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John Carpenter, Cody Carpenter & Daniel Davies

Lost Themes IV: Noir

    It’s been a decade since John Carpenter recorded the material that would become 'Lost Themes', his debut album of non-film music and the opening salvo in one of Hollywood’s great second acts. Those vibrant, synth-driven songs, made in collaboration with his son Cody Carpenter and godson Daniel Davies, kickstarted a musical renaissance for the pioneering composer and director. In the years since, Carpenter, Carpenter, and Davies have released close to a dozen musical projects, including a growing library of studio albums and the scores for David Gordon Green’s trilogy of Halloween reboots. With 'Lost Themes IV: Noir', they’ve struck gold again, this time mining the rich history of the film noir genre for inspiration.

    Since the first 'Lost Themes', John has referred to these compositions as “soundtracks for the movies in your mind.” On the fourth installment in the series, those movies are noirs. Like the film genre they were influenced by, what makes these songs “noirish” is sometimes slippery and hard to define, and not merely reducible to a collection of tropes. The scores for the great American noir pictures were largely orchestral, while the Carpenters and Davies work off a sturdy synth-and-guitar backbone. The noir quality, then, is something you understand instinctively when you hear it, as in connected in an emotional way.

    The trio’s free-flowing chemistry means 'Lost Themes IV: Noir' runs like a well-oiled machine - the 1951 Jaguar XK120 Roadster from Kiss Me Deadly, perhaps, or the 1958 Plymouth Fury from John’s own Christine. It’s a chemistry that’s helped power one of the most productive stretches of John’s creative life, and Noir proves that it’s nowhere near done yielding brilliant results.


    TRACK LISTING

    1. My Name Is Death
    2. Machine Fear
    3. Last Rites
    4. The Burning Door
    5. He Walks By Night
    6. Beyond The Gallows
    7. Kiss The Blood Off My Fingers
    8. Guillotine
    9. The Demon’s Shadow
    10. Shadows Have A Thousand Eyes

    Indie's Exclusive 7" Bonus Track:
    1. Black Cathedral

    Molchat Doma

    Monument

      Monument is a fitting title for the third album by Belarusian trio Molchat Doma. Indeed, it stands as a monument to everything they’ve achieved in their short time as a band, from whispered-about unknowns, to enigmatic underground icons, to legitimate viral sensations with hundreds of thousands of TikTok videos using their music. Monument sees them return as conquering heroes, expanding on the minimalist greatness of S Krysh Nashikh Domov and Etazhi to fully realize a more maximalist vision of their crystalline post-punk sound.

      Written and recorded while the band was quarantined in their hometown of Minsk during the COVID-19 pandemic, Monument is a conscious step up in songwriting and fidelity, and it reveals a band preternaturally comfortable in its own skin. Whether playing to the dancefloor, as they do on the synthpop anthem “Discoteque,” or working more introspectively on pre-pandemic live favorites “Otveta Net” and “Ne Smeshno,” Molchat Doma are in complete control. Their greatest strength has always been their songwriting, and they’ve only gotten better.

      As the band’s arrangements have grown more sophisticated, so too have the sounds they use to bring them to life. Roman Komogortsev and Pavel Kozlov’s gear arsenal has grown to include an extensive range of synthesizers and drum machines, all of which they deploy with precision. Egor Shkutko’s vocals move fluidly between his familiar deadpan monotone and an expressive croon, his beautifully delivered Russian lyrics at turns bleak and romantic. Shkutko has often been compared to Ian Curtis, but here, he outgrows the comparison.

      With Monument, Molchat Doma have done one of the hardest things to do as a band. They’ve greatly expanded the scope of their music while retaining everything that made them great in the first place.

      STAFF COMMENTS

      Barry says: If you enjoyed the drum machine / vocal interplay on the new Working Men's Club LP (or, indeed any post-punk from 1980 onwards), you'll love the dystopian drive and eerie synth swells of Molchat Doma. Reminiscent of many, but exactly unlike few, exactly as it should be.

