Manchester’s Gnod and New York’s White Hills stand as titans of Psychedelic & Space Rock. Together they bend the very notions of what rock can do, seemingly suspending our sense of time. Their alchemical chemistry and a fateful session at the Dropout Studio in Camberwell gave rise to the legendary, ongoing series of records under the moniker 'Drop Out'. The records became an influential and sprawling series of extended pieces that remain touchstones of contemporary psychedelia. Having been called “absolutely essential,” “best I have heard – ever,” “A masterpiece,” the Drop Out series finally gets its definitive edition.

'Drop Out III' is a wholly new iteration of Gnod & White Hills’ collaboration, the “director’s cut,” if you will. 'Drop Out III' is replete with sounds recorded in the “Drop Out era” that have never been heard before. The double LP features a cornucopia of expanded versions of essential songs complete with new arrangements, mixes, and instrumentation. Classics like 'Run-A-Round' and the eponymous 'Drop Out' maintain their motorik drive and fizzing melodies with a new shine. The set also features a full LP of pieces never before included on vinyl, including the beautifully serene 'Air Streams' in its original droning arc. The album comes with a download of a full album’s worth of bonus material, all crafted around the 'Drop Out' era. White Hills’ “Decorating Time” showcases the depth of the band’s subtlety, rich with minute turns and a twist of psychedelic ambience. “Nothing NEU! Under the Sky” captures the invigorating pulse and dynamics of Gnod’s live performances. Together, this expansive body of work epitomizes the sense of possibility each band exudes, and the potency of their expertly crafted brand of Transatlantic psychedelia.

15 years after the series began, 'Drop Out III' is an essential album for lovers of contemporary psychedelic rock, a testament to the power of this collaboration.

TRACK LISTING

1. Drop Out
2. Run-A-Round
3. Wellhang
4. Spaced Man
5. Elka
6. Undressing Time
7. Air Streams
8. Unify

More Eaze and Claire Rousay’s collaborations are effortlessly joyful, their music evoking the warmth and respect they have for each other. Their bond goes back to their youthful hometown of San Antonio, Texas where they played in country outfits and noise rock bands respectively, and each pushed their music to extend beyond the traditions and conventions of genre. More Eaze (the moniker of violinist/multi-instrumentalist mari maurice) and Rousay have spent the past decade pushing boundaries, standing together at the vanguard of genre-shattering music that thrills and surprises with its vulnerability and creativity. no floor weds their prowess as sound designers and masterful skills as composers with their skills as acoustic instrumentalists. Eschewing the auto-tune inflected pop-psychedelia and found sounds of their previous collaborations, no floor is collage music as pastoral melancholia, a lush tour into their own version of Americana.

The duo’s ever-widening sonic scope is centered in their mastery of collage. Known for their extensive use of found sound and hyper pop escapades, maurice and rousay employ a more traditional compositional approach. On 'No Floor' the pair created their own elaborate sound world rather than manipulating field recordings. “It was a conscious choice to spend a lot of time making fucked up sounds and then figuring out how they could be beautiful in another context,” notes maurice. “With this record I had no idea what claire would do on each track, and we were both trying to match each other’s ‘freak’ in terms of sound design.” Movements across each piece uncover the ecstatic in nuance. The album’s gentle arc explores feeling with minute gestures and textural swells, carried by maurice and rousay’s enmeshed sonics. rousay’s ostinato guitar patterns and acoustic strums swim through tides of maurice’s pedal steel. Glitching electronics burble in dynamic fits as dramatic strings add waves of tension and release. no floor’s pieces are atmospheric, living biomes that breathe and grow with each passage, rewarding close listens with the revelation of its emotional core.

The five tracks that make up 'No Floor' were named for seminal bars in the pair’s shared history, or as the duo humorously refer to them, “Pillars of our debauchery.” 'No Floor' is an introspective reflection on the emotional turmoil of youth as much as it is a celebration of a camaraderie forged in that turmoil. Freneticism dances atop the placid textures of pieces like 'Kinda Tropical' and 'Limelight, Illegally', embodying the playfulness that comes with reveling in kinship at a shared safe space. The more reserved 'Hopfields' and 'The Applebees Outside Kalamazoo, Michigan” reflect the less familiar locales of their namesakes, the former a sumptuous special occasion that glimmers with soft light and the latter a slow roil of the uncertainty and strangeness that comes with touring as experimental artists in one’s youth. “As we moved from being very close together to living further away and being involved in different scenes, we had more serious conversations,” notes rousay. “In the past it was more plug and play, where with this record we talked about every aspect before and while working on it.”

The pieces of 'No Floor' are born of the deep connection between more eaze and claire rousay, built from strands of familiarity and surprise, the two buttressing one another as they push themselves as instrumentalists, composers, and artists to unexplored boundaries. The wordless timbral compositions retain the duo’s lyrical approach to their craft. Infused with melody, the pieces are collages of sound and emotion. no floor exemplifies the duo’s shared skills in unearthing new and exciting sound arrangements, evoking the warmth and affection of their friendship and musical fearlessness. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Hopfields
2. Kinda Tropical
3. The Applebees Outside Kalamazoo, Michigan
4. Limelight, Illegally
5. Lowcountry

Jules Reidy’s sublime music maps the human experience in glittering constellations of sound. The guitarist is a driver of Berlin’s fertile contemporary music scene. A wide-eyed imagination combined with technical mastery guide each work in Reidy’s extensive catalog, from solo guitar albums and collaborations with innovative peers, including recent works with claire rousay, Oren Ambarchi, Andrea Belfi and Sam Dunscombe to major commissions from JACK Quartet and Zinc & Copper. The songs of Ghost/Spirit collectively convey an astral sense of yearning and wonder, pushing towards transcendence. The album charts a deeply personal journey with love, spirituality and transformation expressed in fractal guitar figures, ethereal vocal vapors and rippling microtones.

Reidy’s guitar approach unlocks the tonal and textural possibilities of the instrument from their use of alternate tunings and astute processing. The maximalist melodics of album opener “Every Day There’s a Sunset” are bolstered by rumbling bass samples from Andreas Dzialocha, Reidy’s collaborator in the duo Sun Kit. On “Satellite,” cello samples from Judith Hamann stretch out through the cosmos, orbited by spiraling finger-picked guitars, while stacked trombone chords echo out into the ether. Thundering drum samples from Berlin metal mainstay Sara Neidorf push the album to ecstatic peaks on “Every Day There’s a Sunrise,” fragmented rhythms breaking apart in the atmosphere. Field recordings of the Berlin S-Bahn recur throughout the album, another endless cycle of leaving and returning that shuttles beneath the album’s whirling tones.

Ghost/Spirit captures the inherent power and agency in choosing to offer yourself up to the universe and let go, ego death and prayer rendered in incandescent sonics. Reidy’s inimitable skill as a guitarist, producer and composer is on full display, and when combined with the intensity of experience, the resulting album is a remarkable work of art.

TRACK LISTING

1. Every Day There’s A Sunset
2. Interlude I
3. Satellite
4. To Breathe Lightning
5. Ghost
6. Breaks
7. Search Light
8. Every Day There’s A Sunrise
9. Spirit
10. Maybe
11. Interlude II
12. Letter
13. Splits The Light
14. You Are Everywhere

Rose City Band’s music is sun-kissed timeless country rock whose seemingly effortless momentum carries the joy of its creation without ignoring the darkness pervading our consciousness. Led by guitarist/vocalist Ripley Johnson, the music of Rose City Band is rooted in his love of private press records of the mid to late 70’s. The band, in addition to Johnson, features pedal steel guitarist Barry Walker, keyboardist Paul Hasenberg and drummer John Jeffrey who enmesh a keen sense of rhythmic drive and melody with gentler, sumptuous atmospheres. Sol Y Sombra digs its heels into insatiable grooves, its parade of catchy songs conjuring a sunset drive through an open desert, both a celebration of a sojourn and a reach for the warmth of home.

The contrasts of Sol Y Sombra, the musical equivalent of bright stars in a night sky, are to Johnson an inevitability. “With Rose City Band, I'm generally trying to make uplifting music, good time music,” says Johnson. “This time I couldn't avoid the shadow being more of a presence. There's no getting away from it. The shadow is always there. So, I left it in.” Like many genre-breaking private press albums, the melancholia-infused Sol Y Sombra’s contrasts equally enhance moments of joy and movement whilst elevating the music with its honesty and intimacy. Nuanced performances and interplay between players unfurl like desert flowers splashing color onto an arid landscape. The ensemble's buoyant moments still glide with ease, but there is room to revel in respite of the shade of a dark cloud. For Johnson, the album finds places where the conscious meets the unconscious, the songs emanating the more mercurial and curious aspects of their sonic dream world, using darker hues to paint the panorama around them.

Sol Y Sombra’s opener “Lights on the Way” is halogen on the highways, a beam of light pressing onward past dashed lines and soaring with Johnson’s guitar work and lush harmonies. The album’s first half is rife with blissful Americana, from upbeat rollicks to ballads dripping with sweet molasses. Walker’s pedal steel speckles the slow-motion shuffle of “Evergreen” with glinting starlight. His playing throughout pairs perfectly with Johnson’s effervescent guitar lines, exuding the casual virtuosity of pedal steel country legends while lending remarkable modern twists to his graceful licks. Across the album, Johnson’s tasteful guitar interjections and soothing voice are met in kind with the versatile playing of Walker, Hasenberg, and Jeffery, with special guest performances by synthesist/vocalist Sanae Yamada. Album closer “The Walls” perfectly captures the band’s explorative and expansive songs, Hasenberg’s soulful organ driving the album to an emotionally cathartic conclusion.

Throughout his prolific career with Wooden Shjips, Moon Duo and now Rose City Band, Johnson’s music has consistently centered around exploration and discovery. Sol Y Sombra imbues his penchant for space and resplendent tonality with a denser amalgam of his influences. Johnson tactfully incorporates new elements with deftness and fluidity, while holding the band’s center intact. “One of my takeaways from making this record is that I spent a lot of energy trying to do things a little different but ended up back where I started in many ways,” notes Johnson. “And that's OK.” Through a delicate balance of the somber and the serene, of subtle evolutions and familiar sounds, Sol Y Sombra makes for a holistically joyous experience, finding solace in both sun and shade.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: As you'd expect, any new album from Ripley Johnson and co is bound to be a well written and beautifully produced collection, and the stunning ray of sunshine that is 'Sol Y Sombra' is no different. Hazy slide guitar and warm strummed acoustic beneath airy reverbed vocals and swooning harmonies. for me, their most immediately irresistible outing yet.

