The Odyssey Cult has its roots in Miller’s improvised solo electric guitar performances dating back to 2013. Though still almost entirely instrumental, the two volume debut expands his original concept of ‘solo electric guitar performance’ to something much broader in narrative scope and is as indebted to the great minimalists and loop pioneers as it is to guitar oriented Krautrock, cult film soundtrack music and the great feedback-riding, amp destroyers of the 60s to present day.

In departure from the more structured song work of most of Miller’s bands over the last 16 years, The Odyssey Cult albums are based in improvisation. Loops, cut-ups, collages and tonal performances (rather than melodic ones,) often form the engine of movement and narrative. The Odyssey Cult is the sound of the collapse of a prehistoric age. Giant amplifiers and fuzz bass loops smash into one another until only crackling ANS transmissions are left floating above the fray. A prayer of poetry scrawled in feedback, a painting in sand of the dreams of imaginary birds, and raising the noise-rock quotient significantly, the rhythm section of Feral Ohms makes multiple appearances throughout the two albums as foil to Miller’s screaming amps, echoing extended guitar oriented power trio freak outs like White Heaven’s ‘Levitation’, a deconstructed mid 70s Crazy Horse and the heat-blistered primal workouts of High Rise. Vol.1 and Vol.2 are an artistic statement intended to be sat down and fully engaged with, a journey, an epic poem, a meditation, a long rich dream that loosens all sense of space and time- ultimately confusing history, moment and self. Those that take the time to enter and feel sound, creation and performance will surely be rewarded by the joy and beauty of The Odyssey Cult.

For fans of Ash Ra Temple, Popol Vuh, 70’s Soundtracks, Fripp & Eno, Guru Guru UFO, Faust, Hendrix Woodstock feedback meltdowns, The great PSF power trios, Flying Saucer Attack, This Heat and disorienting ambient music.

TRACK LISTING

1. Nausicaa | Sandymount
2. Poseidon
3. The Heaven's Black
4. Sirens
5. Far From The Others, Washed His Hands In The Foaming Surf
6. Ulysses

The Odyssey Cult 'Vol. 3' ignites visceral fires of fuzz, pumped-up motorik, shimmering noise and hazy vocals, just in time to send up the last intoxicating smoke of summer. As for those of us still piecing our skulls back together after the ecstatic ’90s-pummel of Ethan Miller’s previous project (the zonked supergroup of Orcutt Shelley Miller), we forgive ourselves for not anticipating this, a meltdown-psych re-fusion of Ethan and Ben Flashman, two of the principals in Comets On Fire, the premier purveyors of early-aughts American guitar mayhem.

Featuring Ethan Miller (Howlin Rain, Heron Oblivion) on guitar, loops, vocals, Ben Flashman (Comets On Fire) on bass, Steve Shelley (Sonic Youth) on drums, Anthony Taibi (Carlton Melton/White Manna) on keys, Zoh Amba on sax and Brigid Dawson (OSEES), Paula Frazer (Tarnation), Inna Showalter (Magic Fig) on vocals.

Miller and company layer psychedelic murk of the highest order into a neon rock monolith, its components spanning coasts and generations of musicians. Depending what angle you look at it, Volume 3 glitters with facets reflecting all corners of sonic psychedelia, fusing the best of all post-hippy/punk eras, complete with earworms that sound equally great by the pool, on headphones, or blasting in the sled cruising down the 5, the 10, or whatever freeway of your dreams. Whether or not you’ve heard Orcutt Shelley Miller, Comets On Fire, Tarnation, or the OSEES, this LP stands out like a life buoy (or, occasionally, a shark fin) in a sea of wax.

TRACK LISTING

1. The Yeti’s Eyes
2. Sun Damage
3. On Neon Tigers
4. Our First Trip
5. Leviathan
6. Back To The Cave
7. The Night Archer
8. Ammenglade

Of Monsters and Men began as the solo project of Nanna Bryndís Hilmarsdóttir however it quickly grew with the additions of friends Ragnar “Raggi” Þórhallsson (co-singer/guitarist), Brynjar Leifsson (guitarist), Arnar Rósenkranz Hilmarsson (drummer), Árni Guðjónsson (piano/accordion player) and Kristján Páll Kristjánsson (bassist)

Crafting epic songs inspired by their amazing homeland, fairy tales and personal history, the band went from battle of the bands winners to the breakthrough act at this year’s Iceland Airwaves and SXSW festival. The bands self-released, first single ‘Little Talks’ to date has sold an impressive 400,000 copies and received 3 million views on YouTube.

Of Monsters and Men continue to make waves among fans and tastemakers alike. ‘My Head is an Animal’ has already enjoyed huge success in Iceland and Europe. Mirroring that feat in America ‘My Head is an Animal’ entered the iTunes alternative chart at #1 and album chart at #2 however went on to top the album charts one week later. And in Germany the album debuted at #4 on their official album chart.

Along with a penchant for crafting rising epic pop numbers ‘My Head is an Animal’ has beautifully delicate moments and signal a fully-fledged band destined to win the hearts of musical lovers worldwide.

STAFF COMMENTS

Ryan says: A stern bit of icelandic pop right here, it's a bit folky but they manage to turn humble folk into a collection of sing-out-loud anthems. It's brilliant!

TRACK LISTING

1. Dirty Paws
2. King And Lionheart
3.Mountain Sound
Slow And Steady
5.From Finner
6. Little Talks
7. Six Weeks
8. Love Love Love
9. Your Bones
10. Sloom
11. Lakehouse
12. Yellow Light

'All Is Love and Pain in the Mouse Parade'. It may sound a little strange, but the title and beating heart of Icelandic indie-folk collective Of Monsters and Men’s fourth album hits a lot closer to home than you’d expect. A tapestry of stories, moments, and conversations, the album explores how love and pain intertwine. Feelings that might seem at odds with each other, but co-exist simultaneously and need one another. Tales both big and small — from the loneliness and longing of living in a block surrounded by strangers, to missed connections in a grocery store, to the lives and losses of a community of mice in a vacant house during winter.

Of Monsters and Men went from Reykjavík to the global stage with their breakout 2011 debut 'My Head Is An Animal', which propelled them from Icelandic indie darlings to international chart-toppers. The album’s breakout single 'Little Talks', a defining song for a generation, now boasts over 1 billion Spotify streams.

Amid their meteoric rise, the band released their sophomore album 'Beneath The Skin' in 2015, which debuted in the Top 3 of the Billboard 200 and was accompanied by a surprise cameo on HBO’s huge hit series Game of Thrones. Their cinematic sound has popped up everywhere from The Hunger Games to The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, while their festival appearances — Coachella, Glastonbury, Lollapalooza, and more.

Over a decade in, the band have gone from folk-tinged newcomers to digital-era mainstays, with 9 million monthly listeners on Spotify and a new generation discovering that Iceland’s beauty extends beyond fjords and thermal baths. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Television Love
2. Dream Team
3. The Actor
4. Tuna In A Can
5. Barefoot In Snow
6. Fruit Bat
7. Kamikaze
8. The Towering Skyscraper At The End Of The Road
9. Ordinary Creature
10. Styrofoam Cathedral
11. The Block
12. Mouse Parade
13. The End

'Aethermead', the newest offering and 20th full-length album from of Montreal, finds the band revisiting sounds from their early years, while still pushing artistic boundaries with their iconic style of pop & indie rock. Celebrated for their unique and prolific output, frontperson and primary songwriter / multi-instrumentalist Kevin Barnes recorded the album at Brooklyn’s Honey Jar studios with audio engineer, Drew Vandenberg (Faye Webster, Toro y Moi), with basic tracking done live to a 16-track tape machine with Barnes’ longtime live band. “I wanted to capture a quick moment together and to make on-the-fly, spontaneous creative decisions,” says Barnes. “It felt very liberating and exhilarating to have to start and finish an album in a month’s time.”

The result shimmers with indie pop elements of their 2004 release, 'Satanic Panic in the Attic', as well as the raw, live energy of 2013’s 'Lousy With Sylvianbriar'. Inspired partly from a recent move to Brooklyn, NY and a yearning for community, the album marks a shift in Barnes’ daily routines, with the album’s title referencing a section of Prospect Park called the Nethermead, where Barnes walks their dog every day. “I started a meditation practice soon after moving to help me self-regulate,” says Barnes. “I began to imagine I was sending all my destructive and useless thoughts/energies into the ether.”

Barnes’ beautiful and melodic chord progressions are on full display with tracks like 'Already Dreaming', as well as the straight-up rock & roll banger 'Take The Form'. Other highlights include the loungey 'My Zhe Zhe', as well as the bluntly sexual lead single, 'When'.

From the breakthrough brilliance of 2007’s 'Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?' to a steady run of boundary-pushing releases, of Montreal have remained fearless sonic shapeshifters—equally at home crafting hook-laden anthems as they are exploring surreal, experimental textures. The band's prolific output has led to numerous late-night TV appearances—including The Late Show with David Letterman and Late Night with Jimmy Fallon—and brilliant collaborations with artists such as Solange, Janelle Monáe, and Jon Brion.

On stage, they transform concerts into immersive spectacles of color, costume, and cathartic energy. The band has performed across the globe, gracing festival stages at Coachella, Primavera, Lollapalooza, Vive Latino and beyond, while also amassing hundreds of millions of streams worldwide. With a new tour on the horizon, of Montreal continue to celebrate their legacy while pushing boldly forward.

TRACK LISTING

1. Already Dreaming
2. Wanting on Air
3. Listen to Music and Cry
4. My Zhe Zhe
5. Take the Form
6. When
7. Hack it Up
8. Lacan in the Family
9. Having a Moment
10. From the Font of You
11. To Nothing’s Reward
12. Now We Cringe at the Thought
13. Dismissal Mosaics

On Of Montreal’s latest album, 'Lady on the Cusp', Kevin Barnes shapeshifts between genres with each song. On tracks like 'Rude Girl on Rotation', Barnes revisits sounds of late 60’s guitar pop & psychedelia reminiscent of 2013’s 'Lousy With Sylvianbriar', while 'Young Hearts Bleed Free' and 'Music Hurts The Head' showcase Barnes’ love of experimental funk pop that has been present throughout much of the band’s discography. 'Lady on the Cusp' is another exciting listen from one of the most prolific and influential artists making music today.

TRACK LISTING

1. Music Hurts The Head
2. 2 Depressed 2 Fuck
3. Rude Girl On Rotation
4. Yung Hearts Bleed Free
5. Soporific Cell
6. I Can Read Smoke
7. PI$$ PI$$
8. Sea Mines That Mr Gone
9. Poetry Surf
10. Genius In The Wind

Off World presents the final album in its trilogy of surreal and spacious leftfield electronics. "A stellar project headed by Sandro Perri, one of the most singular producers in contemporary music" (Boomkat), this third volume is another distinctive collection of tracks constructed from semi-improvised ensemble recordings made over the past decade with a varied cast of co-conspirators. Drew Brown, Matthew Cooper, Susumu Mukai and Andrew Zukerman join Perri again on a variety of synths and machines, along with violinist Jesse Zubot (Tanya Tagaq, Fond Of Tigers). Perri also continues to add organ and piano to the mix, while Volume 3 notably features first-time Off World contributors Nicole Rampersaud on trumpet and Martin Arnold on guitar, both mainstays of Toronto's vibrant improv and out-music scenes. The Quietus calls Off World "genuinely explorative…the musical equivalent of a Dali-esque landscape" which through all sorts of genre-defying twists and turns, at times evokes "off-kilter, late Miles Davis ambience". Off World 3 doubles down on that jazz-adjacent trope in certain respects, while holding fast to Pitchfork's dictum that Perri "cultivates his own genreless brand of futurism." Marked by longer tracks than previous collections, three of the album's five songs clock in around the 10-minute mark, where overtly improvised instrumental playing wends its way across alternately bubbling and woozy electronic beds. "Impulse Controller" is a languidly skewed rhumba where ambling melodic undercurrents and dubby electronic pointillism provide a dulcet promenade for Rampersaud's Miles-esque trumpet excursions. "Ludic Loop" see-saws along in a slow synthy two-step, punctuated by Perri's restrained piano chords and Arnold's fried electric guitar. "Empasse" is perhaps most reminiscent of earlier Off World collections, though again slowed and stretched, with oozing synth bass ostinatos counterposed by ambient layers of viola and violin filigree from Zubot. These three centerpiece longform tracks each highlight one of the album's instrumental improvisers, and taken together, make for the most scintillating sedate and ruminant album in the trilogy. Off World 3 sounds as sui generis as ever, but in wrapping up the series, Perri sprinkles the project's emblematic alien surrealism with decidedly anthropic elements and temporalities. This final volume in the trilogy could also be seen as a re-statement of the politico-aesthetic mission that Pitchfork aptly celebrates in its glowing reviews of Perri's two most recent solo albums, In Another Life (2018) and Soft Landing (2019), that were released between Off World 2 and the present volume: a uniquely purposeful, subtly detailed cannon of songs "busy, vibrant, and bursting with life, but that aren't ever in a rush to get anywhere". 

TRACK LISTING

1. Orientation (3:45)
2. Impulse Controller (10:49)
3. Terrascope (1:03)
4. Ludic Loop (9:55)
5. Empasse (8:53)

Three new releases vinyl albums bundled together at one very special price!!

Off World - 1
Automatisme - Momentform Accumulations
Jason Sharp - A Boat Upon Its Blood

OFF!, the punk braintrust formed in 2010 by Keith Morris (ex-Black Flag, Circle Jerks) and Dimitri Coats (ex-Burning Brides), will release their first new album in eight years, Free LSD on Fat Possum Records.

The band’s powerful new rhythm section: bassist Autry Fulbright II (...And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead) and drummer Justin Brown (Thundercat, Herbie Hancock) accompany the release. The injection of new energy into the band’s signature high-anxiety hardcore is palpable and volatile, adding a new swing to the music’s incendiary thrust.

Combining reckless improvisational energy with the combined skills of four deadly sharp musicians (vocalist Keith Morris, guitarist Dimitri Coats, bassist Steven McDonald, and drummer Mario Rubalcaba), OFF! have dug down through a decades’ worth of accumulated stylistic garbage, and rediscovered the stripped down core of noise, speed, and rock & roll that punk seemed to have lost forever. Their third full-length studio recording, “Wasted Years”, is the most direct and unprocessed embodiment of OFF!’s mission yet.

TRACK LISTING

1. Void You Out
2. Red White And Black
3. Legion Of Evil
4. No Easy Escape
5. Over Our Heads
6. Hypnotized
7. It Didn't Matter To Me
8. Exorcised
9. Death Trip On The Party Train
10. I Won't Be A Casualty
11. All I Can Grab
12. Time's Not On Your Side
13. Meet Your God
14. Mr. Useless
15. You Must Be Damned
16. Wasted Years
17. In Your Arms (Bonus Track - CD Only)

Those crazy cats at Wah Wah Wino have recalled Officer John back into their fold for another excursion into dreamy baggy downbeat. Think Massive Attack meets Erika De Casier with a bit of a Manchester's rain-soaked gloom and melanchly. Proper songs, high fidelity production. It kinda eschews the usual Wah Wah Wino tomfoolery for something, dare-I-say, more slightly accessible and (HEAVEN FORBID)... commercial? It's certainly a triumph by Officer John.  Includes a suitably baggy Morgan Buckley re-work n all. Top stuff.

TRACK LISTING

Stay
Pass
Handle
Awake
You
Stay (morgan Buckley Remix)

Blackest Ever Black presents to you 'Dead Unique', an album by Officer! recorded in 1995 but - outrageously, inexplicably - never before released into the public domain. This then is not a reissue or a revival; it’s a new record that just happens to have been maturing in the cask for, oh, a little shy of 20 years. It also happens to be a lost classic of English art-rock, and the crowning achievement in the career of its mercurial creator, Mick Hobbs. Londoner Hobbs’ roots are in the fecund RIO scene of the late ‘70s and early 1980s, initially as guitarist in The Work (alongside Bill Gilonis, Rick Wilson and Henry Cow’s Tim Hodgkinson), and subsequent related groupings The Lowest Note, The Lo Yo Yo, and The Momes. Over the course of the decade he became closely associated with This Heat and their Cold Storage studio in Brixton, working with the likes of Flaming Tunes, Family Fodder, Catherine Jauniaux and Zeena Parkins, to name but a few. Officer! - the project that this incorrigible collaborator and connector calls his own - surfaced in 1982 with a cassette tape entitled 'Eight New Songs By Mick Hobbs'. It marked the blossoming of a singular writer and improvisor, with a gift for plangent melody, ingenious arrangement and lyrics at once caustic and courtly, playful and profound (two songs from this tape, ‘Life At The Water’s Edge’ and ‘Dogface’, have been remastered for a limited edition 7” release on Blackest Ever Black later this year). The Cold Storage-recorded 'Ossification' LP arrived a year later, followed by 'Cough' (1985) and 'Yes Yes No No Yes No Yes' (1988). Megaphone Records, responsible for 'Ossification'’s recent 30th anniversary reissue, rightly describe it as “one of the most unusual, pleasurable and character-filled ‘pop’ records anyone has heard… a timeless anomaly in the history of recorded music.”

By the start of the 1990s Hobbs had joined Jad Fair’s Half Japanese (he continues to play in that group as well as Strobe Talbot, a trio with Fair and Benb Gallaher). In the early months of ’95, Half Japanese were in Baltimore to record their 'Hot' LP; Hobbs stayed on to cut the bulk of the songs that comprise Officer!’s 'Dead Unique' - songs drawn from a rich store of material written and refined in the seven years since the band’s last outing - with a talented assemblage of local and visiting musicians. Returning to the UK, Hobbs brought the tracks to producer Julia Brightly to mix at her 16-track home studio in Bethnal Green; by the end of the summer, 'Dead Unique' had taken shape. And then? Nothing. For reasons that no one, least of all Hobbs, can remember, 'Dead Unique' was shelved, all but forgotten about until 2012, when Blackest Ever Black chanced upon it while trawling the Officer! archive maintained for Hobbs by Andrew Jacques. Finally, rightfully, on May 26th, 2014, the album will be made available to all for the very first time - on double-vinyl and CD.

