RIYL: Ra Ra Riot, Thao, Regina Spektor, Andrew Bird, Typhoon.

"Omoiyari" means to have empathy and consideration for others, and act on it. This fall, the American indie-folk multi-instrumentalist and singer-songwriter Kishi Bashi is set to release the companion album to his forthcoming documentary song film, titled Music from the Song Film: Omoiyari. Consisting of two LPs "The Songs" and "The Score" the release showcases what is essentially the soundtrack to Omoiyari, the feature-length motion picture co-directed by Kishi Bashi, aka Kaoru Ishibashi or "K," which is being released via MTV Documentary Films in November.

Focusing on K's own six-year journey of discovery surrounding his research of the incarceration of 120,000 Japanese Americans that followed the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the film is part social justice documentary and part song-film experiment. The album includes K's live improvisations, which are featured in the documentary, many recorded on the sites where the concentration camps stood. Written during and about the artist's transformational dive into his personal identity and serving as a broad survey of the Japanese American experience as well as the incarceration Music from the Song Film: Omoiyari serves as an evocative musical accompaniment to the lessons of empathy and compassion portrayed in the film and highlights the process and power of one of modern indie's most talented musicians. 

TRACK LISTING

Intro At The Piano
Red, White, And Blue
Improvisation At Heart Mountain
Summer Of ‘42 (orchestral Edition)
Improvisation In The Root Cellar
ļ

It’s been a decade since we last heard from Marnie Stern, but when her guitar bursts in like a shower of stardust on The Comeback Kid, the follow-up to 2013’s The Chronicles of Marnia, it’s like no time has passed.

But this is no nostalgia trip. The Comeback Kid is a statement of intent. “I can’t keep on moving backwards,” Stern repeats on anthemic opening track “Plain Speak,” her fingers furiously tapping the fretboard as the song joyfully zips forward like a rocket hitting warp speed. Stern continually pushes herself outside of her comfort zone throughout The Comeback Kid, including not leaning on the tapping technique that launched a thousand Eddie Van Halen comparisons. “Til It’s Over” is as straight-ahead an “alternative rock” song as Stern has ever made and there’s a cover of Ennio Morricone’s “Il Girotondo Della Note.”

“It was so great to be able to start being myself again and when I would think, ‘Oh, is that too, too weird?’ I'd remember I'm allowed to do whatever I want! This is mine. It's me,” says Stern of writing songs for The Comeback Kid. “I'm trying to go against the grain of this bullshit that when you get older, you lose your sense of taste. I want to empower people to not be so homogenous and go against the grain a little bit.”

Taking joy in your individuality is the message of The Comeback Kid, as is the realization that making music which truly reflects who you are in all your brightness and your weirdness is quite possibly the key to happiness. “This record is about reassuring yourself that happiness is not about what kind of things you have or how many things you have or what you don’t have—it’s about all the good things you do,” says Stern.

TRACK LISTING

Plain Speak (3:14)
Believing Is Seeing (1:58)
The Natural (2:48)
Oh Are They (2:16)
Forward (1:52)
Working Memory (3:09)
Il Girotondo Della Note (1:18)
Til It's Over (2:32)
Nested (1:57)
Earth Eater (3:18)
Get It Good (1:46)
One And The Same (2:20)

Available on vinyl for the first time in over 15 years! The Runners Four is Deerhoof’s double-LP concept album about friends banding together as honorable outlaws in a corrupt world, deciding what to save in an apocalypse, passing secret messages of warning and hope from a remade future back to a soon-to-be-destroyed present. Abundant with lyrical allusions to the flood, where cargo hold claustrophobia inside meets a watery chaos outside, it was written and self-produced by Satomi Matsuzaki, John Dieterich, Chris Cohen and Greg Saunier while they holed up in a rented Oakland rehearsal room for the winter months 2004-5. On pink and blue vinyl.

TRACK LISTING

LP 1:
Side A
1. Chatterboxes
2. Twin Killers
3. Running Thoughts
4. Vivid Cheek Love Song
5. O'Malley, Former Underdog
6. Odyssey
Side B
1. Wrong Time Capsule
2. Spirit Ditties Of No Tone
3. Scream Team
4. You Can See
LP 2:
Side A
1. Midnight Bicycle Mystery
2. After Me The Deluge
3. Siriustar
4. Lemon & Little Lemon
5. Lightning Rod, Run
Side B
1. Bone-Dry
2. News From A Bird
3. Spy On You
4. You're Our Two
5. RRRRRRRight

RIYL: Sebadoh, Lou Barlow, Beat Happening, Silver Jews, Daniel Johnston, Guided By Voices, 13th Floor Elevators. The Folk Implosion"s fan favorite 1994 album back in print on LP for the first time in years.

They say there's always something special about the first time and this record is that first time for the Folk Implosion. The band left the acoustic guitars and fragmentary sketch modus operandi of their earlier cassette behind to focus on an eccentric version of home studio craft, held together by a few cheap microphones (including a Radio Shack PZM) and a Tascam cassette 4-track recorder sequestered under the eaves of a 3rd floor, Cambridge Massachusetts double-decker house apartment.

Wood floors and Christmas lights were as much a part of the vibe as an Ampeg VT 40 guitar amp and a small chord organ. The duo would wait until the downstairs neighbor went to work in the morning and then would play until the tunes snapped like a high-pitched snare drum. The setup would close down just before the neighbor came home from work, keeping the peace long enough to see the project through to completion.