TRACK LISTING

Lights On The Way
Open Roads
Rolling Gold
Evergreen
Sunlight Daze
Radio Song
Seeds Of Light
La Mesa
Wheels
The Walls

The Body have been a leading force of innovation in heavy music for over two decades. The prolific duo of guitarist/vocalist Chip King and Lee Buford (on percussion/electronics) have consistently expanded the scope of what heavy music can be. The Body has produced a wealth of groundbreaking collaborations and benchmark albums that over the past 2 decades have changed the perceptions and directions of heavy music. Known for the monolithic force of their music, and their inventive production techniques, their albums are benchmarks in the expansion and evolution of heavy music. Tightly packed with deceptively nuanced arrangements, exhilarating and challenging distortion, their albums are possessed of an unmistakably singular sound. 'The Crying Out Of Things' is no exception, a culmination of all that The Body have done before, highlighting their mastery of dynamic, monumental music that pushes toward the unmistakable sound of oblivion.

From the band’s origins, incorporating unorthodox methods to achieve an oppressive atmosphere has been essential to their alchemy. Full choirs, unexpected sound samples, 70s-inspired horn lines, dub drum beats and diverse guest performances have speckled their varied and eclectic repertoire, the common thread being a complex webs of distortion and noise. 'The Crying Out Of Things' harnesses elements from their ground breaking catalog: the expansive ecstatic distortion and live energy of 'I’ve Seen All I Need To See', the ambitious layering and arrangements on 'I Have Fought Against It, But I Can’t Any Longer', and the corroded pop edge of 'No One Deserves Happiness' into one compact work. Guest performances include vocalist Ben Eberle, horn player Dan Blacksburg, and recent collaborator Felicia Chen add essential textural range. 'The Crying Out Of Things' makes clear The Body’s distinct power to convey a dark range of emotions, thought inventive arrangements, dynamics, and sound selections.

The album’s embrace of noise is a comprehensive display of the multitude of expressions possible with abrasive sound, a skill that The Body have pioneered and refined. “I think for us the key to the way we use noise is, it’s not the only element,” says Buford. “You’ve gotta really listen if you’re into noise. But it also has to have dynamics. Where, say, BIG|BRAVE (who have a similar ethos) expresses it in this more intellectual, minimalist way, The Body comes from an instinctual, maximalist way. We’re trying to cover it ALL.” There’s a delicate equilibrium to the compositions and momentum to each song on 'The Crying Out Of Things'. 808 kick drums and dissonant horns add clarity and punch to the chaos on 'Last Things', a reimagined version of a song from their 'A Home on Earth' EP. 'Removal' does slow-motion twirls of dubby drums and echoing samples before being subsumed in a droning throng. 'A Premonition' and 'The Building' act as bracing odes to the duo’s love of hip hop and R&B with undeniable grooves where 'Less Meaning' stands as one of the band’s most aesthetically punk songs, an uptempo wreckingball emboldened by glitches and tambourine. The focus of distortion shifts across instruments and sections with subtle precision, embellishing hulking drums one moment and the shriek of King’s voice the next. By weaving subtleties into the fabric of each piece, The Body creates starker contrasts and more extreme swings of emotional weight from one instant to the next.

The Body stand alone in their ability to connect disparate influences and collaborators into a wholly original, potent and singular work. Alongside producer/engineer Seth Manchester, the duo’s voracious and omnivorous musical appetites have pushed the studio as an instrument into new avenues to conjure profound feelings from the music. 'The Crying Out Of Things' cements The Body’s place as a leader of heavy new music, their boundless creativity, their defining ability to convey anguish, created with a visceral clarity to devastating impact. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Last Things
2. Removal
3. Careless And Worn
4. A Premonition
5. Less Meaning
6. The Citadel Unconquered
7. End Of Line 04:13
8. The Building
9. All Worries

Black Pus is the guttural, raw, freeform project of singular drummer, vocalist, & artist Brian Chippendale. A heavy drum foundation and distorted electronics anchor Black Pus’ sound, and remain directly connected to the intensity of Chippendale’s legendary duo with Brian Gibson, Lightning Bolt. Recorded at
Machines with Magnets by engineer Seth Manchester, Terrestrial Seethings is pure energy, pure Black Pus, capturing the precision, frenzy, and ecstatic performance in all its glory. After more than a decade playing and improvising, Chippendale’s imagination and curiosity continue to push his world of twisted joy in expressive new directions.

While known primarily for his iconic style of drumming with Lightning Bolt, Chippendale has also worked alongside artists such as Björk, The Flaming Lips, Boredoms, Andrew W.K., and Lee “Scratch” Perry. Outside of music related endeavors, Chippendale has made a name for himself as a renowned painter and painterly silk screen artist. Known for his frenetic color work,
for 'Terrestrial Seethings' Brian created striking black drawings that, like its title, pervert assumptions. Chippendale’s approach to crafting music as Black Pus mirrors his restless and indomitable spirit as a creator. His daily practice of making music and art on his own is both as meditative and cathartic, as it is inquisitive and spontaneous.

“This art is a river of energy that I jump into and ride along with,” says Chippendale. “It’s not really music made to tell written stories. It’s energy music first and foremost.” The pieces that shape Terrestrial Seethings brim with his preternatural ability to unearth new ideas and explore them with abandon while maintaining a sense of cohesion and a kind of alien musicality.

TRACK LISTING

1. Ping Pong
2. Hungry Animal
3. So Deep
4. Mark My Word
5. Celestial Seethings
6. Gothic Socks
7. Wide Asleep
8. Terrestrial Heathens

‘Black Bile’ compiles some of Umberto’s most resplendent, sanguine music to date. The solo work of LA composer Matt Hill draws heavily from the world of cinema, spinning immersive narratives and rich atmospheres using sound alone.

Hill, an active composer for film and television, recently scored the 2022 Jerry Pyle film ‘Loveseat’ (soundtrack was released in 2023). Other recent scores include the 2020 thriller ‘Archenemy’, from the producers of cult classic ‘Mandy’.

Inspired by the ancient Greek theory of the ‘four humors’, an early medical theory linking the inner workings of the human body to the elements, ‘Black Bile’ specifically links the feelings of melancholy with autumn. Hill’s celestial compositions are an autumnal soundtrack conveying beauty, yearning, reflection and comfort.

Many of the album’s phrases are constructed from just two notes or sounds, arranged by Hill into complex patterns that undulate with an organic pulse. The spare melodic structure holds myriad small and beautiful details. The songs began with Hill improvising on the piano, to find the notes and patterns that created the musical and emotional structure from which he could expand with textural detail. Hill then would often remove the initial structure leaving a sparer, more skeletal one which he could again expand upon to create a full piece. The careful attention to each detail gives his minimal compositions emotional heft.

The album masterfully stakes Umberto’s claim among other avant-ambient boundary pushers such as Lawrence English or Laurel Halo.

“There is real compositional variety and intrigue in his songs… elaborate and unpredictable... it’s hard not to be impressed with Umberto’s evolution of late, as lacerating experience as it may be at times.” - The Quietus

“Songs that are subtle yet unsettling, like a horror film that rattles your psyche without relying on tired shock tactics.” - Self-Titled

“Masterfully polished and skilfully arranged... dazzling” - Brainwashed

TRACK LISTING

Grasp
Spoonwood
Empty Shell
October
Monkshood
Vestige
Dying Honey & Linden

The world of Endon is one of constant evolution and revolution. The Tokyo-based ensemble of Taichi Nagura, Koki Miyabe and Taro Aiko have made a name for themselves with their relentless exploration of sonic extremes in the vein of artists such as the Boredoms and Merzbow. The resulting music is a powerful emotional release for both artist and listener.

The band’s commitment to evolution and dystopian noise as a playground for exploration and pure expression carried them through the recent departure of their drummer, Shin Yokota, and the tragic death of brother and band member Etsuo Nagura in 2020. Where some might have tried to replace members, Endon ’s core pressed forward with an autobiographical work exploring these changes and the shifts in their lives.

Honest and raw emotions delivered with uncompromising sonic intensity, ‘Fall of Spring’ is a thrilling tidal wave of sound and raw emotions born of the psyche of three individuals musically congregating into one tumultuous voice.

‘Fall of Spring’ captures the electricity and unpredictability of Endon ’s live performances in vivid detail. The album harnesses the power of their storied performances through unpredictable movements, deft arrangements and an exhilarating textural palette. By imbuing their sound with raw feeling at every edge of obliteration, the trio are able to create what they call ‘organic music with inorganic material’.

For Endon, these moments of suspense and surprise are the core of their music. As with their shows, ‘Fall of Spring’ is a vessel for band and audience to share moments, to suspend time and move through grief and pain, and to bask in catharsis and resilience. Endon continues to be a mercurial force in the world of extreme music.

“Endon are, without a doubt, one of the most punishing bands in contemporary extreme metal.” - Decibel

“One of the leaders of Japan’s next wave of experimental acts... ENDON thrive on the unexpected.” - Heavy Consequence / Consequence of Sound

“Primal yet progressive...shattered and shattering” - Metal Hammer

“This is music that’s creepy as fuck, but that keeps a toehold in melody, in proto-punk energy and psychedelic raunch” - The Wire

TRACK LISTING

Prelude For The Hollow
Hit Me
Time Does Not Heal
Escalation

‘Thrasher’ is the soundtrack to a virtual reality video game about a creature that has a life cycle that traverses different psychedelic realities.

‘Thrasher’ was composed and performed by Brian Gibson, bassist of Lightning Bolt. It is the follow up to the acclaimed best-selling game and soundtrack, ‘Thumper’.

The central character in ‘Thrasher’ is a giant centipede-like creature, so Gibson employed a lot of melodic sequences that resonated well with its segments moving through space.

Says Gibson: “I grew up playing some of the earliest video games, ‘Pac-Man’, ‘Space Invaders’ on an Atari 2600. Due to the limitations of those graphics they were extremely abstract games compared to today’s games which are just trying to simulate reality in the highest possible detail. I prefer games that make their own reality. I’d like to be transported as far from this one as possible… like ‘Pac-Man’, when you play it, it’s obvious what you are supposed to do, it makes its own sense.”

The soundtrack has the drive you might expect knowing Gibson’s work in Lightning Bolt, combined with complex melodic structures that are absolutely irresistible. In addition to bucking the hyperreality trend in gameplay, Gibson’s DIY ethos and warehouse culture roots permeate the entire soundtrack. He says it best: “‘Thumper’ has that combination of psychedelic and iconic that takes me back to the Fort Thunder days. ‘Thrasher’ is a further exploration into some of those motifs.”

