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Exitmusic

From Silence

    The debut EP from New York City’s Exitmusic (Aleksa Palladino and Devon Church).

    Both chillingly beautiful and melodic, whilst creepily sparse and disembodied. Ethereal dark pop similar to Beach House, Sigur Ros and Portishead.

    This EP will be released exclusively to independent stores only in advance of a full release in November.

    Jens Lekman

    An Argument With Myself

      Jens Lekman returns with his first new music in almost four years, with the mini-album ‘An Argument With Myself’.

      Witty, literal, and location-specific, the songs are all heading somewhere as a means to either go crazy or keep from doing so.

      From the title track’s inner battle about moving to Melbourne, or the manic roadmap of directions to any place but here (and any time but now) of ‘New Directions’.

      Jens has a devoted hardcore following desperate for new Jens music and he’ll be returning for shows in the UK in October shortly after this release, including an already sold-out show at London’s Heaven.

      This is a collection of five of the most impeccably crafted songs you will hear in 2011.

      Philadelphia’s The War On Drugs are the vehicle of Adam Granduciel, frontman, rambler, shaman, pied piper guitarist and apparent arranger.

      ‘Slave Ambient’, their second album proper, is a brilliant 47-minute sprawl of rock ‘n’ roll, conceptualized with a sense of adventure and captured with seasons of bravado.

      Recorded over the last four years, the album puts the weirdest influences in just the right places. Tom Petty and Spacemen 3, ‘Neu! '75’ and ‘Blood On The Tracks’, Flying Saucer Attack and Bruce Springsteen, New Order and No Wave, The Byrds, Bread and Burt Bacharach. How is a music fan supposed to reconcile all of this?

      Synthesizers fall where you might expect electric guitars (and vice versa); country rock sidles up to the warped extravagance of '80s pop. Instant classic ‘Baby Missiles’ is part Springsteen fever dream, part motorik anthem. ‘Original Slave’ might sound like a hillbilly power drone, but ‘City Reprise #12’ suggests Phil Collins un-retiring in order to back Harmonia.


      STAFF COMMENTS

      Andy says: This is a beautiful, hazy, rock'n'roll record, which, sure enough shimmers and thrums and is actually semi-ambient. Check all the tasty influences listed below, but if I told you that Kurt Vile is a sometime member of this band and that this was like a mysterious cousin to Vile's "Smoke Rings..", then you'd get the feel of this album right away. Cool.

      TRACK LISTING

      1. Best Night
      2. Brothers
      3. I Was There
      4. Your Love Is Calling My Name
      5. The Animator
      6. Come To The City
      7. Come For It
      8. It's Your Destiny
      9. City Reprise #12
      10. Baby Missiles
      11. Original Slave
      12. Black Water Falls

      ‘Future Weather’ (Bonus Disc With Ltd CD Version Only)
      Come To The City
      Baby Missiles
      Comin' Through
      A Pile Of Tires
      Comin' Around
      Brothers
      Missiles Reprise
      The History Of Plastic

      Here We Go Magic

      The January EP

        "The January EP"s six songs complete the songwriting cycle that Here We Go Magic began in an upstate New York farm house upon the commencement of their critically-acclaimed sophomore album "Pigeons".

        The band's signature mix of swirling guitars, Krautrock grooves, pulsing synths, and hushed chants provide a foundation for these otherworldly songs.

        "Hands In The Sky" is a ghostly number that showcases vocalist Luke Temple's lyrical pedigree.

        At the centre of the mini album lies a dichotomy between eerie folk sounds and driving art rock. The jangly back-and-forth between the guitars of Michael Bloch and Temple form the backbone to "Song In Three", the yin to "Pigeon"s standout "Collector"s yang.

        "The January EP" was produced by Jen Turner and recorded live to analog tape in a band-built living room studio.

        Little Scream

        The Golden Record

          Born in Iowa and raised along the Mississippi River in an ‘Addams Family meets 700 Club’ home, Little Scream, aka Laurel Sprengelmeyer, learned violin and piano as a child. 'When my parents divorced, all my mom got out of the deal was a green Chevy pick-up truck. When that truck was dented up in an accident, my mom used the insurance money to bring home a Washburn banjo and the black Fender La Brae I still sometimes play at shows. I spent the following months locked away in our root cellar learning guitar tablature'.

