Running elbows in quick from the City of the Big Shoulders with Wake Up Applauding. Delivered loudly, dripping in unintelligible menace with the occasional flash of dark humor, their bathtub mixture of dope-sick guitars claws at your purse, ramming into an unhealthy sense of propulsion and repetition that seems chemical, unreal.

This is villains-plotting-evil kinda punk, mutants in the sewers emerging and wreaking havoc… Mothra shorting out high-voltage power lines and melting, screaming, onto a fleeing populace. Corrosive, driving, repetitive, pissed off, these guys deliver that evil cruisin’ vibe, tight and pushing 100 but with just a rotted off stump of a hand grossing everyone out and shifting gears.

TRACK LISTING

1. Reclaimed Would
2. Jason Polak
3. Speed Camera
4. No Wave Jose
5. Interlude A
6. We Never Close
7. Ghost Bag
8. Fucktown Reality
9. Interlude B
10. Wake Up Applauding
11. Art Seen

Castle Face is proud to present Dan Rincon’s (OSEES, Wild Thing, Apache, Personal and the Pizzas) premier solo release Spotlight City.

Artificial landscapes and melodies comprised of Moog Grandmother, Mellotron and a kinky Modular system span from beautiful and lilting to haunting and etherial. The album was a years long learning experience of getting all components and ingredients to link arms and blend comfortably. Wrangling was part of the process. Strings soaring and sines weaving. Sometimes in the atmosphere, sometimes in the Earth’s core, sometimes flanked by neon blur as it hums & weave patterns through a world imagined in vintage sci-fi pulp.

“I was listening to a lot of solo Roedelius and Conrad Schnitzler records while writing this record and I’d say that both have been hugely inspirational on what I want to do as a solo recording artist. The way both of those of those artist pushed the early, chaotic electronic music into something more melodic is really inspiring to me, it’s not that dissimilar than trying to get melodies out of a modular synthesizer.”

An absolute necessary slab for anyone a fan of CF, OSEES, Popol Vuh soundtracks , 8 bit video game accompaniment & 80s Tangerine Dream. Burn one and burn out.

Here we have a new batch from Thee Oh Sees for your absorption - nine muscular tunes primed to pummel. Last year’s Drop was more schizophrenic, ranging from heavy to whimsical and back - Mutilator Defeated At Last has more in common with the monolithic hugeness of Floating Coffin - with only two slight reprieves in heaviness this is a record made to be played loudly and that demands bodily sacrifice inherently.

Despite the plutonium heavy feel, Thee Oh Sees continue to be omnivorous - synths and acoustic guitars expertly wind their way throughout like veins of gold through granite - any and all that stands in its way will be devoured and assimilated. This is the sound of a band doing what they do best, and it’s out on Castle Face Records.

TRACK LISTING

1. Web
2. Withered Hand
3. Poor Queen
4. Turned Out Light
5. Lupine Ossuary
6. Sticky Hulks
7. Holy Smoke
8. Rogue Planet
9. Palace Doctor

“Twin giant towers of amps grinding out minimal beat bloop, the transient sound molecules smell of burning gear and the floor of the pit—this is organic, electronic music at its finest. Dance? Why not. Freak out? For sure. Brothers from a different mother (Bjorn Copeland and Aaron Warren) à la two-thirds of Black Dice have come together with this fantastic debut [Flaccid Mojo] for us. These are mean beat vipers, spitting and tumescent on the abattoir floor.“I would call it drug music, but I’m not sure what drugs these humans consume. Stem cell and adrenal gland cocktails I’m guessing. Futuristic and primal it is, beats from the Thunder-Dome, fight music for fuckers. I’ve seen them on two separate occasions blow the power for an entire building. Baller move, boys. Produced perfectly by Chris Coady (look him up to be impressed). This record is a burning car in a field and I love it.“

For fans of Black Dice, Container, Whitehouse, Negativland, Ralph Records, minimal beats à la Profan, vintage Japanese noise, Severed Heads, windburn and chapped lips.” —John Dwyer

TRACK LISTING

1. Moonwalk The Tomb
2. Dyslexic Uptalk
3. Striped Pants
4. Straight Arrow
5. Slow Psychics
6. Garbage People
7. FM Drive
8. Fried Muscles

Perched in the belfry of The Chapel we caught thee mighty Oh Sees, alive and in their natural element, with our shutters aflutter and our
tapes on a roll. After a short incubation period, the beast has reached full maturity and it is hideous. Over three nights they pummeled, and we’ve culled some great photographs, a wicked recording, and even a little live video action.

Castle Face is happy to announce the first double LP in the Live in San Francisco series, presented on two discs, in a handsome double
gatefold jacket.

Finally you depraved Oh Sees freaks have something to take home with you when you lose your shoes and your girlfriend at the show. Put it on at home and pretend to wait in line for the bathroom and it’s like you’re really there.

The thrash, the throb, the mob is all present and pushed to the front. Dual drummers synced in each ear, Tim Hellman rounding out the
bottom and Castle Face’s own John Dwyer up front on guitar, lasering young brains off and fomenting the crowd to a froth—it’s a great
band, in a great room, with a great crowd and it’s cooked to perfection…

Take a little bit of it with you this time.

TRACK LISTING

1. I Come From The Mountain
2. The Dream
3. Tunnel Time
4. Tidal Wave
5. Web
6. Man In A Suitcase
7. Toe Cutter Thumb Buster
8. Withered Hand
9. Sticky Hulks
10. Gelatinous Cube
11. Contraption

Long overdue vinyl repress of the sixth The Oh Sees album, and indeed, the first Castle Face release Yes! the sixth THE OH SEES album (from 2007!) and their first for their own label Castle Face. Now reissued on Black Vinyl for the first time in an age..has a DL included … . Produced by KELLEY STOLTZ using all green energy (no joke), the album serves as a half-way point between the band's Cool Death of the Island Raiders album and their most recent material. we got some right now, dig in!

Latest iteration of John Dwyer’s everchanging, impossible-to-describe band.

Witness the ever-changing, ever-mutating threat that is reality. Perception is under duress; sensibility is bending everyday under the barrage of nonsense. One must make note of whom one is and what one has become: look into the mirror of the planet-killers—psychic cannibals infiltrate and contaminate once familiar and seemingly secure territories… formidable foes indeed! What powers these beasts? What fuels discord and hatred? The behemoth of a “civil” society? What are the weapons at one’s disposal? Generosity is the aegis against greed, empathy is the armor to deflect apathy, love is the club to abate hate…the fog is lifting and humans are opening their eyes.

And so Castle Face offers this field recording, the Osees Protean Threat, from the pits as a quick booster between protein pills and recycled sweat beverage anthems to assist the listener to not worship at the altar of violence and greed, to not offer oneself up for free, to stand up and be vigilant! Truth will not be found in the speeches and photo ops of the overlords— stand strong and together under the gaze of the oppressors. Stand vigilant, united with those who don’t have the same privileges. Demand respect and a peaceful life for all. This recording is at the apogee of scuzz—punk anthem amulets for the ears and heart, a battery for one’s core. Be strong. Be human. Be love.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: They're going to start running out of different iterations of those 5 (or 6) letters soon aren't they? No matter the moniker, this is classic Oh Sees territory, mathy guitars, perfect production and DRIVE. Quintessential OCS.

TRACK LISTING

1. Scramble Suit II
2. Dreary Nonsense
3. Upbeat Ritual
4. Red Study
5. Terminal Jape
6. Wing Run
7. Said The Shovel
8. Mizmuth
9. If I Had My Way
10. Toadstool
11. Gong Of Catastrophe
12. Canopnr ’74
13. Persuaders Up

Ft. John Dwyer, Ryan Sawyer, Peter Kerlin, Tom Dolas, Brad Caulkins, Kyp Malone & Marcos Rodriguez “This is the first interstellar transmission from five days of electrified and improvised sessions recorded at Stu-Stu-Studio, edited down to forty minutes for your earballs. “Bent Arcana is the inceptive chapter in what I hope to be several releases showcasing these types of off-the-cuff musical compositions. So you can try your fry on and turn off. This one is very much on the ECM / ’70s hard fusion / prog-kraut tip. It is a many pronged weapon, swung by the spontaneous sentinel.” —John Dwyer

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Jazzy hooks and careering free-psych freakouts are tempered by more restrained moments of groove that only the culmination of talent such as this can achieve. A group perfectly in tune with the skills and intentions of all the rest is an exciting prospect indeed. Bent Arcana is a force to be reckoned with.

TRACK LISTING

1. The Gate
2. Outr? Sorcellerie
3. Misanthrophe Gets Lunch
4. Mimi
5. Oblivion Sigil
6. Sprites

"The space-age songsmiths of Once & Future Band have been ting-tinging away on the truly heavy anvil of hominid perspective and emotion again to bring you this singing scape of songs.
Annealing for over a year now, until it was cool enough to hold in your ears, nested in the pinnae, the time has finally come.
Dew drops pop and hiss as they settle on the gliding guitarmonies.

Once & Future Band have outdone themselves this time around, in my opinion. If songs could stop heated exchanges by mere presence, these are the ones, and more needed than ever.
As I tuned in to each new transmission, each step closer to this perfect platter, I had to stop and do nothing else, and merely absorb how wonderful this album is. Each tune exists in the company it was born to live with. There are haunting chorale escorts here...long trains of room warmth... the belting of the machine heart...lofty guitar and bass melange... and just beautifully laid to magnetic tape with a sure hand by the throbbing brains that are Once & Future Band for fans of Roy Wood, Idle Race, ELO, Roxy Music, Head Hunters, Stevie Wonder, Paul McCartney, The Lord Bowie, The Band, and the soundtrack from every movie that ever pierced your cold, cold heart”
- John Dwyer.

TRACK LISTING

1. Andromeda
2. Automatic Air
3. Problem Addict
4. Several Bullets In My Head
5. Freaks
6. Mr. G
7. Deleted Scenes
8. Airplane
9. The End And The Beginning

“The drum clock is docking and the night tide washes up synthesized environments, woozy and recorded perfectly. In my humble opinion, Mr. Elevator has risen and ascended and risen again, top floor, time and space, he hath bended, and brain cells have been rent and spent, on the wing aloft and buoyant, a perfect rapid eye movement enhancer and neuromancer.“A capsule garden soundtrack, a killer live band, Leslie spinning a yarn through the melodious afternoon. Now its twilight, all is well: the most overweight bass soundsabound, the crystalline organs blanket breaks and backs, the whip crack of the snare is your guide here, its pretty fried and boundless in its approach.

