Grails – the experimental rock institution who have cultivated a quarter-century career out of crate-plunging cultural curiosities – returns a mere two years after the lauded 'Anches En Maat' with their most personal and emotionally resonant album to date. While the band still revel in rearranging bizarre and obscure sources into something often revelatory and surreal, 'Miracle Music' does so with an ascendant melodic power that feels hallowed.

The 'Miracle Music' lineup includes cofounders Emil Amos (Om, Holy Sons, Lilacs & Champagne) and Alex Hall (Lilacs & Champagne), alongside returning members, AE Paterra (Zombi, Majeure), Jesse Bates, and Ilyas Ahmed. Produced by Amos, Miracle Music reunites the group with recording engineer Jason Powers and his Type Foundry studio in Portland, Oregon, where the earliest Grails records were made more than two decades ago. Replete with acoustic and electric guitars, synths, woodwinds, brass, samples, percussion – and featuring horn arrangements by Kelly Pratt (David Byrne, M. Ward) – Miracle Music unveils an exquisite new horizon for Grails. Creatively tireless as ever, Grails balance the boundary-pushing claustrophobia of early Industrial music with the airy melodies of Classical compositions to craft the heavy mood that is 'Miracle Music'. In a catalog defined by mercurial departures, this is Grails’ most sentimental and high-minded trip yet.

TRACK LISTING

1. Silver Bells
2. Primeval Lite I-III
3. Earthly Life
4. Homemade Crucifix
5. Harmonious Living
6. Strange Paradise
7. Perfect Etercuss
8. Visible Darkness
9. Choir Commencement

The brand-new album from Australian out-rock duo, Party Dozen. Crime In Australia follows 2022’s The Real Work, the first Party Dozen record that (some) people were actually waiting for; the one that Nick Cave sang on; the one that had a track that billy woods jumped on for a rework; the one that took them to the USA, Europe (twice), Japan, China and New Zealand; the one that saw Party Dozen hook up with a cool US label (Temporary Residence Ltd.); the one that made Bandcamp, Stereogum, Brooklyn Vegan and a whole swathe of Australian radio stations declare it their Album of the Day/Week/Epoch; and the one that made KEXP invite the band in for a live session, and made Sub Pop add to their hallowed Singles Club.

The Real Work was not the first Party Dozen record, but it was in many ways where Party Dozen really started to put it all together. Crime In Australia continues to build on their arc and elevates their ascent with a slew of new songs that are simultaneously more focused and more feral than anything they’ve ever done. And there are no guests on this one. 

TRACK LISTING

Coup De Gronk
Wake In Might
Money & The Drugs
Les Crimes
The Big Man Upstairs
Judge Hammer
Bad News Department
The Righteous Front
Piss On Earth
Jon’s International Marketplace

The first new album from Lilacs & Champagne in nearly a decade. Features members of Grails, Om, Holy Sons, Zombi, and NickeL Plated.

Nearly a decade after their last album, Lilacs and Champagne picks up right where that record, Midnight Features Vol. 2: Made Flesh, left off. With bizarre excursions into pillowy, sentimental made-for-TV music – and children's choirs incanting the blackest dread-filled music the band has conjured to date Fantasy World is both transcendent and traumatic.

Despite sharing two founding members of Grails (multi-instrumentalists Emil Amos and Alex Hall) Fantasy World only peripherally resembles their core group. Lilacs & Champagne have exaggerated their early record's implications and accelerated their mercurial rearranging of music history by deftly incorporating live instrumentation and samples with equal amounts of deference and disregard. Previously existing primarily in a realm adjacent to instrumental hip-hop (J Dilla, Clams Casino, Madlib), Fantasy World exposes Lilacs & Champagne's deeper lineage as playful tape-collage culture jammers in the vein of legendary sound satirists, Negativland and Severed Heads.

It embraces the effect of a child entering a dollar store: the immediate euphoria felt upon discovering the seemingly endless aisles piled impossibly high with novelty toys, utensils, party decorations, and toiletries eventually gives way to the overwhelming realization that they're actually just a tourist in a perilous mountain of colourful garbage. From those mountains, Lilacs & Champagne mold monuments to curiosity and confusion. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Ashley says: There isn't an Emil Amos project I don't love. Grails, Holy Sons, Watter, Om, I love them all. Obviously I was over the moon that sleazy b-movie outlet Lilacs & Champagne are returning, and bring with them another glitzy mix of found-sound glitchy electronica and lounge-adjacent horror pop. It's as mad and brilliant as it sounds.

