Legendary hip hop pioneer DJ Muggs and frequent David Lynch collaborator Dean Hurley join forces for the original score to the 2023 Sundance-premiering feature film Divinity. Equal parts sonically punishing and ethereal, the soundtrack delivers a unique punch that further intensifies the mind-bending, acid-trip experience of the film.

Divinity is a sci-fi dystopian odyssey produced by Steven Soderberg hand helmed by visionary director Eddie Alcazar. Set in the distant future, scientist Sterling Pierce dedicated his life to the quest for immortality, slowly making progress developing a serum named Divinity. Jaxxon Pierce, his son, now controls and profits from his father’s once benevolent dream. Society on their barren planet has been entirely perverted by the supremacy and pervasiveness of the drug. Two mysterious brothers arrive with a plan to abduct the mogul, and with the help of a woman named Nikita, they set on a trajectory hurtling toward true immortality.

Amidst the film’s extraordinary tapestry of stark aesthetics and themes, the score is a ten ton barbell of sonic weight. Crafted with 8-bit samplers, Wavestation synths, extended choir and string techniques, the soundtrack manages to swing wildly between the arenas of both music and sound design. Like all rich soundtracks, listening to the score on its own reconjures the imagery of the film in the screen of the listener’s mind, an aural experience that manages to encapsulate and pulse a matched intensity of the film.

Tracks like ‘The Brothers’ and ‘Reflective Dreams’ cascade Vangelis-esque tones, painting with broad strokes of cinematic grandeur and ethereal wonder. ‘Main Titles’ and ‘Infinity Techno’ conversely swing hard into relentless, punishing sonics; with brutal, pulsing energy representative of the twisted, relentless pursuit of immortality. A standout of the album is undoubtedly “Divinity 2 Infinity: The Odyssey,” featuring cult hip-hop hero and lyrical-savant Kool Keith. Written for the film’s end credits, the track is a satisfying throwback to the 90’s original soundtrack cut bespoke tailored to the film’s narrative themes.

DJ Muggs and Dean Hurley’s synergy yields a soundtrack that takes Divinity beyond the screen and into a multi-dimensional experience, inviting its listener along uncharted aural terrain for an unforgettable odyssey in sound.

TRACK LISTING

1. Intro Descent
2. Live Eternal
3. Bigger, Stronger, Faster
4. Capture
5. Main Titles
6. The Brothers
7. Drone Interrogation
8. A Symbol Of Life
9. Heavy Weight
10. Reflective Dreams
11. Infinity Techno
12. Escape Suite
13. Aftermath
14. Rip Fights
15. Final Fight
16. Ascend Finale
17. Divinity 2 Infinity: The Odyssey

Acts of Light is a fugue comprised of nine slow hypnotic dirges. Vulnerability, majesty, and candour elicited with drone, double bass, field recordings and sacred choral chant compose its private ritual. Born out of excavations and explorations in feeling, intuition and physicality through sound which culminated in her 2021 EP Feral Hymns, Acts of Light is a disquiet personal offering to wilderness, loss, absence, mystery and love supreme.

Its resonant, rich and weighted lament is both subterranean and chasmal whilst simultaneously detailed and tender, awakening hidden forms that emerge from the shadows with each listen. Textural dust and speckled light move slowly and expansively here through a deeply sonic and sensory rite of passage where Woods’ moving compositions confide in us feeling to be received with the entire body.

Recorded and mixed over a span of two years along the west coast of Ireland and in various other locations, including the Pro cathedral in Dublin where Woods recorded the choristers of the Palestrina Choir and Galway where she recorded the voices of Galway City Chamber Choir, string samples were recorded by Jo Berger Myhrein Oslo, whilst field recordings were recorded nomadically thro ughout her time spent travelling through the north and south of Spain

TRACK LISTING

1. Burial Rites
2. Wife Mother Lover Crow
3. Where The Bough Has Broken
4. Acts Of Light
5. Ochre
6. Awakening
7. Blood Orange
8. The Foot Of Love
9. Vigil 

In the early 1990s, a team of linguists, engineers, anthropologists, and archaeologists were tasked with constructing a type of communication that could transcend time. How might we converse with future civilizations when language may evolve or dissolve entirely? The result yielded the design of spike fields; a strange construction of granite thorns bursting from the earth to alert its viewers to the deadly uninhabitability of nuclear waste disposal sites. For Maria BC (they/them), this state of temporal focus molds the wanderings on their second full length album Spike Field. How do we connect with the weathered shadow of our experience, while envisioning the self a few steps ahead of us? While their debut album Hyaline (2022, Father/Daughter) explored grief and anxiety through a series of character-led accounts, Spike Field recognizes that the past will continue to lurk below the surface until we decide to break through the soil.

Spike Field was recorded in the home of a family friend. The home featured an out-of-tune baby Steinway piano, complete with squeaky hammers and strange, sporadic sounds. The piano is sprinkled throughout the album, and features extensively on opener “Amber,” showcasing Maria BC’s looser, more extensive arrangements. The song flickers with electronic wonder, like a wave seeking out its station, before crashing into the angelic choral introduction of “Watcher”. Strings, plucked guitar and buzzing swells accompany their classically-trained mezzo- soprano voice on “Return to Sender,” a song that focuses on the frustrations and turmoil of being unable to reach a loved one––both physically and emotion-ally.

Spike Field reminds us that despite our best efforts to bury certain aspects of ourselves, they will always lurk beneath the surface. Instead of ignoring the seeds striving to break through, we can point to these places with a curious grace, concocting a language that transcends words to converse with our previous selves. Maria BC pieces together juxtaposing sonic landscapes and oscillating vocals to represent the thread of miscommunication, or the failure of words, that weaves throughout the album, transforming it into a distinct and ever-evolving sonic tongue. If we listen, we might find something new within ourselves

RiYL: Grouper, Big Thief, Marissa Nadler, Cat Power, Juliana Barwick, Mount Eerie, Espers, Diane Cluck, Six Organs, Steven R Smith, Linda Perhacs

TRACK LISTING

1 Amber (3:54)
2 Watcher (3:04)
3 [ A Backlit Door ] (0:52)
4 Haruspex (5:19)
5 Return To Sender (3:21)
6 Tire Iron (3:49)
7 Daydrinker (3:58)
8 Tied (ft. Issei Herr) (4:16)
9 Still (5:13)
10 Lacuna (4:16)
11 Mercury (4:08)
12 Spike Field (6:27) 

By now everyone should know John Carpenter is not only a celebrated filmmaker but also a musical maestro whose soundtracks have become synonymous with the genres of horror, suspense, and science fiction. His innate talent for composition and his deep understanding of how music can elevate storytelling have left an indelible mark on the world of cinema, and a haunting presence in people’s record collections.

Anthology II continues the celebration of his compositional genius via an excellently sequenced collection of some of his most iconic pieces of music from his extensive filmography, all newly recorded with his musical collaborators Daniel Davies and Cody Carpenter.

The compilation opens with “Chariots of Pumpkins” from Halloween III that perfectly captures the eerie essence of the cult classic film with its pulsating synths and haunting melodies. The listener is engulfed by a sense of unease and anticipation, before being thrust into “69th St. Bridge” from Escape From New York, a dynamic track that encapsulates the futuristic and gritty nature of the film via the use of throbbing bass lines, driving rhythms, and electronic textures. The record has also an isolating tone as it skulks through ambient leaning tracks such as “Fuchs” and “To Mac’s Shack” from The Thing, and “Walk to the Lighthouse” from The Fog, all of which display a slower tempo, foreboding undertones and an ethereal atmosphere that feels like a distant whisper. All of which has been cautiously laid in preparation to the grand finale. The iconic and instantly recognizable ”Laurie’s Theme” from the original Halloween. Its simple yet menacing piano melody which has become synonymous with the horror genre, concludes the album by striking fear into the hearts of listeners.

These tracks represent just a fraction of John Carpenter’s impressive musical repertoire. With each haunting note and pulsating beat, his soundtracks continue to resonate with audiences, forever etching his name in the annals offilm music history.

TRACK LISTING

1. Chariots Of Pumpkins (Halloween III)
2. 69th St. Bridge (Escape From New York)
3. The Alley (War) (Big Trouble In Little China)
4. Wake Up (They Live)
5. Julie’s Dead (Assault On Precinct 13)
6. The Shape Enters Laurie’s Room (Halloween II)
7. Season Of The Witch (Halloween III)
8. Love At A Distance (Prince Of Darkness)
9. The Shape Stalks Again (Halloween II)
10. Burn It (The Thing)
11. Fuchs (The Thing)
12. To Mac’s Shack (The Thing)
13. Walk To The Lighthouse (The Fog)
14. Laurie’s Theme (Halloween)

Föllakzoid grows via depuration, aiming with each record to fill longer spaces of time with fewer and fewer elements. And like the best techno, kraut, and psychedelia have proven throughout time, sometimes the most minimal framework is the strongest container for transcendence. Which is what Föllakzoid have achieved with V, an immersive opus that takes the listener on seductive journey straight to the dance floor.

The creative perspective of the band has always been about unlearning the narrative, musical and visual paradigms that shape physical and digital conceptions, in an effort to make a time-space metric structure that dissolves both the author and the narrative. As the creative project of queer and trans artist Domingæ, the band has had a unique experience navigating the psychedelic rock scene.

Unlike past Föllakzoid records, that were done in single takes with the full band, their latest record V took a month to construct out of more than 70 separate stems. Guitars, bass, drums, synthesizers, and vocals, were all recorded in isolation and producer Atom™, who was not present for recording, was then asked to re-organize the four sequences of stems without any length, structural restrictions or guidelines.

The inherent possibilities were endless yet bound together by the inner logic of the game itself and by the spirits of the players. V is the exercise of telling an elaborate story about nothing, with the smallest number of words necessary. The story is one of the electricity and code which we inhabit - or which may inhabit us, and can be imagined through heart-pounding bass, skittering beats, head swirling melodies, and an ominous allure that feels at times like genuine hypnosis.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: We're massive fans of Follakzoid here at Piccadilly, and 'V' takes the formula so deftly established over their previous four LP's (grinding drone, huge stoner chug and psychedelic fog) and builds upon it substantially. Walls of noise and dynamic fuzz give way to scattered percussive shards and crystalline electronic textures. Mindblowing.

TRACK LISTING

1. I
2. II
3. III
4. IIII 

Psychedelic warriors Föllakzoid began in Santiago, Chile from what they described as the result of “a product of a trance experience between friends, sort of a soul abduction in which they’ve been living since 2008.” They believe that there is some sort of gravitational force that makes South America able to dialogue directly with other places, times, and dimensions.

II is an album comprised of five songs and some of the finest kraut-rock, a record that is ready to take you on a serpentine journey through their mystical Chilean land.

This masterpiece originally released in 2013 is now getting a long awaited repress after being sold out for quite some time, and in an irresistible gold colour. 

TRACK LISTING

1. 9
2. Rio
3. Trees
4. 99
5. Pulsar 

With little more under their belt than a relentless string of live performances, and a twice pressed (subsequently sold out) Self Titled Demo, NYC based band Lathe of Heaven have proved themselves to be a potent and cohesive element amidst the torrent of hardcore punk and synth-driven pop revival currently proliferating throughout the U.S. underground.

Formed in 2021, the band features members of noteworthy Brooklyn based projects such as Pawns, People's Temple, Porvenir Oscuro, Android, Hustler and more.

Though this roster of past and alternate musical endeavors exposes a diverse range of genre and skill sets, Lathe of Heaven can only be understood as a departure from such influences, exploring a sound entirely of its own.

Now nearly two years later,Lathe of Heaven are finally prepared to unleash their debut Full Length Bound by Naked Skies. With careful consideration, this eleven track LP blends elements of British New-Wave and Finnish Post-Punk into a nuanced juxtaposition of 80s sonic mania. Incorporating themes of classic and contemporary Science-Fiction, Bound by Naked Skies indebts itself as much to its literary influences as it does to the music that informs its unique and deliber-ate sound. Paying powerful homage to the uncanny worlds of authors Arthur C. Clarke, Octavia Butler, Ken Liu and of course Ursula Le GuM (whose novel the band is named after), themes of cosmology ("Ekpyrosis"), simulation ("Her-alds of the Circuit-Born"), mental illness ("Moon-Driven Sea"), and ontology ("EntroprThe Spider" etc.), weave implicitly throughout the arch of the record, providing a sense of insight into the minds of those plagued by the ambiguous nature of humankind's terrifying and not-so-distant future.

TRACK LISTING

1. At Moment’s Edge
2. Ekpyrosis
3. Genome
4. Ilusión De Luces (Cold’s Embrace)
5. Inertia
6. Moon-Driven Sea
7. The Breaking Strain
8. The Spider
9. Entropy
10. The Faithful Image
11. Heralds Of The Circuit-Born

Since emerging in 2015, Sextile have been a party-provoking force on the LA underground, capable of kicking up a riot with the raw-edged squall of a synth or the sharp-elbowed jerk of a guitar. Sextile are now ready to rage with a serotonin-boosting new album, a new group dynamic, faster BPMs, and an even wilder new direction. Recorded in Yucca Valley, Push bounces and bops at the fringes of hardcore dance music, with the hallmarks of drum & bass, gabber and trance illuminating the record like glowsticks at a ‘90s Fantazia rave.“Contortion” introduces the album with shadowy vocals from Keehnand a ‘00s-ready twist of dirty electro bass, setting the tone for the dance-punk rave-up that unfolds across 11 attention-grabbing tracks. There’s plenty of historic teen angst and biting social commentary written into the album’s vivid tales and misadventures. Balancing storytelling with face-melting synths that turn the tune into an acid trance character study, “No Fun” is penned from the perspective of a teenager trying to flee their town.A punk spirit underscores the album. The clue’s in the name with “Crassy Mel,” which partly serves as a high-energy dedication to ‘70s anarcho-punk legends Crass. The track’s headbanging heft, vocal yelping, and Prodigy-shaped breakbeats accentuate the album’s overwhelming sense of fun. Plus, the dreamy ambient wash at the end of the song is the ultimate palate-cleanser. Push was inspired by the kind of pleasure-seeking music fans whose social calendar comprises both the punk show and the rave. Josh Wink, Iggy Pop, Goldie, and early XL Recording shave all been name checked as influences on Push, and the dancefloor remains a constant presence. Repping their place of origin, “New York” brings these musical touchstones off the page, guiding the album like an acid-soaked lodestar with its grinning nod to “Higher State of Consciousness” and a whirlygig of music-box synths. There are still nods and “hellos” to the caustic post-punk of Sextile’s earlier work. Sextile haven’t relinquished their punk credentials, they’ve just given them a smiley-faced revamp.

TRACK LISTING

1. Contortion
2. No Fun
3. Crassy Mel
4. Lost Myself Again
5. Crash (feat. Izzy Glaudini)
6. New York
7. Basically Crazy
8. Modern Weekend
9. LA DJ
10. Plastic
11. Imposter 

Spellling, the moniker of the Bay Area experimental pop mastermind Chrystia Cabral, returns with Spellling & the Mystery School, a collection of richly envisioned new versions of songs from throughout her critically-acclaimed discography, out August 25 via Sacred Bones. Recorded with her touring band (est. 2021), these reimagined studio tracks follow Cabral's spellbinding career — from her 2017 breakthrough debut Pantheon Of Me, to 2018's multidimensional synth-based project Mazy Fly, and her expansive third album, 2021's The Turning Wheel, breathing new life into the extravagant orchestrations she's written and produced entirely herself.

"With this album, I wanted to capture the ways that these songs have morphed; Cabral says of Spellling er the Mystery School. "They're like my children all grown up in a different stage of their lives, and I wanted to celebrate that:'

Throughout Spellling & the Mystery School, Cabral's hypnotizing voice is enveloped in a newly fleshed-out sonic universe of dreamy strings (Del Sol Quartet and Divya Farias), haunting piano (Jaren Feeley), driving trip-hop percussion (Patrick Shelley) and bass (Giulio Xavier Cetto), shredding electric guitar (Wyatt Overson), and drama-intensifying background vocals (Toya Wil-lock and Dharma Moon-Hunter).

Overall, the album encapsulates the transportative Spellling live experience through which Cabral, with her idiosyncratic stage presence, conjures up a spiritual sense of communion and vulnerability among her audience. "I want people to feel like there's alchemy happening and to be aware of the magical parts of sound," she explains. "Like, this really did come out of thin air:'

Cabral plans to bring her otherworldly live set through a special performance with Atlas Obscura this summer, held at Children's Fairyland, a historical children's amusement park in Oakland that her own mother used to frequent as a child. There, she will unravel her mythical songs that inter-rogate ideas of self-concept and political history, aided by the backdrop that will no doubt bring out her music's other dimensions of playfulness, innocence, curiosity, and joy.

TRACK LISTING

1. Walk Up To Your House
2. Under The Sun
3. They Start The Dance
4. Cherry
5. Haunted Water
6. Hard To Please (Reprise)
7. Phantom Farewell
8. Boys At School
9. Always
10. Revolution
11. Sweet Talk

The highly influential Khanate return with their first album in 14 years, developing their singular and signature precise, temporal abstract doom beyond all thresholds. Khanate are Stephen O’Malley (Sunn O))), KTL), James Plot- kin (OLD, Scorn, Phantomsmasher), Alan Dubin (OLD, Gnaw) and Tim Wyskida (Blind Idiot God).

Unflinching and brutal, the seeds for To Be Cruel were planted in October 2017 when Tim and Stephen spent a week in the English countryside at Orgone Studio with Jamie Gomez Arrellano. James began working these sessions into overall suites of music, a process the band has classically used on all of their prior albums. By spring 2018 initial song arrangements were proposed and over the latter half of the year bass, synth and vocal tracks were added. 2019 saw the completion of writing and recording at which point it was passed to Randall Dunn to mix, alongside the band, in 2020.

The three songs that comprise To Be Cruel are complex, powerful and multi- dimensional. The music is all-enveloping; dry, alive, rich, and blistering. Concurrent with the release of To Be Cruel, Sacred Bones will digitally reissue Khanate’s four prior full lengths - Khanate (2001), Things Viral (2003), Capture & Release (2005), Clean Hands Go Foul (2009) - with a physical reissue campaign to follow.

TRACK LISTING

1 Like A Poisoned Dog
2 It Wants To Fly
3 To Be Cruel

‘Silver Haze’ was produced by Randall Dunn, who has also worked with the likes of Sunn O))), Boris, Earth, Zola Jesus, and Marissa Nadler, all of whom are artists that SQÜRL cite as inspirations. The album enlists Charlotte Gainsbourg, Anika, and Mark Ribot as collaborators, resulting in a communal offering that shares an energetic lineage with the New York School of Poets.

‘Silver Haze’ expands on SQÜRL’s passion for creating rich textural sounds, finessed by a keen ear for production. The band is known for playing with everything from analogue synths to broken radios and pulling inspiration from painters, writers, and birds on the street. ‘Silver Haze’ is a poetic journey of spoken words, dynamic instrumentals, drone riffs and distorted effects, one that features tubular bells and a cello in addition to their signature stacks of delay, encircling the listener in a warm oscillation both delicate and devastating.

TRACK LISTING

1. Berlin '87
2. The End Of The World
3. Garden Of Glass Flowers Feat. Marc Ribot
4. She Don't Wanna Talk About It Feat. Anika
5. Il Deserto Rosso Feat. Marc Ribot
6. John Ashbery Takes A Walk Feat. Charlotte Gainsbourg
7. Queen Elizabeth
8. Silver Haze 

Fan favorite dark dance outfit Boy Harsher have contributed a sumptuously eerie track for the David Gordon Green directed finale to the iconic Halloween franchise. Sacred Bones and Nude Club (Boy Harsher’s imprint) are joining forces and releasing a proper 12” maxi single containing four versions of the track “Burn it Down,” to be released in tandem with the original score provided by John Carpenter, Cody Carpenter, and Daniel Davies.

Boy Harsher said of the experience: “During an extremely brief period of rest between tours, we got this call from the music supervisor of Halloween. The director, David Gordon Green, had listened to our music and wanted to use something for the final installment in the trilogy - Halloween Ends. We flew to New York the next day to meet the team and discuss the possibilities. It was totally surreal. Obviously we’re huge fans of Carpenter and the franchise is a fav, but to work with Gordon Green was also so special, his early films (George Washington, Undertow, Snow Angels) were heavy influences on our work. The real kicker is that Halloween Ends was shot in Savannah, GA - the birthplace of Boy Harsher and where we met. Unbelievable. It all felt too synchronous, and we knew we had to make something work although we were about to leave for a multi-month tour that week. We flew home to Massachusetts, dug through old demos, and found “Burn It Down”. In the end it was the perfect energy for the bittersweet love affair between Allyson and Corey, so during a couple days off - we cleaned it up and made it come alive.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Mine says: Mega new/old track from Boy Harsher on this 12" that features 4 versions of an old demo they dug out to be featured on the soundtrack for 'Halloween Ends'. After a foray into the film and soundtrack world with their 2022 horror short film 'The Runner' and accompanying soundtrack LP (my album of the year!) it seems more than fitting that they now lend their eerie cold wave sounds to an instalment of the Halloween franchise. I put this on the shop stereo this week and noticed both Tim and Andy sneaking over to check out what was playing...