Once tracked, the band snuck into Fort Apache studios with Tim O'Heir (producer of Sebadoh's 'Bakesale' LP) early one morning, freeloading off the Sebadoh sessions that were set to get going that afternoon. Tim mixed the songs through a very hi-fi Neve board in a matter of hours with the Tascam sitting right on the giant board like a tugboat keeping time with an oil tanker. The duo hoped that the spirits of ancestors like The Troggs, Devo, Al Green, and The Bee Gees would be pleased with the scent of tribute that arose from the ashes of the pyre. Today, they are pleased to see the Slaps and the Sputniks on view again nearly 30 years later.

TRACK LISTING

1. Blossom
2. Sputnik's Down
3. Slap Me
4. Chicken Squawk
5. Spiderweb-Butterfly
6. Had To Find Out
7. Better Than Allrite
8. Why Do They Hide
9. Winter's Day
10. Boyfriend, Girlfriend
11. Shake A Little Heaven
12. Waltzin' With Your Ego
13. Take A Look Inside 14. Start Again

Did you know that miracles happen every day? We don’t always see it that way. We look at the state of the world and think, “It’ll be a miracle if we make it out alive.” But miracles are what humans do. We’re Earth’s most inventive and unpredictable species, when we’re allowed to be. Also the most destructive. Miracle-Level is Deerhoof’s mystical manifesto on creativity and trust. It celebrates the infinite small wonders of existence that spontaneously present themselves, when not obstructed by our death-driven masters. Musically, Miracle-Level is vulnerable, brave, and brimming with spicy surprises. Deerhoof’s 19th album is also their their first to be recorded and mixed in a recording studio. Production was entrusted to Mike Bridavsky, at No Fun Club in Winnipeg, Manitoba. This is also their first album written entirely in Satomi’s native language. Deerhoof once again speak in a secret code that only their fans understand, in which hooks abound, and genre is nonexistent.

TRACK LISTING

1. Sit Down, Let Me Tell You A Story.
2. My Lovely Cat!
3. The Poignant Melody
4. Everybody, Marvel
5. Jet-Black Double-Shield
6. Miracle-Level
7. And The Moon Laughs
8. The Little Maker
9. Phase-Out All Remaining
10. Non-Miracles By 2028
11. Momentary Art Of Soul!
12. Wedding, March, Flower

Recommended If You Like: Godspeed.. , Explosions in the Sky, Sigur Rós, This Will Destroy You, Do Make Say Think, Mogwai, Lymbyc System, Tycho, Ratatat, Positive/uplifting instrumental loopage ‘n riffage.

Valley of Fire is El Ten Eleven's most thematically committed record, merging personal anecdotes with the larger ecosystem of the sound. While the album was inspired by organic beauty, its seven songs are still rife with El Ten Eleven's trademark technical flair. This is their 13th record, and it's clear El Ten Eleven have evolved with a cadence similar to the changes time has made to The Valley of Fire itself. The trials of age and experience have ushered in something altogether new. “El Ten Eleven is proof that live looping and programming can rock; and that instrumental tracks can captivate and hold a room’s attention as well as any vocal-led group.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: It's always a pleasure to hear an El Ten Eleven LP, I've been a big fan since the starting notes of 'My Only Swerving' from their 2004 debut and 'Valley Of Fire' is probably the closest in post-rock grandeur and melodic beauty to the early days of ETE. Stunner.

TRACK LISTING

1. New Year’s Day
2. Not Even Almost
3. Volsens
4. Two Views Of A Secret
5. White Domes
6. Days Of Our Lives
7. Valley Of Fire

A cinematic ocean of sound. Eerie Wanda's Marina Tadic draws you into her inner worlds on these 11 new songs produced by Kramer (Galaxie 500, Unrest, Ween, Daniel Johnston.) On Internal Radio, the new album by Eerie Wanda, visual artist and musician Marina Tadic welcomes you to her inner world. Guided by intuition, Tadic's songs use haunting, ethereal space, growing whole universes from the seeds of ideas. Internal Radio documents Tadic becoming the artist she wants to be, working through some things, and even exorcizing a few demons.

The result is the most realized Eerie Wanda album yet, building on the project's guitar pop past for a more experimental, other worldly, serious grown-up affair that ventures into sensitive, motional territory.

"Pet Town is delightfully airy; a set of songs that have drifted in on a breeze from some strange and foreign landscape you won't find on any map.” Gold Flake Paint.

“Tadic’s melody here is part of that Brian Wilson lineage … she sets those notes adrift with a casually graceful minimalism… It evokes a pleasant stroll through a city at the moment when night begins to fall on a daydream.” Stereogum.