          Co-produced with Richard Reed Parry (Arcade Fire, Bell Orchestre), ‘The Golden Record’ features Little Scream on guitar, vocals, violin, and keyboard.

          In typical Montreal fashion, the album showcases a cast of local talent including Richard Parry, Mike Fuerstack (Snailhouse), Becky Foon (Silver Mt. Zion), Patty McGee (Stars), and Sarah Neufeld (Arcade Fire, Bell Orchestre). The National’s Aaron Dessner also contributed to "The Heron And The Fox".

          Nightlands

          Forget The Mantra

            As Nightlands, Philadelphia multi-instrumentalist David Hartley makes enormous, warm and thunderous music. Hartley has been a prolific member of many Philadelphia groups, most notably The War On Drugs.

            The music he creates in his bedroom is itself a bed of delicate, chiming strings and bubbling synths beneath a blanket of choral arrangements. It's dreamy in the literal sense - the seeds for the album were sown when Hartley began archiving musical ideas that occurred in his sleep with a simple bedside tape recorder. As a result ‘Forget the Mantra’ is, in essence, a field recording of Hartley's dreams.

            JJ

            JJ No 2

              In Summer of 2009, Gothenburg, Sweden’s jj quietly released one of the year's most critically acclaimed albums. This album, "JJ Nº 2", was the group’s debut full-length ("JJ Nº 1" was their first single).

              jj create pop, R&B and Balearic dub from the ghosts of lost lovers. Their music is both carefree without carelessness, and self-aware without being self-conscious. With it, they build an ice bridge arching from Gothenburg into the heart of the UK music world, and everywhere in between.

              'A gorgeous ode to chemically-assisted euphoria, or an effective, shimmering simulation for those who keep their intoxications on the legal side' - Pitchfork.

              TRACK LISTING

              1. Things Will Never Be The Same Again
              2. From Africa To Malaga
              3. Ecstasy
              4. Are You Still In Vallda
              5. My Love
              6. Intermezzo
              7. My Hopes And Dreams
              8. Masterplan
              9. Me & Dean

              Windsor For The Derby

              Against Love

                One of Secretly Canadian’s longest serving artists, Windsor For The Derby return with a record of infinite loops and drones conceived in backrooms of clubs and venues during the past two years of touring.


                Damien Jurado

                Saint Bartlett

                  "Saint Bartlett" opens up with a grandiosity yet unheard on a Damien Jurado album. It strips away the many layers of paint from the house down the street where we know Jurado has occupied for the last decade. The new coat is exhilarating. It makes the whole neighbourhood shine. It's a modest grandiosity; still homegrown. The mellotron swells, heavenly handclaps ring in stereo and big drums create a sky for the songs to fly in. And the words. Words spring forth from within the volcano of Jurado, full of hope. There's so much hope, in fact, that album opener "Cloudy Shoes" turns into a call-and-response with himself, as though it were a dialogue between two halves of himself.

                  'I wish that I could float up from the ground / I will never know what that's like'

                  Heavy stuff. Richard Swift's Spector-esque production is spot-on. He ferries Jurado across the river, where the metamorphosis occurs. He then ferries him back, and it is through Swift's lens that we see Jurado not as a folk singer, but as a mystic - somewhere between Van Morrison, Scott Walker and Wayne Coyne. "Saint Bartlett" was made entirely at Swift's National Freedom studio in Oregon, in just under a week with only Jurado and Swift as the performers.

                  Molina & Johnson

                  Molina & Johnson

                    Consider the collective catalogs of these two prolific masters of the new American folk songcraft: Magnolia Electric Co., Centro-matic, Songs: Ohia, South San Gabriel. Now, let's just be honest. A little bit of artistic ego and one-upmanship can serve a greater purpose. In this collaboration between Jason Molina and Will Johnson, each seem to hold the other's talents to the fire and elevate both performance and creativity. In the friendly sharing of ideas, Molina and Johnson become two poets' poets in a workshop to craft a singular, searing elegy. Each artist's familiar aesthetics and production styles find a new, intriguing middle ground on Molina and Johnson. Molina's documentarian, record-the-room-as-it-is ethos finds a home in Johnson's subtle atmospherics and production tweaks; and Molina's powerful tenor croon finds a fitting dance partner in Johnson's equally moving soft-gravel vox. While the individual performances from each are stunning in their own right, the musical mind meld that was captured is absolutely the occasion it should be. It was magic and, thankfully, captured for all of us to relive and enjoy.