      TRACK LISTING

      Utonut’ (5:44)
      Obrechen (4:09)
      Discoteque (4:05)
      Ne Smeshno (3:52)
      Otveta Net (4:03)
      Zvezdy (3:46)
      Udalil Tvoy Nomer (5:10)
      Leningradskiy Blues (4:00)
      Lubit’ I Vypolnyat’ (5:27)

      Mort Garson

      Journey To The Moon And Beyond

        When Sacred Bones first began their Mort Garson reissue project in 2019 with a proper reissue of Plantasia, the Garson-naissance began in earnest. Soon after, you could hear Mort Garson and his Moogs bubbling up on TV shows, documentaries, podcasts, hip-hop tracks, or anywhere else, the man a cultural phenomenon once more. Like a perennial that returns with each new spring, the Mort Garson archives have brought to bear yet another awe-inspiring bloom. Journey to the Moon and Beyond finds even more new facets to the man’s sound. There’s the soundtrack to the 1974 blaxploitation film Black Eye (starring Fred Williamson) alongside some newly unearthed music for advertising. Just as regal is “Zoos of the World,” where Garson soundtracks the wild, preening, slum- bering animals from a 1970 National Geographic special of the same name. The mind reels at just what project would have yielded a scintillating title like“Western Dragon,” but these three selections were found on tapes in the archive with no further information.

        The crown jewel of the set is no doubt Garson’s soundtrack to the live broadcast of the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing, as first heard on CBS News. That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for Moogkind. But for decades, this audio was presumed lost, the only trace of it appearing to be from an old YouTube clip. Thankfully, diligent audio archivist Andy Zax came across a copy of the master tape while going through the massive Rod McKuen archive. So now we get to hear it in all its glory. Across six minutes, Garson conjures broad fantasias, whirring mooncraft sounds, zero-gravity squelches, and twinkling études. It showcases Mort’s many moods: sweet, exploratory, whimsical, a little bit corny, weaving it all together in a glorious whole.

        Maybe at the time it scanned as crass and opportunistic for Garson to apply his keyboards to subjects like astrological signs, the occult, hippiedom, houseplants, or the moon landing. But more than most other electronic music pioneers of his ilk, Garson foresaw the integration of such electronics into our daily lives, how they would allow us to engage with the world.


        TRACK LISTING

        1 Zoos Of The World
        2 The Big Game Hunters See The Cheetah
        3 Western Dragon (Pt 3)
        4 Western Dragon (Pt 2)
        5 Moon Journey
        6 Music For Advertising #6
        7 Black Eye (Main Theme)
        8 Western Dragon (Pt 1)
        9 Music For Advertising #7
        10 Captain DJ Disco UFO (Pt II)
        11 Three TV IDs
        12 Music For Advertising #8
        13 Love Is A Garden
        14 The D-Bee's Cat Boogie
        15 Black Eye (End Credits)

        Alan Vega

        Invasion / Murder One

          One of Alan Vega’s greatest talents was his ability to bring the past and the future together into a suspended place of timelessness. His groundbreaking duo Suicide was often seen as future primitivism and most of his musical output has exemplified this blending of the primordial human condition and visionary thinking. With Invasion b/w Murder One, the next release from the now infamous Vega Vault following 2021’s Mutator, we see this innate power in full effect.

          The two tracks “Invasion” and “Murder One” were recorded two decades apart from one another in New York City. “Invasion” was recorded toward the end of the 2012-2015 studio sessions for the posthumous album IT and was one of his last recordings, while “Murder One” was recorded in 1997-1998, (after the Mutator sessions) and is part of a cluster of material that was recorded but never mixed prior to the sessions for his album 2007, released in 1999. Pairing these two songs together as a release illustrates the timelessness of the 30 plus years of unreleased material that he deemed the Vega Vault.