TRACK LISTING

1. Sail To The Silver Sun
2. NOWx1000
3. Long Time
4. On Heaven
5. Confess
6. Nightwalk
7. Someone's In My House
8. Sister Take My Hand
9. Birds Aren't Real
10. Puzzled
11. Bon Voyage

Recommended If You Like: Floating Points, Stars of the Lid, SUUNS, FACS, Peaking Lights, Jerusalem In My Heart. Channeling his background in classical music, SUUNS’ Ben Shemie combines string fractals, manipulated vocals, and synth-powered chaos to bridge the universes of past, present, and future. Over the course of ten tracks, Shemie chronicles a wandering soul tangled in its own dark orbit, searching for meaning in a world of stardust and astral mirages.­ Breathing life into Shemie’s orchestral maneuvers was the Molinari String Quartet, one of Canada's most celebrated contemporary ensembles. Recording the album’s ten tracks in two single-takes, the urgency and dynamism of these compositions can be heard as much felt. The listener can sense the stuttering pulse of Shemie, flanked by five amplifiers and wading in electronic bedlam, as the Molinari Quartet switchbacks measures of strings and chimes.­ Sometimes, the only way to make sense of the world is to travel to its absolute end. While Shemie’s image of a faraway universe is equal parts inspiring and chaotic, he assures the listener everything and everyone is exactly as it should be.

TRACK LISTING

1 The Departure
2 The Eye
3 The Mirror
4 The Future Indefinite
5 The Tower (Part 1)
6 The Tower (Part 2)
7 The Passage
8 The Other Being
9 The Past Continuous
10 The Return

Recommended If You Like: Can, Tortoise, OOIOO, Sonic Youth, Ty Segall, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, Bitchin Bajas, The Cars, Liars.

Experimental psych-punk institution Onedia returns with Success, the band’s most guitar-centric, rocking album in decades. Long straddling the gray area between the NYC punk/psych/rock community and the art/experimental world, the music of Oneida is celebrated for its mix of abstract, atmo[1]spheric sounds and pulsing, hammering anthems. Success finds the band getting to the core of what makes minimal rock music

so good - songs pared back to beat and melody with a limited number of guitar chords. If a song or two gets ripped in half later by a corrosive guitar solo, well, what did you expect? This is Oneida.



“Oneida are the rare experimentalists who can hammer away at a riff or idea incessantly and somehow make it really last.” Pitchfork

TRACK LISTING

1. Beat Me To The Punch
2. Opportunities
3. Low Tide
4. I Wanna Hold Your Electric Hand
5. Paralyzed
6. Rotten
7. Solid

Featuring Squirrel Flower and Liam O’Neill (SUUNS). Recommended If You Like: Mount Eerie, Low, Richard Swift, the Weather Station, Lomelda, Fleet Foxes, Squirrel Flower, L’Rain. Cedric Noel is a songwriter, bassist, collaborator and producer currently based in Montréal, Québec. The newest longplayer from Tio'tiá:ke/Montreal staple Cedric Noel lands with a stunning sense of surety and self. Hang Time stands as a high water mark for a songwriter who's spent the past decade quietly expanding the borders of his music. Longtime fans will recognize the fluid elements of the album’s open-ended rock formations: reflective strumming, soaring choruses, searing guitar lines, subtle bass grooves; all occasionally dissolving into pools of pure ambience. New listeners will find surprises throughout: threads of folk pop, ambient and sound collage fasten the foundations of this expressive whole. However, what’s most striking on Hang Time is Noel’s newfound sense of voice, both literal and metaphorical.

Written primarily in 2017-18 during an intense period of self-reflection, this collection of songs finds Noel wrestling profoundly with his sense of identity, self and place. The album’s material was captured faithfully at The Pines, a beloved downtown Montreal studio whose doors shuttered shortly after amidst the strain of the pandemic. Noel worked closely and patiently with friend and engineer Steve Newton, ensuring the songs had the time and space needed to come fully to fruition. Hang Time features subtle rhythm work from drummer Liam O’Neill (SUUNS) and guest spots from Brigitte Naggar (Common Holly) and Tim Crabtree (Paper Beat Scissors) among others. The album opens in mid-air with ‘Comuu’, a song that implores a becoming-more while hovering triumphantly.

Then follows a suite of songs (‘Headspace’, ‘Keep’, ‘Stilling’) that recall the heart-rending power of y2k-era Low, albeit with a more vigorous beat. On ‘Bass Song’, an intimate duet with musician Ella Williams (Squirrel Flower) that explores the depths of interpersonal constriction. At the crux of the album sits ‘Born’, a deceptively pleasant-sounding song that explores the confounding emotionality of adoption before fading into a distended soundfield.

Throughout the back half of the album, Noel double’s down on this commitment to his genuine, proud, Black self. The most confrontational track, ‘Allies’ finds him refraining “Are you on my side?” as a trailing guitar solo interweaves a Malcolm X soundbite, eventually engulfing the composition. Glorious lead single ‘Nighttime (Skin)’ traces the artist’s sense of ancestral dissociation through to a triumphant moment of pride in self-acceptance. Throughout Hang Time, Noel finds a way to ask hard questions (both of the listener and himself) in ways that are compassionate, open and honest. The ebb and flow of tension and tenderness that moves within these tracks helps to grow the heart and redefine what Black music can be in 2021.

TRACK LISTING

1. Comuu
2. Headspace
3. Keep
4. Stilling
5. Bass Song
6. Born
7. Dove
8. A Hold On Losing
9. Okayokay
10. Allies
11. Nighttime (Skin)
12. Hang Time
13. Cozy

Recommended If You Like: Pedro The Lion, The Sea and Cake, David Bazan, Major Murphy, Kurt Vonnegut & Guided by Voices. For ten years now, I’ve understood “Oscillate Wisely” as a play on the Smiths’ instrumental “Oscillate Wildly”--itself, of course, a pun on Morrissey’s muse, Oscar Wilde. This is not to say that anything about Mike Adams and his band reminds me of the Smiths (especially­Morrissey), as much as the idea that rock bands like Mike Adams At His Honest Weight take shape more or less as a thesaurus of past ideas--winking at them, borrowing them like a library book, checking them out from across the room, cloning them.

