Juanita and Juan is a dynamic musical duo formed by Alice Bag and Kid Congo Powers, two influential figures in the punk and alternative music scenes who first crossed paths in 1977 during the early days of the Hollywood punk movement. Their friendship, rooted in a shared passion for raw, boundary-pushing music, has led to a new creative partnership that transcends genres and defies labels, although the two refer to their sound as “Loud Lounge.”

Alice Bag, a founding member of the pioneering punk band the Bags, is known for her fierce stage presence and unapologetic, feminist approach to punk music. She has spent decades championing the voices of women in rock and advocating for social justice, both through her music and activism. Kid Congo Powers, an original member of The Gun Club and a key player in The Cramps, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, as well as his own band, Kid Congo and the Pink Monkey Birds, brings his audacious blend of noisy, psych-infused rock with a touch of glam. His unique guitar playing and distinctive style have made him a beloved figure in underground music circles.

Together, Juanita and Juan blend their influences—Bag's fiery vocals and penchant for dark melody with Powers’ atmospheric, reverb-laden guitar tones—creating a musical landscape that is both nostalgic and fresh-sounding. Their collaboration captures the adventurous spirit of their punk roots while embracing new sonic territory.

The duo’s chemistry is undeniable, with their musical partnership serving as both a testament to their enduring friendship and the spirit of musical exploration that began for the pair in 1976, proving that punk is not just a genre, but a lasting, ever-evolving attitude.

TRACK LISTING

1. Aftertaste
2. Jungle Cruise
3. Ven A Mi
4. Interrupter
5. The Prez
6. Crocodile
7. DBWMGWD
8. Put Your Weapons Down

'Chaotic Shimmer' is a collection of songs that vary in texture and genesis. The A side has a stronger sense of familiarity with the more rocking numbers, while the B side stretches out in more exploration. Some of the same electronic elements of 2024's 'Black Holes Don't Choke' can be found in songs like 'Music For The People' and 'Caught Waiting'. There is also a subtle nod to Minor Threat in the lyrics of 'Caught Waiting'. The track 'Path I'd Like to Follow' is dreamy and meditative - channeling JJ Cale or late sixties San Francisco fog. The opening track is a rocket ship waiting to escape the dull confines of this singular consciousness, and it creates a space for the title track to transcend at will. All of the songs were recorded by Charles Moothart at his studio in Los Angeles. He wrote, performed, recorded, and mixed everything heard on this album. Reserving the right to do as thou wilt is rock and roll 101. The world is chaos, and chaos is creativity. To accept and embrace this is to tap in to the 'Chaotic Shimmer' - a transcendent energy. Music is for the people.

Charles Moothart is a multi-instrumentalist based in Los Angeles. He plays guitar in bands like FUZZ and Primitive Ring, as well as drums in GØGGS and Moonhearts. He was the touring drummer for Ty Segall's Freedom Band, as well as the Ty Segall and White Fence collaborative tours. Moothart has also released solo work under his initials CFM.

TRACK LISTING

1. Carried In The Wind
2. Chaotic Shimmer
3. The Path (I'd Like To Follow)
4. Bring To Bloom
5. Caught Waiting
6. Music For The People

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

Bella and the Bizarre is a high-energy Berlin-based band that blends the raw intensity of garage rock with a silky soulful flow. A wild fusion of garage punk, sixties rock’n roll and a touch of RnB soul, with its own gentle smokiness. Combining a broad spectrum of influences - from Wanda Jackson to the Remains, Eartha Kitt to the Ramones, they are ready to set you in trance! Known for their vibrant stage presence and infectious energy, Bella and the Bizarre deliver performances that are as captivating as they are unpredictable.

TRACK LISTING

1. Baby It's My Turn
2. Into Your Mind
3. Oh So Many Times
4. No More
5. Inky Waters
6. Unleashed Mind
7. Stop Wasting Time
8. Don't You Wait
9. No Need

Sgt Papers are a punk rock duo of brothers Ivan and Felipe Garcia from Hermosillo, Sonora, in the heart of the desert in Mexico.

They started in 2017 releasing their first album “Sgt. Papers Lonely Psych Punk Band” independently, creating a buzz in the local independent rock scene and the independent scene in the US. They began touring the US playing both clubs and festivals.

They followed this with two more albums in 2019 and 2021 while the same time helping grow the rock scene in Hermosillo. Their following grew along with the band. Their approach to recording and touring has been very DIY.

The band’s sound is a combination of psych, garage, punk all played with plenty of distortion.

TRACK LISTING

1. Un Toque O Dos
2. Ya No Hay Papel
3. FUGA!
4. Un Día Me Vas A Matar
5. Déjalo Para Después
6. Pónchate
7. Beso En La Mejilla
8. Diosito
9. En Las Nubes
10. Pérdida Total
11. Hacerme Wey

Washington, DC’s DES DEMONAS have been hailed as a favorite of Henry Rollins (KCRW FM/Black Flag), Marc Riley (BBC6 Music/The Fall), and Iggy Pop (BBC6 Music/The Stooges) since the release of their debut LP on In The Red Records and their subsequent singles and EP.

DES DEMONAS’ much anticipated follow-up LP “APOCALYPTIC BOOM! BOOM!” is out this fall on In The Red Records.

The group is made up of some familiar names from the DC punk, garage, and indie scenes. A Kenyan punk-poet-politique Jacky “Cougar” Abok (Foul Swoops, Thee Lolitas) is on vocals & percussion, Mark Cisneros (Hammered Hulls, Kid Congo and the Pink Monkey Birds, The Make-Up) is on guitar, Paul Vivari (Benjy Ferree, DJ Soul Call Paul) is on Farfisa organ and bass machine, and Matt Gatwood (Two Inch Astronaut) is on drums.

Des Demonas’ music is a melding of disparate sounds and influences, hitting with a driving pulse and fiery intent.

“The sonic fuel of the band is a blend of post punk, punk, funk, blues, psych rock, Afro beat, even bubble gum but the noise you hear is pure Des Demonas.” - Kim Salmon / The Scientists.

“Dig the Des Demonas. Play it loud. Twist your wig.” - Kid Congo Powers.

TRACK LISTING

Obsession
The Duke Ellington Bridge
Conduit
Fascist Discotheque
Restructuring
Apocalyptic Boom Boom
Angola
Elvis And Nixon
Miles Davis Headwound Blues
Backwards Man
Arthur Lee Bomb Squad
Psychic Bloc
Des Demonas Against Fascism

In 1979, two school-kids all hopped-up on punk-rock started their own group in their hometown of Hawthorne, Los Angeles (birthplace of the Beach Boys) and soon found themselves opening shows for notorious scene pioneers Black Flag. Jeff McDonald was fifteen, his brother Steven McDonald only eleven. But that didn’t stop their group from becoming one of the most remarkable, enduring and unique outfits punk-rock ever belched up.

2024, then, marks Redd Kross’s forty-fifth birthday— an important anniversary for any group whose heart pulses at 45RPM—and the brothers are celebrating the event with a veritable multimedia extravaganza. There’s a memoir, Now You’re One Of Us, due in November, author Dan Epstein telling the group’s story in the McDonalds’ unmistakable (and occasionally contrary) voices. A brilliant rockumentary, Born Innocent, directed by Andrew Reich, will premiere later in the year. Most exciting of all, this new album—an eponymous double-album, no less, packed with eighteen of their sharpest, most addictive songs yet. These years of joyful service to rock’n’roll have seen Redd Kross evolve into a killer pop-rock concern, dealing in dayglo power-chords, choruses as tall as skyscrapers and a lyric sheet thick with acid couplets and arch popcultural references their loyal following will gobble up like quaaludes.

TRACK LISTING

1. Candy Coloured Catastrophe
2. Stunt Queen
3. The Main Attraction
4. Cancion Enojada
5. Good Times Propaganda Band
6. What’s In It For You?
7. I’ll Take Your Word For It
8. Terrible Band
9. Stuff
10. Back Of The Cave
11. Too Good To Be True
12. Way Too Happy
13. Simple Magic
14. The Witches’ Stand
15. Lay Down And Die
16. The Shaman’s Disappearing Robe
17. Emanuelle Insane
18. Born Innocent

In The Red Records is proud to announce a previously unreleased new album by Brooklyn-born master of minimalism Alan Vega, Insurrection. The eleven songs here showcase the unparalleled vision and uncompromising force from one of the most influential artists of all time. Alan Vega was born in Brooklyn in 1938. He co-founded the legendary New York City punk band Suicide with Martin Rev in 1970. Suicide’s groundbreaking 1977 debut is considered one of the most influential albums of all time. Vega considered his solo records the audio counterpoint to his visual art that reflected the world around him while simultaneously exploring universal themes. It makes his work as relevant today as it was when he created them. It was during his highly experimental period beginning in the late ’80s that he began working with Liz Lamere, who became the most crucial collaborator of his solo career until his death in 2016. Lamere, along with Jared Artaud, resurrected these newly unearthed collection of lost recordings, which they co-produced and mixed. Lamere and Artaud spearhead the Vega Vault project, which aims to bring rare, unreleased and back catalog work spanning Alan Vega and Suicide’s career to the public for the first time. On Insurrection, Lamere says: “Insurrection was created in the time period around 1997/98, after Mutator and prior to Vega’s 1999 release of 2007 and captures the intense energy of NYC in the ’90s rife with crime, killing, hate, fascism, racism, and moral bankruptcy. You can hear the tortured souls floating through this album. Post-Gulf War angst still enveloped Alan. He was having premonitions about a major terror attack in the US, well before 9/11. The upcoming birth of his son raised further awareness of the state of our world. All these emotions are mirrored in the sounds he magnetized. And true to Vega form, there remains hope and empowerment coursing through the tracks. In the almost three decades of going into the studio with Vega, we recorded significantly more material than the seven albums released. Vega’s intention was to experiment with sound which would become the canvas for the poetry that reflected his vision of the universe. Because the goal wasn’t to make albums, he had no timeline or constraints and would freely follow new paths uncovered along the way.”