TRACK LISTING

1. Ill Gotten Gains (2:49)
2. Rude Dream (3:13)
3. Fantasy Land (2:19)
4. Melissa (2:37)
5. Betraying Yourself (2:44)
6. Ready Rubbed Blue (2:03)
7. Evil Has No Boundaries (2:42)
8. No More Sherry (2:59)
9. Gentle Man (2:31)
10. Leprotic Phantasies (2:06)
11. 144 York Way (2:40)
12. Last Frontier (2:16)
13. Dr. Why (3:14)
14. Ordinary Man (4:08)

The second EP from rising New York singer-songwriter, June McDoom.

Features covers of songs popularized by Judee Sill and Nina Simone.

My first EP, June McDoom, was hugely inspired by the minimal sound of the 60s and 70s folk era. I wanted to reimagine a couple of those songs more stripped down as a follow up to that first EP. Judee Sill's songwriting and arrangements have impacted me deeply, and so I hoped to honor the music she made by recording a version of her song, “Emerald River Dance” – one of my favorite songs for many years and a song I still sing at most of my shows. The first time I heard “Black is the Color” was Tia Blake's version that she recorded in 1971, and then Nina Simone's performance inspired me to try and record a rendition of my own.

While writing "On My Way" and "The City," I always imagined versions of those songs stripped down with three-part harmonies, which I was finally able to do here with dear friends, Cécile McLorin Salvant and Kate Davis, who have both been big inspirations to me throughout the years. One of my close friends, Sam Weissberg who I met while studying in jazz school when I first moved to New York City worked with me and arranged the harp and strings for each song. I produced the songs and tracked the remaining instruments and vocals with Evan Wright at our new studio in Greenpoint, Brooklyn that we share with our friend, Nick Hakim (who also provided backing vocals on “On My Way”).

TRACK LISTING

1. Emerald River Dance (4:48)
2. Black Is The Color Of My True Love's Hair (3:57)
3. On My Way (With Strings) (3:54)
4. The City (With Strings) (6:01)

The new studio album by iconic experimental ambient artist, Eluvium.

­The first Eluvium album to feature a full live orchestra.

(Whirring Marvels In) Consensus Reality is the new album by Eluvium – the renowned moniker of prolific modern composer, Matthew Robert Cooper. Taking initial inspirations from T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land and Richard Brautigan’s All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace, (Whirring Marvels) inherently deals both with humankind’s need for meaning, and the emergence of algorithms reflecting the feedback loops of humankind’s interactions with machines themselves. This complicated relationship that we have with technology, automations, and algorithms – and the influence they in turn have on shaping our image of the world – is the mechanized heart and soul of an album that almost instantly establishes itself as a peak in Eluvium’s inimitable catalog.

During the writing process for (Whirring Marvels In) Consensus Reality, Cooper began experiencing shoulder and arm pain that rendered his left arm increasingly debilitated. This inspired new compositional methods that blended varying degrees of electronic automations with traditional songwriting. Lyrical themes were built using algorithms to cull content from a notebook filled with years of scribbled thoughts, poems, considerations, conspiracies, scientific notions, and notes on the spirit of existence. Employing musicians from all around the world – including members of the American Contemporary Music Ensemble (ACME), Golden Retriever, and the entire Budapest Scoring Orchestra – much of the music was conducted and recorded remotely via teleconference during the global COVID lockdowns of 2020 and 2021. This approach to composing served as an unintended but serendipitous challenge for an album inspired by the complicated convenience of technology.

(Whirring Marvels In) Consensus Reality blends an ornate combination of ingredients to construct a narrative of our dynamic invention; technological advancement; loneliness and isolationism; and unchecked idealism in a world of never-ending growth. The resulting hope that somehow emerges is itself a marvel of innovation and inspiration.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Matthew Robert Cooper produces some of the most beautiful modern-classical music around today, from the brittle solo piano of 'Pianoworks' to the more grand, expansive outings like 'Copia' or this, his most orchestrated outing yet. 'Whirring Marvels...' is playful in parts, but deeply heartfelt throughout. Rich and fun, just how I like my albums.