But the best stuff is more ineffable, far more than just cut-and-paste. There’s a weird grandeur to Adams' music, starting with that fully formed, geekily majestic 2011 debut LP Oscillate Wisely, that I don’t hear in anything else, before or since. A sense that Adams is guiding his listeners toward a cosmic joke so personal, so inscrutable, so funny (“funny”), if you give him your attention. It's in his blood, I think. He's not Oscar Wilde, but a uniquely Midwestern type of deeply sincere romantic and dyed-in-the-wool goofball cast from the mold of Hoosier icons like Letterman and Vonnegut.

He doesn’t want to believe in anything, he didn’t create this body, he­loves­a parade.­ It’s all in fun, but it gets so personal. Onstage, Adams is gregarious and playfully self-effacing, a college town denizen telescoping backwards to the brief early 90s moment when “college rock” entered the corporate suite, and performers forced to become showmen retreated to the comfort of their native tongue: irony.­And­Oscillate Wisely­has demonstrated for a decade that earnestness and sarcasm are as intricately bound in rock and roll's­lingua franca­as hang-ups and chill hangs. I’ve never heard any musician summon everything I love about being from Indiana so perfectly. And I’m­fucking­old. Eric Harvey.

TRACK LISTING

1 Bad Weather
2 Skeletons In The Cloner
3 I Don’t Want To Believe In Anything
4 I’m Not Worried
5 Sunrise
6 Don’t You Blanket When That Happens
7 I Did Not Create This Body
8 IIIIIIIII Love A Parade
9 It’s All Been Done You Said
10 You’ll Have Me As Long… 

RIYL: Explosions in the Sky, This Will Destroy You, Do Make Say Think, Mogwai.

Defying expectations is standard operating procedure for El Ten Eleven. Seriously, who would expect two instrumentalists to create such a large and complex sound? But thanks to inventive arrangements and a masterful use of looping, Kristian Dunn (bass/guitar) and Tim Fogarty (drums) developed a pulsating sound full of atmospheric intensity. They’ve also crafted an incredibly durable career, and the duo credit the ongoing interest in their debut album as the foundation for that success. The music of El Ten Eleven has been embraced by fans of many genres - from math rock, to jazz, to lo-fi hip-hop. The duo's sound is sharply evocative in mood and feeling, yet simultaneously abstract and meditative.

The combination of these qualities has stimulated the imagination of the group's fans, and gives space for listeners to assign their own value and meaning to the sounds. "I'm aiming for emotional impact when I come up with songs," Dunn explained. "Does it move me? Does it make me feel something? Sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it's technically interesting but it doesn't make me feel anything. But I don't want music that's interesting. I want music that's emotionally resonate." 

TRACK LISTING

1. New Year’s Eve
2. Meta Metta
3. The Time Knife
4. Isn’t Everything Enough?
5. Sixteen Circles
6. A Reflection Of A Reflection

Over eighteen boundless albums as experimental as they are pop, Deerhoof has continuously quested for radical sounds and daring storytelling. 2020’s Future Teenage Cave Artists explored fairytale visions of post-apocalypse, welding intrinsic melodies with absurdist digital recording methods. Its sequel Love-Lore, a live covers medley, channeled futurist mid-century artists Parliament, Sun Ra and Stockhausen, to name a handful into a patchwork love letter to the anti-authoritarian expressions that inspire the band.

Galvanized by the challenge of unifying many styles of music, Deerhoof landed on their next record’s concept: baroque gone DIY. Actually, You Can is a genre-abundant record that uses technicolor vibrancy and arpeggiated muscularity to offer a vital shock from capitalism’s purgatorial hold. “In the United States now, to be a moral person means to be a criminal, whether it has to do with a general strike or forming a union or Black Lives Matter protests,” clarifies Saunier of the album’s countercultural embrace of liberation. “If you follow the rules, you’re guilty. That’s the spirit we were trying to express: an angelic prison bust, a glamorous prison bust.” It’s a condemnation of America’s mundanity, replacing violence with the heartfelt power of mutualism.

With state lines and oceans separating band members, Deerhoof not only reinvented their sonic and thematic credo, but also their recording process. Deerhoof’s players are not strangers to home-recording their individual parts, and have long embraced composing via file trading. But 2020’s halt to touring kicked off their longest separation from playing together, foregrounding new priorities. As the group’s combined demos became increasingly layered, bassist and vocalist Satomi Matsuzaki put her foot down, insisting the new album should replicate concert energy. Visualizing the quartet on huge stages with past tourmates Radiohead and Red Hot Chili Peppers, Saunier fugue-arranged his bandmates’ complex demos into songs to make an audience smile and dance. He sought out far-traveling delays, heavy playing, and unique panning to evoke the power of outdoor music. Matsuzaki scrutinized spots that would betray the conceit, eliminating anything that took away from the sound of onstage grandeur. “We spent so much time imagining playing together in the process of recording, it’s almost like a false memory of us playing this music together,” Saunier marvels.

