Eleven songs by J. Robbins (Jawbox, Burning Airlines).

J. Robbins on Basilisk:
2020 gave us the pandemic, which despite all its awfulness also gave me a lot of opportunities to write and demo music - but everyone was terrified to get into the same room together to play. Finally, around February of 2021, I called up Brooks Harlan and Darren Zentek and asked if they would be down to meet me at the studio and do a 2-day session and see how it turns out. Brooks and Darren were into the idea - we were all in full cabin fever mode at that point and dying to do anything - so I sent them the demos and we did it. The musical connection had always already been there, but the energy that came from all being in the same room doing this together - something we had just spent a year wondering if we’d ever get to do again - was wonderful. It felt like having been lost in the desert, and then finding an oasis. I’ve never been so happy with a session - both the results and the experience, and the outcome was exactly what I had wanted: something more stripped down and very immediate.

We were all fired up and we did a second session in March 2022. In the interim I enlisted some collaborators:Gordon Withers to add cello and second guitar to a few songs, Janet Morgan and her two sisters to sing some harmonies, Dave Hadley to play pedal steel on “Not The End,” and Chicago punk legend John Haggerty to add an actual blazing guitar solo to the song "Exquisite Corpse." And I went on working on vocals and overdubs at home. The lyrics were (as always) somewhat therapeutical: “Automaticity” came out of thoughts on aging and remaining present in a world increasingly going on auto-pilot; “Last War” and “Dead Eyed God” work out fears prompted by January 6th and the rise of neo-fascism. More personal matters were trying to work themselves out as well. Recurring childhood dreams ("Deception Island"), surrealist games ("Exquisite Corpse"), and trephination guru Amanda Feilding ("Open Mind") were also in the mix.

Another result of pandemic isolation was that I had also been working on more abstract, electronic based music(inspired by my love of film soundtracks, Peter Gabriel’s music, and by studio work I had done not long ago with the band Locrian), using granular synthesis, sampling, and software synths. So as Basilisk came together, I wanted to see if I could pull those sounds into the flow of the record, open up its vocabulary a little and still make something cohesive. Connection has always been the whole point of music making for me. There are so many ways to come at it, and i don't want to close any of those doors. Going forward, I only want to open more of them.

TRACK LISTING

1. Automaticity
2. Exquisite Corpse
3. Last War
4. Gasoline Rainbows
5. Not The End
6. Old Soul
7. A Ray Of Sunlight
8. Deception Island
9. Sonder
10. Open Mind
11. Dead Eyed God

Following a spur-of-the-moment cross-country trip with a pair of fiery European girls, Vikesh Kapoor left school for a brief yet inspiring stint as a mason’s apprentice. The America he had previously known resided narrowly between his childhood home in rural Pennsylvania and the New England university he left home for. Alongside his parents’ own immigrant struggles, these experiences quickly witnessed Kapoor to the scope of the American dream.

A few years later, Kapoor performed at Howard Zinn’s memorial service in Boston, in front of Zinn’s family and colleagues (including Noam Chomsky). Roused by Zinn’s lifelong battle against class/race injustice, Kapoor spent the next two years in Portland, Oregon working on his full-length debut record. The Ballad Of Willy Robbins, a concept album loosely based on a newspaper article, chronicles the brutal but hopeful story of a working class man who slowly loses everything: ambitions, health, family and shelter. It’s a worker’s tale, less specific to the blue-collar life as it is about anyone struggling to make something of themselves.

Co-produced by Adam Selzer (M. Ward) and features Nate Query (Decemberists, Black Prairie), Jeff Ratner (Langhorne Slim) and Birger Olsen (Denver).

THE NEW YORKER: “a series of sharply etched portraits of struggling Americans that points back along a road of socially conscious songs. Woody Guthrie is standing at the head of that road”

Tim Robbins, Oscar winning actor, director and writer, releases his debut album.

Produced by the legendary Hal Willner, the album features a host of world class musicians, including Kate St John, Leo Abrahams, Roger Eno and Rory McFarlane, amongst others.

TRACK LISTING

1. Book Of Josie
2. You’re My Dare
3. Dreams
4. Time To Kill
5. Toledo Girl
6. Queen Of Dreams
7. Crush On You
8. Moment In The Sun
9. Lightning Calls

It is now three years since Dell’Orso heard rough mixes of these album tracks when Wayne Robbins & The Hellsayers visited the U.K to tour with their friends, Band Of Horses. At that point The Hellsayers were over from their home town Asheville, North Carolina to promote their debut album "The Lonesome Sea", a country-cosmic rock jewel Dell’Orso discovered via a Beachwood Sparks fan site.

Picking up from where their debut left off, Wayne describes "All You Need" as 'the night album, about the wee small hours'. Far heavier than its predecessor, the album has already been described as 'an atmospheric blend of Buffalo Springfield harmonies and Sonic Youth guitar blasts', lap steel guitar jostling with piles of Yo La Tengo distortion.

Like "The Lonesome Sea" this album was recorded in a school bus repair shop (though bizarrely not the same one) with no heating in the dead of winter. The albums gestation was hampered by the familiar tale of lack of resources, but also a terrier determination to mix such a dense record littered with dozens of vocal tracks and guitar overdubs perfectly.

Eventually the band mixed the album with Mitch Easter particularly known for his work on early REM records, with the exception of the crestfallen "Rowboat Of Stone" which Cian Ciaran from Super Furry Animals has put his magic to (Cian having recently mixed albums by Sibrydion and El Goodo for Dell’Orso).

Appropriately since this album was finished The Hellsayers have recently recorded an EP with Brent Rademaker from Beachwood Sparks which will appear later in the year.

'Genuinely inspired merging of pre-electric and post psychedelic Americana. Neil Young and Giant Sand provide pointers, but Wayne & co chart a spry, original course' - Uncut Magazine.

STAFF COMMENTS

Darryl says: Sweet and summery indie-Americana infused with occasional Sonic Youth-esque distortion blasts. Recommended.

TRACK LISTING

1. C#7
2. I Saw An Angel
3. All Roads Lead To Helen
4. The Island Of Malta
5. The Devil Has A Map
6. Rowboat Of Stone
7. The Lonesome