                    Early Day Miners

                    The Treatment

                      The Early Day Miners new album, "The Treatment", speaks to the powers of reinvention in more than one way. After years of building gorgeous and sprawling guitar rock epics, Early Day Miners have trimmed their sound into shorter, tighter songs with a decidedly pop edge to them. They have also slimmed their line up down from as many as eight members to the lean four-piece outfit of Dan Burton (guitar, vocals, keys), John Dawson (guitar), Marty Sprowles (drums) and Johnny 'Yuma' Richardson (bass). Even in the album's lyrics, the yearning allure of reinvention is ever present.

                      Throw Me The Statue

                      Creaturesque

                        Originally the one-man project of multifaceted musician and songwriter Scott Reitherman, Throw Me The Statue (TMTS) has since expanded to a quartet with drummer Jarred Grimes, and multi-instrumentalists Aaron Goldman and Charlie Smith. This album is produced by TMTS and Phil Ek (The Shins, Built To Spill, Band Of Horses), and while the band retains much of the lo-fi bliss found on their critically acclaimed debut "Moonbeams", Phil Ek's mixing of "Creaturesque" brings the band's maximalist pop sensibilities to new heights. Perhaps more sonically upbeat than its predecessor, its details are at times painted in both optimistic and sobering tones. Reitherman's scattershot poetics touch on an array of ideas, it's oppressive American machisimo and suburbanite sexuality. It's soft drugs and convertible cars. It's the struggle for higher expectations within the mess of modern life, and when wrapped up in the structures of TMTS' sure-handed tunes it's an all too delicious combination.

                        Magnolia Electric Co.

                        Josephine

                          About halfway through Magnolia Electric Co.'s latest long player, "Josephine", there is a noticeable shift in weight. It's a release of some sort - the kind that comes when you give up holding back the tears. It's a heavy kind of freedom coming to the forefront, an empowering sadness. And when chief Electrician Jason Molina delivers the line 'an hour glass... filled with tears and twilight from a friend's dying day', the mood becomes clear. The band is back on its heels, yes, but they are going to fight back in the only way they know how. Molina's concept album is an honest-to-God effort on the part of Magnolia Electric Co. to pay tribute to the life and spirit of fallen bassist Evan Farrell (R.I.P. December 2007), as the ideas for "Josephine" were being pieced together. Molina said each tune is a good faith attempt to make real Evan's hopes for the record. And in doing so, Evan's spirit becomes part of the concept. The loss of "Josephine" becomes the loss of Evan. Molina's familiar lyrical allegories are still in tact. But here, in what is no doubt the strongest set of songs Molina has written since the inception of Magnolia Electric Co., those classic themes take on new meanings. Molina has approached the universal loneliness before, but never in such a focused, directed manner as found on "Josephine". Molina, Magnolia Electric Co. and legendary recording engineer Steve Albini have put it all to heart. Evan Farrell, Jason Molina and the band are on different journeys now - but maybe somehow, somewhere parallel. This is heartbreak at ten paces, to be sure.

                          TRACK LISTING

                          1. O! Grace
                          2. The Rock Of Ages
                          3. Josephine
                          4. Shenandoah
                          5. Whip Poor Will
                          6. Song For Willie
                          7. Hope Dies Last
                          8. The Handing Down
                          9. Map Of The Falling Sky
                          10. Little Sad Eyes
                          11. Heartbreak At Ten Paces
                          12. Knoxville Girl
                          13. Shiloh
                          14. An Arrow In The Gale

                          BLK JKS

                          Mystery EP

                            Childhood friends Linda and Mpumi grew up on the same block in Johannesburg's East Rand, where they taught themselves guitar. Forming a band in 2000, early BLK JKS shows and recordings were remarkable for their stacks of guitar drone and head nodding beats. It was with the addition of bassist Molefi and drummer Tshepang­both of Soweto­that BLK JKS began work with a fresh approach and plunged into its current universe of sound.