For Deerhoof’s members to continually uncover new corners of their own talent requires deep wells of gratitude, not only for each others’ creativity but for the freedom their career affords. But by embracing each other’s art with curiosity, Deerhoof authors a musical alphabet that continues to astound and inspire, a unique lexicon expanding limitlessly with each album. For new listeners and decades-long devotees, Deerhoof’s electrifying, generous approach to collaborative worldbuilding on Actually, You Can is an emboldening call to support our communities with renewed strength, infinite love, and the resilience to keep exploring.

TRACK LISTING

1. Be Unbarred, O Ye Gates Of Hell
2. Department Of Corrections
3. We Grew, And We Are Astonished
4. Scarcity Is Manufactured
5. Ancient Mysteries, Described
6. Plant Thief
7. Our Philosophy Is Fiction
8. Epic Love Poem
9. Divine Comedy

Recommended If You Like: Tomberlin, The Cranberries, Barrie, Kacey Musgraves, Japanese Breakfast, The Weather Station, Slow Pulp, Lala Lala, Big Thief.

First full length since Almost (2018). Featuring Julien Baker.

After 2018’s critically acclaimed Almost opened The Ophelias to a world beyond their Cincinnati home, the indie rock quartet craved a return to a sense of community. The band members no longer lived in the same city bandleader Spender Peppet (she/her) and new bassist/longtime music video collaborator Jo Shaffer (they/them) live in New York, while drummer Mic Adams (he/him) and violinist Andrea Gutmann Fuentes (she/her) remain in Ohio. When it came time to record the candid, expansive Crocus, The Ophelias purposefully focused on the experimental, communal spirit that fueled their first record.

Crocus was recorded at night in a converted “2000 percent haunted” Masonic lodge, which surely had an effect on the album’s ability to weave darker tones through the taut song structures. Engineer John Hoffman kept spirits high at The Lodge KY, ensuring the Ophelias had the freedom to experiment in the grey area between pain and rebirth. Despite The Lodge’s eerie nature, the ghosts remain personal, finding Peppet facing herself and her own truth without blinking. Through songs equally infused with references to the Bible and The Twilight Zone, The Ophelias extract mystic emotion out of the spaces between their past, present, and future.

The four core Ophelias members provide a wide-reaching exploration into genre, emotion, and sonic textures over the course of Crocus. That expansiveness shines on album highlight “Neil Young on High,” a track that finds Peppet’s firefly vocals backed by harmonies from Julien Baker. On “Spitting Image” Gutmann Fuentes leans hard into country swing, showing her range as a violinist while a chorus of voices sing the taunting “ha ha ha” hook below her. Shaffer’s bass intertwines seamlessly with the drums on “Becoming a Nun,” which explodes into feedback and punk-inspired textures beyond what The Ophelias have previously created.

Peppet’s direct delivery of intimate lyrics draws you in - detailing the murky line between the things we mourn and the things we remember. “Crocus represents that state of flux, between dreaming and reality or internal reflection and external action. I had to wring this out of my chest,” and as a listener you immediately identify with her. The Ophelias’ growth has been marked -- so much has been transformed and rebuilt. Crocus is a safe haven, built with trust, love, and the assuredness that comes with growing up.

TRACK LISTING

1 Crocus
2 Sacrificial Lamb
3 Neil Young On High
4 Vapor
5 Spirit Sent
6 Biblical Names
7 Mastermind
8 Becoming A Nun
9 Spitting Image
10 Under Again
11 The Twilight Zone
12 Vices

Debut album from Australian Supergroup feat. Jim White (Dirty Three, Xylouris White), Chris Abrahams (The Necks), & Gareth Liddiard (The Drones, Tropical Fuck Storm). Recommended If You Like: Will Oldham, Protomartyr, New Testament-era Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Mark Lanegan, Richard Hawley, A Vegas lounge act from another planet. As the world continues to plunge into a fiery blaze of calamity, the Southern Hemisphere’s air warms, its leaves glow green, and the damp earth jolts awake. Springtime is coming to Australia, and it will be ushered in by three sonic shamans who are no strangers to our ears.

Springtime’s self-titled debut combines free jazz, poignant lyricism crafted alongside renowned Irish poet Ian Duhig aka Gareth Liddiard’s uncle and improvisation to craft austere portraits of a world paralyzed by shellshock. It’s as monstrously ravishing as it is clumsy in its elegance. Words run into each other with little regard for one another’s injuries. There are sounds which come out of nothingness to wallop and brutalize their fellow sounds. The live recording of Will Oldham’s “West Palm Beach” is treated with love and respect and would certainly be met with open arms by its author. Across the span of seven tracks, Liddiard incants with wild-eyed fury as White and Abrahams lay down stuttering strings, fizzling electronics, and feathery piano melodies. It is within these raving abstractions that one may find an answer to the enduring question, “What fresh hell will this new season bring?”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: You don't get much better member lists than that of Springtime, consisting as it does some of the biggest names in the Australian underground. Classical leaning in parts, but mostly hovering somewhere between the instrumental maelstrom of Dirty Three and the fractured ambient passages of Nick Cave / Warren Ellis with a vocal swagger reminiscent of Shane McGowan. Intense, evocative and unforgettable.