TRACK LISTING

1. Sewer
2. Invasion
3. Crash
4. Cyanide Soul
5. Murder One
6. Fireballer Fever
7. Genocide
8. Chains
9. Jet Lord
10. Mercy
11. Fireballer Spirit

In 1977 The Adverts sent a five song cassette they recorded at a rehearsal to Chiswick Records. Chiswick chose not to pick up the band and the tape sat at the label’s headquarters until October 2022 when the tape was auctioned on eBay. The winning bidder was Henry Rollins who, upon hearing the tape, contacted TV Smith (the band’s singer and principal songwriter) and got permission to release the tracks. The tape was transferred at Tonal Park in Maryland and mastered by Mikey Young in Australia and it sounds incredible in all its raw glory.
The Adverts were one of the original Class of ’77 UK punk bands and they were arguably one of the best. Their singles and debut album, Crossing The Red Sea With The Adverts, are all time classics of the genre. Rehearsal Tape is the first time the band was ever recorded. In The Red and 2.13.61 are over the moon to have the opportunity this punk rock artifact on vinyl.

TRACK LISTING

1. One Chord Wonders
2. New Boys
3. Quickstep
4. We Who Wait
5. Bored Teenagers

“It's a new lineup,” landlord of the avant-garage Kid Congo Powers exclaims of the Pink Monkey Birds edition responsible for the fifth studio full-length of their 19 year recording career, That Delicious Vice.

“We've gone from a four piece to a three piece,” continues Kid, whose unique guitar style has been at the center of some of the most forward-thinking bands in punk and garage: The Gun Club, The Cramps, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, and Knoxville Girls, to name a handful.

“I'm not sure if living in the desert is making me want more space in music or not,” laughs Kid, a Tucson resident for a few years now. “Maybe I’m turning into a desert stoner rocker. But I'm not a stoner, so that's not happening.”

No, the former Brian Tristan is most decidedly not unleashing a Kyuss tribute album. But you hear the desert all over That Delicious Vice, beginning with opening instrumental “East Of East,” its Duane Eddy/Rowland S. Howard guitar twanging through some malicious reverb. You feel it in the slide guitar-drenched theme from an imaginary western, “Silver For My Sister,” which echoes the pioneering Los Angeles blues punk band Kid formed with Jeffrey Lee Pierce, The Gun Club. There’s also such unique pieces as the acid/garage cumbia title track, translated into Spanish at least for its name, “Ese Vicio Delicioso.” As he tells the tale of his musical journey over the Pink Monkey Birds’ cowbell-thumping Latinate rhythms, Kid’s thickly distorted guitar groans and screams with feedback, likely a conscious sonic homage to Jimi Hendrix, name checked in the lyrics.

But the album’s major hallmark has to be its extended collaboration with Alice Bag, the face of and voice of early LA punk titans The Bags. How and why these two took this long to unite creatively is a dense mystery, considering both graduated with honors from early Hollywood punk palace The Masque, and their photos had to have stared at one another from opposite pages of a few issues of Slash or fLiPSiDe.

This led to “Wicked World,” a full-on Kid Congo/Alice Bag duet that’s That Delicious Vice’s second track and major fulcrum. Over rat-a-tat “Big Bad John” drums, a blast of fuzz bass, and Kid’s siren-like slide guitar, the co-composers recount in tandem the tale of a child “born into trouble from a devil seed/Every fork in the road led her here.” It’s a short drive from there through a poor childhood and bad decisions to turning tricks and seeking kicks, amid an atmosphere heady with the scent of sex. The action stops, and Alice chants, “One two three four five six seven — you’re going to Hell, and I’M GOING TO HEAVEN!!” It’s a pulp paperback reincarnated as primal rock ‘n’ roll.

That Delicious Vice is produced by Kid Congo & The Pink Monkey Birds, recorded and mixed by Jim Waters [Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Sonic Youth] at his Waterworks Studios facility in Tucson. It features nine new original tracks that are the band’s strongest to date. The band will be touring Australia in April with more touring to follow.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Fuzzed-out breakdowns and soaring psychedelic freakouts are the bedrock of Kind Congo's sound, but on 'that Delicious Vice' the band are on peak form, effortlessly moving between walls of sound freakout drone and tender slide-guitar balladry. There 's groove and rhythm too, never eschewing the feel for needless heft, it's a beatifully balanced maelstrom.

The ever poignant yet exceedingly elusive Chorg Dorgon speaks on the new album by Charles Moothart, entitled Black Holes Don’t Choke: “For the sake of clarity, and its clarity that we seek, Charles has been a pillar of our musical experience since he began playing eons ago in the various projects and countless albums he has contributed to. Charles is a musician who has been constantly on the road for years playing in Ty Segall’s Freedom Band and Fuzz. When there has been a rare time away from those engagements especially in the post-pandemic scramble to catch up world of gigs and tours, he has been spending all of his time in his laboratory figuring out how to synthesize all of the info he has collected and musical ideas he has developed in the past few years since the last CFM record and subsequent shows for this new solo work. Just before the pandemic started, he was out playing solo shows in a project that revolved around an MPC sampler, just to give an example as to the wideness of his explorations. His result is Black Holes Don’t Choke. Love songs for the apocalypse. A prayer toward optimism amid chaos. A plea toward nature. The themes on this album are the themes of today. Charles appeals for us to visualize evolution. And with a signature, the music sounds exactly as you want it to. It sounds like Charles Moothart’s music only more evolved and with greater focus and direction. With greater textural dynamic and more sonic variation and realization, but never sacrificing the insane riff that he is clearly the master of. He gets to the point on this record. He is presenting a voice you can understand and rely on as you make your own journey into it. Create your own meanings. The record now belongs to the world. Because we all start a thought as that which is beginning-less and endless and at some certain point it becomes its own thought, takes it owns shape and becomes itself, separate from the thinker, separate from the observer. alive in the ether!”

TRACK LISTING

1. Roll
2. Hold On
3. Black Holes Don't Choke
4. Anchored And Empty
5. One Wish
6. Little Egg
7. Clock Rats
8. Time Lapse Choke
9. The Fire I Call Home
10. Crypts Crumble

Garage/punk rock informed by the likes of Iggy, Thunders and late ‘70s punk by former member of A Place To Bury Strangers and The D4.

In 2022, Henry Rollins heard an early version of Dion Lunadon’s sophomore album Beyond Everything. He said it sounded like something that should be on In The Red Records. In The Red Records agreed. Now ITR are proud to announce the follow up, Systems Edge. Ten brand new original garage / punk rockers informed by the likes of Iggy, Thunders and late ’70s punk without sounding retro or by-the-numbers. This is seriously great stuff! Born in Auckland, New Zealand and now residing in New York City, Lunadon has played in various bands, most notably The D4 (who released two albums on the legendary Flying Nun label) and A Place To Bury Strangers.

TRACK LISTING

1. Secrets
2. Nikki
3. Diamond Sea
4. I Walk Away
5. Rocks On
6. Shockwave
7. Grind Me Down
8. Straight Down The Middle
9. I Don’t Mind
10. Room With No View

In the Red Records will proudly present the U.S. edition of Rantings from the Book of Swamp, the freewheeling eighth studio release by Australia’s magnificent and unpredictable Kim Salmon and the Surrealists, as a two-LP. The Surrealists were formed by the Scientists’ singer-songwriter-guitarist Kim Salmon in 1987, betwixt the last two tours by the original incarnation of that pathfinding Perth-bred band. The Surrealists had been dormant in recent years, as the bandleader focused his energy on recording and touring with a reunited lineup of the Scientists featuring guitarist Tony Thewlis, bassist Boris Sujdovic, and drummer Leanne Cowie, who had recorded the career-summarizing 1986 LP Weird Love. (In 2021, In the Red issued Negativity, a new album by that unit, to wide acclaim.) In 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown settled around the globe Salmon reconvened with bassist/baritone guitarist Stu Thomas and drummer Phil Collings, who had appeared on the Surrealists’ 2010 release Grand Unifying Theory, the group’s most recent record. As with that work, the new material was created live on the studio floor, and emphasized improvisation in both its structure and content.

“The premise for this recording,” Salmon explains, “was that at its commencement the band members would come prepared with no other material than whatever ideas they might be able to individually bring. The lyrical content was all derived from my notebooks (Book of Swamp) from sketches I’d been jotting down over the last couple of years. There was to be no consultation about musical forms until the event began. Once the event began, the band had carte blanche to do whatever necessary to salvage compelling performances over the two live events @ 7PM AEST 6/13/20 + 6/14/20 respectively…….i.e., we had to make it up from scratch!”

Captured at Rolling Stock Recording Rooms in Collingwood, Victoria, Australia, by Myles Mumford, the music heard on Rantings from the Book of Swamp was originally presented as a pair of live streams directed by Andrew Watson at Semiconductor Media. The resultant album comprises 13 brain-bending tracks characterized by Salmon’s percolating lyrical imagination and the raw, unfettered interplay of the three seasoned musical collaborators. After the world began to emerge from the pandemic lockdown in 2022, the Surrealists hit Australian stages on the double-barreled “You Gotta Let Me Swamp My Rantings” tour, which featured two different lineups performing two albums in toto: the Rantings from the Book of Swamp trio, and the threesome of Salmon, Thomas, and drummer Greg Bainbridge, who played the material from You Gotta Let Me Do My Thing, the 1997 Surrealists album they cut together. Offbeat, off the street, off the map, and off the wall, Rantings from the Books of Swamp serves as a potent reminder that Kim Salmon and the Surrealists remain a puissant force in boundary-pushing rock music.

A pop record for tired times. Sugared with bits of shatterproof glass to put more crack in your strap. At long last, verse / chorus. A weathered thesaurus. This is OSEES bookend sound. Early grade garage pop meets protosynth punk suicide-repellant. Have a whack at the grass or listen while flat on your ass. Heaps of electronic whirling accelerants to gum up your cheapskate broadband. Social media toilet scrapers unite! Allow your 24-hour news cycle eyes to squint at this smiling abattoir doorman. You can find your place here at long last. All are welcome from the get go to the finale…a distant crackling transmission of 80s synth last-dance-of-the-night tune for your lost loves. Suffering from Politic amnesia? Bored of AI-generated pop slop? Then this one is for you, our friends. Wasteland wanderer, stick around. Love y’all. For fans of Teutonic synth punk and Thee Oh Sees (who the fuck are they?)” — John Dwyer.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: The brilliant OSEES are back with a vitriolic blast of fuzzy guitars, frenetic percussion and wonky synth sweeps. Dwyer and co are without a doubt at the forefront of the garage/indie movement, crafting a sound that's both hugely impactful and undoubtedly their own, with more than a hint of irony peeking through here and there. Brilliantly done, as ever.