“Did you really expect a game made by a member of notorious power duo Lightning Bolt to be anything less than a punishing hell ride?” - FACT

“A masterpiece.” - Brooklyn Vegan

“... sinister and rhythmic work ties in perfectly to the game’s visuals and relentless action.” - The Sixth Axis

“One of the best music games ever made.” - PC Gamer

TRACK LISTING

Metal Maze
Magenta Machine
Monolith
Mist
Mica
Timekeepers
Metal Maze II
Maelstrom
Melting Menace
Magma Skull
Mica II
Mad Moon

Over the course of 20 years, German artist Black To Comm (Marc Richter) has pushed the limits of / and merged the aesthetics of art, conceptual installations, and music, coming in a wave of innovation alongside his peers Pita, Fennesz, and later Sarah Davachi to name a few.

Through it all, Richter as Black to Comm has challenged assumptions, explored identity, and confronted the concept of authorship itself. ‘At Zeenath Parallel Heavens’ finds Black To Comm contemplating the hybridity within each and every one of us, be it sexual, racial, cultural, or linguistic.

Richter mirrors personal dualities musically with a combination of sounds he created and manipulated samples, blurring their boundaries. “I always try to blur the line between sampling and my own recordings, also between ‘real’ instruments, MIDI, electronics, editing, between authenticity and theatrics/artificiality,” says Richter. When recording he became aware of how AI text programs processing resembles his own methods. “I had the realization recently that the way I compose is not too dissimilar to what AI software is doing nowadays - especially when the AI is hallucinating (this is the term used when the AI is overloaded / overcharged / inundated and comes up with made-up results).” Human behaviour reflected in a computer facsimile of human intelligence appealed to the ethos of Black To Comm, whose titles and concepts are often oblique and tongue-in-cheek.

TRACK LISTING

1. Then Began The Harp To Fashion
2. Steep Thy Plumage In His Sweetness
3. Never Heed The Tongues Of Wooers
4. Time Will Fly On Equal Pinions
5. La Société Des Rêves
6. Musik Im Schatten
7. Schleim Des Nichtwissens
8. On The Grass Her Shoes Of Deer-Skin

Vienna has a storied history as a ground zero for new music. Radian, who call Vienna home, embody the city’s spirit of innovation. Martin Brandlmayr (drums, electronics), Martin Siewert (guitar, electronics) and John Norman (bass) are stalwarts of the European contemporary music community.

‘Distorted Rooms’ presents a dazzling new elevation of Radian’s employment and manipulation of microtones with a new emphasis on abstracted guitar motifs, often employing a more loop-based or electronic approach to the guitar’s sonics. Radian’s visionary approach to composition speaks to a lifetime of working in forward-thinking music. The trio expertly hone in on sounds often removed from the sheen of the recording process and mine them for unique, rich textural sound palettes which they then meticulously arrange.

‘Distorted Rooms’’ creative process began with multi-stage recording of often the smallest sounds, from pick-scrapes to an amplifier’s latent hiss. These slivers of sound are then restructured and processed through a variety of techniques that transform them drastically. Radian have always been interested in sounds that might be considered byproducts and maximizing their creative and aural potential. More minor gestures like switching a pedal on and off or toggling the guitar’s pickup are miked and spun into textures that crackle and froth to fascinating effect.

Radian’s angular, expansive music delights in tension and contradiction, sound and silence, improvisation and composition. The trio employ a singular and wholly unique sense of microtonality. While their creation process is complex, the resulting music is emotionally affecting, creating an aura of suspense and at times unease. Brandlmayr, Siewert and Norman share an unconventional, wildly imaginative approach to sound.

“Radian [have] perfected a painterly approach to sound construction.” - Pitchfork

“With music like this, repeat listens always prove hugely rewarding, enabling stirring new passages and sounds to all of a sudden emerge, as if they’d been written in disappearing ink.” - The Quietus

“The visceral thrill of the trio’s sound increases in their live performances, where the tactile crispness of their music is heightened.” - Chicago Reader

TRACK LISTING

Cold Suns
C At The Gates
Cicada
Skyskryp12
Stak
S At The Gates

Multi-instrumentalist Sally Anne Morgan, known for her work as part of The Black Twig Pickers, and half of House and Land (with Sarah Louise), cultivates seeds sown by folk musics and psychedelia.

‘Carrying’ tills the rich soil of Appalachian traditions and her rural North Carolina surroundings into warm, reflective songs about the weight people carry with them, as well as Morgan’s own pregnancy and the birth of her first child.

Bridging the more freeform, expansive leanings of 2021’s ‘Cups’ and the lucid beauty of her acclaimed 2020 debut, ‘Thread’, ‘Carrying’ finds Morgan imbuing her masterfully crafted songs with more subtle and intricate arrangements.

The album’s exploratory nature is anchored by a full band, comprised of some of the most thoughtful players in the psychedelic folk and ‘cosmic country’ spheres, including a guest appearance by Ripley Johnson (Rose City Band, Wooden Shjips, Moon Duo), and the foundational rhythm section of fellow The Black Twig Pickers collaborators: drummer Nathan Bowles (Steve Gunn Band, Pelt), guitarist Andrew Zinn, and bassist / engineer Joe Dejarnette.

Morgan finds unity in the burdens and joys, tensions, and releases of modern living as a common thread that people bear in their day-today lives. “So much of what we accumulate and carry around with us burdens us, but we also can’t or don’t know how to let go,” says Morgan. The profoundness and mundanity of that weight ran parallel for Morgan as she literally carried her child to term: the utter commonality of enduring what billions of parents before her had, and the awesome power of the human body and spirit, the complicated and unpredictable wash of emotions that come with nurturing and nourishing another life.

“Breathtaking, string-laden psychedelic folk” - Brooklyn Vegan

“Meditations on folk music, rather than the thing itself, stern and cerebral at times, but intermittently lush and beautiful...” - Dusted Magazine

TRACK LISTING

Beekeeper
The Center
Dawn Circle
Summerwater
Awake
Streets Of Derry
Diamond Joe
Song For Arthur

Alison Chesley is an unparalleled cellist and composer who has been making boundaryless music for nearly three decades under the moniker Helen Money. From her work in Verbow to her solo releases, extending to her work as a highly sought after collaborator with Jarboe, Bob Mould, Steve Albini, Neurosis and many more, Chesley has remained a singular voice and a pioneer in expanding the scope and perception of the cello. Will Thomas is an active composer for commercials, TV, and film (GvsE, CSI, The Haunted Swordsman). He has also contributed to several of Helen Money’s solo albums and an ongoing collaboration with Roger Eno. Trace marks Thomas’s and Chesley’s first fully collaborative album, synthesizing their myriad skills as songwriters, performers, and sound artists into vivid, profoundly moving music.

Helen Money and Will Thomas are masters of invoking emotional atmospheres. Their music paints in vibrant hues with outlines blurred, often using dense layers of processed instruments and textural ambience as a backdrop for harmonic tension and melodies. Trace is thrillingly cinematic. Each piece tells a compelling story through ratcheting suspense, twisting shifts, unfurling arcs, and blissful repose. “I don’t compose with a storyline in mind,” says Chesley. “I search for a feeling – a sound. It’s often not until the very end of the process that I realize what I was trying to express.” Chesley’s cello and Thomas’s synthesized textures converse with one another with a sense of curiosity. They each use their highly developed means of conveying emotion through sound and their collaborative natures to accentuate the emotional arc of the compositions. After years supplementing each other’s music and the long isolation of lockdowns, their collaboration’s conversational approach is rich with the electricity of old friends reconnecting. Chesley notes, “I was feeling grateful to be able to do this with someone I had worked with for so long – to be in the studio together again.”

Trace is a masterclass in sound design. Chesley’s formidable skill as a cellist and composer ground the compositions with rich organic sounds of cello and bow. Thomas’s equally deft hand manipulated electronics, keyboards create potent frameworks that bolster the sense of mystery and searching across the album. “Thieves” applies a jittering rhythmic pulse and sampled cello harmonics that tug forward anxiously before distorted cello thrusts transform the piece into something more resolute. The duo of “Half Asleep” and “Half Awake” act as companion pieces, using lush arrangements of cello and piano, each intoning atop steady chordal figures that sound distant and familiar, like meeting a friend in a dream. Chesley and Thomas pursue harmony and discord in equal measure. A thrum of foreboding blurs the lines between their instruments on “Boulevard in Silence,” which embodies wisps of shadow and the cowl of nightfall. Industrial crashes and obliterated bass textures subsume “Tilt” and the gorgeous timbres of “Glass Shattered” swim in waves of dissonance without resolution. “Trace” moves from gentle nudges to a hypnotic thump as the piece grows more rhythmically and sonically dense; each deviation rewarding with unexpected textures and sounds.

Chesley and Thomas’s unique voices as composers remain discernable and present throughout the album, but Trace is a celebration of connection of collaboration with an acute sense of details and the power they convey. On Trace, the duo utilize timbre, tone and dynamics as essential tools in crafting stunning emotive narratives. Together, the duo wield sound with inquisitive aplomb, burrowing into each other’s sonic aesthetics and unearthing irrefutable beauty. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Someone Out There
2. Thieves
3. Half Asleep
4. Boulevard In Silence
5. Abandon
6. Trace
7. She Never Suspected
8. Half Awake
9. Tilt
10. Glass Shattered
11. The Wheel

On Garden Party, Rose City Band’s country psychedelic rock evokes the wide-open spaces of the American west and free spirits who call it home. Lead by acclaimed guitarist and vocalist Ripley Johnson, Rose City Band are some of the best players in contemporary rock: pedal steel guitarist Barry Walker, keyboardist Paul Hasenberg, bassist Dewey Mahood (aka Plankton Wat), drummer Dustin Dybvig, and features Sanae Yamada of Moon Duo on Synthesizer. At its inception Rose City Band focused on what songwriter Johnson calls “porch music”. Recorded largely at Center for Sound, Light, and Color Therapy in Portland and mixed by John McEntire, Garden Party features guest appearances by Moon Duo bandmates John Jeffrey on drums and Sanae Yamada on synths, as well as Rose City Band live performers Hasenberg on keyboards and Walker on pedal steel. With the musicians in his life in mind, Ripley’s porch has opened up for each player to step into. Despite being tracked primarily as a solo endeavor the recordings capture the twists and bends of a fully realized ensemble, and in a nod to bands such as the Grateful Dead it doesn’t stop there. “The songs won’t really be finished until we play them on the road,” says Johnson. Like all great music, Garden Party taps into the listener’s emotional center and takes them to their happy place – their sunny spot. The album is an invitation to recalibrate, a joyous ride where the band’s sounds surround and embrace you. Ripley says it best: “I always like when an album starts in one place, and ends in another” What a beautiful journey it is.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Another languid slice of new country from the brilliant Rose city Band. Evoking a sense of hazy road trips and bristling summer sunshine, these pieces flow and bloom from dusty lounge jazz into full groove-led psychedelic territory. Another smash hit from Johnson & co.

