What does the Earth sound like? In Stations, the 10th volume in the Field Works series, producer Stuart Hyatt approaches that question with a team of scientists working on the EarthScope experiment. Using sophisticated ground recording devices, Field Works has created a new type of music in which human voices sing along with the actual voice of the Earth. Stations features an all-star ensemble of vocalists and instrumentalists, including Hanna Benn, Janie Cowan, Masayoshi Fujita, Stuart Hyatt, Laraaji, Qasim Naqvi, and Brad Weber. The deluxe vinyl edition includes a bonus digital album of peer reviews by Deantoni Parks, Green-House, Olga Wojciechowska, Afrodeutsche, Nathan Fake, Ben Chatwin, Sophia Loizou, Amulets, Penelope Trappes, and Alva Noto. Stations was commissioned by The Anchorage Museum and The National Geographic Society.

“For those interested in the intersection between field recordings and music, this is a must-have.” A Closer Listen

“A beguiling and quietly astonishing piece of work.” Folk Radio

TRACK LISTING

1. Station 1 (2:28)
2. Station 2 (2:57)
3. Station 3 (3:02)
4. Station 4 (3:04)
5. Station 5 (3:02)
6. Station 6 (2:42)
7. Station 7 (3:04)
8. Station 8 (2:13)
9. Station 9 (2:58)
10. Station 10 (3:29)

The expansive new album Rachel Grimes, the renowned modern composer and cofounder of iconic chamber-rock group, Rachel’s. A rich, sprawling folk opera that explores the controversial history of Kentucky’s overlooked figures. The Way Forth, a new folk opera from Rachel Grimes, encompasses lush layers of voices and orchestrations in an experiential, non-linear investigation highlighting perspectives of Kentucky women from 1775 to today. Inspired by a treasure-trove of family documents, photos, and letters spanning several generations, Grimes began in 2016 to research some of the more vexing questions that came to the surface about these people, places, and events.

The songs that make up The Way Forth weave back in time through a postcard, a personal account of a long life on a farm, traces of folk tunes, names, places, and rivers, all woven into an emotional fabric of yearning, nostalgia, grief, and the rich intimacies of everyday life. Initially solo voices are heard above vivid orchestrations, expanding with the choral voices of the community through fragments of traditional church music and popular tunes. The scope widens to include a modern male narrator's reflections on a place battered by greed, civil war, bigotry, and the exploitation of natural resources. Through music, voice, and film, The Way Forth honors the emotional legacy of the silenced, the holistic, the beauty in quotidian life, and explores the eternal grace and redemption of time, as symbolized by the great Dix and Kentucky Rivers

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: An honest and tender look at rural history and locality as well as the place of arts and creativity within society, all presented through Grimes' singular musical vision. Any fans of Rachel's tender chamber classical (myself included) will find a lot to enjoy here, while being comfortingly different from anything that's come before.

TRACK LISTING

1. Got Ahold Of Me (4:15)
2. Postcard From Pauline (1:46)
3. Patsy (2:11)
4. Sisterhood Of Man (3:20)
5. Red House School (5:24)
6. The Hysterical Society (2:15)
7. Nowhere On Earth (3:24)
8. There Is No Other (3:33)
9. The Spells (1:33)
10. Fontaine Ferry (4:25)
11. For So Long (4:40)
12. Dix River Doxology (3:21)
13. Dolly (1:43)
14. Bill Of Sale (1:53)
15. End Of Dominion (12:07)
16. Sara (2:45)
17. A New Land (3:39)

The limited edition super-deluxe vinyl format is pressed onto 100% virgin vinyl in a custom Yellow-White-Clear March-Up color mix. The records is packaged in a full-color gatefold jacket, and includes a full-sized 28-page full-color diary, and an original hand-numbered animation print cell from the We The Animals film production. The soundtrack to the massively acclaimed, aware-winning motion picture, We The Animals. We The Animals has received near-unanimous acclaim (91% on Rotten Tomatoes), and the soundrack has been praised as an integral part of the film’s profound resonance. We The Animals is the award-winning new film from Jeremiah Zagar (In A Dream). Based on the best-selling novel by Justin Torres, We The Animals is Zagar’s first narrative feature.