TRACK LISTING

1. Escapement (1:37)
2. Swift Automatons (2:37)
3. Vibration Consensus Reality (for Spectral Multiband Resonator) (8:01)
4. Scatterbrains (3:34)
5. Phantasia Telephonics (5:55)
6. The Violet Light (2:30)
7. Void Manifest (4:11)
8. Clockwork Fables (2:16)
9. Mass Lossless Interbeing (3:43)
10. A Floating World Of Demons (3:04)
11. Endless Flower (3:46)

The first new album in over a decade from world-renowned singer-songwriter, Nina Nastasia.

Produced by Steve Albini.

Riderless Horse is my first solo record, and it’s the first record my former partner, Kennan Gudjonsson, didn’t produce.

I haven’t made an album since 2010. I decided to stop pursuing music several years after my sixth record, Outlaster, because of unhappiness, overwhelming chaos, mental illness, and my tragically dysfunctional relationship with Kennan. Creating music had always been a positive outlet during difficult times, but eventually it became a source of absolute misery.

Riderless Horse documents the grief, but it also marks moments of empowerment and a real happiness in discovering my own capability. Steve Albini produced this record with me, and Greg Norman assisted. It was exactly the right environment to work on this record. We all had meals together, cried, laughed, and told stories. It was perfect. It made me realize how much I love writing, playing and recording music.

Terrible things happen. These were some terrible things. So, what to do – learn something valuable, connect with people, move the fuck out of that apartment, remember the humor, find the humour, tell the truth, and make a record. I made a record.

TRACK LISTING

1. Cork And Pour (0:12)
2. Just Stay In Bed (2:12)
3. You Were So Mad (2:53)
4. This Is Love (3:10)
5. Nature (2:57)
6. Lazy Road (2:45)
7. Ask Me (3:41)
8. Blind As Batsies (2:35)
9. The Two Of Us (2:37)
10. Go Away (2:19)
11. The Roundabout (2:09)
12. Trust (3:20)
13. Afterwards (2:34)
14. Creek And Chimes (0:33)

The complete recorded history of one of the more influential and revered post-hardcore bands of the early 1990s. Newly mixed in 2021 by J. Robbins (Jawbox, Burning Airlines). Lincoln was a Morgantown, WV band formed in 1992 by Jay Demko (vocals/guitar), John Herod (guitar), Justin Wierbonski (drums), and Johanna Claasen (bass). Dan Ball would later take over on bass. Though a band for only a brief time who left behind only a handful of recordings, they remain highly respected and are often regarded as one of the many foundational pieces of what would become known as “post-hardcore,” as well as the proto-emo scene that was birthed by bands like Rites of Spring and Moss Icon. Lincoln’s first 7” was originally released in 1992 by Watermark Records.

The following year, their universally beloved split 7” with Washington, DC’s Hoover became the inaugural release on the Art Monk Construction label. A final Lincoln 7” was released posthumously in 1994. All of Lincoln’s releases have remained out-of-print and unavailable since the late 1990s. In 2021, Lincoln’s entire recorded history was recovered, and the original analog tapes were restored and transferred. J. Robbins (Jawbox, Burning Airlines) newly mixed every song. All eight songs – seven that originally spanned three 7” singles, plus a previously unreleased track are now finally available on CD, LP, and Digital formats. It all sounds and feels better than ever, and shows just how much a small band from a small town with a small discography can have such a large and lasting impact

TRACK LISTING

1. Benchwarmer (5:01)
2. Sugarloaf (3:27)
3. Waterboy (4:42)
4. Repair And Reward (5:06)
5. Union (2:39)
6. Grade Curve (3:06)
7. Stop Means Stop (2:12)
8. Seed (3:40)

At the top of 2020 a year that began like any other but ended like none other Matthew Robert Cooper’s Eluvium moniker unveiled a new ambient album series built around generative music and long-form loops. Intended as a minor, limited-edition stop-gap between proper albums, Virga I unexpectedly became a balm for many in a year of overwhelming anxiety and uncertainty. One year later, Eluvium follows with Virga II, an album made to help translate that flood of emotions as something other than anxiety and uncertainty. From the opening oceanic darkness of the aptly-named “Hallucination I” – a purposefully stoic, immovable piece designed to engage the listener’s subconscious in developing melodies through illusory repetition – through to the gaseous drift of the title track, Virga II rebuilds itself to reflect our ever-changing time and space. From buzz to bliss, it is a wondrous journey of reflection and restoration.