TRACK LISTING

1. Chasing Rainbows
2. Slow Burn
3. Garden Song
4. Porch Boogie
5. Saturday’s Gone
6. Mariposa
7. Moonlight Highway
8. El Rio

Power trio Dommengang deliver heavy psych rock on new album ‘Wished Eye’. The album delivers super tasty, dirty guitars, serpentine psychedelic grooves, and propulsive drumming with gleeful abandon. Guitarist Dan ‘Sig’ Wilson switches from explosive to expansive on a knife’s edge, laying down wailing hooks before evaporating into bristling fuzz. Bassist Brian Markham and drummer Adam Bulgasem (Black Mountain)’s foundations play with time, galloping forward or stretching out into the cosmos. ‘Wished Eye’ is an expression of the sheer joy of making music together.

For fans of Blues Creation, Earthless, High Rise, and Acid Mothers Temple.

TRACK LISTING

Runaway
Society Blues
Last Card
Myth Time
Little Beirut
Blue & Peaceful
Petrichor
Wished Eye
Flower

Mats Gustafsson is a key character in the modern jazz scene as a world-renowned saxophone player, and has collaborated with countless artists including Sonic Youth, Neneh Cherry, Peter Brötzmann and Merzbow.

Joachim Nordwall has been creating psychedelic electronic music since the late 1980s, and has been in groups such as The Skull Defekts and Alvars Orkester, with work credited alongside Aaron Dilloway, Mika Vainio, Kevin Drumm, Christine Abdelnour and John Duncan.

Nordwall founded and runs the lauded record label iDEAL Recordings, operating at the cutting edge of experimental and electronic music, and hosting festivals, exhibitions, concerts, and club nights.

The duo create a sense of vast, three dimensional auditory expanses. “This is where acoustics and analogue synths meet. It is unique music. Unheard Vibes. Perfect for special venues and good PAs” - Gustafsson and Nordwall.

TRACK LISTING

1.  THERE ARE SOME WORLDS WHERE ALL DREAMS DIE (en Glad Stund)
2.  THE DAY OF DAYS WAS THERE (vardag)
3.  LOVE SHOWS IN HER SMILE: IT IS CONFIDENT (panik)
4. THEIR NEW LIFE WAS THEIR FINAL LIFE (vilse)
5.  BIRDBRAIN (olle ångest)
6.  HIS FINGERS, MOVING IN THE AIR, PRODUCED A SOFT ORGAN-LIKE MUSIC (långtråkigt)
7.  OH, SAID THE STRANGE MIND, YOU WANT ME TO THINK FOR YOU (det Blir Aldrig Bättre)
8.  HER EYES…WERE LIKE COLD FIRES (slut)

Sightless Pit is Lee Buford (The Body) and Dylan Walker (Full of Hell), two unparalleled artists at the forefront of redefining heavy music.

‘Lockstep Bloodwar’ is Sightless Pit’s sophomore album, following the band’s acclaimed debut ‘Grave of a Dog’, which featured Lingua Ignota, as well as The Body and Full of Hell’s collaborative album, ‘Ascending a Mountain of Heavy Light’.

The album includes eclectic and celebrated guest artists, including Gangsta Boo (Three 6 Mafia), YoshimiO (Boredoms), Frukwan (Gravediggaz), claire rousay, Midwife, Lane Shii Otayonii (Elizabeth Colour Wheel), Foie Gras, and more.

TRACK LISTING

On A Knife (feat Midwife)
Calcified Glass (feat YoshimiO & Gangsta Boo)
Flower To Tomb (feat Lane Shi Otayonii)
Lockstep Bloodwar
Low Orbit (feat Frukwan & Industrial Hazard)
False Epiphany (feat Claire rousay)
Shiv (feat Crownovhornz)
Morning Of A Thousand Lights
Futilities (feat Foie Gras)

Oozing Wound are comprised of members Zack Weil (guitar, vocals), Kevin Cribbin (bass) and Kyle Reynolds (drums).

The members of Oozing Wound are veterans of Chicago’s underground scene, having played in Cacaw, Unmanned Ship, ZATH and Bad Drugs

TRACK LISTING

Bank Account Anxiety
Total Existence Failure
The Good Times (I Don’t Miss ‘Em)
Hypnic Jerk
Crypto Fash
Between Cults
Chudly
Midlife Crisis Actor
Old Sludge
Face Without Eyes

Hot on the heels of the sold-out limited EP, ‘Was It Ever Real?’, The Soft Pink Truth release super catchy, sexy contemporary disco banger, ‘Is It Going To Get Any Deeper Than This?’. Throughout the ten songs of the album, the provocation to go deeper prompts promiscuous moves across the genres of disco, minimalism, ambient, and jazz, sliding onto and off of the dancefloor, sweeping higher and lower on the scale of frequencies, engaging both philosophical texts re-set as pop lyrics and wordless glossolalia.

Daniel’s romantic and musical partner MC Schmidt and friend Koye Berry play piano, Mark Lightcap (Acetone, Dick Slessig Combo) plays acoustic and electric guitar, Jason Willett (Half Japanese) plays bass, Nate Wooley plays trumpet, Brooks Kossover (Drugdealer) plays flute, John Berndt and Andrew Bernstein (Horse Lords) play saxophone, and shakers, shekere, tumba, triangle and cajon parts are played by Cuban percussionist Ayoze de Alejandro Lopez. There are chamber instruments as well: harpsichord by Tom Boram, harp by Obadias Guerra, Irish harp by Una Monaghan and, on many tracks, lush string arrangements by Turkish arranger Ulas Kurugullu for violin, viola, and cello that recall the Love Unlimited Orchestra found on classic Barry White albums.

Sidestepping retro kitsch but paying homage to highly personal interpretations of disco such as Arthur Russell, Don Ray, Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band, and Mandré, or the jazz funk of Creed Taylor and CTI Records. Its emphasis on slowly morphing deep house grooves will also appeal to fans of DJ Sprinkles, Moodymann, and Theo Parrish.

Gorgeous artwork designed by Robert Beatty, known for his work with artists such as Tame Impala, The Flaming Lips, The Dream Syndicate, Thee Oh Sees, Neon Indian, and Oneohtrix.

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: An alluring mix of moody and avant disco with rich, head-turning instrumentals which almost trip into live deep house jams. Somewhere between Manchester's See Thru Hands, The Rotating Assembly and 40 Thieves. Mega!

TRACK LISTING

Deeper
La Joie Devant La Mort
Wanna Know
Trocadero
Moodswing
Sunwash
Joybreath
Deeper Than This?
Toot Sweet
Now That It’s All Over

'VMAK' is the first ever solo album by acclaimed bassist Douglas Andrew McCombs.

McCombs is one of the most highly regarded bassists / guitarists working today, known for his pioneering band Tortoise, his bass playing in Chicago’s Eleventh Dream Day, and his innovative instrumental group Brokeback. He has released albums with guitarist David Daniell and collaborated with the likes of Tom Zé to Yo La Tengo, Stereolab to Daniel Lanois. In addition to being the touring bassist for The Sea and Cake, McCombs has somehow found time to form a new trio Black Duck with guitarist Bill MacKay, and percussionist Charles Rumback.

Douglas McCombs’ ‘VMAK’ is a window into one of the most distinguished and distinct voices in guitar music for the last three decades, effortlessly stretching the boundaries of the guitar while staying firmly grounded by blissful, uncanny melody.

McCombs’ debut solo album is a mix of improvisation, textural explorations and recurring melodic themes. The album title was lifted by the well-travelled McCombs from one of the visas packed into his current passport, the stamp a reminder of how far his music has taken him - literally all over the world. Not since McCombs’ solo outlet Brokeback blossomed into a full-fledged rock unit has his singular approach to solo guitar playing been exhibited in such striking detail. Taking after Brokeback’s classic ‘Morse Code in the Modern Age: Across the Americas’, ‘Two To Coolness’ is a piece that McCombs refined through a series of improvised performances and features Calexico drummer John Convertino, as well as singer / guitarist / synth player Sam Prekop (also of The Sea and Cake). ‘Green Crown’s Step’ was largely improvised working through melodies and patterns. The stately ‘To Whose Falls Shallows’ reshapes three key themes that Tortoise and Brokeback fans will find to be signature McCombs, buoyed by fellow Brokeback member James Elkington (Tweedy), who also engineered and mixed the album.

On the album, McCombs plays with spare instrumentation and primarily plays electric and acoustic guitars as well as the Bass VI, drawing out textures that stretch the scope of his instruments. McCombs’ work is pastoral and expansive, his playing is refined and nuanced, and his melodies often bely his admiration for Ennio Morricone as his guitar imbues endlessly sprawling fields of the Midwest with the same sense of magic. It is a true pleasure to hear him perform in such an intimate way. This is an absolute essential for followers of McCombs and newcomers alike, as the album lays bare his influence on each of his groups as well as firmly stakes McCombs as a force all his own.

TRACK LISTING

Two To Coolness
Green Crown’s Step
To Whose Falls Shallows

Available on vinyl for the first time in 10 years, with new cover design by the band’s Tim Rutilli. “Uniting where you come from - your roots - with what you strive to be or what you reinvent yourself to become - crowns,” explains Tim Rutili. “At the bottom of these songs are the memories and images you sift through in the process.”

TRACK LISTING

Pink And Sour
Spider’s House
Sunday Noises
The Eye You Lost In The
Crusades
A Chinese Actor
Alice Crawley
The Orchids (Psychic TV)
Burned By The Christians
Black Metal Valentine
Rose-Petal-Ear
3 Legged Animals

Mouse on Mars are recognised as one of Germany’s most defining and versatile electronic music projects. With their anarchic mixture of sound that oscillates between uncontrollable chaos and meticulously arranged structures, Jan St. Werner and Andi Toma have forged a unique musical language which is readily decomposed by the unpredictability of its myriad mutations. Free from schools of thought, genre conventions andfrom the constraints of the music establishment, they have worked under the Mouse On Mars alias for 24 years, mapping their own idiosyncratic trajectory through a no man’s land between pop, art, club music and the avant-garde.

TRACK LISTING

Mine Is In Yours
Wipe That Sound
Spaceship
Send Me Shivers
Blood Comes
The End
Detected Beats
All The Old Powers
Evoke An Object

Multi-instrumentalist Sally Anne Morgan tills the soil of old timey music, folk practices old and new, and psychedelia to sow music that reaches out beyond its roots.

‘Cups’ dives headfirst into the waters of the Morgan’s unconscious mind and plumbs those depths for swells of fertile brilliance and awe.

