A quick scan of the world's favorite crowdsourced discography reveals that Sonic Youth co-founder Lee Ranaldo was not a total stranger to crackling electric experimentation in the years following his songwriting turns of the 20-teens. Yet 'The System', ingeniously culled and sequenced from Ranaldo's soundtrack work for Dutch filmmaker Joris Postema’s "eco-doc" of the same name nonetheless feels like a reawakening. Quietly released in a vastly different (and much more "filmic") form by Doxy Music / Riva Media Records in 2025, this LP reimagines and reconfigures the initial release, including unreleased material (written and recorded for the film) to lend it new stature as both a return to drone-improv form and a reunion with introspective Downtown angst.

Given the state of the world, it's not surprising that the film Ranaldo scores -- a documentary on three climate activists bruising their fists on the black iron prison of techno-fascist deathkultur -- is a study in despair and futility. But rather than wallowing in navel-gazing doom and gloom, the film documents the unstoppable spirit that has animated human resistance since the time of the Pharaohs.

As it turns out, the gorgeous scope of Lee Ranaldo's guitar palette is a perfect manifestation of the hope and despair that animates the film. But like other high-water marks in the guitar-centric soundtrack canon -- the high plains raga of Bruce Langhorne's 'Hired Hand', Neil Young's sparse and ghostly solo transmissions on Dead Man, or the monolithic mantras of Popol Vuh's 'Nosferatu' -- its devotion to spectral gestures and meditative song forms launches it firmly outside of the OST orbit into a universe fully its own.

It might seem like a long journey from the Lower Manhattan rhythmic grime of the album's opener 'Tajikistan (Nice to Meet You)' (reminiscent of guitar opuses like Robert Quine and Jody Harris's Escape) to the ringing cowboy chords of the final track, but the narrative logic of the LP pulls the listener along as solidly as a pack horse. As the LP unwinds, and collaborators like Jim Jarmusch, cellist Leila Boudreil, Yeah Yeah Yeahs snare shaman Brian Chase and guitarist Yonatan Gat take their places, new vistas unfurl -- the ritualistic thrum of 'Berlin Blockade', the haunted overtone palaces of 'Bergelmir', the cavernous acoustic strumming of 'Instruments of Violence'. It all winds up with the high lonesome standard 'Cool Water', each unhurried note trailing off into long-tail reverb, layers of shifting vocal harmonies pulling everything skyward -- a hopeful note in an album where existential dread never lurks too deeply below the surface.

In the end, 'The System' functions both as a film score and a hallucinatory (mostly) instrumental guitar record, revealing a sensibility not too often spotted in the 21st century -- a liminal space where the song, the jam, the meditation merges into a blurred whole. 'The System's expansive fabric, emerging from a collective sound circling around Ranaldo's signature tones, envelops and amplifies the contributions of its community of creators -- the perfect antidote to narcissistic despair. Much like the subjects of the film light the way toward intra-generational resistance, the music of 'The System' reveals a path through gathering darkness. The world could be yours if you follow.

TRACK LISTING

1. Tajikistan (Nice to Meet You)
2. Pippi Sailing (Cimbalom)
3. No More Slogans
4. Berlin Blockade
5. Bergelmir
6. Something Beautiful to Live For
7. The Conference
8. An Exploding Dandelion
9. Telefoongesprek Henk
10. Both Ends of the Spectrum
11. Instruments of Violence
12. A Just Collapse
13. Tadzio Wild Congress
14. The Cusp of the Change
15. Cool Water

The Odyssey Cult 'Vol. 3' ignites visceral fires of fuzz, pumped-up motorik, shimmering noise and hazy vocals, just in time to send up the last intoxicating smoke of summer. As for those of us still piecing our skulls back together after the ecstatic ’90s-pummel of Ethan Miller’s previous project (the zonked supergroup of Orcutt Shelley Miller), we forgive ourselves for not anticipating this, a meltdown-psych re-fusion of Ethan and Ben Flashman, two of the principals in Comets On Fire, the premier purveyors of early-aughts American guitar mayhem.

Featuring Ethan Miller (Howlin Rain, Heron Oblivion) on guitar, loops, vocals, Ben Flashman (Comets On Fire) on bass, Steve Shelley (Sonic Youth) on drums, Anthony Taibi (Carlton Melton/White Manna) on keys, Zoh Amba on sax and Brigid Dawson (OSEES), Paula Frazer (Tarnation), Inna Showalter (Magic Fig) on vocals.