TRACK LISTING

Side 1
1. Hallucination I (13:25)
2. Scarlet Hunter (8:29)
Side 2
1. Touch Returned (9:57)
2. Virga II (11:02)

Maples, Ash, and Oaks: Cedars Instrumentals is a mesmerizing soundtrack for a long walk in the woods, made up of pedal steel, oud, guitar, hurdy-gurdy, and piano. Based on the original Field Works album Cedars, this new suite of instrumental music brings the listener even deeper into the forest. For this special limited-edition release, Stuart Hyatt deconstructed each track from Cedars and rebuilt them one layer at a time. He removed the narrators’ voices and invited Julien Marchal to introduce piano as the new protagonist.

The 15 new tracks are named from each line of the new poem, Deciduous, by Cecily Parks. The musical frameworks are based on the Field Works album Cedars, created by Marisa Anderson, Fadi Tabbal, and Stuart Hyatt – and performed by Julien Marchal, Youmna Saba, Dena El Saffar, Danny Paul Grody, Bob Hoffnar, Stuart Hyatt, Tomás Lozano, Nathan Bowles, Alex Roldan, Fadi Tabbal, and Marisa Anderson. The forest soundscape was recorded by Harrison Ridley in the Welsh countryside. PRESS - “For those interested in the intersection between field recordings and music, this is a must-have.” A Closer Listen.

TRACK LISTING

1. The Morning Bends Down (2:36)
2. To Meet The Canopy (2:54)
3. That We Walk Under. (2:19)
4. We Know The Moss, Forget-Me-Nots (2:08)
5. And Blue-Green Spruce (2:41)
6. But We Want To Be Known (2:32)
7. By The Woods. We Say (1:29)
8. Without Saying, Forget Me Not. (2:18)
9. We Listen To Maples, Ash, And Oaks, (1:58)
10. Without Hearing, But Not Hearing (2:12)
11. Doesn't Mean That We Aren't (2:01)
12. Being Spoken To. (2:16)
13. What Was That? Leaves Rustle (2:14)
14. As If To Say, You Forget. (1:48)
15. We Forgot. (2:07)

Prior to the release of their lauded 2010 album, Pyramid of the Sun, Maserati collected their rare and out-of-print vinyl tracks from the previous couple years into a compilation for CD and Digital release. Featuring all four tracks from their blink-and-it’s-gone limited-edition split LP with Zombi, as well as their remix LP (featuring The DFA’s Tim Goldsworthy and !!!’s Justin Van Der Volgen), Passages was augmented with two previously unreleased tracks the Moog-fueled meditative trance of Steve Moore’s “Monoliths” remix, and the sublime outtake, “Do You Hear The Nightbirds Calling You?”. The Passages collection was remastered from the original master tapes, and packaged with eye-popping new artwork. To celebrate Maserati's 20th anniversary, we have finally made Passages available on vinyl for the first time ever. Packaged in an updated design that maintains the spirit of the original, the vinyl was cut by Amy Dragon at Telegraph Mastering, and the records were pressed at RTI.

TRACK LISTING

1. Join Us, Mystic Sister (1:18)
2. No More Sages (5:01)
3. Monoliths (6:20)
4. Thieves (2:40)
5. The World Outside (Thee Loving Hand Remix) (8:11)
6. Inventions (Justin Van Der Volgen Remix) (7:57)
7. Monoliths (Steve Moore Remix) (5:16)
8. Do You Hear The Nightbirds Calling You? (3:14)