A complex but thrillingly immediate avant-pop song cycle that charms and confounds at every turn, Dead Unique will give immense pleasure not only to Officer!’s existing cult following, but to anyone with an appreciation of piquant, idiosyncratic songcraft – fans of Kevin Ayers, Flaming Tunes, Art Bears, Woo, Dislocation Dance, R. Stevie Moore, Robert Wyatt, Cleaners From Venus, Lol Coxhill or The Monochrome Set should especially pay attention. It touches upon ragged-raw rock ‘n roll, sumptuous chamber music, pastoral folk, blowsy prog-jazz and paranoid dub-space, effortlessly shifting from skronking abstraction to rousing harmonic refrain and back again. 'Dead Unique' is also the culmination of Hobbs’ lifelong collaborative impulse: his visionary ability to bring musicians together, galvanise them and wrestle coherence out of the collective free play of ideas, arriving at something far more than the sum of its parts. The tension between composition and improvisation is key to the LP’s power, with Hobbs abetted by an extraordinary supporting cast that includes Tim Hodgkinson (bass clarinet), Pleasant Livers’ Fred Collins (vocals), Legendary Pink Dots’ Patrick Q (violin), filmmaker/animator Martha Colburn (vocal), Gilles Rieder (drums), Jad Fair (vocals) and Jason Willett (bass, keyboards, trumpet). Special mention must go to John Dierker, whose superbly expressive clarinet and saxophone parts are a fixture throughout, and to Joey Stack, who takes lead vocals on ‘Good’ and the show-stopping ‘Elephant Flowers’. Nonetheless it is the voice of Hobbs – as principal writer, performer and protagonist of these songs – that resonates most powerfully. Blurring the roles of storyteller, poet and prankster, he turns memorable line after memorable line, booby-trapping them with mischievous puns, fleet-footed literary allusions, sudden digressions and shifts of register, nonsense rhymes and other wordplay. But his acute wit and flair for the absurd is moored by a deep romantic sensibility, and though it delights in the minutiae of the human comedy, 'Dead Unique' ultimately addresses its biggest themes: love, loss, commitment, independence, the mutability and inconstancy of all things.

TRACK LISTING

1. Nest
2. Elephant Flowers
3. It Goes Up / Revenge
4. Go Back
5. Cows Hum In The Fields
6. Shrug / Good
7. Biteman
8. Nardis
9. Someone At The Door
10. Stewed Fruit
11. All I Got
12. VIM
13. Bugs In Amber
14. Guess
15. The Pony Was Contented
16. Lilac And Orange
17. Clint

Hamburg-based multi-instrumentalist and producer The Offline continues with the advancement of his hip-hop-leaning, library-tinged cinematic worldbuilding, with his second full-length album, 'La grande evasion'.

An intoxicating mix of woozy, breakbeat flecked psych soul and breezy groovelaced West Coast surf with hints of BADBADNOTGOOD, Khruangbin & Tommy Guerrero.

TRACK LISTING

1. La Grande Evasion (Theme Principal)
2. Aurore
3. Les Aventuriers
4. Boulevard National
5. Dans Les Grands Espaces
6. La Belle En Lumiere
7. De Paris A L'Amazonie
8. L'excursion
9. Les Oiseaux De Mer
10. La Vie A Bord
11. Les Iles
12. Le Trip (feat. Kimo Eiserbeck)
13. La Vie De Nuit
14. Les Miracles De L'ocean
15. Theme De L'adieu
16. Nikonos V

The band was a crucial part of the Rose Mansion Analog label (including bands Soviet Pop, Hot & Cold, and Golden Driver) & the scene that spawned around it. Since the band's dissolution, guitarist Tom Ng has formed the (even more) minimalist duo Gong Gong Gong (Wharf Cat Records) and continues to hone the 'Phantom Rhythm' with each passing release. Read what their associate Fung You-Chung wrote of the album upon it's debut: Do the Offset: Spectacles need a drummer or a drum machine? There are a lot of different opinions on this topic. When the band first started, they were busy trying to answer the same question. In the early days, the band auditioned a drummer in Hong Kong's famous underground rehearsal space, President Piano Co. The session began with some roughly-formed songs, and the drummer's technique was hardly questionable, yet something was missing. Finally they decided to max out the volume on the three amplifiers they were using. At the end of the session, they couldn't even hear what each other were saying. The drumless concept did not come from this incident, but the totality of each instrument, tone, expression, volume level and the subsequent ringing in the ears did conglomerate into form through it. Beats produced by drums or drum machines do not always necessitate the sense of rhythm or listener's immersion into the music.

This is the art of the Offset: Spectacles: a demonstration of how to enter one's consciousness through rudimentary movements. The quantified beat case no longer describe the intertwining results of the tug-of-war between different instruments through the negotiation of volume - that is, the Phantom Rhythm. Although one could certainly take the quantified beat into account, that would defeat the purpose. Whether it was deliberately done or not, it doesn't matter. This result is not about technique or form, nor can it be pinned down to any sort of category, and it would be rather shallow to describe it as theory. This physical and mental dialogue not only connects the listeners (as well as the origination of its name.

If one were to suggest that history has provided adequate nourishment through the forebearers of Phantom Rhythm in Django Reinhardt, Bo Diddley, The Velvets, one could further suggest that the lyrics of the Offset: Spectacles is a realization of the characteristics of a spectacular society. As opposed to this age of totemic cities that oversaturated lofty ideas and golden rules, the Offset: Spectacles do not ask the listeners to explore the absolutes. The lyrics do not exist on their own, nor are they a subject of lyrical studies or dialogues crafted for enticing anyone, rather, they are a straightforward presentation of the society of the spectacles, or the spectacles of the society; bits and pieces of emotions left in the cities.

Whether this musical layering is an inversion, negation or just a void of rhythm, the essence lies in how the band absorb and replicate such cities, such character, and such mental states. When the chord strikes, when subjects intertwine in space, if listeners could still sense the scent of the band, urges from each embrace would undoubtedly enter their perception. The Offset: Spectacles debut album is presented again in glorious black vinyl, with remastered audio by Mikey Young, and includes a new insert with English translations of the lyrics by Vince Li. The album will also land on streaming services for the first time.

TRACK LISTING

1. Back To The Cave
2. Plateau Insomniac
3. Snags
4. Binary March (for Lee Chi-Leung)
5. The Loop Swing
6. Colour It In
7. Downward
8. Dead Air
9. Lament For Michaelangelo Antonini
10. Bodies’ Descendants
11. Curbstomp

Two and a half years on from the sad and untimely passing of Ewan Robertson aka Offshore, his label Big Dada can announce the release of a last album from the Aberdonian musician and designer. The tracks for the new record, 'Offshore' were all more or less completed before his death in 2012. His family, his partner and the label have pieced the album together as close to his original intentions as they could manage, to create a suite of music which in its openness, beauty, humour and joyfulness, both hints at what Ewan could have gone on to achieve, and celebrates what a unique and lovely human being and musician he was.

In addition, artists including Ikonika, Amon Tobin, Blue Daisy, Slugabed, Mamiko Moto, Lockah and Enchanté have all contributed remixes and expect videos and photographs from long time collaborators.

All profits from the record are to go to the Marfan Trust at his family's choosing, it was the condition that affected Ewan.

The sadness felt by those who knew and loved Ewan is still very real, but this record is a chance to celebrate what a unique and talented individual he was.

TRACK LISTING

J Bouncey
Make It Up
Barden’s Burden
Church Rhythm
Flickbook
NY In A Minute
Torry Tash
Olympian
Step Forward
Ruin
Swing
Start
Painting
Turn That Down Upside Frown
Off Peak

Celebrating its 25th anniversary, The Offspring's sixth studio album 'Conspiracy of One' has been reissued. Featuring 'Original Prankster', 'Want You Bad' & more.

TRACK LISTING

1.Intro
2. Come Out Swinging
3. Original Prankster
4. Want You Bad
5. Million Miles Away
6. Dammit, I Changed Again
7. Living In Chaos
8. Special Delivery
9. One Fine Day
10. All Along
11. Denial, Revisited
12. Vultures
13. Conspiracy Of One

07. Huck It

Over the past couple of years Acid Jazz have been re-issuing releases from the enigmatic ‘Albarika Store’ label, a goldmine in Afro cuts from Benin, West Africa. The latest instalment is the ultra-rare ‘Ogassa Original (Vol. 1), the first LP from obscure but ultimately brilliant Porto Novo group, Ogassa from 1978.

Like many Albarika releases, it was recorded at EMI Lagos, giving a depth and fidelity that stands out in the realm of Afro rarities. Reissued in full with the original artwork for the very first time, a must have for Afro collectors and completists alike.

TRACK LISTING

1. Avale
2. Ogassa Story
3. Production Vido Tche
4. Gbe We Gnin Wa Bio

“My auntie asked me what’s my path?” spits Lord Jah-Monte Ogbon on his debut from the celebrated Lex Records. The lyric relatably references the crossroads he’s at in his current life, especially as someone right on the cusp of rap stardom. “Recently I’ve been thinking more and more about what comes next in my life,” the artist reveals.

It’s fair to say Ogbon’s Lex LP features less of the shit-talking court jester of old. Instead, there’s more of an imperfect man re-examining past mistakes so he can avoid any future forks in the road. There’s a particular focus on over coming heartbreak, inspiring Ogbon to admit he’s haunted by an ex so badly he now needs to call up the Ghostbusters for assistance.

Since emerging in the late 2010s, Lord Jah-Monte Ogbon has consistently lit up America’s underground rap scene and this is thanks to a refreshingly honest writing style. Amid the exquisitely wavy strings of 2021’s 'The Missing Link / The Sneaky Link', for example, he rapped: “Everyone thinks they’re play er, until their bitch doesn’t come home.” Biting and snappy, the nasally vocals carry the playful verve of comedian Richard Pryor bravely excavating personal Demons to solicit giggles.

All this brash, wry Redman-inspired storytelling continues on the new project. Its first single is titled 'I’m Signed to Lex, Now I’m Up' – a name that mirrors what a big moment releasing a project on the label that once housed MF DOOM represents for Lord Jah-Monte Ogbon’s legacy. “I’m really driven by being able to level up and give my family more financial freedom,” he hopes.
And, if auntie asked what his path was right now, what exactly would the rap per say? Lord Jah-Monte Ogbon concludes: “Auntie: this rapping thing feels like it’s finally about to pay off!”

TRACK LISTING

1. I’m Signed To Lex Now I’m Up
2. You Know My Love Language Right?
3. Flewed Out, All Expenses Is Paid For
4. Tia Mowry (The Rich TT)
5. Butter Leather Weather
6. Drunk Nights In Edgewood (IMYSM)
7. 360 Photo Booth
8. I’m Getting Too Famous (This Time Last Year)
9. Okay, I Know Who My Twin Flame Is
10. Bedford Avenue (Skit)
11. So You Really Don’t Miss Me?
12. Let Me Reflect / Uber From O’Hare
13. Texting This Fine Shit For A Month
14. Instagram Highlights
15. Nah, You’re Mad Extra
16. King Of Charlotte (I Feel Like Trolling)
17. Lord Jah-Monte’s #1 Supporter (Skit)

Daniel Ogren is one of the key artists in Sweden's contemporary, underground music scene. He has already accrued quite the back catalogue, both as a member of the sensational quartet Dina Ogon and also as a solo artist with eight albums already under his belt.

'Fastingen-92' was originally released as a limited-edition vinyl pressing in 2020 on the independent label Sing A Song Fighter Records (the same label that first introduced us to Dina Ogon's music). The album came to our attention after hearing Daniels' solo band performing live at the Stockholm Jazz Club, Fasching. The band featured Love Orsan and Christopher Cantillo of Dina Ogon fame (who also records with the incredible Sven Wunder), and their sensational genrebusting set blew us away. It convinced us that this now out-of-print album needed to reach a wider audience.

'Fastingen-92' doesn't sit in one genre, it draws from Daniels's love of South American folk music, soul, Nordic folk music and film soundtracks, resulting in something unique, dreamlike and transformational.

It features 'Idag', an epic, beautiful, cinematic song that introduces the ethereal vocalist Anna Ahnlund. 'Idag' has gained a cult following and Daniel has stated that it was the spark that started the Dina Ogon project. Tracks like 'Annalena' and 'Kristinehamn by Night (for Christopher)' sound like a new club sound that hasn't yet been invented (which Nicola Cruz would spin in his DJ sets), mysterious, hypnotic, and engaging. Other songs like 'Maj (for Tintin)' and 'Picasso' venture into blissed- out Scando- Balearic realms. Daniel's love of nature and the inspiration he draws from the geographic environment of the Swedish countryside can be felt in these tracks, they take you to other places and times and are simultaneously familiar, ancient and alien.

Alongside the collaborations with Anna and Christoper, the album features Josefin Runsteen playing the drums on 'Idag' and Swedish musicians Edvin Nahlin and Ulrik Ordin. The majority of the album was played, recorded and mixed by Daniel. For the Mr Bongo edition, we have added the bonus track 'April' which was previously only available digitally. 'Fastingen - 92' is a truly remarkable record that gets into your soul, so please delve in!

TRACK LISTING

Annalena
Hjalmarsfjorden
Idag
Kristinehamn By Night (for Christopher)
Maj (For Tintin)
Picasso
Levi
Oktober (For Lo)
April

Hey there, human kids,
Lift your face out of the feed trough and pluck that feculence from your ears. Hark! A sonar blip from beneath the pile of bodies. Boop, blip ughhh….
People churning like a boiling swamp. Man, this din is nauseating.
The screen flickers for the first time this year with a transmission from two months in the future:
“the internet has deemed guitar music dead and you are free to do whatever the fuck you like ….long live the new flesh!”

This album is Soundcloud hip-hop reversed, a far flung nemesis of contemporary country and flaccid algorithmic pop-barf.
No songs about money or love are floating in the ether.
Just memories, echoes, foggy blurs
Blip-blop goes the scope
Heavy funk
Dystopia-punk canons
Lonnnnng jams
Bloated solos dribbling down your caved-in chest.
Human cattle like a beef avalanche, right on your burned out face hole.
Spider legs fuzz crawling in your brain.
Lots of curse words for your mom.
You’ve gotten the over-population blues, so let’s have some art for art’s sake.
What else are you gonna do?
Stare at the sky? Please…
50 carbon copies of you look back at you as you walk the streets.
Take a breath, you’re going to need it.
Take drugs, you’re going to need those just to stand in line at the air and water reclamation center soon enough.
There’s no fruit, buddy.
You’re at the bleak-peak.
They will squeeze you till you’re all squeezed out.

For fans of fried prog burn out, squished old-school drool, double drums, lead weight bass, wizard keys (now with poison), old-ass guitar and horrible words with daft meanings.
If you don’t like it then don’t listen, bub.
Back to the comments section with you!
Easy
Over and out

- John Dwyer.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Obviously the Oh Sees had to release another album on the same week as their top competitors in the 'Who Can Write The Most Albums' game (it's a good one), and much like KG&tLW, they've smashed it once again. It's no surprise that Dwyer has formed a brilliantly heavy but perfectly nuanced mix of production perfection and instrumental devastation. Everything you'd imagine, and some stuff you probably wouldn't. Ace.

TRACK LISTING

The Daily Heavy
The Experimenter
Face Stabber
Snickersnee
Fu Xi
Scutum & Scorpius
Gholü
Poisoned Stones
Psy-Ops Dispatch
S.S. Luker’s Mom
Heartworm
Together Tomorrow
Captain Loosely
Henchlock

The Oh Sees wasted no time in racing headlong into nightmarish battle with the mighty 'Orc', clawing even farther up the ghastly peak stormed so satisfyingly by their previous 'A Weird Exits'. The band is in tour-greased, anvil-on-a-balance beam, gut-pleasingly heavy form, nimbly braining—with equal dashes of abandon and menace—on this fresh batch of bruisers and brooders, hypnotically stirred into to the cauldron of chaos you’ve come to expect.

On 'Orc', fresh blood Paul Quattrone joins Dan Rincon to form a phalanx of interlocking double drums, alternately propelling and fleet-footing shifting ground to pinion John Dwyer’s cliff-face guitars to the boogie. Tim Hellman keeps it swinging like a battle-axe to the eyebrows. The tunes veer toward the violence of their live shows, with a few tasty swerves into other lanes: heavy to lush, groovy to stately. Throughout, it remains sinister in its swaggering skulk, manic in its fuzz-fried fugues. They hit all the sweet spots the heads foggily remember, and there’s plenty to sweat over if you just hopped into the sauna.

More evil…more complex…more narcotic…more screech… more blare…more whisper…there’s even more Brigid. Less “Thee,” but more of everything else.

TRACK LISTING

1. The Static God
2. Nite Expo
3. Animated Violence
4. Keys To The Castle
5. Jettisoned
6. Cadaver Dog
7. Paranoise
8. Cooling Tower
9. Drowned Beast
10. Raw Optics

The newly shorn Oh Sees waste no time in racing headlong into nightmarish battle with the mighty Orc, and wouldn’t ya know it, they’ve clawed even farther up the ghastly peak last year’s A Weird Exits stormed so satisfyingly. The band is in tour-greased, anvil on a balance beam, gut-pleasingly heavy form, nimbly braining with equal dashes of abandon and menace on this fresh batch of bruisers and brooders, hypnotically stirred into to the cauldron of chaos you’ve come to expect from, ahem, Oh Sees. Fresh blood Paul Quattrone joins Dan Rincon to form a phalanx of interlocking double drums, alternately propelling and fleet footing shifting ground to pinion Dwyer’s cliff-face guitars to the boogie. Tim Hellman keeps it swinging like a battle-axe to the eyebrows. The tunes veer towards the violence of their live shows, with a few tasty swerves into other lanes… heavy to lush, groovy to stately… throughout it remains sinister in its swaggering skulk, manic in its fuzz-fried fugues… they hit all the sweet spots the heads foggily remember, and there’s plenty to sweat over if you just hopped into the sauna. Ew. More evil…more complex… more narcotic… more screech…. more blare…. more whisper… there’s even more Brigid. Less “Thee”, but more of everything else.