TRACK LISTING

1 Burn It Down - Rework
2 Burn It Down
3 Burn It Down - (Instrumental)
4 Burn It Down - Rework (Instrumental)

After 45 years, the most acclaimed, revered horror franchise in film history reaches its epic, terrifying conclusion as Laurie Strode faces off for the last time against the embodiment of evil, Michael Myers, in a final confrontation unlike any captured on-screen before, one where only one of them will survive.

When the franchise relaunched in 2018, Halloweenshattered box office records, becoming the franchise’s highest-grossing chapter and set a new record for the biggest opening weekend for a horror film starring a woman. In 2021, Halloween Killsearned the biggest opening weekend for any horror film in the pandemic era and simultaneously set a new record for a non-live event premiere streaming on Peacock.

As Halloween Endsmarks the last chapter of the David Gordon Green trilogy, so it ushers the essential return of original director and composer John Carpenter to score the iconically hair-raising soundtrack alongside Cody Carpenter and Daniel Davies. Together they once again bring the celebrated music score to the horror movie series, one of the most distinctive aspects of the franchise to date

Similarly to the last two soundtracks, Halloween Endswas recorded in its entirety at John Carpenter’s home studio and Daniel’s studio. “The three of us compose,perform, and record all the music, and everything is mixed by Daniel together with John Spiker” says John Carpenter.

The unmistakable mix of software synths, vintage analogue equipment, and live instrumentation is utilized once again to provide the signature sound of Halloween. However, rumors have it that Halloween Ends is going to be somewhat different from the previous two films in the trilogy. With that comes an expanded soundtrack, one that matches the tone of a tangible rise in stakes and conveys the climatic feel of the film. The soundtrack of the third installment broadens old themes whilst creating new ones in an effort to bring renewed life to one of the most epic horror scores ever written. Carpenter elaborates, “The main themes have all been passed down from the original Halloween. We have refined them and created new themes for new characters.

”The soundtrack was tracked scene by scene but the album itself plays like a standalone piece of music. The general atmosphereis one of dread yet the record includes some groove laden moments reminiscent of Escape From New York or some of Carpenter’s other more dance-able scores. Exquisite and delicate ambient pieces weave their way between some of the score’s more arresting moments and yet maintain a subtle pop sensibility. The overall achievement showcases three master musicians, one of whom invented the entire horror-synth genre, crafting an evocative, playful and deeply listenable score that honors a legacy and expands on the decades of work that have been leading to this triumphant climax.

Carpenter is known for directing the original 1978 Halloween, as well as other horror classics like The Thing, The Fog, Escape From New York, Christine, Big Trouble in Little China, andThey Live. However John Carpenter is not only a cult movie-maker, he’s also a pioneering electronic composer. Halloween Endsis the soundtrack of the final battle against evil. Watch your back this Halloween, Michael may be near you.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: One of the most legendary soundtrack writers and directors of all time, in his newest guise with both Cody (his son) and Daniel Davies bring us the third and final bout of dystopian synths and tense atmospheric drone. A blistering, and perfectly fitting instrumental tour de force.

TRACK LISTING

1 Where Is Jeremy?
2 Halloween Ends (Main Title)
3 Laurie’s Theme Ends
4 The Cave
5 Cool Kid
6 Drags To The Cave
7 Evil Eyes
8 Transformation
9 Because Of You
10 Requiem For Jeremy
11 Kill The Cop
12 Corey And Michael
13 Corey’s Requiem
14 The Junk Yard
15 Where Are You?
16 Bye Bye Corey
17 The Fight
18 Before Her Eyes
19 The Procession
20 Cherry Blossoms
21 Halloween Ends

Këkht Aräkh is the Ukrainian project founded in 2018 by Dmitry Marchenko. Originally released on the Finnish label Livor Mortis in 2021, Pale Swordsman goes to even greater extents in building a bold and atmospheric sonic palette, and it’s now seeing a worldwide reissue via Brooklyn label Sacred Bones.

For the sound design of the album, Dmitry was inspired by The Stooges’ Raw Power to deliver a more soft sounding album, decisively less “metal”. Traditional black metal song structures still persist in songs like “Night Descends” and “In The Garden”. However, their rawness and fast tempos is quickly cut through by dark ambient passages in “Amor” and “Intro” and softly played desolate ballads like “Nocturne” and “Lily”.

The crown jewel is the album closer “Swordsman”, a track that displays a superb gothic sensibility, a poem recited over a deeply melancholic piano melody. “The Christian concept of a person ridding themselves of evil to find inner peace or to be able to leave this world safely has become the core inspiration for the song.” Dmitry explains “However, this is not the only reading possible. I purposely avoid specifics in my lyrics so that the listener can always give the song their own meaning.”

The inspiration for the concept of the album also came from David Bowie’s The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. “I really enjoy it when an album tells a story about some character so I came up with one.” says Dmitry when explaining the origin of the Pale Swordsman. The character is portrayed on the striking album cover art - a figure sitting aloof with a sword and a rose in each hand – and clearly symbolises the romantic juxtaposition of belligerence and fragile beauty that permeates the album’s sound and atmosphere.

Pale Swordsman delivers a foreboding yet bittersweet melancholy through poetic lyrics, soft interludes, raw and distorted guitars, eerie drums and harsh vocals - a fragile yet potent mix that successfully amplifies the ambience.

TRACK LISTING

1. Intro
2. Thorns
3. Night Descends
4. In The Garden
5. Amor
6. Nocturne
7. Amid The Stars
8. Lily
9. Crystal
10. Swordsman

Këkht Aräkh is the Ukrainian project founded in 2018 by Dmitry Marchenko. The debut album Night & Love was initially released on the Finnish label Livor Mortis in 2019 and it’s now seeing a worldwide reissue via Brooklyn label Sacred Bones. Dmitry’s intent to experiment with standard black metal canons previously seen at play in Through the Branches to Eternity EP (2018) solidify further on Night & Love, he mentions “back then I had an idea of combining Darkthrone’s Transilvanian Hunger type of black metal with early Internazionale or Croatian Amor vibe.”

Described as ambient or atmospheric black metal, this debut presents Këkht Aräkh’s signature dichotomy of harsh traditional early Norwegian black metal and the more ethereal and delicate melodies. On the other hand the lyrics are romantic and melancholic, clearly influenced by a stark Gothic imagery, and serve as an extra layer of mystery to the already suggestive body of work. The album beings with a soft acoustic intro in “As the Night Falls…” before descending into the raw and raucous “Elegy for the Memory of Me” and “Den Venstre Hånd På Den Høyre”, both songs that are drenched in the more traditional black metal style of raspy, high-pitched vocals, dense, tremolo- picked riffs and fast paced drums. It is however songs like “Night” and “Love” that really set this album apart. “Night” is a softly spoken word ambient track that with a beautiful piano synth work that permeates throughout it aids in the romantic delivery and conjuring of imagery of the night. “Love” is a spellbinding and melancholic song, equal in its romanticism but one that displays a deeper sorrow and tenderness supported by calming field recordings of trickling water. The intertwining of black metal, dark folk and ambient repeats itself, culminating in a quietly hummed outro “...And Never Ends (Eternal Love)” that alludes to and completes the album’s first track.

TRACK LISTING

1. As The Night Falls...
2. Elegy For The Memory Of Me
3. Den Venstre Hånd På Den Høyre
4. Night
5. Her Body Strewn With Petals Black
6. Primal Beauty Of Silence
7. As The Wounds Gently Bleed
8. Love
9. Down To The Depths Of Inner Cold
10. Mysteriet Med Svartfiolett
11. Through Night Which Knows No Dawn
12. Forever Night Castle Of Love
13. ...And Never Ends (Eternal Love)

Don't let the prestigious acting career fool you, Caleb Landry Jones is a bonafide musical maverick. And on his forthcoming release Gadzooks Vol. 2 he places himself in a lineage of outsider artists, many with only a thin thread tethering them to this reality, who are capable of reaching into the cosmic realms of imagination and bringing back a musical masterpiece. And while most artists don't save some of the best music of their career for an album with Vol. 2 in the title, Jones is an artist for whom chronology is a slippery substance.

The album was recorded with Nic Jodoin in the famed Valentine Recording Studios simultaneous with the mixing of his debut album The Mother Stone. The team invited a slew of heavy hitting musicians to the studio to contribute to the magic. The resulting album sounds a bit like pink elephants in cowboy hats making asmr... at least for the first 20 seconds before it seamlessly changes entirely.

One of Jones's greatest musical gifts is his ability to cover a vast energetic and sonic landscape, with a wide array of instrumentation and vocal stylings over a wholly unique song structure, in a way that feels cohesive and euphoric. And while all his records have an ecstatic quality Gadzooks Vol 2. is perhaps his most soothing and sublime collection to date. Each song has at least a dozen ear worming hooks, all so satisfying you feel a deep longing as they fade until you realize they are being woven into yet another groove-laden, toe-tapping peak. A continual mic drop on an orgasmic wonder wheel.

And given the chameleonic quality to the music we asked Caleb Landry Jones to introduce you to the album himself so here are some of his thoughts: "I'm aware of only half the picture. It comes down upon me like a heavy rain. The psycho Deli is out of mustard and all the Porn Stars won’t leave their homes. I’m out only to get myself, but don’t get in the way. The bugs which throw themselves at windows rarely get their say. "

TRACK LISTING

1. Croc Killers 2
2. Little Lion Blues
3. Touchdown Yolk
4. The Shanty Shine
5. Georgie Borge (The Termite)
6. Jeepers
7. Anyone But You
8. Slink On Fido
9. The Puppet Rush
10. Croc Killers 1

The horror master John Carpenter is back with his Halloween franchise collaborators Daniel Davies and Cody Carpenter for their infectious new soundtrack to the 2022 adaptation of Stephen King’s Firestarter. This marks the first official soundtrack that the team has composed together outside of the Halloween franchise and their inspiration and evolution as a creative team is on full display.

The film is a new take on the thriller examining a girl with extraordinary pyrokinetic powers and her fight to protect her family and herself from sinister forces that seek to capture and control her. The film releases theatrically on May 13th, 2022 and stars Zac Efron, Sydney Lemmon, Ryan Kiera, is directed by Keith Thomas (The Vigil) and created by the producers of The Invisible Man. The story has become a classic and the intense nature of the film creates a canvas for a dynamic soundtrack.

The Firestarter soundtrack utilizes some of the best elements of Carpenter’s famous musical repertoire and charts exciting new territory. The tracks range from fist pumping sci-fi anthems to slow reverb drenched piano ballads and each utilizes a variety of sonic applications. Skulking beats, skittering synths, crushing guitars and an ever-lurking echo come together to create an album that is atmospheric and also deeply melodic, cohesive and eclectic. These three musicians are all working in the peak of their individual and collaborative creativity and this soundtrack further solidifies them as masters of the craft.

TRACK LISTING

1. Mother’s Love
2. Lot 6 (Main Titles)
3. Are You Scared Of Me?
4. Dodge Ball Heats Up
5. Corporate Menace
6. Burned Hands
7. Rainbird Fights Vicky
8. Bless Mommy
9. Flashback Kills
10. Police Arrive
11. Sniper Attack
12. Charlie Alone
13. Charlie’s Powers
14. I’ll Find You
15. Charlie’s Rampage
16. Rampage Ends
17. Firestarter (End Titles)

“To be at the edge, at the precipice of anything, requires deep surrender. It’s like dying over and over again. In the tidal throes of life at its fullest and most intense is the space where grace and strength is fortified and cultivated, is what I am learning” Indigo Sparke ruminates on her magnetic second full-length album Hysteria, a huge and beautiful sweeping work, one that possesses a rare, reflective power. From the first few notes, in the first song, Blue, something chilling and captivating pierces straight into the listener’s chest. With harmonies reminiscent of the voices in our heads, she examines love, loss, grief, a newly realized rage, her history, dreams, and the emotional weather patterns surrounding those sensations: her words tell the stories, and the sounds act them out. It’s a diary built for big stages. ‘Hysteria’ arrives just a year after her striking, minimalist debut, Echo. Here though, Sparke offers an expansive body of work—it’s a simultaneously nostalgic yet clear and complex collection that expands her sound and outlook.

Work on the record began at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic while Sparke was stranded in quarantine in her native Australia waiting for her visa to be renewed so she could return to the States. Echo was being prepared for release, but Sparke was already experiencing a flow of creative thought as a result of shifts in her own life. “I was going through an intense separation and processing all of that in the deep flux of the world collapsing,” she recalls. “I was moving through huge waves of grief and trying to reconcile what was going on, internally and externally. The grief opened a doorway to the past I thought I had made peace with. But there were days where I just couldn’t get off the floor. It felt like everything was falling through this hole in my chest. It felt stark and nauseating to feel such immense groundlessness whilst also looking at all the different versions of myself I had been. All the varied different chapters I had experienced, from heavy drug use, to sexual abuse, love in all its forms, complex trauma and mental health, time spent living in India and Bali seeking something deeper to make sense of it all. It was almost like my life was flashing before my eyes. I realized I was in a profound altered state, as everything simultaneously stood still around me yet was flashing violently inside of me.”

After moving back to New York in the spring of 2021, Sparke finished writing the album’s 14 songs and decamped upstate with producer Aaron Dessner (The National, Taylor Swift). “I just had a really strong intuitive gut feeling that I would do this album with Aaron. We had met once years before in Eau Claire so I asked my manager to reach out to him. When we first talked, we talked about co-writing from scratch, I did have a big folder of demos but was nervous to share them, but after he heard them he said, ‘There’s so much to work with in here already,’” Sparke recalls on how Dessner, who also contributes instrumentation along with multi-instrumentalist and long time collaborator Shahzad Ismaily and drummer Matt Barrick (The Walkmen, Muzz), got involved in bringing Hysteria to life. “Aaron is such an incredible person, to feel his generosity and to feel him in my corner is a true gift. It definitely took a moment for me to get used to a different way of working and hand my trust and heart over to him and his vision but it also felt so natural and we became close friends in the process.”

The connection felt intuitive for both Sparke and Dessner who recalls “I started hearing ideas listening to her voice almost immediately. We connected by phone and had a long talk. She was incredibly open and gracious and really it was creatively inspiring from the moment we started working. It always feels like some weird miracle when songs emerge that you want to listen to all the time -- and this was definitely the case with her record. It feels cohesive and timeless and inspired to me in a way that I know I will keep coming back to. I think the chemistry is right.” Centering Sparke’s powerful vocals throughout, Hysteria is packed with big guitars and layered instrumentation that practically acts as the album’s lungs, giving every note breath. If Echo bore the mark of producer Adrianne Lenker’s intimate, spectral approach, then Hysteria is comparatively full-bodied and warm like a raging fire, as Dessner’s ornate instrumentation perfectly compliment Sparke’s songwriting. The result is music that sounds timeless.

This is music that sounds huge even as it zooms in on the trials and turmoils of one’s inner life, from the pulsing immediacy of “Infinity Honey” to the soaring “God Is a Woman’s Name” or the towering chorus on “Hold On.” You can hear Sparke reflecting on reconciliation, grief, hope, and the passage of time on the perpetually building “Pressure in My Chest” and the airy, Joni Mitchell-esque title track, which finds her embracing a gorgeous upper register over gently strummed guitar. “Set Your Fire on Me” builds and bursts not unlike Angel Olsen’s own raw folk-rock expressionism—and then there’s the stark opener and first single “Blue,” which acts as a cosmic road map for Sparke’s own journey in life. “It was very stream-of-consciousness—it just came out in one go,” she says while discussing how the song came together. “It’s almost like a biopic, or my own version of The Odyssey, charting what I’d been going through while traveling through the realms of time. Being in the movement of grief, memory, and love was intense and beautiful for me, because I didn’t feel stagnant—so the song has a galloping sense of expression as a result. It doesn’t let up.” While reflecting on the album’s thematic bent Sparke observes “My mum pointed out how often I use the word ‘blue,’ which is kind of ironic because that’s what my name means.” There’s all the shades of what blue could be, emotionally, and tonally throughout the record.

To Sparke, Hysteria is reflective of the growth she’s experienced over the last many years—to the point where, in her words, it almost presents a different artistic perspective entirely. “I feel like I matured a lot in this epoch of expression,” she explains. “When you are alone in the dark, you see yourself more clearly. I realized a lot of my behavior and patterns living at edge states. The edge of hope, sorrow, joy, etc. I was at the axis point inside of love right at the edge of a place that had been a home of hysteria for me in the past. Since this reckoning I’ve been determined to find a sense of surrender in the chaos. An unwavering trust and faith. And a will to remain kind and calm and patient with myself so that I can move towards embodying grace more and more. It’s the only way to survive for me now. So there’s a deeper acceptance of who I am and what’s made me, me. I think in the process of all of this somewhere along the road I quietly became a woman and now I don’t feel as fragile as I once did, or now, I accept the wild inner landscape of myself and my history and it gives me a different kind of strength to work from.”

While the world that Sparke inhabits is a rich tapestry of sound that pulls the listener into circular spaces of seemingly never ending minimalistic textures and harmonic suspensions, what’s most clearly on display is her voice and her song forms. Deceptively simple structures wind like labyrinths in a whirlwind of lyrical expression and vocal pageantry calling to mind the early works of PJ Harvey, Meredith Monk, and the like. These compositions are a warm invitation into her world

TRACK LISTING

CD
Blue
Hysteria
Pressure In My Chest
God Is A Woman’s Name
Why Do You Lie?
Pluto
Infinity Honey
Golden Ribbons
Real
Sad Is Love
Set Your Fire On Me
Hold On
Time Gets Eaten
Burn

Vinyl
Side A
Blue
Hysteria
Pressure In My Chest
God Is A Woman’s Name
Why Do You Lie?
Side B
Infinity Honey
Golden Ribbons
Real
Sad Is Love
Set Your Fire On Me
Hold On
Burn

7"
Side A
Hold On
Side B
Time Gets Eaten
Pluto

Criminal, The Soft Moon’s fourth studio album, is a confessional work. Through the stark lens of shame and guilt that has followed Luis Vasquez since a violent childhood growing up within the humming ambient sprawl of ’80s Mojave Desert, here he documents the gut-wrenching sound of going to war with himself.

Criminal marks a striking and important chapter in his self-exploration, both artistically and emotionally. As a young musician living in Oakland, Vasquez began to try and process the narrative of his difficult upbringing veiled through musical exploration.

Working with producer Maurizio Baggio at La Distilleria in Bassano Del Grappa, Italy, Criminal sees Vasquez further explore putting his lyrics at the forefront and letting his raw emotions flow.

Sacred Bones is now repressing this favourably received record in a bunch of new colors in celebration of the label’s 15th year anniversary.

“His bleakest - and most cohesive - music yet” - All Music

“On his fourth album as The Soft Moon, post-punk auteur Luis Vasquez finally breaks from a whisper into a scream.” - Pitchfork

“There are plenty of deliciously bitter pleasures here for anyone who similarly loves brooding in that blacked-out, candlelit bedroom of the mind.” - A.V Club

TRACK LISTING

01. Burn
02. Choke
03. Give Something
04. Like A Father
05. The Pain
06. It Kills
07. ILL
08. Young
09. Born Into This
10. Criminal

In the words of Jenny Hval: “Blood Bitch is an investigation of blood. Blood that is shed naturally. The purest and most powerful, yet most trivial, and most terrifying blood: Menstruation. The white and red toilet roll chain which ties together the virgins, the whores, the mothers, the witches, the dreamers, and the lovers. Blood Bitch is also a fictitious story, fed by characters and images from horror and exploitation films of the '70s. With that language, rather than smart, modern social commentary, I found I could tell a different story about myself and my own time: a poetic diary of modern transience and transcendence. There is a character in this story that is a vampire Orlando, traveling through time and space. But there is also a story here of a 35-year old artist stuck in a touring loop, and wearing a black wig. She is always up at night, jet lagged, playing late night shows - and by day she is quietly resting over an Arp Odyssey synthesizer while a black van drives her around Europe and America. So this is my most fictional and most personal album. It’s also the first album where I’ve started reconnecting with the goth and metal scene I started out playing in many years ago, by remembering the drony qualities of Norwegian Black Metal. It’s an album of vampires, lunar cycles, sticky choruses, and the smell of warm leaves and winter.”