In stark contrast to the traditional and pop-informed structures of her previous album, ‘Thread’, ‘Cups’ adopts a free-flowing approach intuitive and receptive, brimming and shifting and changing across a fragile equilibrium of pieces both improvised and composed.

The fluid pieces twirl from pensive, looped fiddle to tiptoed banjo to patient, sunny parlour guitar arpeggios to droning dulcimer and a litany of percussive ripples with gentle ease.

By distilling her most immediate inspirations into layers of sparkling timbre and buoyant rambles, Sally Anne Morgan’s ‘Cups’ builds a sense of community from within, like a back porch jam with her own subconscious.

“Meditations on folk music, rather than the thing itself, stern and cerebral at times, but intermittently lush and beautiful... [‘Cups’] captures essential bits of folk music, frames them in stark, repeating ways, and makes us look at them differently.” - Dusted Magazine

“[‘Cups’ is] a totally charming album that bares the unspoiled essence of its creator, a thoroughly engaging artist forging her own singular path upon the resilient precepts of the past.” - No Depression

“Morgan has created a record that’s a meditative idyll... If you need a bit of spiritual realignment, then ‘Cups’ is a necessity, a moment of peace in a punishing world.” - Raven Sings The Blues

“breathtaking, string-laden psychedelic folk” - Brooklyn Vegan

TRACK LISTING

Night Window
Prune
Hori Hori
Pythagoras
Sandbox
Through The Threshold
Home Soup
Angeline
In Come A Bee
Word For World

Available on vinyl for the first time since its original CD-only release in 2007.

The closest of relationships gives its members space to expand, change, develop and play. Tenor saxophonist Fred Anderson and drummer Hamid Drake have just that kind of partnership, one that has seen them periodically move apart and work extensively on other fronts - Anderson tending to the recent relocation of his major jazz venue the Velvet Lounge; Drake in a dizzying array of globetrotting ensembles - but always returning to the fold, digging in together and checking out what’s been learned in the interim.

Over the course of some three decades, the master saxophonist and the prodigy percussionist have continued to reconfirm their commitment to their joint project.

TRACK LISTING

Planet E
Strut Time
For Brother Thompson
Sakti/Shiva
From The River To The Ocean

The music of Dewey Mahood is steadfast in its pursuit of transcendence.

For the past two decades as Plankton Wat, Mahood has contoured his melodic guitar playing into wholly transfiguring pieces.

His fluid compositions apply ethereal, elastic textures to grounded rhythmic grooves that recall the cosmic and the earthly in equal measure.

‘Hidden Path’ is an album built on reflection and discovery, turning the thrill of exploring obscured passages into inward revelations.

Originally presented as a limited cassette in 2017, and now presented on vinyl for the first time, remastered by Amy Dragon, ‘Hidden Path’ is a distillation of Mahood’s musical practice as a way of life, a patient celebration of the unexpected, unhurried and exhilarating.

TRACK LISTING

The Inward Reflection
Dream Cascade
A Window In The Mirror
Hidden Path
The Everflowing Stream
Solitude Amongst The Trees
Awaken
Fields Of Remembrance

The Body and BIG|BRAVE are both bands possessed with an unequalled ability to convey overwhelming weight with simplicity, repetition and detailed sonic atmospheres; artists who continue to alter the definition of what it means to be a heavy band.

The Body are consistently prolific while increasingly ambitious as untethered producers and collaborators. BIG|BRAVE shape sound with dense waves of guitar and feedback, minimalist and hypnotic crashes and emotionally exacting vocal melodies. In collaboration, The Body and BIG|BRAVE shift the gravity of their compositions to woven layers of percussion and unspooling guitars that sprawl through stark frameworks of earthy folk.

Their debut collaborative album, ‘Leaving None But Small Birds’ distils the two ensembles’ pioneering approach to heavy music into psalms for the forgotten, threnodies of lost love and odes to vengeance.

Recorded, mixed and produced by Seth Manchester at Machines With Magnets (Liturgy, Battles, Mdou Moctar) and mastered by Heba Kadry (Björk, David Bowie).

“Emotionally coherent but tricky to categorize. BIG|BRAVE are the sound of the raw unconscious, turned up loud.” - Pitchfork

“The Body have become one of the most interesting and difficult to pin down groups in extreme music.” - Rolling Stone

TRACK LISTING

Blackest Crow
Oh Sinner
Hard Times
Once I Had A Sweetheart
Black Is The Colour
Polly Gosford
Babes In The Woods

Jan St. Werner is one-half of legendary electronic duo Mouse On Mars. Werner records music as well under the name Lithops and has released records with Oval’s Markus Popp as Microstoria. Jan has collaborated with a wide range of artists from Mark E Smith and Stereolab to The National.

Kid Millions, aka John Colpitts, is a prolific drummer, known for his work in Oneida and frequently performs with Laurie Anderson and Marnie Stern. Colpitt’s past collaborations include Philip Glass, Royal Trux, Boredoms, White Hills and Spiritualized. Under the moniker Man Forever, Colpitts collaborated with acclaimed groups So Percussion, Greg Fox, Tigue, Yo La Tengo and more.

Together, the works on ‘Imperium Droop’ are a joyful listen and an exhilarating foray into the unknown; Kid Millions’ (John Colpitts) tireless rhythms and subtle gestures mirror Jan St. Werner’s boundless textural palette and together drive each piece towards transcendence. Exploring a liminal space between improvisation and composition, the duo expand their musical dialogue beyond the physical limitations of space and time.

LP is available on opaque purple with white coloured vinyl with art by Frieda Luczak, whose designs have been featured on many classic Mouse on Mars albums.

“Kid Millions has become a ubiquitous force in a constantly changing scene.” - New York Times

“Mouse on Mars have never let their concepts eclipse the music; part of the pleasure of the duo’s output is its very inscrutability... the sounds beckon in their mystery.” - Pitchfork

“Mutant, microtonal... [Jan St. Werner] explores one area of sound with great intensity and nuance” - Uncut

“Experimental percussion genius” - Village Voice on Kid Millions

TRACK LISTING

Color Bagpipes
Apotropaic
Laffen’ Death
Hexaco Inversion
Dark Tetrad
Astral Stare
Nuclei Melodies
Sorrows And
Compensations

Colleen is an aboundingly inventive composer and artist. For two decades Cécile Schott, as Colleen, has crafted welcoming, enchanting, and bewildering music. The multiinstrumentalist and vocalist’s timeless compositions make use of carefully selected tools to mold memories into transcendent splendor. The Tunnel and the Clearing finds Schott at her most vulnerable and confident, invoking contemplative and swirling organ processed through analog electronics, steady drum machine syncopations and her distinctive voice. On an album centered on processing the complicated washes of emotion through tribulations and revelations Colleen presents a vision of breathless clarity.

The Tunnel and the Clearing was developed over a period of transformative change. Colleen began work on the album in 2018 but was all but halted by extreme fatigue from a previously undiagnosed illness. Years of treatment and adjustment eventually led to relocating to Barcelona, soon followed by lockdowns and then the dissolution of her longtime partnership. Reflecting on these cumulative experiences she reimagined her compositional practices, spending months in near complete silence. Says Schott, “Never before had I felt so profoundly the power that music has, through harmony, melody, rhythm and sound itself, to express the whole range of human emotions.” The resulting seven pieces investigate the complex, at times contradictory relationship between excitement and fear, anger and understanding, struggle and triumph, all focused on a reconstruction of the self.

Colleen’s albums are unified by distinct and personal instrumentation, built around music boxes, viola da gamba, or electronics, they somehow all remarkably share a dreamlike modern quality. For The Tunnel and the Clearing Schott restricted herself to using analog electronic instruments including the Elka Drummer One, the Roland RE-201 Space Echo and Moog Grandmother synth, coupled with Yamaha organ keyboard. Stunningly, Colleen achieves the rich emotional intricacy and the lush density of textures on The Tunnel and the Clearing through almost entirely live performance and processing. These detailed and affecting compositions mirror Colleen’s grappling with her own psyche. Schott elaborates “I found direct correspondences between my internal discourse, its obsessive, frantic attempts at making sense of what I could not understand, and the music I was making, with motifs functioning as questions and answers, doubts and assertions.” Clicks, hums, warbles and throbs emulating our evolving internal worlds, an “emotional noise.” A musical journey through the tunnel toward the clearing at its end. The Tunnel and the Clearing is a work of lucid reverence, a constellation of marvels suspended in air.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: A beautifully produced juxtaposition of Space Lady-esque echoing vocal shards and slowly pulled organ swells, flickering drum machines and psychedelic reverb, 'The Tunnel..' is both brilliantly propulsive and warmingly lysergic, ending up somewhere between an arm-waving midday festival slot and loose, chillout room ambience. Really lovely stuff.

TRACK LISTING

1. The Crossing
2. Revelation
3. Implosion-Explosion
4. The Tunnel And The Clearing
5. Gazing At Taurus - Santa Eulalia
6. Gazing At Taurus - Night Sky Rumba
7. Hidden In The Current

Over the course of two decades The Body - Lee Buford and Chip King - have consistently challenged assumptions and defied categorization, redefining what it means to be a heavy band.

On ‘I’ve Seen All I Need To See’, they test the boundaries of the studio to explore the extremes and microtonality of distortion to find its maximal impact.

Their most incisively bleak album to date, a towering monolith of noise, Buford’s booming, resolute drums paired with King’s obliterated guitar and howl.

Course, bristling distortion contorts every instrument, with samples of spoken word, cymbals, toms and King’s already noxious tone emerging from layers of feedback.

Features guests Ben Eberle (Sandworm) and Chrissy Wolpert (Assembly of Light Choir).  Recorded with long time engineer Seth Manchester at Machines with Magnets (Lightning Bolt, Battles, Daughters) and mastered by Matt Colton (Sumac, Brian Eno, Uniform, Sunn O)))).

The Body have collaborated with many, including Full Of Hell, Thou, Uniform and Bummer.

“The distortion has this ability to envelope you, and not push you away. It has this strange kind of beautiful timbre... once you give into the sheer power of it, and let it take you on a ride then it becomes this whole other kind of sonic experience.” - Matt Colton

TRACK LISTING

A Lament
Tied Up And Locked In
Eschatological Imperative
A Pain Of Knowing
The City Is Shelled
They Are Coming
The Handle/The Blade
Path Of Failure

The music of Emil Amos is at once intimate and expansive. Under the name Holy Sons, as well as with bands Om, Grails and Lilacs and Champagne, Amos harnesses boundless sonic textures to embellish delicately crafted songs, he plays the bulk of the instruments and sings the majority of the vocals throughout the album and is joined on a few pieces by drummer Steve Shelley (Sonic Youth).