“For fans of Tangerine Dream, Air, Donovan (think the Hurdy Gurdy Man LP), The Troggs, Irmin Schmidt, Egg, Stereolab, and even early Mute records.” -John Dwyer.

TRACK LISTING

1. Waiting
2. Love Again
3. Alone Together
4. Bamboo Forest
5. Anywhere
6. Brobdingag
7. Down
8. Kompressor
9. Sylvia
10. Patterns

The path is finally revealed by a splash of light, and it is dazzling. You cover your eye bones with a claw and can make out a reflection of the perfect being There is a whiff of you in there. There is a bit of everyone in there. There are cars and bells and birds and fruits and water and night skies and laughter and heavy woe…motioning for you to dive in All things are in this ethos swirling in its core This album is the armored nucleus of sound and vision It carries you along on its lumbering back, it tosses you through space and pulls you down a hole A trip indeed Mikey Young can do no wrong in our eyes and he has held the door open for you again (a gentleman, as always) Listen up, the higher power music hour has cracked their mighty knuckles and laid down some deep trips for you to view the city swaying and swarming like a field of grass flecked with insect transport.

FOR FANS OF: Popul Vuh, A.R. & Machines, Vangelis, The Residents Sci-Fictitious working man’s factory songs Sweat-flicked neon-bending warehouses opening a box of light.

TRACK LISTING

1. You Feelin' Me?
2. This ↑
3. Billions Of Tears
4. Life On The Perimeter
5. Raga For Vacuum And Dishes
6. It?s Walkable!
7. Parker
8. Back To The Centre
9. Spectrum View
10. Freedom ?13

Last year’s Pools having taken up a sizable chunk of Castle Face’s cold dark hearts, the label was delighted to hear that LA post-industrial trio Prettiest Eyes have a new gang of crowd-stirrers. None too early, either; once one’s become accustomed to their clanging synthetic orbit, it’s hard to find other tunes that truly scratch the same itch.

Volume 3 bursts at the seams with chrome-dipped timbres and surprise sharp edges, alien klaxon-calls and wailing dissonance offsetting the ziplock’d grease of their insistent drum and bass grooves. Prettiest Eyes are one of the most exciting live bands going on right now, and Volume 3 catches them in fine fettle.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Prettiest eyes is exactly what i'd expect from Castle Face. A clanging and genre-bending combination of psych rock, post-punk and stoner-synth stuff, all wrapped together with a distorted aesthetic and hypnotic drive. Completely insane, and undeniably brilliant.

TRACK LISTING

1. Johnny Come Home
2. It Cost's To Be Austere
3. I Don't Know
4. Mr. President
5. Nekrodisco
6. The Shame
7. Another Earth
8. Marihuana
9. Summer In LA
10. No More Summer
11. Strange Distance
12. La Maldad

Encased in a brown paper wrapping like a forgotten bit of smut from behind the beaded curtain, this unassuming disc is a time-capsule back to John Dwyer’s early SF days, janglingly fingerpicked wisps of melody and electronics baking in the all-too anemic sunshine of San Francisco’s elusive summer. Like a seashell to the ear, one can hear within it Baker Beach bike ride excursions, holding court and gently harassing passers-by on a Haight street stoop, and midnight rambles with friends from out of town, daring the sun to come up.

Somewhere chronologically between the folky whisper of Songs About Death And Dying and the recently reissued Cool Death Of Island Raiders, this one’s been vexing to find for way too long and Castle Face has decided to give it “the treatment”. May it awaken the gentle glow of possibility dappled with the dancing shadow of danger that it stirs around this castle.

STAFF COMMENTS

Mine says: Much anticipated reissue of this low-key/lo-fi The(e) Oh Sees EP from 2006, now available on green vinyl. Don't snooze!

TRACK LISTING

1. I Agree
2. Grave Blocker
3. Burning Bridges
4. Cunny Sharms
5. I Am Slow (demo)
6. The Great Crush
7. Drone #3
8. Drone #4

“Thee Hounds of Foggy Notion / Live Performances Sans Stages And Whatnots With Thee Oh Sees (2008), is a film we made just over a decade ago, and this record is the soundtrack. I loved making it, and I love all that were involved. I’m honestly blissed-out proud to hear over the years that it somehow is loved by so many others, too. “I first met John Dwyer on Flag Day. I was blown away by a trio of roving Coachwhips guerrilla street shows that climaxed at the the scenic vista parking lot high above San Francisco atop Mt. Sutro. Amongst the gathered uninitiated hordes of souvenir sweatshirt selling families, and puzzled elderly global tourist translators, and a white weirdo tuxedo wedding party, was the sonic corruption of the Coachwhips...I’m certain that this exact event was the idea seed for Thee Hounds Of Foggy Notion, and that it saved my life a little bit. “When JPD asked me to consider making a video for Thee Oh Sees with the sole stipulation that he didn’t want to do anything fake-y to playback, my head started swimming. What we mutually agreed upon was to essentially reprise Flag Day, and film Thee Oh Sees performing live, but not on stages. “I rented a 15-passenger van, a generator, and the minimal cinematic equipment my trusted cinematographer friend James Wall deemed we needed. Everything sound wise was JPD territory and went through an ancient mixing board that Johnny had housed within a Samsonite suitcase. We ran all the plate mics from the drums, and the li’l pedestal mics from the amps through this old mixer, and we all believed that all would be well and swell.” — Brian Lee Hughes

TRACK LISTING

1. The Gilded Cunt
2. Island Raiders
3. Ship
4. Block Of Ice
5. Curtains
6. Dumb Drums
7. We Are Free
8. Thee Hounds Of Foggy Notion
9. Make Them Kiss
10. Golden Phones
11. If I Had A Reason
12. Highland Wife’s Lament
13. Dreadful Heart
14. Ghost In The Trees
15. Iceberg
16. Second Date

Just when we thought we knew what to expect from POW! they surprise us with a vigorous and rabid LPs worth of moody cybernetic punk that’s frankly their best yet. Their 4th is oil-dipped in a rainbowed slick of dread, yet the songs are buoyed by tight tunes that seem to have a lot of fun among the ruins of the future, dare I say with an eye to a less gloomy horizon? Melissa Blue’s sharp elbowed synths jostle with Byron Blum’s zap gun guitar in an ominous fog of oscillations, and yet somehow my toe is a-tapping. POW! got darker and more catchy at the same time, for which some credit is due to the excellent drumming of Cameron Allen and the fantastically future savvy production by Byron Blum & Tomas Dolas. Lots of sticky punk heart resin-layered in a futuristic-scanning bionic bop. For fans of Solid Space, Tubeway Army, The Units, The Screamers, and glittery black nail polish. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Connecting
2. Disobey
3. Dream Decay
4. Free The Floor
5. Here It Comes
6. Machine Animal
7. Metal & Glue
8. Night Nurse
9. No World
10. Peter
11. Scissors

“Here we have the final entry into our Live In San Francisco series: an intimate evening with Alex [Cameron] and his indispensable sax man, Roy Molloy (beard in briefcase) performing at the Swedish American Hall in San Francisco, a very classy and lovingly maintained venue originally built in 1907 on Market Street, just a pube or two into the Castro District. “I was first introduced to Alex Cameron by Adam Beris, a real swell fellow who’s been drawing Castle Faces for us for years. He asked if I had heard of this “Suicide meets sad Springsteen” act and showed me the mysterious Geocities-style website (complete with shady porn ads). I was immediately hooked on the skeletal throb, the stark portraits of hard luck losers, the ego-maniacal squares, and the swagger on this prosthetically wrinkled Australian song and dance man. On a paid website, as he reminds us. Both sharp-witted and steeped in thespian courage, this is exactly what the world needed in this hungry, hungry time we live in. We got in touch, things led to other things, and when Alex was opening for Oh Sees at the Chapel in San Francisco we hatched a plan to make a live record, over white wine spritzers (as all the best deals are inked). “Al and Roy are the real deal, folks…and this wasn’t to be just any old show. I was determined to do something a little special, and I got the idea from working on John’s book of poster art (Exploded Globes) to bill it as a semi-formal, encourage people to ‘get dressed up and messed up’ as John puts it, and do it in a classy sort of hall, make it muy romantico. We got flowers from the Mission De Flores (who have sadly joined the ghost ranks of SF small businesses past), one of which made it to the cover, the champagne and fine wines flowed, and I like to think we helped San Francisco get a little luckier that night. There’s flower petals all over the mix here; Roy’s sax slinks sultrily, Al is in fine form, adding the occasional barb on the stem, sounding well oiled and comfortably bantering between tunes, and Justin Nijssen hangs back and window-dresses the whole thing with some well placed guitar and a few backups. These are professionals, need I remind you, hard workin’ road dogs with deep thoughts that inspire deep respect, and they put some dancing sweat on all the hits from Jumping The Shark as well as “Candy May” from Forced Witness, which at the time wasn’t yet out. We couldn’t be prouder of our final Live In SF disc, and it’s out on Castle Face Records in partnership with Secretly Canadian.” – Matt Jones.

Announcing a reissue of The Oh Sees - The Cool Death of Island Raiders
We here at Castle Face are not afraid to get our shins dirty mucking around in the stacks and we’re well aware of an out-of-press gap of Oh Sees releases right before 2006 when we started the label with Sucks Blood. We’re rectifying that and first among these is The Cool Death of Island Raiders, a particularly dusty gem that we think merits another look.

Kicking off the record with what should have been the hit of the summer that year but for the hard C in the title, "The Gilded Cunt" seems to clearly preface Oh Sees’ later psych skewed pop sensibilities. At the time it was an obvious jam and I recall being floored by its shuffling beauty. Chirping birds, gently lapping tempos and the nascent harmonization of Bridgid Dawson and Dwyer detail what I consider to be a definitive highlight of their early quiet period of the band. The tree hangs heavy with Patrick Mullins’ handiwork, manning the musical saw, drums, and an assortment of home made electronics. It seemed a bit radical to be so quiet about it but the tunes are total earworms among the assorted drones, cut up bits of tape noise, and mellow front porch vibes, and the whole thing hangs together in a lovely hand-made way, helped in no small part by Dave Sitek’s production (he would later work on Master’s Bedroom as well). “

We flew Brigid out a fresh woman and literally sent her home on a plane with a trash bag of her clothes” says John. Evidently the whole record was accidentally erased at some point right around when the photo on the back of the jacket was taken, which makes it all the more remarkable that the result sounds so casually and confidently careworn. 