Jenny Hval has developed her distinct take on intimate sound since the release of her debut album in 2006. For her last two solo albums, 2013's Innocence Is Kinky and 2015’s Apocalypse, girl, Hval has received thoughtful and widespread international acclaim for her fascinating voice, singular delivery and markedly non-traditional arrangements which incorporate elements of poetry, prose writing,
performance art, and film. She eloquently brings to light issues of both male and female gaze.

TRACK LISTING

1. Ritual Awakening
2. Female Vampire
3. In The Red
4. Conceptual Romance
5. Untamed Region
6. The Great Undressing
7. Period Piece
8. The Plague
9. Secret Touch
10. Lorna

“The whole point of this record was to share every emotion that I feel,” says The Soft Moon’s Luis Vasquez. “No two songs are the same. It’s about existing in the world as a human being and experiencing many emotions and experiences throughout life.”

And so hence the title Exister, a record rooted in the ecstatic joys and crippling lows that life can throw up and how just hanging on and existing is sometimes all we have. “Exister is my way of saying ‘I’m here, deal with it.’” Vasquez says.

Sonically, this expression is a vast, expansive and potent one. The opening ‘Sad Song’, which unfurls with a dense brooding atmosphere, Vasquez describes as almost a ballad, while tracks such as ‘The Pit’ capture the opposite end of the musical spectrum, exploding as a thundering piece of industrial techno complete with gut-churning levels of bass.

‘Monster’ - a song that follows a human metamorphosis into an unrecognizable and destructive being - seamlessly combines a deeply melodic, almost electro pop, vocal hook with a slow build atmospherics to create something equally beautiful and unsettling. ‘Become the Lies’ explores the devastating consequences of being lied to by your own family and is a post-punk stomper, merging charging basslines, pummelling drums and snaking guitars, all of which combine explosively. Elsewhere the album runs the gauntlet of everything from ambient to dark wave - features ferocious guest contributions from fish narc and Special Interest’s Alli Logot on ‘Him’ and ‘Unforgiven’ - all while retaining that distinct tone that unmistakably The Soft Moon.

TRACK LISTING

1.Sad Song
2. Answers
3. Become The Lies
4. Face Is Gone
5. Monster
6. The Pit
7. NADA
8. Stupid Child
9. Him (Feat. Fish Narc)
10. Unforgiven (Feat. Alli Logout)
11. Exister

Time is a beguiling, indistinct entity...sometimes standing still, sometimes bending back upon itself with premonitions or memories of the future. Growing out of a pen pal style correspondence that took place over the course of a year, separated by the Atlantic Ocean, Gloria de Oliveira and Dean Hurley passed thoughts and music back and forth that would eventually form their collaborative album, Oceans of Time. The result is an aural tapestry of that exchange: woven from conceptual threads of the celestial within, mortality and the realm beyond stars.

The duo’s partnership is an effortless merge, yet it’s the steady presence of de Oliveira’s vocals that endows the record with itssense of potency. Throughout the album, there is an innate understanding of how a lyric across a chordal color can sharpen an emotional truth. Much like a sunbeam that pierces a spiderweb to reveal its intricacy, her lyric and melody are purposely aimed in order to illuminate the truths deep within oneself... a process that ties us all to the universal. The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, a professed influence, wrote about the truth as something that was inherently subjective, less about the concrete reality of what is believed and more about how it is experienced by the believer.

Frequent David Lynch collaborator Dean Hurley sets the tonal and sonic landscape of each track on the album, lending a layered ether that envelops, frames and holds de Oliveira’s vocals. With its impressionistic synths, shimmering guitars, and ethereal sonics, Oceans of Time at moments recalls the foundational dreampop of 4AD acts like Cocteau Twins and Lush. The album feels especially attuned to the connections between the physical and transcendental realms, and the best dreampop has a way of making the veil between two worlds feel just a little bit thinner.

Oceans of Time is a key that has the power to release its listener from the handcuffs of reality, however briefly...

TRACK LISTING

1. Intro
2. I’m Nebel
3. Ashore Of The Cosmic
4. Seven Summits
5. Something To Behold
6. Hanging Gardens
7. Eyes Within
8. All Flowers In Time
9. Astral Bodies
10. In The Tenth Year Of
11. Picture Of A Picture
12. Further Than The Stars

Last year Sacred Bones released the groundbreaking album Sounds of the Unborn which was made by using biosonic MIDI technology to translate Luca Yupanqui’s in utero movements into sound. With the help of her parents, Psychic Ills bassist Elizabeth Hart and Lee Scratch Perry collaborator Iván Diaz Mathé, Luca’s prenatal essence was captured in audio. They designed a ritual, a kind of joint meditation for the three of them, with the MIDI devices hooked to Elizabeth’s stomach, transcribing its vibrations into Iván’s synthesizers. They let the free-form meditations flow without much interference, just falling deeper into trance and feeling the unity. After five hour-long sessions, the shape of an album began to emerge. Elizabeth and Iván then edited and mixed the results of the sessions, respecting the sounds as they were produced, trying to intervene as little as possible, allowing Luca’s message to exist in its raw form.

The album received widespread attention and was featured in NPR, The Guardian and Audiofemme among others. Conversations is an album featuring remixes by some of contemporary music’s most visionary participants including electronic music pioneer Suzanne Ciani, new age legend Laraaji, fan favorites Peaking Lights and up and coming star Nialah Hunter, among others. These remixes bring new and vibrant musicality to the richly dimensional and moving sounds created with the original release.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A
A1. V2.2 (Suzanne Ciani Remix)
A2. V3.2 (Peaking Lights Remix)
A3. V4.2 (Hiro Kone Remix)
A4. V3.1 (Nailah Hunter Remix)
SIDE B
B1. V2.1 (Dallas Acid Remix)
B2. V5 (Dean Hurley Remix)
B3. V1 (Morita Vargas Remix)
B4. V4.1 (Laraaji Remix)

Thou have a bit of a reputation for doing Nirvana covers, even releasing of a full album of them titled Blessings of the Highest Order during the height of quarantine. The infamously ravenous Thou fans were stuck in their rooms, drinking every drop and begging for more and just their luck the band decided to release a full-length compilation of their non-Nirvana covers they recorded and released from 2009-2022.

All of the songs on A Primer of Holy Words appeared on limited pressings of various split EPs and benefit compilations. The range of bands being covered is wide: Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains from abandoned tribute projects; Born Against from a small press European compilation; Ginger Quail, an obscure New Orleans punk band from the late 90s; and so on. Regardless of their standing in the civilian world, all of these bands and songs have had a strong imprint on Thou--much more so than “sludge” or metal in general or “the swamp” of New Orleans.

New Noise Magazine described some of the tracks saying “They’ve got a Black Sabbath ‘Sweet Leaf’ cover that they’ve dirtied up to the point where it sounds like a High on Fire original, a blackend-sludge version of Born Against’s ‘Well Fed Fuck,’ a bewitched version of Pearl Jam’s ‘Spin the Black Circle,’ and an appropriately gross and desperate cover of Shellac’s ‘Prayer to God.’ It’s as good or better than their Nirvana album imho.” And while the mentioned tracks will be on the vinyl version sans “Sweet Leaf” it will have a different track list from 2020’s digital release including a cover of the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s iconic track “Maps”.

This collection includes artwork from former New Orleans - now Mexico City artist Rachel Speck from her Tropical Goth imprint.

TRACK LISTING

1. Introduction
2. Prayer To God - Shellac
3. Spin The Black Circle - Pearl Jam
4. No Excuses - Alice In Chains
5. Fourth Of July - Soundgarden
6. Maps - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
7. Well Fed Fuck - Born Against
8. Screaming At A Wall - Minor Threat
9. Anarchy’s Stupid - Ginger Quail
10. Tremor Christ - Pearl Jam
11. Paroled In ‘54 - Agents Of Oblivion
12. Don’t Let It Bring You Down - Neil Young

Baton Rouge sludge band Thou have released over a dozen LPs worth of music, collaborated with divergent artists like Emma Ruth Rundle and The Body and released covers that run the full gamut of genres. Continuing their practice of bucking typical metal tradition, their latest record, a split release with composer Gewgawly I, is a soundtrack created for the highly anticipated new video game NORCO.

Gewgawly I has created a master work of ambiance, not only reminiscent of some of the best game soundtracks from the 80s and 90s but also a stunning work of contemporary experimental music pushing the genre forward in exciting ways. Thou have rounded out the game’s grit with a wash of downtuned doom and drone. The band has previously been described as “For fans of: alienation, absurdity, boredom, futility, decay, the tyranny of history, the vulgarities of change, awareness as agony, reason as disease,” and these themes come to life vividly in Thou’s collaboration with the richly illustrated world of NORCO.

“Thou represents an aspect of Louisiana that’s close to my heart. The members know the suburbs of New Orleans and Baton Rouge well. They capture a kind of strange irreverence in their sound and visuals that’s specific to the region and has influenced the game NORCO,” says Yuts from Geography of Robots. ”We’ve been trying to collaborate for a while, and I’m just stoked it’s finally happening!”

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A
A1.Delirious Eyes
A2. Parish (Overworld Theme)
A3. Grainer To Chicago
A4. Fourth Flood
A5. Endless Eve
A6. Troy Story
A7. Perilloux & Sons LLC
A8. Disorientation Is Normal
A9. Trinkets

SIDE B
B1. Behind The Fenceline
B2. Last House In Dimes
B3. Ditch Man’s Curse
B4. Planner Will Hide
B5. Your Pawpaw
B6. Refinery Fight
B7. Apocryphon Of Kenner John
B8. Here Comes The Scum
B9. True Padu

SIDE C
C1. The Long Road
C2. Corrupted Sanctum
C3. Forgive Me, Father

SIDE D
D1. Virtual Death
D2. Homunculus
D3. View Of A Burning City

Red velvet curtains draw back to reveal a cosmic wheel of fortune, floating in the deep black star-studded theater of infinite space. A whirl of timbres, personalities, and stories. The Turning Wheel revolves around themes of human unity, the future, divine love and the enigmatic ups and downs of being a part of this carnival called Life.

Venturing to push the boundaries of her primarily synth-based work, Spelling took on the ambitious task of orchestrating and self-producing an album that features an ensemble of 31 collaborating musicians. The Turning Wheel incorporates a vast range of rich acoustic sounds that cast Spelling’s work into vibrant new dimensions. The double LP is split into two halves - “Above” and “Below.” Lush string quartet shimmer combines with haunting banjo and wandering bassoon leads, as the album progresses from the more jubilant, warm, and dreamy mood of the “Above” tracks to the more chilling and gothic tone of the “Below” tracks. This progression is anchored by Spelling’s familiar bewitching vocal style that emphasizes the theatrical and folkloric heart of her songwriting.

The release of The Turning Wheel was delayed by over a year from its intended release date in 2019, but the forced pause ended up serving as a blessing in disguise. Navigating the chaos of recording and producing the remaining instrumentalists - either remotely or through rigid socially distanced studio sessions - was immensely difficult, however the delays ultimately provided the opportunity for Spelling to dedicate more attention to her lyrics. The Turning Wheel demonstrates a distinct evolution of lyrical style, from the more incantatory and abbreviated approach of her previous work to a more expansive, narrative production.

The Turning Wheel is a manifestation of this considerable effort, time, and collaborative energy and will surely become a classic for its elegance. And while the artist’s eclectic influences, from soul to psych to pop to noise, remain present, something entirely new has also been born in the cosmic soup of this massive undertaking: a grand and genreless adventure. One that allows the artist’s authenticity to shine and also marks her as a conduit for something with a magic of its own.

TRACK LISTING

1. Little Deer
2. Always
3. Turning Wheel
4. The Future
5. Awaken
6. Emperor With An Egg
7. Boys At School
8. Legacy
9. Queen Of Wands
10. Magic Act
11. Revolution
12. Sweet Talk

Rob wanted the world of The Northman to feel harsh and uncomfortable, and for everything to feel like it was caked in mud and dry blood, so it was crucial for the score to mirror that.” Composers Robin Carolan (Tri-Angle Records) and Sebastian Gainsborough (Vessel) were given a task of epic proportions when director Rob Eggers(The VVitch, The Lighthouse) asked them to create the score for his ambitious and highly anticipated new film The Northman, releasing on April 22nd. They needed to make a score that both honored the immense research that had gone into the authenticity of this Viking era period piece and complimented the cinematic maximalism of the film for a modern audience. The artists stretched themselves to the depths of their creativity and the resulting album is a gorgeous sonic tableaux that places the listener right in the center of the film.

While arranging the score the composers consulted musician and ethnographer PoulHøxbro for inspiration and insight into the history of Viking music. Having backgrounds in left field electronic music, Robin and Sebastian felt liberated by the constraint of using a small selection of musical tools for this piece. “Electronic music has almost limitless potential when it comes to making sounds and that’s obviously an incredible thing, but you can also go down the wormhole and get lost in it sometimes. There’s no risk of that happening when you only have a few primary instruments to draw upon.” Robin remarked.

They utilized traditional instruments such as the tagelharpa, langspil, kravik lyre, and säckpip to build the cinematic world of The Northman but they also took creative freedoms in adding instruments likes drums, which some academics believe wouldn’t have played a big part in Viking musical culture, simply due to the lack of archaeological evidence of actual drums. “One of the pieces we wrote was intended to emulate the sound of a bullroarer; an ancient instrument used in sacred rituals or in battle to intimidate enemies. It makes a really disorienting roaring vibrato sound and low frequencies capable of traveling insane distances.” Robin says when asked about one of the more unique aspects of the score. Everyone involved put so much effort into both their research and their creativity and this richness is evident in every track. The album as a whole is a cinematic masterpiece of sound and ambiance, both gorgeous and disturbing, like the film it so beautifully accompanies.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: A wonderful soundtrack from the ever-reliable Sacred Bones, by music scene aficionados Carolan & Gainsborough. Tense, orchestral scores and deep ambient passages, both bleak and beautiful, perfect for listening to as meditative home listening as well as a perfectly measured soundtrack.

TRACK LISTING

1. Approaching Hrafnsey
2. The King
3. Entering The Temple
4. Last Teardrop
5. Blood Tree, Part I
6. Strike, Brother
7. Escape
8. I Will Avenge You, Father
9. The Land Of The Rus
10. A Burning Barn
11. Seeress
12. Raven’s Omen
13. Storm At Sea / Yggdrasill
14. Iceland
15. I Will Save You, Mother
16. Slave Work
17. Guðrún
18. Follow The Vixen’s Tail
19. He-Witch
20. Draugr
21. Mound Dweller
22. To The Games
23. Birch Woods
24. First Of Many
25. Trollish Sorcery
26. Svið Night, Part I
27. Svið Night, Part II
28. I Am Your Death
29. Come Morning
30. I Am His Vengeance
31. Óðinn
32. Valkyrie
33. Vestrahorn
34. Hidden Valley
35. Blood Tree, Part II
36. Blóð Inside / I Choose Both
37. A Maiden King
38. The Wolf Has Grow
39. The Gates Of Hel / Slain By Iron
40. Hekla
41. Cut The Thread Of Fate
42. Make Your Passage / Valhöll
43. Ættartré / End Credits

There is a way a voice can cut through the fascia of reality, cleaving through habit into the raw nerve of experience. Nika Roza Danilova, the singer, songwriter, and producer who since 2009 has released music as Zola Jesus, wields a voice that does that. When you hear it, it is like you are being summoned to a place that’s already wrapped inside you but obscured from conscious experience. This place has been buried because it tends to hold pain, but it’s also a gift, because once it’s opened, once you’re inside of it, it can show you the truth. Zola Jesus’s new album, Arkhon, finds new ways of loosing this submerged, stalled pain.

On previous albums, Danilova had largely played the role of auteur, meticulously crafting every aspect of Zola Jesus’s sound and look. This time, she realized that her habitual need for control was sealing her out of her art. Arkhon sees Zola Jesus’s first collaboration with producer Randall Dunn (Sunn O))), Earth, Mandy soundtrack, Candyman soundtrack) and with drummer and percussionist Matt Chamberlain, whose prior work appears on albums by Fiona Apple, Bob Dylan, and David Bowie. Arkhon runs the spectrum from songs whose weight lies in their bare simplicity, like “Desire,” an elegiac piano composition about the end of a relationship that was recorded acoustically in a single take, to towering, groove-oriented tracks like “The Fall” and the tight, interlocking percussion and samples of a Slovenian folk choir in “Lost,” which propel narratives of collective despair and mutual comfort in kind. Through these turns, Arkhon reveals itself as an album whose power derives from abandon. Both its turmoils and its pleasures take root in the body, letting individual consciousness dissolve into the thick of the beat.

Despite the darkness curled inside reality, there is power, too, in surrendering to what can’t be pinned down, to the wild unfurling of the world in all its unforeseeable motion. That letting go is the crux of Arkhon, which marks a new way of moving and making for Zola Jesus.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Zola Jesus' music has always been uncompromising, and had a distinct identity all of it's own, but on 'Arkhon', Danilova mixes her distinctive compositional style with a number of collaborators, resulting in a fractured, visceral hybrid of modern industrial music and abstracted synth-pop.

TRACK LISTING

1 Lost
2 The Fall
3 Undertow
4 Into The Wild
5 Dead And Gone
6 Sewn
7 Desire
8 Fault
9 Efemra
10 Do That Anymore 

For over a decade, Nika Roza Danilova has been recording music as Zola Jesus. She’s been on Sacred Bones Records for most of that time, and Okovi marks her reunion with the label.

Fittingly, the 11 electronics-driven songs on Okovi share musical DNA with her early work on Sacred Bones. The music was written in pure catharsis, and as a result, the sonics are heavy, dark, and exploratory. In addition to the contributions of Danilova’s longtime live bandmate Alex DeGroot, producer/musician WIFE, cellist/noise-maker Shannon Kennedy from Pedestrian Deposit, and percussionist Ted Byrnes all helped build Okovi’s textural universe.

With Okovi, Zola Jesus has crafted a profound meditation on loss and reconciliation that stands tall alongside the major works of its genre. The album speaks of tragedy with great wisdom and clarity. Its songs plumb dark depths, but they reflect light as well.

TRACK LISTING

1. Doma
2. Exhumed
3. Soak 
4. Ash To Bone 
5. Witness 
6. Siphon 
7. Veka 
8. Wiseblood
9. NMO
10. Remains
11. Half Life 

When Chris Stewart set out to write and record his third album as Black Marble, he was newly living in Los Angeles, fresh off a move from New York. The environment brought much excitement and possibility, but the distance had proved too much for the car he brought along. With it out of commission indefinitely, he purchased a bus pass and planned his daily commute from his Echo Park apartment to his downtown studio, where he began to shape Bigger Than Life. The route wound all through the city, from the small local shops of Echo Park to the rising glass of the business district, to the desperation of Skid Row. The hurried energy of the environment provided a backdrop for the daily trip. When Stewart finally arrived at his studio, he’d look through his window at the mountains and the sky, seeing the beauty that makes L.A. unique — the same beauty his fellow commuters, some pushed to the edge of human endurance, had seen. That was the headspace he was in when he began to map out the syncopated drums and staccato arpeggiation of Bigger Than Life, an ode to his new condition and a shimmering synth-pop response to its cacophony.

“The album comes out of seeing and experiencing a lot of turmoil but wanting to create something positive out of it,” Stewart explains. “I wanted to take a less selfish approach on this record. Maybe I’m just getting older, but that approach starts to feel a little self-indulgent. So with this record, it’s less about how I see things and more about the way things just are. Seeing myself as a part of a lineage of people trying to do a little something instead of trying to create a platform for myself individually.”

As with every Black Marble album, Stewart recorded, produced, and played everything you hear on Bigger Than Life using entirely analog gear, though the process was new. This time around, he wrote everything on his MPC and sequenced it live to his synths — only using the computer to record, not to create. “I try new approaches every time, which helps me stay engaged but also its kind of a trick I play on the creative side of my brain,” Stewart says. “Keeping one side of my mind busy on organizational creativity I think frees up the other side where the inspirational creativity comes from.”

TRACK LISTING

Never Tell (4:17)
One Eye Open (4:43)
Daily Driver (3:54)
Feels (4:42)
The Usual (1:35)
Grey Eyeliner (3:32)
Bigger Than Life (3:54)
Private Show (4:41)
Shoulder (4:12)
Hit Show (1:36)
Call (3:43) 

This February the story of the infamous Unabomber Ted Kaczynski will receive its theatrical debut in a new Tony Stone directed film, Ted K. Kaczynski is notorious for both tragically murdering three people (and wounding an additional 23) via bombs sent in the mail and for his numerous writings on the evils of technology he composed during his primitive residency in the woods of Montana. Stone’s choice to have the renowned electronic artist Blanck Mass score the film is somewhat ironic and creates an obvious tension perfect for the controversial and complex subject matter.