TRACK LISTING

1 Will To Power
2 The Viaduct Love Suicide
3 Jeanie In A Bottle
4 She Moved Through The Fair
5 The Island
6 West Palm Beach
7 The Killing Of The Village Idiot 

Polymath percussionist Thor Harris inaugurated Thor & Friends in the autumn of 2015 after five years of touring as the percussionist of iconic avant-rock ensemble Swans. The project is intended as a vehicle for experimentation with the conceptual vocabulary of American Minimalism collaborating with a rotating cast of Austin-based musicians. The ensemble has three core members, Thor Harris, Peggy Ghorbani and Sarah 'Goat' Gautier — with its line-up expanding and contracting with the flux of compositional and improvisational contexts. Thor & Friends draws on classic Minimalist composers, including Terry Riley and Steve Reich, but also amalgamate such diverse influences as Brian Eno, Aphex Twin, Moondog and The Necks around a polyrhythmic core of mallet-struck instruments, primarily marimba, xylophone and vibraphone.

Circling these core motifs are shifting streams of everything from processed pedal steel and analog synthesizer to violin, viola, stand-up bass, clarinet, duduk and oboe. Thor & Friends, '3’ is, naturally, the band's third LP. Initially put out as part of Joyful Noise Recordings, 2019 Artist in Residence, it is now being released far and wide through Joyful Noise. Thor writes, "This record was made over several years and in many locations. Only by the grace of the brilliant Jeremy Barnes was it all sewn together into this fantastic tapestry of sound you are lucky to now behold." Musicians who played on this record include, Jennifer Wasner, Tuvan throat singing is Soriah, Jeremy Barnes and Heather Trost of A Hawk and a Hacksaw, John Dieterich from Deerhoof, Thierry Amar and Tim Herzog from Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Adam Torres, Michael Gira, Jarboe, Stine Janvin Motland, John Congleton and many others. 

TRACK LISTING

1. As Above So Below (feat. Jenn Wasner, Soriah)
2. Lonely Dee
3. Tucson (feat. Michael Gira, Crystal Fulbright)
4. Jarboe Walks In The River (feat. Jarboe)
5. Falling (feat. Jarboe, Stine Janvin Motland, Soriah)
6. Stine And Her Animals (feat. Stine Janvin Motland)

Polymath percussionist Thor Harris inaugurated Thor & Friends in the autumn of 2015 after five years of touring as the percussionist of iconic avant-rock ensemble Swans. The project is intended as a vehicle for experimentation with the conceptual vocabulary of American Minimalism collaborating with a rotating cast of Austin-based musicians. The ensemble has three core members, Thor Harris, Peggy Ghorbani and Sarah 'Goat' Gautier - with its line-up expanding and contracting with the flux of compositional and improvisational contexts.

Thor & Friends draws on classic Minimalist composers, including Terry Riley and Steve Reich, but also amalgamate such diverse influences as Brian Eno, Aphex Twin, Moondog and The Necks around a polyrhythmic core of mallet-struck instruments, primarily marimba, xylophone and vibraphone. Circling these core motifs are shifting streams of everything from processed pedal steel and analog synthesizer to violin, viola, stand-up bass, clarinet, duduk and oboe. Thor & Friends, '4' is the band's fourth LP. Initially put out as part of Joyful Noise Recordings, 2019 Artist in Residence, it is now being released far and wide through Joyful Noise. Thor writes, "Thor & Friends is a collective of musicians. Some players are classically trained, others are punk musicians with no reading skills, just spirit and will. Through friendship and musical collaboration, this album brings together Craig Ross, Alan and Mimi from Low, Bill Callahan, and Jolie Holland; strings from the likes of Mollie Fischer, Travis Weller, Lindsey Verrill, Andrea Calderon, and Nino Soberin; and even more instrumentation from Jeff Johnston on saw, Christopher Cundy, Andrea Belfi, and Adam Harding." 

TRACK LISTING

1. Mystery Train (feat. Low, Jolie Holland)
2. Dies In Paris (feat. Bill Callahan)
3. Uber Driver
4. The Other Last Straw
5. I Told You They Were Lying
6. Saint Belfi
7. Off Her Meds

Highly anticipated second album, 1.5 years after their critically acclaimed debut LP. Featuring members of the now-defunct band The Drones. RIYL: King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, Nick Cave, The Slits, Protomartyr, The Drones, Gang of Four, IDLES.

“I've invented fake news as a genre of music,” Gareth Liddiard observes with a laugh. He's talking about “Maria 63”, the closing track on Tropical Fuck Storm's sophomore LP ‘Braindrops’. The song takes aim at the once-marginalized alt-right conspiracy theories that now seem to be a driving force behind the rise of fascism in global politics. “It may be the most stupid song ever written,” Liddiard jokes. He's wrong, “Maria 63” is emblematic of Tropical Fuck Storm's keen ability to mine the extreme edge of pop culture's periphery for potent musical and conceptual spice.

Tropical Fuck Storm were formed around 2017 in the city of Melbourne, Victoria along Australia's south-eastern coast. The band released their debut long-player A Laughing Death in Meatspace on Joyful Noise Recordings in 2018. Each of the band's four members bring considerable experience to the group. Liddiard and Fiona Kitschin were part of the long-running and critically-acclaimed act The Drones, while Erica Dunn and Lauren Hammel have performed in a variety of well-received projects. Perhaps it's that wealth of rock and roll experience that allows Tropical Fuck Storm to so expertly deconstruct and distort the genre's norms.