          This release continues the collaboration of Mutator’s mixing and producing team, Liz Lamere and Jared Artaud. Liz provides a bridge to the past, having performed throughout the recording process of “Murder One” and “Invasion” while Jared opens a bridge to the future having been chosen by Alan himself to carry the torch and ensure the vision stays intact. Alan trusted no one more than Liz and Jared, and gave his blessing and encouragement to continue releasing material from the Vault. As Alan stated in the song “Vision” from IT, “If you destroy the vision, you will suffer the whirlwind.”

          Listening to the various tracks during these mixing sessions brought up vivid recollections of how the sounds (such as the haunting voices in “Murder One”) were created and the constant experimentation that was involved, memories that informed Liz’s approach in the mixing process. Together with Jared’s technical skills, intuition, and deep understanding of the feeling these sounds were intended to evoke, the two were able to preserve the authenticity of the recordings while enhancing the quality of sound so the listener can fully experience the nuances of these unique auditory creations.


          TRACK LISTING

          1. Invasion
          2. Murder One 

          Domingæ (Föllakzoid)

          Æ

            Musician and filmmaker Domingæ is probably best known as the founder of experimental psych band Föllakzoid.

            Written whilst stranded in Mexico and Tokyo on her way to a world tour with Föllakzoid, her new debut solo album Æ has taken the decompositional system she devised for the band and added the depth of inner exploration and a symbiotic relationship with musical craft.

            The resulting sound is as groovy and hypnotic as the best Föllakzoid tracks but with a seductive and darkening electronic texture. She has become a channel in which the shadows inhabit. Domingæ’s sounds and formats are articulated via depuration, expanding in time and space via the subtraction of shifting elements. The process of unlearning and uninstalling previously established creative softwares in order to achieve dissolution has always been a central focus in her creative pursuit.

            Æ is a result of said experimentation, the dissolution of preconceived notions to create a minimal sound yet rich in textures.


            TRACK LISTING

            1. Æva (4:10)
            2. Dæmon (4:22)
            3. Archaeans (4:23)
            4. Ænnihilator (5:32)
            5. Asǽse (13:29)

            Blanck Mass

            Odd Scene B/w Shit Luck

              THIS IS A RECORD STORE DAY 2018 EXCLUSIVE, LIMITED TO ONE PER PERSON.

              These two tracks have been recorded specifically with RSD in mind, and were committed to tape in the space of a frenzied two day session in January 2018. Neither track will appear on any Blanck Mass album. They are in a style that is not normally associated with Blanck Mass. BM wanted to do something special and as RSD is a special day for all music fans and collectors of one off releases by their favourite artists, this is the perfect release date. 

              In creating Freedom, McMahon brought in a powerful set of collaborators and old friends. Along with core band members, including Parker Kindred (Antony & The Johnsons, Jeff Buckley) on drums, came Chris Coady (Beach House) as producer, and Delicate Steve on guitars. This is the first Amen Dunes record that looks back to the electronic influences of McMahon’s youth with the aid of revered underground musician Panoram from Rome, who finds his place as a significant, if subtle, contributor to the record. The bulk of the songs were recorded at Electric Lady in New York, and finished at Sunset Sound in Los Angeles, where McMahon, Nick Zinner, and session bass player Gus Seyffert (Beck, Bedouine) fleshed out the recordings.

              On the surface, Freedom is a reflection on growing up, childhood friends who ended up in prison or worse, male identity, McMahon’s father, and his mother, who was diagnosed with terminal cancer at the beginning of recording. The characters that populate the musical world of the album are a colourful mix of reality and fantasy. Each character portrait is a representation of McMahon, of masculinity, and of his past.

              Yet, if anything, these eleven songs are a relinquishing of all of them through exposition; a gradual reorientation of being away from the acquired definitions of self we all cling to and towards something closer to what's stated in the Agnes Martin quote that opens the record, “I don’t have any ideas myself; I have a vacant mind” and in the swirling, pitched down utterances of “That's all not me” that close it.