2020 saw the first Blanck Mass movie score, for the soundtrack to Nick Rowland’s acclaimed cinematic debut Calm with Horses. This expansion into new areas of melodic composition and textural exploration won Blanck Mass many new fans, with the BBC’s acknowledged number one film buff Mark Kermode proclaiming the work the soundtrack of the year. In 2021, Blanck Mass won the prestigious Ivor Novello Award for Best Original Film Score and has firmly established himself at the forefront of the latest wave of experimental soundscape wizards.

Recording during lockdown at his studio in Edinburgh, Scotland, Blanck Mass’s Ben Power was in the perfect setting for a musical piece intended to capture the isolation central to Kaczynski’s story. Power was also working with a director in a time zone 10 hours behind and thus many sessions required working in the middle of the night, which added a fitting intensity to the composition process. He said of the project “I wanted it to feel like an ‘epic’” and drew on the legends Sergio Leone and Ennio Morricone for inspiration in encapsulating the energy of the perceived good vs. evil.

The gentle madness of sound achieved is exquisite and slowly builds in intensity and desperation as the score moves along. Power is able to perfectly capture the complexity, the terror and the deep emotionality of the film while presenting an often breathtakingly beautiful and always masterful album that stands on its own as a work of art.

TRACK LISTING

1. Scroll
2. Montana (Main Theme)
3. Noise Destroys Something Wonderful
4. Pesticides
5. Revenge
6. ComTech
7. Greyhound
8. Second Test
9. Desecration
10. Tell Me Your Heart
11. Dark Materials
12. Becky’s Theme
13. Blue Tunnel
14. Manifesto
15. Ranger Gary
16. At Peace - Freedom Club
17. Prophecy
18. Skidders
19. Montana (Reprise)

Sacred Bones is an independent record label and publishing company based in Brooklyn, NY that started over 15 years ago in the basement of a record store and has gone on to become a critically respected label that is synonymous with forward-thinking music and culture and won the 2020 Libera Award for Label of the Year. With over 300 releases under our belt, we’ve had the distinct pleasure to work with legendary artists the likes of Mort Garson, Patti Smith, Trent Reznor, and the late Genesis P-Orridge, as well as fostered the respective music careers of film directors David Lynch, John Carpenter, and Jim Jarmusch.

We’ve also released career-defining albums by newer artists like Zola Jesus, SPELLLING, Molchat Doma, Marissa Nadler, Amen Dunes, and Jenny Hval, all while retaining our cult underground through smaller curated releases from some of the best punk and experimental artists. Our fifteenth anniversary as a label will be honored with several events and an exciting vinyl repress collection but the crown jewel of this year’s celebration is the compilation Todo Muere that features beloved artists from our roster covering their favorite songs that we have released over the years.

The compilation features innovative pairings, like punk stalwarts Institute covering art pop sensation SPELLLING, and matches made in heaven like Marissa Nadler’s gorgeously eerie cover of David Lynch’s already eerie song “Cold Wind Blowin.” Some songs are sister renditions with their own imaginative touch like Constant Smiles’ cover of Jenny Hval while others, like the Zola Jesus song performed by Thou, Mizmor and Emma Ruth Rundle take on entirely different genres. And while each song on the comp stands on its own as a testament to the many song writing and song performance talents housed on the Sacred Bones roster, the compilation as a whole was sequenced as a cohesive whole deserving prime placement on any record shelf.

TRACK LISTING

1. Boris - Funnel Of Love (SQURL) (4:37)
2. Anika - Godstar (Psychic TV) (3:03)
3. The Hunt - I Can’t Stand (Zola Jesus) (3:48)
4. Constant Smiles - Spells (Jenny Hval) (4:56)
5. Dean Hurley - Our Day Will Come (Mort Garson) (2:48)
6. Domingae - Change (Anika) (5:16)
7. Thou, Mizmor, And Emma Ruth Rundle - Night (Zola Jesus) (4:02)
8. Hilary Woods - In Heaven (David Lynch) (3:55)
9. Institute - Boys At School (SPELLLING) (5:37)
10. Marissa Nadler - Cold Wind Blowin’ (David Lynch) (4:07)
11. The Holydrug Couple - Coca-Cola Blues (Psychic Ills) (6:17) 

On the tribute album Songs for Tres, Psychic Ills band members come together to commemorate the late Tres Warren who passed away just as the world turned upside down in March of 2020. Isolated, feeling helpless and lost by the death of her musical soul mate and collaborator of 18 years, bassist Elizabeth Hart found making music to be her only outlet in a time where people were unable to be physically together to mourn. So, she reached out to Adam Amram, Jon Catfish DeLorme and Brent Cordero, the main players in the Ills line up since the release of their last full length album Inner Journey Out (2016), to ask if they would embark on this cathartic journey with her. This was a different kind of production endeavor for Hart driven solely by “the aching need and urgency” to do something to honor her friend.

Hart, Amram, DeLorme and Cordero reunited for the first time five months after losing Warren at Amram’s loft – the same spot where they’d rehearsed countless times before – although this time with a different objective. In an effort to share, support and create, the old friends joined in the painful and healing experience of making this tribute album to cope with their loss. The band members wrote, arranged, and rehearsed for months and the result of their work culminated in a weekend of recording in the southern Catskill mountains at the end of 2020. This isolated and intimate environment was a perfectly serene and fitting location to finalize their story.

Throughout the album, Hart, Amram and DeLorme take turns as the vocal lead on each of the songs while Cordero showcases his finger-picking guitar skills in addition to his piano and organ playing, which he is known for. Along with the core band members, a number of other musicians played on the album, many of whom had collaborated on prior Psychic Ills releases and wanted to be a part of this last collaboration in memory of Warren. Keeping the project in the Ills family, Hart produced the album alongside Iván Diaz Mathé, the long-time Psychic Ills sound engineer.

The album consists of five original tracks and four cover songs. Initially, learning the covers was just a method for the musicians to “break the ice” and play together again for the first time without their band leader. However, those tracks became just as important to include as the originals because of their essential role in the process of coming together to make the album. The cover songs were chosen because of their unique connections to the band’s memories of Warren. Dennis Wilson’s "Rainbows" and Fleetwood Mac’s "Station Man" come from two of Warren’s favorite albums, Pacific Ocean Blue and Kiln House. The band also recorded Blaze Foley’s "Clay Pigeons" and Powell St. John’s "Right Track Now." The idea for the latter was suggested by Amram. Warren once sent him a clip of Roky Erikson singing a moving rendition of that song in the film Demon Angel and it had stuck with him ever since.

Hart wrote "I’ll Walk With You" on the day of Warrens’ passing, at the time not knowing what it meant. When she got the call with the heartbreaking news, it became clear to her what the song was about. Relying on a gently lilting string arrangement to set the tone, this duet features Mazzy Star vocalist Hope Sandoval alongside Hart. Sandoval previously collaborated with Psychic Ills accompanying Warren on "I Don’t Mind" (2016). The ideas for "Home" and "Walk Around," two other songs on the album by Hart, started simply with an acoustic guitar and lyrics, a hopeful exercise to connect with her lost friend. Brent Cordero’s instrumental "Whole Lotta Piece of Mind" is nothing short of a transcendental experience. By running his pedal steel through a Leslie speaker, Jon Catfish DeLorme crafts the unique tone showcased on Wonderful Feeling, a moving example of studio experimentation combined with old school techniques. DeLorme describes it as “an attempt to highlight the musical experience I shared with Tres both sonically and thematically. What resulted is the unguarded exaltation I feel lucky to have shared with my fellow bandmates.” Adam Amram’s “Into the Sea” was composed spontaneously the week Warren passed. The melodic tune has a hopeful lightness and Amram describes it simply as “a song to my brother”. Their connection shines through.

In fact, the entire album is one that radiates the layers of friendship, love and music that will forever exist between this family of musicians. As the band themselves state: “This album was made out of love and a commitment to honor our dear friend and bandmate.” A portion of the proceeds from the album will be donated to RAICES, a charity who aids children who have been displaced at the Texas/Mexico border.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. Rainbows
2. I’ll Walk With You
3. Wonderful Feeling
4. Clay Pigeons
5. Home

Side B
1. Station Man
2. Right Track Now
3. Whole Lotta Peace Of Mind
4. Walk Around
5. Into The Sea

In an effort to sublimate the negative energy surrounding everyone in 2020, legendary Japanese post-rock band Boris focused all of their energy creatively and turned out the most extreme album of their long and widely celebrated career, NO. The band self-released the album, desiring to get it out as quickly as possible but intentionally called the final track on the album “Interlude” with anticipation of a follow-up.

The follow-up comes with W the band’s debut album for their new label Sacred Bones Records. The record opens with the same melody as “Interlude” in a piece titled “I want to go to the side where you can touch...” and in contrast to the extreme sounds found on NO, this new album whispers into the listener’s ear with a trembling hazy sound meant to awaken sensation.

On all of W Wata carries the lead vocal duties. In general the styles on the album range from noise to new age, as is typical with one of our generation’s most dynamic and adventurous bands, but there is thread of melodic deliberation through each song that successfully accomplishes the band’s goal of eliciting deep sensation. Be it through epic sludgey riffs, angelic vocal reverberations or the seduction of their off-kilter percussion, Boris will have you fully under their spell.

NO and W weave together to form NOW, a duo of releases that respond to one another. In following their hardest album with this sensuous thundering masterpiece they are creating a continuous circle of harshness and healing, one that seems more relevant now than ever and shows the band operating at an apex of their musical career.

TRACK LISTING

1. I Want To Go To The Side Where You Can Touch…
2. Icelina
3. Drowning By Numbers
4. Invitation
5. The Fallen
6. Beyond Good And Evil
7. Old Projector
8. You Will Know - “Ohayo” Version
9. Jozan

Typically, a band’s big indie label debut doesn’t come 15 albums into its career, but with Constant Smiles’ Paragons, here we are.

Primary songwriter and sole “constant” member Ben Jones—who considers Constant Smiles a collective—sees its impressive output as a way to document the group’s evolution. Since its live debut as a noise duo on Ben’s home of Martha’s Vineyard in 2009, Constant Smiles has grown to include contributions from 50 other members, all of whom have personal connections to the group’s extended family. And while the collective has indulged an array of musical whims along the way - including Ben’s penchant for penning a new set’s worth of material for each live performance - Constant Smiles’ sound has tightened up considerably over their past couple of albums, in large part as a result of Ben’s working relationship with Mike Mackey, who has become his main creative partner. This increased focus manifests on Paragons in the band’s most cohesive batch of songs to date, ranging from shimmering psych-pop excursions to bittersweet, piano and string-accented strummers, and an execution that feels like a massive step forward for the band.

Through its recent forays into dream pop and shoegaze (Control) and synth-pop (John Waters), Constant Smiles has learned how to incorporate its experimental inclinations more fluidly into the mix. Artists like Yo La Tengo, and the more recent Rat Columns, are good touchstones for Constant Smiles’ musical approach - tethering to an indie-pop core while perennially mining genres, always finding new ways to intrigue listeners and pursue a unique vision

TRACK LISTING

01. Introduction
02. Run To Stay
03. Hope For Tomorrow
04. The Things I Miss
05. Learning To Start Over
06. With Death In Mind
07. Interlude
08. The Weight
09. Daisy, Table For Three
10. Please Don’t Be Late
11. Shame
12. Where Am I Now?
12. Outro

On Fast Idol, LA-based Black Marble reaches back through time to connect with the forgotten bedroom kids of the analogue era, the halcyon days of icy hooks and warbly synths. Harmonies are piped in across the expanse of space, and lyrics capture conversations that seem to come from another room, repeat an accusation overheard, or speak as if in sleep of interpersonal struggles distilled down to one subconscious phrase. At the same time, percussive elements feel forward and cut through the mix with toms counting off the measures like a lost tribe broadcasting through the bass and tops of a basement club soundsystem.

Melodies roll with the fizz and charm of Jacno and phrases repeated are electric torchlight ballads sung after hours in William Gibson’s San Francisco. ‘Somewhere’ opens in sombre herald, before dropping into a fast freeway tempo; the glassy synths and crisp beats cut through the anxious moods on ‘Bodies’ and ‘Try’ sits in a lineage with cult bands like Asylum Party. ‘The Garden’ is a journey through a post-apocalyptic cityscape, earthed by the pulse of a drum machine whereas ‘Ship To Shore’ could be a lost Oppenheimer Analysis B-side, and the album’s closer ‘Brighter and Bigger’ catches a sentiment like The Dadacomputer has learned to feel emotions. He captures the loneliness of Ray Bradbury’s atomic-era sci-fi and the apocalyptic but revolutionary spirit of Godard’s Sympathy for the Devil, as in ‘Preoccupation’, the beating heart of the album, which conjures ambivalent scenes of an empty world and the comfort to be found in a
shared humanity.

Emerging from the early 2000s New York synth scene, Black Marble carried on the tradition of early synthwave pioneers like Martin Dupont and Modern Art who repurposed synths once reserved for expensive studios and stadium rock superstars. Seeking to channel this spirit, Black Marble recalls the gauzy tape wow and flutter of The Membranes and the warbling VCO of Futurisk, carrying on a sound that seeks to channel the future while imprinting residue of the past.

TRACK LISTING

01. Somewhere
02. Bodies
03. Royal Walls
04. Try
05. The Garden
06. Say It First
07. Streetlight
08. Ceiling
09. Ship To Shore
10. Preoccupation
11. Brighter And Bigger

In 2018, David Gordon Green’s Halloween, starring icon Jamie Lee Curtis, slaughtered the box office, earning more than $250 million worldwide, becoming the highestgrossing chapter in the four-decade franchise and setting a new record for the biggest opening weekend in history for a horror film starring a woman. The film had the distinction of being the first film in the series with creator John Carpenter’s direct involvement since 1982’s Halloween III: Season of the Witch. Carpenter served as an executive producer, a creative consultant, and, thrillingly, as a soundtrack composer, alongside his collaborators from his recent solo albums, Cody Carpenter and Daniel Davies.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: John Carpenter is obviously one of the most legendary figures in the soundtracking biz, and in the newest iteration with Cody &co, we get possibly his strongest late-career work to date. 'Halloween Kills' is a wonderfully evocative, perfectly pitched soundtrack from one of the true masters. Everything you'd expect.

TRACK LISTING

01.Logos Kill
02. Halloween Kills (Main Title
03. The Myer’s House
04. First Attack
05. Stand Off
06. Let It Burn
07. He Appears
08. From The Fire
09. Strodes At The Hospital
10. Cruel Intentions
11. Gather The Mob
12. Rampage
13. Frank And Laurie
14. Hallway Madness
15. It Needs To Die
16. Reflection
17. Unkillable
18. Payback
19. Michael’s Legend
20. Halloween Kills (End Titles) 

Caleb Landry Jones is a continual creator. The Texan-born star found fame as an actor - you’ll recognise him from key roles in X-Men: First Class, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, amongst others - but music is perhaps his first love, and his source of greatest comfort. A chance encounter with famed auteur Jim Jarmusch brought him into the orbit of Sacred Bones, and the stalwart independent released Caleb’s 2020 debut album The Mother Stone. Psychedelic in a defiantly non-retro way, this indulgent, freewheeling trip won critical acclaim, but masked a secret - he’d already finished another album.

Filming alongside Tom Hanks in dystopian themed Finch, Caleb found himself writing during those long evenings after the shoot in locations across New Mexico, idling away his hours by focusing on creativity. “I need it,” he says, “I’ve tried working without it. On one acting job, I intentionally didn’t bring a guitar to try and do it without music... but that didn’t last long. I need to create something - it could be a drawing, it could be a song - because otherwise I feel like I’m wasting time. Which is something I do plenty of on my own!”

With his creative faculties burning, Caleb knew he had to get straight back into the studio when filming stopped. Linking with the same cast who formed The Mother Stone, he resumed his partnership with producer Nic Jodoin, based out of the elegant Valentine Recording Studio in Los Angeles. A studio steeped in history - everyone from Bing Crosby to Frank Zappa worked there - he interrupted mixing sessions for his own debut album in order to focus on something different.

Gadzooks Vol. 1 is unlike anything you’ve heard before - comparisons range from Skip Spence’s fractured masterpiece Oar through to skewed troubadour Robyn Hitchcock, via John Lennon’s black moods on The White Album and Frank Zappa’s caustic surrealism. Recording to tape, Caleb would hack away at each take, re-assembling the songs like Escher diagrams. “It’s like when you’re swimming in the pool,” he smiles, “and you’re doing a bit of butterfly, and then that gets old after a while. So then you start doing breaststroke, and then that gets old after a while. I think it’s just a reaction from the place where we were before.”

Part of a flood-tide of creativity - as its title suggests, a second half to this album is already on the horizon - Gadzooks Vol. 1 is thrilling, shocking, and wonderfully entertaining. Each song starts and finishes in entirely unique places, often totally divorced from each other. “I’m trying to write something very simple,” he says, “And it gets really abstract because I don’t know any other way.”

TRACK LISTING

1. Never Wet
2. Yesterday Will Come
3. The Loon (A Gate Away)
4. Bogie
5. Gloria
6. California
7. For A Short Time (There Was Loving)
8. A Slice Of Dream
9. This Won’t Come Back

The score for Only Lovers Left Alive - a collaboration between SQÜRL (Jim Jarmusch, Carter Logan and Shane Stoneback) and Dutch lutenist Jozef Van Wissem - serves as a reflection of the distinct textures of Detroit and Tangier, bridging ancient and modern sounds, entangled and timeless.

Avant-Baroque lute weaves through twenty-first century guitar grit, heavy back beats, Moroccan percussion, synth bass, field recordings, and numerous sonic effects to create a cinematic tapestry.

Guest vocalist Madeline Follin (Cults) appears on SQÜRL’s syrup soaked re- interpretation of the Wanda Jackson hit “Funnel of Love”. Zola Jesus’ commanding vocal soars through Van Wissem’s “In Templum Dei”. And Yasmine Hamdan’s intimate and evocative “Hal”, recorded on the set of the film and mixed by SQÜRL .

The film and soundtrack album were released worldwide in 2014, and quickly earned the group the Cannes Soundtrack Award from a consortium of film and music critics. In the years that have followed it has remained a favorite of critics and fans alike, who have continued to hunt down the limited vinyl copies in existence.

TRACK LISTING

1 Streets Of Detroit (0:37)
2 Funnel Of Love (3:41)
3 Sola Gratia (Pt. 1) (3:26)
4 The Taste Of Blood (5:50)
5 Diamond Star (1:15)
6 Please Feel Free To Piss In The Gard (4:21) 7 Spooky Action At A Distance (3:35)
8 Streets Of Tangier (1:37)
9 In Templum Dei (2:58)
10 Sola Gratia (Pt. 2) (5:10)
11 Our Hearts Condemn Us (4:36) 12 Hal (4:30)
13 Only Lovers Left Alive (3:32) 14 This Is Your Wilderness (3:52)

Luca Yupanqui was not yet born when she recorded her debut album. The music on the aptly titled Sounds of the Unborn out April 2 on Sacred Bones, is the expression of life in its cosmic state — pre-mind, pre-speculation, pre-influence, and pre-human. It is the first album created by a person while they were still inside the womb, the expression of a soul that hasn’t yet seen the light of day nor taken a single breath of air. It is a message that comes from a different realm, a sublayer of our existence.

Sounds of the Unborn was made with biosonic MIDI technology, which translated Luca’s in utero movements into sound. With the help of her parents, Psychic Ills bassist Elizabeth Hart and Lee Scratch Perry collaborator Iván Diaz Mathé, Luca’s prenatal essence was captured in audio. They designed a ritual, a kind of joint meditation for the three of them, with the MIDI devices hooked to Elizabeth’s stomach, transcribing its vibrations into Iván’s synthesizers. They let the free-form meditations flow without much interference, just falling deeper into trance and feeling the unity. After five hour-long sessions, the shape of an album began to emerge.

Elizabeth and Iván then edited and mixed the results of the sessions, respecting the sounds as they were produced, trying to intervene as little as possible, allowing Luca’s message to exist in its raw form.

This cosmic soul summoning created new sounds, striking into uncharted territory for Elizabeth and Iván as musicians. A new language was being created, a new form of communication. It was a music without intellect or intentionality behind it, with no preconception or attempt to create any specific sound or melody. Every note on Sounds of the Unborn occurred naturally.

It is human nature to wonder what life is like inside another human being’s consciousness. How does it feel? What does it sound like? All these questions became stronger and more important to Elizabeth and Iván while they were waiting for Luca to come into the world. At a certain point the questions turned into, What would she say if she could speak? How would she react to the outer world? And ultimately, What kind of music would she play if she was able to? This album is an attempt to answer those questions.