TRACK LISTING

1. The Gilded Cunt
2. The Dumb Drums
3. Turn Offs
4. Losers In The Sun
5. Drone Number One
6. Island Raiders
7. Cool Death
8. Broken Stems
9. We Are Free
10. Drone Number Two
11. You Oughta Go Home

“For folks who dig A Frames, Country Teasers, Wire, Gang of Four, pita chips and dad’s boozy breath, may we present The Intelligence, captured live in a truly subterranean underground show space below SF vintage clothier Vacation.

“Lars Finberg: a name synonymous with artisanal hand-crafted, locally brewed, and organically-farmed song lasers. Hilarious, fast, tour-tight and ballsy—the band has all these perks in pocket, and all that on borrowed gear! I’ve watched this band go through many variations over the years and in their own right all of them have been marvelous. This particular version of the line up is constructed entirely of road-dogs. These guys don’t fuck around—or maybe they only fuck around, who can tell anymore? They drink, they get bawdy, they shred, and when we asked Lars if the band would be into doing a small show in a basement in the Tenderloin in SF for a live LP, he asked ‘What should we play?’ and I replied ‘nothing but the hits’— and they did exactly that.

“The Intelligence and Lars himself are masters at the penning of hits—hit after hit after hit—and with a soft-shoed tippity-tap of crowd work and banter, you can really smell the basement on this one and feel the cobwebs grazing the top of your head as you go deaf in one ear from the eye level PA pointed directly at your soul hole. If you love this band then this is a great live LP of them scorching the hits and talking trash. If you don’t know this band (shame on you) then this is a good place to start.” —John Dwyer

TRACK LISTING

1. Virgos
2. Dating Cops
3. Debt & ESP
4. We Refuse (To Pay The Dues)
5. Whip My Valet
6. Evil Is Easy
7. Thank You God For Fixing The Tape Machine
8. Estate Sales
9. Janitors
10. (They Found Me In The Back Of The) Galaxy
11. Confidence
12. Telephone Wires
13. Males

Crack the coffers, Oh Sees have spawned another frothy album of head-destroying psych-epics to grok and rock out to. Notice the fresh dollop of organ and keyboard prowess courtesy of Memory Of A Cut Off Head-alum and noted key-stabber Tom Dolas, while the Paul Quattrone / Dan Rincon drum-corps polyrhythmic pulse continues to astound and pound in equal measure, buttressed by the nimble fingered bottom end of Sir Tim Hellman the Brave and the shred-heaven fret frying of John Dwyer, whilst Lady Brigid Dawson again graces the wax with her harmonic gifts.

Aside from the familiar psych-scorch familiar to soggy pit denizens the world over, there’s a fresh heavy-prog vibe that fits like a worn-in jean jacket comfortably among hairpin metal turns and the familiar but no less horns-worthy guitar fireworks Dwyer’s made his calling card. Perhaps the most notable thing about Smote Destroyer is the artistic restlessness underpinning its flights of fancy. Dwyer refuses to repeat himself and for someone with such a hectic release schedule, that stretching of aesthetic borders and omnivorous appetite seems all the more superhuman!

TRACK LISTING

1. Sentient Oona
2. Enrique El Cobrador
3. C
4. Overthrown
5. Last Peace
6. Moon Bog
7. Anthemic Aggressor
8. Abysmal Urn
9. Nail House Needle Boys
10. Flies Bump Against The Glass
11. Beat Quest

A glistening field of sport / Mylar turf sucking up to the feet of the future athlete / No noise from the crowd / Hypoextinct brain waves peak at nominal levels / Mouths hang as they watch the rehearsed games unfold. “Across megalopolis / Handshakes between men and machine / Ply for future rations /Every man for himself that isn’t under the spell of the government’s mind whip / Signals wash out over haphazardly stacked neighborhoods as they sleep / Investing, convincing, planting memories / Fabrication of emotion. “And even farther still / Past the snicker-snack of the city’s air intake fans /A humming drone passes over the green grey canopy of the last forest / The no man’s land / Scanning for heat traces and human sound / Looking for the resistance with its red pin-prick eye. “In the moments between search and seizure / The rebels eat from the forest floor /They climb trees, they commune with the animals / They live life, they stare out to the ocean, past the shanty skyscrapers/ The last frontier. “Sean Smith soundtracks all these thoughts in my mind’s eye / His synth and guitar layered music is the signal / It is the force field, refracting light / It is the chemtrail drifting down like slow motion party glitter / From the heavens settling like moon flakes on the roofs of the cards / On the debris / On the upturned faces of the rabble. “It is beautiful imagination at its best.” - John Dwyer.

TRACK LISTING

1. Start Forever
2. Cryptomnesia
3. These Crimes Occurred At Night
4. Naturalistic
5. Silence
6. Name Plus Focus Equals Purpose
7. An Ambiguous Utopia

Nothing like a carb-load Italian pre-show feast and table wine to grease the gears of some live action in Fidenza, Italy . A land-locked classico right where you would pinch to hike up the boot. A club packed tight with handsome men and women abused by sonic marauders. “Have you seen Uranium Club live? No? Drop everything. They are complete-package slayers.

Watch- works drummer power, shred-haired bass magic (glasses flying), ripped twin guitar flexing on nerd beach, vocals poured through the skylight into your e-holes and over your thought center, sunglasses all around: fucking hypno- wheel. “Tough, smart, and wiry, midwest exploded all over the globe. Minneapolis, a city known for producing the best, has taken no nap on these young men: the driest tone, the snappiest hooks. They are simply great and this recording captures a particularly good night. They Shred ‘til everyone’s dead, including a nine-minute jam, god help us.

“Here’s something to make you feel good about the world, to know that we have extended a strong art-handshake to our brothers and sisters in Italy. Vivia l’italia! Ciao, bella.” - John Dwyer.

Los Angeles (formerly Puerto Rican) punk band sizzles the brain on their sophomore album.

For fans of Screamers, Suicide, Chrome, and The Birthday Party.

“Very pleased to be working with Prettiest Eyes. I first saw them ages ago at the Satellite and they were cake-takers that night. Now, they are stronger and weirder than ever. I couldn’t believe this new batch of tunes and their bananasenergy live show and, their fans are hard-core heads, just a soup of dance and mouths agog. Brutal, fractured, pogoing beats played by Pachy [Garcia], also the singer, belching out vocal smoke rings in the laser light above the din—they are flat out commands, militaristic in their delivery and yet catchy, like you like em. Marcos, an extro-sensual bassist who climbs inside of your mind-clothes while grinding out aggressively greasy throbs and pulls and Paco, the keyboardist, who at times plays reeling wailing lines that could be mistaken for a number of other instruments…and the hair on this dude! I have a hard time remembering how nice his face is offstage, all you can see is a whip wigging out.

They are captivating, they are odd, they make strange and interesting choices. Futuristic and yet drawn from the same sonic sludge that all mankind derives from, they live and breathe early Los Angeles-punk vibes while still innovating at every turn. There is electricity in this sound, they simply rule and what a pleasure to hear Pools doesn’t stray far from what makes them just melt it in person. Recorded perfectly to harness the animal on a nice inanimate slab of plastic you can take home. For fans of Screamers, Suicide, Chrome, and yes, a hint of a down unda Birthday Party.” - John Dwyer.

TRACK LISTING

1. Don’t Call
2. Mire Nena
3. Pools
4. No Hands Pete
5. Dandy
6. Untitled
7. See Saw
8. Gold Snake
9. Let Me Touch
10. Prance
11. Uncut
12. A Sweet Song

Flat Worms belt-sanded everyone with their 7-inch on Volar, and Castle Face is proud as new papas to present their debut album. The band continues their ride on a buzz-saw wave of feedback-tipped riffs into the middle distance, the smog-choked sunset receding in the rearview, with a thousand-yard dead pan stare surgically pinned to a high octane set of boredom-energized punk pistons. This is an ear-ringing missive from the end of the cul-de-sac, a mirage wavering above a mid-sized American suburb at dusk, with the constellations bleached black by the sprawl. A little Wipers, a little Wire, and a lot of late-capitalist era anxious energy - Flat Worms scratch the itch quite nicely.

TRACK LISTING

1. Motorbike
2. Goodbye Texas
3. Pearl
4. Accelerated
5. White Roses
6. 11816
7. Followers
8. Faultline
9. Question
10. Red Hot Sand

An exciting development from under strange Australian lablights: ORB re-spawn from last year’s Birth with a further mutated slab of paranoid heavy shred, Naturality. They bring the dread with a kinetic muscularity and a pleasantly evolving synthetic strangeness, as if having eaten of the wrong part of the garden, causing familiar things start to seem less so. The effects of these spores on the modern brain, already clogged with a steady drip of zips and zooms, are fresh and confusing.

ORB are young and fleet fingered, and certainly know their way around a riff, but bring everything into an almost alien clarity both blunted and futuristic. ORB, you see, have ripened quite radically, and one can only think at an accelerated pace upon their travels with King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard.

This album finds them sprouting new appendages and clawing at their enclosures. This is potent stuff—be careful! Shroomed out doom rock extra-special… early Sabbath, Edgar Broughton Band, Buffalo…down tuned and grooving up the stoned rock …

“When I was first told about Duds, it came with the considered opinion that the guys were far from what you’d call ‘careerists’. ‘They don’t take themselves too seriously’ was another comment. I could have taken this as a warning that they weren’t in it for the right reasons—but that couldn’t be further from the truth. From my perspective Duds simply won’t bend over backwards to ‘get on’. They do what they do and you can take it or leave it. I took it—with both hands…with a vice-like grip. They have the invention and urgency of Edinburgh legends The Fire Engines. The PostPunk ethic. Short songs, short sets = short album.