Miller and company layer psychedelic murk of the highest order into a neon rock monolith, its components spanning coasts and generations of musicians. Depending what angle you look at it, Volume 3 glitters with facets reflecting all corners of sonic psychedelia, fusing the best of all post-hippy/punk eras, complete with earworms that sound equally great by the pool, on headphones, or blasting in the sled cruising down the 5, the 10, or whatever freeway of your dreams. Whether or not you’ve heard Orcutt Shelley Miller, Comets On Fire, Tarnation, or the OSEES, this LP stands out like a life buoy (or, occasionally, a shark fin) in a sea of wax.

TRACK LISTING

1. The Yeti’s Eyes
2. Sun Damage
3. On Neon Tigers
4. Our First Trip
5. Leviathan
6. Back To The Cave
7. The Night Archer
8. Ammenglade

Orcutt Shelley Miller and legendary frontman David Yow of The Jesus Lizard join forces for a feral rendition of Captain Beefheart’s 'Hot Head', b/w Neil Young’s 'A Man Needs A Maid'.

Orcutt Shelley Miller follow their critically acclaimed self-titled 2025 debut album with a 7-inch EP that presents an unexpected pair of covers and a perfectly tailored guest vocalist appearance by David Yow for Beefheart’s 'Hot Head'.

Ethan Miller, known for his singing in bands like Howlin Rain and Comets On Fire handles the intimate and glass-fragile vocal duties on OSM’s cinematic rendition of Neil Young’s 'A Man Needs A Maid'.

On how Hot Head came about OSM bassist Ethan Miller says, “David is one of the great through-lines helping to carry the spirit of Beefheart’s musical legacy into and beyond alternative music of the ‘90s and 2000s. In my estimation that explosive blending of sonic complexity and visceral, primitive expression is really at the heart of David and The Jesus Lizard’s power, as it is also at the heart of Orcutt Shelley Miller. Beefheart hand-carved the model for that musical dynamic in marble.”

On the subject of Beefheart David Yow says, “I am extremely grateful for Don Van Vliet and the stuff he made, both the things you look at and the things you listen to, but no more so than OSM. That may or may not be the truth.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: "Hot Head" sees a blitzkrieg of overdriven guitars and vocals mangled to oblivion with some primal cave man drumming and brilliantly destructed blues bass riffs.

TRACK LISTING

1. Hot Head
2. A Man Needs A Maid

'They Came Like Swallows' is the first album-length collaboration between Thurston Moore and Kramer (now officially Bonner Kramer), two giants of alternative/ experimental music. The accomplishments and influence of these two artists in the world of independent music cannot be overstated and the result of their artistic union is a startlingly cohesive statement that burns through landscapes of primitive outsider rock, avant-garde composition, progressive ambient and further locales boldly and beautifully unnamable.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: A bracing selection of pieces from Kramer & Moore, drifting from deeply experimental rock and drone to succinct, atmospheric synthpop and melodic post-punk (check in particular their brilliant cover of Joy Division's 'Insight')

TRACK LISTING

1.Urn Burial
2. The Redness In The West
3. The Third Migration
4. They Came Like Swallows
5. The Living Theater
6. The Oceans Are Crying
7. Insight

Orcutt Shelley Miller is an avant-rock trio comprised of three highly celebrated figures of experimental music: Bill Orcutt (Harry Pussy), Steve Shelley (Sonic Youth) and Ethan Miller (Howlin Rain, Comets On Fire). Following in the footsteps of the high-firing free jazz and European outer-rock bands of the ’60s and ’70s and the Pacific Rim’s subterranean reimagining of “rock” form in the ’90s, Orcutt Shelley Miller utilize explosive group chemistry, focused intention and chance to pursue the creation of song in its rawest, purest form.

“The landscape Orcutt Shelley Miller inhabits lies deep in the stoner American bedrock, fed by volcanic riffage and hypnotic phrasing with rhythmic nods to the SoCal ’60s and atonal slash piled on a mid ’80s SST punk-fusionoid substrate, ultimately blasting a ‘big rock statement’ that treads the line between good times and blown minds.” - Tom Carter.

TRACK LISTING

1. A Star Is Born
2. An L.A. Funeral
3. Unsafe At Any Speed
4. Four-door Charger
5. A Long Island Wedding

After a storied first year as a band releasing and touring behind their critically acclaimed debut album Today, Galaxie 500 closed out 1988 with a quintessential performance at New York City’s famed CBGB with every bit of their signature intimacy and autumnal bombast on display. The unusual bill which also included Sonic Youth, B.A.L.L. and Unsane was a benefit show for the zine shop See Hear.

Captured here in a raw but inspired board mix by Kramer and restored and mastered from the analog source by Alan Douches at West West Side Music, CBGB 12.13.88 is a live snapshot of a Galaxie fully formed, punctuating the end of their first chapter while poised to step into their next with On Fire the following year.