TRACK LISTING

1. Stunner
2. Blank Chems
3. Intercepted Message
4. Die Laughing
5. Unusual & Cruel
6. The Fish Needs A Bike
7. Goon
8. Chaos Heart
9. Submerged Building
10. Sleazoid Psycho
11. Always At Night
12. LADWP Hold

The Side Eyes are back with the follow up to their 2017 self-titled debut album and are asking the question What’s Your Problem? Anyone suspecting that the Southern California band may have mellowed out in the five years between albums will have those suspicions shattered within the first twenty seconds of the opening track “Get Me Out.” If anything, the band is now harder, faster and angrier than they were the first time around. Vocalist Astrid McDonald is in fiery fine form calling out everything from phonies to shit-talkers to people that simply aren’t nice. Brothers Kevin and Chris Devine on guitar and bass and drummer Sam Mankinen thunder through the twelve tracks here at a breakneck speed that is positively pummeling. While The Side Eyes sound like a throwback to early Southern California hardcore punk rock like Circle Jerks and the Adolescents, the band also sites more recent bands like Ceremony, Glue and Babes In Toyland as influences. Produced by Steve McDonald (Redd Kross / Melvins) and clocking in at under twenty minutes (while spinning at 45 RPM), What’s Your Problem is a modern punk rock gem that blows past the sonic barriers of their past inspirations. This is great stuff!

Fans of the innovations and originality that sprang from the L.A. underground of the late 1970s and ’80s often ask, “What’s Paul B. Cutler been up to?” A vital participant in the Los Angeles music scene of that period as bandleader, songwriter, musician and producer, Cutler’s work—in particular his guitar playing— with The Consumers, 45 Grave, Vox Pop and The Dream Syndicate is still admired by fans and an influence on anyone interested in that period and the styles that developed from it.

In 2014, “Ryan Adams contacted me and wanted to form a band. He loved 45 Grave, he wanted to do some goth / punk, whatever you want to call it. That’s right up my alley. He’s amazingly talented and inspiring to work with. We did that for a while, and I wrote a bunch of songs.” Enthused about his new material, Cutler continued recording songs with just his signature electric guitar style and vocals. As this was developing, another vet of the early L.A. scene—Brad Laner of Medicine and Savage Republic—got in touch with Cutler. Soon Laner was mixing, co-producing, playing keyboards as well as adding the rhythm section. The overall process took some time, with songwriting beginning in 2014. When reflecting on the music that comprises Les Fleurs, “To me, and it does not sound like it, but because of the philosophy I had while producing it, it’s punk. I come from the original punk, before it was a genre. Before it was a ‘sound.’ When I got to LA in 1977 there were about twenty, maybe thirty bands and they all sounded very different. The Screamers, The Deadbeats, so many different takes on what music could be. There was no chance for commercial success so we all just did what we wanted. I never stopped. So philosophically I consider this punk rock, made in its original spirit although nobody would recognize it as such. I am a punk to this day.” So that, dear reader, is the basic story. Now it’s up to you to see what you recognize in Paul B. Cutler’s Les Fleurs.

TRACK LISTING

1. The Cold Light Of Day
2. Engineer
3. For The Children
4. Fly Away
5. Grinning Reaper
6. Medusa
7. Istanbul
8. The Game
9. Chains
10. Home Sweet Home
11. Eat Me
12. Last Kiss
13. Decay
14. Persistence
15. Body Shadow Spirit

Summer Forever And Ever succeeds Blue Gene Stew, 2019’s debut by the Wolfmanhattan Project, a collective unit co-starring three musicians familiar to In The Red listeners: singer-guitarist Mick Collins, front man of the seminal Detroit-bred garage units the Dirtbombs and the Gories, singer-guitarist Kid Congo Powers who played in such legendary bands as the Gun Club, the Cramps, and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, and drummer-vocalist Bob Bert, whose skin work has distinguished albums by Sonic Youth, Pussy Galore, Lydia Lunch’s Retrovirus, and Jon Spencer and the HITmakers.

The group was founded as a studio project by three musicians who are kept busy by their primary bands. Blue Gene Stew was written and recorded quickly. Powers says, “I think that the new record was much more a group effort. I think there’s more of a group kind of sound, as eclectic as it is. I feel like we all played together, as opposed to playing on each other’s songs.” Bert notes that the band’s music is grounded in spontaneity: “Me and Mick went in and had a couple of rehearsals, and I would come up with a beat, he would come up with a riff. I still have a cassette Walkman, believe it or not, and we’d put it down on that. It wasn’t even a full song. We’d just put down a bunch of ideas. When it came to recording we’d lay down the basic tracks and work out different things, and a lot of it was made up on the spot. It really is a great collaboration.” Recorded and engineered by Mark C. of Live Skull at his studio, Summer Forever And Ever finds Powers playing piano and the Kaoss touch-pad effects unit and Collins playing synthesizer, in addition to their usual instruments. The album reflects the same eclectic mix of musical styles heard on the debut. References and sometimes even direct quotes from sources as diverse as the Andrea True Connection, Captain Beefheart, the Count Five, and Eurythmics leap out of the speakers.

TRACK LISTING

1. Like Andrea True
2. Countdown Love
3. Summer Forever
4. Respectable Pigs
5. Hypnotize Too
6. H Hour
7. Silky Narcotic
8. Very Next Song
9. New In The World
10. Raised/Razed

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

Live In St. Kilda is a twelve song live album from a one-time-only show in which Kid Congo Powers was backed by The Near Death Experience. Kid Congo says, “How did I hook up with The Near Death Experience you may ask? One fine day Kim Salmon, my long time Scientists Surrealist Beast of a friend, wrote from Australia to ask me to play at his book launch for his biography Nine Parts Water, One Part Sand: Kim Salmon And The Formula For Grunge on November 9th, 2019. The launch was to take place at the Memo Music Hall in St. Kilda, a seaside suburb of Melbourne. A royal command performance for the king of Kim? How could I say no to such an honor? What to do about a band? It did not take more than a minute for each of us to suggest Harry Howard and The Near Death Experience as the logical choice. I was a massive fan of the band already and we shared crossed paths as expats claiming out our musical in 1980s London. Harry with Crime And The City Solution and These Immortal Souls, Dave and Clare with The Moodists, Kim with the Scientists and me with Gun Club and Fur Bible. Needless to say it was fantastical to get together and make a playlist for Kim featuring covers by Suicide and Shangri La, with mine and NDE’s songs as well. The night was magic—I still am floating on a surrealistic pillow remembering the night. Enjoy the racket, enjoy the love, enjoy this record of friendship and celebration.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Snapping garage percussion and screaming guitars lay the foundation for Kid Kongo Powers' unmistakeable vocals and scathing live show. Featuring the Near Death Experience members instead of the usual Pink Monkey Birds has lent his sound an even more raw edge, accentuated by the live setting. Hefty.

TRACK LISTING

1. LSDC
2. I Found A Peanut
3. Black Santa
4. La Llorona
5. The Only One
6. Sophisticated Boom Boom
7. New Kind Of Kick
8. Diamonds, Fur Coat, Champagne
9. She Doesn't Like It
10. Sex Beat
11. When He Finds Out
12. Garbage Man

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

Hard-hitting new collection succeeds the trio’s rampaging 2019 In The Red Debut EP Death Buy! Proving once again that “power trio” isn’t just a descriptive handle from the distant past but a louderthan- God 21st-Century reality, the devastating New York band Skull Practitioners bow Negative Stars, their first full-length album for In The Red Records. The eight-track collection is the second release for Los Angelesbased trio—guitarist Jason Victor, bassist Kenneth Levine, and drummer Alex Baker—who collectively produced the record, with Ted Young engineering (and Baker handling engineering on vocal sessions). Brooklyn Vegan said, “If you dig early ’80s L.A. dusty punk like Gun Club, X and Flesh Eaters, or the many works of Jon Spencer, you will want to check out these four ripping, ripped-up tracks.” Rock And Roll Globe described the music as “Gun Club fugues played by anxious Amphetamine Reptile Records ghosts deciding they’d prefer to continue to walk the earth.” Negative Stars is the culmination of years of work in New York’s clubs and studios. “I don’t like to say the date we started working together,” says Levine, “but the second Bush was still president.” At the time, Victor had already established himself as the dazzling co-lead guitarist for Steve Wynn and the Miracle Three; when Wynn revived his ’80s L.A. Paisley Underground consortium the Dream Syndicate in 2017, Victor took the guitar chair previously occupied by Karl Precoda and Paul Cutler. Baker had only recently arrived from Cincinnati. With their album finally complete and the pandemic lifting, Skull Practitioners have begun to take to the stage more regularly: in 2022 they have played shows with Lydia Lunch, Live Skull, the Art Gray Noizz Quintet, and In the Red label-mates the Wolfmanhattan Project (Kid Congo Powers, Mick Collins, and Bob Bert). They plan to get on the road in the near future.