                            Zero Boys

                            History Of

                              From 79 through to 83 The Zero Boys ruled the Mid-West hardcore scene. "History Of" is the first release of their 'Lost' second album. Whilst contemporaries concentrated on aggression and turbo-charged ferocity, The Zero Boys pointed a way to a scene which could include melodicism, intelligence and rock 'n' roll suss. Craig Finn of The Hold Steady has written a feature about this band (as one of his primary influences) for The Guardian. Re-mastered from the original tapes, with liner notes by Jack Rabid.

                              Danielson

                              Trying Hartz

                                Danielson can move from the 'proto minimalist eccentric gospel', to 'prog metal dread' to 'music hall choir' to 'indie rock one man band' in one fell swoop. The vision in his music and recordings is astounding. This two CD set covers the best of the first 10 Years Of Danielson, The Danielson Family and Br. Danielson from 1994 to 2004. It contains rare live and session recordings as well as studio performances from across the years, all within a beautiful 2CD package.

                                The War On Drugs

                                Wagonwheel Blues

                                  The War On Drugs push the boundaries of a quintessentially American music. Guitars soar and colorful clouds roll past whatever sun or moon you are cruising under, through whatever old bar you are reveling within. The War On Drugs point toward a tireless horizon in the distance that you will never reach but are compelled to chase. It's a tail you've chased your whole life and will continue chasing because your life is more poetic when you are moving toward it - your cinematography is more rich. Wagonwheel Blues is one of those albums that each of us holds onto tightly. They get moved from apartment to apartment through the years; they are songs on the radio that follow us from town to town. They evoke waves of nostalgia and grow more poignant with each new bump along the road.

                                  In The War On Drugs we have a fresh face that already sounds like an old friend. Bringing a dose of the West Coast to the hard streets of Philadelphia, their songs recall the '80s guitar army of Sonic Youth with the captivating lyrics and vocal stylings of Tom Petty or Bruce Springsteen. Songwriter Adam Granduciel (vocals/guitar) leads the attack with his lyrical paintings of his own American landscape. Walls of guitar - acoustic, electric, and twelve-string - douse each track of this debut album, threatening to cast the band into space rock territory, but the melodies and immediately identifiable lyrics soldier on to keep these songs from blasting into the esoteric beyond. With Wagonwheel Blues, Granduciel joins a distinct set of songwriters in a new golden era of polished-yet-subcultural underground music. The War On Drugs have that unmistakable singularity that comes along only so often, with the spirit of invention and playfulness lying earnestly at the forefront of their creative process.

                                  Richard Swift

                                  Richard Swift As Onassis

                                    Richard Swift is one of the most critically acclaimed artists of the last few years. On this new double album he turns his hand to a completely different genre and mood: a 20 song exploration into Richard Swift's alter ego; delivering acid garage rock classics. This was recorded on down time between tours – a chance for Richard to delve into his hugely varied musical collection. Drawing on Link Wray, Howlin' Wolf, Little Richard and others, this is an album drenched in classic reverb and knee-high boogie blues.

                                    June Panic

                                    Songs From Purgatory

                                      June Panic spent six years during the early 1990s crafting 14 lyrically disturbed and sonically self-mutilated albums that would make him the closest thing to an underground rock songwriting celebrity that the Dakotas would bear during this era otherwise obsessed with grunge. While scratching an itch for Dylan that could not be alleviated, June willed his bedroom songs into musical nuggets that find tonal residence between the hazy fog of Ween and Sebadoh, the great white isolationism of Eric's Trip, and the everything-and-the-kitchen-sink production style of 80s-era Prince. The material embodied on "Songs From Purgatory" was recorded in vans, dank basements and tiny apartments using crappy microphones on an even crappier 4-track machine. This body of work showcases a songwriting and producing talent that perhaps was only commercially held back by its medium - one which he initially embraced as a matter of necessity, but eventually grew to deliberately embrace with the zeal of a lo-fi revolutionary. Originally released as cassette-only albums on his own label 3 Out Of 4 Records, June's master tapes were almost destroyed in the Great Flood of 1997 that consumed Grand Forks. Over 200 master tapes sat submerged under the murky Red River water for several days in his parents' basement until saved through a painstaking cleansing process that is hilariously documented in the liner notes to this collection.

