Kyiv (Ukraine) born Sasha Renkas, made music as Antenna for almost a decade, releasing many EP's and a full length album. Now he follows his urge to make a different kind of music. The result is a full length album with slow, intimate, nighttime music varying from abstract pop ballads to ambient movie score pieces. At times they sound like stripped down Kate Bush instrumentals, drenched in reverb, or introvert Roxy Music with a touch of dub and nineties trip-hop. "This time I wanted to compose music and then perform my instruments live making this album. I used mainly old synthesizers and other instruments and a heavy layer eighties reverb machines. Before moving to the Netherlands, I was growing up in the nineties in Kyiv, surrounded by economic turbulence and a weird mix of music from different decades that overflowed the country after years of isolation. Accompanied by the weird early Ukrainian visual culture I was mesmerized by the music videos I saw on TV and I wanted to belong there. I guess I never really grew up, still drifting like a cowboy through imaginary spaces, in a timeless vacuum, outside of real life. I decided to release this album as Sasha Renkas, because it felt very personal and pure, all coming from a spacious, misty place where everybody is still alive and safe."

TRACK LISTING

01 West
02 Prozora
03 Safe Place
04 Boy
05 Night
06 Carrier
07 Hydro Park
08 Come To Me
09 Operator
10 Liman
11 You'll Be Okay
12 2 Days

‘Paint It Black’ performed by Nevermore Academy star pupil, Wednesday Adams. Her debut release. Expect more from this talented young musician.

“The version of ‘Paint It Black’ played by Wednesday on her cello has a unique dark energy that fascinated fans.” - auralcrave.com

TRACK LISTING

Paint It Black - Wednesday Addams
Wednesday Main Titles - Danny Elfman

Having first made his mark as a songwriter and guitarist for Los Angeles’ Allah-Las, Pedrum Siadatian has etched out a place of his own with his solo work as PAINT. What started as modest 4-track experiments quickly took on a life of their own as Pedrum began distilling his musical and lyrical inspirations into something both timeless and new. His miniature menagerie of light-psych and proto-punk gems had outgrown their cassette cage and were now ready to be heard.

PAINT’s eponymous debut (Mexican Summer, 2018) appeared out of the ether, fully formed. It was praised for its originality and drew favorable comparisons to the likes of Kevin Ayers, Lou Reed and Julian Cope. The mess was the message and the decidedly mid-fi production found Siadatian both honoring and eschewing tradition. The album was accompanied by videos for the singles “Daily Gazette” and “Moldy Man,” both directed by Sam Kristofski (Connan Mockasin, Pond), with select performances in North America, UK, and Europe.

This year sees PAINT returning with the release of the ambitious Spiritual Vegas. While Ray Davies-smirks and Kevin Ayers-wit abound, Siadatian’s singular touch is unmistakable. Joined once again by producer / engineer Frank Maston at the helm, Spiritual Vegas features a rogue’s gallery of players with performances by Jackson Macintosh (TOPS, Sheer Agony) on bass and guitar, Nick Murray (White Fence, Oh Sees) on drums, and brothers-in-Las Spencer Dunham and Matt Correia on bass and percussion respectively.

The production is a clear departure from PAINT’s debut- with an increased clarity and tonal variety, drawing inspiration from 80’s/90’s art-rock like The Meat Puppets and The Magnetic Fields.

“Ta Fardah” (Til Tomorrow) is an early standout. Sung in Farsi, a nod to Siadatian’s Iranian heritage, it’s a crate digger’s dream — channeling 70’s Persian funk melodrama that might have been a nightclub dancefloor hit in pre-revolution Tehran. On “Landman” we hear Siadatian protest all things aquatic, despite social pressures to the contrary. He sings “I’m no Toucan Sam-man, in some guitar jam band” on this Kinks-y ode to land-locked life, complete with “bah bah bah” harmonies and a tropical marimba line.

The record closes with the minimalist jazz of “Impressions.” It centers on a moody keyboard figure as lazy jazz guitar, sax, and flute solos weave in and out. Both melancholy and triumphant, “Impressions” is a fitting end to an album that explores both feelings and posits they might actually be the same.

The title Spiritual Vegas was inspired by a visit to Bali, Indonesia, where Siadatian was struck by the juxtaposition of tourists seeking either Instagram enlightenment or Vegas-like debauchery. Is there really a difference? Awakening comes in many forms and as Siadatian intones on opener “Strange World,” “the moment you find laughter’s the key/ the sooner you’ll be free” — a fortune cookie philosophy for both the record and the world at large.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Paint are an entrancing proposition, a mid-heavy juxtaposition of psychedelic jangling and hypnotic repetitive art-rock. Brilliantly absorbing, and comfortingly odd.