It reunites Zagar with Nick Zammuto, the renowned composer and co-founder of beloved collage-pop pioneers, the Books. Inspired by the film’s setting in rural upstate New York – and influenced by the early ambient electronic music that galvanized the Books two decades ago – Zammuto pairs that earthen, wooded isolation with dynamic pulses of customized electronics and sparse, crystalline layers of melodic soft synths. The juxtaposition is arresting, and gives the soundtrack a unique heft befitting of its subject matter – and betraying of its minimal instrumentation. Beautifully edited and sequenced to act as both a companion to the film and a standalone album, We The Animals: An Original Motion Picture Soundtrack is as subtle as it is startling, and succeeds in making even the heaviest emotions feel momentarily weightless

TRACK LISTING

1. I’ll Fly Away (1:04)
2. We Wanted More (00:49)
3. We Wanted Less (01:11)
4. Just This (00:52)
5. Look At Me (01:17)
6. You Went So Far (00:26)
7. Under The Bed (01:48)
8. Paps Leaves (01:09)
9. The Kitchen (02:20)
10. Like A Bomb (00:31)
11. Stealing (02:01)
12. Dream Of Paps (01:44)
13. Haircut (02:04)
14. Tonight We’ll Go For A Ride (02:14)
15. You Were Supposed To Find Us (00:22)
16. Bad Bad Bad (00:56)
17. Wet Dream (00:45)
18. No More Crying (02:20)
19. Paps Dig A Grave (00:15)
20. It Was My Grave (03:36)
21. Bad Nightmare (00:48)
22. Winter (01:52)
23. Can I Come? (01:00)
24. Fly Away (05:29)
25. I’m Nobody’s Baby (01:15)
26. We The Animals (02:21)

The first new album in nearly a decade from Italian-American post-punk stalwarts. Recorded, mixed, and sequenced by longtime collaborator, Steve Albini. A decade is literally a lifetime for most bands. For Italian-American post-punk stalwarts, Bellini, a decade is simply the time it took to make their new album.

Separated by an ocean, the members of Bellini lived their lives, mourned several close friends who lost theirs, and occasionally converged in Italy or Chicago to write and record what would become Before The Day Has Gone. Recorded as always by longtime collaborator and companion, Steve Albini, Before The Day Has Gone’s roots are in tracks that were originally laid to tape at Albini’s Electrical Audio Studios way back in 2012, where they sat unfinished until fall of 2017, when vocalist/lyricist Giovanna Cacciola recorded her vocals with the help of Sacha Tilotta, her son with Bellini guitarist,
Agostino Tilotta.

Once received, Albini mixed and sequenced the album independently, as Bellini has preferred with all of their albums since 2005’s Small Stones. Bellini’s gift for marrying melody and dissonance is as sharp as ever on Before The Day Has Gone – the band’s veteran rhythm section of Matthew Taylor and Alexis Fleisig anchoring Tilotta’s sinewy anti-riffs and Cacciola’s primal punk poetry. Bellini deliver passion and pain with the kind of pride and prowess one would expect from a band of their pedigree, and Before The Day Has Gone is their most dramatic and dizzying display of their two-decade career. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Greek Fire (4:28)
2. Right Before (3:03)
3. Two Ears One Mouth (4:10)
4. Clementine Peels (4:23)
5. Plumber’s Foxtrot (2:47)
6. Il Maestro/If I Could Say (7:01)
7. Being Married (2:18)
8. Slow Talker (4:15)
9. Promises (6:17)
10. Whales In Space (2:45)

RIYL: The Microphones, Will Oldham, Bon Iver, Jim O’rourke. Features members of Pinback, Tarentel, Sleeping People, Rumah Sakit, Dilute, and more. After more than ten years apart, multi-instrumentalist songwriters Marty Anderson (Dilute, Okay) and Kenseth Thibideau (Tarentel, Sleeping People) have reconnected to resurrect Howard Hello. Originally founded to craft music inspired by the American Zeitgeist, Election Year finds Howard Hello returning to familiar themes: The dichotomies of reality and illusion; organic and synthetic; sincerity and irony; faith and fact.