                                      David Fischoff

                                      The Crawl

                                        Armed with a rather large arsenal of obscure samples culled from his life as well as the entire Chicago Public Library sound collection, Dave Fischoff went to work. Alone in a near downtown basement apartment (sometimes in his bedroom closet), his mind took a very long trip, delving into the under-explored territory where electronic music, hip hop, and orchestral pop meet. Taking cues from The Beach Boys and Burt Bacharach to The Postal Service and Public Enemy, Dave Fischoff has conceived, collected, cut and pasted, orchestrated and created a piece of work that is large and complex yet utterly personal and easily accessible.

                                        The Impossible Shapes

                                        Tum

                                          The Impossible Shapes from Indiana have electrically projected what stands as a direct and feverish summoning on the late 60s sugar-sandoz-lick of the pop-folk format. Formed in 1998 The Impossible Shapes have kept a profoundly articulate sense of classic song / dream structure whether they are billowing in drenched multi-tacked gauze like Indianapolis forefathers Zerfas or snarled in amp-buzz annihilation of power-quartet stage performances. On the flip, Barth can pixie dance from guitar play / vocal slay in a quaint yet sexually sly role of piper against Deer's counterpoint-heavy arrangements of tape-spliced antics. Like meat-pulp quicksand, they pull you deep in. "Tum" is buoyed by these three streams from the opening Bram Martin-like invocation through the scratch orchestral vision of "Twisted Sol Epoch" toward the shimmering gallop heavy "Florida Silver Springs".

                                          Damien Jurado

                                          On My Way To Absence

                                            Damien Jurado is a man with a hand in the baskets of all the right fringe genres. He can be the storyteller who produced the alt folk masterpiece "Rehearsals For Departure" - one of Uncut and NME's Albums Of The Year - and the sonic pioneer responsible for "Postcards And Audio Letters", a music free album of telephone conversations, answering machine messages and boom-box Christmas recordings. As a result he's won a reputation as one of America's most adventurous artists and is regarded by his musical peers as a songwriter of immense capabilities. "On My Way To Absence" is the result of Jurado and long-time collaborator Eric Fisher locking themselves away for four months of musical polarity. Described by Damien as 'a tribute to jealousy', it's a collection of songs that sound as if they've been stoked in the fires of time - and captures, in a similar manner to the best of Nick Cave and Gillian Welch, a particular primal essence in the way a tale is spun. This is his great strength as a writer - the ability to find the quick truth, the good stuff, and then to sing it from his gut.

                                            The Impossible Shapes

                                            We Like It Wild

                                              For "We Like It Wild", their fourth proper full-length, the band ventured to the wooded Indiana hills of Monroe County. With alternating lead guitars, the band recalls the urban paranoia of Television and the forlorn southern gothic of Derek & The Dominoes with Barth's fey Donovan-esque voice sounding as though it's coming from across the Atlantic. All the while they maintain the urgent bounce of early REM.

                                              Danielson Famile

                                              A Prayer For Every Hour

                                                Reissue of the debut album from these New Jersey oddballs. Deeply rooted in American folk and gospel music, the Famile offers a twisted hybrid of early Talking Heads, Carter Family, Half Japanese and the Shaggs.

                                                Racebannon

                                                Satan's Kickin Yr Dick In

                                                  Racebannon craft a sordid tale of woe, depression, excitement, accolade, fear, rise, fall, alpha and omega through a five part aural aria of the pleasures and pain of the rock'n'roll lifestyle. Tracks often go from a funeral dirge to defiant and pompous to a spaced out overdose. One for fans of The Melvins, Icarus Line and Jesus Lizard.

                                                  Swearing At Motorists

                                                  Along The Inclined Plane

                                                    Fantastic mellow mini album from this band who've been compared with Buffalo Springfield through to Richard Hell, Alex Chilton and The Replacements.


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