TRACK LISTING

1. Dedication
2. Exit Wounds
3. LEAP
4. Intruder
5. What Now
6. Fire Drill
7. Ventilation
8. Nelson D
CD-only Tracks
9. Death Buy
10. Grey No More
11. The Beacon
12. Miami

“Step into a sick rhythm. And I mean sickly. Surgery Channel is a constructed world where everything is piercing and pinpointed. Every single word brings confrontation. With an intro as intimate and uncomfortable as this, The C.I.A. make you question what could be happening here…or what they’re after. Denée Segall (vocals, lyrics) is both haunting and seducing us at once with her voice. Something unhinged might be about to happen and they’re calmly dangling it over your head. Is it the possibility of dismemberment? Revenge? “There is something about Surgery Channel that is sterile and covered in dirt at the same time. Maybe it’s the feeling of simultaneous anger and defeat. Maybe it’s what comes after. Or maybe it’s about the ever-so-brief silent spaces between notes and words. Rhythm would be nothing without empty space. Words are rhythm at The C.I.A. “There’s nothing wishy washy about The C.I.A. or the way they sound. It’s all about precision and aim But really, it’s a warning... amplified by the suspense of tick-tocking drum machine beats that resemble a hospital room. Ty Segall (bass, percussion, back up vocals) and Emmett Kelly (bass, synth, back up vocals) have painted a jarring and dissonant landscape behind Denée’s story. Their basses could easily be swapped for bone drills and you might not be able to tell the difference. Emmett’s modular synth envisions an environment reminiscent of the instrument itself, a mess of wires and pulsing red lights. Ty’s subtle use of electronic and analog percussion fluctuates between the sound of a metal tray hitting the floor (“The Wait”), and the swish of an ultrasound scan (“Bubble”). “Both Surgery Channel and The C.I.A’s first self-titled record are ripe with straightforward conviction. However this most recent installment reveals a new side of their personality. Now The C.I.A. is communicating from an electrified, pulsating, metallic playpen that wants you to strut. Surgery Channel shows punks a new way to move while remaining loyal to the traditions of catharsis and social commentary. “This record is an astute observation and blunt critique. Both inward and outward. It is an exploration into how harshly intimate that process can be. It was written in 2021 by Denée Segall, Ty Segall, and Emmett Kelly. It was recorded at Harmonizer Studios and mixed at Golden Beat by Mike Kriebel.” —Sofia Arreguin

TRACK LISTING

1. Introduction
2. Better
3. Inhale Exhale
4. Impersonator
5. Surgery Channel Pt. 1
6. Surgery Channel Pt. 2
7. Bubble
8. You Can Be Here
9. The Wait
10. Construct
11. Under
12. Over

Liz Lamere has announced her debut album Keep It Alive via In The Red. After collaborating with late partner Alan Vega (Suicide) for over three decades on his solo work, and starting out playing drums in punk bands, she is releasing her own music. All of the music and lyrics were written and performed by Liz Lamere. It was recorded in her lower Manhattan apartment during lockdown, engineered by her and Alan’s son Dante Vega Lamere in the same space where the Suicide singer constructed his light sculptures. They emerged with a riveting set of songs that are charged with an irrepressible lust for life and the feel for the contagious hook. The album was then co-produced and mixed by Jared Artaud and Liz Lamere, with Ted Young engineering the mixing sessions and Josh Bonati mastering.

“There’s something very magical about creating music in the same environment where Alan created his visual art,” notes Lamere. “His energy is pervasive and is inevitably infused in the recordings.” She continues: “We were living through unprecedented times and Keep It Alive took adversity and uncertainty and turned it into a message of resilience and empowerment.”

The album courses with the defiant energy that motivated Lamere through her early double life as both Wall Street lawyer and downtown New York musician before meeting and falling in love with Vega led to her becoming his manager, creative foil and keyboard manipulator on solo albums beginning in 1990 (Deuce Avenue, Power On To Zero Hour, New Raceion, Dujang Prang, 2007, Station, IT) and recently released lost album Mutator that launched the Vega Vault she curates with Jared Artaud. After Vega passed away in July 2016, Lamere found it cathartic writing down thoughts and observations in notebooks. Simultaneously, she and Artaud started collaborating, overseeing the mastering of IT and then co-producing and mixing Mutator; and during this time they naturally discussed an alliance on the solo album she knew would be forthcoming.

Keep It Alive is an homage to a song on Vega’s New Raceion album that has significant meaning for Lamere. It was one of the key lines she would chant on stage, becoming a staple of live performances with Vega. The vision behind the album is about preserving your own inner fire. Lamere commented “Alan always encouraged me to make my own music, and I’ve waited until the time was right as I’ve been dedicated to preserving Alan’s vision and building his legacy.”

TRACK LISTING

1. Lights Out
2. Stand
3. Sin
4. Heat Beat
5. Subway Cyanide
6. Cruise Screen
7. Freedom's Last Call

Originally released in 1979 on their own Disposable Records, this record was the brainchild of John Irvine in the UK. The record was pressed in a tiny edition, was played on John Peel several times and vanished without a trace. An excellent example of the UK DIY scene of the time later popularized on the Messthetics compilation series. It ranks number 12 in the top 100 DIY singles list that ran in Ugly Things issue #78. We’ve repressed it in an edition of 400 on red, purple, double mint green and olive green vinyl.

Angeles, California—Divine Horsemen, the fiery, eclectic ’80s group that rode the unique vocal chemistry of Chris Desjardins (a.k.a. Chris D.) and Julie Christensen, return to the musical stage with Hot Rise Of An Ice Cream Phoenix, a collection of all-new recordings. Co-produced by Desjardins and Craig Parker Adams (who engineered I Used To Be Pretty, the 2019 release by Chris D.’s groundbreaking ’70s punk band the Flesh Eaters), this new 13-track album comprises the first new music by the Horsemen in thirty-three years.

Founded after the dissolution of the Flesh Eaters and launched with the 1984 Enigma Records album Time Stands Still, billed as Chris D./Divine Horseman, the band released three albums and an EP on SST Records, all of which featured the searing harmonies of Desjardins and Christensen, who were married at the time. The couple split professionally and personally just prior to the release of their January 1988 EP A Handful of Sand. However, the two musicians remained in touch over the years, and Christensen contributed vocals to five tracks on I Used To Be Pretty, which reunited the 1980 “all-star” edition of the Flesh Eaters heard on the Ruby/Slash classic A Minute To Pray, A Second To Die. By then, the idea of reviving Divine Horsemen was already percolating.

Featuring onetime Divine Horsemen guitarist Peter Andrus, who had appeared on A Handful Of Sand and the 1987 album Snake Handler, and Bobby Permanent, the 2021 Divine Horsemen lineup is completed by drummer DJ Bonebrake of the incomparable L.A. band X. Hot Rise Of An Ice Cream Phoenix stands as a bracing new achievement by a distinctive musical partnership that has always marched to the beat of its own drum. Like the Flesh Eaters’ recent reunion, it’s a welcome return that plays to the group’s historic strengths.

TRACK LISTING

1. Mystery Writers
2. Falling Forward
3. Ice Cream Phoenix
4. Mind Fever
5. Handful Of Sand
6. Any Day Now
7. 25th Floor
8. Can't You See Me
9. No Evil Star
10. Strangers
11. Barefoot In The Streets
12. Stoney Path
13. Love Cannot Die

In The Red are proud to announce the new solo album by Don Howland. Howland’s been pursuing his brand of scuzzy roots rock for over a quarter of a century, first as a member of Columbus’s beloved Gibson Bros. and later as the main man in the Bassholes. His music is a raw convergence of country blues, ’76 punk and lo-fi garage. Howland was one of the original flagship artists for In The Red and the label is happy to be working with him again. He’s been a crucial figure in underground music for several decades and is one of the American underground’s true originals. “Howland’s music is a tinnily mixed, macabre mix of psychobilly, swamp rock, and Captain Beefheartian avantgarde weirdness, peopled with weird and disturbing images, relaying troubled encounters and stories with a streak of wild-eyed glee.” —Richie Unterberger

TRACK LISTING

1. Endgame
2. Half Off
3. Party In Hell Pt.1
4. Sleep In Cars
5. Treetops
6. In With The Out Crowd
7. Buckeye Jam
8. Thank You CIA
9. How Now (Brown Cow)
10. Looking Glass Rock

“Massive slab of debut vinyl by a Brooklyn New York trio whose guitarist, Jason Victor, knows more than a little about the potential of psych-gush overload. In his position as the current guitarist of the Dream Syndicate, one might suppose that, by stepping into shoes formerly occupied by Karl Precoda, Mr. Victor was granted some sort of special legacy connection to the ur-root of string-excess in the post-punk era. But Jason seems to have been blowing the tops of people’s heads off with pure raunch vomona since before he ever met Steve Wynn.

“The Skull Practitioners have been active since 2013, garnering a reputation for bodacious live skronk, although the only graspable evidence of their existence has been a 2014 cassette, which was not widely distributed. Now, with the mighty In The Red empire behind them, only a sucker would think they won’t go far.

“Victor’s explosive guitar shards are the most obvious element of the trio’s sound, but bassist Ken Kenneth Levine can conjure up a throb as thick as Al Feedtime’s, and Alex Baker’s drumming mixes propulsion and motorik circularity with reckless grace. There are only vocals on half the tracks here— Gun Club-seasoned blow-outs called “The Beacon” and “Grey No More”—but I didn’t miss them on their other two tunes. The richness of the band’s psychedelic inventions obviates the need for overt human lingo. The music here communicates on a molecular level.

“Remember when Tim Leary said Peter Walker was ‘playing celestial strings on the DNA of musical being’? It’s the same here. I’ve never heard much of Jason’s studio work (often with pop engines like the Silos or Matthew Sweet), but if he plays this great, I might have to check them out. In the meantime, these four songs will be enough. For me. For you. Even for the late Tim ‘Fuckin’ Leary. C’est la.” —Byron Coley.

Charles Moothart is releasing his third album under the moniker CFM. It’s called Soundtrack For An Empty Room and keeps it cookin’ off 2016’s Still Life Of Citrus And Slime and 2017’s Dichotomy Desaturated. Moothart is a frequent contributor on many of Ty Segall’s solo ventures but also as a co-conspirator in bands like the blazing jam unit Fuzz, and a fantastic monster of a group called GØGGS, which throws Segall and Moothart in with Chris Shaw of Ex-Cult. Something that’s immediately apparent on this album is that it’s a harder record than its predecessors. The shift isn’t subtle but it is tremendously cool. A lot of the material was written while Moothart was on tour with Segall and working on the GØGGS Pre Strike Sweep album. The first two CFM efforts gave Moothart the experience to work effectively on his own in the studio, the live shows infuse this with the confidence and attitude that comes from a lot of nights playing where there are no second takes. It is an exciting follow up and further proof that Moothart is one of those people with a lot of music in him.

“If I may speak completely for myself. It’s musicians like Charles, Ty, Chris Shaw, John Dwyer, Tim Presley and Mikal Cronin who are not only revitalizing Independent Music, but have forced the idea of the monolithic album, endless tour and then a year before another release to be but an antiquated and megaboring option. It’s a blast trying to keep up with their output. Super exciting. Lastly, all three CFM albums are great but Soundtrack To An Empty Room is the best one. It rips from start to finish.” - Henry Rollins.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: A brilliant outing from one of the core members of some of the alt-underground's most blazing acts, CFM finds our charles in full fuzzy force, ripping through mind-melting riffage, covered in distortion and with no shortage of groove. Awesome stuff.