“They’re one of the most thrilling bands I’ve seen in years—and the fact that they’re releasing this brilliant piece of work on the Castle Face label adds the last piece of a perfect ‘outsider’ jigsaw puzzle. Duds sitting alongside Oh Sees, Ty Segall, White Fence, Useless Eaters, et al. There is a god!” —Marc Riley, June 2017

TRACK LISTING

1. No Remark
2. Signal, Sign
3. A Different Stage
4. The Nose
5. Irregular Patterns
6. Split On Both Sides
7. Keine
8. Of Nature
9. Elastic Seal
10. Pro Tem
11. Elastic Feel
12. Reward Indifference

“The couple that slays together, stays together: Looch Vibrato and Aggy Sonora, like the moniker of an infamous killing duo, the fucking butchest band from Bordeaux. Looch, with hands like bunches of bananas and songs like flaming arrows. The lovely and tough-as-hell Aggy, crushing the kit. Heavy weird attackers from our sister country. Sludge drips—murder the guitar, usurp the amp, fry the mic, howl like beasts, melt the crowd: Magnetix. We were lucky enough to grab them on one of their rare U.S. shows, recorded in a basement in San Francisco. Here it is in all its gory glory. Let’s go tripping…” —John Dwyer

TRACK LISTING

1. Growing Up
2. Feel High (When I Die)
3. Lawn Mowers Attack
4. Mort Clinique
5. Impaction
6. Living In A Box
7. LR6
8. Rest Of My Life
9. Break Up The Fone

“Matt, Mark and Adam, aka Male Gaze, return quickly from the brainy roar of their previous album King Leer with their six heels hanging even further over the edge of the abyss. Good bands often pull punches but the great ones don’t and these charismatically scarred veterans of romance, gear singed from all too real firefights in the dark world of adulthood, lodge ten new slugs into your vest. Your life was spared but you’ll feel every second of the thirtyfive-plus minutes, grateful that all you got was a bruising. Imagine what it did to them! Have you ever flung yourself out there to such a degree that you risked total humiliation if it all went south, to where the next step would be self deportation to some distant island of annihilation in your mind? How did that work out for you? Don’t worry, Male Gaze knows and they wrote some songs about it. Look out your window, down at the glittering metropolis below and listen to this album.” - Henry Rollins.

TRACK LISTING

1. Keep Yr Kools
2. Wha Do Wha Do
3. All Yours
4. Didn't
5. Tell Me How It Is
6. Pale Gaze
7. If U Were My Girl
8. African Ripoff
9. Pyramids
10. Miss Taken

Within seconds of dropping the needle on I Don’t Wanna Grow Up one gets the feeling of being in good hands: an AP course in power-pop, delivered by Matthew Melton, with the confidence and consistency of your favorite late night diner. Familiarity works as a curious device — this is directly in Melton’s wheelhouse, no sonic surprises whatsoever, yet somehow these odes to teenage love and heartache are brand new, catchy and vital.

His twists and turns utilizing the same tools are astounding in their continued freshness. That this is the final Warm Soda record (in anticipation of his new band Dream Machine’s debut, also forthcoming on Castle Face Records) seems logical when you consider the way he’s re-written the same vibe into four excellent records of catchy pop. A lesser talent would have given up after two records, tops — Melton’s commitment to the platonic ideal of power pop again bears fruit, and perhaps this one is the best yet? Mix tape makers of the world, take note: if you leave this album out of your next amorous transmission, you’re fucking up.

TRACK LISTING

1. Young In Your Heart
2. I Don't Wanna Grow Up
3. Tell Me In A Whisper
4. To Be With Ramona
5. Don't Stop Now
6. Game Of Undefined Love
7. Don't Leave Me For Another Guy
8. Run Away With Me
9. Gumdrop
10. Tell Me Your Story
11. This Changes Everything
12. Angel Of Love

Oh my, what is this? The alien globule of Damaged Bug’s errant planet has circled the sun and re-enters our orbit where last year’s Cold Hot Plumbs left off. Urgent falsetto morbidities detail Damaged Bug’s most rhythmically adventurous offering yet, syncopating lush landscapes with moon-shot death rays. Witness in horror the tractor beam pull of Slay The Priest - a breathless sprint through unfamiliar enemy territory - erratic laser beam synths dredge the lake, hard panned double drums resurrect dead heartbeats - load thy crossbow, friend, this night is long and we appear beset on all sides. The Bug is back and more hideous than ever - join us in a gawp at its iridescent shell, its alien mandibles…and the guts streaming from the wound. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: John Dwyer steps into his Damaged Bug moniker once again for a synthy freak-out of psychedelic loops and twisted melodic interludes.

TRACK LISTING

1. Structure Image Approach
2. Bog Dash
3. The Cryptologist
4. Slay The Priest
5. Ugly Gamma
6. Rick’s Jummy
7. Gimme Tamanthum
8. No One Notice The Fly
9. Bunker Funk
10. Mood Slime
11. Liquid Desert
12. Heavy Cathedral
13. Unmanned Scanner
14. The Night Shopper

When squirming black mold in a dingy Bayshore, CA, warehouse became sentient, creaked and took humanoid form it created Blank Square and their singularly oddpunk debut, Animal I — sounding like the weirder end of Flesheaters but with a sterility that can only be contemporarily compared to Total Control’s Aussie hardcore no-wave and then with a pinch of what made DNA and Mars amazing. This album is captured with plenty of concrete and sheet metal kept in the mix and a highlight towards dissonant syncopations, as if it was recorded in a empty room minus one chair and definitely down a flight of wet, cement stairs. Featuring saxophone with a mild but nauseating-at-times rippling slap delay, the band cruises on a rhythm section that sounds like the they’ve got another house show to play tonight after this one. Rectangular in all the right places, it’s uncomfortable, like sleeping in a car. For listeners who love art in their sax punk, reaching waaaay back into California’s punk history (SST would’ve undoubtedly dug this). There you go, weirdos.

TRACK LISTING

1. One Way
2. Bangers
3. Empty My Head
4. Fuc'd
5. Bad Acid
6. Quark
7. Put A Lid On It
8. I Was High
9. Charmer
10. Exit Saint
11. Tape Measure
12. Youth Trash

POW! continue their danse macabre in the laser glow of hi-beam synthesizers, with a new batch of synth-punk candy that will rot your teeth: Crack An Egg. Vacuum-sealed, chrome gleaming, propulsion pounding, eyebrows arched and slightly pixelated, this album is like the cupie-doll face beckoning from a digital billboard outside your hovercraft window. From a none-too-distant dystopia and on to your turntable — VCFs slowly open across a smogged-out horizon as they urge you to take that “Necessary Call,” warn moodily against a “Cyberattack,” and inexplicably “Crack An Egg” in honor of the human race. Synthetic earworms squirm into and out of view like twinkling city lights through evening’s opaque air, feasting on terse punk skeletons. The neon is buffed to an aerosol sheen by Chris Woodhouse behind the blinking motherboards, with a streetlight or two of Gary Numan’s slanting through the door. The automatons know where the party’s at — follow them.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Dusty synths meet with crackling vocals and VHS saturation. Pow! rip into the ozone layer with their jagged celestial melodies and trancey psychedelic rock. Half electronic, half direct rocking anthems, but brilliantly balanced throughout. A triumph of concept and execution.

TRACK LISTING

1. DNS
2. Back On The Grid
3. Castle Of Faith
4. Necessary Call
5. Runner
6. Crack An Egg Intro
7. Cyberattack #3
8. Color The System
9. Hello
10. The Razor
11. Energy In Motion
12. Crack An Egg

From the same misty mountaintop tape spool as August’s A Weird Exits, Thee Oh Sees bring the companion album An Odd Entrances.

Delving more towards the contemplative than the faceskinning aspects of its predecessor, this sister album is a cosmic exercise en plein aire with John Dwyer and company double-drum shuffling, lounging with cellos, following a flute around the groove, and spooling a few Grimm-dark lullabies along the way. Lurking in the grass are a snake or two, like the celestial facing instrumental buzz of “Unwrap The Fiend Pt. 1.”…But for the most part this is a relatively hushed affair, a morning rather than evening listen.

The band plans on donating half their profits from the first pressing to Elizabeth House, a local charity in Pasadena that specifically helps homeless women with children get back on their feet.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: If this forms the Yang to 'A Weird Exit's Ying, there is between them a fully realised and startlingly broad palette of skills. Where 'Weird Exits' brought the fire, this brings the sweet, sweet burn cream. Rhythms are more pronounced, the distortion is turned down a little but still forms a brilliantly nuanced and fantastically executed whole. Superb.

TRACK LISTING

1. You Will Find It Here
2. The Poem
3. Jammed Exit
4. At The End, On The Stairs
5. Unwrap The Fiend, Pt. 1
6. Nervous Tech (Nah John) 

The white-hot set of Live In San Francisco not only features Feral Ohms’ shaggy guitar heroics captured directly to ferromagnetic medium for your grokking, but also happens to be their debut record. From zero to vertical from the get of the set, the ’Ohms muscle this one out fast and hot, featuring Ethan Miller of Howlin Rain, Comets On Fire and recent psych-folk breakouts Heron Oblivion.

Miller gives free rein to his most pyro-psycho-technic guitar fancies, not to mention a full-throated demon-worthy wail, with Chris Johnson on drums (previously of Drunk Horse and currently of Andy Human and the Reptoids) full MC5 style with freight train pummel, with rides so heavy in the mix it sounds like early Damned. Josh Haynes (of the unGoogle-able Nudity) is a total forehead smacker on bass as he bi-amps a filthy sound while wearing some weirdo humility leather strap face harness - it’s just dirty.
“Teenage God Born To Die” indeed. Expect great things from them and this concise set is just long enough to get a dander up for a proper full length, set for release on Ethan’s Silver Current label in 2017. In the meantime, keep an eye out for their live shows and don’t forget the ear plugs, they’ll singe your minge...

TRACK LISTING

1. Love Damage
2. Early Man
3. Teenage God Born To Die
4. Value On The Street
5. Super Ape
6. The Glow

Emerging from the distant light is the new double-LP from John Dwyer’s Thee Oh Sees—the first studio recordings to capture the muscular rhythm section of twin drummers Ryan Moutinho and Dan Rincon with ringer bassist Tim Hellman cracking spines. The groove and bludgeon one has come to expect from the band’s live shows is captured seamlessly here—they go from zero to headsplitter, and on the rare occasions they do let up on the gas a bit, you’re treated to some locked-in hypnotizers, too. The guitar sounds more colossal and ethereal at the same time, riding roughshod over the vacuum- sealed rhythm section, spiraling skywards, and diving into the emerald depths so quick your guts tingle. Synths, strings and smokesoaked things crawl behind the scenes to make an extra far-out party platter, served on 45 RPM plates for most excellent listening quality. With amazing visuals (including a side-D etching by airbrush-vanart maestro Robert Beatty) and packed in vape-proof goatskin, it’s a beast and, come August 12th, it can be yours should you so choose.