On their first album together since Maze of Woods (2015), Matthew Robert Cooper (Eluvium) and Mark T. Smith (Explosions in the Sky) further their creative curiosities as Inventions. Beginning with a trace of uncontrollable laughter that shifts into the driving atmosphere and unfolding elation of opening track “Hint and Omens,” Continuous Portrait is an album of strange hypnosis, punctuated by songs that venture quite far from the respective oeuvres of Cooper and Smith. The spry, playful layers of “Calico” bounce against a steady thrum of rhythms and samples from everyday noises, while the dancing lightness of “Outlook for the Future” is met with a storm of emotional resonance. Both tracks emerge as distinctively different directions for Inventions, and it is that very sense of exploration, pleasure, and ceremonial melancholia which informs the entire album from front to back. Inventions has always been the product of two friends who find comfort and inspiration in the genuine surprise of creating and combining sounds. Continuous Portrait whirls and hums like Cooper and Smith want us to invoke our inner playfulness and welcome a greater joy into our lives, if only for a moment. The result is a portrait that continuously embraces the completely foreign and familiar, and evolves with each successive listen.

TRACK LISTING

1. Hints And Omens (5:38)
2. Calico (3:57)
3. Continuous Portrait (2:54)
4. Outlook For The Future (3:31)
5. Close To People (3:16)
6. Spirit Refinement Exploder (5:15)
7. The Warmer The Welcome (3:57)
8. A Time In My Life (4:11)
9. Saw You In A Movie (4:07)

Maserati’s first new album in 5 years. “The sonic equivalent of being in the passenger seat with Bullitt.” Pitchfork // “Sleek, pedal-to-the-metal rock, sharply executed by a group thoroughly committed to its own stylistic cause.” NPR // Marking their 20th year as a band, Maserati returns with their first new album in five years. Produced by the band and mixed by Grammy-winning producer, John Congleton (Explosions In The Sky, Swans, Angel Olsen), Enter The Mirror is Maserati’s most compelling mélange of triumphant guitar hooks, abstract synth-pop, and Wax Trax-inspired noise anthems.

The gated drums of Phil Collins and chorus-drenched guitars of INXS were prominent influences on Enter The Mirror, paired to magnificent effect with the increasingly dystopian lyrical themes (which, ironically, were also massive influences on popular music in the 1980s, and feel ever more relevant now). In addition to longtime members Coley Dennis, Matt Cherry, Chris McNeal, and Mike Albanese, Maserati are joined by friends and collaborators, Bill Berry (R.E.M.), Owen Lange, and Alfredo Lapuz Jr. Self-reflection and loss of control as both a positive and negative aspect of modern existence is at the heart of Enter The Mirror. It is Maserati’s most efficient and cohesive album, and a monumental accomplishment for a band who have weathered many storms throughout their first two decades and found the will to not just keep moving, but to move with style and chase. 

TRACK LISTING

1. 2020
2. A Warning In The Dark
3. Killing Time
4. Der Honig
5. Welcome To The Other Side
6. Empty
7. Wallwalker 

Remastered, repackaged reissue celebrating the 20th anniversary of Explosions In The Sky. First time ever available on vinyl. Packaged in a full-color jacket w/matte varnish, full-color heavyweight inner sleeve, and full-color LP labels.

The Rescue is commonly referred to as Explosions In The Sky’s “secret album,” mostly due to the fact that since its initial limited mail-order only CD release in 2005, it has never been made commercially available on any format, in any store, anywhere in the world. In 2005 – after having toured the world for over a year straight in support of The Earth Is Not A Cold Place, and scoring the major motion picture, Friday Night Lights – Explosions In The Sky took the year off to physically, emotionally, and creatively recharge. It was during this period that they decided to try making an entire album in a method that was totally foreign to them: Quickly, and loosely. They came up with the idea to compose, rehearse, record, and mix an entirely new song each day for eight days in a row. They kept the rules simple and strict: the song had to be crafted from start to finish in one day, and could not be revisited once that day was done. The band would produce, record, and mix everything themselves in their own homes, without outside assistance or interference. With such rigid parameters, the expectations were kept suitably low. The quality of the album that bloomed was startlingly high. The songs had a lightness and unruliness that starkly contrasted their catalog, while maintaining the same emotional resonance that had already become a trademark of their music. The Rescue – Anniversary Edition has been beautifully remastered from the original 24-bit stereo mixes by Heba Kadry at Timeless Mastering. The vinyl lacquers have been cut by Bob Weston at Chicago Mastering Service. The record was pressed onto audiophile-quality 100% virgin vinyl at Record Technology Inc., and is packaged in a full-color jacket with a full-color heavyweight inner sleeve featuring the hand-written story of The Rescue, as told by the band upon its completion in 2005. This is the long-overdue, definitive presentation of a rare but requisite piece of Explosions In The Sky’s remarkable history.