TRACK LISTING

1 Intro (Phor Phaedra)
2 Strange World
3 Grape St.
4 Lanolin
5 Flying Fox
6 Ta Fardah
7 Why Not, Tick Tock?
8 Meet Me (In St. Lucia)
9 Land Man
10 Tongue Tied
11 Ballad Of Adelaide
12 Well Of Memory/ODAAT
13 Impressions
14 Outro (The Lines I Drew)

The verb, the noun, the substance, the action, the command: make a mark! With that, PAINT (guitarist/singer Pedrum Siadatian of the Allah-Las), is making his mark too with his first, selftitled solo record.

PAINT started by four-tracking his own strange, slow-growing ideas just after Allah-Las third album Calico Review (2016) - fed or led by a certain acid-bitter poetry (Gregory Corso and John Lennon) and the murky music of Kevin Ayers and Syd Barrett. Siadatian found a producer and partner-in-grime in adept cinematic psychedelicist Frank Maston, who instinctively understood these songs would fall apart if scrubbed too roughly in the studio. Now PAINT’s self-titled debut LP has a happily paradoxical finished-but-not-finished-off feel, like Lou Reed and R. Stevie Moore and Julian Cope and Richard Hell, but just the songs that never came out.

Like “Daily Gazette”: big-city-on-the-skids mid-tempo hot-summer punk blues cool like those Richard Hell/Tom Verlaine Neon Boys tapes. Like “Splattered”: a subway-sound Velvet Underground valentine. Like “Silver Streaks”: budget-studio 1970s expression-as-obsession from the California observed and preserved by demimonde private-press psychedelicists Damon or F.J. McMahon. Like “Wash”: a last-dance cosmic waltz that could’ve been a snippet of an Angelo Badalamenti soundtrack.

Anyway, this is PAINT, the substance and the action – it drips, it runs, it changes colors. In between: not the desert but the dirt, not the night but the dark, not the sun but the heat and not the sea but the deep, and always the heartbeat blood-rush feel-it! momentum that makes all rock ‘n’ roll rock and roll.

Think of it this way: PAINT’s first album isn’t always clean, but it’s very very clear. Sometimes the mess is the message.

TRACK LISTING

1. Intro
2. Daily Gazette
3. Plastic Dreams
4. Moldy Man
5. Silver Streaks
6. True Love (Is Hard To Find)
7. Splattered
8. Just Passin Thru'
9. I Didn't Know A Thing
10. Heaven In Farsi
11. Wash
12. Outro/Corso

Wet Paint make music governed by a simple premise - whatever you do, make sure that it's LOUD! Their surging guitars, irreverent lyrics and deceptively simple melodies are all driven by the same slacker-passion that emanates from the likes of Pavement, Dinosaur Jr and Pixies. Melodrama, anger, thrill and unbridled emotion are all in store, with this tale of one-way romance that will sound familiar to most of us (excluding, of course, the under-16s and devout Christians). What you're sure to get is lots of delicious feedback and an energy in song-writing that will be familiar to those who've already listened to "Save The Whale" (released earlier this year on Trial & Error). On the B-side comes an amazing remix by friends and colleagues Bloc Party, for all bedroom ballerinas who wish to dance to "Hug it Out" in their underwear. Highly recommended!

Wet Paint make music governed by a simple premise - whatever you do, make sure that it's LOUD! Their surging guitars, irreverent lyrics and deceptively simple melodies are all driven by the same slacker-passion that spurts from the likes of Pavement, Dinosaur Jr and Pixies. Wet Paint are ready to rock your socks off! It all began when three fifths of the band Absentee decided to be more productive between 6:30 and 11pm on Monday evenings. Side-stepping their familiar roles, Babak took up the mic and found his scream, Laurie hung up his bass and picked up a squealing axe, whilst Melinda discarded her melodica for a pair of thunderous drum sticks. After a few evenings of noise-making it became clear that throbbing bass lines would complete this raucous sound. In stepped James, of the exceptional Economy Wolf, and the Wet Paint line-up was complete. "Save The Whale" is a rather wonderful slacker-indie anthem that's further augmented by a beautiful lo-fi rendition of the song by Lightspeed Champion on the B-side. Tremendous!!!!!

Paint It Black's follow up to the last year's "CVA" picks up it's intensity and urgency and runs with it at full tilt. It's a highly charged catharsis, very effectively expressing through poignant lyrics and a raging sound the pain surrounding such personal trauma as divorce and the generalised agony of war. This is chainsaw hardcore echoing the bruising violence of Black Flag, "Damaged" vintage - yup, it's really rather good.

Most cities have a cyclical history to their punk scenes, and Philadelphia is no exception. The duo of Dan Yemin and Dave Wagenschutz (Good Riddance) has helped lead the charge of more than one wave, first in the mid-90s in the legendary Lifetime and then again with Kid Dynamite. Now, reunited in Paint It Black, the duo is poised to kick off yet another chapter of passionate and threatening music. Paint It Black marks Yemin's vocal debut and introduces Dave Hause on guitar and Andy Nelson on bass. Paint It Black delivers unabashed, uncompromising hardcore, negating the preconceived boundaries between the personal, political, melodic and aggressive, accentuating a much-appreciated axiom: maximum intensity. CVA is highly recommended for fans of Black Flag, Seven Seconds and Faith.