo Felix make their Kranky debut with this fine and idiosyncratic collection of songs. The main focus here is the vocal/piano/cello talents of Lucinda Chua, whose sparse yet quirk-loaded minimalism receives guitar and bass backing from Chris Summerlin, who's probably best known for his work in the rock band Lords. Chua's writing is quite unlike anything else currently out there; her lyrics convey strange or often very simple, domesticated ideas delivered in a pared-down, plaintive f…
Live in Japan - Part one
Two seperately released live albums form Fenn O'Berg, featuring recordings taken from their 2009 Japanese tour. It features Christian Fennesz, Jim O'Rourke, and Peter Rehberg. Both recorded during the group's 2009 Japanese performances.
Stone/Water
With any sizeable Brötzmann group, the temptation is always there to compare it to his classic Machine Gun unit. This new tentet doesn’t match up to the unbridled ferocity of that earlier grouping, but then what has? Perhaps the greatest sea change since the heavy-drinking glory days of 1968 is that ecstatic playing is now as much an idiom as an instinctive response. For all its supposed iconoclastic freedom, this idiom now has its own traditions, its own heroes, and its own stock cliches. Youth…
Paper of pins
"the coming together of this quartet on "paper of pins" has resulted in mature, yet unforced sounding compositions. the touching number "brown reduse" wins you over with its catchy piano sounds and subtle trumpet which is rounded off by the electronica. it's a small orchestral gem in the jazz style which is still edgy despite its perfection. this is highlighted, for example, by the fact that you can hear the brass player drawing breath on some tracks. certainly, the scottish composer is no perfe…
beauty school
during my last visit to the states, about 2 years ago, one of the highlights was definatly a night long visit to SCOTT FOUST's house! john shaw took us there and explained from before what it was gonne be like, we would be seated down in a confortable couch while "the last great man" would stand up next to a pedastal with some quality whiskey, dope and cigarettes on it, sporting a mono coloured suit and sunglasses (day and night) while foust is telling stories about different art records, and ma…
Heaps of nothing
The second album from Australian band Naked On The Vague, who have doubled in size for this batch of new material. The tone is characterised by dark and fearsomely heavy garage-punk, with a wafer-thin coating of distortion lending a little extra bite to the band's already vicious dynamics. "Bleak, unrepentant, withering and droll, Heaps of Nothing is a 21st century codification of the gallows wit and mesmerizing otherworldliness of (Dub Housing-era) Pere Ubu, Primitive Calculators and L…
Englabörn
Upon setting out to score the music for the play Englaborn by Havar Sigurjonsson, Johann Johannsson, co-founder of the Icelandic arts organisation Kitchen Motors, came upon a text by the Latin poet Catullus which roughly translates as, I hate and I love. Why do I do it, you might ask? I dont know, but I feel it happening to me, and it's tearing me apart. This poem concisely bridges the emotional opposites which clashed within the play itself. As the play's content was extremely violent and distu…
Cult Spectrum
Since 2009 Grant Evans has been peering ever deeper into the kosmische abyss with his records as Nova Scotian Arms for Aguirre, Preservation and Hooker Vision. He's also known for the lush Quiet Evenings releases with his wife, Rachel Evans (Motion Sickness Of Time Travel), but in solo flight his sound is more wide-eyed, exploratory, reaching heady new climes on 'Cult Spectrum', arguably his most vivid vision yet. Perhaps it's thanks to an exquisite mastering job by Lawrence English, but …
The Hour Is Now
An excellent compilation of beautiful early 70s folk tunes from three LPs that that legendary acid-folk hippy-goddess Collie Ryan recorded in 1973, pretty much in Fahey/Basho vein
Shaking, Waking
Clear Vinyl. Anyone who grabbed hold of the recent 'Alive in my Mouth' LP from ex-Baltimore trio Heavy Winged will know just how essential their tunes are. Made up of the classic bass, drums and guitar combo, the noise they generate is anything but predictable - the guitars rasp and drone, the bass bubbles and resonates and the drums rise and fall like tidal waves hitting a doomed continent. This is not your average white band, and 'Waking, Shaking' is possibly their finest release to date as th…
Asleep On The Floodplain
Ben Chasny has spent many years at this point perfecting his very personal vision of the American landscape. With his early LPs he managed to grab a groundswell of support for his distinctly lo-fi recordings, and since hitting the Drag City label with the breathtaking 'School of Flower' he has managed to extend his vision to countless others. 'Asleep on the Floodplain' continues his exploration, and while it doesn't change up the formula too much (apart from the odd analogue synth blurt here and…
Introducing
The Drag City / Galactic Zoo team delve deeply into the recesses of private press obscurity once again, further revealing the underbelly of American music's recorded history - this time the little known songwriter Ryan Trevor is in the spotlight, who released just one incredibly rare, homespun LP (this one, if you're wondering) which surfaced originally in 1977. Not much is known about Trevor, though the guys at Drag City bill him as a "loner genius", whose work is to be filed somewhere between …
Decaying ships
The road is long, sweaty and tense when your shoes are made of metal and you have to walk through a labyrinth with a magnetic floor to reach a brown sea full of hungry lobsters. The ship is waiting though, and the tension is building up heavily with every spin of this record, heavy meditative aircraft static blurr slowing down your usual codeine rhythm! modular synth carpets at its nastiest! you'll be purring when you're on the actual boat.. thick like your mommy's wallet, yet sparse droning tha…
True Breath
Stunning five-song debut EP by this young Tokyo producer. Ghost-in-the-drum-machine rhythms layered with her exquisite Cocteau Twins vocal haze, but impeccably crafted into nuanced multi-movement compositions. Will be doing a full-length later in 2012 as well. Our fave new female artist
A
A is Sunburned's second album with producer Kieran Hebden, a.k.a. Four Tet. Directed by Kieran like actors in a film, Sunburned is taken off the bandana smokestage of their previous collaboration -- Fire Escape -- and put onto a sweat-soaked 4am lysergic dance floor. Kieran uses the band like his live instrument laptop and sampler. The results are truly stunning which makes this record into one of the best moments of each artist's respective musical careers. With artwork by California vis…