These themes, however familiar, are perhaps no more confusing and confounding than right now in present-day United States (hence the album's title). Musically Anderson and Thibideau use music as an analogy, fusing abstract and traditional instrumental textures with angelic, distorted layers of vocal accompaniment. Their collaborative connection is extraordinary and rare, symbiotic craftsmen of profound meditations that are as fascinatingly weird as they are irrefutably wonderful. 

TRACK LISTING

1. The Split (1:04)
2. Achilles Heel (3:52)
3. Simon Say (3:55)
4. Greenhouse (5:13)
5. Witness (4:45)
6. Vote (2:38)
7. MCD (4:43)
8. Out (4:41)
9. Money Mouth (3:20)
10. Sunny (4:37)
11. MAD (3:01)

Lasso Yo is the third full-length from Canon Blue, the alter ego of Nashville producer-songwriter, Daniel James. It's been over a half-decade since Canon Blue's previous album, the Efterklang and Amiina-augmented orchestral pop opus, Rumspringa. Six years can feel like a lifetime, and James knows that all too well, and he tells the whole story on Lasso Yo. Conceived during increasingly long periods of isolation caused by increasingly intense bouts of anxiety and depression.

Lasso Yo weaves those difficult personal struggles into a lyrically earnest and musically rich collection of songs. Produced, performed, and recorded by James at Taylor York's (Paramore) house, and mixed by John McEntire (Broken Social Scene, Yo La Tengo, The Sea and Cake), this is not only Canon Blue's most personal record, but also his most profound. For what was undoubtedly a challenging, cathartic record to make, Lasso Yo achieves a kind of weightlessness that betrays the heavy load it carries. It' s this dichotomy that gives the album a curious magic, an unlikely transcendence spawned by an uncomfortable confrontation between James' past and present, and the new shape it gives his future.

TRACK LISTING

1 Beholden (3:52)
2. Tame Birds (4:22)
3. Dedicate (3:32)
4. Take 6 (3:23)
5. Onyx (3:34)
6. Plea Rel (4:01)
7. Carry My Weight (3:44)
8. Back In Town (4:55)
9. Germanium (4:55) 

Two legendary PINBACK Eps compiled, remastered, and released on vinyl for the first time ever. Remastered for vinyl from original recordings. In the early days of Pinback, they were known mostly as two lauded musicians who spent their spare time away from their primary projects (Three Mile Pilot, Thingy, Heavy Vegetable) to hone their home recording skills while experimenting with ideas, tones, and instrumentation that didn’t quite fit into those primary projects.

Pinback hadn’t yet become their day job; it hadn’t yet become a well-oiled 5-piece touring machine; and it had no idea where it was going to go. In retrospect, that earnest curiosity is what makes those early Pinback recordings so resonant and so unique, and what separated them from every indie rock band of this century. Every bit as powerful and expressive as their first two albums, the 1999 EP, Some Voices, and the 2003 EP, Offcell, famously bucked the perception of EPs as outtakes and toss-offs. What were ostensibly minor stopgaps between albums became massive fan favorites and staples of Pinback’s live show. Having never been released on vinyl, it’s only fitting that we revisit these poignant recordings – and take the opportunity to painstakingly remaster and repackage them into the full-length album that never was, the aptly named Some Offcell Voices. 