TRACK LISTING

01 “The Static God”
02 “Nite Expo”
03 “Animated Violence”
04 “Keys To The Castle”
05 “Jettisoned”
06 “Cadaver Dog”
07 “Paranoise”
08 “Cooling Tower”
09 “Drowned Beast”
10 “Raw Optics”

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!

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

Warm Slime is the tenth studio album by Thee Oh Sees, originally released on May 11, 2010.

The album is the fourth to be released under the name Thee Oh Sees, and is the band's tenth studio album, overall.

The album's liner notes state that the album was "recorded live at 606th street in San Francisco in one day, one week after the gay pride parade 2009 on a tascam 388". 606th Street in San Francisco was, at the time, the location of Club Six, a hip hop club where John Dwyer worked. Dwyer described Club Six as "A big, airy room with a nice wooden stage, hardwood floors and really high ceilings. I gave them $500 to record in the room for 12 hours." The whole album was recorded "live" with no overdubs in an attempt to recreate the feeling of the band's live performances. Mike Donovan, the leader of Sic Alps, was the only guest musician on the album. Donovan was a past collaborator that had appeared on OCS' 2005 album 3&4, on which he provided vocals for the song "Burning Beauties". Like the majority of the band's catalogue, Warm Slime was recorded and mixed by Chris Woodhouse.

Much attention was drawn to the album's title track. At over thirteen and a half minutes long, it was the lengthiest song the band had ever released. Dwyer claimed that he had wanted to record a long format song like Can's "Yoo Doo Right", The Doors' "When the Music's Over", and Iron Butterfly's "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida".

John Dwyer – vocals, guitar, tape
Petey Dammit – bass
Brigid Dawson – organ, percussion, vocals, Wurlitzer
Mike Shoun – drums
Mike Donovan – fuzz guitar, percussion

One of the BIG faves in the Oh Sees catalogue!

TRACK LISTING

1. Warm Slime
2. I Was Denied
3. Everything Went Black
4. Castiatic Tackle
5. Flash Bats
6. Mega-Feast
7. MT Work

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) 

What’s the first thing you think of when someone mentions Thee Oh Sees? Probably their riot-sparking live show, right? Visions of a guitar-chewing, melody-maiming John Dwyer careening across your cranium, rounded out by a wild-eyed wrecking crew that drives every last hook home like it’s a nail in the coffin of what you thought it meant to make 21st-century rock ’n’ roll? Yeah, that sounds about right. But it misses a more important point—how impossible Thee Oh Sees have been to pin down since Dwyer launched the project in the late ’90s as a solo break from such sorely missed underground bands as Pink and Brown and Coachwhips. (While Dwyer still records songs on his own, Thee Oh Sees is now a five-piece featuring keyboardist / singer Brigid Dawson, guitarist Petey Dammit, drummer Mike Shoun and multi-instrumentalist / singer Lars Finberg.) That restlessness extends to everything from the towering, thirteen-minute title track of 2010’s Warm Slime LP to the mercurial moods of 2008’s The Master’s Bedroom Is Worth Spending a Night In. Now, Thee Oh Sees chase the home-brewed symphonies of Castlemania with the scrappy, high-wire hooks of Carrion Crawler / The Dream. Originally envisioned as two EPs, it was cut live to tape in less than a week at Chris Woodhouse’s Sacramento studio in June, reflecting the battering-ram bent of the band’s live show better than any bootleg ever could. “As I’m sure most would agree,” explains Dwyer, “Castlemania was more of a vocal tirade. This one’s meant to pummel and throb.” That it does, whether one blasts the slow, speaker-bruising build of “The Dream,” the sunburnt organs and dovetailing guitars of “Crack in Your Eye” or the interstellar instrumental “Chem-Farmer,” a perfect example of what happens when one takes a well-oiled machine—a gang of rabid road warriors, really—and adds a second, groove-locked drum set to the mix. To listen is to realize that Dwyer’s music is as manic as the underground comic inclinations of his artwork; colorful and confusing in a way that’s more than welcome. It’s downright refreshing, like a slap in the face at 5:00 in the morning. Or, as Dwyer puts it, “You have to leave a mark somehow.”

TRACK LISTING

1. Carrion Crawler
2. Contraption/Soul Desert
3. Robber Barons
4. Chem-Farmer
5. Opposition
6. The Dream
7. Wrong Idea
8. Crushed Grass
9. Crack In Your Eye
10. Heavy Doctor

What’s the first thing you think of when someone mentions Thee Oh Sees? Probably their riot-sparking live show, right? Visions of a guitar-chewing, melody-maiming John Dwyer careening across your cranium, rounded out by a wild-eyed wrecking crew that drives every last hook home like it’s a nail in the coffin of what you thought it meant to make 21st-century rock ’n’ roll? Yeah, that sounds about right. But it misses a more important point—how impossible Thee Oh Sees have been to pin down since Dwyer launched the project in the late ’90s as a solo break from such sorely missed underground bands as Pink and Brown and Coachwhips. (While Dwyer still records songs on his own, Thee Oh Sees is now a five-piece featuring keyboardist / singer Brigid Dawson, guitarist Petey Dammit, drummer Mike Shoun and multi-instrumentalist / singer Lars Finberg.) That restlessness extends to everything from the towering, thirteen-minute title track of 2010’s 'Warm Slime' LP to the mercurial moods of 2008’s 'The Master’s Bedroom Is Worth Spending a Night In'.

Now, Thee Oh Sees chase the home-brewed symphonies of Castlemania with the scrappy, high-wire hooks of 'Carrion Crawler / The Dream'. Originally envisioned as two EPs, it was cut live to tape in less than a week at Chris Woodhouse’s Sacramento studio in June, reflecting the battering-ram bent of the band’s live show better than any bootleg ever could. “As I’m sure most would agree,” explains Dwyer, “Castlemania was more of a vocal tirade. This one’s meant to pummel and throb.” That it does, whether one blasts the slow, speaker-bruising build of 'The Dream', the sunburnt organs and dovetailing guitars of 'Crack in Your Eye' or the interstellar instrumental 'Chem-Farmer', a perfect example of what happens when one takes a well-oiled machine—a gang of rabid road warriors, really—and adds a second, groove-locked drum set to the mix. To listen is to realize that Dwyer’s music is as manic as the underground comic inclinations of his artwork; colorful and confusing in a way that’s more than welcome. It’s downright refreshing, like a slap in the face at 5:00 in the morning. Or, as Dwyer puts it, “You have to leave a mark somehow.”

TRACK LISTING

1. Carrion Crawler
2. Contraption/Soul Desert
3. Robber Barons
4. Chem-Farmer
5. Opposition
6. The Dream
7. Wrong Idea
8. Crushed Grass
9. Crack In Your Eye
10. Heavy Doctor

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

We all know the type: prolific bands that commit every loose thought, stray idea and 90-second song fragment to tape. Bands that pay no attention to little inconveniences like “release cycles” or “self-editing,” and instead decide that quantity equals quality, creating a discography more labyrinthine, imposing and—ultimately—exhausting than the cast of creatures in a sci-fi novel. Here is why none of that applies to THEE OH SEES. Because each of the dozen-plus albums they’ve released since 2004 possesses a distinct personality and represents a different point along the path of JOHN DWYER’s slow transformation from auteur of woozy, bare-bones four-track psychedelia to goggle-eyed garage rock marauder backed at long last by a band that both shares and stokes his singular vision. Because drop a needle on any record and—to their great credit—it takes several songs before you’re convinced it’s Thee Oh Sees. The seasick hundred-bottles-of-rum shanty 'What the Driven Drink', from 2007’s delirious 'Sucks Blood' exists in a different galaxy than the rollercoastering 'Chem-Farmer' from 'Carrion Crawler / The Dream'; the doomy doo-wop of 'Blood on the Deck' hardly seems like the product of the same band that delivered the yelping 'Ruby Go Home' in 2009.

TRACK LISTING

1. I Come From The Mountain
2. Toe Cutter - Thumb Buster
3. The Floating Coffin
4. No Spell
5. Strawberries
6. Maze Fancier
7. Night Crawler
8. Sweets Helicopter
9. Tunnel Time
10. Minotaur

Back in 2012, Thee Oh Sees made their first appearance at Austin Psych Fest, performing an electrified set at Emo's East. The first of many Levitation appearances down in Austin, this show has been mixed by John Dwyer and mastered for vinyl by JJ Golden. Now immortalized on glorious 12" colored wax. "I think this was our first time at levitation but our millionth time in the amazing and tough as nails city of Austin, Texas. Brigid Dawson, Mike Shoun, Petey D and myself had already laid the live show out in front of crowds here, so it wasn't our first rodeo and certainly not my last. Our love is obvious here as we bring forth a short but sweet set of hits and deep cuts. This is also the version of the band with Lars "Fingers" Finberg of Intelligence fame as second banana drummer. So enjoy some primal and sensual double drumming and as a side note, no one died at this show. Thanks as always to Levitation for making shit happen" - John Dwyer 


The first Austin Psych Fest was held in March 2008, and expanded to a 3 day event the following year. The event quickly developed into an international destination for psychedelic rock fans, with lineups spanning the fringes of indie rock, from up-and-comers to vintage legends, and capped off with headline performances from co-founders The Black Angels, along with Tame Impala, The Flaming Lips, The Brian Jonestown Massacre, Thee Oh Sees (in various forms) and many more. LEVITATION helped spark a movement, inspiring the creation of similar events across the globe and a burgeoning psych scene that would soon ignite. The series captures key moments in psychedelic rock history, and live music in Austin, Texas, pressed on beautiful limited edition colorful vinyl pressings - each an eye popping visual representation of the music contained within. The artists and sets showcased on Live at LEVITATION have been chosen from over a decade of recordings at the world-renowned event, and document key artists in the scene performing for a crowd of their peers and fans who gather at LEVITATION annually from all over the world.

TRACK LISTING

1. The Dream
2. Devil Again
3. Tidal Wave
4. Enemy Destruct
5. Robber Barons
6. Block Of Ice
7. Meat Step Lively
8. Minotaur

What’s the first thing that comes to mind when someone mentions Thee Oh Sees? Probably their riot-sparking live show, right? Visions of a guitar-chewing, speaker-smothering, tongue-wagging John Dwyer careening across your cranium, chased by a wild-eyed wrecking crew that drives every last hook home like it’s a nail in the coffin of what one thought it meant to make 21st century rock ’n’ roll?

Yeah, that sounds about right. But it misses a more important point—how impossible Thee Oh Sees have been been to pin down since Dwyer launched it in the late ’90s as a solo break from such sorely missed underground bands as Pink and Brown and Coachwhips. That restlessness extends to everything from the towering, thirteen-minute title track of 2010’s Warm Smile LP to the mercurial moods of 2008’s The Master’s Bedroom Is Worth Spending a Night In. And then there’s the home-brewed symphonies of Castlemania and the high-wire hooks of Carrion Crawler / The Dream, which dropped a second drum set among sunburnt organs, dovetailing guitars and rail-jumping rhythms.

If one prefers a slightly more subtle musical awakening, there’s always Putrifiers II, the latest in a long line of Oh Sees albums that expands the group’s sound well past your friendly neighborhood garage band. So while the space-odyssey nods of “Wax Face” actually sound like they’re meant to melt one’s ears straight off, the record’s full of deviant detours, from the poison-tipped string parts and Eno-esque engineering of “So Nice” to the groove-locked Krautrock inclinations of “Lupine Dominus.”

The most noticeable element may be Dwyer’s melodies, however, as they reveal a softer side to his songwriting, one that makes perfect sense considering just how disparate his dust-clearing influences are. Scott Walker, The Velvet Underground, The Zombies and the experimental Japanese act Les Rallizes Denudes are but a small taste of what informed Thee Oh Sees this time around, as Dwyer returned to the multi-instrumental ways of Castlemania— full-band sessions for another record are already underway—and rounded out a fuller, drier sound with drummer / engineer Chris Woodhouse and special guests like Mikal Cronin (sax), Heidi Maureen Alexander (trumpet, vocals) and K Dylan Edrich (viola).

TRACK LISTING

1. Wax Face
2. Hang A Picture
3. So Nice
4. Cloud #1
5. Flood's New Light
6. Putrifiers II
7. Will We Be Scared?
8. Lupine Dominus
9. Goodnight Baby
10. Wicked Park

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

“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

The ridiculously prolific Bay Area band Thee Oh Sees are back with another full-length long-player. "Warm Slime" is guaranteed to please fans of their whacked-out garage / psych / punk jams. Recorded by Sacramento sultan of sound Chris Woodhouse, "Warm Slime" carries on in the same tradition as the group’s previous In The Red release, "Help", showcasing their more electrified and rocking side, in comparison to other recent home-recorded releases. The centrepiece is undoubtedly the mind-bending title track, which clocks in at nearly 14 minutes and takes up the entirety of the album’s first side. It’s a psychedelic epic of "Inna Gadda Da Vida" proportions! John Dwyer’s guitar playing is at its quadraspazzed best here, and the vocal interplay with Brigid Dawson gives it a B-52s-at-their-least-cheesy-crossed-with the-Troggs vibe. The results are stunning.

'Thee Oh Sees incorporate the oft-referenced Nuggets stuff in a way that feels reverential. With grinding guitars and bah-bah-bah vocals, but with the punk and new-wave elements also at play, they don’t feel trite or plagiarized. This is like meat and potatoes prepared by a master chef -totally familiar but utterly delicious.'  - Pitchfork.

TRACK LISTING

1. Warm Slime
2. I Was Denied
3. Everything Went Black
4. Castiatic Tackle
5. Flash Bats
6. Mega-Feast
7. MT Work

A new Canadian band, available only on import, fronted by Suzie Ungerleider whose effortless vocals are a real discovery. This is melodic, laid back americana full of tasty guitar lines produced by vintage 1950's and early 1960's Gibson and Les Paul classic guitars and it really gives a quality to the music.

"Beacons" is the beguiling UK debut of Ohbijou. Borne in the bedrooms of a family home in Ontario, Casey Mecija's gentle compositions, bound with youthful frailty and unnerving beauty, found their natural habitat in Toronto. Enlisting the help of her younger sister, Jenny, and friends Heather Kirby and Anissa Hart, Mecija's songs began to take flight. An encounter with James Bunton and Ryan Carley led to further collaboration and the conception of Ohbijou. Andrew Kinoshita soon added his talents to Ohbijou's orchestration. Furnished with mandolin, violin, piano, banjo, cello and an impressive array of other instruments, a seven piece orchestral pop force began to appear on stages around Toronto that quickly affected the landscape of independent music in the city. Mecija pens songs wrought with the romantic afflictions of big city life. She sutures the intimate details of her personal relations to the macrocosmic relations of her city. Dressed with intricate melodies and vocal harmonies arranged by her bandmates, the songs reveal a striking musicality and virtuosity. Ohbijou's music has a seductive beauty, their delicate songs framed by elegant orchestral arrangements. Their emotive music is simultaneously both sad and life-affirming.

There's an obvious chemistry emanating throughout Ohmme's music that's so tangible it can only come from a decades-spanning friendship. Songwriters Sima Cunnningham and Macie Stewart formed their unbreakable bond performing throughout the fringes of Chicago's many interlocking communities, collaborating with titans from the city's indie rock, hiphop, and improvised worlds. But together, along with drummer Matt Carroll, they've stretched the boundaries of what guitar music can do starting with the band's experimental 2016 self-titled EP and their adventurous debut 2018 LP Parts. Now their longstanding partnership culminates with the stunning and muscular follow-up Fantasize Your Ghost. Ohmme formed in 2014 as an outlet for Cunningham and Stewart to explore an unconventional approach to their instruments.


"That's the whole genesis of the band: us walking up to our guitars and saying, 'how can we make this noisemaker do something different?'" says Cunningham. But as their musical collaboration strengthened, bringing Parts and intensive tours with acts like Wilco, Iron & Wine, Twin Peaks, and more, the band's scope and focus has also broadened. "Grinding on tour last year for so long, it can alter your mental state where you have to think about your life in a different way than you would if you're home. A lot of the songs stemmed from just thinking about all of the possibilities that life could be and could take," says Stewart. The commanding single "3 2 4 3" tackles the terrifying realization of needing to make a change. Their deft scene-setting and the way their disparate voices blend together heightens the song's inherent anxiety. These moments of emotional clarity fill Fantasize Your Ghost.


Written across 2019, early sketches of the album's tracklist were demoed at Sam Evian's Flying Cloud Studios in upstate New York. "That's where we really started to see the record come together," says Cunningham. The sessions were intensely collaborative and open, the product of long, existential conversations between Stewart and Cunningham in the van about their lives and how to channel the anger they were feeling about the state of the world. Tracks like the driving opener "Flood Your Gut" underwent several revisions with Ohmme uncovering several new directions the song could go before finishing it. Fantasize Your Ghost was recorded over a six day session in with indie rock journeyman producer Chris Cohen and captures the astounding magnetism and ferocity of their live show.


Fantasize Your Ghost encapsulates the thrilling and sometimes terrifying joy of moving forward even if you don't know where you're going. It's an album that asks necessary questions: When life demands a crossroads, what version of yourself are you going to pursue? What part of yourself will you feed and let flourish and what do you have to let go of? This is a record of strength, of best friends believing in each other. Unapologetic and brave, Ohmme are ready to figure it all out together.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Over the few years they've been recording, Ohmme have clearly perfected their brand of rhythmic indie rock into the perfectly hypnotic distillation we hear today. Elements of Americana, White Stripes-esque blues rock and hypntoic synthy kosmische. It's a melting pot indeed, but one that works flawlessly. That groove!