TRACK LISTING

1. Tugboat
2. Oblivious
3. Parking Lot
4. Don’t Let Our Youth Go To Waste
5. Pictures
6. Flowers
7. It’s Getting Late
8.Temperature’s Rising

Howlin Rain’s grand 3xLP archival statement and untold story, written over nearly two decades in invisible ink between the lines. Features never before heard songs from The Russian Wilds, The Dharma Wheel, The Alligator Bride, Mansion Songs, Live Rain and the lost Ethan Miller Band sessions.

With a broad cast of musical characters including Rick Rubin (Producer/American Records), Luther Dickinson (North Mississippi Allstars), Scarlet Rivera (Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue), Joel Robinow (Once and Future Band), Isaiah Mitchell (Earthless/ The Black Crowes) and many more. Includes songs by The Rolling Stones, Grateful Dead, Leon Russell and Neil Merryweather.

“I wanted to compile the record so it would have impact like our grandest, wildest, most unabashed studio album. I left out home demos, and songs from quiet corners, sketches, etc, in favor of fully formed, fully finished, studio level tracks from front to back. Lost at Sea is intended to be something that you can pour yourself into and get swept away in.” — Ethan Miller (Founder, bandleader).

TRACK LISTING

1. Brawler Theme
2. Down A Drain
3. Burn Down
4. Speed (Heat & Light)
5. Beyond The New Age
6. Here Comes Sunshine
7. Hot .22
8. The Border
9. Shine A Light
10. Hollywood Boulevard
11. Out In The Woods
12. Misery
13. Pride In A Cold Wind
14. Lady Of The Sky
15. Kiss The World Goodbye

The complete uncollected Noise New York studio recordings of Galaxie 500. A twenty-four track chronological journey through rarities and outtakes including never-before-heard songs, from the start of their incendiary career to their final studio session. Uncollected Noise New York ’88-’90 marks Galaxie 500’s first release of new archival material in nearly thirty years and their most comprehensive collection of unreleased and rare material ever. Produced and engineered by Kramer at Noise New York 1988-1990.

• Complete uncollected Noise New York studio recordings of iconic indie band.

• Features rarities and outtakes, plus first release of new archival material in nearly thirty years.

• Historical photos and liner notes by the band.

STAFF COMMENTS

Darryl says: Galaxie 500 specialised in chiming slowcore-sunburst guitars, smooth rolling bass, hazy psychedelia fuzz and laid back forlorn vocals. This twenty four track collection includes rarities, outtakes and previously never heard songs, all produced and engineered by Kramer at Noise New York 1988-1990. An absolute archival treat from start to finish on the wonderful Silver Current Records. Formats include a super limited UK exclusive double purple and silver coloured vinyl, double back vinyl and double digi-pack CD; all with historical photos and liner notes by the band.

TRACK LISTING

1. Shout You Down
2. See Through Glasses
3. On The Floor (Noise NY Version)
4. Can't Believe It's Me
5. Oblivious
6. King Of Spain
7. Jerome
8. Song In 3
9. Crazy
10. I Wanna Live
11. I Will Walk
12. Cold Night
13. Ceremony
14. Never Get To Heaven
15. Maracas Song
16. Victory Garden
17. Blue Thunder (w/sax)
18. Cheese And Onions
19. Fourth Of July (Video Mix)
20. Cactus
21. Moonshot
22. Them
23. Final Day
24. Here She Comes Now

Presenting Howlin Rain’s grand-scale new studio album: The Dharma Wheel, a six-track, 52-minute dive into a joyous fantasy realm. A sonic travelogue of prog funk, psychedelia, bygone West Coast jam music and watermelon rock. The triumph of a working band!

Over nearly 20 years, Howlin Rain may have become the quintessential independent American rock ’n roll band: a steam-spitting Hydra of cranked guitars, kicking asphalt dust through a kaleidoscoping travelogue of desert motels and dives, volleying forth transmissions of sci-fi poetry from the blacktop veins of this cracked and aching country.

Now, in America 2021, capping these strangest and sorest of times, the band returns with The Dharma Wheel, a six-track, 52-minute dive into a joyous fantasy realm of exaggerated present.

“I wanted The Dharma Wheel to be a portal from our everyday world, the one from which you stand on hard ground and hold the album in your hands and peer into the artwork, and into another universe,” says songwriter, guitarist and vocalist, Ethan Miller. “You enter into that universe with your eyes and ears and mind and take a ride through free-form meditation on these ideas — from big, fundamental concepts about our existence right down to the grease that rolls down the arm of a pulp novel killer as he eats a gas station hot dog in an old Dodge in an alleyway.”

