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THE OPEN

Open The Gates is Philadelphia-based free jazz collective IRREVERSIBLE ENTANGLEMENTS’s third full length album (and first double LP length album). Recorded at Rittenhouse Soundworks in Philadelphia, across 73 minutes of music the band – featuring Camae Ayewa aka Moor Mother, trumpeter Aquiles Navarro & drummer Tcheser Holmes (who released their duo debut Heritage of the Invisible II on International Anthem last year), saxophonist Keir Neuringer, and bassist Luke Stewart – supplement their raw, organic punk-jazz sound with firsttime experiments with electronics and synthesizers.

“Irreversible Entanglements’ fearless music takes to task the police, American politics, capitalism, and racism.” – The Nation

"The jazz ensemble evokes our American topography, both physically and psychologically, by capturing what’s in the news and what’s underneath that surface.” – Pitchfork

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: A brilliantly soulful storm of free-jazz timbres and spoken word phrases bolstered with snappy counterpoint and harmonic dissonance, both unnerving and hypnotic, but thoroughly enthralling throughout. Brilliantly inventive and momentous.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A
A1. Open The Gates
A2. Keys To Creation
SIDE B
B1. Lágrimas Del Mar
B2. Storm Came Twice
SIDE C
C1. Water Meditation
SIDE D
D1. Six Sounds
D2. The Port Remembers

Lala Lala

I Want The Door To Open

    “I want total freedom, total possibility, total acceptance. I want to fall in love with the rock.” That’s how Lillie West describes the theme of “DIVER,” the song she calls the thesis of Lala Lala’s third record, I Want The Door To Open. The rock in question is a reference to Sisyphus, the mythical figure doomed by the gods to forever push a boulder up from the depths of hell. To West, it is the perfect metaphor for, in her words, “the labor of living, of figuring out who you are, what's wrong with you, what's right with you.”

    Coming off of 2018’s acclaimed The Lamb, an introspective indie rock album recorded live with a three-piece band, West knew she was ready to make something sonically bigger and thematically more outward-looking than anything she’d done before; a record that would be less a straightforward documentation of her own personal struggles and more like a poem or a puzzle box, with sonic and lyrical clues that would allow the listener to, as the title says, open the door to the greater meaning of those struggles.

    The result is I Want The Door To Open, a bold exploration of persona and presence from an artist questioning how to be herself fully in a world where the self is in constant negotiation. From the moment West declares “I want to look right into the camera” over a cascade of dreamy vocal loops on opening track “Lava,” I Want The Door To Open distinguishes itself from anything she’s done before in scope and intensity. The ultra-magnified iteration of Lala Lala is fully encapsulated in the monumental “DIVER.” Inspired by a character from a Jennifer Egan novel, it’s a pop song of Kate Bush-esque proportions replete with layered synths and booming, wide open drumming by fellow Chicago musician Nnamdi Ogbonnaya, and West pushing her vocals to the ragged edge. I Want The Door To Open is a musical quest undertaken with the knowledge that the titular door may never open; but it is through falling in love with the quest itself that one may find the closest thing to total freedom, total possibility, and total acceptance available to us on this plane of existence.

    TRACK LISTING

    Lava
    Color Of The Pool
    DIVER
    Photo Photo
    Prove It
    Castle Life
    Bliss Now!
    Straight & Narrow
    Beautiful Directions
    Plates
    Utopia Planet

    The Hold Steady

    Open Door Policy

      'Open Door Policy' is The Hold Steady's 8th full length studio album and the follow up to 2019's 'Thrashing Thru The Passion'. Produced by Josh Kaufman (The National, Hiss Golden Messenger, Josh Ritter), this new release once again finds the 6-piece line up in peak form in what Craig Finn describes as "the best band we've ever been".

      The Hold Steady is: Bobby Drake (drums), Craig Finn (vocals), Tad Kubler (guitar, vocals), Franz Nicolay (keyboards), Galen Polivka (bass), and Steve Selvidge (guitar, vocals).

      TRACK LISTING

      1. The Feelers
      2. Spices
      3. Lanyards
      4. Family Farm
      5. Unpleasant Breakfast
      6. Heavy Covenant
      7. The Prior Procedure
      8. Riptown
      9. Me & Magdalena
      10. Hanover Camera

      Hiss Golden Messenger

      Let The Light Of The World Open Your Eyes (Alive At Spacebomb)

        THIS IS A RECORD STORE DAY 2020 RELEASE AVAILABLE ONLINE ONLY AS PART OF THE AUGUST 29TH DROP DAY AT 6PM.
        LIMITED TO ONE PER PERSON.