TRACK LISTING

1. Flood Your Gut
2. Selling Candy
3. Ghost
4. The Limit
5. Spell It Out
6. Twitch
7. 3 2 4 3
8. Some Kind Of Calm
9. Sturgeon Moon
10. After All

From the muddy banks of the Mersey comes this 5 track mini-album by the front-runners of the New Liverpool Underground... their (long-gone) cassette release now on vinyl. Twenty two minutes & fourteen seconds of white hot Granadaland Gnarl fusing paint-stripping Post-Punk with "Back From The Grave" Garage Rock Gunk ...not to mention a heavy, heavy dose of Metalcore Skrunk. Dig The Fall? The Gories? The Common Cold? Arndales? Imperial Wax? Sabbath? Replacements? This is for you, Daddy-o... this is for anyone who still believes in the R&R dream ... R&R as primal scream... OHMNS ain't no slackers & are playing constantly around the North and sometimes further afield (France, Italy, Denmark even) Should they arrive near you ...do not miss!

London-based psychedelic stalwarts Josefin Öhrn + The Liberation are proud to reveal their third album 'Sacred Dreams' for Rocket Recordings. Continuing to dive into the deeper waters of experimentation, ‘Sacred Dreams’ is both a musically hefty amalgamation of reverb drenched space-rock and retro centric electronics, as well as an emotionally cathartic release for the band, marking a new direction and fresh approach.

Since their critically acclaimed album 'Mirage' was released, Josefin and writing partner Fredrik have relocated from Stockholm to London and have created a new Liberation around them - this new band consists of the powerful and intuitive assemblage of musicians; Maki (Go Team), Patrick C Smith (Eskimo Chain), Matt Loft (Lola Colt) and Ben Ellis, who’s worked with both Iggy Pop and Swervedriver. ‘Sacred Dreams’ was largely recorded at Press Play Studios (King Krule, Fat White Family, Yves Tumor, Stereolab, High Llamas and many others) run by Andy Ramsay of Stereolab, who also produced and even programmed his non synced drum machines adding a lot of inspiration to the album.

‘Scared Dreams’ invites you into the bands own dimensional soundscape, a world built with transcendental guitars, driving grooves and otherworldly, enchanting vocals, altogether seeped in layers of blissfully produced synths. Opener and lead single ‘Feel The Sun’ encapsulates this new direction perfectly before the anthemic ‘I Can Feel It’ makes the bands intentions known. Elsewhere playful 80s electronics sit alongside a shoegaze sensibility effortlessly and amongst the textured flow of the LP emerge pop hooks like the infectiously bluesy ‘Baby Come On’.

Josefin tells us “This album comes out of a period of heartbreak, loss and dissolution, but also of deep love, warmth and beauty unveiled in the middle of it. A sacred dream, the way we see it, is not necessarily a golden fluffy cloud river, but instead also contains all the shadows that need to be seen and felt in order to drop what has to go in order to truly live. And the dissonance of such a dream may not be immediately apparent, let alone the meaning of it. In a way all of these tracks seem to emanate from that place where we have almost reached a new shore, or maybe we missed it and are headed somewhere else entirely, but there’s no way of telling until afterwards.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Mine says: After the experimental krautrock LP ‘Horse Dance’ (2015) and the pulsing psychedelia on shop-favourite ‘Mirage’ (2016), London-based Swedes Josefin Öhrn + The Liberation return with their most diverse album to date, showcasing a variation of sounds, including, but not limited to, 80s synths, trippy, reverb-laden guitars and dreamy, 60s inspired pop. ‘Sacred Dreams’, which was written during a ”period of heartbreak, loss and dissolution”, is less of a sonic journey than its predecessors and instead seems to show that Josefin and her band don’t want to be confined to a particular genre. After opening with the electronic and motorik dance tracks “Feel The Sun”; “I Can Feel It” and “Desire” the Spiritualized-esque “Hey Little Boy”, the transcendental “Only Lovers” and the blues stomper “Baby Come On” lead the album into a hazier, mellower and more psychedelic direction.

TRACK LISTING

01/ Feel The Sun
02/ Honey Slumber
03/ I Can Feel It
04/ Desire
05/ Hey Little Boy
06/ Only Lovers
07/ Baby Come On
08/ New Horizons
09/ Caramel Head
10/ Let It Come
11/ Whatever You Want
12/ Floating Away

London-based Swedish singer-songwriter Josefin Öhrn (previously of Grammy nominated Josefin Öhrn + The Liberation) debut album 'Cherry' featuring vocals from Bobby Gllespie (Primal Scream) and Anton Newcombe (The Brian Jonestown Massacre), with guitar from Andy Bell (Ride).

Josefin’s most intimate and self-defined album yet, 'Cherry' explores themes of fresh starts, desire, love and grief. It taps into a new and very interesting phase of music, seen on recent releases from Robyn (Sexistential) and Lykke Li (The Afterparty), where the experiences of women are put out there without shame in colourful candidness, such records tap into a fascinating period of raw, intense and highly transformative self-actualization.

Josefin wrote the songs on 'Cherry' during a new phase of her life, it captures the sense of liberty, excitement and vulnerability that comes with such a re-birth. Explored with an intensity that’s sensual, vulnerable and unguarded. At its core lies the female gaze – not as a concept, but a lived experience with a sense of longing running through the album like a pulse: a longing for connection, for freedom.

Musically, 'Cherry' has echoes of the hypnotic psych-rock of Josefin’s previous band Josefin Ohrn + The Liberation (Rocket Recordings) but the arrangements, structures and mixing on 'Cherry' are less avant-garde and closer to the laid-back atmospheres of Kurt Vile, Lana Del Rey or Natalie Bergman with clear hooks and with Josefin’s voice standing front and centre – intimate, magnetic, unwavering – which allows for the album’s stark emotional immediacy.

Josefin personally asked Kalle Jerneholm Gustavsson (Soundtrack Of Our Lives), who she had worked with previously, to produce the album. “We recorded it in his studio, Svenska Grammofonstudion, Gothenburg. It’s an amazing studio where artists can stay, so I was totally living the album, breathing music every waking and sleeping hour as I was far away from my everyday life in London” explains Josefin. “It was a beautiful experience.”

TRACK LISTING

1. Electrified
2. Dreaming Of You
3. Cherry Tree
4. Lose Yourself
5. The Real Thing
6. Always On My Mind
7. What If
8. I Want You
9. Jag Ger Dig Min Morgon
10. The Shoreline 

Vital NYC experimental solo artist OHYUNG explores their own gender transition with arresting new album of trip-hop laced, rave-inspired electronic songwriting 'You Are Always On My Mind'.

Lia Ouyang Rusli describes their new album as OHYUNG as “my trans self and my former self in conversation, from both perspectives.” The record represents their lengthy, complicated, but crucial journey between lives, strewn with both doubt and excitement. It is an ecstatic, pop-oriented shift in direction from an artist primarily known for noise, experimental hip-hop, and ambient music, but carried with sleek confidence, maturity, and a silvery, hallucinogenic shimmer that reveals Rusli’s experimental background. It is, writes Rusli, “sometimes written from a dark place and other times from a place of happiness.” Throughout, darkness and light rise and fall in layers of phased strings, trip-hop drum production, and earworming vocal lines.

Also a film score composer, Rusli’s songwriting craft is meticulous and nuanced. 'You Are Always On My Mind' was, perhaps surprisingly, formed primarily from processed “generic string loops” found in online sample packs - a strange and wilfully jarring reminder that what seems to be is not always what is. Recontextualised, these string loops enshadow the simplicity of their origins and reveal a grace and purposefulness perhaps not even imagined by their authors, subtly drawing out euphoria and tension in equal balance.

Rusli also writes of the influence of rave culture central to their transition, and of the record’s production and theme. “It’s a declaration of love for raves and the dark hazy rooms that helped me to be free and true with myself— seeing other people who are so free and beautiful and thinking that one day that can be me— that’s me in the future.” But there is also a fear and unease present. Key moment “no good” explores “the worst version of myself as a trans person, feeding doubt to my pre-transition self” with its core lyric anyone can see / I’m no good for you, delivered over a relentless beat, swooning strings, and glistening synthesis.

TRACK LISTING

1. You Are Always On My Mind
2. No Good
3. Dog Medicine
4. I Swear That I Could Die Rn
5. 5 Strings {lake} Ft. J. Fisher
6. Crush
7. Dancing On The Soft Knife
8. Im Holding Close The Memory Fades
9. Id Rather Be A Ghost By Your Side Than Enter Heaven Without You
10. Years Ago
11. Im Coming Towards You

WRWTFWW Records is honored to announce the first ever vinyl release for esteemed Japanese producer, composer, and environmental music luminary Yoshio Ojima’s rare forgotten album "Club", previously only released as a limited edition of 50 cassettes back in 1983. The electronica/proto-techno/experimental gem is available as an LP reissue supervised by the artist, sourced from the original masters and housed in a heavy 350gsm sleeve. Only 500 copies were made.

A precious and sought-after item among collectors and enthusiasts of early Japanese electronic music, "Club" is a stunning and timeless collection of avant-garde electronica, proto-techno, mecha-ambient, and ear-pleasing experimentations from Yoshio Ojima, the ambient/environmental master behind the pivotal "Music For Spiral" albums released in 1988 (aka Une Collection Des Chaînons I and II reissued on WRWTFWW), and producer of Hiroshi Yoshimura’s Pier & Loft, Motohiko Hamase’s #Notes of Forestry, and Satsuki Shibano's iconic Rendez-Vous.

Filled with quirky minimalist acid-synth-and-drum-machine-handiwork, bouncy collages of beautifully childlike techno and pre-IDM, and the irresistible DIY charm of humble beginnings, the 8-track album is a fun, adventurous and risqué, but catchy in the most peculiar way piece of Japanese electronic music history neatly capturing the incredible creative energy boiling through the country’s scene in the 1980s.

Experience the roots of Japanese electronica!

Points of interests

For fans of electronica, ambient, minimalism, kankyo ongaku, cassettes, YMO, Hiroshi Yoshimura, DIY adventures, albums that were never on vinyl before, music that predicted the future (which is now the present…or even the past!)

First ever vinyl release of Japanese environmental music legend Yoshio Ojima’s super rare 1983 album "Club".

TRACK LISTING

A1. Entrance
A2. Orientation
A3. Club-a
A4. Club-b
B1. Days-man
B2. Boy In Vision
B3. Schooling
B4. Graduation

From the depths of stoner hell crawls Italian band OJM. Produced under the eyes and ears of stoner-rock guru Paul Chain, the debut kicks from the get-go sounding akin to a heavier version of Queens of the Stoneage. Nine tracks to melt your cerebelum, including a nerve shredding version of Iggy Pop's "TV Eye". Hard fuzzed guitar and lurching slow doom epics. Yum!!

Helsinki quartet OK:KO releases their third album "Liesu" with We Jazz Records on 15 April. The band, led by drummer/composer Okko Saastamoinen and including saxophonist Jarno Tikka, pianist Toomas Keski-Säntti and bassist Mikael Saastamoinen (of Superpostion & Linda Fredriksson "Juniper") is a scene favourite in Finland and has recently garnered some international attention with their melodic, dynamic and original approach. The OK:KO sound is adventurous yet accessible, and contemporary yet rooted in the lineage of acoustic small group jazz.

When listening to OK:KO, you can feel that their influences also come from out of the musical realm. After all, isn't this just how it should be? Making music from your own life. Here, you can tell that the landscape of rural Finland, its poetic, at times even melancholy beauty, is ever present. It's folk song country. But don't be fooled, these guys form a real flesh and blood jazz band. That means that the music just starts when the first note hits, and onwards from there, we're in for a wild ride.

Whether punchy like on "Anima", solemn like on "Arvo", or just trekking out there a skiing lane of their own like on "Vanhatie", what you'll get is pure OK:KO. Melodic, interactive, honest and forward-reaching contemporary jazz music. That is something we appreciate – a lot!

Vinyl editions available on opaque white / black vinyl, with inside-out 3mm spine sleeve and a polylined black inner sleeve.

TRACK LISTING

1. Anima
2. Rieju
3. Kirkkis
4. Arvo
5. Vanhatie
6. Yösalmi

“Even my subconscious is self-conscious,” Okay Kaya sings on “Inside Of A Plum”, giving us a sense of the mental state she entered while making SAP, an album she wrote, performed, engineered, and produced alone, sometimes spending weeks at a time without social interaction. This is a concept album about consciousness in which Okay Kaya focuses her trademark combination of abstraction and wit on what happens to her mind unaccompanied, on her tendency to feel less like a human and more like the sticky secretion of a tree.

After releasing her Spellemann Award winning album Watch This Liquid Pour Itself in January of 2020, Kaya left her home in New York and moved to Europe to create and show her various interdisciplinary exhibitions. Among others, she made an installation that amplified music made underwater and an interactive sculpture based on Jungian sandplay therapy for children. Between her exhibits, Kaya recorded through lockdowns by herself in the loaned studios of generous friends.

SAP first grew from the first single “Spinal Tap” about Kaya wandering in Berlin, tree-touching. “Sap reminds me of the bodily functions I need to remember to do, like sleep. One might say it ‘resinates.’” The album was further inspired by Ketamine Therapy which is discussed in “The Inside Of A Plum.” Kaya explains, “The doctor said this treatment grows literal physical branches in your brain.” As she experimented with ego death, the subject of her song “Jazzercise”, Kaya found herself writing in the voices of fictional characters she’d encountered in other people’s stories. In ‘Jolene From Her Own Perspective,’ she imagines Dolly Parton’s nemesis responding to her song. In ‘Origin Story,’ Kaya writes as a mythical goddess frustrated with her creation myth. In ‘I’ve Spent Forever Planning A Crisis,’ Kaya responds to Cassavetes’ film A Woman Under The Influence writing from the perspective of the story’s children.

Okay Kaya’s investigations of mind-body come along with sexy dance beats, unpredictable interlocking synths, delicate soft guitars, and close-to-the-mike R&B whispering. But Kaya likes her falsettos cracking and her soul-inspired hooks careening wildly, a beautiful chaos that somehow fits together.

When she returned to New York, Kaya was excited to collaborate again, to get friends to “bless the record.” She invited friends to Gaia Studios in Greenpoint, Brooklyn to sing or play an instrument. Most songs on the album unfold with guest performances from artists as varied as deem spencer, Taja Cheek of L’Rain and Adam Green of The Moldy Peaches.

Just as the recording process began with isolation and ended with friends, SAP starts with the internal and leads outside to romance, to lovers who serve as funhouse mirrors, reflecting Kaya back to herself from different angles. In “Pearl Gurl” Kaya harmonizes with her multi-tracked second self and sings her uncertain conclusion: “If love is not the answer, it’s one hell of a question.”

TRACK LISTING

1) Mood Into Object Personified
2) Jolene From Her Own Perspective
3) Origin Story
4) Jazzercise
5) Pathologically Yours
6) Spinal Tap
7) Inside Of A Plum
8) Rorschach
9) In Regards To Your Tweet
10) Dep. Chamber
11) Pearl Gurl
12) The Lesson
13) I’ve Spent Forever Planning A Crisis
14) Like A Liver
15) Weltschmerz

Long-awaited return of ex-Granfaloon Bus frontman Felix Costanza. After releasing eight critically acclaimed albums over more than a decade, San Francisco's Granfaloon Bus 'parked' forever in 2003. The band had built up a good following in Europe, and many press writers wondered openly how much longer the band could possibly remain 'under the radar' before the wider world finally woke up to their considerable talents. Following the split of the band, front man and songwriter Felix Costanza turned his attentions to a new solo project, which he called Okie Rosette. The album "Leap Second" was brought to life with the help of various accomplices. Thee More Shallows' Dee Kesler lent his recording expertise and sonic wizardry to some of the tracks, Carrie Bradley (The Breeders, 100 Watt Smile) contributed violin parts, and ex-Granfaloon Bus members Jeff Stevenson (bass) and Ajax Green (guitar) joined in too, along with various other contributors. The addition of Rachel Stevenson's dulcet, husky voice provided the perfect foil to Costanza's world-weary vocals. A description once used by a journalist to describe the music of Granfaloon Bus – 'slanted folk-pop' – still applies as an apt description of this mixture of folk / melodic pop / Americana stylings, further tweaked with distorted samples, electronic beats, loops and skewed lyrics. It all adds up to a stunning album – the best work yet by Felix Costanza, and hopefully only the beginning of his long-overdue ascent 'above the radar'.