His music balances cues from classic and indie rock traditions with tenderness and sense of foreboding through unparalleled artistry. Holy Sons’ ‘Raw and Disfigured’ showcases Amos’ mastery of songcraft through a seemingly impossible combination of subtle yet potent gestures, bold arrangements and resolute vulnerability.

Recorded at Sonic Youth’s studio Echo Canyon West, ‘Raw and Disfigured’ stands as Amos’ most ambitious and comprehensive album yet, a panoramic gallery of songs as beautiful as they are crushing.

TRACK LISTING

The Loser That Always Wins
Lady Of The Hour
Cast Bound King
Hand That Feeds
Permanent Things
Four Walls
Held The Hand
Lost In The Fire
Transformation
Slow To Run
Reach Out And Touch Something
Cóiste Bodhar
Nights Like This
Up On That Hill
Backslider’s Wine
Bloody Strings

The Quickening is an improvised work guided by emotional intuition and an ability to spin collective experience into music of potent and boundless beauty.

Jim White and Marisa Anderson instrumental voices’ are unmistakable and spellbindingly lyrical. Anderson unravels global guitar traditions into atmospheres all their own through improvisations and transforming melodic lines. While White implements an array of sticks, brushes, and techniques that imbue each rhythmic percussion passage with its own distinct personality. Together their melodic flourishes cascade and twist upon one another, at times trading conversational exchanges, and at others drifting in unison as if lost in the same train of thought.

White and Anderson share an abounding appetite for musical exploration. White, as a member of Venom P Stinger, Dirty Three, and Xylouris White, is well known for his creative and idiosyncratic drumming. His singular abilities have also led to collaborations with Cat Power, PJ Harvey, and Bill Callahan among others.

Anderson’s prolific output as a solo performer, her mastery of traditional folk and blues forms and her abilities to make them entirely her own has established her as one of the most exciting and forward-thinking guitarists of the last decade.

White and Anderson’s considerable technical skills are used in the most inventive and unconventional manner on their debut duo recording, The Quickening. The duo’ friendship and shared explorative nature inform these warm and daring improvisations. Their remarkable performances take the listener on a journey of exuberant discovery.

The idea of a collaboration developed while on the road together in 2015, Anderson playing solo and White playing with Xylouris white. The Quickening began at the Portland studio Type Foundry in late 2018, where the duo initially agreed to meet and improvise and record. Happy with the recordings, the duo headed to Mexico City and into Estudios Noviembres, a time capsule of a studio from the 70’s that had been largely closed before some young engineers took it over. The “slight disorientation” of working in less familiar environments mirrored their willingness to plunge headfirst into exploring new sonic territory together. Anderson purchased a new nylon string Ramos-Castillo guitar from a Mexican luthier just ahead of recording which leant to the spontaneity of “The Lucky” and “The Quickening”. The duo did not rehearse or perform together prior to the recording sessions; as White puts it, “it’s good to suspend disbelief at this stage of playing.”

TRACK LISTING

Gathering
Unwritten
The Lucky
The Other Christmas
Song
Last Days
Diver
The Quickening
Pallet
18 To 1
November

In just over a year since their initial inception, Eye Flys have established themselves as a force beyond reckoning. Their debut full-length ‘Tub of Lard’ is stunningly potency full of piss and vinegar, scientific in its ability to pulverize everything in its path. Due in part to the considerable pedigree of the band’s line- up (including members of Full of Hell, Backslider, Triac), the East Coast-based quartet chew through steel-barbed riffs and off-kilter rhythms with exponential force. Their 2019 debut EP ‘Context’ set an early precedent for just how lean and ruthless they can be. On ‘Tub of Lard’, Eye Flys launch that potential into 10 songs of maximum impact that find both raw power and subtlety in their simplicity.

For fans of Unsane, Cherubs, The Melvins.

TRACK LISTING

Tubba Lard
Guillotine
Predator And Prey
Not Ready For Tomorrow
Reality Tunnel
Nice Guy
Chapel Perilous
Extraterrestrial Memoradum
BLS
Perception Is Gamble

Sightless Pit may be a new name in heavy music but its members are some of the most groundbreaking artist of the genre. Lee Buford (The Body), Kristin Hayter (Lingua Ignota) and Dylan Walker (Full Of Hell) recorded their debut ‘Grave Of A Dog’ at Machines With Magnets with Seth Manchester (The Body, Lightning Bolt). Fans will recognize immediately Buford’s singular percussion and production, Walker’s venomous howl and Hayter’s virtuosic voice. The three share a bleak vision of existence and a willingness to follow each other into the musical abyss. Sightless Pit are a group of expansive ideas, extensive experience working together and shared vision. Over the course of the eight tracks the trio reflect the extremes and emotional weight of their world view through elegiac dirges, driving beats and explosive crescendos. Together, three strong voices unite to create a work of remarkable clarity of expression of enormous sorrow, futility and, most of all, beauty.

TRACK LISTING

Kingscorpse
Immersion Dispersal
The Ocean Of Mercy
Violent Rain
Drunk On Marrow
Miles Of Chain
Whom The Devil Long
Sought To Strangle
Love Is Dead, All Love Is
Dead

For their seventh full length, ‘Sonic Citadel’, Brians Gibson and Chippendale have done the daring, stripping away some of the distortion mask to reveal the naked pop forms as never before.

Throughout their 25-year history Lightning Bolt have toured the world, performing at Coachella, ATP, Festivals, Pitchfork Music Festival, Austin Psych Fest and FYF Fest, to name a few.

Brian Chippendale has collaborated with Björk, Boredoms, Andrew W.K. and Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry. Brian’s comics are published with Drawn & Quarterly and Picturebox. Brian is also in Black Pus.

Brian Gibson’s game Thumper, produced by his own company Drool, was awarded the 2019 Apple Design Award, was on Gamespot, Hardcore Gamer and IDN’s Best Of 2016 lists and won countless other awards.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: With the grinding guitars and machinated percussive blasts, Lightning Bolt have always proved an intimating presence. 'Sonic Citadel' sees them embracing more of the rapid-fire punk aesthetic than their more dirgy stoner sludge, and is all the better for the glimmers of melody and old-school thrash-punk fire within.

TRACK LISTING

Blow To The Head
USA Is A Psycho
Air Conditioning
Hüsker Dön’t
Big Banger
Halloween 3
Don Henley In The Park
Tom Thump
Bouncy House
All Insane
Van Halen 2049

Eye Flys brings together the minds of four musicians known for their work in some of the most extreme, blistering bands today. The quartet was initially started by Full Of Hell guitarist Spencer Hazard and former Backslider drummer Patrick Forrest as an outlet to play aggressive music with equal intensity that would contrast the breakneck speeds of their other projects. After asking Backslider bassist Jake Smith to join on guitar and vocals and Triac’s Kevin Bernsten on bass, Eye Flys’ potential for crafting impossibly heavy songs was solidified.

Eye Flys’ debut ‘Context’ was written and recorded just a few short months from the band’s inception, drawing on each members’ considerable experience and driven by the excitement of playing in uncharted territory. This is an album of commanding, lean noise rock absolutely brimming with vitriol.

The direct, raw energy of Eye Flys’ music is simultaneously menacing and intoxicating. Drawing immediate comparisons to bands like Unsane, Cherubs and The Melvins (where they take their name), the quartet’s bludgeoning sound is underpinned by a razor sharp edge. Smith’s vicious lyrics are paralleled by his unrelenting barks with passages like the opening of ‘Weaponize’ literally spat through grinding teeth. Their taut, muscular riffing and pummelling drums lay atop a foundation of deceptively intricate arrangements.

Eye Flys’ ‘Context’ stands as a testament to its members’ abilities to produce music that is as ferocious as it is addictive. In just six songs Eye Flys not only prove their place among their peers but stand out as a force of sheer, immovable power.

TRACK LISTING

Stems
Dosed
Crushing Of The Human
Spirit
Weaponize
The Triumph Of Hagbard Celine
Fuckface

The incomparable duo, Matmos, have done it again! Their new album, Plastic Anniversary, was created using only plastic. Highlighting the crises of convenience, the Duo make music from our refuse. True to form, the band have assembled a promiscuous array of examples of this sturdy-yet-ersatz family of materials: Dominos, Styrofoam coolers, police riot shields, polyethylene waste containers, PVC panpipes, pinpricks of bubble wrap, pills, silicone gel breast implants and most horrifically synthetic human fat. Where did this idea come from? Drew Daniels and M.C, Schmidts own “plastic” anniversary as a couple.

Matmos glide from the tongue-in-cheek fun of “Breaking Bread” (literally smashing Bread LPs) to Cronenbergian body-horror of “Interior with Billiard Balls & Synthetic Fat.” The album is playful and poppy while conveying a very serious message and on the darker implications of ignoring the havoc we are imposing on the earth all for the sake of convienience

A super special limited edition set will come with a sculptural album, embedded with plastic bottles, that while is the actual album, is rendered viruatlly unplayable by the pastic floating within. This edition also includes the album on a exclusive multi color mashup vinyl, a t-shirt, and a bonus track, all exclusive to the box. All proceeds from this special edition will benefit The Ocean Cleanup.

TRACK LISTING

1. Breaking Bread
2. The Crying Pill
3. Interior With Billiard Balls & Synthetic Fat
4. Extending The Plastisphere To GJ237b
5. Silicone Gel Implant
6. Plastic Anniversary
7. Thermoplastic Riot Shield
8. Fanfare For Polyethylene Waste Containers
9. The Singing Tube
10. Collapse Of The Fourth Kingdom
11. Plastisphere

Chicago’s Oozing Wound are a mass of contradictions: weed lovers whose music hits you with its breakneck head banging force. The band deal with nihilism, yet remain addictively fun. Their music is equal parts sludge and thrash, noise and riff-loaded rock. High Anxiety is an unabashed mocking of the madness of modern living, its chemical induced adventures and establishment absurdity, deriding the industrial complex behind established institutions such as NASA while savaging those who deny science. Oozing Wound on High Anxiety are nihilistic pied pipers making us laugh our way to the apocalypse. The album finds guitarist and vocalist Zack Weil drummer Kyle Reynolds and bassist Kevin Cribbin blending their ferocious energy, sonic experiments and blunt lyricism for a pummeling enjoyable head-banger with an irresistible sneer.

On High Anxiety, Oozing Wound’s songs have become more complex, their attacks more ferocious, and bass and guitar lines more captivating. The album was recorded in four days at Steve Albini’s Electrical Audio studio. The trio ripped through live-tracking and overdubs, leaving space to experiment with new sounds and effects. The band, having an affinity for the complexities of prog music, managed to bring prog elements to High Anxiety without sacrificing any of their songs punch. Subtle layers of saxophone, flutes and synths were blended into guitar tones, adding depth and texture without cluttering arrangements. Fist-pumping blasts of whitehot riffing become a Trojan horse for sonic weirdness. The resulting recordings are at once some of their most sonically rich, immediate, and impactful.