TRACK LISTING

1. Dead Man's Gun
2. Ticklish Warrior
3. Jammed Entrance
4. Plastic Plant
5. Gelatinous Cube
6. Unwrap The Fiend Pt. 2
7. Crawl Out From The Fall Out
8. The Axis

The skies have opened and dropped a trio of kids from Geelong, Australia, packing some seriously futuristic sludge: ORB.

A heaping helping of proto-metal chops meets paranoid sci-fi fantastical ravings, replete with some tasty synthesizer werk that breaks it up just so. Close-mic’d to perfection by Total Control’s own Mikey Young, these epics swing with demonic swagger and crackle with the static of a menacing future, twisting and churning through loose-limbed riffery, all punctuated by a wail that sounds as if it’s coming from every hidden camera outside the Ministry of Love. A proggy but in-the-pocket head-trip hard rock record for the table, and hopefully these Aussies will be bringing their dystopian groove your way soon.

TRACK LISTING

1. Iron Mountain
2. Reflection
3. New Moon
4. First And Last Men
5. Electric Blanket

Weirdo-punk supergroup Male Gaze is back with nine new chunks of octave-pedal abuse and sultry croons with King Leer, their first proper long-player. This time around, the trio of Matt Jones (ex-Blasted Canyons), Mark Kaiser (ex-Mayyors), and Adam Cimino (ex-The Mall) have added former Blasted Canyons and Tiaras member Adam Finken on second guitar and resident Castle Face engineer Chris Woodhouse behind the boards to ramp up the skuzzpop of last year’s Gale Maze into brutal wall-of-sound territory.

“On King Leer, the boys toy with their poppier side, dosing the songs with syrupy melodies and some newfound heartfelt introspection, but they’re by no means going soft on us—these tracks, buried beneath mountains of fuzz and pounded out with Adderall-fueled fury, pack enough sonic punch to rattle your brain loose.” - Luca Cimarusti, Chicago Reader. 

Fans of early 90s Am Rep crunch will dig deep here!!

TRACK LISTING

1. Got It Bad
2. Lesser Demons
3. Krav Maga
4. Ranessa
5. Green Flash
6. Easy To Void
7. Bad Omens
8. Stupid Heart
9. This Is It

“Hermetically sealed punk broadcast from a bunker. This guitar is untying a knot of wires; vocals like watching a fight where two men exchange tit-for-tat face blows. Surgical drums; bass grown under glass. The occasional synthesizer like you didn’t know you were thirsty till water crossed your lips. Wound tight, lock-jawed; no rust on these gears. Chilly production crystallizes these post-apocalyptic poems from San Francisco.” - John Dwyer.

TRACK LISTING

1. Blind Spots
2. The Shape Is Drawn
3. The Caged Brain
4. Replacement Parts
5. A False Awakening
6. Note For Note
7. Is The Day Done
8. Ciphers
9. Changing Frequencies
10. Silhouettes
11. Forced Exhalations
12. An Interpose
13. I See Patterns

“I was a kid, I took mushrooms to help me ‘ease into things.’ It was a perfect SF night [circa 1999]—warm and dimly lit, shit-and-piss-smelling Clarion Alley. A band took the eye-level built-that-afternoon stage. I had peeked up gender-bent punk’s chicken-leather skirt and into eternity. How old were they? Who were they? How were they so fascinating? “They were blowing my young mind. I remember a show where, for some reason I can’t recall, but probably the cops had shut a party down, they got moved to a friend’s backyard down on 3rd Street. They played in front of a halogen work light on cement and somebody threw a bucket of yellow latex paint into the sky. The show was incredible and unstoppable (until the bikers next door called the cops and broke up the party). I’m not sure how I made it home but the next morning I woke up to strangers sleeping on my living room floor and yellow-paint footsteps covering my joint. I spent the next day gagging on my hands and knees scrubbing paint off the hardwood floor (even the shitty flats in SF have nice floors). Drugs, violence; general snottiness; elastic paranoid guitar; SRO drum kit; coke-bottle specs, sharp bass sounds. “An abstract guitar dance that still I can’t rip off without feeling guilty. Smirking medicated bass player whose heavy glasses slid down his sweating beak. Hot-as-hell and unapproachable drum master Sugar , whose boyfriend at the time I remember as like an extra from Warriors except he rode a BMX and was like 40...bad ass. Then there is Tracy —sneer lip stick smear, ripped stocking high heel in my eye. Tough as nails. Off the rails. A guitar as skinny as a knife, bent on pushing an ideal into your face hole. “I look back on these dark and aggressive times with much fondness. Now, here, we present to you the long-lost final Deep Throats recordings, Good Bad Pretty , on frosted, sugar-injected vinyl. Dig in, kids.” - John Dwyer.

TRACK LISTING

1. Good Bad Pretty
2. Eyes
3. Way I Move
4. 2 Hot 2 Handle
5. Last Request
6. Invasion Of The Body Snatchers
7. Creature Feature
8. Where's The Party
9. Dirty Secret
10. Prove It

“For nine years they have been slowly simmering in a pot. For nine years I have been seeing them usurp every bill they have been on. I’ve never seen a bad Bronze show… they range from smiling and hypnotized dancing crowds to a man getting violated and urinated on at a yuppie bar (everyone still smiling).

“Always the entertainers, always drunk with mad skills; with dashes of John Carpenter, Silver Apples, Liquid Liquid, Birthday Party, Harold Grosskopf, Klaus Schultze, Cluster, and Brian Ferry with a field recorder taped to his tux jacket. Ultra bottom heavy dance beats à la Brian Hock (shirt off / shirt on, it’s all good to me), super handwringing oscillations home brewed by Miles Friction and the ever-great Robert Spector delivering homilies from beyond the dimensional wall.

“They bought a limousine to tour in (which may be the raddest fucking thing I’ve ever heard of), but it’s been parked in the bat cave under a car cocoon like San Francisco’s best kept secret. These guys should be on tour, eaten alive every night by ravenous fanatics—but alas, they are like a rare treat these days. So, we’ve waited outside the bivouac for the flap to lift, and after many nights and cold rations they appeared and performed the great and fabled Bronze happening for us to trap to tape. A mix of absolute old faves and new gears grinding; a great night indeed, recorded and mixed by the Castle Face crew, adorned with photos of the night. You are well set to feast on this release.” - John Dwyer.

“Hard to pin down, harder to hold onto; bent circuit board snake charmers unfurl across hexagonal grids. A seemingly familiar sound, but then you realize you have your ear pressed against a reflection.

“Sunwatchers are a distorted prism to so many past greats: reminiscent of Ethiopiques, John Handy Band, Terry Riley, Art Ensemble meets Laddio Bolocko. Forever-swirling saxophone blended belly-to-belly with elastic guitar and tinfoil-thin phin (a Thai instrument not unlike an electrified tenor guitar or sitar); a whirlpool of repetitious interpretations; militaristic marches ascend into meditations. These songs map out great pyramids and deep, buried labyrinths; they are massive, they are leviathans.“

The band is comprised of NYC improv heavy hitters - Jim McHugh (guitar, electric phin), Peter Kerlin (bass), Jeff Tobias (alto sax), Cory Bracken (vibes, percussion), Jason Robira (drums) - and sitting in are Dave Harrington (guitar, synth), Ben Greenberg (guitar), Dave Kadden (keyboard), Jonah Rapino (fiddle). Notable previous projects include Dark Meat, Arthur Doyle’s New Quiet Screamers, NYMPH and Chris Forsyth’s Solar Motel Band. Amazing cover painting of Handsome Jimmy Valiant by artist Scott Lenhardt—a strange but somehow sensible match made in heaven. “Dream machinery, just plain far out. Look for traces of this one in your brain jelly afterwards.” - John Dwyer.

Get a load of Castle Face’s first local release from their new home in East LA: native Angeleno four-piece Feels and their debut self-titled LP.

Scuzzy, slanted guitar interplay, a little grrrlish swagger, flashes of raw emotion and a cement chip of punk attitude propel these songs directly to your dome and down the brain stem. Kinetic, omnivorous, and easy to get stuck in the noggin, Feels has charm and grit to spare and is pushed deeper into the red, weird wilds by Ty Segall’s home-cooked production.

Surrender yourself into Naked Lights’ dark and intense orbit! From the first few seconds through to the end, On Nature is intensely addictive and welcomely unpredictable. Shades of post-punk, dub, even anarcho-punk are thrillingly blended into wholly futuristic shapes that defy easy categorization.

The cross-talking guitars speak their own thorny language, the atmosphere is wide-focus and carries a subtle tang of danger, and it’s topped off with unique vocals that are as in-your-face as they are intriguing and foreign. An altogether refreshingly vital listen, Naked Lights’ On Nature comes courtesy of Castle Face Records.

TRACK LISTING

1. New Carrion
2. Pictus
3. On Nature
4. Nicht Leiden
5. Hedges
6. Mechanical Eye
7. Blue Ink
8. Mostly Bag
9. Pool On A Platter
10. Clock Support
11. Silouette
12. Barrel
13. Peep Hole
14. Trepanning
15. Undo

Announcing a white-hot entry into Castle Face’s Live in San Francisco series: Useless Eaters, recorded in the basement of vintage clothing store Vacation.

“This show was bananas. When we set up to record a live set, we always hope the band will just murder it and the people will go all crazy. I’d say that crosses over onto the tape and makes the record shine… This was one of those magic moments. All the elements in place for a memorable evening—BYOB, a basement, in the tenderloin of San Francisco, a wicked goddamn band slaying their songs, and a perfect essence in the air. Everyone falling over each other, spilling beer, smiling screaming and sweating. A fucking mess. When everybody leaves and you look at the muddy, hot, trashed, and disgusting room you think, ‘yes, something good happened here tonight.’

“Seth Sutton’s lineup is in peak form here, from touring and being general road-dog bad-asses. His guitar is slanted and choking with intermittent echo—just raw-vibes awesome. Miles Luttrell’s drumming is honed to a point and drunk with hi-hat countdowns. Brendan Hagarty’s bass sounds like it smells bad and is the perfect accompaniment to Seth’s treble-burst guitar, and the at-the-time new edition of Jacob Olsen on keyboard pulls even more of the dystopian spirals from the studio recording out into the live world.” - John Dwyer.