A statement from Okkervil River’s Will Sheff:

The new Okkervil River album is called Away. I didn’t plan to make it and initially wasn’t sure if it was going to be an Okkervil River album or if I’d ever put it out. I wrote the songs during a confusing time of transition in my personal and professional life and recorded them quickly with a brand new group of musicians. I got together the best New York players I could think of, people whose playing and personalities I was fans of and who came more out of a jazz or avant garde background, and we cut the songs live in one or two takes – trying to keep things as natural and immediate as possible – over three days in a studio on Long Island that hosts the Neve 8068 console which recorded Steely Dan’s Aja and John Lennon’s Double Fantasy. I asked Marissa Nadler to sing on it and got the composer Nathan Thatcher to write some beautiful orchestral arrangements, we recorded them with the classical ensemble yMusic and then I mixed the record with Jonathan Wilson out in Los Angeles. 2013-2015 had been a strange time for me. I lost some connections in a music industry that was visibly falling apart. Some members of the Okkervil River backing band left, moving on to family life or to their own projects. I spent a good deal of time sitting in hospice with my grandfather, who was my idol, while he died. I felt like I didn’t know where I belonged. When there was trouble at home, a friend offered me her empty house in the Catskills where I could go and clear my head. New songs were coming fast up there, so I set myself the challenge of trying to write as many as possible as quickly as possible. I wasn’t thinking about any kind of end product; the idea was just to write through what I was feeling, quickly and directly. Eventually, I realized I was writing a death story for a part of my life that had, buried inside of it, a path I could follow that might let me go somewhere new. “Okkervil River R.I.P.” and “Call Yourself Renee” are good emotional transcriptions of that time. I wrote the latter on psylocibin mushrooms on a beautiful afternoon in early fall in the Catskills. I wrote “The Industry” quickly after getting some bad news. “Comes Indiana Through the Smoke” is an anthem for the battleship my grandfather served on during the Pacific Theater of World War II. Before becoming a private school Headmaster, my grandfather was also a jazz musician; he paid his way through college as a bandleader, toured with Les Brown and His Band of Renown, and spent summers playing a residency at a NH lakeside gay dance club called The Jungle Room that kept live monkeys in the basement. (You can hear his actual trumpet on this song, played by C.J. Camarieri from yMusic.) “Judey on a Street” is a love song, sunny but written late at night when the woods are maximum spooky. We cut “She Would Look for Me” pretty shapelessly, with a lot of improvisation, and it’s also a love song. “Mary on a Wave” is about the feminine aspect of God but is in a very masculine tuning: DADDAD. It’s also a love song. I wrote “Frontman in Heaven” in an obsessive three-day streak of writing for 14 hours, going to bed, getting up and writing again. It wasn’t a pleasant experience. I wrote “Days Spent Floating (in the Halfbetween)” by just jotting down the first sentence that popped into my head every morning in October immediately after I opened my eyes. At the end of the month I had a finished song. It was recorded as an afterthought as the last thing we did when they were about to kick us out of the studio. You can hear me flub some lyrics. But one take and we had it.

I think this record was me taking my life back to zero and starting to add it all back up again, one plus one plus one. Any part that didn’t feel like it added up I left out. Weirdly, it was the easiest and most natural record I’ve ever made. More than any time in my life before, I felt guided by intuition – like I was going with the grain, walking in the direction the wind was blowing. The closer it got to being finished, the more the confusion I’d felt at the start went away. It’s not really an Okkervil River album and it’s also my favorite Okkervil River album.

Will Sheff
May 2016

"I Am Very Far" is a startling break from anything this band has done before. The band’s Will Sheff emerges not only as a songwriter of the highest caliber, but a producer and arranger of singular vision. "I Am Very Far" is monolithic and darkly ambiguous.

Sheff contributed vocals to The New Pornographers’ album "Together", wrote a song for Norah Jones’ "The Fall", and helmed the Roky Erickson record "True Love Cast Out All Evil", for which his album notes received a Grammy nomination.

The writing process for "I Am Very Far" produced 30 or so songs, which he narrowed down to 18, recorded in a series of short, high-intensity sessions, each in a different location, each employing completely different methods than the one before it.

For songs like "Rider" and "Wake And Be Fine", Sheff gathered together a massive version of Okkervil River – two drummers, two pianists, two bassists, and seven guitarists, all playing live in one room – and led them on a week of live-in-the-studio marathon sessions, performing a single song obsessively over and over for as many as 12 hours to capture just the right take.

In The Rainbow Rain' - produced by Sheff and mixed by Shawn Everett (Perfume Genius, Alabama Shakes, The War on Drugs) - serves as showcase for Sheff's writing and the musical interplay of his new band mates, Benjamin Lazar Davis (bass), Will Graefe (guitar), Sarah Pedinotti (keys) and Cully Symington (percussion) - the same iteration of Okkervil River that joined Sheff on the Away tour. Recalls Sheff of that tour: "It was my favorite touring experience in many years... I felt like a kid again. I realized how phenomenally lucky I am that I've been able to play music for this long."

Sheff and the band started work on the new album shortly after the end of that tour - and the presidential election. "If December 2016 was good for anything, it was good for writing songs," he says. Galvanized by the seismic events of that Fall and the following year, Sheff, sometimes co-writing with his new band, channeled his outrage and sadness into music intended to be hopeful, healing and uplifting. Inspired by the Quaker meetings he had been attending, Sheff injected the album with undercurrents of spirituality and gratitude. The result is something akin to a modern secular gospel record, and among the best music of his career.

Highlights include driving, melodic anthems "Love Somebody" and "Pulled Up The Ribbon," and "Famous Tracheotomies," which chronicles notable figures who've endured the titular procedure, including Gary Coleman, Dylan Thomas, Ray Davies, and Sheff himself. "In places, the record deals with heavy things like trauma and betrayal and shame, but, actually, it's supposed to be a good time," says Sheff. "I hope it's something fun, that makes people feel happier

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: With hints of smooth synthpop mixed in with the usual swooning indie anthems, Sheff has managed to sacrifice none of his original appeal whilst bringing in the considerable talents of his new bandmates, somehow simmering into a cohesive and enjoyable whole.

TRACK LISTING

1. Famous Tracheotomies
2. The Dream And The Light
3. Love Somebody
4. Family Song
5. Pulled Up The Ribbon
6. Don't Move Back To LA
7. Shelter Song
8. How It Is
9. External Actor
10. Human Being Song

This exclusive 12” from Okkervil River precedes a brand new album. One for the fans, this superbly showcases the gorgeous sounds of Okkervil River.

Formed 12 years ago and having released five albums, Okkervil River have built a unique position in American independent rock.

The band’s music has been described by Uncut as “a delirious mix of Sheff's myriad influences - the Velvets, Stones, Faces, Dylan, Bowie - that brilliantly examined notions of identity, celebrity, loss, reckless living, and who some people become when being themselves is no longer who they want to be.”

Taken from their hugely acclaimed album, "The Stand Ins", this single also includes two exclusive tracks: "Millionaire" and "Pop Lie (One Man Band Version)".

Taken from the new album ‘I Am Very Far’, ‘Rider’ was recorded by a massive version of Okkervil River – two drummers, two pianists, two bassists, and seven guitarists, all playing live in one room.

The band then spent a week of live-in-the-studio marathon sessions, performing a single song obsessively over and over for as many as 12 hours at a time to capture just the right take.

Okkervil River have thrown away all maps and compasses but they continue to chart their way, unblinking, toward destinations unknown.

“The noise they make is thrilling. ‘Rider’ is like Bowie’s ‘Panic In Detroit’ re-tooled in the anthemic manner of Springsteen or Arcade Fire, a bold unfurling, a majestic racket” – Uncut.

TRACK LISTING

Rider
I Guess We Lost

Although he has long been known as a characterdriven songwriter, Okkervill River’s Will Sheff announced that this album is a work of autobiography.

‘The Silver Gymnasium’ is set in a very specific time and place from Sheff's childhood - in 1986 in the small town of Meriden, NH, where Sheff's parents worked as teachers for a boarding school. Sheff conceived the album as a tribute to the spirit of pre-adolescence, meant to evoke the nostalgic feeling of “an action figure you found in the woods.”

This was also the era of video games like ‘Leisure Suit Larry’, ‘Maniac Mansion’, and ‘King’s Quest’. To pay homage to those early games, Sheff created his own online adventure game in partnership with Eyes And Ears' Benjamin Miles.

With "The Stage Names", Okkervil River dynamite the walls of past release, "Black Sheep Boy"'s gothic, moss-walled castle from the inside to let in the glaring sun. Where "Black Sheep Boy" presented a fairytale of dark babbling streams and high distant towers, "The Stage Names" takes place in an unmistakably modern world, where snowy televisions blast into cheap hotels the spectral images of soap stars endlessly betraying each other, where losers in late-night bars languish to the beat of their favourite songs, where broken-down actresses place their final cell calls from lonely mansions high in the hills. Riddled with characters real and fake, with true-life biography and brazenly fabricated autobiography, with the relics of high culture and the crumpled-up trash of low culture, "The Stage Names" is a cinemascopic take on the meaning of entertainment.

"Wake And Be Fine" is the first single from the forthcoming "I Am Very Far" album from Okkervil River.

Work on "I Am Very Far" started after a year spent on other projects. Band member Will Sheff contributed vocals to The New Pornographers’ album "Together", wrote a song for Norah Jones' "The Fall", produced an upcoming album for the Brooklyn-based band Bird Of Youth, and helmed Roky Erickson's acclaimed "True Love Cast Out All Evil" with Okkervil River. (Sheff’s liner notes for said album earned him a 2011 Grammy nomination.)

TRACK LISTING

Wake And Be Fine
Weave Room Blues

‘Your Past Life Is A Blast’ is the third single from ‘I Am Very Far’ from Okkervil River. The release of this single coincides with the band's late festival season appearance at End Of The Road.

“The goal was to push my brain to places it didn't want to go. The idea was to not have any idea – to keep myself confused about what I was doing,” frontman Will Sheff says about Okkervil River's newest album. The resulting record is a startling break from anything this band has done before. By turns terrifying and joyous, violent and serene, grotesque and romantic, it's a celebration of forces beyond our control.

‘Gold Faces’ is an exclusive new non-album song.

After the release earlier this year and the critical success of her debut album ‘Choke Enough’, Oklou is already back with new songs including the lead single ‘Viscus' with FKA twigs. 'Choke Enough : Expansion Pack' is an 8 track vinyl : 4 new songs and 4 remixes.

TRACK LISTING

1. Viscus Feat. FKA Twigs
2. What's Good
3. The Fishsong Unplugged
4. Dance 2
5. Choke Enough - Jamesjamesjames Remix
6. Choke Enough - Malibu’s Ambient City Mix
7. Blade Bird - Nick León Broward Mix
8. Take Me By The Hand- Aaron Hibell Remix 

For Fans Of... John Carol Kirby, Pharoah Sanders, Bill Evans, Durand Jones & The Indications, Misha Panfilov.

The studio at 122 West Loveland Avenue was not an unfamiliar space for Steve Okonski, the leader of his eponymous trio Okonski. Ever since the Colemine label set up shop in Loveland, Ohio it has been a host to a number of groups passing through town, including Durand Jones and the Indications who all of this trio’s members have connections to. After setting aside some time in winter of 2020, Okonski, trained initially as a classical pianist, invited Michael Isvara “Ish” Montgomery and Aaron Frazer to work on an album that was initially planned to be beat driven and fully composed trio instrumentals.

After finishing this first session with some improvisations, a second week was booked in the summer of 2021 to try and capture some more of that spontaneous energy. During this session, the tracks were all improvised and recorded live to a Tascam 388 during several late nights at the Colemine HQ. They were structured to allow the group’s collective intuition to fully shape the melodies and arcs of the music.

The album opens with Runner Up, where a triumphant yet melancholic melody in the piano leads to a more reserved B-section driven by the drums and bass of Frazer and Montgomery. As you journey through the remainder of the album you are met with a plethora of evoked and explored emotions. The calmness one has walking down a moonlit street after midnight, the connection one has for a person who comes into their world for just a moment or a lifetime, and the nerves and catharsis one feels when starting upon a new, unknown journey.

Magnolia closes with Sunday, a track that was recorded late into the night at the close of their first recording session. Without the spontaneity of Sunday, the remainder of Magnolia would likely have never come to fruition. Magnolia was composed from the heart and from the spirit of those in the studio those late nights in Loveland. It is the culmination of an emotional and artistic release that was not afforded or recognized before the band sat at their instruments, and because of that it is introspective, meditative, spiritual, and new.

TRACK LISTING

1. Runner Up
2. Field Museum
3. Old Friend
4. Dark Moon
5. Song For My Sister's Son
6. Walking To A Home
7. Sunday

After nearly two years, Okonski returns with 'Entrance Music' — an album that finds the trio at the height of their improvisational prowess and celebrating the spontaneous and meditative. On the heels of 2023’s debut 'Magnolia', pianist and leader Steve Okonski has reconvened long-time musical collaborators (Durand Jones and the Indications bandmate Aaron Frazer on drums and bassist Michael Isvara “Ish” Montgomery) for another session in the spirit of artists like the Bad Plus, Gerald Clayton, and The Breathing Effect. Ultimately 'Entrance Music' serves as an invitation to early hours, where songs linger in the doorway, announcing their presence before returning to the air, in a meticulous drift into the next.

Recorded over a five day session, 'Entrance Music' was one of the first albums committed to tape at Portage Lounge, Terry Cole’s studio in Loveland, OH. “It was a new setup, but with Terry behind the dials it was very familiar,” says Okonski. “I can’t emphasize enough how much Terry feels like a fourth member [of the band] because of the space he’s curating, the energy he is bringing, and the production ideas.” The energy and sound created with the Colemine label head at the helm makes for a listening experience equally at home with ECM or Stones Throw catalogues.

Whereas much of the debut resonates with his time in New York, Entrance Music “feels a little less ‘on the streets at 2 A.M.’ and a little more nature-based…a little more ethereal,” says Okonski. “It’s definitely age, environment, and family — all of that does come through in the music.”

TRACK LISTING

1. October
2. Vista
3. Lakebridge
4. Wind Or Vertigo
5. Passing Through
6. Summer Storm
7. Dahlia
8. Dusk
9. Penny

Ryo Okumoto is a keyboardist with a rather impressive resume. He has worked with the likes of Phil Collins and Eric Clapton. He is also the keyboardist for Spock's Beard and this work is an extension of his work with the band with added jazz and fusion elements.

Okumu released his first solo record Knopperz in 2021; an instrumental concept album based on pianist Duval Timothy’s 2017 album Sen AmIt was friend and mentor Lexxx who sparked the soul searching that kicked off his next record after he told Okumu that he was trying to explain who Okumu was but struggled to summarise his vast catalogue.

“There are all these ways into these aspects of who I am and I felt like he was saying, it would be so cool if you could find out how to say who you are in a comprehensive way”. Okumu took on that challenge and in response devised his sophomore release I Came From Love, a tapestry of Black experience that explores ancestry, the legacy of slavery, what it means to exist in an unjust society, and Okumu’s own family history.  

The album writing and demoing process began in January 2021 at Lexxx’s East Sussex studio The Barn, while early recordings were completed at Okumu’s studio with Tom Skinner on drums, and Nick Ramm on keys, and Aviram Barath on synths. On I Came From Love, Okumu calls on a star-studded array of guests, including Eska, Kwabs, Wesley Joseph, Robert Stillman, Anthony Joseph, Byron Wallen, Raven Bush, and Grace Jones.

Rather than release solely under his name, Okumu has chosen the moniker ‘Dave Okumu & the 7 Generations’, which Okumu sees as “my actual ancestors, the ancestors of others, my musical ancestors, and my descendants”. Sonically the album hits a kaleidoscopic frenzy of notes, rocketing through bass heavy rhythms, neo soul-tinged cries and frenetic spoken word passages.

The album is a body of work presented in chapters; “You Survived So I Might Live” [tracks 1-4], “The Intolerable Suffering Of (The) Other” [5-8], “Seduced By Babylon” (9-11), and “Cave Of Origins” (12-14).

TRACK LISTING

Two Things
7 Generations
Blood Ah Go Run Streets
My Negritude
The Cost
Prison
Black Firework
Scenes
Amnesia
Get Out
The Struggle
Eyes On Me
Abaka
A Paradise

Debut solo album from Dave Okumu - who you probably don't know from producing and guesting on projects with Arlo Parks, St. Vincent, Tony Allen and Jesse Ware (amongst others). You might recognize him as singer and guitarist from the Mercury nominated band, The Invisible.

However this isn't anything like anything he's made before. An ode to early electronica, downbeat and instrumental hip-hop, it combines elements of glitch, boom-bap, and warped sample heaven to create something with soul, identity and, more important, something that'll sound amazing in your living room as the dark nights draw in.

Playing with a tantalizingly organic palette of sounds, it's jazz-indebted, with lots of dusty piano, upright bass and brushed drums strung up with an elastic, head-bobbing groove which I can't workout is some expert MPC trickery or some other kind of beat-production voodoo. Either way it pulls you in and out, fast and slower as it nods through its movements and is a guaranteed H I T for anyone with penchant for stoner, instrumental hip-hop in the vein of Madlib, J Dilla and Your Old Droog. 

TRACK LISTING

Intro
Son Of Emmerson
Ballpark
Trouble
New Dawn
Brother
Reprise
RTN
Don’t Die

It's safe to say that hip-hop has never seen an album like Ol’ Dirty Bastard's 1995 solo debut Return to the 36 Chambers. The brief glimpses of ODB's unhinged genius provided by Wu-Tang Clan's landmark Enter the Wu-Tang album two years earlier were begging to be expanded on to a larger canvas, and, with RZA guiding production, the album promised to give Dirty the creative license to make one of the most bizarre, entertaining and original LPs in hip-hop history. With his raspy, drunken flow and dark sense of humor, Dirty fearlessly attacks from all angles, throwing himself fearlessly into punchy rhyme attacks (“Damage,” with GZA), drugged-out party jams (the monster singles “Brooklyn Zoo” and “Shimmy Shimmy Ya”) and bizarre, grimly hilarious fantasies of sex and violence (“Don't U Know” and the R&B-tinged “Sweet Sugar Pie”). Backed by RZA's appropriately gritty, dissonant beats and appearances from the Clan, Return became an instant hit, selling over 1 million copies and earning a Grammy Award nomination for Best Rap Album in 1996. The album stands as a high water mark in the Wu-Tang Clan's collective creative output and was selected as one of the Best 100 Rap Albums by The Source magazine in 1998. In honoring the legacy of one of hip-hop's most innovative releases, Get On Down is proud to present this incredible and unique special edition of Ol’ Dirty Bastard's Return to the 36 Chambers as a double LP which contains the complete original album, remastered for optimal sound quality.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A.
1 Intro
2 Shimmy Shimmy Ya
3 Baby C’mon
4 Brooklyn Zoo

SIDE B.
1 Hippa To Da Hoppa
2 Raw Hide
3 Damage
4 Don’t U Know

SIDE C.
1 The Stomp
2 Goin’ Down
3 Drunk Game (Sweet Sugar Pie)
4 Snakes

SIDE D.
1 Brooklyn Zoo II (Tiger Cane)
2 Proteck Ya Neck II The Zoo
3 Cuttin’ Headz

It's safe to say that hip-hop has never seen an album like Ol’ Dirty Bastard's 1995 solo debut 'Return to the 36 Chambers'. The brief glimpses of ODB's unhinged genius provided by Wu-Tang Clan's landmark Enter the Wu-Tang album two years earlier were begging to be expanded on to a larger canvas, and, with RZA guiding production, the album promised to give Dirty the creative license to make one of the most bizarre, entertaining and original LPs in hip-hop history. With his raspy, drunken flow and dark sense of humor, Dirty fearlessly attacks from all angles, throwing himself fearlessly into punchy rhyme attacks (“Damage,” with GZA), drugged-out party jams (the monster singles “Brooklyn Zoo” and “Shimmy Shimmy Ya”) and bizarre, grimly hilarious fantasies of sex and violence (“Don't U Know” and the R&B-tinged “Sweet Sugar Pie”). Backed by RZA's appropriately gritty, dissonant beats and appearances from the Clan, Return became an instant hit, selling over 1 million copies and earning a Grammy Award nomination for Best Rap Album in 1996. The album stands as a high water mark in the Wu-Tang Clan's collective creative output and was selected as one of the Best 100 Rap Albums by The Source magazine in 1998.