High Anxiety drips with a caustic vitriol that is both riotous and intoxicating

TRACK LISTING

1. Surrounded By Fucking Idiots
2. Filth Chisel
3. Tween Shitbag
4. Die On Mars
5. Birth Of A Flat Earther
6. Riding The Universe
7. Vein Ripper

Endon is a band as mercurial as they are ferocious. Comprised of the quintet of vocalist Taichi Nagura, guitarist Koki Miyabe, drummer Shin Yokota and electronics/noisemakers Taro Aiko and Etsuo Nagura, Endon’s music is contained chaos, bending and colliding genres into one another atop a bed of thunderous distortion, feedback, and unearthly squeals. Vocalist Taichi’s voice embodies an unreal number of personalities with wordless howls seething one moment and agonized cries the next, before desperate gasps for air. It comes as no surprise that they have been credited as the most extreme band in Tokyo.

‘Boy Meets Girl’ was envisioned as a soundtrack to an imagined horror film about love. The core of the ensemble’s song structures are often built around Koki’s fuzz-laden guitar and Shin’s drum bombast which propel torrents of hisses and squelches from Taro and Etsuo. Taichi’s largely lyricless screams, moans and whimpers are potent messengers of the songs’ emotional heft. There lies an ecstatic, excited energy amidst the anarchic defiance Endon's music exudes. Born of the same Japanese scenes that gave rise to the likes of Merzbow and Boredoms, their sound is equally diverse and abrasive. ‘Boy Meets Girl’ demonstrates Endon’s singular faculty to produce music that is at once tortured and transcendent.

TRACK LISTING

Boy Meets Girl
Heart Shaped Brain
Born Again
Doubts As A Source
Love Amnesia
Final Acting Out
Red Shoes
Not For You

Through his output both as a sound artist and through his eclectic Dekorder record label, Black To Comm (Marc Richter) has established himself as a singular voice of new music. His Thrill Jockey debut, "Seven Horses For Seven Kings", is Richter’s most direct and visceral to date.

A relentless sonic explorer, he approaches the studio as his instrument, using sampling, analogue production and digital manipulation to sculpt audio fragments into surprising new shapes. Samples from Richter’s contemporaries like German composer Nils Frahm are bent and compounded with elements of early recorded music and medieval song, creating pieces that transcend time and genre. Richter blurs the lines between organic instrumentation and digital production to the extent that the two become inseparable.

"Seven Horses For Seven Kings" was completed during a particularly prolific period for Richter. Working on a broad range of commissions since his last album - from writing for film and theatre works to composing for art installations, apps and sleep music - generated a flurry of new ideas and influences. Extensive touring would equally come to inform a key shift in Richter’s music, simulating the raw, unpredictable energy of live performances on record. While rhythm has been largely absent from previous Black To Comm releases, here the music seems totally bound to it. The album’s breathtaking pace drives Richter’s music to new levels of intensity.

'Black To Comm is... like an abandoned museum of late-Twentieth Century instruments whose exhibits are still running at half power.' - New Yorker

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Pulsing doom-laiden ambience, rickety industrial echoes and foreboding strings form the backbone to Black To Comm's most evocative and absorbing work to date. Stunning stuff.

TRACK LISTING

Asphodel Mansions
A Miracle No-Mother Child At Your Breast
Lethe
Ten Tons Of Rain In A Plastic Cup
Licking The Fig Tree Threshold
Fly On You
Double Happiness In Temporal Decoy
If Not, Not
The Deseret Alphabet
Semirechye
Rameses II
Angel Investor
The Courtesan Jigokudayu Sees Herself as A Skeleton In The Mirror Of Hell

‘Luck In The Valley’ is the 10th and final album by Jack Rose and is the yardstick by which many contemporary acoustic guitar albums are measured. This 2018 re-issue makes this contemporary classic available again for the first time since 2010.

Jack Rose first rose to prominence with the drone/noise/folk unit Pelt. Pelt can be counted among the early influential new music underground bands such as UN, No Neck Blues Band, Charalambides, Tower Recordings and Six Organs Of Admittance. Along with the influences of John Fahey and Robbie Basho, Rose also incorporated North Indian classical, early American blues, bluegrass and minimalism into his singular style.

‘Luck In The Valley’ came right as Rose’s influence was just beginning to take flight but was sadly his last album before his unexpected death in December of 2009. Still, his music and influence, much like his person, bold, hearty and rooted in traditional American music continues to be a source of reference for guitarists and musicians carrying traditional American music into modern times.

“Jack Rose, Versatile Master of the Guitar” - New York Times

“The energy behind ‘Luck In The Valley’ all emanates from Rose himself: you can almost see his fingers flying across his guitar strings... energy resonates from within his melodies and his songs, giving ‘Luck In The Valley’ a radiance.” - Washington Post

“It’s a big, bold work, just the way Rose was a big, bold guy - confident, honest, and forthright.” - Pitchfork

“Jack Rose is acoustic music... Without ever singing a word. Jack Rose could communicate in a way few musicians can.” - PopMatters

TRACK LISTING

Blues For Percy Danforth
Lick Mountain Ramble
Woodpiles On The Side Of The Road
When Tailgate Drops, The Bullshit Stops
Moon In The Gutter
Luck In The Valley
Saint Louis Blues
Tree In The Valley
Everybody Ought To Pray Sometime
West Coast Blues

The music of Brendon Anderegg is a hall of mirrors, multi-layered and self-obscuring. Largely filtered through Mountains - his pioneering electronic project with Koen Holtkamp - Anderegg emerged as a solo artist in the late 90s. He returns now with ‘June’, a vinyl-exclusive release on Thrill Jockey.

The music on ‘June’ is a complex network of layers, paradoxically a calm and soothing listen. Collapsing history into its own contemporary sonic movements, Andregg’s methodically created work falls in the lineage of electronic pioneers like Bernard Parmegiani and early ambient projects like Tangerine Dream, Popul Vuh and Cluster and puts his solo work in the realm of New Age figures like Michael Stearns and JD Emmanuel. ‘June’ is a singularly beautiful and challenging work that marks the long overdue re-emergence of Brendon Anderegg as a solo voice.

Brendon Anderegg is a Brooklyn-based, Emmynominated composer with clients ranging from Pitchfork to ESPN.

Available only on vinyl, ‘June’ is pressed on virgin vinyl and includes a free digital download coupon.

OOIOO’s seminal album ‘Gold & Green’ is finally widely released on vinyl for the first time. Presented as a deluxe double LP in a gatefold jacket with spot metallic ink and full colour inner sleeves featuring glorious artwork. Pressed on virgin vinyl with free digital download coupon.

OOIOO have always created a musical language all their own. Under the leadership of Yoshimi, a founding member of Boredoms, the group have recorded six albums that have subverted expectations and warped perceptions of what constitutes pop and experimental music.

‘Gold & Green’ features guest appearances from Sean Lennon, Seiichi Yamamoto (Boredoms) and Yuka Honda (Cibo Matto).

OOIOO’s Yoshimi is to release an exhilarating new album this Autumn with her group SAICOBAB, featuring sitarist Yoshida Daikiti, bassist Akita Goldman and percussionist Hama.

“‘Challenging’ music doesn’t get more fun than this.” - NPR Music

“OOIOO traffic in a crafty kind of post-punk primitivism… the synths, power chords, polyrhythmic drumming and wordless chants building into an irresistible, throbbing whole” - The Wire

“An extraordinary band.” - New York Times

“OOIOO is tight, lithe and anything but robotic.” - Washington Post

TRACK LISTING

Moss Trumpeter
Á

Oozing Wound are a thrash trio featuring veterans of Chicago’s underground scene who have played with High On Fire, The Body, Ash Borer, Wolf Eyes, Nazoranai and Black Pus, among many others.

A horrifying concoction of apathy and malaise wrapped in a delectable sheet of hatred drowned in a bath of contempt.

“Oozing Wound are the Chicago trio ripping up the rule book of thrash.” - The Guardian

“Chicago trio Oozing Wound play loud, brash and snotty crossover thrash with a penchant for the kind of big, obnoxious riffs that can’t fail to plaster a huge grin across your face.” - Terrorizer

“Their songs barrel along like Iron Lung bitch-slapping the first Megadeth album or meaty Testament-like guitar gallops infused with an air of frenetic power violence irreverence.” - Metal Hammer

“A whole sweaty, stinking ruck of basement smashing fun” - The Quietus

“So refreshingly anti-bullshit are Oozing Wound that they could conceivably turn out to be the Nirvana of thrash.” - Noisey

TRACK LISTING

Rambo 5 (Pre-Emptive Strike)
Diver
Deep Space
Mercury In Retrograde Virus
Weather Tamer
Everything Sucks, And My Life Is A Lie
Eruptor
Tachycardia
You Owe Me, Iommi
Sky Creep

Grumbling Fur are the UK based duo of Alexander Tucker and Daniel O’Sullivan.

Alexander Tucker’s solo releases on Thrill Jockey include ‘Third Mouth’ and ‘Dorwytch’. A prolific artist, his latest graphic novel, the acclaimed ‘World In The Force Field’, is out now via Breakdown Press.

Daniel O’Sullivan has been at the core of the wildly successful This Heat reconstitution and with Massimo Pupillo of Zu recently realised Laniakea. As part of Norwegian experimental collective Ulver he released the ‘ATGCLVLSSCAP’ album and later this year there’ll be a new album from Æthenor, his ongoing project with Steve Noble and Stephen O’Malley of Sunn O))).

‘Furfour’ is the band’s second release on Thrill Jockey, with previous releases on Aurora Borealis and Latitudes alongside their last highly successful output on The Quietus Phonographic Corporation.

On ‘Furfour’, Grumbling Fur are joined by This Heat’s Charles Bullen and Isobel Sollenberger from Bardo Pond. The band have also recently collaborated with Charlemagne Palestine.

‘Furfour’ gradually emerged over three years of writing and recording at 147 Tower Gardens, the mystical, ivy-shrouded house that Tucker and O’Sullivan once called home.

The band’s music is shaped all this are their long-standing shared musical affections, encompassing orchestrated poptones, collage, dub and beatmaking as well as experimental and drone elements - touchtones might include Faust, Arthur Russell, Penguin Cafe Orchestra, Moondog, Michael Nyman, Gate, Syd Barrett, Stereolab, Vibracathedral Orchestra, Ashtray Navigations, CC Hennix and Madlib.