TRACK LISTING

1 Some Voices (3:17)
2 Trainer (2:44)
3 Manchuria (2:42)
4 June (7:17)
5 Microtonic Wave (4:56)
6 Victorious D (4:17)
7. Offcell (4:31)
8. B (4:51)
9 Grey Machine (11:05) 

The first new album by GRAILS in six years. Features members of OM, HOLY SONS, LILACS & CHAMPAGNE, and WATTER. RIYL: Pink Floyd, Earth, OM, The Flaming Lips, Clams Casino. Rather than pick up where they left off, Grails take the sky-high riff-based heaviness of their earlier albums and distill it into a nuanced, widescreen opus. The perennial influences of mid-20th century Western film scores, obscure library music, and psychedelic krautrock are indelibly imprinted, but Chalice Hymnal exudes an eerie patience in unfurling the many layers of its subtle details.

Produced by the band over the past five years, Chalice Hymnal bears some of the European psych and experimental hip-hop production techniques of founding members Alex Hall and Emil Amos' other group, Lilacs & Champagne. Amos' meditative metal band, Om, and longtime singer-songwriter project, Holy Sons, also naturally find their way into the Chalice cauldron. Rounding out their leaner line-up, cofounder Zak Riles (also of experimental kraut-psych trio, Watter) layers finger-picked acoustic guitars into a prog-folk hybrid that pushes Grails further into the deep end, displaying a profound resonance, both musically and emotionally. No one else sounds like Grails, and on Chalice Hymnal they sound more like themselves than ever before. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: One of my favourites for a long time, these lot. Add to that Amos's other projects Holy Sons and Lilacs & Champagne, and you have a whole wealth of musical musings to consider. It's obvious that influence has seeped into Grails itself, with the eastern influence much more pronounced and the patchwork found-sound collage vibes segued into their sound like it was there all along. A great return for Grails, and a cementing of their importance in experimental music.

TRACK LISTING

1. Chalice Hymnal (4:22)
2. Pelham (2:49)
3. Empty Chamber (2:33)
4. New Prague (4:50)
5. Deeper Politics (3:49)
6. Tough Guy (3:57)
7. Rebecca (3:47)
8. Deep Snow II (5:48)
9. The Moth & The Flame (4:07)
10. Thorns II (3:59)
11. After The Funeral (10:19)

And so it began. When multi-instrumentalists and sound enthusiasts Paul de Jong and Nick Zammuto first came together, they surely could not have foreseen their debut album, Thought For Food, becoming such a beloved genre-defying masterpiece, an album that rests firmly in countless Top 100 Albums of the Decade lists. Filled with endearing and enduring songs, the Books revisit their wide-eyed beginnings with this remastered Thought For Food, repackaged with all-new artwork and expanded to include lyrics for every song for the first time ever. Carefully and thoughtfully remastered from the original mixes by Zammuto at his new studio outside his home in Vermont, TFF now boasts a warmth and clarity that surprisingly reveals an increased harmonic depth. Having combined and refined their compositional and recording processes over the course of four albums, addressing the technical limitations of these earlier recordings offers the chance to marry the technical, musical and emotional aspects of these songs in a way like never before. To be sure, the differences are subtle, but for a band who have transformed minutiae into modern art, that subtlety is downright sublime. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Enjoy Your Worries, You May Never Have Them Again (4:06)
2. Read, Eat, Sleep (3:49)
3. All Bad Ends All (2:42)
4. Contempt (3:22)
5. All Our Base Are Belong To Them (4:18)
6. Thankyoubranch (5:05)
7. Motherless Bastard (4:11)
8. Mikey Bass (2:56)
9. Excess Straussess (2:08)
10. Getting The Done Job (3:49)
11. A Dead Fish Gains The Power Of Observation (1:08)
12. Deafkids (1:09)

Emerging from a decade-long hiatus, East Coast electronic producer and multi-instrumentalist, Sybarite, returns with Waver The Absolute. The long break from Hawkins’ Sybarite project seems to have done him some good, as this is unquestionably his strongest and most cohesive work to date. The aesthetic shifts from Sybarite's early ‘00s work to Waver The Absolute are immediately apparent with the opening track – an in-your-face wall of harsh static and fuzz that evolves into a distant, almost blissful transmission. From there Hawkins slips effortlessly into dancefloor mode with a pair of tracks that stretch the limits and lengths of what we used to expect from Sybarite. Waver The Absolute defies genre and expectation, and the eclecticism serves it well. The marriage of the electronic and the organic has been one that Hawkins has expertly manipulated since his days in the legendary Silver Apples in the late 1990s. Both CD and LP formats are packaged in full-color jackets with metallic silver overprints.The vinyl format includes an MP3 download coupon featuring two digital bonus tracks. 