              “Miki Dora was arguably the most gifted and innovative surfer of his generation and the foremost opponent of surfing’s commercialization. He was also a lifelong criminal and retrograde: a true embodiment of the distorted male psyche. He was a living contradiction; both a symbol of free-living and inspiration, and of the false heroics American culture has always celebrated. With lyrics of regret and redemption at the end of one’s youth, the song is about Dora, and McMahon, but ultimately it is a reflection on all manifestations of mythical heroic maleness and its illusions.” – Damon McMahon.


              TRACK LISTING

              1. Intro
              2. Blue Rose
              3. Time
              4. Skipping School
              5. Calling Paul The Suffering
              6. Miki Dora
              7. Satudarah
              8. Believe
              9. Dracula
              10. Freedom
              11. L.A.

              The Men's new LP for Sacred Bones is the tongue-in-cheek-but-still-auspiciously-titled Tomorrow's Hits. This is their first album recorded in a high-end studio and, appropriately, the result is their most high fidelity album to date. That being said, it is still an incredibly straightforward record. Tomorrow's Hits is a concise collection of songs that nonetheless expands the band's ever-evolving musical palette. It's an album full of genre-bending risks, but it reinforces the overarching theme that has come to define its makers: The Men are a great rock band. After spending much of 2011 and 2012 on the road, including a trip upstate to write and record New Moon, their fourth full-length in as many years, The Men needed a break. They decided to take the winter of 2012 off to work on new material in Brooklyn. The converted founding member Mark Perro’s bedroom in Bushwick into a practice space and rehearsed there nearly every day for three months, cutting more than 40 demos. By the end of that winter, the Men had pared that crop of songs down to 13. With their plans to take a break foiled by their own work ethic, they decided to record those songs before New Moon came out. They booked two days at Brooklyn’s Strange Weather studios, clocked in, and tracked all 13 songs entirely live, even including a horn section.

              Eight songs from those sessions made the final cut for The Men’s new LP, Tomorrow’s Hits. This is their first album recorded in a high-end studio and, appropriately, the result is their most high fidelity album to date. That being said, it is still an incredibly straightforward record. Tomorrow’s Hits is a concise collection of songs that nonetheless expands the band’s ever-evolving musical palette. It’s full of genre-bending risks, but it reinforces the overarching theme that has come to define its makers: The Men are a great rock band.


              TRACK LISTING

              1. Dark Waltz (5:15)
              2. Get What You Give (3:22)
              3. Another Night (5:30)
              4. Different Days (4:33)
              5. Sleepless (3:13)
              6. Pearly Gates (6:19)
              7. Settle Me Down (4:59)
              8. Going Down (3:43)

              The cover art for 1st record Sacred Bones released depicted an androgynous wild banshee wearing warpaint, clad all in leather and animal bones, holding a sacrificial knife pointed at the sky. Our debut single was The Hunt's lone statement. The songs were a visceral pulsation, etched in echo. London, structure fires and mental institutions all played a part in the downfall of the originators of 21st century redskin darkwave. 2009. After multiple tumultuous attempts at recording a full length The Hunt decamped to their collective hometown, Boston, to record the ultimate document of their time on earth. This document sat for years, untouched by human hands. 2013. The Hunt lives on. In honor of both the first and one hundredth release, we will finally see and hear the toils of New York's most enigmatic post punk band of recent. Ian Danger, percussive wunderkind, Mike O'Brien, whose four strings drew blood nightly, Christian Kount, master of negative space and Jasper McGandy, the man who's hopes for a darker future led them towards a reality we only now have the honor of witnessing. After all these years the time has come. The Hunt Begins.