Elizabeth and Iván mixed the album in 2020. Luca, now an infant, sat in the studio with them while they worked. Her awareness of what was happening was astounding. She would open her eyes wide and stare at her parents, seemingly recognizing her own sounds from the womb, knowing that they were revisiting those rituals that made them come together as one. Those mixing sessions were technically the first time Luca had heard her own music, but her reaction made it clear that that wasn’t really the case — she had already lived it.

TRACK LISTING

1. V5
2.V4.3 Pt.2
3.V2.1
4.V2.2
5.V3.2
6.V4.2
7.V4.1
8.V1
9.V3.1
10.V4.3 Pt.1

Dies Occidendum is a mythical voyage across fog-laden, scorched earth terrain from the original friar of dark hip hop, Dj Muggs the Black Goat. Known and revered as the sonic mastermind behind both Cypress Hill and his own Soul Assassins imprint, here Muggs sheds the MCs and presents his latest dark-soaked productions as an illuminated manuscript of sorts; a fully immersive, instrumental soundtrack to the mysterious Dies Occidendum. No one wields the Excalibur of sonic darkness quite like Muggs. Combining ingredients of psych rock, gypsy folk with modern elements of trap, forged together under layers of his signature sonic grime, Muggs has created yet another blueprint for the utmost sonic menace and macabre. The Renaissance is upon us. Long live King Muggs.

ABOUT DJ MUGGS:
One of the original architects of dark hip hop in the early ’90s, DJ Muggs helped craft a singular sound that blended darker sensibilities of psychedelic rock and hip hop in a unique way that influenced many in its wake. As the primary producer of legendary rap group Cypress Hill, Muggs’ productions and sonic sensibilities are unmistakable and deeply revered by the truest of hejkvgads. Muggs’ own MC round-robin imprint, Soul Assassins has been home to countless productions, laying sonic drop cloths for everyone from Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, Chuck D, GZA, Mobb Deep to MF Doom, Freddie Gibbs, Roc Marciano and Mach-Hommy.

TRACK LISTING

1 Incantation (2:15)
2 The Chosen One (3:03)
3 Nigrum Mortem (4:07)
4 Liber Null (3:41)
5 Alphabet Of Desire (2:12)
6 Subconscious (2:42)
7 Veni Vidi Amavi (1:48)
8 Anointed (2:23)
9 Anicca (2:57)
10 Transmogrification (5:16)

What is the utility of pain? Can it do anything but fester? In Ferneaux explores pain in motion, building audio-spatial chambers of experience and memory. Using an archive of field recordings from a decade of global travels, isolation gave Blanck Mass an opportunity to make connections in a moment when being together is impossible. The record is divided into two long-form journeys that gather the memories of being with now-distant others through the composition of a nostalgic travelogue. The journeys are haunted with the vestiges of voices, places, and sensations. These scenes alternate with the building up and releasing of great aural tension, intensities that emerge from the trauma of a personal grieving process which has perhaps embraced its rage moment.

An encounter with a prophetic figure on the streets of San Francisco presented the question of “how to handle the misery on the way to the blessing.” This is the quandary of the impasse we now all find ourselves in, trapped in our little caves, grappling with the unease of the self at rest – without movement, without the consumerist agenda of “new experiences.” The possibility of growth, always defined by our connections with others, held in limbo. Sartre said that “Hell is other people,” but perhaps this is the Inferno of the present: the space of sitting with the self.

A blessing is often thought of as a future reward, above and beyond the material plane. With In Ferneaux, Blanck Mass wrangles the immanent materials of the here-and-now to build a sense of transcendence. Here, the uncanny angelic hymn sits comfortably beside the dirge. The misery and blessing are one.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: If you know Blanck Mass, you know that his uncompromising mix of hypnotic synthy OPN business oft turns into an all-encompassing wall of tectonic noise and spine-tingling euphoric washes. Those of you who don't will find exactly that here, but constantly and perfectly progressing in both timbre and scope. It's intoxicating and unmissable stuff, Blanck Mass is never anything but.

TRACK LISTING

A1 Phase I (21:29)
B1 Phase II (19:33)

Mort Garson’s road to cool cultural caché and the sublimity of Plantasia meant a decades’ long journey through an underworld of sophisticated, international, string-laced dreck (i.e., your great-grandparents’ record collection) to arrive at Music from Patch Cord Productions, this set of queasy-listening you now hold.

Music from Patch Cord Productions shows that Garson’s knack was to exist in both worlds, super-commercial and waaay out. He cut delirious minute-long blasts for commercials (as to whether or not they were actually ever aired remains unknown) and spacecraft-hovering études. Were there really account managers out there in the early ’70s that gave the greenlight to these commercial compositions which seemed to anticipate everyone from John Carpenter to Suicide? What were these campaigns actually for, Soylent Green? Regardless, Mort’s jingle work laid the groundwork for the future. As Robert Moog himself noted: “The jingles were important because they domesticated the sound.” Via Garson’s wizardry, the synthesizer transcended novelty to ubiquity and dominance.

Other curios and questions abound. How did Garson’s arrangement work for Arthur Prysock’s satiny body worship album This Is My Beloved transmogrify into the body-snatcher pulses of “This is My Beloved”? Are the two pieces even related? What is the IATA code for the airport of “Realizations of an Aeropolis”? What denomination is the “Cathedral of Pleasure”? If “Son of Blob” sounds like a hallucinatory melted ice cream truck theme, what on earth does Blob’s father sound like? Every sound wrangled out of that Moog by Garson pushes things further and further out.

Of course, these are all questions that may never get answers, as Garson wasn’t the most organized modern day composer, busy as he was conjuring strange new realms with his circuit boards and synths. He worked and wrote right up until his death in 2008, his daughter and Sacred Bones still going through all of the material left behind. He wouldn’t live to see it, but his renaissance was just around the corner, the seeds that had been scattered in record bins around the world suddenly coming to bear fruit. Take a bite!

TRACK LISTING

1. Is He Trying To Tell Us Something? (Instrumental) (3:27)
2. Rhapsody In Green (Alternate Take) (2:05)
3. Baroque No. 2 (2:14)
4. This Is My Beloved (3:05)
5. Music For Advertising #1 (1:02)
6. Music For Advertising #2 (1:03)
7. Music For Advertising #3 (1:06)
8. Killers Of The Wild (1:04)
9. Realizations Of An Aeropolis (2:07)
10. Music For Advertising #4 (1:05)
11. Music For Advertising #5 (0:33)
12. Z - Theme From “Music For Sensuous Lovers” Part I (Instrumental) (3:11)
13. The Blobs - Son Of Blob Theme (2:29)
14. Cathedral Of Pleasure (6:09)
15. Ode To An African Violet (Alternate Take) (3:57)
16. The Time Zone - Space Walker (2:47)
17. Dragonfly (3:20)
18. The Lords Of Percussion - Geisha Girl (4:00)
19. The Electric Blues Society - Our Day Will Come (2:36)

What if the antihero in your favorite film or book had no chance to repent, reconcile, or redeem himself ? There’s no victim to rescue. There’s no evil to thwart. There’s no tyranny to turnover. Instead of saving the day against his bet-ter judgment, he just walks a Sisyphean circle of existential malaise doomed to repeat yesterday’s vices without the promise of a better tomorrow. Rather than tell this story on the screen or on the page, Uniform tell it on their fourth full-length album, Shame. The trio – Michael Berdan (vocals), Ben Greenberg (guitar, production), and Mike Sharp (drums) – strain struggle through an industrialized mill of grating guitars, warped electronics, war-torn percussion, and demonically catchy vocalizations.“Thematically, the album is like a classic hard-boiled paperback novel without a case,” says Berdan. “It focuses on the static state of an antihero as he mulls over his life in the interim between major events, just existing in the world. At the time we were making the record, I was reading books by Raymond Chandler, James Ellroy, and Dashiell Hammet and strangely found myself identifying with the internal dialogues of characters like Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe.”The lead-up to this moment proved just as intriguing as any of those characters’ exploits. Born in 2013, Uniform bulldozed a path to the forefront of under-ground music.

TRACK LISTING

1. Delco (4:36)
2. The Shadow Of God’s Hand (3:54)
3. Life In Remission (4:26)
4. Shame (4:02)
5. All We’ve Ever Wanted (3:59)
6. Dispatches From The Gutter (1:54)
7. This Won’t End Well (3:41)
8. I Am The Cancer (7:51)

“I think most of it takes place in dreams,” Caleb Landry Jones says of his debut solo album, The Mother Stone. “I’m talking more about dreams than I am about what’s happened in the physical realm. Or I’m talking about both, and you’re not sure what’s what.”

Caleb Landry Jones was born in Garland, Texas in 1989 and comes from a long line of fiddle players. Three, maybe four generations back, on his mother’s side. His grandfather wrote jingles for commercials, his mother was a singer-songwriter who taught piano lessons in the house, and his father was a contractor who did a lot of work for the Dallas music-equipment retailer Brook Mays and knew a guy if you needed a bass or a banjo. But Jones is not sure if you can hear any of this in his music and he does not play the fiddle.

Jones has been writing and recording music since age 16, around the same time he started acting professionally. Played in a band called Robert Jones for a minute, lost his guitar player to higher education, moved into his own place, and broke up with somebody, at which point the songs really started coming hard and fast.

“I started playing guitar and playing more keys,” he says, “and then started writing record after record after record after record, because I didn’t know what to do with myself. It was a good way of healing. And it felt like as soon as I started doing it, it felt like it needed to happen all the time.”

In the ensuing years he’d spend a lot of time carrying unrecorded songs around in his head like goldfish in a bag, waiting for a chance to record them in marathon sessions in his parents’ barn. “You gotta play the songs every day, or every two or three days, to keep ‘em,” he says. “Otherwise I forget them.” Sometimes the ideas fuse together, one chapter to the next; this is how songs grow into sevenplus-minute epics like the ones on The Mother Stone. His back catalog is around seven hundred songs deep— a whole discography of full albums, most of them unheard outside the barn, at least for now.

TRACK LISTING

1. Flag Day / The Mother Stone
2. You’re So Wonderfull
3. I Dig Your Dog
4. Katya
5. All I Am In You / The Big Worm
6. No Where’s Where Nothing’s Died
7. Licking The Days
8. For The Longest Time
9. The Hodge-Podge Porridge Poke
10. I Want To Love You
11. The Great I Am
12. Lullabbey
13. No Where’s Where Nothing’s Died (A Marvelous Pain) 
14. Thanks For Staying
15. Little Planet Pig

When S KryshNashikhDomov the debut album by MolchatDoma, was released in 2017, it announced a bold new voice in underground music. The album found a passionate audience on Bandcamp and other streaming services and was released on CD and cassette. Sacred Bones Records is proud to present the album on vinyl for the first time.

MolchatDoma (translated as “Houses Are Silent”), founded in 2017 in Minsk, Belarus, stands at the intersection of post-punk, new-wave and synth-pop. Dark yet danceable, and with a heavy dose of goth ethos, their music is reminiscent of the masters that predate them, but make no mistake: MolchatDoma creates a sound and meaning that is immediately recognizable as all their own.

The band is comprised of EgorShkutko, who sings the Russian lyrics in his deep monotone, Roman Komogortsev on guitar, synths, and drum machine, and Pavel Kozlov on bass and synths.

TRACK LISTING

1. DomaMolchat (2:57)
2. Kryshi (2:48)
3. LudiNadoeli (2:59)
4. MashinaRabotaet (3:09)
5. NeobychniyChelovek (3:31)
6. Pryatki (3:19)
7. Technologia (3:35)
8. Tishina (4:20)
9. Ya Ne Kommunist (3:13)

The second LP by Belarussian trio Molchat Doma, Etazhi, meaning “Floors”, was first released in 2018 on Berlin-based Detriti Records. It became a viral hit, garnering over one million views on YouTube and becoming a legitimate phenomenon on Bandcamp. The band may fly under the radar in their native Belarus, but they’ve reached huge audiences across Europe and beyond. Six separate vinyl pressings of the album have sold out in quick succession, and Sacred Bones Records is now thrilled to bring the record back in print for good.

MolchatDoma (translated as “Houses Are Silent”), founded in 2017 in Minsk, Belarus, stands at the intersection of post-punk, new-wave and synth-pop. Dark yet danceable, and with a heavy dose of goth ethos, their music is reminiscent of the masters that predate them, but make no mistake: MolchatDoma creates a sound and meaning that is immediately recognizable as all their own
.
The band is comprised of EgorShkutko, who sings the Russian lyrics in his deep monotone, Roman Komogortsev on guitar, synths, and drum machine, and Pavel Kozlov on bass and synth

TRACK LISTING

1. Na Dne (4:07)
2. Tancevat (3:23)
3. Filmy (4:17)
4. Volny (4:11)
5. Toska (3:07)
6. Prognoz (3:05)
7. Sudno (Boris Ryzhy) (2:21)
8. Kommersanty (3:47)
9. Kletka (4:44)

Hilary Woods’ Birthmarks has been a labor of intensity and intuition, written over the course of two years. Recorded whilst heavily pregnant between Galway and Oslo in the winter of 2019, Woods explores the oscillating and volatile processes of selfhood and becoming, hidden gestational growth, and the birthing of the Self, amidst continuous social and personal change.

Birthmarks is a record that hunts for ways in which to revisit and caress wounds left by the memory of their scars. In its mystery and attentiveness to the art of alchemy and the world of the unseen, it is a journey through textural fog and feral density that gives way to passages of voracious sonic exorcism and poetic healing. Its eight songs traverse planes of visceral physicality, stark tender space, and breathtaking introspective beauty.

Spurred on and crafted by the impulse to create a more corporeal sonic tendon for her songs to inhabit, Woods took her vision and home recordings to Norwegian experimental noise producer and filmmaker Lasse Marhaug. The collaboration proved rare and fruitful and lies at the heart of this record. Field recordings, analogue bass synthesizers, hushed vocals, and the breath are underpinned with heavy noise processing, fierce and wide cello, rich percussion, sable saxophone, and electronics.

Birthmarks is inspired and informed by ideas of inner transmutation in the face of anxiety, post-war Japanese and wet-plate photography, early music, the secret life of trees, wolves, drone, the drawings of Francis Bacon, the images of Francesca Woodman, the films of Chris Marker, the experiential collapse of community, and the power of the lone human voice. It is a deeply powerful and enigmatic record that ultimately transcends its disquiet roots. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Tongues Of Wild Boar
2. Orange Tree
3. Through The Dark, Love
4. Lay Bare
5. Mud And Stones
6. The Mouth
7. Cleansing Ritual
8. There Is No Moon

New York band The Men have always been genre-morphic and unpredictable, but on their eighth album Mercy they have truly done something new as a band. For the first time since forming, they have now created three straight records with the same lineup, and the result is a sound that feels developed and continuous despite running the gamut of mood, in true Men fashion. Having this lineup stability has allowed the band to deepen and finesse the sounds they were exploring on 2017’s Drift and produce tracks that have a unique and distinct voice.

Mercy was recorded live at Serious Business studio to 2” tape with Travis Harrison. The band did minimal overdubs, contributing to the urgent feel of the recording. The album is simply the sound of a band that has a deep and unjaded passion for songwriting and creation, working at the peak of their collaborative connection.

Mercy takes the listener on a cinematic journey throughout its seven tracks, beginning with the soothing but lonesome country rock opener “Cool Water.” This track, like many on the record, feels timeless, illustrating the band’s ability to write songs you are convinced you’ve heard before on the B-side of your favorite record from the ’70s. You are then pulled into its longest song, the 10-and-a-half minute psychedelic blues rock opus of “Wading in Dirty Water.” The band explore some new territory on Mercy, and they also revisit the Suicide-style sound they have been working on for a while through Drift and also with one of their side projects Dream Police, resulting in the highlight “Children All Over the World,” a song that could stand next to any classic rock hit but with The Men’s unique artistic savvy. It wouldn’t be a contemporary Men record without a total fuzzed-out stomper a la their Open Your Heart-era sound, and this record’s offering, “Breeze,” shows the band’s complete command of this urgent and pulverizing style. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: As stylistically varied a record we've ever heard from The Men, Mercy skilfully toes the line between pastiched 80's soft-focus synth work and grooving psychedelia, dipping toes into a wealth of genres along the way including gothic rock, blues and even veering towards the dancefloor. A fascinating and engrossing collection.

TRACK LISTING

1. Cool Water
2. Wading In Dirty Water
3. Fallin’ Thru
4. Children All Over The World
5. Call The Dr.
6. Breeze
7. Mercy

Stars Are the Light, the luminous seventh album by the American psych explorers Moon Duo, marks a progression into significantly new territory. From a preoccupation with the transcendental and occult that informed Ripley Johnson and Sanae Yamada’s guitar-driven psych rock, and reached its apotheosis in the acclaimed Occult Architecture diptych, Stars Are the Light sees the band synthesize the abstract and metaphysical with the embodied and terrestrial.

Branching out from Occult Architecture Vol. 2, the album has a sonic physicality that is at once propulsive and undulating; it puts dance at the heart of an expansive nexus that connects the body to the stars. These are songs about embodied human experience — love, change, misunderstanding, internal struggle, joy, misery, alienation, discord, harmony, celebration — rendered as a kind of dance of the self, both in relation to other selves and to the eternal dance of the cosmos.

Taking disco as its groove-oriented departure point, Stars Are the Light shimmers with elements of ’70s funk and ’90s rave. Johnson’s signature guitar sound is at its most languid and refined, while Yamada’s synths and oneiric vocals are foregrounded to create a spacious percussiveness that invites the body to move with its mesmeric rhythms. With Sonic Boom (Spacemen 3, Spectrum) at the mixing desk in Portugal’s Serra de Sintra, (known to the Romans as “The Mountains of the Moon”) the area’s lush landscape and powerful lunar energies exerted a strong influence on the vibe and sonic texture of the album.

On embracing disco as an inspiration, Yamada says, “It’s something we hadn’t referenced in our music before, but its core concepts really align with what we were circling around as we made the album. Disco is dance music, first and foremost, and we were digging our way into the idea of this endless dance of bodies in nature. We were also very inspired by the space and community of a disco – a space of free self-expression through dance, fashion, and mode of being; where everyone was welcome, diversity was celebrated, and identity could be fluid; where the life force that animates each of us differently could flower.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: Formed in 2009 by Wooden Shjips' main man Ripley Johnson and his wife Sanae Yamada, Moon Duo had been chugging along quite nicely until 2017's two records in a month opus (‘Occult Architecture’ Volumes 1 and 2) signalled a slight detour, but here we are a further two years hence at a veritable fork in the road. Moon Duo now groove! Not rockin' grooves like Hawkwind of old (very cool still, obviously), but proper, disco and funk inspired, pitter-pattering grooves like Peaking Lights. Helped in no small part by Spacemen 3's Sonic Boom, a lot of the sounds here do actually recall the late 90s UK post rave scene in their blissed out, bubbling buoyancy and hippie, repetitive, lose yourself in nature vibes. This record glides! Synths are further to the fore but Ripley's ever evolving infinite ether guitar flickers and dances around them to maximum effect. Apart from one throbbing song which is a throwback to their previous records (“Eye 2 Eye”) this albums glows with a kind of contained euphoria, languid and laid back, looping and luscious. The beats here are never obtrusive, it still sounds exactly like them, but them that's swapped pot for ecstasy, a couch for a field! There has been the sneaking suspicion, of late, that Ripley Johnson was squirelling his better songs away to this, his so-called band on the side, and now, finally, with ‘Stars Are The Light’, the proof is in the pudding; he does! It's a majestic record.

TRACK LISTING

Flying
Stars Are The Light
Fall (In Your Love)
The World And The Sun
Lost Heads
Eternal Shore
Eye 2 Eye
Fever Night

At first listen, The Practice of Love, Jenny Hval’s seventh full-length album, unspools with an almost deceptive ease. Across eight tracks, filled with arpeggiated synth washes and the kind of lilting beats that might have drifted, loose and unmoored, from some forgotten mid-’90s trance single, The Practice of Love feels, first and foremost, compellingly humane. Given the horror and viscera of her previous album, 2016’s Blood Bitch, The Practice of Love is almost subversive in its gentleness—a deep dive into what it means to grow older, to question one’s relationship to the earth and one’s self, and to hold a magnifying glass over the notion of what intimacy can mean. As Hval describes it, the album charts its own particular geography, a landscape in which multiple voices engage and disperse, and the question of connectedness—or lack thereof—hangs suspended in the architecture of every song. It is,an album about “seeing things from above—almost like looking straight down into the ground, all of these vibrant forest landscapes, the type of nature where you might find a porn magazine at a certain place in the woods and everyone would know where it was, but even that would just become rotting paper, eventually melting into the ground.”