“Everything we do, we try to do it in a weird way. The whole album is full of weird beats, and just weird shit everywhere,” Liddiard explains. He cites Doc at the Radar Station-era Captain Beefheart as a key sonic touchstone, and Braindrops certainly shares the Captain's penchant for pounding abstract grooves. Tropical Fuck Storm have achieved a uniquely off-kilter sound on Braindrops Liddiard partly credits this to the group's use of unconventional equipment, “We use lots of techno gear to make rock and roll because rock and roll gear is boring, and all sounds like Led Zeppelin.”

Liddiard's own description of Tropical Fuck Storm's sound is nearly as interesting and evocative as the music itself. He describes the LP's title track as “Fela Kuti in a car crash,” and talks of creating a sonic atmosphere that “sounds like chloroform smells” for “Maria 62”. A recurring theme on Braindrops concerns the various ways the human brain can be manipulated and controlled for exploitative gain. The bracing “The Planet of Straw Men” is a study of human behavior inside the social media comments section, a place where otherwise reasonable people are seen gleefully engaging in psychotic chest-thumping rhetoric. Listening to Braindrops is a jarring and exhilarating experience, full of pulsating grooves, dissonant experimentation, and unsettling dystopian plot-lines. Braindrops is an unrelenting work, from an unrelenting musical ensemble. “Tropical Fuck Storm is a full on thing,” Liddiard offers. “Everything we do, we do it to death.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: A completely nuts, clashing collection of fragmented melodies and post-punk spirit, encompassing psychedelic freeform, spoken word vitriol and arty noise into a confounding but strangely addictive listen.

TRACK LISTING

1. Paradise
2. The Planet Of Straw Men
3. Who’s My Eugene?
4. The Happiest Guy Around
5. Maria 62
6. Braindrops
7. Aspirin
8. Desert Sands Of Venus
9. Maria 63

Recommended If You Like : Melvins, SWANS, Dale Crover, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Mogwai, David Lynch.

In September 2015, The Lemonheads invited us to join them on a short West Coast tour. A week before we were scheduled to leave, our drummer Murph had to drop out. Bonnie and Steve had already purchased their flights from Melbourne to LA so we were committed to playing these shows, but the thought of trying to find another drummer to emulate Murph's parts just felt wrong. We decided to throw away our planned set list of "Murph songs" and instead enlisted Aniela Perry to join us on electric cello for some very slow, cinematic and open-ended interpretations of “our songs.” We all really enjoyed playing these shows, and experiencing the songs opening themselves up, with space to stretch out and breathe and be as long as they wanted to be. It was a very freeing experience, so much room for improvisation from night to night. After the tour we decided to document these new renditions, so we booked a day at Toshi Kasai’s Los Angeles studio and recorded our set live.

Along with some epic drumming and percussion by the legendary Dale Crover (Melvins), we also welcomed the beautiful Thor Harris (Swans) into the family, who added tubular bells, gongs and additional percussion to our new version of "Without." "I Am Nothing" is not an Electric Wizard cover, but rather takes its name from the spoken word performance by another talented Melbourne family friend, Elissa Rose, who added her poetry to the improvised instrumental section we started our set with each night. And last but not least, another Aussie member of the Dumb Numbers family, Geordie Stafford from Golden Bats, added some crushing elemental guitar to "Sometimes." We sincerely hope you enjoy the music, and recommend listening at night with some mood lighting, incorporating the experience into your night-time ritual. 

TRACK LISTING

1 I Am Nothing / Sometimes 16:05
2 Without / Dissolution 12:36

In 1974 Jad and David Fair teamed up to form a band called Half Japanese. The route was simple, at first. If one pounded on drums the other could squeeze sounds from an electric guitar. There were no other band members to stay in tune with, so there was no particular reason for them to worry about tuning the guitar in a traditional manner or learning traditional chords. They were free from the start to express their music in their own way. They traded off the guitar and drumming rolls. Whichever one sang the words also played the guitar and the other one drummed. For a couple of years they wrote, recorded and performed this way, without the convention of more members. When they did decide to expand they went big. They first thought of recruiting an outside drummer, so that both could play guitars at the same time.

In 2014 Jad and David stripped things back to the roots. They went back to recording as a duo. One sang and played guitar, the other one drummed. 40 years had passed, but they slipped right back into the original roles and churned out a number of breath-stealing songs. 40 years later; 40 years better. One pick, two sticks and heart-warming vocals...... That's all they needed; two brothers, still rockin' the same damn deal! 

Recorded in Joshua Tree, CA, "Command Your Weather" sees Big Business return to its original two-man lineup of Jared Warren and Coady Willis. It's a haunting dream about the struggle for dominance of will over the power and unpredictability of nature. Or it's just a really great rock record, it depends on how weird you're willing to get. But you've never had so much fun being crushed in the cogs of the universe's great machine, that much is for sure! I mean, there's no law against having a couple cold beers while we all burn in the fire of time, am I right?!