TRACK LISTING

1. Intro
2. Shimmy Shimmy Ya
3. Baby C'mon
4. Brooklyn Zoo
5. Hippa To Da Hoppa
6. Raw Hide
7. Damage
8. Don't U Know
9. The Stomp
10. Goin' Down
11. Drunk Game (Sweet Sugar Pie)
12. Snakes
13. Brooklyn Zoo II (Tiger Crane)
14. Proteck Ya Neck II The Zoo
15. Cuttin' Headz

David Wingo is a busy man. In the years since the release of his last record as Ola Podrida, he's written and recorded soundtracks for several movies including Take Shelter (winner of the Grand Prix at Cannes in 2011), MUD (starring Matthew McConaughey and Reese Witherspoon), and Prince Avalanche (starring Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch and co-composed with Explosions In The Sky), both of which are seeing wide release this coming spring/summer. When he had time in between films, Wingo assembled a live band featuring Colin Swietek on guitars, Matt Clark on bass, and David Hobizal on drums and began to bring his new songs in to the band. A first for Ola Podrida, the new album Ghosts Go Blind was recorded to tape in a proper studio, mostly live, with the full band. The resulting songs are energetic and accessible, while Wingo's abstract narratives are more personal and intimate than ever. Throughout the album bittersweet memories of youth are filtered through the nostalgic eyes of a man starting to accept his adult life for the first time. The album opens with last guy at the party pleading for someone to stay with him, and keep the revelry going a little longer. It's an almost cringeworthy desperation, and yet Wingo makes it feel relatable. The final refrain "It's no fun, being alone at the end" takes on a bigger meaning, giving you the feeling his friends have grown up and moved on, leaving him to decide how he'll proceed with his life. By the middle of the album, the character has evolved, now pleading with his partner again, but this time the goal is to stay home and shut out the world.

TRACK LISTING

1. Not Ready To Stop, 5:40
2. Fumbling For The Light, 4:03
3. Washing Away, 4:40
4. Blind To The Blues, 4:32
5. Staying In, 4:06
6. Ghosts Go Blind, 5:12
7. Speed Of Light, 4:07
8. Some Sweet Relief, 4:07
9. Notes Remain, 5:14

The music of Old Apparatus carves its own niche, leading you by the hand into unknown territory, exotic and mysterious, but shot through with a sense of magic and wonder that always pulls it out of the horror it hints at. A low key audio-visual group, they’ve deliberately worked out of the limelight, and consequently released some of the most ambitious and beautiful electronic music of the last few years. Old Apparatus started life on Mala’s Deep Medi record label 2 or so years ago, releasing two highly praised singles that were some of the best sellers on the label, however they were an unconventional choice, sitting uncomfortably with the dancefloor aimed dubstep that the label was known for, as their beautifully crafted mix of drones, sculptured soundscapes and dub moved far beyond the rulebook, and their audio-visual live shows became renowned for their quality. In 2012, Old Apparatus launched a bid for independence with their own ‘Sullen Tone’ imprint to release their own projects and others. The first of these releases on the label were EPs that spanned the second half of the year, opening with the Derren EP before releasing a series of EPs from three separate members of the group. Compendium draws together the highlights of those EPs into a sequenced mix that draws the sheer drama out of the music, like contrasting scenes in a film, enabling the listener to pick out details in music and get lost in its generous sound world. Starting with Zimmer’s rising strings and watery hiss, rolling seamlessly into the far away shoegaze of Mernom and then the warm, woodblock and acoustic guitar 2-step of Derren. The mood switches up to the jungle atmosphere of Dourado, with hypnotising drums and a feeling of panic, before the chopped and screwed march of Lingle drops the mood down, the club-footed hip hop and ritualistic astral atmosphere of cauliroot, creates a mysterious ambience, before the album hones down into the bell-like melodies and sliding drums of boxcat. Chicago opens next with a bare piano and heartbeat thud, working out of the rainy atmospheres, the shimmering drones Octofish lead into the vast waves of Realise, ending the album on a powerful note.

TRACK LISTING

01. Zimmer
02. Mernom
03. Derren
04. Dourado
05. Lingle
06. Cauliroot
07. Boxcat
08. Chicago
09. Octofish
10. Realise

The pet project of Texas based programmer John Mark Lapham, - of The Earlies and 4AD band The Late Cord fame - Old Fire joins a world-class roster that includes the likes of Steven Wilson, The Pineapple Thief, Anathema, Nordic Giants and The Anchoress. Taking nearly a decade to make, Songs From The Haunted South has been a labour of love for Lapham.

Born from an album concept for a 4AD project with singer Micah P. Hinson (The Late Cord), the album was originally intended to feature different singers and musicians recording songs that were both covers and originals. After parting ways with Micah, Lapham remained determined to realize his vision for the album and sought voices he considered special or fitted the inspiration.

The first piece of the puzzle fell in to place after meeting the former owner of 4AD, Ivo Watts Russell, who introduced Lapham to singer/songwriter, Tom Rapp - who recorded a string of haunting albums in the late 60s and 70s under the name Pearls Before Swine. The vocals Rapp provided formed the basis of the track Shadows. In the following years, guest vocals were recorded by Sara Lowes (The Earlies), DM Stith, Christopher Barnes (Gem Club), Rebekka Karijord, and Alex Maas (Black Angels).

The project also features a myriad of exceptional musicians including Warren Defever (His Name Is Alive) - Guitar, Thor Harris (Swans) - Drums, Christian Madden - Rhodes piano & Organ and Semay Wu (Cello).

The 13 track album contains a selection of songs that in one way or another are dedications to people, some dead and some still living. Musically, inspirations range from ambient artists such as Brian Eno and Stars of the Lid to Psychedelic Rock, traditional Country and early 4AD.

Sitting alongside the original Old Fire compositions are a selection of intriguing cover versions. Lapham uniquely interprets songs by Psychic TV (The Orchids), Low (Laser Beam), Ian William Craig (A Sight Grip, A Gentle Hold), Jason Molina (It's Easier Now), Camberwell Now (Know How) and Shearwater (Helix).

Songs From The Haunted South' was produced by John Mark Lapham, mixed by JM Lapham and Mark Kuykendall, and was mastered by Ian Hawgood.

The powerful cover art was designed by UK's Grammy Award winning designer Vaughan Oliver, famed for his work with artists such as Mojave 3, Lush, Cocteau Twins, Dead Can Dance, The Breeders, This Mortal Coil, Pixies, Throwing Muses in addition to artists such as David Sylvian and Bush. The cover shot taken in 1958 features Lapham's father during bivouac camping basic training in the foothills of the Ozarks, at Fort Chaffee.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says:

TRACK LISTING

Old Fire 3
Along Came A Sadness
Helix
Know How
It's Easier Now
A Stranger In The Family
Bloodchild
Faust
Shadows
A Slight Grip, A Gentle Hold
Laser Beam
The Orchids
Deadhouse Dream

For Fans of: Bill Callahan, Adam Torres, Cross Record, Julia Holter, Low, Damien Jurado.

The album’s Texas-based producer John Mark Lapham was a member of Secretly Canadian band The Earlies. Voids employs the vocal talents of Bill Callahan, Emily Cross, Adam Torres, and Julia Holter across twelve genre-fluid, yet impressively cohesive tracks that span baroque dream-pop, filmic ambient, raga-like drones, avant-country, and even spiritual jazz, all imbued with poetic heft and seared by the West Texas sun. It was beneath this same sun that Lapham lost both of his parents, mourned a withering relationship, and shouldered the fallout of the pandemic, turning his life into the rusted-out scraps he then used to build Voids from the ground up.

There is no better narrator for Lapham’s story than fellow Texas resident Bill Callahan, whose iconic delivery perfectly personifies the core themes of Voids. By the time Callahan appears, he does so over a saw-blade drone that sounds like machinery echoing off the corrugated steel walls of a nearby workshop, which then breaks open into a loose yet pained confluence of violin and upright bass that recalls Joe Henderson’s 1974 spiritual jazz album The Elements. On “Dreamless” the album crystallizes into its most straight-ahead moment as Lapham trains his compositional lens on a brilliant piece of pop songwriting. Featured vocalist Adam Torres soars over John Mark’s punctual arrangement of stomping drums and rapturous string-work to anthemic, and gently psychedelic consequence.

Voids concludes with the pleasant clatter of “Circles” wherein Lapham throws all his ingredients into a pot of celebratory catharsis. Drum sets collide with one another gleefully, and harmonized textures scatter and roll about the floor like a dropped bucket of ornate marbles. Lapham’s collage-work, which up to this point has been smartly restrained, comes unglued as he transmutes grief into relief within a moment-of-death montage of aural imagery. Across Voids, that same awareness of tragedy and loneliness is made palatable by the album’s exciting and varied topography, which stands insubordinately against Lapham’s real-life surroundings. The settlers who established West Texas towns like the one he calls home must have done so with a sense of hope despite the hostility of their surroundings, however inevitable the withering. Similar spirits speak through John Mark Lapham’s work, and he welcomes them as fascinating old friends. “That more than anything inspired a lot of what I try to express through Old Fire, faded memories, former glories, places lost in time,” he discloses. “Whatever I was trying to express with Old Fire wasn't finished with the first album, like a story that was only half-read. It seemed like that was only the beginning, and there was a lot more ground to cover.” If there is ground still uncovered for Old Fire after Voids, it's sure to be lush in spite of or perhaps because of the dusty soil beneath it.

TRACK LISTING

01. All Gone [2:11]
02. Blue Star (ft. Emily Cross) [4:07]
03. When I Was In My Prime (ft. Bill Callahan) [5:05]
04. Corpus (ft. Bill Callahan) [4:15]
05. Love Is Only Dreaming [2:45]
06. Dreamless (ft. Adam Torres) [3:08]
07. Don't You Go (ft. Bill Callahan) [4:38]
08. Window (ft. Julia Holter) [4:24]
09. Uninvited [8:22]
10. Memory [5:51]
11. Father As A Child [4:24]
12. Circles [6:57]

A booze and smoke filled stumble through love and loss taking in rock, blues, folk and swing. .

Observers of a world of people trapped in dreams producing music that wants to find out why this happens. Songs that dismantle the procedure of life and ask how are people oblivious? Rooted deep in the folk culture of story telling and drawing characters, picking up something new from every stop along the way. Their gift is the music that is melded from all that they have seen and experienced and offers the listener a doorway into a different path. .

Old House Playground are a two piece band based in Manchester UK. Their trail of gigs leads a winding path across europe taking in Manchester, London, Ireland, Greece, Germany and Switzerland with airplay in the UK, Ireland, Greece, Germany, Switzerland and even Romania. Their album God Damn That Gold was recorded to analogue tape by label mate Chris Evans, and will be released on 11th June 2012 through The Evening Economies and Fat Bob Records.

The 13th studio album from Old 97’s arose from what vocalist/guitarist Rhett Miller refers to as a “de-evolution.” “As much as I want us to calm down and grow up, the songs that felt right for this record were mostly big and loud and brutal and dirty.” Produced by Tucker Martine and featuring appearances from Peter Buck (R.E.M.) and Scott McCaughey (The Minus 5) — American Primitive is gloriously rowdy, revealing a band more attuned than ever to the raw, reckless energy of timeless rock-and-roll.

Old Saw, the enigmatic New England collective led by Henry Birdsey (Tongue Depressor), return with their third long-playing record, Dissection Maps. It is not enough to trace the fields. The choreo-cartographic demands the casting of stone, a grassfire, a carnival; something with which to rupture the horizontality of existence and imagine the vertical.Earth is the eighth morning, folded against the week's work. The field is a line drawing of oblivion. The house is a forest in the shape of a womb. America is a quarry in the image of god.(Aidan Patrick Welby – 2024)

“The band captures the American stretch, the spaces in-between and the hollowness that haunts us along those routes…fades the radio to static to let the nothingness linger among the soul.” (Raven Sings the Blues) “ evokes an ambience of prayer-like solemnity that celebrates something decidedly terrestrial, what the label describes as “a rusted and granular shadow world where the dive bar meets the divine.” It recalls one of those junkyard shrines built by some sincere eccentric, improbably wonderful forms of weathered stone and scrap metal standing like totems to an unrecognised religion rooted in the earth around us.” (Various Small Flames).

TRACK LISTING

Sleeps With Dice
Singing Loom
Dealt In Silver
Revival Hearing
Measured Mile End
Last Rings

The debut album from pre-grunge crunch merchants oldboy:

oldboy formed as a past-time - like golf or knitting - between old friends with a love of having a loud good time. created by Max and Chris in an industrial estate rehearsal room back in 2019, get togethers were few and far between but something was popping - it felt like fun.

Since then, practises were again few and far between but after recruiting an old friend - Ryan - on bass (they didn't want to be a two piece - lightning bolt have that covered) they decided to try a little bit harder and as the world went into reverse they somehow wrote what you have here - their debut album 'bloody'.

Recorded at the Total Refreshment Centre in three days with Jonah Falco (fucked up, chubby and the gang, the chisel) and then mixed in three hours in the basement of rough trade west you get exactly where oldboy are at. it's fast and relentless. it swings in places. It's super raw and the sound of three people having a high ol' time.

Mucho influenced by the prime / premiere cuts of the late 80s / early 90s Chicago / US noise, as once released by Touch and Go, Amphetamine Reptile and Sub Pop.. pummelled home with a British post punk thWACK... it’s pop music, it’s just nasty pop music.

For fans of: Tar, Shellac, Precious Wax Droppings, Helmet, Scratch Acid, Tad....

Play loud…
…and often

TRACK LISTING

1. Proper Son
2. Big Balls
3. Soft To The Touch
4. Fux Been Given
5. Wow
6. Slap On The Wrist
7. Pedestal
8. Brace Yerself
9. Underwater Bats

Olden Yolk is a New York-based group whose penchant for dystopian folk, abstract poeticism, and motorik rhythms have enveloped them in a sound uniquely of-the-moment yet simultaneously time-tested. The project is currently led by songwriters, vocalists, and multiinstrumentalists Shane Butler and Caity Shaffer, whose interlaced vocals are found guiding each composition on their enlivening self-titled debut. The project was initially conceived in 2012 by Butler as an outlet for one-off songs and visual art while touring and releasing albums with the band Quilt (Mexican Summer).

Following the release of a split-record with Weyes Blood in 2014, Olden Yolk became a collaborative entity. Olden Yolk’s debut ruminates on questions surrounding love, self-doubt, and locating autonomy amidst burgeoning unrest. Wrought with hazy melancholy and halcyon joy, Butler and Shaffer’s lilting vocals play off one another through a devotional dialogue, taking form in haunting choral melodies and candid rock n' roll. These songs are ecstatic odes to the life of the city; to the subway platforms, kiosks, and monuments which enliven and encompass our collectivity, elevating into an urban-psychedelia.

On the album, Butler and Shaffer are joined by drummer Dan Drohan (Tei Shi, Uni Ika Ai) and guitarist Jesse DeFrancesco who round out the studio sessions and live-band. Drohan’s deep passion for jazz, hip-hop, and experimental percussion come to fore while Defrancesco’s minimal yet powerful guitar ambiences are heard swelling in the peripheries of each song. The album was recorded at Gary’s Electric in NYC by Jarvis Taveniere (Woods) with co-production, electronics, and mixing by Jon Nellen (Ginla, Terrible Records). Other guests, such as multi-instrumentalist John Andrews (Woods, Quilt, The Yawns) and violinist Jake Falby (Mutual Benefit, Julie Byrne), add to the mercurial nature of the record, creating a landscape tinged with beatific songwriting and transgressive underpinnings. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: The familia, often-tread middle ground between folk and psychedelia is a dangerous one. On one hand, you have bands which sound like they could have come from any era in the past 30 years, and could slip away a mere month later. On the other hand, you have the undiluted hypnotic beauty and filmic soaring majesty of Olden Yolk, perfectly marrying the mind-melting chemical meltdown of the 70's with the pristine production and thematic purity of todays folk. Superb.

TRACK LISTING

1. Verdant
2. Cut To The Quick
3. Gamblers On A Dime
4. Vital Sign
5. Aria
6. Common Ground
7. Hen’s Teeth
8. Esprit De Corps
9. After Us
10. Takes One To Know One

The musical duo of Shane Butler & Caity Shaffer released their debut album as Olden Yolk last year, an alluring concoction of hypnagogic folk & kosmiche rhythms, expanding & refining Butler's work in his former band Quilt toward a more focused direction. "Living Theatre" is the follow up to that eponymous debut & more than lives up to its promise. The songs on "Living Theatre" were written & recorded during a heavy time of transition & upheaval for the duo, with personal tragedies and a big move from their NYC home to a warmer climate in Los Angeles coloring the album's inception.