        Limited edition on black vinyl.North Carolina folk rockers Hiss Golden Messenger re-record two of their original songs, "Cat's Eye Blue" (from their critically acclaimed 2019 album Terms of Surrender) & B-side "Standing in the Doorway" at Spacebomb Studios with contributions from their in-house orchestra.It's the latest in the Alive at Spacebomb Studios series.

        In the space of four tripped out releases, Forest Jams have established themselves as the go-to label for any long travelling, genre staddling space cadets in search of sounds from beyond. Originally an edit-only affair, after three psychedelic dancefloor spectaculars from Albion, Spaziale and Mori Ra, the imprint switched things up and invited Basil & Rogers to take us on a kaleidoscopic voyage into the furthest regions of the live disco universe with an EP of their own compositions. Now, chief starman Elleorde bursts through earth's atmosphere and drops into orbit around that great mirrorball in the sky with four tracks of wormhole disco, cosmic funk and starry-eyed Balea-rock. Elleorde was born 3 years ago at Camp Cosmic, an anything-goes music festival in a Swedish forest that's recently been transferred to the countryside of Germany. Elleorde's debut record shares the same themes as the festival - with a combination of time travel, the cosmos, space journeys, sunsets on exotic planets, and love in space. The set opens at warp speed, blazing through the night sky on rapid fire sequences and a roaring 4/4 rhythm. Thick wah guitar licks and squelching bass bubble up with a wormhole churn, building the dancefloor density before that Spanish guitar and whistled melody harness the bright sun in Morricone's spaghetti sky. The tempo drops for "My Cosmic Partner", an astral love song alive with solid bass, chiming West Coast guitars and buzzing synth-work. Standing firm with a foot in both the disco and rock camps, this seventies style masterpiece wears its flares with flair, letting that hair drift in the solar winds. Over the corner and we find Elleorde firing up the hyperdrive with the steely beat of "Europa From Mars", an intergalactic boogie bomb complete with stomping bass, dreamy keys and more laser fire than a Death Star trench run. Finally, "Some Piece Of Love" finds Elleorde flying at full tilt, blasting his way through the electrodisco singularity thanks to Bobby O styled bass, noodly vocoder and a properly proggy chord progression. Summoning Tantra, Chilly and Patrick Cowley into Seth Brundle's Telepods, the UK producer manages a flawless gene splice to create the perfect space disco entity. So, with no more delay, step in to the time travel machine, "Open Wide and Eat the Future".

        STAFF COMMENTS

        Patrick says: Making like the Silver Surfer, Forest Jams continue to harness the power cosmic here, inviting unknown UK producer Elleorde to deliver four tracks of searing space disco goodness. Falling somewhere between Tantra, Morricone, Seals & Croft and Cerrone, this intergalactic spectacular glitters like C-Beams near the Tannhäuser Gate.

        TRACK LISTING

        A1. Black Talon
        A2. My Cosmic Partner
        B1. Europa From Mars
        B2. Some Piece Of Love

        Glissando

        With Our Arms Wide Open We March Towards The Burning Sea

          There is an ambience to the record that throws it into the vein of some of the Kranky labels releases but it's more orchestral than that, there's more melody and a lyrical content that just seems to suck you in and hold you close. The closing lines of "Floods" in which Elly May, Richard Knox and Tom Morris (Her Name Is Calla) are all chanting 'you were on fire as they ran to hold the flames, we did not see, so the water never came' is an album highlight, backed by Angharad Cooper's (Held By Hands) soaring violin it has a touch of the likes of Efterklang to it before fading into a shimmering drone section to finish. Glissando's previous comparisons have been to such visionaries as Low and Rachel's, the later is more apparent in "Always The Storm" which is almost classically based in its mood and ambience. As the record comes to a close "Grekken" is another highlight as it's dark tones and an ending of 'you made me kill myself' wrap around you. The added vocal of iLiKETRAiNS' Dave Martin serves a haunting purpose and it throws you into an almost dream-like state before the album closer of "Our Flags Wave And Our Arms Are Around Another's Shoulders" lulls you back into that comfortable place again that you know so well.

          The Open

          Never Enough

            Choppy riffs open this, then you're tumbling into the comforting open (sorry) arms of familiar, softly jangling dreampop. Makes sense, 'cause The Cocteau Twins' Simon Raymonde is the producer and this song combines an urgent, yearning clench-fisted chorus with swirling, blissed-out verses. Perfect.


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