Lyrically, Miller has completed his evolution into a mushroom-plucking Whitman of the West, singing outlandish tales in a topographic blend of Humbead’s Revised Map of the World and an inverted U.S. where downtrodden bodhisattvas roam the back streets and moonless country roads.

“Down in Florida swamps, run by nature’s law, standing in the water, Eden gone. Two men loading rifles, beasts making time, they shot a boy from an orange tree and watched the colored birds take flight, watch the colors as they soar and dive.” — ‘Under the Wheels.’

The band, Jeff McElroy (bass, backing vocals), Justin Smith (drums/percussion, backing vocals) and Dan Cervantes (guitar, backing vocals), again sounds hardwired into Miller’s vision, building tracks that swagger and sway in response to his verse. Lending a hand this time around is the legendary Scarlet Rivera (Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue) on violin, and the endlessly inventive Adam MacDougall (Chris Robinson Brotherhood, Circles Around the Sun) on keys.

Songs were shaped via the blast furnace of endless gigs, then recorded often mere hours after the band slipped the stage.

“The captured sonic fact about this record is that it’s the sound of a band that rehearsed this material a lot and put a ton of work into its construction and was on the road a lot and recorded on days off in the tour schedule,” Miller says. “In some cases we were on stage on Saturday night playing these songs at quarter-to-2 in the morning and by Noon the next day we were sipping coffee in the studio playing them for the machine.”

Rivera’s violin is the first sound heard as the album dawns on the instrumental “Prelude.” Soon, the band joins, twirling the theme into a psychedelicized awakening. “Don’t Let the Tears” brings the boogie, with MacDougall’s madcap synth work and wah-wah guitars showering 70’s glitter upon a parquet dance floor of the mind. “Under the Wheels” and “Rotoscope” center the album with taut, compositional epics populated by murdering drifters and fuzz pedal explosions. The blue hour comedown of “Annabelle” meditates upon the weariness of lost love, with Rivera again amping the heartache via her violin strings.

“In the evening the trains go by, and shake the dust from dirty walls, sometimes I feel like a spider in an old mason jar, who threatens only convex light from down the hall. I’ve been lost to the world since the photos of the black hole, landed on my desktop screaming, perhaps the all and nothing all-in-one is just too much to take, for particles and matter that never found their way.” — ‘Annabelle’

The record closes with the 16-minute title track, a multi-movement suite which cycles from Crazy Horse-meets-Traffic jams through colossal, mass-moving funk stomp, eventually cresting and washing into a sing-along gospel lament.

The Dharma Wheel is an album of great depth, and one steeped in good vibes: a rich, glistening world of the ultra-vivid. As illustrated in Arik Roper’s cover art, the grand dharmachakra has been set in motion, churning off the California coast.

“We were trying to build a world big enough that the imagination won’t go soft on you after just a few listens and where our love for this music, and music in general — along with a good dose of audacity — create a magic carpet ride through the world of The Dharma Wheel,” Miller continues. “In pursuing that I think we also managed to make a record that has a lot of joy in it: the joy of playing music, the joy of experiencing music, the joy of storytelling and poetry, the kind of singular joy and extended ecstatic moment that only a real ‘band’ can express in just that way.”

And it’s this joy, this exuberance and dedication to the lines of cosmic expression — all centered in the exalted art of the everyday — that constructs the heart of the record. At its core, The Dharma Wheel is the triumph of a working band, a transmission from a never-paused before arriving for our strange, bruised, spectacular now.”

TRACK LISTING

1. Prelude
2. Don’t Let The Tears
3. Under The Wheels
4. Rotoscope
5. Annabelle
6. Dharma Wheel

Feral Ohms is a power trio from Oakland, California, led by Comets On Fire / Howlin Rain / Heron Oblivion guitar and voice fireball Ethan Miller along with animal drummer Chris Johnson (Drunk Horse / Andy Human) and the loudest bassist in fifteen counties, Josh Haynes (Nudity).

The band turns the spatial pyrotechnics and expansive spirit of classic psychedelia inside out, dragging it through the punk rock era kicking and screaming and boils it down into a series of explosions that start at needle drop and end when the record does. They blast pure action and outlaw rock’n’roll joy through relentless, violent musical force, blowing the doors off psychedelic rock and letting loose the raw, wild, high speed feedback wail of something massive careening off the rails and into your ears.

This is FO’s debut studio album. Recorded by Eric “King Riff” Bauer (Ty Segall, White Fence, Heron Oblivion), Phil Manley (Earthless, Wooden Shjips) and mixed with scorched Earth policy by Chris Woodhouse (Thee Oh Sees, Fuzz).