Recorded by Dave Curran of UNSANE/PIGS/BIG BUSINESS' previous record fame. Founded in 2003 in Seattle, WA., Big Business has spent the last 13 years touring the world and making records. In 2006 Jared and Coady joined forces with the Melvins and moved to Los Angeles. Performing as members of the Melvins and staying autonomous as their own band, they have been there ever since. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Last Legs
2. Regulars
3. Father’s Day
4. Blacker Holes
5. Popular Demand
6. Own Throats
7. Send Help
8. Diagnostic Front
9. Horses

Announcing "Overjoyed", the first album in 13 years from legendary punk band Half Japanese. One of the most influential bands of all time, Jad Fair and Half Japanese spearheaded the DIY and Lo-Fi movements, influencing countless bands such as Sonic Youth, Neutral Milk Hotel, Daniel Johnston, and perhaps most notably, Kurt Cobain (who ranked Half Japanese amongst his top 50 favorites, had them open the "In Utero" tour, and was wearing their t-shirt when he died). Without exaggeration, Half Japanese is one of the most important bands in the history of music. "Overjoyed" was recorded and produced by John Dieterich of Deerhoof, and ranks amongst the best albums of the band's catalogue.

STAFF COMMENTS

Darryl says: After 13 years away, Half Japanese return to the scene with 'Overjoyed'. And they prove themselves to be as vital as ever, melodic indie-punk that keeps them ahead of the pack.

TRACK LISTING

1. In Its Pull
2. Meant To Be That Way
3. Brave Enough
4. Do It Nation
5. The Time Is Now
6. Our Love
7. Shining Star
8. Each Other's Arms
9. Overjoyed And Thankful
10. We Are Sure
11. As Good Can Be
12. Tiger Eyes

RIYL: Randy Newman, Paul Simon, Kishi Bashi, Van Dyke Parks, music!

Lewis and Addison Rogers are brothers who make pop-music together. When they do this, they go by the name Busman’s Holiday. Lewis plays guitar, and Addison plays his modest drum kit, complete with suitcase bass-drum. Independently, the brothers have performed with artists such as Jens Lekman (Addison drumming and providing backing vocals on his recent tour) and Sleeping Bag (Lewis was the original guitarist). “A Long Goodbye”, the first proper album from Busman’s Holiday was recorded by Mark Lawson (Arcade Fire) and mixed by Drew Vandenberg (Toro Y Moi, Kishi Bashi). The band has been featured on WNYC’s Radiolab.

TRACK LISTING

01 Bones I
02 Child Actor
03 Hoped To
04 Death
05 Alone
06 Not Alone
07 Baby Blue
08 World
09 We Are We
10 Bones II

Announcing 'Golden Tickets' - the latest mini album from WHY? The Wolf brothers' pop-inflected psychedelic folk-hop was nominally referred to as hip-hop at the beginning of their career. At this point - certainly on 'Golden Tickets' - the project has outgrown any easy genre-categorization. With the musical eclecticism, pop-twist, and experimental bent of artists like the Flaming Lips or Beck. WHY? shimmers on this album in vibraphone stippled, sweetly riffed songs with characteristically gut-wrenching subtext.

TRACK LISTING

1. Hunter Van Brocklin
2. Banana Mae
3. Fogg
4. GM Hearts AB
5. Murmurer
6. Dropjaw
7. Peta Godfrey

Stripped-down, unblighted, bedroom pop songs... about girls. "Women Of Your Life" is the intimately facile sophomore album from indie-slackers Sleeping Bag. The Bloomington, Indiana based trio is spearheaded by Dave Segedy, who is the group's drummer, songwriter and primary vocalist (that's right: a drummer who writes and sings all the songs!). Specializing in simple and honest songwriting, Malkmus-deadpan vocal delivery, and unusually addictive melodies, Sleeping Bag craft songs that are at once familiar and fresh. The band's debut s/t album was released on Joyful Noise in August 2011, receiving praise from Under The Radar, Impose Magazine, Village Voice, RCRD LBL, and My Old Kentucky Blog.

With their second album, the trio have matured in the ways one might expect: songs are a bit longer, lyrics a bit more personal, and arrangements more developed. But all of Sleeping Bag's signature elements are well represented throughout: the heartfelt ("In The Pocket", "Still Life"), the playful ("Allison Cole", "Saturday Night") and the unbelievably catchy ("Soccer Ball", "Walk Home"). Segedy's effortless melodies, accompanied by the distinctively jangling guitar work of Lewis Rogers and the tastefully minimal bass of David Woodruff, combine to form a sound that summons the energy and earnestness of 90s rock, while sidestepping throwback territory. Familiar influences are organically reconstructed into relevant,
captivating pop. These are instantly accessible songs which gain surprising depth with each obsessively repeated listen.

TRACK LISTING

1. Women Of Your Life
2. Soda You
3. Soccer Ball
4. Allison Cole
5. In The Pocket
6. Nightmare
7. Saturday Night
8. Coco
9. Still Life
10. Walk Home..

Deriving their name from information reading proteins on the cell surface of the brain, this northern California duo creates strikingly original prog-influenced / semi-improv soundscapes from their secluded Mt Shasta studio. Musically the sound can be reminiscent of everything from Can to Sonic Youth, to early Floyd and Coil. The instrumentation is diverse, yet focused; some-what minimalist yet always interesting. Receptor Sight has developed as a vehicle to push musical boundaries while dually serving as a sort-of consciousness exploration. If you allow it, this album will take you places far beyond the normalcy of reality. With "Cycles And Connections", the groups sophomore effort, Receptor Sight has come into their own sound; and admirably, not a single computer or synthesizer was used in the recording of this album. Expanding upon their influences of psychedelic rock, Receptor Sight has created a sound which has yet to be truly categorized. Synchronicity is the theme here, a coincidence of sounds that, once they are played, seem to be meaningfully related. The energy which permeates the universe will flow from your speakers.