TRACK LISTING

1. Black Cat
2. Sequence
3. Street Vision
4. Greenlight
5. Lovely
6. Crashing Through The Static
7. Soundtrack To An Empty Room
8. River
9. Peace

Merriam-Webster definition of supergroup: a rock group made up of prominent former members of other rock groups, also: an extremely successful rock group. While the definition of “extremely successful” may differ, there can be no arguing that Wolfmanhattan Project are a supergroup.

This three piece features Bob Bert (Sonic Youth, Pussy Galore, Lydia Lunch’s Retrovirus), Mick Collins (Gories, Dirtbombs) and Kid Congo Powers(Gun Club, The Cramps, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, Pink Monkey Birds) and their collective track record beats Blind Faith, West, Bruce & Laing and The Power Station’s resumes combined! All three members write, sing and play in this band and, for anyone familiar with the member’s other bands, this stuff is as twisted and great as one can hope for. Everyone involved brings flavors from their past efforts and it’s all mixed together into one unholy rock ’n’ roll gumbo. It’s sleazy, swampy, trashy, no-wavey, weird and rocking! Lydia Lunch even makes an appearance, which makes this album that much more super!

TRACK LISTING

1. Delay Is The Deadliest
2. Now Now Now
3. Braid Of Smoke
4. I Feel You
5. Stick
6. Jar In The Staircase
7. Smells Like You
8. Silver Sun
9. Toybee Tile Blues
10. Last Train To Babylon

Chain & The Gang are different than the rest—you won’t see their name on the garbage heap of hyped bands pushed by paidoff web-zine tastemakers. They’re not “jingle-core,” tattooed onto your subconscious via Madison Avenue mind-control ad campaigns. They’re not middle brow NPR indie-listening for Prius-owning cubicle rockers or a tiresome teenage retread of ’90s surrender sludge. No, Chain & The Gang are singular, terrifying, and unparalleled. Not only the most ferocious live combo ever witnessed but also the world’s only anti-liberty rock ’n’ roll group. Their motto? “Down with Liberty … Up with Chains!”

This band doesn’t care about grades, likes, traffic or hits. They don’t petition publicists for goofy hype or pander to the corrupt institutions who molest rock ’n’ roll and use it as their plaything. Chain & Co. don’t play that game. They want total destruction of the insipid rock ’n’ roll status quo and the foul system from which it purports to offer relief, but in fact keeps afloat. They’ve released five uncompromising records, each one a brilliant, tossed-off sketchbook of insolence and provocation: Down with Liberty … Up With Chains!, Music’s Not For Everyone, In Cool Blood, Minimum Rock ’n’ Roll, and Experimental Music.

Now only one is needed: Best Of Crime Rock. Just recorded, it’s easily the best record, with the most passion, the most accuracy, the most cunning, and the most vigor. Every song on these records is a classic, each lyric an anthem. The tunes are simplistic to the point of parody; call and response rhythm chants which infiltrate the consciousness and leave the listener forever transformed. Each group member is a star. But together they’re something greater than the parts. An irresistible combo that provides the best hope for the future and the only answer to the embarrassing slime pit called “culture.”

TRACK LISTING

1. Devitalize
2. Certain Kinds Of Trash
3. Why Not?
4. The Logic Of Night
5. I See Progress
6. What Is A Dollar?
7. Mums The Word
8. Free Will
9. Come Over
10. Livin Rough
11. Nuff Said
12. Deathbed Confession

Trust is hard, but trusting yourself is harder. Are the decisions you make the right ones? Is it worth taking risks if there’s no one around to talk you out of it? Is it brave to follow your arrow without knowing where that arrow will lead, or is it better to exercise caution? L.A. punk shredder Charles Moothart wrestled with some of these quandaries while making his second solo album under the CFM moniker, Dichotomy Desaturated. “I love working with other people,” he explains, “But there’s always been that side of me where I’ve wondered, “Can I do this without having someone tell me that it’s acceptable or good?’” Suffice to say, he pulled it off, and with aplomb, too.

This latest release is a toothy, swirling collection of songs that captures a variety of sonic moods—raucous, pastoral, pensive—while retaining an indelible melodic punch. The Laguna Beach-raised Moothart first picked up a guitar at 12 years old and got behind the drum kit for the Moonhearts at the age of 16 with fellow Cali six-string ripper Mikal Cronin. Since then, the 27-year-old journeyman has become a fixture in the West Coast community: he’s logged oodles of studio and stage time with Cronin and Ty Segall—both on his solo albums and as part of the ultra-heavy supergroup Fuzz, the latter experience driving him to make music on his own.

He struck out on his own with 2016’s solo debut, Still Life of Citrus and Slime; a year later, he’s back with this, which marks the first time Moothart’s written songs for the specific purpose of compiling them onto an album. This album embraces relative quiet alongside hardcharging riffs and bursts of incendiary color— there’s plenty of face-exploding moments on Dichotomy Desaturated as well, a sense of mischief that is nonetheless serious as all hell. Just listen to the record— the choice is obvious.

TRACK LISTING

1. Dichotomy
2. Pinch The Dream
3. Lethal Look
4. Rise & Fall
5. Saline/The Man/Kind To You
6. Voyeurs
7. The Set Up
8. Desaturated
9. Dead Weight
10. Message From The Mirror

The appeal of Power is the spontaneous brilliance of live Australian hard rock music. The heat from relentless performances in greasy inner city pubs was strong in the ’70s, and the debut albums of many of Australia’s greatest bands are testimony to many late nights twitching and sweating it out. Troglodyte rock music and inner city Melbourne have always made sense. Every week there have been bands playing fast and loose.

2014 was the year Power stepped up, and immediately earned comparison to Melbourne’s Coloured Balls, sharing that edge of menace in their affection for boogie rock and the same air of familiarity with aforementioned greasy confines. Power hosted their own weekly residency in this city, kicking through backyard parties and seemingly hundreds of Tote Hotel shows with the collection of songs they recorded at the right moment and turned into Electric Glitter Boogie.

The result has the savage drive of their live sound , the bolts tightened to threadbare, and is carried by that supreme confidence and determination that allows the band to relax and let the songs happen when they need to, and to know when to kick it hard. Living in the age of power. The sound is raw but full, the band recorded live with minimal overdubs , and the songs continually disintegrate into white heat guitar noise before slamming back into manic amphetamine lockstep. In eight numbers, they traverse an entire history of hard rock, electric glitter boogie, thug glam, raw power punk. Strong character. Definite purpose. Something you just cannot control.

TRACK LISTING

1. Electric Glitter Boogie
2. Serpent City
3. Puppy
4. Gimme Head
5. Slimey's Chains
6. Rainbow Man
7. The Reaper
8. Power

This is the first album by BBQ since 2005’s Tie Your Noose on the historic Bomp! label. BBQ is Mark Sultan, who also has recorded many other albums and 45s, as well as playing in bands like The King Khan & BBQ Show, Almighty Defenders, Ding-Dongs and Les Sexareenos etc., etc. BBQ is his preferred monicker for playing as a very strict live-recorded one-man band.

This album serves as a little wink goodbye to any complexities past and a strong “welcome back” to the primitive, brusque and airy rock’n’roll which has made Sultan beloved since 2003. Forgoing lo-fi, BBQ is reinventing the one-man band, taking it back, for a loud, clear and raw sound; helmed by great songs, sung truly and passionately. Recorded by himself in his basement, live in one to two takes — twelve brand new killers.

The Intended formed years ago in a procrastinator’s threesubject
notebook during chemistry class. Four longtime friends
began passing the time playing music together—Kevin Boyer,
Larry Williams and Heath Heemsbergen were playing in
Tyvek; Glen Morren and Heath Moerland made sounds in
Detroit freakout ensemble Odd Clouds, and after many jams,
a band existed. Trying out song ideas, working on a ’60s cover,
expanding on sketches—a few local gigs and a few years pass.
The zero-pressure nature of how The Intended began shows
up in how the group progressed: a single materialized and the
band’s vibe was caught perfectly on four track by Chris Durham
in his basement practice space. More four track sessions
ensued until a bag of unlabelled cassettes made its way to the
studio to be transformed into the debut album: Time Will Tell.
Held together by a raw fidelity (those tape warbles and
wonky pitch changes aren’t plug ins), the songs twist through
diversions such as the ebullient blasting of “The Ineffable,” the
juvenile classroom anxieties of “Dirty Secret,” and the spoken
revelations of “Beast and the Priest.” Straying from Tyvek’s
punk tendencies, mellow ’60s rockers “Don’t Wait Too Long”
and the title track hit a jangling nerve. Time Will Tell shines a
spotlight on the blemishes of youth, somehow embraced with a
fearless yet awkward glance.

TRACK LISTING

1. Huguenot
2. The Ineffable
3. Desperation
4. Dirty Secrets
5. Time Will Tell
6. Beast & The Priest
7. Blue Law Sunday
8. Fighter Pilot
9. Don?t Wait Too Long
10. Nobody Move

Tyvek have long stood as one of the more steadfast and dependable punk institutions of the last decade. Each record has been great and has improved on the one before it without struggling to reinvent or overwrite their past. Line-ups and life events shift but the energy always comes through as new and raw as it did on the first single. Origin of What, their fourth album, is something of a departure, if a cryptic one—all the familiar elements are in place and yet a pervasive darkness that these strangely disjointed songs.

Working again with Fred Thomas who recorded their most recent album, 2012 burner On Triple Beams, band members from the earliest incarnations to its most recent showed up for various recording sessions, with initial tracks captured quickly. Later, far more extensive editing, mixing and overdubbing ensued, resulting in a fragmented production style that slowly disintegrates the standard punk fare until it starts to resemble dub experimentation before decaying even further. Tyvek’s future, like its origin, is up for grabs.