TRACK LISTING

1. Day One (4:36)
2. Day Two (3:44)
3. Day Three (4:35)
4. Day Four (3:00)
5. Day Five (4:36)
6. Day Six (5:19)
7. Day Seven (4:26)
8. Day Eight (2:33)

Features former members of Crain, The For Carnation, Papa M. If there is one constant with Parlour, it is that nothing is ever the same. For nigh two decades, the Louisville, KY experimental troupe - led by Tim Furnish of influential, defunct Louisville art-punk band, Crain - has relentlessly evolved in subtle but substantial ways. This consistent creative movement keeps the sound of Parlour forever curious, and impossible to predict. While that may make for some commercial challenges, it also makes for more compelling and mercurial music. On the band's self-titled fourth album, Parlour pushes ferocious, dynamic guitar rock to the brink with hypnotic repetition and shifting, stabbing rhythms. In fierce Parlour fashion, the driving crunch of guitars is punctuated with shimmering buzz of synths. The difference here, though, is Parlour has shed their trademark woodwinds in favor of a leaner, heavier aesthetic. With a reduced instrumental palette and increased focus on beats and riffs, the songs are more naked and intense - equal parts crashing krautrock, and crushing prog-rock. 

TRACK LISTING

1. New Syntax Preserves (4:18)
2. Nadeemed (7:29)
3. Fempire (5:06)
4. Catnip (4:40)
5. Resist Ants (7:36)
6. Kármán Line (5:55)
7. Decadence Herd (7:57)
8. Unwinding (6:59)*
9. Aflipperput Redux (7:27)*

*Digital Bonus Tracks Available With Vinyl LP Download Coupon

RIYL: Zombi, John Carpenter, Maserati, Vangelis, Yes.

Following their well-received debut EP, First Contact, the cinematic synth-prog duo, Contact, return with their first full-length album. Comprised of prolific UK film composer, Paul Lawler, and veteran multi-instrumentalist, A.E. Paterra (Zombi, Majeure), Zero Moment emphatically delivers on the promise of First Contact. With cinematic sprawl still intact, it's an album of dramatic, stately gestures. Efficiently packed with vintage, celestial explorations of shape-shifting, alien landscapes, Zero Moment is the soundtrack to pondering what it's like for your body to wander as close to the stars as your mind.

“Every bit as impressive as you’d imagine.” – Noisey.
“Will instantly appeal to fans of previous Zombi work. A synth nerd’s waking wet dream.” – Exclaim.

TRACK LISTING

1. Zero Moment (6:12)
2. Grand Detector (5:29)
3. Serenad (5:56)
4. Sensorium (5:34)
5. Modal Force (5:21)
6. Dawn Star (7:20)
7. Dao Valis (5:58)

A few years ago, an unknown group from an unlikely town began generating the kind of "next big thing" blog buzz that eventually leads to a big label bidding war, support slots on major tours, and unanimous praise. For Bloomington, Indiana's Dreamers of the Ghetto, it resulted in a divorce and a devastating break-up.

"Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift." – Mary Oliver

Singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Luke Aaron Jones and fellow DOTG alum Marty Sprowles picked up the pieces and pared down the widescreen stadium-sized rock of Dreamers to the more intimate, introspective Hunterchild. Jones' vocals are more arresting than ever, indebted as much to vintage Peter Gabriel, Prince, and Depeche Mode as the rich well of electronic R&B explorations from a similar orbit as James Blake and The Weeknd in their most powerful moments. Hunterchild are comfortable in their own skin in a way that's almost unheard of for debut artists.

Co-produced with Kevin Ratterman (My Morning Jacket, Wax Fang), Hunterchild's eponymous debut album is noticeably more eclectic than Dreamers of the Ghetto. From the beat-heavy sexploits of "Part Time" to the stark falsetto professions of "Aching," this is a story in 11 parts. Equally complicated, heartbreaking and revelatory, Hunterchild bares an emotional fearlessness that only comes from a devotion to the light in the face of total darkness.