Thematically "Living Theatre" tunes seem to be about how humans react to the ways life is colored by both fate and the consequences of the conscious & unconscious decisions we make. Musically, the duo's songwriting has gelled into a unified front, relying more on the subtle shifts of melody & rhythm than a barrage of chord changes; "Living Theatre"s hooks lap at your feet like a babbling brook, rather than bowl you over like violent waves. The refinement in tunes like "Castor & Pollux", "Grand Palais" & first single "Cotton & Cain" points to a new frontier for the group; soaring skyward toward the emotionally textural plateaus of trailblazers like The Go-Betweens or Yo La Tengo. There's a discernible romantic feel to tunes like "Violent Days" or "Distant Episode"'s lush arrangements with Shaffer in particular finding her own voice here; poetic, abstract & expressive. "Living Theatre" showcases a band breaking free from its chrysalis, and embracing its next phase of evolution

TRACK LISTING

1. 240 D
2. Blue Paradigm
3. Cotton & Cain
4. Meadowlands
5. Castor & Pollux
6. Violent Days
7. Every Ark
8. Grand Palais
9. Distant Episode
10. Angelino High

After releasing his seventh - arguably best and most popular album - The Odd Shower, The Bitter Springs' singer / songwriter Simon Rivers reinvented himself as Poor Performer, whose own debut, Like Yer Wounds Too, followed the same winning formula, widened somewhat by the inclusion of songs with a greater fragile beauty and introspection . . . though rarely without a degree of self-effacing humour and a rather stylish wit. Decades of self-releasing compact disc-only albums from the far southwestern suburbs of London, with scant regard for promotion or the normal machinations of showbiz - touring, for instance - did little to spread the word about Rivers' unique and prestigious talents. A conversational singer with a delightfully warm and convivial stone, Rivers' sense of the absurd and willingness to portray aspects of life generally unrecognised by pop music, one supposes it's not entirely unfair to have expect Top of The Pops to come calling. Yet the relative absence of cult of Simon Rivers fans is somewhat perplexing, for his lyrics, ideas and tunes all do merit it. There's little affectation in the sense of stage persona, but heaps of personality and intriguing, occasional perverse idea. It's hard to listen to anything he's down without a degree of sheer enjoyment. It's real, without affectation. The very real bumps heads with the slightly mental, just like in life! So what does this new guise - Oldfield Youth Club - have to offer? It's partially a revival of Rivers' first 'real' band, Last Party, and it displays hallmarks of that band's youthful energy. There's a bit of teen glam in Good News I'm Afraid and (Theme From Oldfield Youth Club, even while lead track We're The OYC and When Bob Grant Ruled The World add a dollop of an energetic ruefulness to the mix. A Kind Of Loving In A Loveless Town is an immediate classic, a song one could hear dozens of times before really reaching the core of its magic and majesty. Lest this sound like the work of a solo artist, it does feel like a band - a rather clever one, in fact. Including members Kim Rivers and Neil Palmer (both from Last Party), as well as trumpeter / vocalist Alison Targett, Oldfield Youth Club is a band with an obvious musical kinship. There's a connection to the literal style of Vic Godard's Subway Sect (and members have been shared between both acts) or early Go-Betweens . . . there's an alchemical sensibility shared by all three acts wherein their words and tunes inform each other in a deceptively casual but arresting manner. It's hard not to love, a rare work that earns immediate affection and just grows better from there.

TRACK LISTING

We're The Oyc
Good News I'm Afraid
Strange Family Dynamic
Lightbulb Moments
When Bob Grant Ruled The World
A Kind Of Loving In A Loveless Town
(theme From) Oldfield Youth Club
Cutbacks
Talk 2 People
Baby Joy
The Glue
Net Curtains

This 50th Anniversary celebration edition of Tubular Bells, overseen by Mike Oldfield, contains a brand new half-speed Abbey Road master of the original album, plus a second album that unites several beguiling versions of Oldfield’s masterwork for the first time.

Receiving its first outing on vinyl is Tubular X, that Mike recorded in 1998 for an X-Files album*; Mike’s remix collaboration with York, the original Mike Oldfield’s Single (Theme From Tubular Bells)* and, for the first time since a very limited run in 2012, Mike’s stunning Tubular Bells/In Dulci Jubilo (Music for the Opening Ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games).Of particular interest brand new eight-minute track Tubular Bells 4 Intro, which may well be the last thing ever recorded by Oldfield.

TRACK LISTING

Vinyl Tracklist

LP1

1. Tubular Bells - Part One (2023 Half Speed Master By Miles Showell)
2. Tubular Bells - Part Two (2023 Half Speed Master By Miles Showell)

LP2 - SIDE A

1. Tubular Bells 4 Intro (previously Unreleased Demo)
2. Tubular Bells/In Dulci Jubilo (Music For The Opening Ceremony Of The London 2012 Olympic Games)

LP2 - SIDE B

1. Tubular X
2. Tubular Bells (Mike Oldfield & YORK Remix)
3. Mike Oldfield's Single (Theme From Tubular Bells)


CD Tracklist

1. Tubular Bells - Part One
2. Tubular Bells - Part Two
3. Tubular Bells 4 Intro (previously Unreleased Demo)
4. Tubular Bells/In Dulci Jubilo
5. (Music For The Opening Ceremony Of The London 2012 Olympic Games)
6. Tubular Bells (Mike Oldfield & YORK Remix)

Bouquet Records features Olive T. for their sixth EP release on vinyl to infuse their 2021 roster with the desired verve and energy that dormant club kids are thirsting for.

Releasing in early summer, the energetic dance tracks herald a return to the dance floor, uplifted by soul-stirring synthesiser orchestral strings.
The native New Yorker and scene fixture was influenced by 90's house, inspired by Raze, Deee-lite, Green Velvet, and smooth disco flows.
The ascension sensation of 'Goin' Up' builds on familiar house grooves with digital synths and a thoughtful utilisation of today's technology.

Known to play a range spanning hip hop to club, jazz to funk, disco to garage, and more, Olive T has DJ'd countless venues and over international airwaves.
An early exposure to house and techno, combined with a wide span of diverse musical taste, shaped her unique style. In 2020 she started her own 2 hour radio show on The Lot Radio.

Olive T worked with Tiro! due to her admiration of his use of traditional sounds of the 90's era, sensing he also listened prolifically to 90's house and techno. Tiro!'s remix of 'This Is A Bop' adds organic flare to the original.
A long-time fan of Matt Karmil, she invited him to remix 'Opaque' - He flips the track upside down to reveal a different, but still vibrant interpretation, with his technical approach to remixing.

Olive T has released singles and remixes on Nervous records, 2MR, and on her own. The four track record 'Goin' Up' marks Olive T's first label-released EP, and first release on San Diego-based Bouquet Records.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Opaque
A2. Opaque (Matt Karmil Remix)
B. This Is A Bop
B. This Is A Bop (Tiro ! Remix)

Composer and pianist Oliver Brouwer releases his third album with Swedish record label 1631 Recordings. This forms the final part in a trilogy of albums shared over the last three years. ‘LP 3’ was recorded on the night of the 22nd of June, at Lancaster Priory Church. 

Being musical companions and label mates for years, it was just a matter of time until modern contemporaries Peter Broderick and Nils Frahm would start their first standalone project together.

Blog post by Peter Broderick: 'I am super excited to announce the debut release from a project very dear to me! Oliveray consists of me, Peter Ray Broderick, and one of my greatest friends in the world, the incredible musician / producer Nils Oliver Frahm. We've been collaborating in many ways these past couple years and traveling a lot together. Now finally we have arrived with our first truly 50/50 collaboration effort entitled Wonders. It all started when I was asked to create a cover version for my great friends Efterklang. I asked Nils if he'd like to work with me on the project. So one day we got together in his studio and ran through the song (Harmonics) a couple times and then laid it down to tape in the most relaxed way possible - me playing the guitar and singing and him on the piano... We were both really happy and inspired with how easy and fun this process was. We thought you could hear and feel that relaxed atmosphere in the song. So when our Japanese friends Cote Labo asked us to prepare some kind of release for our Japan tour, me and Nils set aside a couple days to record some music in a similar manner. Without much preconception we just set up the mics and started recording, with an aim to create a short album of half instrumentals, half vocal-based songs. We ran through a few fresh musical ideas that each of us had, improvising along with each other, sometimes just improvising entirely. And before we new it we had a nice little collection of eight intimate pieces of music. The first official output of what will hopefully be a lifelong collaboration, Wonders feels really special to me. Here comes Oliveray!'

Next year will mark two decades of existence for the instrument of sonic chaos known as Mondo Generator. The project, formed by then-soon-to-be-Queens of the Stone Age bassist/vocalist Nick Oliveri released their first album, Cocaine Rodeo, in 2000 via Southern Lord Recordings and never looked back through a whirlwind of intense punk, speed metal and heavy rock. Across four studio full-lengths and more tours than one could count, Mondo Generator has never been anything less than completely in your face, so that even Oliveri‘s acoustic work arrives dripping with attitude. Topped with artwork by Branca Studio and presented on limited blue and black vinyl and CD, this collection spans the career of the band, with guest appearances throughout from Josh Homme, Dave Catching, Dave Grohl, Alain Johannes, John Garcia, Brant Bjork, Alfredo Hernandez, Mark Lanegan, Chris Goss and many more.. A European tour sometime in the fall to coincide with this release is anticipated.“I’m stoked that somebody wants to put out the best of record and the songs on the album are the best songs over the years, 1997 to the present,” says Oliveri. “I feel that those records slipped through the cracks and now this is a chance for people to get a better presentation of the band. Only the best songs off the records!” 

TRACK LISTING

1. 13th Floor
2. F.Y.I.F
3. Sonicslowmotiontrails
4. Like The Sky; Dog Food
5. Smashed Apart; The Last Train
6. So High
7. Simple Exploding Man 
8. Four Corners 
9. Dead Silence
10. I Never Sleep
11. Shawnette Jackson 
12. Detroit; Lie Detector 
13. Take Me Away 
14. Like You Want
15. Sleep The Lie Away
16. Turbonegro Must Be Destroyed 
17. All The Way Down 
18. Paper Thin

"Who's Afraid Of Virginia Wade" is a mixture of acoustic and electric songs which carry the theme of a commentary on modern life in the same tradition as Lou Reed and Bob Dylan. Lyrically this album talks about failed friendships, the overbearance of mobile phones and technology in our lives, and about how much 'bullshit can be up ahead'! It's a taught and claustrophobic comment on modern life which few songwriters are prepared to make.

This album features 9 songs and is 40 minutes long. Limited to 100 and all signed and numbered, this CD comes in a clear DVD wallet and has an 8 page booklet printed on double weight paper with lyrics.

TRACK LISTING

1. The Rise And Fall And Decline Of Everything
2. Ghosts
3. Suicide Junkie
4. How Does It Feel To Get Just What You Want
5. Teach The Children 2010
6. Rebel In A Bad Suit
7. Living Is Just Too Damn Hard For You
8. Cruising On The Highway Of The Superlost
9. The Black Sheeps

Many of the superlatives describing Angel Olsen refer to how seemingly little it takes for her to leave an audience speechless, even spellbound. But Olsen has never been as timid as those descriptors imply, and the noisy, fiery hints in her earlier work find a fuller expression on her newest LP, Burn Your Fire for No Witness. Here, Olsen sings with full-throated exultation, admonition, and bold, expressive melody. Also, with the help of producer John Congleton, her music now crackles with a churning, rumbling low end and a brighter energy.

Angel Olsen began singing as a young girl in St. Louis, where she explored the remarkable range of her voice and the places it could take her songwriting. Her self-released debut EP, Strange Cacti, belied both that early period of discovery and her Midwestern roots. Cautious and homespun on the one hand, the EP transported us to a mystical, unrecognizable world on the other, and it garnered extensive praise for its enigmatic beauty. Olsen then went further on Half Way Home, her first full-length album (released on Bathetic Records), which mined essential themes while showcasing a more developed voice. Olsen dared to be more personal.

After extensive touring, Olsen eventually settled for a time in Chicago's Logan Square neighborhood, where she created "a collection of songs grown in a year of heartbreak, travel, and transformation." The new songs go on to tell us to leave, or to high-five a lover who is lacking, or to dance our way up and out of sorrow. Many of them also remain essentially unchanged from their bare beginnings. In leaving them so intact, a more self-assured Olsen is opening up to us, allowing us to be in the room with her at the very genesis of these songs, when the thread of creation is most vulnerable and least filtered. Our reward for entering this room are many head-turning moments and the powerful, unsettling recognition of ourselves in the weave of her songs.

This act of meaning-making recurs as a theme throughout the album, as the sublimating response to the power of negativity. In the song, "Stars", for example, Olsen wishes to "have the voice of everything" and in a moment of hatefulness and hurt realizes that the strength of fury results in the power she had been seeking all along. Thankfully for us, Olsen has decided to channel a lot of this newfound power into the ethereal, hypnotic performances of her new and revealing songs, sharing with us the full grace and beauty of her transformative moments.

TRACK LISTING

1. Unfucktheworld
2. Forgiven/Forgotten
3. Hi-Five
4. White Fire
5. High & Wild
6. Lights Out
7. Stars
8. Iota
9. Dance Slow Decades
10. Enemy
11. Windows

"Anyone reckless enough to have typecast Angel Olsen according to 2013’s Burn Your Fire For No Witness is in for a rethink with her third album, MY WOMAN. The crunchier, blown-out production of the former is gone, but that fire is now burning wilder. Her disarming, timeless voice is even more front-and-center. Yet, the strange, raw power and slowly unspooling incantations of her previous efforts remain.

Over two previous albums, she gave us reverb-shrouded poetic swoons, shadowy folk, grunge-pop band workouts and haunting, finger-picked epics. MY WOMAN is an exhilarating complement to her past work, and one for which Olsen recalibrated her writing/recording approach and methods to enter a new music-making phase.

As the record evolves, one gets the sense that the “My Woman” of the title is Olsen herself, absolutely in command but also willing to bend with the influence of collaborators and circumstances. An intuitively smart, warmly communicative and fearlessly generous record, MY WOMAN speaks to everyone. That it might confound expectation is just another of its strengths."

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Whether she is banging out swooning gothic eyeshadow-pop choruses or walking us through rural America with swinging slide-guitar laden finger-clickers, Angel Olsen constantly manages with aplomb. The Melancholy lilt in some parts only serves exacerbate the impact of her more driven passages. This isn't a cheery listen, but it is touching and masterful. Highly recommended.

TRACK LISTING

1 Intern
2 Never Be Mine
3 Shut Up Kiss Me
4 Give It Up
5 Not Gonna Kill You
6 Heart Shaped Face
7 Sister
8 Those Were The Days
9 Woman
10 Pops

While spending time trying to conquer the audio of live-stream athome performances, I got better acquainted with my friend Adam McDaniel, an engineer and producer in Asheville, NC. Adam and I had known each other for years. When the band was a bit smaller I’d often rent his studio, Drop of Sun, for pre-recording / pre tour rehearsals. Summer 2020 was tough for many reasons. But Adam and his wife Emily opened their home to me and made it a safe space to create and let go. I had an idea to record some covers and bring some of the band into the mix, or add other players. I wanted to record 80’s songs that I’d overheard walking the aisles at the grocery store, and I needed to laugh and have fun and be a little less serious about the recording process in general. I thought about completely changing some of the songs and turning them inside out.

I’d heard “Gloria” by Laura Branigan for the first time at a family Christmas gathering and I was amazed at all the aunts who got up to dance. I imagined them all dancing and laughing in slow motion, and that’s when I got the idea to slow the entire song down and try it out in this way. I felt that “Safety Dance” by Men Without Hats could be reinterpreted to be about this time of quarantine and the fear of being around anyone or having too much fun. It made me wonder, is it safe to laugh or dance or be free of it all for just a moment?

I know it’s not really in my history to do something unintentional or just for the hell of it but my connection to these songs is pretty straightforward, I just wanted to have a little fun and be a little more spontaneous, and I think I needed to remember that I could!

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: It's Angel's turn on the 80's tip this time, with her voice perfectly fitting the melancholic swell of synths and slo-mo takes on these well recognised classics. There's just enough here to recognise the originals, but with Olsen's wonderfully athletic vocals and inventive production they take on a new life entirely.

TRACK LISTING

1. Gloria
2. Eyes Without A Face
3. Safety Dance
4. If You Leave
5. Forever Young

The descent into darkness is a trope we find time again across history, literature and film. But there’s also an abyss above. There’s a winding white staircase that goes ever upward into the great unknown — each step, each turn, requiring a greater boldness and confidence than the one before. This is the journey on which we find Angel Olsen.

Olsen’s artistic beginnings as a collaborator shifted seamlessly to her magnificent, cryptic-to-cosmic solo work, and then she formed bands to play her songs, and her stages and audiences grew exponentially. But all along, Olsen was more concerned with a different kind of path, and on her vulnerable, Big Mood new album, All Mirrors, we can see her taking an introspective deep dive towards internal destinations and revelations. In the process of making this album, she found a new sound and voice, a blast of fury mixed with hard won self-acceptance.

“In every way —from the making of it, to the words, to how I feel moving forward— this record is about owning up to your darkest side,” Olsen said. “Finding the capacity for new love and trusting change, even when you feel like a stranger. This is a record about facing yourself and learning to forgive what you see. It is about losing empathy, trust, love for destructive people. It is about walking away from the noise and realizing that you can have solitude and peace in your own thoughts, that your thoughts alone can be just as valid, if not more.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Swooning synth strokes, huge cavernous percussion and snappy mid-heavy bass form a fittingly retrophilic cushion for Olsen's always hypnotic voice, in this instance its commanding presence soars above the backdrop, both haunting and uplifting. 'All Mirrors' is a triumph.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A
1) Lark
2) All Mirrors

SIDE B
3) Too Easy
4) New Love Cassette
5) Spring

SIDE C
6) What It Is
7) Impasse
8) Tonight

SIDE D
9) Summer
10) Endgame
11) Chance

Taken from the fourth studio album of the same name by American art pop singer-songwriter Angel Olsen, released on October 4, 2019 by Jagjaguwar.