Prompted by an urge to find a different kind of language to express what she was feeling, the songs on Love unfurl like an interior dialogue involving several voices. Friends and collaborators Vivian Wang, Laura Jean Englert, and Felicia Atkinson surface on various tracks, via contributed vocals or through bits of recorded conversation, which further posits the record itself as a kind of ongoing discourse. “The last thing I wrote, which was my new book, had quite an angry voice,” says Hval, “The voice of an angry teenager, furious at the hierarchies. Perhaps this album rediscovers that same voice 20 years later. Not so angry anymore, but still feeling apart from the mainstream, trying to find their place and their community. With that voice, I wanted to push my writing practice further, writing something that was multilayered, a community of voices, stories about both myself and others simultaneously, or about someone’s place in the world and within art history at the same time. I wanted to develop this new multi-tracked writing voice and take it to a positive, beautiful pop song place... A place which also sounds like a huge pile of earth that I’m about to bury my coffin in.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: 'The Practice Of Love' is a huge, synthy behemoth of an album, percussive and momentous, but wonderfully balanced with Hval's spellbinding vocals echoing over the top. Shining with influences from all over the dance spectrum, with Italo basses and trancy stacked waves fading into jazzy wind instruments and hypnotic soaring harmonies.

TRACK LISTING

1. Lions (3:58)
2. High Alice (4:46)
3. Accident (4:11)
4. The Practice Of Love (3:03)
5. Ashes To Ashes (4:15)
6. Thumbsucker (4:16)
7. Six Red Cannas (4:07)
8. Ordinary (5:18)

Devour marks the fourth full-length record from Margaret Chardiet’s project Pharmakon and her most intense output to date. The album was recorded by Ben Greenberg (Uniform) and is the first Pharmakon album recorded live in studio. The A and B sides were each recorded as continuous takes with vocals from start to finish, marking a totally new process for the artist that allows the ferocity and immediacy of her live performance to resonate throughout. Devour also explores new sonic territory, with denser electronics, groovier hooks, and moments of her most unhinged vocal deliveries to date.

TRACK LISTING

1. Homeostasis
2. Spit It Out
3. Self-Regulating System
4. Deprivation
5. Pristine Panic / Cheek By Jowl

“In this post-industrial, post-enlightenment religion of ourselves, we have manifested a serpent of consumerism which now coils back upon us. It seduces us with our own bait as we betray the better instincts of our nature and the future of our own world. We throw ourselves out of our own garden. We poison ourselves to the edges of an endless sleep.

Animated Violence Mild was written throughout 2018, at Blanck Mass’ studio outside of Edinburgh. These eight tracks are the diary of a year of work steeped in honing craft, self-discovery, and grief - the latter of which reared its head at the final hurdle of producing this record and created a whole separate narrative: grief, both for what I have lost personally, but also in a global sense, for what we as a species have lost and handed over to our blood-sucking counterpart, consumerism, only to be ravaged by it. 

I believe that many of us have willfully allowed our survival instinct to become engulfed by the snake we birthed. Animated - brought to life by humankind. Violent - insurmountable and wild beyond our control. Mild - delicious.
This is perhaps the most concise body of work I have written to date. Having worked extensively throughout my musical life with dramatics, narrative, and ‘melody against all odds’, these tracks are the most direct and honest yet. The level of articulation in these tracks surpasses anything I have utilized before.”
- Benjamin John Power.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Huge lurching arpeggios and cavernous percussion snaps glitch their way around a solid core of 16-bit reductions and skittering vocal shards. Drawing a flawless line between game soundtracks, rawkous EDM and the slowly building electronics of dancefloor trance or the incremental atmospheric accentuation of 70's prog. Indescribably mad, but thoroughly addictive.

TRACK LISTING

1. Intro
2. Death Drop
3. House Vs. House
4. Hush Money
5. Love Is A Parasite
6. Creature/West Fuqua
7. No Dice
8. Wings Of Hate

Philosophy of Beyond, the second volume in Sound Supervisor Dean Hurley’s Anthology Resource series, continues Hurley’s experimental soundscape work into more ethereal and celestial territory. 12 tracks weave together a rich sonic tapestry built in part from comb-filtering experiments, tape loops, and sampled field excursions into unique acoustical environments. A bulk of the LP is assembled from Hurley’s sonic contributions to the recent feature film Perfect (2018, director Eddie Alcazar) as well as material made in residency for Art Gallery of New South Wales’ event Masters of Modern Sound...all of which are threaded together into a singular, cohesive dissertation on the afterlife.

Outlining a landscape beyond physical reality, the record serves as a soundtrack to the mysterious and immortal voyage of the soul into depths beyond the known and back again. What lies beyond physical reality? Beyond intellect and the system of the five senses? What do accounts of near death experiences, alien encounters, psychedelic drugs, astral projection, even strokes all have to do with this and why do each seem to share a core architecture of description?

A long time David Lynch collaborator, Hurley operated and managed Lynch’s Asymmetrical Studio from 2005-2018 where he worked closely with Lynch on the sound and music for his feature films, commercial work and albums; most recently providing material for the third season of Twin Peaks (Showtime). Hurley inaugurated the Anthology Resource series with a compilation of his licensed material from the show in 2017.

What is Anthology Resource? Anthology Resource is an ongoing compendium curated both from and for film and television in the library / production music tradition. A flagship source for outrésonic material, it was conceived to service the unique gap that straddles atmospheric score and sound design. Each release organizes thematic audio material fully licensable, non-exclusive and designed for motion picture based work and listeners alike.

TRACK LISTING

1. Edge Of The Known
2. The Curved Arrow Of Time
3. Dissension
4. Low Harmonic Fanfare / Growth
5. Exotic Matter
6. Far Boundaries
7. Splendor
8. Pastness
9. Echoes Of Known
10. In Knowing
11. Somewhere In Time
12. Birth

In the mid-1970s, a force of nature swept across the continental United States, cutting across all strata of race and class, rooting in our minds, our homes, our culture. It wasn’t The Exorcist, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, or even bell-bottoms, but instead a book called The Secret Life of Plants. The work of occultist/former OSS agent Peter Tompkins and former CIA agent/dowsing enthusiast Christopher Bird, the books shot up the bestseller charts and spread like kudzu across the landscape, becoming a phenomenon. Seemingly overnight, the indoor plant business was in full bloom and photosynthetic eukaryotes of every genus were hanging off walls, lording over bookshelves, and basking on sunny window ledges. The science behind Secret Life was specious: plants can hear our prayers, they’re lie detectors, they’re telepathic, able to predict natural disasters and receive signals from distant galaxies. But that didn’t stop millions from buying and nurturing their new plants.

Perhaps the craziest claim of the book was that plants also dug music. And whether you purchased a snake plant, asparagus fern, peace lily, or what have you from Mother Earth on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles (or bought a Simmons mattress from Sears), you also took home Plantasia, an album recorded especially for them. Subtitled “warm earth music for plants…and the people that love them,” it was full of bucolic, charming, stoner-friendly, decidedly unscientific tunes enacted on the new-fangled device called the Moog. Plants date back from the dawn of time, but apparently they loved the Moog, never mind that the synthesizer had been on the market for just a few years. Most of all, the plants loved the ditties made by composer Mort Garson.

Few characters in early electronic music can be both fearless pioneers and cheesy trend-chasers, but Garson embraced both extremes, and has been unheralded as a result. When one writer rhetorically asked: “How was Garson’s music so ubiquitous while the man remained so under the radar?” the answer was simple. Well before Brian Eno did it, Garson was making discreet music, both the man and his music as inconspicuous as a Chlorophytum comosum. Julliard-educated and active as a session player in the post-war era, Garson wrote lounge hits, scored plush arrangements for Doris Day, and garlanded weeping countrypolitan strings around Glen Campbell’s “By the Time I Get to Phoenix.” He could render the Beatles and Simon & Garfunkel alike into easy listening and also dreamed up his own ditties. “An idear” as Garson himself would drawl it out. “I live with it, I walk it, I sing it.”

But as his daughter Day Darmet recalls: “When my dad found the synthesizer, he realized he didn’t want to do pop music anymore.” Garson encountered Robert Moog and his new device at the Audio Engineering Society’s West Coast convention in 1967 and immediately began tinkering with the device. With the Moog, those idears could be transformed. “He constantly had a song he was humming,” Darmet says. “At the table he was constantly tapping.” Which is to say that Mort pulled his melodies out of thin air, just like any household plant would.

The Plantae kingdom grew to its height by 1976, from DC Comics’ mossy superhero Swamp Thing to Stevie Wonder’s own herbal meditation, Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants. Nefarious manifestations of human-plant interaction also abounded, be it the grotesque pods in Invasion of the Body Snatchers or the pothead paranoia of the US Government spraying Mexican marijuana fields with the herbicide paraquat (which led to the rise in homegrown pot by the 1980s). And then there’s the warm, leafy embrace of Plantasia itself.

“My mom had a lot of plants,” Darmet says. “She didn’t believe in organized religion, she believed the earth was the best thing in the whole world. Whatever created us was incredible.” And she also knew when her husband had a good song, shouting from another room when she heard him humming a good idear. Novel as it might seem, Plantasia is simply full of good tunes.

Garson may have given the album away to new plant and bed owners, but a decade later a new generation could hear his music in another surreptitious way. Millions of kids bought The Legend of Zelda for their Nintendo Entertainment System back in 1986 and one distinct 8-bit tune bears more than a passing resemblance to album highlight “Concerto for Philodendron and Pothos.” Garson was never properly credited for it, but he nevertheless subliminally slipped into a new generations’ head, helping kids and plants alike grow.

Hearing Plantasia in the 21st century, it seems less an ode to our photosynthesizing friends by Garson and more an homage to his wife, the one with the green thumb that made everything flower around him. “My dad would be totally pleased to know that people are really interested in this music that had no popularity at the time,” Darmet says of Plantasia’s new renaissance. “He would be fascinated by the fact that people are finally understanding and appreciating this part of his musical career that he got no admiration for back then.” Garson seems to be everywhere again, even if he’s not really noticed, just like a houseplant.

STAFF COMMENTS

Patrick says: Perfect for playing to plants, pasta and unborn children (Barry reckons you can play it to your cat too), this early electronic masterpiece is amongst the finest Moog records ever recorded. Shut your eyes and you’ll find yourself brushing through the verdant flora of a distant planet, glittering arps and delicate melodies accompanying your every move. Originally given away with any houseplant purchase at LA’s Mother Earth, this unique LP has since become a holy grail for open-minded audiophiles, and we’re eternally indebted to Sacred Bones for such a gorgeous reissue.

TRACK LISTING

(A)
1. Plantasia
2. Symphony For A Spider Plant
3. Baby’s Tears Blues
4. Ode To An African Violet
5. Concerto For Philodendron And Pothos

(B)
1. Rhapsody In Green
2. Swingin' Spathiphyllums
3. You Don't Have To Walk A Begonia
4. A Mellow Mood For Maidenhair 

Pirouetting on decadence, meeting eyes with a dizzy sensation, falling and flying at the same time—Lust for Youth have continually held poise through the most vitalizing of times. Their new album, a self-titled collection of eight songs, is surefooted where they had earlier feared to tread, and light-headed for a new set of reasons. The album is driven by a dance-pop agenda, hustling its way through upbeat peaks that level out into reflective ballads. While still taking clear cues from a crop of austere synth-pop, Lust for Youth sound brighter than they ever have before, taking tips from some of the flirtiest Eurobeat to aid their new direction.

On their previous album, Compassion, Lust for Youth examined euphoria and contemporary life with a wry wit. Where facetiousness masqueraded as commitment, compliments and fawning clearly yearned for a true connection. Lust for Youth sees Hannes Norrvide and Malthe Fischer taking some familiar strides, though to another place. The disaffected balearia is this time rendered into brighter pop compositions that bustle with intricate production. No longer galvanizing us with hooks, but with a songcraft unhindered by anxiety, the album presents a cohesion not seen in the project until now. Lyrically, the apprehension still hangs like tinsel. Often garish and celebratory, the droll mischief is this time more pointed, more personal, and far more self-aware. A thread of reflections upon the state of the world is artfully wound throughout the album, casting a quiet force upon the detachment of Norrvide’s vocals.

Lust for Youth have been one of love’s most honest confrères, detailing the pangs of what is all too often a sullen process. On this occasion, they look up. The pull of the world is different for us all, but it pulls us all.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Twinkling keys and huge, echoing kick drums form a throbbing backdrop to the 80's vox and dreamy atmospheric synth swells littered all over Lust For Youth's self titled masterpiece. Huge arps and chest-thumping basses work their way around a brilliantly written and hugely reminiscent melodic counterpoint. Lovely stuff.

TRACK LISTING

1. New Balance Point
2. Insignificant
3. Venus De Milo
4. Great Concerns
5. Fifth Terrace
6. Adrift
7. Imola
8. By No Means

With half the band having left their native Texas for New York, Readjusting the Locks is the first Institute album written across the country. Despite the distance it sounds every bit as cohesive as if they were all still hanging out every night in the same Austin dives. The newly NYC-based Moses Brown and Arak Avakian flew to Houston in October 2018, where they joined Barry Elkanick and Adam Cahoon to demo the entirety of the new album in a single day. In December, the band got back together in Brooklyn to record with their longtime producer Ben Greenberg (Uniform).

Where the previous Institute albums often wandered into the experimental, Readjusting the Locks strives to be economical, its 13 tracks clocking in at a tight 29 minutes. The band has seamlessly incorporated more ’77 rock n’ roll into their sound, some songs feeling like they could’ve been a Stiff Records single. This sound is emphasized by Greenberg’s expert production — crisp but still blown out and dirty. Lyrically, Readjusting the Locks moves away from the traditionally personal words of frontman Moses Brown. Rather than attacking the internal workings of his brain or its socialization, as on previous records, this album attempts to address the societal atmosphere in which his agita exists.

Blaming Neoliberalism and the irresponsible notions of utopia fostered under it, Brown argues that in recent decades the Western world’s assumption that humanity would continue to prosper into the future has, on the contrary, created a disastrous political vacuum. This has allowed banks, corporations, and their politicians to aimlessly advance the Neoliberal agenda into an inconceivably dangerous place. He argues that we are deadlocked in a permanent existential crisis, stuck in an unhumanitarian and environmentally destructive system so all-consuming that we will not find a clear alternative. Without a true plan for a sustainable future those in power will continue to offer humanity new policies, technologies, and politicians that promise change but are only capable of “readjusting the locks” on our incomprehensible existential predicament.

TRACK LISTING

1. M.P.S. (2:15)
2. Mon Cherie (1:53)
3. Let Me Be (2:02)
4. Indoctrination Set (1:45)
5. Roll Music (2:30)
6. Can’t See Nothin’ (1:14)
7. Shangri-La (2:56)
8. St John’s Wort (1:23)
9. Dazzle Paint (2:36)
10. Anxiety (1:53)
11. Utopia Sound (1:26)
12. Fooled Again (2:38)
13. Deadlock (4:28)

NYC’s The Men have made a name for themselves as wayfaring musicians, constantly evolving and eluding their listeners. Before they were genre-hopping through country, post-punk, noise rock, and more, they were applying that experimental nature within the more confined space of punk. Within that genre they were wildly adventurous, playing noise shows, hardcore shows, rock shows, and switching up the instrumentation as they saw fit, while always operating within a general punk ethos. Their first demo was a hand-dubbed and spray-painted run of 32 copies, half of which worked, and their first shows were at New York dives like Tommy’s Tavern, Matchless, and Don Pedro (all of which have been shut down).

That hand-dubbed demo kicked off a furious run of creative output from 2008 to 2011, much of which is now collected on the new compilation, Hated. The songs on Hated are pulled from a variety of sources — the debut demo tape, a split with Nomos, a 7", a 12" EP, and a slew of unreleased demos, outtakes, and live recordings. These songs show the huge range and potential of a band still in its infancy, when they were just beginning to blaze the path they’re still on to this day.

The core value of the original incarnation of The Men was work ethic. The band became a lifestyle for original members Chris Hansell, Mark Perro, and Nick Chiericozzi, with Hansell even living off unemployment checks to dedicate his time to the project. The three of them would jam and obsess over music together over all else.

For those who were at those early NYC shows, Hated will be a welcome reminder of a glorious time in the underground. For those who weren’t, it’s a chance to experience The Men as the locals did, and to get a glimpse of a Brooklyn DIY scene that doesn’t really exist anymore, at least not in the same way. And for diehard fans of the band, it’s a reminder of how much they’ve evolved, and how much more evolution they still have to go.

TRACK LISTING

1. Twist The Knife
2. Hated
3. Free Sitar
4. Gates Of Steel
5. Ailment
6. Digital Age
7. Control Loop
8. Think (7" Version)
9. Impish
10. Walking Out On Love
11. Saucy
12. Somebody’s Watching Me
13. Love Revolution
14. Captain Ahab
15. Cowboy Song
16. California
17. Wasted

By the time Twin Peaks’ second season had aired and Fire Walk With Me had just begun principle production, Thought Gang had been born. The esoteric jazz side-project of David Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti evolved from the seeds of Twin Peaks’ trademark slow cool jazz and blossomed into more experimental pastures: horizonless vistas of acid-soaked free-jazz, laced with spoken word narratives and sprawling noisescapes. Fire Walk With Me’s soundtrack would ultimately showcase two preliminary tracks (“A Real Indication” and “The Black Dog Runs at Night”) from a full-length album that wouldn’t see release for two-and-ahalf decades. Beginning in May 1992 and continuing throughout 1993, the bulk of the remaining material for the album was recorded in pieces, and dove-tailed into a string of contracted sessions for other Lynch-Badalamenti projects.

In the years following, fragments and working versions of Thought Gang material would make appearances in everything from a Lynch-helmed Adidas commercial to scenes in Hotel Room, Mulholland Dr., Inland Empire, deleted scenes from Fire Walk With Me, and most expansively utilized in Showtime’s third season of Twin Peaks. “Frank 2000” and “Summer Night Noise,” as well as an alternate instrumental mix of “Logic and Common Sense,” would score scenes from season three and aid in defining the show’s distinctly experimental, noisetilted soundtrack.

“It’s sort of like jet-fueled jazz in a weird way…but it’s all based on stories,” says Lynch. “It’s Modern Music.”

Those two words seem to efficiently capture both Thought Gang’s essence and distinctively genre-less genre. Quite often music that finds release beyond its decade of creation experiences a bit of an aural patina resulting from the process of marinating in the ether of time. Perplexingly, Thought Gang retains a contemporary quality difficult to quantify. Fittingly, the resulting album somehow still sounds “modern” and will continue to remain “modern,” decades upon decades after is creation.

TRACK LISTING

1. Stalin Revisited
2. Logic And Common Sense
3. One Dog Bark
4. Woodcutters From Fiery Ships
5. A Real Indication
6. Jack Paints It Red
7. A Meaningless Conversation
8. Frank 2000 Prelude
9. Multi-Tempo Wind Boogie
10. The Black Dog Runs At Night
11. Frank 2000
12. Summer Night Noise

When the new Halloween movie hits theaters in October 2018, it will have the distinction of being the first film in the series with creator John Carpenter’s direct involvement since 1982’s Halloween III: Season of the Witch. Carpenter serves on the new David Gordon Green-directed installment as an executive producer, a creative consultant, and, thrillingly, as a soundtrack composer, alongside his collaborators from his three recent solo albums, Cody Carpenter and Daniel Davies.

The new soundtrack pays homage to the classic Halloween score that Carpenter composed and recorded in 1978, when he forever changed the course of horror cinema and synthesizer music with his low-budget masterpiece. Several new versions of the iconic main theme serve as the pulse of Green’s film, its familiar 5/4 refrain stabbing through the soundtrack like the Shape’s knife. The rest of the soundtrack is just as enthralling, incorporating everything from atmospheric synth whooshes to eerie piano-driven pieces to skittering electronic percussion. While the new score was made with a few more resources than Carpenter’s famously shoestring original, its musical spirit was preserved.

“We wanted to honor the original Halloweensoundtrack in terms of the sounds we used,” Davies explained. “We used a lot of the Dave Smith OB-6, bowed guitar, Roland Juno, Korg, Roli, Moog, Roland System 1, Roland System 8, different guitar pedals, mellotron, and piano.”

Unlike the Lost Themes albums, where the composers wrote the soundtracks for imaginary movies, Halloween saw the Carpenters and Davies collaborating on music set to images for the first time. Though it marked a significant change from their previous creative process, the trio thrived under the constraints and tight deadlines that film scoring work demands.

“Being limited by the length of time in scoring the sequence, we focused on the director’s tempo, timing, and vision,” Davies said. “He would tell us what he had in mind, how long the cue should be, what emotion he wanted, and we would take it from there. It’s only the three of us, there is no elaborate system. We wrote, performed, and orchestrated everything.”