“I think of this record as kind of a ‘Tim Presley reads his book on tape,’ the story of life in Los Angeles flowing like the low moisture river that it is. The start is uphill, long and slow, and you ponder when you will be spat out onto the straight away. By the time ‘Clean It Glen’ kicks in, your hands are sweating, and then you are there and it is glassy and wonderfully repetitive, repetitive, repetitive. Lights are flashing, cars are passing. There is synthesized wild life here - blips that are winged, crackles that are slithering through the digital grass. Echo ripples across a chrome topped body of water. You catch a glimpse of yourself in a store-that-sells-something window. “Beats are the staccato lines on the road being eaten by the undercarriage of the vehicle that whips through this world. Guitars are trash and debris; acid. A headphone record at its primal best, far out and geographically odd. Every time I play this someone asks, ‘what the hell is this?’ I say, ‘W-X, dig in. Best to listen to it in its entirety.’ A vast 20-course experience served on twin platters; a carnival; a far cry from White Fence and yet still the scent lingers on the fingers. He told me I would hate this repeatedly and I replied that it is my favorite masterpiece of his (of which there are many). This record looks through to the matrix of Tim’s songsmith genius, don’t forget to blink. “For fans of early Soft Machine, The Fall, The Tronics, general clutter, disarray and Faust.” - John Dwyer.

Silver-tongued songsmith and true American treasure Kelley Stoltz presents a new collection of instant classics with just a hint more synthery than 2013’s Double Exposure. For those not yet in the fan club, Kelley’s like a Ray Davies / Brian Wilson / Tom Petty power pop Cerebus from another dimension where well placed tambourines, handclaps, and wry observations are a universal language. Criminally under-appreciated, Kelley’s face should be on Amoeba-bucks for his contributions to the pop canon - the black-lipstick-smeared stand-out and lead-off track “Cut Me Baby” could be his walk-on music for the acceptance speech.

Each track here leaps off the table with Kelley’s carefully considered wit and expertly layered arrangements. His innate way around a sticky hook and no shortage of tasty studio flourishes will bring out the listener’s inner record nerd, guaranteed.

Recorded one track at a time at Guitar Center, completely in secret, Apprentice Destroyer’s debut Glass Ceiling Universe transcends its intriguing concept to highlight a hyperactive and omnivorous talent within. These wide-ranging, kaleidoscopic instrumental compositions veer from the disorientingly complex to the achingly and delicately beautiful, all the while maintaining a metallic, misanthropic edge. It’s almost as if computers were playing to each other across the sales floor, laughing at the puny humans attempting to create harmonics in air when they can do so perfectly in the vacuum of binary. Glass Ceiling Universe is lifestyle music for all the cyborg assassins out there, and it’s out on Castle Face Records.

Announcing a totally far-out split release from unexpected corners: fave Hoosier-via-SF tripper transplants Burnt Ones sweet-talked the one and only Space Lady into a sharing an album, and the results are magical. In her inimitable style The Space Lady sparkles through “Across the Universe,” “Starman,” a brand-new original called “The Next Right Thing” and an achingly elegaic “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” These beautiful tunes are wonderful additions to her lovely repertoire.

For their half, Burnt Ones mellow down their sound, crafting a warm cocoon on two kaliedoscopic creepers, peaking just a little with a floweringly spaced-out version of the Space Lady’s greatest hit, “Synthesize Me,” and closing with another druggy lullaby. It’s sweet and mellow ride through both sides and it’s out on Castle Face Records.

TRACK LISTING

1. Space Lady - Across The Universe
2. Space Lady - Starman
3. Space Lady - The Next Right Thing
4. Space Lady - Somewhere Over The Rainbow
5. Burnt Ones - The Good Life
6. Burnt Ones - Infinity Suite
7. Burnt Ones - Synthesize Me
8. Burnt Ones - Not Here, But There

“These were carefree times. We were young enough to put our bodies to the test every night on the seven-by-seven-mile patch of the Bay. The endless wars seemed less at home. Songs were hanging off the branches heavy, plump and threatening to rot on the vine if they weren’t polished and put to tape.

The band was on their third live drummer but the lineup in The Fresh & Onlys’ recording tower was a consistent group of pop soldiers writing, working and whiling away the hours. A beeramid of cheap cans, endless dope smokery and a pretty strong vibe of dudes who would play together into oblivion. 388 rolling, tape spilling over itself, drum kit covered in mufflers, a chest of shitty percussion toys, lots of ideas and multiple secret weapons at their disposal.

“Shayde Sartin: the beast from out east, the thud of a heavy slow bomb… the best bass player in the Bay. Unaccredited infinite times on records that were made better by his finely crafted skills. I can pick him out on records instantly.

“Wymond ‘The Count’: you can almost smell his hair on his hooks. If there was a stage monitor in your living room his fence-climber boot would be on it. Wymond always has the riff that made the jets of the song take off. Listen and you’ll see what I mean.

“Tim Cohen: the man behind the beard. Some would say the leader. In the game as long as Bette Midler. Cohen writes great songs in his sleep, I think. Once referred to by a buddy as ‘like three weirdos in one.’

“Think of these as basement tapes, a companion to the first Fresh & Onlys Castle Face release (which itself deserves another listen). I remember watching some of these tunes get banged out live in a sweat pit in Oakland. The sound guy so gacked out that there was no sound guy, basically.” - John Dwyer, February 16th, 2015.

TRACK LISTING

1. Tongue In Cheek
2. Don't Look Down
3. Seven Directions
4. Summer Wheels
5. Double Sided Woman
6. Sunglasses
7. I'm A Puppet
8. Deviants Within
9. Bomb Wombs
10. Oo I Got Got
11. Stranger In My House
12. Pile Of Bones

Announcing the long overdue seventh entry in Castle Face’s Live in San Francisco series, starring The Blind Shake.

Captured to tape at the same shows as the OBN IIIs’ live record, The Blind Shake were tour-greased and fully torqued over three night at The Chapel in San Francisco way back in 2013. For those unfamiliar: the sheer bodily reaction to seeing these guys is a unique pleasure. They are consistently one of the most fun bands doin’ it to it these days—such a direct channel to your inner teenager it’s more often than not you end up in the pit, awash in baritone guitar and that “let’s wig out” beat.

Whether you’re a noob or a vet, all your bludgeoning favorites are here, one song combing into the next with tasty bites of guitar, and man, they swing that hammer all over this thing. A sterling testament to their claim as the heaviest nice guys around. Their chrome domes shined up real nice for the excellent night-of photographs from main man Brian Pritchard, and as usual John Dwyer, Chris Woodhouse, Eric Bauer and Bob Marshall were manning the decks, keepin’ it crisped for the hi-fis at home.

“A fog of memories caught in the sun-flakes settling in the forest, a beautiful album indeed... [M]any glittering gems [are] woven into these tunes but one listen is not enough to see them all. Like trying to appreciate the silver strobing of ocean waves, they are different every time you glance at them. Better to watch their reflections on the ceiling and just soak it up.

“It seems kind of rare that an album can create and sustain a mood, not to mention such an odd and unique vibe as this. A sing-song tale of a long, surreal journey through canopied pathways, tunnels and spiraling downwards through the earth’s maw…falling, falling, falling and suddenly you wake in your bed. Home-grown in aesthetic, Mirror Woods is a quilt of hues... The colors, albeit gorgeous, are cross-processed, like a polaroid of a cathedral’s most glorious stained glass window: off, slightly sour but just dripping with pop sentiment. This is not an experimental album for young chin-scratchers only, this is a pop record for anyone with a heart; this is a homage to love, to friends and family, to droll existence. Hold up a torch to the dark, make a spark.

“Think United States of America meets Vangelis meets July meets Silver Apples in Arthur Russell’s New York apartment (what a family band portrait that would be).” - John Dwyer.

TRACK LISTING

1. Mirror Woods Morning
2. Come Into My World
3. Sour Fruit
4. Peaches
5. (Feel Through A Hole In the Trail To Sound Creek)
6. Bacavan Blues
7. By The River Again
8. Mirror Woods
9. The Town
10. Shadow People Don't Care
11. Mirror Wood's Constant Dream Of Childhood
12. (Float Like A Soul As It Drifts From This Realm)
13. A Well Placed Mirror
14. Mirror Wood's Abduction

John Dwyer has a surprise… While everyone eagerly anticipates the next Oh Sees record, he’s been working tirelessly in his synth laboratory, hand-crafting a followup to last year’s neon-noir Damaged Bug debut - one that shakes up the snow globe considerably.

If 'Hubba Bubba' was a brush with a robotic exoskeleton on deep-space patrol, 'Cold Hot Plumbs' visits the alien world that sent it into the cosmos. Lush, textural and psychedelic, the songs breathe with a otherworldly sadness and heart. Barbed, sophisticated arrangements flower in every direction. The vintage-perfect sound palette would be window dressing if not for the songs themselves: fresh, vital, and above all catchier than the flu. 'Cold Hot Plumbs' is a strange, beautiful, and oddly infectious addition to Dwyer’s oeuvre, and not one to be missed.

TRACK LISTING

1. Exactly What You Think
2. What Cheer
3. The Mirror
4. Jet In Jungle
5. Der Mond
6. The Frog
7. Cough Pills
8. Structure Image Exterior (Edit)
9. Grape Basement
10. Very
11. Cone
12. Deep Bore Drill Worker
13. Mega Structure
14. Transmute

POW! is re-chromed and ready to soundtrack your dystopian near future. Harsh neon synths battle with zipline guitars for space above a dark and teeming cityscape. Your guide is always in the shadows, you can’t make out his face but you hear his crazed diatribe as he wards off all affronts. Razor-sharp punk at its core, Fight Fire is fleshed out with inventive and catchy synth work—and the floating bits of atmospheric expansion between tracks only heighten the paranoid atmosphere. These tunes have a sci-fi depth, a moody bite, and a startling clarity sharpened to a point by the wizard hand of Chris Woodhouse, who helmed the magnetization. Recommended listening for future-punk teens and grown adults alike.

Blow-out enthusiasts, make ready to scarf this down without chewing:
“How many licks does it take to get to the spider egg in the center of this sugar bomb?
“You got the jitters, and dude, there’s blood on your shirt.
“I like gore with my goth.
“Hey, you got your pop sensibilities on my explosion!”