              TRACK LISTING

              1. Mountains (3:24)
              2. Fifteen Minutes (3:46)
              3. Summer Of Hate (3:04)
              4. Set The Rising Sun (4:06)
              5. Black And White (4:32)
              6. Scripts (5:12)
              7. Trainwreck (3:58)
              8. When The Sky Turns Black (3:24)
              9. One Thousand Nights (4:23)

              On the heels of last years critically acclaimed debut LP “Under the Pale Moon,” and “Earth Has Doors” EP comes the sophomore full length from Wymond Miles, guitarist of San Francisco garage-pop titans The Fresh & Onlys. “Cut Yourself Free” assembles another convergence of moon-lit romantic swagger and post-punk massacred urgency. Again self recorded and produced to tape, Miles’ song-craft has emerged more refined and poignant, benefitting from the avalanche of his frenzied live shows, but also adhering to a more minimalistic fashion with crooning mid-era Nick Cave or Bowie/Roxy Music strains of pop-modernism. But what stands at the forefront is Miles’ command of his textural guitar and vintage-synth sprawl that on his choosing can open dream-like vistas, or pierce with an engine’s snarl. Turning to the narrative, Miles weaves each song with its own vignette of story line, often with a vaguely obscured protagonist/antagonist dialog. Relationships in Miles’ sketches are always tangled, if not licentious affairs, but are presented more as lustrous gateways to mend and revitalize rather than squalor in.

              TRACK LISTING

              1. The Ascension (5:33)
              2. Passion Plays (3:27)
              3. Night Drives (4:06)
              4. White Nights (2:12)
              5. Bronze Patina (1:32)
              6. Vacant Eyes (5:30)
              7. Anniversary Song (4:43)
              8. Why Are You Afraid? (3:17)
              9. Love Will Rise (2:59)

              For fans of New Order, Demdike Stare, Andy Stott. On Perfect View, Swedish producer Hannes Norrvide returns with his third full length and it’s warmer and more inviting than any of his previous work. The album is composed of largely instrumental pieces, focusing more on beats, samples and general ambiance than its predecessor, last year’s Growing Seeds. Tracks like “Breaking Silence” and “Barcelona” highlight this shift in direction and overall mood, while tracks such as “Another Day” and “Vibrant Brother” stay true to Norrvide’s signature form. Overall this album ventures more towards rave than no-wave and this is perhaps most evidenced by witnessing their live show where Norrvideis joined by Vår frontman Loke Rahbek.


              TRACK LISTING

              1. I Found Love 4:16
              2. Breaking Silence 4:21
              3. Another Day 3:03
              4. Barcelona 3:25
              5. End 1:37
              6. Perfect View 7:50
              7. Vibrant Brother 3:53
              8. Kirsten 5:21
              9. Image 2:04

              Wymond’s previous EP, Earth Has Doors was about intangible and esoteric concepts; the music drifted beautifully in somewhat of an oceanic, boundless state. For the LP it was very important for him to make the songs be felt somatically. In his own words, “I wanted it to hit the body, I wanted it carnal.” Whereas the EP had been a drawn out labor of love he worked on and then shelved for several years, most songs on Under the Pale Moon developed quickly last winter.

              He describes them as being effortless to write, short songs with stripped down arrangements; recorded straight away as soon as they came to him. Feeling very raw and alive, he wrote the basic structure for most of the record within a few weeks. He had the chords and melody for album standout “Singing The Ending” when last year began to take a cathartic turn. In a short span of time his closest friend was killed and he lost some family members. Without much time to deal with grief, he immediately had to tour Europe with the Fresh & Onlys for two months while still basically in shock. He became filled with an ardor for life and seeing the record through. The loss had emerged as a purifying fire and manifested not as a morose lament on tragedy but as a feverish grindstone of passion, dissent, desire, and an apolitical rebellion cry against the bondage of established order.

              While never overtly attempting to address his influences, the listener can hear a bit of Go-Betweens, Echo & the Bunnymen, Nick Cave, Nikki Sudden and The Cure present in his work. Miles creates a big romantic pop record reminiscent of Roxy Music at the height of their power. Under the Pale Moon is a gorgeously dramatic and romantic debut; a focused departure from his work in the Fresh & Onlys, he emerges as innovative songwriter with limitless pop potential.