For John Carpenter, who reunited on the new film with original Halloween star Jamie Lee Curtis, composing the score felt like a homecoming. Not only had he not worked on a Halloween movie in 35 years, he hadn’t composed a soundtrack since his 2001 sci-fi thriller Ghosts of Mars.

“It was great,” Carpenter said of the experience. “It was transforming. It was not a movie I directed, so I had a lot of freedom in creating the score and getting into the director's head. I was proud to serve David Gordon Green’s vision.”

For Cody Carpenter, John’s son, and Davies, his godson, it was surreal to work on something that means so much to generations of fans, and that they grew up around.

“It was an honor for us to be involved, and we are really happy to be a part of something that so many people are anticipating and excited about,” Davies said. “Working together with both the director of the new Halloween and the creator of the original Halloween was really a fantastic experience.”

TRACK LISTING

1. "Halloween Theme" 2:21
2. "Halloween 1963" 3:11
3. "The Evil Is Gone!" 4:08
4. "Halloween 1978" 2:50
5. "The Boogeyman Is Coming" 0:40
6. "The Shape" 1:43
7. "The Hedge" 1:35
8. "He Came Home" 2:40
9. "Trick Or Treat" 0:39
10. "The Haunted House" 1:43
11. "The Devil's Eyes" 1:39
12. "The Boogeyman Is Outside" 1:27
13. "Damn You For Letting Him Go!" 1:34
14. "Empty Street" 0:33
15. "See Anything You Like?" 2:22
16. "Lock The Door" 2:53
17. "He's Here?" 0:55
18. "Light's Out" 2:49
19. "Cut It Out" 1:19
20. "Tombstone" 1:19
21. "The Shape Stalks Laurie" 1:35
22. "Turn Around" 0:33
23. "Unlock The Door" 2:53
24. "The Hanger" 3:04
25. "Call The Police" 0:28
26. "Last Assault" 1:34
27. "Was That The Boogeyman?" 0:32
28. "End Credits/Halloween Theme (Reprise)" 3:36

Exploded View, the international music project of Annika Henderson, Hugo Quezada, and Martin Thulin has returned and taken flight with their second full-length, Obey. The album was recorded at Hugo’s and Martin’s studios in Mexico City with Annika visiting from Berlin. Leaving behind their raw, live recording process, and embracing overdubs and multi-instrumentalism, the band has crafted their most ambitious work to date. The four-piece that recorded the band’s self-titled debut album and Summer Came Early EP became three to create a more concise collection of songs. Their motivation for creating together remains purely passionate and the improvisational spark the band is known for has morphed into the emotional flames of being close friends with a deep desire to make music with each other.

When asked about the title of the record, singer Annika said “this is in reference to so many things. We live in a society where we must obey or risk punishment. This can be social punishment, legal punishment, emotional punishment - if you dare to step outside, you will reap the reward. We live in a time when we are selfcertifying a lot. Whether it’s how we present ourselves on social media or our diet or our job - we obey the social norms. Our fears are used against us by advertisers. Our fears of growing old or being excluded - we must conform or pay the high price - buy this and you will be accepted. We must obey.” She adds musingly at the end, “It’s also funny because in the band we often feel like we are all compromising, so we must all obey each other’s wishes to some extent too.”

Striking the balance between precise and wild, between unshackled and grounded, grooving and unhinged, has always been Exploded View’s specialty. They have a special knack for making the esoteric feel accessible and crafting pop music out of seemingly raw consciousness. This unique ability to make beautiful music that feels written beyond the veil is at the heart of what makes the band so captivating and powerful, and it’s on full display all over Obey.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Woozy, languid psychedelic atmospheres wrap around a solid foundation of reticent percussion and pulsing bass drones. Elsewhere we get more directed instrumental lines but imbued with the syncopated lag seen elsewhere. A stripped-back but perfectly formed experience, rich and multi-layered but beautifully concise at the same time.

TRACK LISTING

1. Lullaby (2:13)
2. Open Road (4:19)
3. Dark Stains (3:25)
4. Gone Tomorrow (5:03)
5. Obey (5:30)
6. Sleepers (3:49)
7. Letting Go Of Childhood Dreams (2:42)
8. Raven Raven (3:33)
9. Come On Honey (2:52)
10. Rant (4:46)

It was 10 years ago, in a house on the outskirts of Santiago, Chile, that Ives Sepúlveda Minho and Manuel Parra started playing music together, and The Holydrug Couple was effectively born. A decade later, they’ve made ‘Hyper Super Mega’, an album that represents the culmination of everything they’ve learned in their years as a band.

Following the release and surrounding tours of their second album, 2015’s ‘Moonlust’ (Sacred Bones), the duo found themselves back at home, feeling directionless and listless. “The over-riding feeling was one of exhaustion,” Sepúlveda recalls, “exhaustion of the planet and of culture, the overuse of references and information that you see everywhere, in fashion, literature, tourism, music, technology and so on.”

So, the duo immersed themselves in these feelings and started to build the foundations of their new record. Amidst eleven tracks of perfectly-formed, heady psych-pop, ‘Hyper Super Mega’ speaks of immediacy, internet and social media, consumption, love and a comfortable despair at the state of the planet. It tells of a world over-connected through cell phones and information, whilst hinting at the place of occult language and imagery in an attempt to convene different and unknown places, or places that are open to interpretation.

Sonically, if ‘Hyper Super Mega’ feels, in places, like a classic pop record, that’s because Sepúlveda and Parra spent much of the recording process thinking, too, about the classic pop records of the ’60s and ’70s. Masterpieces by bands like The Beatles, The Beach Boys, and Fleetwood Mac were all reference points, not always explicitly in sound, but certainly in spirit. The duo approached the mythos of the “classic album” from their own inimitable perspective, hoping to make a record that felt authentically like The Holydrug Couple that might fit into the same canon.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Longing Indie anthems bolstered with swooning, classic rock solos and huge, soaring synthlines. Cosmic and dreamy but intermittently propulsive, The Holydrug Couple have hit the perfect combination of melancholic, wandering instrumentals and pointed melodicism. Ace.

TRACK LISTING

1. Hyper Super Mega (3:58)
2. Waterfalls (4:20)
3. Forever End (4:00)
4. Ikebana Telephone Line (4:14)
5. Lucifer’s Coat (2:11)
6. I’ll Only Say This (5:01)
7. Easy (4:14)
8. Chevalier (2:53)
9. Hotel Cache (5:13)
10. Western Shade (1:54)
11. Mercury Lake (3:49)

Sacred Bones Records is proud to present the new album, Magus, Thou’s first full-length since 2014’s Heathen. In the months leading into the new album, Thou will be releasing three drastically different EPs: The House Primordial on Raw Sugar, Inconsolable on Community Records, and Rhea Sylvia on Deathwish, Inc. Each record will focus on a particular sound—noisy drone, quiet acoustic, and melodic grunge—all of which is incorporated into the new LP, subsumed in the band’s more standard doom metal.

While sonically, Magus may be a continuation of Heathen, thematically it stands as a stark rebuttal, a journey beyond the principles of pleasure and pain. It is more the culmination of these distinct EPs, which all orbit some internal black hole. FFO alienation, absurdity, boredom, futility, decay, the tyranny of history, the vulgarities of change, awareness as agony, reason as disease.

TRACK LISTING

1. Inward (10:09)
2. My Brother Caliban (1:04)
3. Transcending Dualities (8:53)
4. The Changeling Prince (6:29)
5. Sovereign Self (10:15)
6. Divine Will (1:35)
7. In The Kingdom Of Meaning (9:33) Greater
8. Invocation Of Disgust (5:59)
9. Elimination Rhetoric (7:54)
10. The Law Which Compels (2:59)
11. Supremacy (10:54)

Three Demos is a very unique release, featuring the very first demo recordings for songs from Julee Cruise’s initial lp with David Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti, Floating Into the Night.

In 1985, Lynch’s obsession with This Mortal Coil’s “Song to the Siren” was at a fever pitch. Wanting to feature the song in Blue Velvet, the rights to the Tim Buckley cover proved problematic and prohibitively expensive. Lynch had famously just began working with Angelo Badalamenti, who had been suggested by producer Fred Caruso to coach Isabella Rossellini with singing “Blue Velvet” for the film. Faced with the “Song to the Siren” dilemma, Caruso again suggested his friend Badalamenti as a possible solution, encouraging Lynch himself to pen lyrics in order to come up with an original alternative for the film. “David reluctantly agreed to write a lyric, but he thought writing a new song was absolutely preposterous because ‘Song to the Siren’ was his favorite song of all time,” Badalamenti says. The result – “Mysteries of Love,” sung by Cruise – ended up forging a rich blueprint for not just one song, but two full-length albums.

Two years after Blue Velvet was released, the notion of a full album of material took shape and three crucial demos were recorded to gain the confidence and financial support of a label. Early versions of “Floating,” “Falling,” and “The World Spins” were all roughed out in economic elegance, rendering distinctive snapshots of what could be if the formula of “Mysteries of Love” was spun into a larger body of work. They’re fascinating glimpses into the genesis of what became Floating Into the Night and the minimal key ingredients that made the material alchemize. An early version of the album opener “Floating” originally began with a stunning spoken-word intro later dropped entirely from the album version. A revelation in its overarching simplicity, the three-song collection is devoid of the lp’s additional arrangement flourishes, and yet still manages to present the same emotional depth charge with only voice, synthesizer, and lyric.

TRACK LISTING

1. Floating (Demo) (6:12)
2. Falling (Demo) (6:01)
3. The World Spins (Demo) (7:43)

Following the release of critically acclaimed LP Wake in Fright, which had two songs featured in the new season of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks, it was time for Uniform vocalist Michael Berdan and instrumentalist Ben Greenberg to return to the studio. The duo decided to up the ante and add a third member to help perfect their vicious post-industrial dystopian cyber-punk. After some deliberation, Greenberg called upon drummer Greg Fox (Liturgy, Zs) to help round out the sound they were looking for. Using a mix of triggered samples and real drums along with layered synths and good old electric guitar, the trio arrived at what would become The Long Walk after only a few short days in the studio.

From the opening whirr of the title track, it’s clear that the band is onto something special. Recorded in Strange Weather studios in the first part of 2018, The Long Walk is eight new tracks by the duo of Greenberg and Berdan, incorporating Fox’s skills behind the drum kit to add an entirely new dimension to the signature Uniform sound. Ditching sequenced tracks, Greenberg opted for single takes to highlight the Frankenstein-like guitar-bass-synth hybrid that oozes throughout the recording. Meanwhile, crushing guitar thunder is punched up by Fox’s masterful drumming while Berdan’s cries from the nether feel more desperate and morose than ever. This is Uniform at its most bleak, emotional, and powerful.

Lyrically, The Long Walk deals with paradoxes in spirituality and organized religion. Berdan went to Catholic school for most of his primary education. Fear of Biblical hell and damnation felt tangible. As Berdan grew and matured emotionally, he began to reject Catholicism bit by bit. In the recent past, Berdan found himself slowly reconnecting with his background, observing how the faith that he found so repressive served as a great source of comfort and strength for so many. Yet therein lay the contradiction that drove him from religion in the first place — many of the human traditions of the church also dealt in repression, intolerance, and bigotry. Could one observe the rituals and practice of a faith while acknowledging and rejecting its ugliest elements?

TRACK LISTING

1. The Walk (5:31)
2. Inhuman Condition (4:16)
3. Found (3:51)
4. Transubstantiation (4:36)
5. Alone In The Dark (3:47)
6. Headless Eyes (3:58)
7. Anointing Of The Sick (4:47)
8. Peaceable Kingdom (6:49)

Drift is the seventh full-length by NYC rock polymaths The Men. The band’s last album, the self-released Devil Music, was the sound of a band who had been through hell hitting reset and looking to their roots to rediscover themselves. On Drift, The Men return to their longtime label Sacred Bones Records and explore the openness that Devil Music helped them find.

The immediately evident result of that exploration is the experimental quality of much of the material on Drift. Songwriters Mark Perro and Nick Chiericozzi chase their muses down a few dozen thrilling rabbit-holes over the course of the album’s nine tracks. The songs on Drift veer in a number of directions, but notably, almost none of them feature a prominent electric guitar. The lone exception, “Killed Someone,” is a rowdy riff-rocker, worthy of the finest moments of the band’s now-classic Leave Home and Open Your Heart albums. The rest of the album drives down stranger highways. “Secret Light” is an improvisation based on an old piano riff of Perro’s. “Maybe I’m Crazy” is a synth-driven dancefloor stomper for long after last call. “Rose on Top of the World” and “When I Held You in My Arms” are paisley-hued, psyched-out jams with big, beating hearts.

The album was recorded to 2" tape with Travis Harrison (Guided by Voices) at Serious Business Studios in Brooklyn. A whole pile of instruments was involved — synths, strings, sax, steel, harmonica, tape loops, on top of the usual guitar, bass, and drums. Unlike recent releases from The Men, there aren’t many overdubs on Drift — a reflection of the personalities of its makers becoming less frantic, Chiericozzi suggests. In fact, the band removed a lot of the additional parts they tried adding early on, giving the final product a bit of a ghostly feel. The songs on Drift took giant leaps and trips from their beginnings only to find the band returning to the first spark of creation.

TRACK LISTING

1. Maybe I’m Crazy (4:11)
2. When I Held You In My Arms (4:59)
3. Secret Light (4:16)
4. Rose On Top Of The World (4:28)
5. So High (3:26)
6. Killed Someone (2:30)
7. Sleep (2:45)
8. Final Prayer (5:46)
9. Come To Me (2:45)

Criminal’ is a confessional work. Through the stark lens of shame and guilt that has followed Luis Vasquez since a violent childhood growing up within the humming ambient sprawl of 80s Mojave Desert, here he documents the gut-wrenching sound of going to war with himself. Battling with his own sanity, self-hatred, insecurity, self-entitlement and grappling with the risk of these things transforming him into a person he despises, Vasquez has laid his feelings bare with this: his confession and most self-reflective work to date.

“Guilt is my biggest demon and has been following me since childhood. Everything I do strengthens the narrative that I am guilty” Vasquez reflects. “The concept of ‘Criminal’ is a desperate attempt to find relief by both confessing to my wrongdoings and by blaming others for their wrongdoings that have affected me.”

‘Criminal’ marks a striking and important chapter in his self-exploration, both artistically and emotionally. As a young musician living in Oakland, Vasquez began to try and process the narrative of his difficult upbringing veiled through musical exploration. Taking krautrock's motorik beats and Post-Punk deconstructions and honing them into a hushed percussive incantation, The Soft Moon's self-titled debut album took shape. The album was released in late 2010 by Captured Tracks and was praised by critics and emulated by contemporaries.

In 2012 the apocalyptic conceptual work of 'Zeros' emerged, shortly followed by Vasquez moving to Venice, Italy in 2013, acting as a catalyst for 2014’s release, ‘Deeper’. While previous albums were primarily instrumental records, where Vasquez’s voice was diffused amidst the music as another instrument, ‘Deeper’ marked the beginning of a new musical direction where vocals and lyrics became something more than a mere presence. ‘Deeper’ was a descent into the womb of childhood trauma, anxiety and fear, and although Vasquez survived this dark exploration of himself, he did not return alone.

Working once more with Maurizio Baggio, who produced ‘Deeper’, at La Distilleria in Bassano Del Grappa, Italy, ‘Criminal’ sees Vasquez further explore putting his lyrics at the forefront and letting his raw emotions flow. The album is Vasquez's way of holding himself accountable and seeking redemption for the abuse he inflicts on himself and others, and acknowledges roots in the abuse which, inflicted upon him as a child, broke him.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Thudding drum machines, screaming distorted guitars and barely-there vocal abstractions fed through a wall of effects. It's a delicate but perfectly achieved bout of melodic suggestions and visceral, white-hot emotion.

TRACK LISTING

1. Burn
2. Choke
3. Give Something
4. Like A Father
5. The Pain
6. It Kills
7. ILL
8. Young
9. Born Into This
10. Criminal

For over a decade, Nika Roza Danilova has been recording music as Zola Jesus. She’s been on Sacred Bones Records for most of that time, and Okovi marks her reunion with the label.

Fittingly, the 11 electronics-driven songs on Okovi share musical DNA with her early work on Sacred Bones. The music was written in pure catharsis, and as a result, the sonics are heavy, dark, and exploratory. In addition to the contributions of Danilova’s longtime live bandmate Alex DeGroot, producer/musician WIFE, cellist/noise-maker Shannon Kennedy from Pedestrian Deposit, and percussionist Ted Byrnes all helped build Okovi’s textural universe.

With Okovi, Zola Jesus has crafted a profound meditation on loss and reconciliation that stands tall alongside the major works of its genre. The album peaks of tragedy with great wisdom and clarity. Its songs plumb dark depths, but they reflect light as well.

ARTIST STATEMENT:

Last year, I moved back to the woods in Wisconsin where I was raised. I built a little house just steps away from where my dilapidated childhood tree fort is slowly recombining into earth. Okovi was fed by this return to roots and several very personal traumas.

While writing Okovi, I endured people very close to me trying to die, and others trying desperately not to. Meanwhile, I was fighting through a haze so thick I wasn’t sure I’d find my way to the other side. Death, in all of its masks, has been encircling everyone I love, and with it the questions of legacy, worth, and will.

Okovi is a Slavic word for shackles. We’re all shackled to something—to life, to death, to bodies, to minds, to illness, to people, to birthright, to duty. Each of us born with a unique debt, and we have until we die to pay it back. Without this cost, what gives us the right to live? And moreover, what gives us the right to die? Are we really even free to choose?

This album is a deeply personal snapshot of loss, reconciliation, and a sympathy for the chains that keep us all grounded to the unforgiving laws of nature. To bring it to life, I decided to enlist the help of Alex DeGroot, who has been the only constant in my live band and helped mix the Stridulum EP back in 2010. It will be released on Sacred Bones, the closest group of people I’ll ever have to blood-bound family.

TRACK LISTING

1. Doma
2. Exhumed
3. Soak
4. Ash To Bone
5. Witness
6. Siphon
7. Veka
8. Wiseblood
9. NMO
10. Remains
11. Half Life

“Seven yers ago, it was winter break at university in Madison, Wisconsin. There was a snowstorm that covered the city with a still white haze. Not a single person in the streets. I was sitting on my bed with a cheap keyboard and a computer, screaming into the void. I barely remember writing the songs. It was a chaotic point in my life. I had no time to think about process or intent. It was a purge. I do remember taking a break from recording, bundling up, and walking through the barren streets while listening to the demos I’d made. The world, at once, felt clear. After writing and producing what would become the Stridulum EP, I contacted a new friend, Alex DeGroot, to come over and record my vocals. He was studying audio engineering and had more knowledge and gear than I could dream of. He helped mix Stridulum, too, because all I had was a pair of headphones. (Since then, Alex has stuck by me, as a live bandmate, technical director, co-producer, mixer, and engineer.) These songs were a huge leap of faith back then. It was my first time singing without layers of distortion, echo, and reverb. It was the first time I peeled back the layers to find out what was at the core. I’m still on that path today, seeing how far I can push myself into unknown places, whether through clarification or destruction. It’s like Stridulum’s still here with me, underneath it all. Still, it’s surreal to think that this record, made by a 19-year-old girl sitting on a bed in a freezing old house in Madison, would make its way into strangers’ ears seven years later.”

-Nika Roza Danilova, June 2017

Collects the early Zola Jesus EPs Stridulum and Valusia in a single volume for the first time.

TRACK LISTING

1. Night (3:37)
2. Trust Me (2:01)
3. I Can’t Stand (4:10)
4. Stridulum (4:22)
5. Run Me Out (3:19)
6. Manifest Destiny (3:16)
7. Poor Animal (4:27)
8. Tower (3:58)

“Contradictions embraced: Although SQÜRL’s music is anti-mathematic, SQÜRL loves mathematics. We love the Fibonacci numbers. And magic numbers. Perfect numbers. Bell numbers. Catalan numbers. 260 is none of these. It isn’t a perfect number, and not factional of any number. It’s not even a regular number. 260, though, is the number of days in all Mesoamerican calendars. The Mayan calendar. The Tolkien calendar. 260 is also the number of days of human gestation. (Orangutans also). 260 also has an elliptical connection to the dark rift; a series of molecular dust clouds located between our solar system and the Sagittarius Arm of the Milky Way. And although not a magic number, 260 is the magic constant of the magic square investigated by Benjamin Franklin, and part of the solution to a famous chess problem; the n-queens problem for n=8. 260 is also the country code for Zambia. And the US area code for Fort Wayne, Indiana. Therefore, SQÜRL has labeled this recording EP #260.” -Jim Jarmusch, March 1, 2017

SQÜRL is: Jim Jarmusch, Carter Logan and Shane Stoneback.