TRACK LISTING

1. So Bad (5:23)
2. Part Time (4:33)
3. Aching (4:06)
4. Hunter (4:46)
5. Work You (4:01)
6. Fantasy (4:30)
7. Time Traveling Lover (5:00)
8. Alone (4:17)
9. Secret Messages (4:08)
10. No Anchor (5:12)
11. How It Feels (4:49)

In 1992 Louisville, KY was home to a unique and diverse punk rock scene that was fast becoming a highly influential underground mecca, and for every Slint and Rodan there were a half dozen brilliant and forward-thinking bands that went virtually unnoticed – most of whom were guilty of more than a little self-sabotage. Plenty of cities across the world have these kinds of musicians, the ones who are cherished in worn-out mixtapes and increasingly unbelievable stories of historic local live shows. The Telephone Man were one of those, and one of the best ones to ever fall through the cracks of Louisville music history.

With a maturity and level of execution that betrayed their youthful age, they were the missing link between the introverted slow burn of Slint, the angular aggression of Bitch Magnet, and the emotional expressiveness of early 90s DC punk. It was a unique combination at the time, and twenty years later sounds downright prescient. Less than 75% of this collection ever saw the light of day, and even that was limited almost exclusively to short-run handmade cassettes passed around at live shows and sold at local record stores.

Though its members would move on to more notable endeavors – guitarist/singer Matthew Ronay is now a world-renowned artist based in NYC, while others continued to pursue music in a diverse array of bands, including Guilt, Ink & Dagger, The Metroschifter and Weird Weeds – this beautifully remastered anthology fills in a little-known but enlightening piece of the legendary Louisville music puzzle.

TRACK LISTING

1. Automatic Pilot (4:46)
2. Castner (4:11)
3. Douglass Boulevard (6:34)
4. Let Me Tell You How Much I Love You So You Can Treat Me Like Shit (3:57)
5. Rain = Flood (5:20)
6. Kelly (2:41)
7. Muldoon (3:53)
8. Whole Man, Half Man (4:13)
9. I Will Follow You (6:41)
10. Grandfather (8:42)
11. Camaro (2:40)
12. Inspector 29 (1:58)
13. Nothing (3:11)
14. Rebel Yell (4:12)

First album released domestically from acclaimed Australian group. Recorded by Steve Albini mixed by Scott Horscroft (SILVERCHAIR, THE PRESETS). Garnering increasing acclaim in their native Australia with their first two albums, we are proud to finally present Melbourne trio My Disco’s third full-length, the truly brilliant and enigmatic "Little Joy". As always with My Disco, the most fascinating and unique element to their sound is space – long, deep, sometimes scary space. Their defiance of rock music’s time-worn tropes is what defines them, and "Little Joy" explores and expands on that concept, stretching a naked few instruments to transform short blasts into heavy, rhythmic, meditative body music. The bare bones of a drum beat, a rumbling bass, one repeated phrase and some bursts of feedback add up to a wholly compelling world of sounds between sounds. Shards of vaguely recognizable post-punk riffs fuse pounding, euphoric rhythms to hypnotic, almost psychedelic vocal mantras.

The result is a new take on an old idea that occupies the unlikely space between Boredoms, The Necks, Wire and Liars. Recorded by Steve Albini and mixed by Scott Horscroft, My Disco’s minimalist instincts are perfectly suited for Albini’s famously austere productions and Horscroft’s textured, pop-leaning sensibilities. This unlikely marriage is at the heart of "Little Joy"s success. It’s the sound of a band using the fewest tools to create the greatest range of possibilities – a record both expansive and minimal, a compressed expression of vast emotions.

'The minimalist trio don't so much defy convention as simply deny it, sidestepping genre and tradition to smash together their own sound. Identifiable elements include shards of black noise, striking percussion, lyrical snatches delivered with prosecutorial zeal and pulmonary bass parts.The band have used the ethos of the DIY scene they came out of to craft a fascinating sound, where repetition gives way to harsh beauty' - Craig Mathieson, The Age.

TRACK LISTING

1 Closer (2:58)
2 Young (8:46)
3 Turn (3:45)
4 Sun Bear (6:45)
5 Sunray (4:40)
6 Lil’ Joy (6:46)
7 With Age (3:35)
8 Rivers (9:51)
9 A Turreted Berg (4:12)