TRACK LISTING

1. The Letter (2:04)
2. Valence (6:35)
3. Waver The Absolute (5:41)
4. Look Ahead See Behind (5:45)
5. Mosquito Theme (2:18)
6. Open Secret (4:16)
7. The Children (4:06)
8. Hold The Phone (3:59)
9. Daft Shaft (4:53)
10. Ornamental Hermit (5:06)

"Ceiling Sky" collects these previously rare, vinyl-only tracks onto CD for the first time. This includes the limited edition 12" singles "Streets" / "Nozomi" and (rmxs) - featuring remixes by Four Tet and Sybarite - as well as the two bonus tracks from the 2xLP vinyl edition of the "Noumena" album. In total this is an hour's worth of enchanting, haunting music that only a handful of people have had the pleasure to hear until now.

The stories that make up Tarentel's existence are almost as dramatic and hard to follow as their musical trajectory. The San Francisco group started in the mid-90s as an outlet for guitarists Jefre Cantu-Ledesma and Danny Grody to make left-of-centre instrumental guitar suites. Their sound and vision proved very infectious, drawing in more collaborators and full-fledged members than anyone has time to count. Over the course of nearly a decade, the band has become a bit of a legend in independent music. The songs themselves, average over 10 minutes each – with some stretching past the half-hour. Perhaps then, it comes as a bit of a surprise that their first album in nearly four years bears more songs in less time than ever before. Though hardly a pop record, "We Move Through Weather" is Tarentel's most focused album. Now stripped to a trio (Sonna's Jim Redd completes the line-up on drums), the sound is almost entirely intuitive. Virtually every song is built from expansive improvisations of sweeping drones and walls of discordant feedback. Where taught, meticulous guitar melodies once drove their songs to conclusion, thunderous drumming now navigates the group through an uncertain abyss of layered noise, horn bursts (courtesy of musician Steve Dye's arsenal of homemade instruments) and the occasional lonely piano.

To truly understand the color and shape of Nice Nice, you must really see them live. Only then will you realize that every sound heard on this record, every intricate polyrhythmic layer is live. There are no overdubs, and there are only two people in the band. Born in Olympia, Wa and now calling Portland their home, guitarist Jason Buehler and percussionist Mark Shirazi meticulously warp hard funk, psyche, soul, dub, angular rock and no-wave noise into a mechanical beast that can take you from dream to dance in 30 seconds flat. The instrumentation is relatively simple: guitar and drums. But it's the endless tap-dancing of effects pedals and rock solid dub beats that make every moment more magical than the last. Recommended to fans of the Load label, Leaf label, the new weird Americana scene and old school New York punk funk ala ESG and James Chance.

Cex's initial rise to fame came from a series of warm, skittery instrumental albums showcasing a dark mix of hard dance production and atmospheric ebb and flow. Recorded for a couple of highly respected electronic labels (Tigerbeat6 and 555). Hence the natural decision to release an instrumental version of his "Being Ridden" album. As an added bonus, there are three exclusive instrumental tracks on this disc that are not included on the vocal version!

Jazz-infected structures, funky rhythms and beautifully frenzied guitar interplay, steeped in progressive rock influences and destructive improv.

Recorded by Steve Albini at his electrical audio studios, this dark and addictive music that will appeal to fans of Low, Tortoise, Papa M, Codeine and Yo La Tengo.

Complex polyrhythmic insrumentals for the acoustic guitar, accordian, upright bass and drum kit. The instrumentation lends itself to be a quieter album, but the subtle dynamic shifts and loud drumming makes for an incredible rock-out. Will appeal to fans of Papa M, Rex, Directions In Music etc.