TRACK LISTING

1. Tip To Tail
2. Can't Exist
3. Girl On A Bicycle
4. Gridlock
5. Mirror Image Of
6. Count Me In
7. Into The Outlets
8. Origin Of What
9. Real Estate & Finance
10. Choose Once
11. Tyvek Chant
13. Underwater 3

“In the year of the snitch, there are forces beyond your control that keep you up at night. Ghost notions that swirl around your room while you sleep. Your own pillow laughing right in your face while you fight for an hour of rest. Voices whisper from the corner, telling you everything you never wanted to hear. Negative Growth, our third album, is dedicated to fear and deception. “This collection of songs was conceived in Memphis and finalized in Los Angeles, with the help of our family doctor Ty Segall. It was created in February 2016, when we traded Memphis misery for a week of California sunshine. Negative Growth is a nine-track nightmare, a death trip in the crystal ship. The institution known as In The Red Records will do the honors. The Hollywood Heat Seeker takes ten years off your life.” - Chris Shaw of Ex-Cult.

TRACK LISTING

1. Mr. Investigator
2. Attention Ritual
3. Let You In
4. Government Birdcage
5. Dogs Roll In
6. Panic In Pig Park
7. Hollywood Heatseeker
8. Nightmare Zone
9. New Face On

Chapter Two: We find our man stumbling through the darkness in the garden of illusion and fame.

Chris Shaw smokes the microphone while Ty Segall and Charles Moothart trade lizardian licks and skin hits. Guest GØGGS include Cory Hanson, Mikal Cronin and Denée Petracek. Ten tracks of misanthropic noise to bring home to mom’s house on fire. Boots to your face after the high speed chase, Then! A death trip down memory lane. The lead actor dies first and the shotgun shooter flashes chipped teeth.

Created in Los Angeles in the middle of the summer of 2015: three years of planning, thirty days of writing, one week of ripping. A severed finger on the button, the player ends the game. Final notice has been served.

STAFF COMMENTS

Darryl says: GØGGS is the three headed noise monster comprising of Charles Moothart (guitarist with Ty Segall Band), Ty Segall himself, and Ex-Cults Chris Shaw on vocals. Ten tracks of scuzzy fuzzy fun.

TRACK LISTING

1. Falling In
2. Shotgun Shooter
3. She Got Harder
4. Smoke The Worm
5. Goggs
6. Assassinate The Doctor
7. Needle Trade Off
8. Future Nothing
9. Final Notice
10. Glendale Junkyard

Spawned in the same creepy corner of the Pacific Northwest, from the remains of the fantastically under-appreciated The Hunches, Eat Skull and The Hospitals, are the Sleeping Beauties.

Big basement rock opens up “Bobby and Suzie” with its gluey, flypaper tempo changes bringing to mind Alex Chilton’s “Like Flies on Sherbert” and the Electric Eels mashed into a ball. Rhythm piano played with an icepick is next on “Meth” and though it may be a tale of warning, the track adds allure to having “got a weekend sack and it’s Saturday / Sunday my life is crumbling.” Under the moss-covered tremolo glam of “Wheeler” is a map to one of the catchiest choruses of the record. The smell of bleach in the bathroom leads to “Potter’s Daughter” with an invitation to relax and go “swimming in tampons” but in the last minute Rod Meyer’s and Rob Enbom’s scraping guitars peel back the skull again.

Sounding poppy, primal and carsick at once, drug mules and biblical references tiptoe sweetly onto the bus on “Merchants of Glue.” The windows steam up in the Rocket from the Tombs-eque “Slumber Party” as the garbage boogie slides into an early Butthole-Surfers-like stream of unconsciousness. “Hands Across America” continues to showcase singer Hart Gledhill as one of the most distressing throats since Captain Beefheart while competing with guitar solos louder than Teengenerate. These burns are soothed on “Southie,” evoking some kind of 13th Floor Elevators groove followed by the sad, warped, almost country-tinged “Addicted to Drugs.” This respite is short lived, however; the terrific push-pull / future-primitive rhythm section kicks in on “50’s Haircut / Gold Shoes.” After a while, the gutter puzzles start to make sense, like a schizophrenic does if you actually sit down and listen. When the last sands gently, mercifully slide through the hourglass on “South Eugene,” it’s over too soon.

It is exciting to see a new band in 2016 sing about their unique pain and pleasure, not hidden by delay pedals and not seeming to care if you like it or not. This record probably makes you smarter for listening to it, and the only problem is it erases your mind as well. - Lars Finberg, 2016.

TRACK LISTING

1. Bobby & Suzie
2. Meth
3. Wheeler
4. Potter's Daughter
5. Merchants Of Glue
6. Slumber Party
7. Hands Across America
8. Southie
9. Addicted To Drugs
10. 50's Haircut / Gold Shoes
11. South Eugene

CFM is Charles Francis Moothart. He has been making records for the past decade, playing various instruments in various bands—bass in The Epsilons, drums in The Moonhearts, and guitar in The Ty Segall Band and, most recently, Fuzz. Still Life of Citrus and Slime is Moothart’s first solo effort and it’s a great one.

Moothart says, “Still Life of Citrus and Slime—the idea of creating something outside of the comfort zone. Blending basic elements of necessity, release and escape. An attempt to fuse reality with the elusions of the possible. The music represents an elevation beyond the barriers of linear motion and self-doubt. It is similar to looking in a mirror and realizing that time trails itself constantly by just a millisecond. You cannot kill time, and you cannot exist on both sides of the reflex. Yet, to bridge the gap is to eliminate instinct and output in their purest forms.

“This record is a portrait of a person navigating the mechanics of two distinct machines. The first—the brain. The second—the Tascam 388. Eight tracks and a quarter-inch path to maneuver to the summation. The songs simmer from rare to well done. No matter the cut, the meat is fresh and still vibrating with life. “Fast, slow, wonky and straight. There are moments of everything in these grooves. At times it feels like it could come apart at the seams, but it doesn’t. It grabs the thread, bites the end, pulls it tight and continues the experiment. It’s rock ’n’ roll, and that’s all. The greener grass is browning on the other side. The drought is here to stay. The only way out of this mess is to put your head down and do the right thing. Keep moving, keep trying, keep creating, and project any positivity possible. Of course it is much easier to succumb to the wolf. Just forget about it, and pretend it is out of your control. Thankfully the wolf let down his guard. Having found refuge in a blanket of heartache and a bottle of wine, he took a cat nap in a manger of confusion.”

TRACK LISTING

1. You Can't Kill Time
2. Brain Of Clay
3. Lunar Heroine
4. Street Car History
5. Glass Eye
6. Slack
7. Habit Creeps
8. Clearly Confusion
9. Purple Spine
10. The Wolf Behind My Eyes
11. Still Life Of Citrus And Slime

GØGGS is the brainchild of Chris Shaw (Ex-Cult) and Ty Segall. In the planning stages for a long time, the band finally came together in 2015 in Segall’s Los Angeles studio to record an album, which will be released next year.

Other participants in the project include Cory Hanson (Wand), Charles Moothart (Fuzz) and Mikal Cronin. This single features an original from the album on the A-side and an Iggy Pop cover on the B-side that’s exclusive to the 7-inch.

TRACK LISTING

1. She Got Harder
2. Billy Is A Runaway

The husband-and-wife songwriting talents of Jeffrey Clarke (Demon’s Claws, Hellshovel) and Emily Frances give one the feeling that Milk Lines have been commissioned by time itself to build a dream-like bridge, so that reality might have the chance at a glimpse… Their wide range of influences and unique brand of music are organic, primitive yet thoughtful. The lo-fi, trippy and sometimes country-laced tunes display a fresh and original sound. After having played a few select events in the Montreal- Toronto area, Milk Lines were noticed by Toronto’s Fucked Up and asked to record their first and only release to date, the Crystal Crown single. The band has since been tapped by The King Khan & BBQ Show to support them on two of their US tours. In The Red is now proud to announce the release of the band’s debut full-length, 'Ceramic'.

TRACK LISTING

1. Planes Of Neptune
2. Pellucidar
3. Golden Torpedo
4. Lucille
5. Suicide Note
6. Purgatory
7. Crib Death
8. Can I Stand In Your Sun
9. Came From Her
10. Crystal Crown
11. Another Breed
12. Planes Of Neptune

Fuzz has abandonment issues. Abandoning expectation. Abandoning reservation, consummation, resignation and trite dictation. Instinct is all there is when it comes to the divination of harsh salvation. Segall, Moothart and Ubovich are exploring all the blank-ations of what will be, or has always been, 'Fuzz II'.

Tried and true methods mixed with tongue-twisting, teeth-shattering, seizure-inducing stabs at the norm. Who knows… maybe that’s wrong. Maybe it’s all done. Played out. Maybe it’s not for want of new but for lack of old. But probably not. Bathe in the heat wave that is Fuzz, and regret nothing in the time freeze. Necessity is the mother of creation; and devolution stakes its claim in the past as it continues to bind itself to the future. San Francisco, Los Angeles, heaven, hell, lunar fields, subterranean hallucinations, traffic jams, sleepless days, hazy nights, recollection or blind reflection. It is all there and so should be you. 2015 and 2016 will bring a new surge of slime, fuzz and otherwise bittersweet concoctions of earthly lettering. It will be heavy, chaotically controlled, softly serpentine and blindingly barbaric. To translate the auditory from ethereal to saliva- soaked semantics is to shatter a promise as it’s made. In the meantime, Ty, Charles and Chad walk on. It is what it is. Just like everything else. And if you don’t know, now you know. This message brought to you by In The Red Educational Services… as it was before and is it will be again.

TRACK LISTING

1. Time Collapse / The 7th Terror
2. Rat Race
3. Let It Live
4. Pollinate
5. Bringer Of Light
6. Pipe
7. Say Hello
8. Burning Wreath
9. Red Flag
10. Jack The Maggot
11. New Flesh
12. Sleestak
13. Silent Sits The Dustbowl
14. II

It’s been a long time since the world heard from Dan Melchior’s Broke Revue. Their last album, O Clouds Unfold!, was recorded in 2004 and was posthumously released in 2009. During their five year existence, the band’s sound evolved from raw, blues-based rock ’n’ roll to a more experimental / post-punk style. Since the band disbanded, Melchior has carried on with a solo career that has been prolific, to say the very least. The volume of singles, albums and cassettes that he’s churned out over the past decade has been staggering.