Strong vocals à la Modern English, back-beat complete and foamy bass bleached onto half-inch tape specially for Castle Face. Seven headstrong tunes to clatter your phonograph needle. I’ve always loved Matt Jones’s (ex- Blasted Canyons) vocal stylings, rich with tenor muscle flexes. Over the top in its endeavors and reaching, always reaching. Primal gas-guzzler drumming, center speaker from Adam Cimino sets the ear up for a beating. And hell, it’s got the old (and I mean old) bass player, Mark Kaiser, from Mayyors; solid-state aggression at its mid-low, knuckle-dragging finest. A slap in the brain done up nicely here on wax. Enjoy. - John Dwyer.

“I believe Destruction Unit to be one of the most important underground bands in America. The live shows vary from dense chaos to dumbstruck pandemonium. The volume is always colossal. The spectacle, dramatic. “Putting microphones on these Arizona weirdos is similar to trying to get a decent recording of a soccer riot-getting Ryan [Rousseau] to sing into our microphone like shooting a hummingbird with a spitball from across a gorge… but we’ve done it. Polished up and pushing the red, we present this deathless comet captured to tape. Headphones on, lowlights flickering, spliff in hand-you are a warrior on the dawn of a new perilous passage…until you have to flip the LP. Enjoy.” - John Dwyer.

TRACK LISTING

1. The World On Drugs
2. Slow Death Sounds
3. Bumpy Road
4. Night Loner

On the tail of their breakout second LP Midnight Passenger, Memphis-based punk cyclone Ex-Cult delivers a brand new batch of bruisers. Chris Shaw lends a sneering, spitting toughness to the proceedings while the band flays riffs in loose, hairy, mosh-inducing menace behind him, touching on post-punk, psych sprawl and early-’80s hardcore while remaining beholden to none. They have the power to convert even the most jaded and bored concertgoer into a sweaty mess in the pit. Punks, skate rats, scenesters, skinheads, hardcore kids, druggies-so many disparate groups dig this band it’s like an MRR cartoon waiting to happen. The adrenal-enhancers on Cigarette Machine are road warriors already, having been honed on the band’s recent tour that no doubt laid waste to a town nearby. The only problem with this sterling batch of sluggers is that it’s over too quick.

TRACK LISTING

1. Clinical Study
2. Cigarette Machine
3. Rats In The Gas Tank
4. Meda House Company
5. Dripping Mouth
6. Your Mask

By now you should know what you’re in for here: an eardrum-toasting take to tape of the mighty Ty Segall Band, captured during two nights in San Francisco at the barely-pushing-medium-sized venue The Rickshaw Stop. Rowdy crowd, meet stacks of amplifiers—Ty, Charlie, Mikal and Emily came to singe your ears off. There have been live recordings of Ty before, of course, but never so crisply and fully realized as this scorching platter of fuzz.

As always, the cover artwork showcases beautiful black and white photos shot to film at the venue by Castle Face’s favorite lensman Brian Pritchard. As always, the tape takes are tweaked and saturated to perfection by their incredible crack team of engineers and knobgoblins. Live in San Francisco features jams from throughout Mr. Segall’s torrential output of the past few years, including a take of the first single “Feel” off his great new record Manipulator. It’s the next best thing to getting in to the show, which is getting harder and harder with Ty these days…

TRACK LISTING

1. Wave Goodbye
2. Slaughterhouse
3. Death
4. I Bought My Eyes
5. Feel
6. The Hill
7. Thank God For The Sinners
8. Skin
9. Standing At The Station
10. What's Inside Your Heart

“You like anchovies? Morning breath? Dried blood? The sun-up residue after a night of hard drugs? Well, you’re gonna love Icky Boyfriends.

“I painted houses for a couple years with an old-school San Francisco artist / musician dude who would let me run the boombox while we worked. This was right around the time I became obsessed with Icky Boyfriends. I would play the shit all day and wax about how I much I loved them. He piped up one day and asked what they were called again. ‘Icky Boyfriends,’ I said. ‘Oh yeah, I remember those guys…man, they could clear a room.’ “That’s the Ickys—an acquired taste for people who maybe have eyes that feel natural when trolling the gutter for nutrition. These are stories of strung-out super heroes singing the praises of the old school San Francisco freak scene. Hilarious at times, genius always and as scuzzy as anything you could ever hear. “Live in San Francisco was recorded masterfully by the Castle Face engineers team at the grand SF Eagle. There are many classic favorites here, as well as a couple new jams (I challenge anyone to tell the difference). We’ve kept it primal and simple as the Ickys always have. What a treat, now let’s eat!” - John Dwyer

TRACK LISTING

1. 22 Fillmore
2. Miss Nevada
3. Cuckoo
4. Ecophobia
5. My Disciples
6. I'm Not Fascinating
7. Frank's Mom
8. Don't Read The Bay Guardian
9. I Was?
10. Toenails
11. Even Richard Nixon's Got Soul
12. Bay Colony Baby
13. Rock And Roll Asshole
14. Resurrection Ale
15. Pigs 1
16. Pigs 2
17. No Duh
18. Drug Wars (Original)

Seth Sutton has been ripping the shit out of terse Telecaster-sharp riffs and Devo-indebted angular rhythms with Useless Eaters since dude was 18 years old. A young protégé of Jay Reatard, Sutton’s home-fried concoctions are sharp, corrosive mini-masterpieces that drive you to flick cigarettes and push strangers. Psycho-sexual, serrated vocals; thin, acidic guitars; rubbery bass and hot-to-tape traps lather the whole disc. Sutton delivers a really ripping crew of tunes this time around, kicking off with the supremely heavy “American Cars” and not letting up ’til the side break—these are glass-crunching gems with just the right amount of crud to cut your lip a little. A great alienated vibe flows throughout, along with some really sticky melodies, too. Going out under the neon tonight? Take this with you.

Castle Face announces a loogie-shined re-release of Coachwhips’ Get Yer Body Next Ta Mine on CD and vinyl!

Following last year’s reissue of Hands on the Controls, the label continues dusting off the vaults, unearthing another screeching, swaggering beast. The tracks have been re-tweaked to taste (a pinch of capsicum) and what a picture emerges—the scuzz and squall cracking ever so slightly and revealing a coffee-can full of earworms underneath. The zombie-shuffle come-on of the title track is worth the price of admission alone, but there’s adrenalized bludgeoners here as well: “1000 Years,” “UFO, Please Take Her Home” and “Yes, I’m Down” all capture the band at their sweat-soaked best.

TRACK LISTING

1. I Put It In, Way Down South
2. 1000 Years
3. Like Food, It Feeds
4. Tonight's The Night
5. Just One Time
6. Manner In Which The Girl Was Treated
7. UFO, Please Take Her Home
8. Hey Stiffie
9. Couldn't Find Love
10. Nife Fight
11. My Baby, I Killed Her
12. Yes, I'm Down
13. Other Man
14. Get Yer Body Next Ta Mine

“The first time I heard Dan Melchior I felt betrayed that no one had turned my ear to his strange sounds before then. The LP was called Hello, I’m Dan Melchior and it starts with the line ‘I once did mushrooms with Björk…’ Goddamn, he had me at mushrooms.

“Since then, I’ve been blessed with unearthing several of his masterpieces from LP bins all around the world. Dan has made mighty and copious marks upon the world of wax. Every record is a wade through the primordial poem- brain that is Dan Melchior’s creative force.

“What we have here is a fabulous collection of classic Melchior und das Menace. We asked, he let us dig through the archive, and lo and behold: Hunger, a grip of unreleased Melchior gold. It will take less than ten seconds for the high to kick in after the rush of greasy guitars consume you at the get-go of ‘A Wizard Doesn’t Need a Computer.’ And yes, he’s taking the piss. “I’ve also been lucky enough to do some touring with him and his lovely wife and co-conspirator Letha. They may be the only white cats I know who don’t look weird in dashikis. I wish I was kidding…quite comely. Letha has been duking it out with a heavy illness, and although strong as ever, the bills are piling up and they could always use a hand. A portion of the proceeds from the sales of this record will go to aid them in this fight. Here’s a link to the website, should you feel the urge to donate otherwise: http://melchiorfund. blogspot.com/

“So please dig in with open ears and hearts. Let Dan melt your brains as he has ours at Castle Face.” - John Dwyer.

Cut from the cloth of early Soft Machine and Kevin Ayersisms, garagearray is a lofty, loopy flight in a candy-flossclouded sky, with an ever-present darkness just below the surface. It’s wonderfully off the cuff, at times reminiscent of a Syd Barrett session where the band must’ve just closed their eyes and felt it out in the dark, coming together in all the right moments in the nick of time.

For 'Garagearray', Dylan Shearer is joined by Petey Dammit (Thee Oh Sees) on bass and Noel von Harmonson (Comets on Fire) on drums. Produced by Eric Bauer (Ty Segall, Mikal Cronin, etc.), the recording maintains a lighter-than-life vibration, like a breeze weaving through a tree far overhead. The production smacks with that lostin- time quality of a BBC session piloted by a natural-onthe- knobs genius. Shearer has a sort of shy quality that seems to fall away when he sings these songs live. It’s really quite lovely and full of sad and poetic moments.

Castle Face is very proud to co-release garagearray with Empty Cellar Records, and to celebrate the occasion, the labels have come up with two special limited, hand-printed jacket / colored vinyl editions featuring artwork by Michael Sean Coleman.

Our lad John P. Dwyer has been lancing eardrums with Thee Oh Sees in an ever-escalating flurry of records for the past six years. Since the release of The Master’s Bedroom Is Worth Spending a Night In announced a new loud era (and excepting a few momentary detours into home-baked territory - Dog Poison and Castlemania, for example), Dwyer and company have pummelled a bit harder each time out, cementing their reputation as a live force to be reckoned with and leaving legions sweaty and bruised in the process. Late last year, after years of relentlessly touring the world, the word got out… Dwyer’s moving to Los Angeles (fear not, still California!) and Thee Oh Sees are taking a much-needed hiatus with a shifting of gears ahead and a new album on the way. This is that album.

Drop was recorded in a banana-ripening warehouse (no joke) with hair-farming studio warlock Chris Woodhouse playing drums; it’s also graced with the presence of talented gurus Mikal Cronin, Greer McGettrick and Casafis adding horns and vocals. The result pushes the familiar polarities of the group farther outward than ever before. Opener “Penetrating Eye” might be the heaviest Oh Sees song yet, “Transparent World” and “Put Some Reverb On My Brother” foam with seasick fuzz, and yet the ballads, like the harpsichorded “King’s Nose” and the lush and stately closer “The Lens,” extend their oeuvre into mellotronic, far-out pop with delicacy and grace.