              TRACK LISTING

              1. Strange Desire
              2. Pale Moon
              3. Singing The Ending
              4. Run Like The Hunted
              5. Youth’s Lonely Wilderness
              6. The Thirst
              7. You And I Are Of The Night
              8. Lazarus Rising
              9. Badlands
              10. Trapdoors And Ladders

              Wymond Miles

              Earth Has Doors EP

                Four years ago Wymond Miles, guitar player and songwriter in San Francisco’s The Fresh & Onlys, began writing solo material thematically based on the concepts of eschatology, anthroposophy, and Gnostic and Hermetic symbolism. Drawing from a vast musical pool of inspiration, including Scott Walker, Robert Wyatt, Arvo Part, and Nikki Sudden amongst others, Earth Has Doors is Miles’ first solo release.

                Since beginning Miles had basically shelved these songs to attend school, focus on fatherhood, and commit to the demanding schedule of the F&O’s. He earned a degree in humanities with an emphasis on the philosophical implications of the ecological/economic crisis of our times, and that subject matter can be traced throughout his first !". These songs concisely yet
                esoterically document the existential crisis of our current epoch — moving from the nothingness of modern materialism, fragmented reductionist thought, and drug escapism to a world imbued with subjectivity and meaning through a new relationship with the Earth and cosmos as alive and full of inherent intelligence.

                Wymond describes his early writing process: “For the first time I had a sense of place, and a reverence of humility for my surroundings. I was full of wonder, but I felt very small, and went inward to begin the work of writing.” He elaborates, “Sonically the mood had to reflect the somberness of moving between the existential chaos of my twenties into this new perspective of living … The mysterious hues of the soundscape reflect a sense of curiosity and possibility in the canyons of sound.” Working in his home studio and using 8 track tape (the infamous Tascam 388), Miles performs almost everything on this record — guitars, synths, bass, drums, manipulated tape delay, and vocals. A few friends played with him, guesting on drums (“Hidden Things” and “Earth Has Doors”) and viola (“As the Orchard”), while his wife Sarah sings some harmonies on side A.

                Pop. 1280’s first full-length album. Highly praised amongst NY punk illuminate. Actively toured in 2011 and will be on the road much of 2012. First 300 LP’s on colored vinyl. New York’s Pop.1280 are back with their debut full length for Sacred Bones, 'The Horror'. This record comes almost one year after their highly praised EP 'The Grid', and it finds the band exploring new territory and perversions. Chief songwriters Chris Bug and Ivan Lip are now joined by drummer Zach Ziemann (ex-Twin Stumps) and bassist/sonic manipulator Pascal Ludet. Recording for The Horror took place at the Python Patrol basement studios in Brooklyn with engineer Ben Greenberg (Z’s, Pygmy Shrews).

                'The Horror' showcases a lot more improvisation and in-studio writing, giving the album a darker, more unhinged organic feeling. This new approach let the band stretch out more, and while they haven’t lost the synth-punk skronk that has gotten them compared to Pussy Galore, D.A.F. and Cop Shoot Cop, 'The Horror' adds longer songwriting explorations and psychedelic-scapes that reference bands like Cabaret Voltaire, Chrome, and early Sonic Youth. Thematically, The Horror finds Pop. 1280 stepping out of the cyberspace of 'the Grid' and into the deserted beaches, highways and plains of a surreal hell. It’s the road album for the post-apocalypse.

                In the year since their EP came out, Pop.1280 have toured the East coast and Midwest extensively with label-mates Cult of Youth, fellow pig-fuckers Pygmy Shrews and Twin Stumps. They have been featured in Impose, Stereogum, and The Village Voice (twice) and got glowing reviews on Agit Reader, Vice, and Dusted. Additionally, Blind Prophet Records released a stunning new 7" in October 2010 and the band have been very active in their hometown of NY playing key shows throughout the fall and winter 0f 2011. 2012 though, is the year for these armageddoners. Get ready or die trying.


                TRACK LISTING

                1. Burn The Worm
                2. New Electronix
                3. Nature Boy
                4. Bodies In The Dunes
                5. Cyclotron
                6. Beg Like A Human
                7. Dogboy
                8. West World
                9. Hang Em’ High
                10. Crime Time


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