Now, after a ten-year hiatus, Melchior has reassembled the Broke Revue and (in record time) recorded a new album. Lords of the Manor takes a very different turn from the band’s last album. O Clouds Unfold! was an voluminous showcase of Melchior’s infectious and melodic songwriting, with layers of extra instrumentation spanning 23 songs. Lords of the Manor is an entirely different beast; song structure and instrumentation are stripped to the bare bones, melody is ditched in favor of repetition, Dan’s usual lyrical style is jettisoned for a far more minimal approach and the band’s previous penchant for tightly-crafted two-to-three-minute rock songs has given way to long, sprawling improvisations. The result is dark, relentless and incredible.

TRACK LISTING

1. Outskirts
2. I Don't Know
3. The Defeat Of JC
4. Monkey
5. Jaki
6. Lord Of The Manor
7. Rain

“Take it from me, orbitin’ the Earth over ’n’ over ain’t all it’s cracked up to be. When I was asked to hop on board a Soyuz headed to the International Space Station (Assignment: Critical Observation), I reckoned this’d be the trip of a lifetime. Space, the final frontier. And how ’bout that view? But now I feel like I’ve been here that long—a lifetime, that is. You know, the food ain’t much to speak of, plus I gotta constantly make sure I don’t make no crumbs, else they might fuck up our air breathin’ filters. Crumbs! The things one learns. Drinkin’ ain’t no fun neither, ’less you get your jollies sippin’ daquiris from a straw out a plastic bag, like some swishy, doe-eyed Deadhead. And don’t even get me started on hygiene issues! I believe I could take a life for a proper bubble bath right about now (I miss my ducky, too). Which is all just a lumberin’ yet apropos segue to the matter at hand: this debut LP by Watery Love.

“Now, any right-minded corncob south of the Van Allen Belt knows them three precedin’ 7-inches via Richie, Siltbreeze and Negative Guestlist smacked kernels hard, and that smolderin’ ferocity has naturally been carried over here. The glow ’n’ throb what’s got got is as much the byproduct of the eternal bioluminescence of Iron Cross or Third World War as an appreciation for the corroded, fractoluminescence exuded once upon a time by Chain Gang, Slow Death EP-era Leather Nun ’n’ The Gordons. Sure, their environment might seem cold and uncarin’—even downright sociopathic— but behind that facade of David Goodis-like grimness are four sodbusters chompin’ to have a good time. When singer Richie Charles hollers “I’m a skull!” who among the masses would not rush headlong to get a lick off thatboney pate? It ain’t about Rofinol, people, it’s about the roof, and how far can Watery Love raise the fucker. Unlike you dickheads, I’m sittin’ pretty in the catbird seat (what part of me bein’ out to space did you miss?) so let me say, keep it comin’! Higher ’n’ higher, nose to the grindstone and all that. Don’t worry, I’ll stop ya when ya get here. And one more thing—don’t forget to bring a six pack. We’ll need it.” — Roland Seward Woodbe International Space Station, Outer Space Call Sign: Alphar

TRACK LISTING

1. Dose The Host
2. Pump The Bimbo
3. Competing Odors
4. Skulls In Zen
5. Only Love
6. I'm A Skull
7. Empty Walls
8. Piece Of Piss
9. Face The Door

Eastlink is a section of freeway in the suburbs of Melbourne, Australia. Eastlink is also a band from Melbourne that delivers a blown-out, three-guitar assault, equal parts riff-fueled rock and noise-fucked psych. If it matters (and you know it does!), Eastlink features members of such notable Australian flag-bearers as Total Control, UV Race, Repairs, Lakes, Straightjacket Nation, Interzone, Teargas, etc. Really, they are just a f’n great band. Watch for their debut album in 2014 on In The Red!

After two incredible 7-inch singles released on the band’s own excellent Jack Shack Records, Brooklyn’s Pampers are proud to announce their debut full-length on In The Red. Pampers are a four-piece—two guitars, bass and drums, plus echo-laden vocals—and there’s a postmodern art-punk angle afoot here, yet the band’s relentless, breakneck tempos and all-out aggression tilt more punk than art. Self-described as “thug pop,” the band’s sound is a brutal, psyched-out pummeling with hooks fighting to be heard beneath the din. It’s certainly more thug than pop. Produced by Ben Greenberg of The Men, Pampers’ twelve tracks explode with opener “Eruptions” and don’t let up until “Head Bag” fizzles out in a whirl of guitar noise and equipment buzz. Everything in between is a cavernous whomp of mongoloid vox, primitive drumming and a cloud of warped sonics swirling above the rock ’n’ roll thud.

“I only caught the last song of Pampers’ set and mainly remember them being very, very loud.” —Brooklyn Vegan “They’re awesome and you all are missing out by not seeing them perform. Seriously, they’re great.” - Impose.

TRACK LISTING

1. Eruptions
2. Not
3. T.H.T.F.
4. Edge Of Knife
5. Monkey Drip
6. Sack Attack
7. The Wigga
8. Purple Brain
9. Shot
10. Night Brunch
11. Rat Hole
12. Head Bag

TV Ghost’s third full-length for In The Red, Disconnect is a journey to the center of dreams. The Lafayette, Indiana, band displays a newfound maturity, incorporating churning rhythms and psychedelic drone into a lush torrent of gaseous keys, sprawling guitars and eerie melody. Think Porcupine-era Echo and the Bunnymen and Tago Mago-era Can run through a Cure Pornography blender.

“TV Ghost’s 2009 debut LP, Cold Fish, is a maelstrom—10 hectic songs ripped out in 25 minutes. Stuffed to the seams with wiry guitars, trembling keyboards, crashing beats, and Tim Gick’s mad-man warble, it has the creepy tension of a post-punk haunted house where the Cramps, the Scientists, or Pere Ubu might leap out from the shadows at any moment. The band deftly balances precision and abandon—every moment sounds lunatic and unhinged, yet no track collapses into complete anarchy. “That abandon has subsided a bit on Mass Dream, which doubles the length of its predecessor despite having only one more track. That’s by design—Gick says that his intent was to “space things out more, let the songs breathe.” And while I miss Cold Fish’s farther-flung moments, the band has countered that loss with songs that are deeper and more open. Now, along with all the post-punk echoes rattling around, unexpected reference points pop up. At times I hear the enervated drama of Echo & the Bunnymen’s Ian McCulloch, or the stridency of Ian Svenonius during his Nation of Ulysses days. And TV Ghost prove as adept at stark dread as they are at fevered bedlam....” —Pitchfork.

TRACK LISTING

1. Five Colors Blind
2. Veils
3. Placid Deep
4. Stranger
5. Dread Park
6. Elevator
7. A Maze Of Death
8. Cloud Blue Moments
9. Others Will Be Born
10. Siren

From the bands he was wrapped up in early in his teenage years, such as The Muggles, Defilers, Real Cool Killers, and the formidable Guilty Pleasures, to his ascent to mainstream recognition with The Ponys, it’s clear that Jered Gummere is known as one of the most important songwriters of our generation. His influence on pop music over the first half of this century is undeniable, impacting most notably Jay Reatard, and much of the current Brooklyn sound, right up to all the modern bands that still try to capture that elusive something The Ponys delivered on a nightly basis. Ahead of their time undoubtedly, and with that same pioneering spirit fully intact, Gummere’s newest assemblage, Bare Mutants, coalesces all of the most pivotal nuances of his repertoire into a perfectly minimal, mid-tempo snapshot of this morosely powerful tone.

Adding in essential Chicago nutrients such as Seth Bohn from Mannequin Men on bass and Jeanine O’Toole from The 1900s on backups and tambourine, along with multi-talented friends Matt Holland on drums and Leslie Deckard on organ, Bare Mutants have come together as a tightly-wound, tense-yettranquil wall of sound that surges and ebbs within the raw emotion and gut-wrenching intensity of a band that’s on its way somewhere big. None of the heart-crushing tracks on this debut album are going to quicken anyone’s pulse, yet the solemn seduction that awaits within these celestial grooves is immeasurable in its trance-inducing tension. —Todd Novak, Victim of Time / HoZac Records.

TRACK LISTING

1. Without You
2. The Fire In Your Hands
3. I Suck At Life
4. Crying With Bob
5. Inside My Head
6. Nothing Is Gold
7. Devotion
8. Cunt
9. Growing
10. Treason #2
11. Scars

In The Red is proud to announce the re-release of the selftitled album by The Traditional Fools, a garage-punkthrash-surf trio consisting of Ty Segall, Andrew Luttrell and David Fox. They recorded and released their lone fulllength back in 2008—it sold out quickly and has never been re-pressed until now. Recorded live in the studio, The Traditional Fools is low on fidelity and high in energy. The band’s sound is a perfect combination of ’60s garage, vintage surf reverb and early LA punk performed with trashy, reckless abandon. Covers by Redd Kross and Thee Headcoats give an idea where these guys were coming from, and songs about bikini babes and shredsticks tell where they were at. Grab a bike, tank top, sunglasses and every beer you can find, and enjoy surf-punk done right.

• Reissue of sole album from surf-garagepunk band featuring Ty Segall
• First time on CD; vinyl includes digital download coupon

It’s morning in Detroit: Organic cafes are sprouting up where liquor stores once dominated the landscape, cycle lanes now line even the most impassable roadways, and an army of aimless (white) youth, the shock troops of gentrification, are living out their wild west fantasies in maximum comfort and self-satisfaction. The names of their wifi networks tell the story: “homesteader,” “eastside settler,” “landgrabba.” They come for a reason: a cheap practice space in other people’s misery.

True to their contrarian instincts, Tyvek won’t give any quarter to the well heeled (and no doubt well intentioned) drum circle that has invaded their hometown, but they also can’t help but feel a certain optimism. Their third album, On Triple Beams, picks up where the blistering proto-hardcore of the Nothing Fits record leaves off, but doesn’t tarry long in familiar zones. The melodies open up into a much more spacious musical headspace, channeling unexpected positivity on tracks like “Wayne County Roads,” “Say Yeah” and “Returns.” Produced by Fred Thomas, On Triple Beams is hard and direct but it doesn’t pummel. Likewise, the lyrics ain’t pedantic. Searing punk rock is still the order of the day, and the tunes are just bangin’. And in case there’s any doubt: these are tunes in a major way—the songwriting chops are on this album are completely out of place in the 2012 bumper crop of plastic platters.