This schizophrenia heralds the man and the band into an unseen future in classic Dwyer fashion - restless energy harnessed into exquisitely crafted jams, with an emphasis on the pensive and the paranoid in turns.

TRACK LISTING

1. Penetrating Eye
2. Encrypted Bounce
3. Savage Victory
4. Put Some Reverb On My Brother
5. Drop
6. Camera (Queer Sound)
7. King's Nose
8. Transparent World
9. The Lens

Burnt Ones have been Castle Face favorites for years, and last year’s You’ll Never Walk Alone on Burger was the one for which they kicked themelves repeatedly for not getting to first.

The label is very honored to present their third record, Gift. Far more psychedelic than their previous work, the album may be a bit of a surprise to fans on first listen. A potent blend of wide-eyed strummers on shifting sands is punctuated by blinking oscillators, left turns into wispy sound collage and tape manipulations, drug-rug-wrapped lushness and telephone whispers from a supremely stoned sounding Mark Tester, the guide through this cultish and vaguely sinister headphone-scape. It’s a woozy and a woolly one.

TRACK LISTING

1. Pulse
2. Money Man
3. Submarine
4. Bye Bye Floating Charm
5. Spell Breakers
6. Is It Over
7. Airplane Ride
8. Caterpillar
9. New Heroes Of Subscription Services
10. Mirror Too / You & Me
11. Sleeping Inn
12. Pineapple Program No. 31
13. US Wheels
14. Morning Drum

Trin Tran: The one-man band without a plan, hurtling through the songiverse without a map or compass. For years now, Trin Tran has been creeping out from deep space (America’s Midwest) and bouncing songs off satellites. These transmissions are a testament to his lovely weirdness. This new EP is an injection of strange-pop—less garage than his recent full-length on Ty Segall’s imprint God? Records and more the bastard child of Duran Duran and Bruce Haack.

Riskier vocal delivery, heavier synths. Stronger, swifter, silver-er. Mute Records would have licked their glossy lips over this meal in the early ’80s. Recorded by Eric Landmark of San Francisco scrapsynth alums Numbers and Ricky Reimer of Madison, WI, angularities Transformer Lootbag, mixed and mastered by John Dietrich of Deerhoof, Far Reaches truly harkens from the 6th Dimension. It’s a new era for the mask and its one-man armada.

Recorded at home in the fall of 2013 with a variety of synthesizers, drum machines and assorted handmade electronics, 'Damaged Bug' is Oh Sees mastermind John Dwyer’s latest bit of cracked pop alchemy. The project is the cure to the ailment of too much guitar for too long. Fizzing and sputtering like a glowing, temperamental cockpit control panel, Dwyer bunkered deep in a blinking laboratory, penning songs about the long arc of our travels across space and time. Propulsive beats and synthetic veneers coat laser-guided melodies reflecting off shiny metal surfaces while instrumental interludes pop in and out like breaks in the asteroid belt.

A far-out side of our main man—nocturnal, hard-wired, and chrome-plated. Hubba Bubba features original artwork by Deirdre White.

BEHOLD - when we introduced this live series we spoke of lightning in a jar - this here's a thunderstorm. Ty Segall's new stoner thrashers FUZZ not only totally murdered this set at San Francisco leather-daddy hangout The SF Eagle, but it was Ty's birthday and he blew out his birthday cake candles mid song, didn't miss a beat, and that moment is forever etched into this record (we took a photo too). The place was insanely packed and they sound like the agile wolf-men they are up close and personal - Ty, mic wailing through a guitar amp and dominating drums like it's the easiest thing in the world, Charlie - guitar set to Hendrix-meets-Hawkwind melter-mode, and Roland keeping his bass firmly lodged in the groove - the jams are thick and wooly, we got some great photos of the night - man, this was one to remember and we're super excited we captured such a freakishly good performance. As always, captured hot to tape and mixed and massaged by our crack team of speaker-freakers (Chris Woodhouse, Eric Bauer, Bob Marshall, and John Dwyer) and shot to nicely grainy (real) film by Brian Pritchard.

Minneapolis riff-scientists The Blind Shake have been troweling out detuned psych-noise for a poor man’s decade. Known for murderous live sets and polite post-show interactions, the trio has gained the respect of dive bar owners, bookies, clergy, and no-name snitches nationwide. They've collaborated with psychedelic legend Michael Yonkers as well as downstroke warrior John Reis. They are a force to be reckoned with as many shall see on their upcoming tour with Thee Oh Sees, and they have a brandy new full-length coming for Castle Face, Key To A False Door!

A collection of unearthed demos and repolished old tracks, out September 24th on Castle Face Records Featuring original artwork by Shalo P

No one sounds like The Herms.
No one sounds like Matthew Lutz.

The Herms are a smudged window into a neighboring dimension to ours, Berkeley. Even though it's right next door to Oakland and San Francisco, it may as well be a million musical-miles away. Back when they were playing around town, it felt to me like not too many in my scene "got" this band. I thought people should have been going crazy for these guys. The local rag gave them accolades (a curse perhaps?), and even a cursory listen to this collection should clue you in to how great they were. This may be one of the few times that I have to concur with a music writer - this band is amazing. They are sun, heartbreak, pop and fried-static all in one master package, evolving from song to song, and I think they're fantastic.

The Herms did have a proper release years ago, but on CD only (gasp!) and frankly I've always been in love with these earlier, rawer 8 track Tascam demos. They sound like the band did when you were standing in front of them. I love The Herms and have been waiting a looooong time to do a proper release for them. Sorry it took exhuming their songs from the grave before I was ready. Please listen loudly with the windows open, so maybe that music writer may pass by, hear it and think, "Finally! I told you so, you assholes". John Dwyer 7-10-13.

TRACK LISTING

Power Joystick (original)
The Organization (Tascam Demo)
Volleyball
Now Everyone
Drop Out
All The Things You Do
When We Comin' Through
Here We Are
Art School Groove Exit Theme
Come On Down
Kalypso
This Operation (Acoustic Demo)

"The year was 1996 (a guess really), when I had LA MACHINE play in our Olneyville warehouse space. It was the first time I danced in front of other people. (I was later told I was really good). I think maybe it was the first time I can recall where I stood in front of something I would consider modern psychedelic music. Not a rehash of some ghost from the past but something new to me.

We had a plethora of hardcore, improv, and noise bands in New England... but this... this was something different. It was churning and it had a haunting floor-scraping ass on it. It had hints of nausea and a cyclic simplicity that to this day I still love and listen to often. Loudly, stoned, driving through the desert, laughing. They played and my friends skated the quarter pipe my flate mate had built...it was my first successful party and I thank La Machine for it.

RICK PELLTIER and JOHN LOPER have compiled these tunes for us to release post-mortem, but who knows...maybe they will come back to haunt a warehouse near you...OoOoOoOH. Every song reminds me of when I was younger, stronger, and faster. But now I know enough to realize how lucky I actually was to have this stuff around me. And now you can too. Enjoy." -John Dwyer (4.30.13).

Lovingly remastered from the original cassette with new original art by WILLIAM KEIHN.

Perhaps you've heard of the trajectory our beloved friend Greer McGettrick and her cohorts in The Mallard have traced across the current musical landscape…a promisingly home-baked debut full of twists and turns that nonetheless felt of the time and lived in…tours and tours and tours…songs on splits and compilations, including both Son Of Flex and our covers record of The Velvet Underground and Nico…shifting band members and band members shifting instruments…the now infamous Noise Pop performance where they played as Throbbing Gristle at one of the oldest and most venerated venues in San Francisco, The Great American Music Hall, to a thoroughly bewildered audience…all the while getting faster darker and sharper…and after coming back from SXSW, the sudden dissolution - with an album finished, and already being printed and pressed with us, their now-swan song Finding Meaning In Deference.

It's a conversation interrupted to be sure, but one that you should be listening in on. There's an unapologetic maelstrom of dark energy simmering beneath the surface of these tunes, but it never subsumes some of the group's best songwriting efforts yet. The myriad guitar/vocal interplay is sharp as ever, the pissed-off is turned up to 10, but there's an ever-present bop and hook to even the most bummed-out tunes here. If you never got to see them, I'm sorry - but this record catches them in excellent form at the zenith of their powers, a guitar somehow hung from the rafters for the rest of eternity - we're sad to see them go, but thrilled to share this excellent record with the world.

A whole new LP from TIM PRESLEY, will be sure to please fans of last year's Family Perfume Vol.1 + 2.

"Heavy on the warp, mellow to the yellow, with perhaps even more earworms this time around, shoe-strung together and laced with adenoidal whimsy as only Mr. Presley can pull off. I have cyclops vision now. But I’m not a giant. I changed my name and body only, and stabbed my social nous in the right ear. I still read fear but there are no police this year. I can repeat the same dream. I can let birds talk to me. I’m in jail. I have love and a whistle. I lay where the lotus lay and then spring the frozen flowers on any giving day. I apologize to those put in the trees, but I was gathering the Cyclops reap. In the span of 4 1/2 years. I’ve lived in two different apartments and have used three different rooms during this time. All in Echo Park, Los Angeles, CA, only a couple miles from one another. After the death of my father in 2008 I started writing and recording non-stop in these rooms. I can’t say it was directly because of that trauma, but I think deep down it might have much to do about it. This record was initially going to be a collection of the many songs trapped between the 4 White Fence LP’s. As i was putting that together, there were more coming. a better crop. i couldn’t stop. So, instead of a retrospective i said “Fuck It”. might as well use the most current songs of the bunch. For the exception of “Make Them Dinner At Our Shoes” which is from 2009.” - Tim Presley.

John Dwyer and his Oh Sees (aka OCS) reissue the "Suck Blood" album on his own Castle Face imprint. Produced by Kelley Stoltz using all green energy (no joke), the album serves as a half-way point between the band's "Cool Death Of The Island Raiders" album and their most recent material. Thee Oh Sees are the underground punk rock of 2009!!

TRACK LISTING

1. It Killed Mom 02:42
2. Sucks Blood 03:42
3. Iceberg 02:58
4. The Gouger 01:53
5. You Make Me Sick, Oh Yeah 03:41
6. [Untitled Drone #] 01:30
7. The Killer 03:50
8. Ship 02:42
9. What The Driven Drink 02:05
10. Invitation 03:14
11. Golden Phones 03:30
12. [Untitled Drone #2] 01:39