TRACK LISTING

1.All Mirrors
2.All Mirrors (Solo Version)

Fresh grief, like fresh love, has a way of sharpening our vision and bringing on painful clarifications. No matter how temporary we know these states to be, the vulnerability and transformation they demand can overpower the strongest among us. Then there are the rare, fertile moments when both occur, when mourning and limerence heighten, complicate and explain each other; the songs that comprise Angel Olsen’s Big Time were forged in such a whiplash.

Big Time is an album about the expansive power of new love, but this brightness and optimism is tempered by a profound and layered sense of loss. During Olsen’s process of coming to terms with her queerness and confronting the traumas that had been keeping her from fully accepting herself, she felt it was time to come out to her parents, a hurdle she’d been avoiding for some time. “Finally, at the ripe age of 34, I was free to be me,” she said. Three days later, her father died and shortly after her mother passed away.

The shards of this grief—the shortening of her chance to finally be seen more fully by her parents— are scattered throughout the album. Three weeks after her mother’s funeral she was in the studio, recording this incredibly wise and tender new album. Loss has long been a subject of Olsen’s elegiac songs, but few can write elegies with quite the reckless energy as she.

If that bursting-at-the-seams, running downhill energy has come to seem intractable to her work, this album proves Olsen is now writing from a more rooted place of clarity. She’s working with an elastic, expansive mastery of her voice—both sonically and artistically. These are songs not just about transformational mourning, but of finding freedom and joy in the privations as they come.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Angel Olsen has always had a unique skill in writing melodies, but it's here on the heartbreaking 'Big Time' that her command of melody and atmosphere come together into the perfect whole. It's beautiful and sombre in parts, and downright jubilant in others. Beautifully balanced and achingly affectionate and tender.

TRACK LISTING

1. All The Good Times
2. Big Time
3. Dream Thing
4. Ghost On
5. All The Flowers
6. Right Now
7. This Is How It Works
8. Go Home
9. Through The Fires
10. Chasing The Sun

A few years ago, Angel Olsen quietly formed somethingscosmic, a new imprint and a home for Olsen to have “the flexibility to release when and how I want to with the help from my longtime partners at Jagjaguwar". Somethingscosmic’s second release, ‘Cosmic Waves Volume 1’ is a compilation reimagined as a dialogue; Side A features artists chosen by Olsen, with each artist choosing their own song for the collection. Side B is a collection of songs from the same artists, but chosen by Olsen and recorded by her. Each, unsurprisingly, illuminates a star in the constellation of talents that make Angel Olsen such a spectacular and enduring artist. Hearing Olsen refract the artists’ songs back to them reveals not just the depth of Olsen’s imagination, but the multiple masters at work across the collection as well.

“As someone that emerged into the music scene through a small tape label,” says Olsen, “I’ve wanted to continue the spirit of discovery and of my debut release, ‘Strange Cacti’, while supporting and collaborating with artists and friends whose music I have been moved by. I feel there is something unique and special about covering another artist's song,” she continues. “We all make it our own, or we try to, but I personally always learn something new about the process when I’m engaging someone else’s words and melodies in such a
close way. Time and again I find that putting myself into various different styles of songs can lead to new ways of thinking and creating.”

The artists on 'Cosmic Waves Volume 1' draw from a sprawling, myriad sounds, eras and inspirations. Poppy Jean Crawford’s magnetic growl and guitar-god heaviness; Coffin Prick’s reckless, psychedelic fuzz; Sarah Grace White’s hypnotic voice and melody; Maxim Ludwig’s expert minimalism; and Camp Saint Helene’s beautiful, big sky folk. “Thank you for listening and
supporting this experiment,” Olsen says. “If you like what you hear, please support these artists by buying some of their music, merch, a ticket to their show, or telling your friends about them. It goes a long way. Love, Angel”

TRACK LISTING

Side A - Compiled By Angel Olsen
1. Poppy Jean Crawford - Glamorous
2. Coffin Prick - Blood
3. Sarah Grace White - Ride
4. Maxim Ludwig - Make Believe You Love Me
5. Camp Saint Helene - Wonder Now

Side B - Performed By Angel Olsen
6. The Takeover (Poppy Jean Crawford Cover)
7. Swimming (Coffin Prick Cover)
8. Sinkhole (Sarah Grace White Cover)
9. Born Too Blue (Maxim Ludwig Cover)
10. Farfisa Song (Camp Saint Helene Cover)

'Big Time' brought Angel Olsen to a deeper, truer sense of self than ever before. Borne from the twin stars of grief and love, the album delivered beautiful sense of certainty, the sure-footed sound of an artist fully, finally at home with herself. But within that wisdom comes the realization that there is no finish line, no destination or static end point to life while you’re living it, and Forever Means collects songs from the Big Time sessions that hold this common theme. They are, in Olsen’s words, “in search of something else.”

“I was somewhere traveling,” says Olsen, “stopped for a few days and wandering the city, and I was thinking ‘what does ‘forever’ really mean? What are the things I’m seeking in friendship or love, and how can ‘forever’ be attainable if we’re always changing?’” Sitting with the reality of that entropy, Olsen realized “maybe the secret to ongoing love is to embrace change as part of love itself, that forever must have something to do with playing, looking, constantly searching things out for yourself, never letting yourself think you’re finished learning or exploring.” ‘Forever’”, says Olsen, “remains curious while trying also to be kind and honest.”

All this packs into the four precious songs that comprise Forever Means, songs from Olsen’s roads traveled and the ones ahead. “Nothing’s free / like breaking free” Olsen sings, comfortable with the costs of her clarity, her heart and voice fixed on the present, the future, the not-yet-known and the beautifully unknowable.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A:
1) Nothing’s Free
2) Forever Means

SIDE B:
3) Time Bandits
4) Holding On

Received an 8.0 rating from Pitchfork!!!! After her highly-acclaimed debut Strange Cacti landed in the hands of listeners, it became very obvious the special presence Angel Olsen offered to listeners. She had a fresh edge to her sound, a warm and wonderful range, and a level of skill and charm out of this world. Obviously, fans ate it up. And now here we are, a mere 2 years since her initial Bathetic release—the original cassette version of Strange Cacti. The release of Half Way Home is something everyone has been excited for. We've always wanted to see and hear what Angel brings out through her music. Half Way Home is a continuation of her elegance brought forth.

TRACK LISTING

Acrobat
The Waiting
Safe In The Womb
Lonely Universe
Can't Wait Until Tomorrow
Always Half Strange
You Are Song
Miranda
The Sky Openend Up
Free
Tiniest Seed

How does one best describe Angel Olsen? From the lo-fi, sparse folk-melancholy of her 2010 EP, ‘Strange Cacti’, to the electrified, polished rock ‘n’ roll bursting from 2016’s beloved and acclaimed ‘MY WOMAN’, Olsen has refused to succumb to a single genre, expectation or vision. Impossible to pin down, Olsen navigates the world with her remarkable, symphonic voice and a propensity for narrative, her music growing into whatever shape best fits to tell the story.

‘Phases is a collection of Olsen’s work culled from the past several years, including a number of never-before-released tracks. ‘Fly On Your Wall’, previously contributed to the online-only, anti-Trump fundraiser ‘Our First 100 Days’, opens ‘Phases’, before seamlessly slipping into ‘Special’, a brand new song from the ‘MY WOMAN’ recording sessions. Both ‘How Many Disasters’ and ‘Sans’ are first-time listens: home-recorded demos that have never been released, leaning heavily on Olsen’s arresting croon and lonesome guitar.

The B-sides compilation is both a testament to Olsen’s enormous musical range and a tidy compilation of tracks that have previously been elusive in one way or another.

Balancing tenacity and tenderness, ‘Phases’ acts as a deep-dive for longtime fans, as well as a fitting introduction to Olsen’s sprawling sonics for the uninitiated.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: 'Phases' provides the linking thread between the varying facets of Olsen's songwriting, with B-sides and unreleased odes, come a further understanding of Olsen's innate songwriting ability and how important even these previously unused pieces can be! Lovely stuff.

TRACK LISTING

1 Fly On Your Wall
2 Special
3 Only With You
4 All Right Now
5 Sans
6 Sweet Dreams
7 California
8 Tougher Then The Rest
9 For You
10 How Many Disasters
11 May As Well
12 Endless Road

From the album 'Song of the Lark and Other Far Memories’ .B-side features a Roxy Music cover

TRACK LISTING

1.Smaller
2.More Than This (Roxy Music Cover)

The time had come, Angel Olsen realized in the fading summer of 2018, to take her new songs out of the house. Olsen's 2016 marvel, My Woman, had been a career breakthrough, but it catalyzed a period of personal tumult, too: a painful breakup, an uneasy recovery, an inadequate reckoning. At home in North Carolina's Blue Ridge Mountains, Olsen penned songs that finally grappled with these troubles, particularly love:"how forever is too much to promise, how relationships can lock us into static versions of ourselves, how you can go through hell just to make someone else happy. These heartsore explorations shape Whole New Mess, Olsen's first solo album since her 2012 debut and an emotional portrait so intimate and vulnerable you can hear her find meaning in these crises in real-time.

At least nine of the eleven songs on Whole New Mess should sound familiar to anyone who has heard All Mirrors, Olsen's grand 2019 masterpiece that earned high honors on prestigious year-end lists and glossy spreads in stylish magazines. "Lark," "Summer," "Chance" - they are all here, at least in some skeletal form and with slightly different titles. But these are not the demos for All Mirrors. Instead, Whole New Mess is its own record with its own immovable mood, with Olsen working through her open wounds and raw nerves with just a few guitars and some microphones, isolated in a century-old church in the Pacific Northwest. If the lavish orchestral arrangements and cinematic scope of All Mirrors are the sound of Olsen preparing her scars for the wider world to see, Whole New Mess is the sound of her first figuring out their shape, making sense for herself of these injuries.

Considered alongside All Mirrors, Whole New Mess is a poignant and pointed reminder that songs are more than mere collections of words, chords, and even melodies. They are webs of moods and moments and ideas, qualities that can change from one month to the next and can say just as much as the perfect progression or an exquisite chord. In that sense, these 11 songs - "solitary, frank, and unflinching examinations of what it's like to love, lose, and survive -" are entirely new. This is the sound of Angel Olsen, sorting through the kind of trouble we've all known, as if just for herself and whoever else needs it.

TRACK LISTING

Whole New Mess
Too Easy (bigger Than Us)
(new Love) Cassette
(we Are All Mirrors)
(summer Song)
Waiving, Smiling
Tonight (without You)
Lark Song
Impasse (workin’ For The Name)
Chance (forever Love)
What It Is (what It Is)

A two-year journey through the heart of loss and redemption, in words and music. Illustrated photographs. Mark Olson was a founding member of The Jayhawks, the most acclaimed band to emerge out of the alt-country scene. He left the Jayhawks in 1996, after the release of the band's biggest-selling album, "Tomorrow The Green Grass", but continued to record music with his new band, The Creekdippers, at his new home in the California desert. Mark recently finished recording his first true solo album, "The Salvation Blues", with producer Ben Vaughn. On this deeply personal album, Mark's voice and poetic lyrics are complemented by Vaughn's gorgeous musical backdrops, which feature the work of some of LA's best studio musicians. The album also features the long-awaited reunion with his former Jayhawks bandmate Gary Louris on three songs.

This is music that will speak to you about things that have happened! An album that sounds like you are alone in the desert all by yourself. Remembering childhood experiences and musical instruments and all the joy that took place. We have forgotten because of terrible things that have happened. Is it the truthfulness that attracts you to this music? Listen out of time: Mark Olson & Ingunn Ringvold are singing 'Spokeswoman of the Bright Sun', the follow-up to the critically acclaimed Alternative Country/Americana masterpiece 'Good-bye Lizelle' (Glitterhouse Records, 2014).

All original track recordings were made with a Nagra field recorder. These tracks were delivered to John Schreiner for mixing and mastering. This is the moment a rainbow came into town. John has worked in some of the most important historically speaking and result speaking recording studios in Los Angeles. John worked with Hal Blaine in the past and in the present reinforced his studio sounds in San Clemente, CA with room sounds from studio 3 at Western Recorders. John mixes in groupings and the results are a new step forward in post modern folk-rock sound exploration. Enjoy the warmth and spaciousness of these outstanding musical mixes!

Mark Olson was born and raised in Minnesota by a family of mostly farmers and school teachers. He has been involved with musical instruments since the age of twelve and is self taught for the most part and uses alternate tunings and two part unison singing followed then by breaking off into harmony in his writing and live performances. He lives now in the California Desert with his wife Ingunn Ringvold. Mark and Ingunn tour off and on internationally almost every year.

TRACK LISTING

01 Dear Elisabeth
02 Time Of Love
03 Spokeswoman Of The Bright Sun
04 Mary Francis
05 Seminole Valley Tea Sipper Society
06 You Are All
07 Gravity Loss
08 Nicola
09 All My Days
10 Death Valley Soda Pop Cool Down Dream

Welcome to the debut album by Richard Olson & The Familiars, A LP full of dreamy harmony laden melancholy and, dare we say it, Singer Songwriter Pop Music – though Pop Music in the sense that each track is a gorgeous ear worm that you can wrap yourself in and within. Richard was a member of the now-legendary Eighteenth Day Of May, before forming The See See who would then evolve into the much loved and revered The Hanging Stars.

On Richard’s debut LP we are treated to a record full of lush harmonies, acoustic guitars and strings as well as Richards most personal and reflective writing, Songs that are full of a hazy warmth and yearning that superbly capture the feel and sound that lies somewhere between The Byrds (think Easy Rider) and The Clientele. The plaintive gorgeousness of opening track ‘I Can’t Help Myself’ reflects the heart-rending, deep feeling that flows throughout the whole of Richard Olsen and The Familiars debut LP.

Richard has a great, expressive voice, capable of switching from harmonious and melodic to world-weary within a single song. Air is especially affecting and effective - gorgeously near-ambient kaleidoscope vibe of whispered vocals with pedal steel and slide guitar. ‘I’m A Butterfly’ blends a sumptuous bouncy riff with harmonica and tambourines into hazy dream of pop perfection. Inside Sunshine is the perfect song to close the LP, lilting into the sunset as Richard creates an wonderous retro hued filter - a filmic paean to love with Luke Barlow’s flute playing adding to the trance created.

The twelve band members of Olumo Soundz are solidly rooted in the great musical tradition hailing from predecessors Fela and Femi Kuti. However, the band puts their own spin on a vibrant genre, and packs a punch at each and every show with their own repertoire.

The four track album (U.N) United Nonsense – presented in a high quality 180 gr vinyl edition – is a joyous musical announcement of awareness, resistance and faith.

TRACK LISTING

1. U.N. (United Nonsense)
2. Chasin
3. Sunday Jump
4. Wahala Dey Come

In 2008, Toby Pazner and a group of New York City’s most sought-after musicians found themselves in a Brooklyn bedroom, gathered around a Tascam 388 tape machine. There, they recorded what would become the debut 45 of a project he named The Olympians—initially released on Truth & Soul Records.

Eight years later, while on tour in the Greek Islands, Pazner had a fever dream in which he was visited by a toga-clad, curly-haired figure. The mysterious presence urged him to return across the great sea to build a "Temple of Sound"—a vision that ultimately materialized as the group’s self-titled album, released in 2016 on Daptone Records. The record featured a long list of elite musicians from the Daptone family, allof whom contributed their talents to help realize Pazner’s creative vision.

The album was met with widespread acclaim, quickly earning a reputation as one of the finest instrumental soul records of the decade–gaining reviews from Pitchfork, American Songwriter, Brooklyn Vegan, KUTX and many others. In the digital space, the project has been backed by unbelievably strong organic growth at DSPs, with streaming numbers exceeding all expectations, turning it into a breakout success for both Daptone and Pazner.
Following the success of his debut solo effort, Pazner spent the next several years exploring the musical cosmos—writing songs with Lee Fields as well as joining him on the road as his keyboardist (whom he has also managed for 16 years),. During this time he also started a family. This series of transformative life events set the stage for the forthcoming album, In Search of a Revival (Daptone Records).

In Search of a Revival revisits the original dream that inspired The Olympians but with a more introspective and evolved approach. This time, and a whole 10 years since the self-titled debut was released, Pazner composed, arranged, and produced the entire album on his own. Featuring a mix of returning musicians from his debut as well as a handful of friends and collaborators he has met on his musical journey–forming a 17 person ensemble of the scene’s top players. While The Olympians drew heavily from the classic soul stylings of Curtis Mayfield and James Brown, In Search of a Revival leans into the golden era of the Wrecking Crew, the lush textures of Gold Star Studios, vintage film scores, and the more obscure corners of cinematic soundscapes.

From the cascading harps which open the “Sirens of Jupiter” to the driving horn coda of “Sagittarius By Moonlight,” The Olympians deliver a new sound all of its own: an ancient dream of far away Greece painted out in lush cinematic arrangements over the tough rhythms. In Search of a Revival is poised to be yet another Daptone classic—an album that not only honors the traditions of instrumental soul, but sets a bold new standard for the genre in the years to come.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Another superb outfit to spring from the much-welcomed modern soul resurgence, Thee Olympian strike a perfect balance between the staggered beat of traditional soul and the more athletic production we hear from modern producers. A beautifully fluid, head-noddingly funky orchestral soul journey.

TRACK LISTING

1. In Search Of A Revival Part 1
2. Strawberry Kiwi
3. Thunderball
4. California
5. A Little Something
6. Here Comes Ben
7. In Search Of A Revival Part 2
8. Saraswati Puja
9. Hollywood Cold
10. Tall Grass
11. Wildfire
12. Honey Bea

Debut album from this hip hop vs rock'n'roll crew. Irresistably catchy hooks, cut-up samples and breaks, a dose of attitude and all with a pop twist of their own making.