Welcome to the strange path that Tyvek has trod for the past eight years: for every step forward, they take two steps to the side for good measure. This trip won’t be spoiled by the crass opportunism of the Nu-Detroiters: they have to keep it real. Sometimes the new jacks just gotta get put in check, and obviously Mommy and Daddy weren’t ever going to do it. In the midst of so much change, Tyvek is energized by the chaos of a city in flux, the crucial moments that make up everyday life, and the unfiltered reality of sensory experiences. Hear the sound and jump all around.

Originally released in 2005, the third album from Atlanta's enfants terrible finds the band at their trashy best. Somewhat more melodic but every bits as psychotic than their previous releases. To quote Mick Collins, "the Black Lips are the only garage band that matters". This baby is a masterpiece.

Taking their name from the phenomenon of analog television frequency disturbances, Lafayette, Indiana’s "TV Ghost" conjures an especially sludgy and punishing brand of art-punk. They began making a name for themselves in 2007, when their first 7-inch, "Atomic Rain", was released by Die Stasi Records, also home to the noisy likes of Pink Reason and Zola Jesus. TV Ghost's sinister sound - which echoes the Scientists, Suicide and The Cramps’ ’70s output - and frantic live show won them an underground following; a 12-inch EP on Die Stasi, a single on Columbus Discount Records and their debut album, "Cold Fish", followed in 2009 with several rounds of touring the US in support. The band’s trek across Europe in 2010 left a trail of busted gear, annoyed booking agents and new fans behind them.

TV Ghost’s sophomore full-length was recorded by Greg Ashley (Gris Gris), and "Mass Dream" is by far their clearest and most coherent release to date. While sacrificing none of the band’s scuzz-punk dementia, this album is far less dense and impenetrable than its predecessor; Ghost frontman Tim Gick’s lyrics are clearer and his complex song structure a bit easier to get a handle on. That said, this is still blood-boiling, spastic and down right evil music by anyone’s standards. Live, there are few who can match them. Their sets are explosive, destructive and out of control. Gick howls as if his bowels are being extracted through his gluteus, while his eyes roll back in his head and the rest of the band pummels away in noisy ecstasy. Every show they play is psychotic and chaotic perfection. "Mass Dream" is the first time it’s been captured on wax to perfection.

TRACK LISTING

1. Wired Trap
2. Sleep Composite
3. The Winding Stair
4. Cancor
5. An Absurd Laceration
6. The Inheritors
7. Doppleganger
8. Subterfuge
9. The Degradation Of Film
10. Tropes
11. Mass Dream

Nearly ten years after their critically-acclaimed album "Ultraglide In Black" helped kick-start a renewed interest in all things Detroit and rock ’n’ roll, The Dirtbombs release the de facto companion piece entitled "Party Store". Where Ultraglide was a covers collection of ’60s and ’70s soul gems centered on the ideas of African-American identity and politics of the era that made an impression on a young, pre-musical Mick Collins as he listened to them on 45s in the family basement, "Party Store" is an assortment of live-band interpretations of classic Detroit techno music of the ’80s and early ’90s - songs Collins digested as they were originally released, when he was already making waves with garage-punk legends The Gories.

The subject matter runs the gamut from materialistic future-disco braggadocio (“Sharevari,” originally by A Number of Names) to cold, post-industrial isolation (“Alleys of Your Mind,” originally by Cybotron) through the instrumental optimism of a worldwide house classic (“Strings of Life,” originally by Derrick May). All these themes encapsulate the climate of Detroit both now and at the time of their initial release. Let it be said clearly: this record addresses both the past and the future of Detroit. The players’ recreation of the sequenced, digital rhythms and melodies stems from an Oblique Strategies card pulled during the recordings: 'Humanize something that is without error'. They do so with a crisp, krautrock-like precision on originals that all featured drum machines, sequencers and synthesizers. The two clear standout tracks are “Good Life” and “Bug in the Bass Bin.” Collins recontextualizes the upbeat modern dance élan of the former, originally by Kevin Saunderson via his Inner City outfit, to echo with post-punk zeal as the zest of doubled harmonies resonates throughout. “Bass Bin” (originally by Carl Craig as Innerzone Orchestra) features modular synthesizer programming by Craig himself and is the album’s pièce de résistance. Clocking in at more than 21 minutes, the track’s original light jazz underpinnings are diffused into a martial, militaristic backbeat coupled with fire-raining feedback screes from Collins’s trusty Kent guitar.

As Detroit continues its seemingly irreversible slide into the tar pits of economic despair, new traditionalists Tyvek unashamedly take the reins and harness the ambition to keep their slurred, manically refreshing noise pop bouncing around the skulls of everyone still breathing in the real, uncategorizable fumes of the original new wave. With an already impressive trail of essential releases behind them, including last year’s debut album and an infinitesimal stream of 'tour only' CDRs, the band is always evolving, yet never strays too far from the original cacophony that earned them a spot in the hallowed halls of modern punk’s elite erratics. As dynamically diverse as Tyvek’s recordings are, their live set also shifts dramatically with each new appearance, ranging from a monstrous five-piece to the currently stripped-down trio that gets the job done without sacrificing intensity or brazen brevity. With relentless touring, razor-sharp songwriting and the ability to adapt to their surroundings without resistance, no wonder Tyvek captures the off-center sounds of bygone-era DIY scrapings and spins them into gold, all without showing any influence of the 'Detroit sound' that’s known the world over.

Tyvek’s In The Red debut, "Nothing Fits", is a scalding collection of amped-up and thrust-out songs that cranks up the energy level far beyond their previous releases and decimates the detractors into the abyss. It’s Tyvek at their fiery, screaming best, and if this doesn’t curl your eyebrows and your toes simultaneously with excitement, then you might need to settle for something musically akin to hospital food or take another laxative, because this blast of new recordings might just flush out your system to the point of personal emergency.

STAFF COMMENTS

Darryl says: Superb dumb-ass garage punk, fiery and amped-up into the red.

TRACK LISTING

1. 4312
2. Animal
3. Potato
4. Future Junk
5. Nothing Fits
6. Outer Limits
7. Underwater 1
8. Underwater 2
9. Kid Tut
10. Pricks In A Car
11. This One Or That One
12. Blocks

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

This 7-inch single features two brand new songs from Mark Sultan (a.k.a. BBQ) certain to please any fan of his brand of authentic rock'n'roll. Drawing liberally from R&B, doowop, psychedelia, punk, and soul, and this single is furtherproof that the man is one of the finest singers and songwriters around. Sultan is currently on tour supporting the grotesquely popular new King Kahn & BBQ Show album, but watch for his new solo LP on In The Red in 2010.

There are actually three Christmas Islands: one off the coast of Australia, one in the Pacific Ocean (which also goes by the name Kiritimati), and one whose incredible self-titled debut album is on In The Red. Hailing from sunny San Diego, California, Christmas Island plays music that on the surface is happy and poppy. There is a dark undercurrent to their brand of lo-fi pop punk - it is joyous and almost twee while secretly depressed and deeply disturbed. Citing Tronics, Urinals, Television Personalities, The Clean, Versatile Newts, and The Fall as influences, Christmas Island is Beach Boys-style, sunny Southern Californian pop by way of the late 70s / early 80s UK DIY scene.

"Double Negative" is the latest full-length in the Black Time canon. Fans of the band's previous output will not be disappointed, especially if they want to hear the fractured, art-damaged scree of their singles forged with the trebly garage punk of their two albums. The trio of Lemmy Caution, Janie Too Bad, and Mr. Stix out do themselves here and turn in the most fully realized Black Time release to date. If you've been aching for Messthetics and Back From The Grave compilations, then look no further. "Double Negative" is the absinthe you've been wanting to drink. Known for their propensity for all things black, Black Time carries their theme of bleak darkness to the nth degree.

Henderson, Tennessee's Jeffrey Novak is a name familiar to those who pay attention to the whole lo-fi-garage punk underbelly of today's indie scene. He's released a handful of singles and at least one album on labels in the US and Europe as a one-man-band and with his former group, The Rat Traps. He's been at it for nearly five years and he's barely in his twenties. Cheap Time is his newest and most serious endeavour to date. Founded with Jemina Pearl and Nathan Vasquez of Be Your Own Pet, Cheap Time set out to recapture the essence of teenage schlock rock scuzz of such heroes as Redd Kross and The Runaways. Cheap Time's self-titled debut is 28 minutes of snotty punk pop perfection. From the New York Dolls via-Germs screech of "Tight Fit" to the anglophile power pop of "Ginger Snap" to the bubblegum bounce of "Trip To The Zoo", this debut has instant classic stamped all over its bratty face.

If musicians painted images with their instruments, The Intelligence's soundscapes would be set in a grainy, ash-gray world, among piles of scrap metal and busted machinery, with discarded computer parts blinking in cobwebbed corners and factories belching out toxins at irregular intervals. It'd be a black-and-white wasteland of humanity, a post-apocalyptic industrial revolution, warmed only by the distant loops of a delayed, disembodied guitar riff. At the center of it all would be Lars Finberg, delivering deadpan lines like 'Going out with you is like going out with a cop'. He'd be pounding bent garbage-can lids with one hand and programming distorted beats on his keyboard with the other, a one-man laboratory of intoxicating post-punk experimentation. The music is so jagged and cinematically poetic and dusted in clouds of lo-fi noise that listening to it at different times can conjure completely different visions. It's par for the course for Finberg, who has participated in some of Seattle's most exciting musical forces such as the A-Frames and The Dipers. The Intelligence are demanding attention in and beyond the Northwest, creating a new direction in sound based on the fundamental elements of bands like The Fall and PiL, yet beneath the post-punk clang lies a serious pop sensibility.

Third full length from Toronto's Deadly Snakes, their second for the garage rock stronghold In The Red records. It's their finest moment to date, this six-piece dig deep into the Rolling Stones, Van Morrison, the Band, electric Bob Dylan, and the entire canon of early soul music, also earning the reputation in the USA as a one of the most soul-shaking live acts!! These guys have the Memphis soul gone punk rock sound nailed!!

Loud aggressive debut from this band from Portland, Oregon. Typical of an In The Red release, this is classic rock'n'roll with all the influences you'd expect - Stooges, Stones, Cramps, Beefheart, New York Dolls and 60s / 70s punk.

Features garage legend Mick Collins, and sounds like a raw and moody Stooges groove, excellent stuff.