An enthusiastically marginal rock band from New York City who like big drums & distorted guitars, cassette recorders, loops, feedback, sad country songs, molten stoner core, chopped & screwed hip-hop, and imaginary movie scores.

SQÜRL began in 2009 when Jim Jarmusch and Carter Logan teamed with producer Shane Stoneback to record some original music for the film The Limits of Control. Echoing the varied Spanish landscapes captured in the film, the three emerged with a set of slow-motion psychedelic rock instrumentals (releasing them as Bad Rabbit). Following these scoring sessions Jim, Shane, and Carter continued to record new originals while also exploring the back-alleys of American country, noise, and psychedelia. SQÜRL released a series of 3 EPs, recorded over a 3 year period by Shane at Treefort Recording in Brooklyn, NY. Jarmusch and Logan’s collaboration continued as a duo with SQÜRL’s acclaimed score for Paterson, and a trio with Stoneback for EP #260

TRACK LISTING

1. Solstice (6:03)
2. The Dark Rift (4:35)
3. Equinox (5:09)
4. Gates Of Ishtar (Equinox Remix By Anton Newcombe) (9:30)
5. The Dark Rift (Föllakzoid Remix) (8:32)

Uniform formed in New York City in 2013 when old friends Ben Greenberg (ex-The Men, Hubble, and the producer/engineer responsible for much of the Sacred Bones catalog) and Michael Berdan (ex-Drunkdriver, York Factory Complaint) reconnected and realized that they had evolved to a similar place musically. Wanting as intimate an experience as possible, they decided to keep the project a two-man show, eschewing a live rhythm section for programmed drums and low-end synths, augmented with Greenberg playing guitar and Berdan handling vocals. The collaboration quickly yielded a raw 12", followed by a full-length, Perfect World. The Ghosthouse12", is the first Uniform release on Sacred Bones Records, and it will be followed by a full-length in early 2017.

Ghosthouse shares a basic configuration with the previous Uniform releases, but the tools have evolved far beyond their initial drum machine and bass synth setup. These songs have grown from a broader palette of sounds — shots, explosions, implosions, impacts, ricochets, collapse; the sounds of conflict, war, and destruction that we witness every day. The result is the most sonically confrontational Uniform material to date, and Berdan’s lyrics, largely inspired by his lifelong battle with insomnia and depression, match them for relentlessness.

The three songs on Ghosthouseshow the incisiveness that Greenberg and Berdan now have at their command. The title track addresses the feeling of lying awake at night and wondering if it’s still possible to make peace with an estranged friend after their death. “Waiting Period,” a riff on the Hubert Selby Jr. novel of the same name, is the internal dialogue of a man waiting for his handgun application to clear so he can kill himself. The “Symptom of the Universe” cover pays mostly faithful homage to Black Sabbath, but trades the original’s “summer skies of love” for something far bleaker. These tracks reveal the incredible range that’s possible within the Uniform musical template, and they provide a fascinating glimpse of what’s to come.

TRACK LISTING

1. Ghosthouse (7:25)
2. Waiting Period (5:47)
3. Symptom Of The Universe (5:44)

Marching Church, the onetime solo project and now bona fide big band formed by singer Elias Bender Rønnenfelt, has followed its leader’s muse everywhere from their early days of 4-track lo-fi tapes, to Sam Cooke-tinged soul on This World is Not Enough, to outré free jazz on their most recent Coming Down 12".

For Telling It Like It Is, Rønnenfelt and his bandmates have foregone much of their past proclivity for wild stylistic swings in favor of thematically unified, complicated, but fundamentally cohesive song arrangements; the studio itself at times acting as an auxiliary band member. The result is the most focused vision of Marching Church yet, but one that has lost none of its swagger, and none of its power to enthrall.“We have here one world united under the sparks of one enormous disco ball hanging over us like the moon,” Rønnenfelt elaborates. “In one fleeting moment in the light of its mirrored surface we see human endurance, in the next we see doom.” The light and shade he finds in this worldview permeate the songs on Telling It Like It Is. Rønnenfelt describes the new work “an album which raises multiple flags,” and “the sound of individualism stuck in the center of the modern world, swimming with and against the current.”

The band in 2016 comprises Rønnenfelt and his frequent collaborator and Iceage bandmate Johan S. Weith (on electric viola and guitar here), Lower‘s rhythm section of Kristian Emdal and Anton Rothstein, trumpet player Jakob Emil Lamdahl, and Hand of Dust’s Bo Høyer Hansen. Augmenting these sessions are Maaike Van der Linde and Thora Sveinsdottir of the Stargaze Orchestraon flute and strings, and Sonja La Bianca of Choir of Young Believers on saxophone. The obvious chemistry among these players makes this the most cultivated Marching Church album to date, unveiling the full spectrum of capabilities and musical dexterity of each player. Telling It Like It Is taps into a debauched lunacy that teeters equally on the verge of exhaustion, and the charged sensuality rooted in our loins that keep us going.

TRACK LISTING

1.Let It Come Down (3:18)
2.Up For Days (4:10)
3.Heart Of Life (3:44)
4.Inner City Pigeon (5:04)
5.Lion’s Den (4:46)
6.Florida Breeze (5:26) (CD Only)
7.2016 (4:02)
8.Achilles’ Heel (4:41)
9.Information (4:35)
19.Calenture (5:39)

After recently signing to Sacred Bones Records, new four-piece Exploded View, fronted by German/Bristol political- journalist-turned-musician/singer Anika, announce news of their debut self-titled album.

While lead single ‘No More Parties in The Attic’ is laden with an enticing no-wave, post-punk sound, layered with distorted guitars and ominous drones– ‘Orlando' chimes in with echoing vintage synths, courtesy of Hugo Quezada that clash with a chilly electro backbeat and an anthemic soulful bass line setting the tone. With her disarming quietude nursery rhyme like vocal delivery, Anika remarks on the creation process: “Well, that day I was speechless and empty; a reflection of the times. I became a vessel for the past; the only way to deal with or help understand the present. Enlightenment came with the help of some strong leading ladies; A certain author, a certain film and a certain actress. Go figure.”

Anika released her self-titled debut album in collaboration with Geoff Barrow’s Invada imprint and Stones Throw to critical acclaim in 2010. This new project was created during the rehearsal sessions for Anika's Mexican live debut back in March 2014. An unexpected partnership formed between Annika and local producers, Martin Thulin (Crocodiles producer) synth-head Hugo Quezada (Robota) and Riotboy sweetheart Hector Melgarejo (Jessy Bulbo / Nos llamamos) to form Exploded View. The four musicians discovered a new sound, several steps removed from the krautrock-isms of Henderson’s previous work during their rehearsals and live performances in Mexico City. The straight to tape sessions that followed in the San Rafael neighborhood, ventured somewhere new; a lighter place, unguarded, veering from any script. Improvisation was the guiding principle and the source of the band’s inspiration. The studio itself was outfitted so that every sound produced in the room would be recorded. A Tascam 388 8-track captured everything – fully live, fully improvised, first-takes only. Produced by Thulin and Quezada and mastered by Josh Bonati in NYC.

For fans of Can, dub, and political revolution.

STAFF COMMENTS

Martin says: Berlin's Exploded View formed around Annika Henderson (aka Anika), better known, up to this point, for the sparse, troubled beauty of her solo work. The exploded view in this case is formed by what was initially intended to be Anika's backing band, but is now the entity in its own right. This is a disturbed dream, a fitful night of drones, Kraut dub and fractured melodies over which Anika's low tones brood and rant on subjects as diverse as capitalism, the illusion of existence and Robert De Niro. A dark joy.

TRACK LISTING

1.Lost Illusions
2.One Too Many
3.Orlando
4.Call On The Gods
5.Disco Glove
6.Stand Your Ground
7.No More Parties In The Attic
8.Lark Descending
9.Gimme Something
10.Beige
11. Killjoy

Both formats include an exclusive free Sacred Bones label sampler bonus disc CD.

Don’t sleep. Don’t retreat. Stay awhile. Let’s spend the night together. Cheena testify to a long history of New York nights, trading insults and borrowing beer at rooftop parties that began years ago. There’s plenty of New York in this band – Lou Reed’s better glam punches found a jawline or two among them, the heavy handed playing of the Dolls, and that particular manner of NY glam you can hear in Kiss– that’s all in Cheena.

Spend The Night With...is a soundtrack to nights where revelry and lust are never isolated from poor decisions and vanity, where the grave sincerity of a bathroom confession explodes into cruelty and hysteria. Nights on busy streets or crowded subway cars coloured with elegant ambition and constrained by the practicality of street smarts. While we say this is NY music, we must also say this is American music. One could imagine a timeless jukebox of American RNR history from hard glam to cocaine / codeine country has blasted into the imbibed ears of our Cheens for many nights on end. Thus we hear songs for and of the night, songs pieced together out of iPhone recordings of 5am guitar histrionics and lyrics scraped out of speed fried text exchanges. There is a long history of bands as disparate as the Byrds, Gun Club, and the Flesh Eaters which had to reconcile RNR with country and blues roots; a tradition of truly AMERICAN music that feeds on itself. This is where I would isolate the sound of Cheena.

America eating itself. Every generation gets the Cheena it deserves because we still live in cities and we still need RNR to live. We still need guitars to be gripped by gods. We still need bards to write odes to heroic crime and ignoble, destitute hedonistic excess, we still need music to drink to that also contains the darkness and disease of hangovers so we aren’t too far away from what is raw and what is real. With love and admiration, I kiss your hand from Melbourne to the Sacred Bones offices and the 538 roof. – DX (Total Control, UV Race, Distort).

TRACK LISTING

1. Cry For Help
2. Fever
3. Car
4. Jane
5. Electric Snoopy Gang
6. Stupor
7. Tarzan
8. 7 Nights
9. Liberated Animal
10. Lost My Way
11. M.E. (Bonus Track)

‘Like Shadows Dancing In The Dark’- Label Sampler Bonus Disc
Tracklist
1. Jenny Hval – Female Vampire (from Blood Bitch)
2. Exploded View – Orlando (from Exploded View)
3. Lust For Youth – Display (from Compassion)
4. Blanck Mass – Atrophies (from Dumb Flesh)
5. Wymond Miles – Divided In Two (from Call By Night)
6. Psychic Ills – I Don’t Mind (feat. Hope Sandoval) (from Inner Journey Out)
7. Institute – Perpetual Ebb (from Catharsis)
8. Cheena – Car (from Spend The Night With…)
9. Destruction Unit – Salvation (from Negative Feedback Resistor)
10. Marching Church – Living In Doubt (from This World Is Not Enough)
11. Flowers For Agatha – The Freedom Curse (from KBDR Vol.2)
12. Pop.1280 – USS ISS (from Paradise)
13. Almost Holy OST (Atticus Ross & Bobby Krilic) – Wild Moose
14. John Carpenter – Utopian Façade (from Lost Themes II)

Wymond Miles was raised in the working-class small towns of the American West. On Call by Night, the singer’s latest widescreen opus, Miles masterfully evokes that lost landscape, all while grappling with issues of fatherhood, privacy, PTSD, violence, and dissipated romance. The album adds a critical new chapter to the Fresh & Onlys guitarist’s story as an artist, and reasserts him as a major voice in contemporary songwriting. Call by Night sees Miles building a noticeably bigger sound than on his previous solo records, while simultaneously standing as his most intimate work.

It’s a record explicitly written for the fidelity of the vinyl format, with louder songs beginning each album side and quieter songs at the interior. His attention to sequencing paid off; the album flows like a piece of classic cinema, and sounds like it’s splashed across a drive-in screen in 70mm. Recorded using vintage gear by Phil Manley (The Fucking Champs, Trans Am) at El Studio in San Francisco and Miles’ Garden Chamber home studio, the record is a treasure of tube-amp warmth, and a landmark in the songwriter’s catalog. Miles wrote most of Call by Night on piano, and while the wall-of-sound guitar and cinematic synth playing that helped define his earlier efforts is still present, the beating heart of the songs is left more open thanks to his new method.

Where previous full-lengths were cloaked in distinct aesthetic choices, this record exists outside of any stylistic restraints. “Divided in Two,” the lead single, considers dignity, class, honor, and father-son relationships through the devastating lens of PTSD, all set to a sardonic flag-waving waltz, with martial percussive bomb blasts. The title track explores the enduring aesthetic of British psych-folk. Other songs dip into the traditions of gospel music, sea shanties, and even big-box power ballads, using antique instruments and Miles’ unique perspective on the modern world to forge a new collection of entries for the American songbook. Miles has said the songs on Call by Night mark his “more definitive commitment to seek, listen, and give voice to an enduring muse.” If that’s true, then the muse has obviously been singing to him loud and clear.

New solo record by the guitarist of The Fresh & Onlys

TRACK LISTING

1.Summer Rains (4:44)
2.Protection (2:14)
3.Solomon’s Song (3:05)
4.Call By Night (2:37)
5.Bride Of The Lamb (2:17)
6.Divided In Two (4:01)
7.Rear View Mirror (3:16)
8.Stand Before Me (4:27)
9.Devil’s Blue Eyes (4:12)

‘Like Shadows Dancing In The Dark’- Label Sampler Bonus Disc
Tracklist
1. Jenny Hval – Female Vampire (from Blood Bitch)
2. Exploded View – Orlando (from Exploded View)
3. Lust For Youth – Display (from Compassion)
4. Blanck Mass – Atrophies (from Dumb Flesh)
5. Wymond Miles – Divided In Two (from Call By Night)
6. Psychic Ills – I Don’t Mind (feat. Hope Sandoval) (from Inner Journey Out)
7. Institute – Perpetual Ebb (from Catharsis)
8. Cheena – Car (from Spend The Night With…)
9. Destruction Unit – Salvation (from Negative Feedback Resistor)
10. Marching Church – Living In Doubt (from This World Is Not Enough)
11. Flowers For Agatha – The Freedom Curse (from KBDR Vol.2)
12. Pop.1280 – USS ISS (from Paradise)
13. Almost Holy OST (Atticus Ross & Bobby Krilic) – Wild Moose
14. John Carpenter – Utopian Façade (from Lost Themes II)

Human culture has reached its terminus. The corporate and political machinery that seeks to subjugate our bodies and control our minds has utterly defeated us, and we didn’t put up a fight. We willingly participate in the constant surveillance that has stripped us of any semblance of privacy. It is this world that Pop.1280 inhabits, and unto this world that they offer Paradise, their third full-length album. Paradise is an act of defiance against the engineers of these end times, yes — but it’s also an unforgiving look into the mirror; it’s the paradise we created for ourselves.

While Paradise is indeed concerned about the ills that technology has wrought in the modern world, it’s also a record fraught with existential ennui. A fear permeates the record that the world will never get any better; that we as humans have made our bed and now must lie in it. The combined weight of those external and internal forces lay the foundation for the album, and they give it its power. Paradise builds on 2013’s Imps of Perversion LP and 2015’s Penetrate 7" by venturing further outside of traditional notions of punk, and diving even deeper into outer sounds. Synthesizers, mechanized drum machines, and samplers play as critical a role on the record as the more familiar squall of Ivan Drip’s buzzsaw guitar and Chris Bug’s vocals. Any noise a band member could make that helped contribute to the record’s atmosphere of unease was welcome; synth player Allegra Sauvage adds cello to two songs, and drummer/producer Andy Chugg plays trumpet on the title track.

The sessions for Paradise were held at the Population Control Center, and the result is the most collaborative Pop. 1280 release to date. Despite its misgivings about technology, Paradise was made possible by the confluence of humans and their machines, at times struggling for control, but ultimately working together to create this vital, vicious piece of art. If the bitter irony makes you smile, hold that pose — the camera lens is watching.

TRACK LISTING

1.Pyramids On Mars (5:24)
2.Phantom Freighter (3:38)
3.In Silico (7:13)
4.Chromidia (2:52)
5.USS ISS (3:26)
6. Paradise (3:37)
7.Rain Song (4:45)
8.The Last Undertaker (4:02)
9. Kingdom Come (4:32)

Since 2010, Elias Bender Rønnenfelt (Iceage, Vår) has used the Marching Church moniker to a variety of musical ends, both live and recorded. However, the project as it exists on This World Is Not Enough wasn’t born until November 2013. With a live performance looming and no real idea what the set would be, Rønnenfelt found a new vision for the band while daydreaming at a gig at the venue where Marching Church was set to perform. “What I pictured was me in a comfortable armchair, adorned in a golden robe, leading a band while a girl kept pouring me champagne when I required it,” Rønnenfelt explained. “This raised the question, ‘What sort of music would go along with this picture?’”

Rønnenfelt discovered the answer to that question with a lineup rounded out by Kristian Emdal and Anton Rothstein of Lower, Cæcilie Trier (Choir of Young Believers), Bo H. Hansen (Hand of Dust, Sexdrome) and Frederikke Hoffmeier (Puce Mary). Under Rønnenfelt’s leadership, the group composed some music, rehearsed twice, and played their show. It was decided that night that this incarnation of Marching Church would make a record.

This World Is Not Enough was influenced at first by obscure works like David Maranha’s experimental drone-rock saga Antarctica, and eventually by soul bandleaders like James Brown and Sam Cooke. “The whole month of writing and rehearsing and the one week we had in the studio was truly an explosion of ideas,” Rønnenfelt said. “Improvisation, something I have never worked with before, was crucial in the making of this album, considering the loose nature of the writing on some of these songs. The album works because of the band’s incredible ability of breathing life into these, at times, very simple ideas and experiments.” The eight tracks that made the final cut are, in Rønnenfelt’s words, “songs of nocturnal longing, preposterous self-obsession and cockeyed etiquette,” and they are an exemplary statement of the songwriter’s extraordinary growth since the birth of Iceage.

TRACK LISTING

1. Living In Doubt
2. King Of Song
3. Hungry For Love
4. Your Father’s Eyes
5. Calling Out A Name
6. Every Child (Portrait Of Wellman Braud)
7. Up A Hill
8. Dark End Of The Street

Sacred Bones Records is proud to present International, The third full length LP from Copenhagen's Lust For Youth. To put it bluntly, International is unrecognizable as a Lust For Youth record on first listen. Hannes Norrvide’s previous solo albums under the Lust for Youth moniker have been described as “dark, cold, atonal, tormented, lonely, and lower than lo-fi.” The approach on International has shifted dramatically. Writing as a three-piece now, with longtime live collaborator Loke Rahbek and new band member Malthe Fisher, who produces and plays guitar, LFY have entered a completely new territory. The result is stunning. International is a buoyant synth masterpiece in the vein of early Depeche Mode, Pet Shop Boys and New Order. Norrvide’s work has always had pop sensibilities buried deep in the reverb, but the hooks are front and center on International, and there is nothing lo-fi about it.

That is not to say the record is without substance. There are still some deeply introspective moments as well, notably the instrumental passages “Ultras” and “Basorexia,” which evoke the morning-after loneliness that a lot of earlier Lust For Youth work has explored. According to Rahbek, “the record sort of happened by chance. Hannes and I had talked about recording some stuff together for the fun of it, and Malthe offered to help us record. Initially, we were just going to do a song or two, but within a few weeks it was obvious that it was a combination that worked. The period was strange, terrible things happened in everyone’s life outside of the studio, so as a result many hours were spent in the studio, like a safe zone.”

“As the title indicates,” Rahbek adds, “the record deals with the rootless, sometimes almost inhuman, nature of traveling and touring. Hotel rooms and strangers’ beds, drugs and clubs, and the impossibility of living a regular life.” It may be an irregular life, but nothing could suit them better. International is Norrvide’s magnum opus, and with Fisher’s production and Rahbek’s co-writing skills, the potential this band has always shown has been fully realized. The album features additional production by Elias Bender Rønnenfelt of Iceage as well as Adrian Toubro of Lower

TRACK LISTING

1. Epoetin Alfa (3:32)
2. Illume (2:39)
3. Ultras (1:27)
4. New Boys (3:32)
5. Lungomare (5:03)
6. Armida (4:50)
7. After Touch (4:00)
8. Basorexia (2:01)
9 Running (3:52)
10 International (3:49)

THIS IS A RECORD STORE DAY 2014 EXCLUSIVE, LIMITED TO ONE PER PERSON.

In early 2007, David Lynch was the subject of a retrospective art exhibition at Paris' Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain. Evocatively titled The Air is on Fire, it was notable for being the first major comprehensive exhibition of the avant-garde director's paintings, photographs and drawings. It wasn't strictly a visual affair; throughout the entire gallery's two floors and four rooms, a pervasive, interactive soundscape escorted viewers through the work. That soundscape, which shares the name of the exhibition, was composed by Lynch and his collaborator, Dean Hurley, and it's being issued for the first time on vinyl by Sacred Bones Records as a special Record Store Day release.