TRACK LISTING

Strange The Friends
Acid Ali Khan
Heavy Days
Molten Familiar
Milky Light
Pyewacket’s Palace
Perfect Reader
Silent Plans / Black Egg
Golden Simon
Sapien Sapiens
Come Down And Watch Them
Suneaters

Jan St. Werner, the well-respected artist and musician known for his solo compositions, his work with Mouse On Mars and art pieces, has created a beautifully rhythmic, instantly gripping work with his new album ‘Felder’.

Werner has created sounds that are listenable and inviting, complex but approachable and, mostly, completely unidentifiable. ‘Felder’ means ‘fields’ in German and here the word refers to conceptual frameworks and subjects and sound fields. Werner mixes organic sounds from French horns and cellos seamlessly with synthesized notes created with one-of-a-kind programs. He builds layers of sound with differing cadences upon one another, creating intricate patterns that connect with each other structurally, rhythmically, semantically and historically. Suggestions of jazz, industrial music, drone and even folk float in and out of the electronic compositions in a seemingly effortless manner; paradoxically, ‘Felder’ was meticulously constructed over the course of four years.

“Music that makes you hyper-aware of your place in relation to it and something that removes you from thinking about yourself altogether” - Pitchfork

Werner has collaborated with Markus Popp (Oval), Mark E Smith (The Fall), Damo Suzuki (Can), the scientist / writer Oswald Wiener and the theorist Siegfried Zielinksi on pieces that were premiered at the Chicago Symphony, Phiharmonie Cologne, Barbican London, Radialsystem Berlin, HAU Berlin, Akademie der Kunste Berlin and the German public radio stations WDR, SWR, BR, and DLF. Werner has also shown works at Kunstverein Munich, Neue Nationalgalerie Berlin, Museum Abteiberg Monchengladbach, Cubitt Gallery London, Kunsthalle Dusseldorf and Cornerhouse Manchester.

In addition Werner has worked with the visual artist Rosa Barba on pieces premiered at London’s Tate Modern, the MIT List Visual Arts Center and the Reina Sofia in Madrid.

TRACK LISTING

Beardman
Kroque AF
Osho
Foggy Esor Pt. 1
The Somewhere That Is Moving
Slipped Through Heaven
The Abstract Pit
Foggy Esor Pt. 2
Singoth
Rain Deer

Revered Chicago-based instrumental group Tortoise, comprised of Dan Bitney, John Herndon, Doug McCombs, John McEntire and Jeff Parker, have spent 25 years making music that defies description. While the quintet have nodded to dub, rock, jazz, electronica and minimalism throughout their acclaimed and influential six-album discography, the resulting sounds have always been distinctly their own.

It’s a fact that remains true on the hotly anticipated forthcoming new album ‘The Catastrophist’ (Thrill Jockey) and Tortoise’s first studio album in nearly seven years.

Recorded at McEntire’s famed Soma Studios, it’s an album where moody, synth-swept jams like the opening title track cosy up next to hypnotic, bassand- beat missives like ‘Shake Hands With Danger’ and a fantastic cover of David Essex’s 1973 hit song ‘Rock On’ sung by U.S. Maple’s Todd Rittmann. Throughout, the songs on ‘The Catastrophist’ transcend expectations as often as they delight the listen’s eardrums.

‘Rock On’ isn’t the only vocal moment on the album. Yo La Tengo’s Georgia Hubley distinctive tones are on the bittersweet classic soul/R&B vibe ballad ‘Yonder Blue’. this also marks the first time a Tortoise album will feature a guest vocalist singing original lyrics.

‘Gesceap’, the first track premiered from ‘The Catastrophist’, is a stunning seven-minute long, minimalist rhythmic piece, morphing from two gently intersecting synth lines into a pounding, frenzied full-band finish.

There’s a deeply intuitive interplay between the group that comes only from two decades of experimentation, revision and improvisation. At a time when our minds are constantly bombarded by myriad distractions, ‘The Catastrophist’ reminds us that there’s something much greater out there. All we have to do is listen.

TRACK LISTING

The Catastrophist
Ox Duke
Rock On
Gopher Island
Shake Hands With Danger
The Clearing Fills
Gesceap
Hot Coffee
Yonder Blue
Tesseract
At Odds With Logic

Dommengang are a Brooklyn-via-Seattle rock trio fronted by Pacific Northwest psych mainstay Sig Wilson (Holy Sons, Castanets, Scout Niblett) and Brooklyn musicians Brian Markham and Adam Bulgasem (currently members of Holy Sons’ live band).

While the trio’s affection for electric blues and proto-punk bombast is clear, their music abandons traditional song structures and replaces their recognizable tropes with progressive frameworks. The band’s debut, ‘Everybody’s Boogie’, pivots between gloriously inventive riffs and fuzzed-out experimentation, a combination so potent that the listener hardly notices that they rarely sing.

‘Everybody’s Boogie’ was recorded live in the studio in Greenpoint, Brooklyn with minimal overdubs.

Recommended for fans of Pontiak, Endless Boogie, Earthless and Goat

TRACK LISTING

Everybody’s Boogie
Hats Off To Magic
Slow Hat
Her Blues
Wild In The Street Blues
Extra Slim Boogie
Burning Off The Years
Have Luck Will Travel
CC
Lost My Way

'Glitter Glamour Atrocity' is a snapshot of the band in the midst of an incredible burst of creativity, and was recorded during the same sessions that produced 'Heads On Fire' and 'Abstractions & Mutations'. Sonically, it is radically different from anything else coming out of the New York underground at the time, and it set the template for the singular concoction of heavy psychedelic music, krautrock, and a worship of pure sound they have explored in different variations ever since.

Throughout the album the band explores themes of greed, misinformation, war, hypocrisy and their outcomes within the world’s political and economic systems, presenting these weighty topics with the same air of mystic understanding that underpins their music. Glitter Glamour Atrocity includes the song “Under Skin Or By Name,” the longest running staple in the band’s live set, which the band performed in the acclaimed film Only Lovers Left Alive at the request of director Jim Jarmusch. It is one of only two performances in the movie, which is enamored with the music making process and record collector culture.

Following the mood-setting intro track and the meditative bombast of “Under Skin or By Name,” WHITE HILLS settle into the sparse groove of “Spirit of Exile,” an expression of a desire to live apart from a culture that one does not fit into. These songs glow with the burning vitality and passion of free thinkers trapped in the waning years of the Bush administration. Those sentiments are perhaps most compellingly expressed on “Love Serve Remember,” a warped, surreal vision of life after 9/11 seen through the eyes of someone who witnessed the event first-hand, interspersed with a brilliantly edited speech by Bush himself in which he admits “I was a threat to the United States.”

Glitter Glamour Atrocity was recorded with the first iteration of the trio line-up with Dave W on vocals, guitar, synthesizers, and sound collage, Ego Sensation on bass and vocals, and Bob Bellomo on drums. It was recorded at Bellomo’s studio in Passaic, NJ, and produced by Dave W.

TRACK LISTING

01. Air Waves
02. Under Skin Or By Name
03. Spirit Of Exile
04. Distance
05. Somewhere Along The Way
06. Long Serve Remember
07. Passage
08. Glitter Glamour Atrocity

The Soft Pink Truth is the solo alter ego of Drew Daniel, one half of celebrated Baltimore-based electronic duo Matmos.

After a decade of silence in which Daniel concentrated on Matmos and becoming a Shakespeare professor, The Soft Pink Truth is set to release ‘Why Do The Heathen Rage?’, whose subtitle ‘Electronic Profanations Of Black Metal Classics’ reveals its bizarre agenda as an unrequited love letter to a justly divisive genre.

A gleeful queer travesty of black metal’s undying obsession with kvlt authenticity, ‘Why Do The Heathen Rage?’ is also a formally precise homage executed with a scholar’s obsession. With the guitar chord transcription assistance of Owen Gardner (Teeth Mountain, Horse Lords) and a coven of guest vocalists including Antony Hegarty (Antony And The Johnsons), Terence Hannum (Locrian), Jenn Wasner (Wye Oak) and M.C. Schmidt (Matmos), Daniel meticulously transposes the riffs, structures and patterns of black metal chestnuts and deep cuts by Darkthrone, Venom, Mayhem, Sarcofago, Beherit and more into oddly hybrid new forms. Cruising camp absurdity by forcing a sticky tryst between the two mutually incongruous early 90s subcultures of rave and black metal, the results are bracingly strange on first listen but curiously addictive as the album sinks in.

TRACK LISTING

Invocation For Strength
Black Metal
Sadomatic Rites
Ready To Fuck
Satanic Black Devotion
Beholding The Throne Of Might
Let There Be Ebola Frost
Buried By Time And Dust
Maniac
Grim And Frostbitten Gay Bar

THIS IS A RECORD STORE DAY 2014 EXCLUSIVE, LIMITED TO ONE PER PERSON.

Brand new 16 minute 12“ EP from Glenn Jones pressed on virgin vinyl and packaged in a full colour LP jacket with free download coupon.

Limited to only 1,000 worldwide.

All exclusive, never before released material.

Limited to 120 copies for the UK and Ireland.

TRACK LISTING

Medley : Island III / Against My Ruin
From A Forgotten Session
The Orca Grande Cement Factory At Victorville (with Cian Nugent)

THIS IS A RECORD STORE DAY 2014 EXCLUSIVE, LIMITED TO ONE PER PERSON.

Classic albums from the early days of Thrill Jockey.

Originally released in 1996/1998 - these have been out of print on vinyl for nearly a decade.

Both albums are being re-issued and will be sold as a 4xLP set.

‘Flemish Altruism’ will feature new/updated artwork.

Both will include download coupons for the first time.

A Minor Forest recently reunited and played a very well received show in San Francisco (with a Bay Guardian cover story)

The band will tour the US in April & May of this year.

Limited to 60 copies for the UK and Ireland.

TRACK LISTING

Flemish Altruism
...But The Pants Stay On
Bill's Mom Likes To Fuck
Ed Is 50
So Jesus Was At The Last Supper...
Jacking Off George Lucas
Speed For Gavin
Perform The Critical
Straw Transfer
Dainty Jack And His Amazing Technicolor Cloth Jacket
Beef Rigger
The Loneliest Enuretic

Inindependence
The Dutch Fist
Erik's Budding Romance
Look At That Car, It's Full Of Balloons
... It's Salmon!
The Smell Of Hot
Michael Anthony
Discoier

D. Charles Speer, aka Dave Shuford, is a founding member of both Rhyton and No Neck Blues Band, and also known for his work with Enos Slaughter, The Suntanama, Egypt Is The Magick #, and Coach Fingers.

On ‘Doubled Exposure’ The Helix take their loose and free country rock boogie and enhance it with the blistering psych Speer explores in Rhyton, and the traditional Greek melodies delved into on the Speer solo album, ‘Arghiledes’ (also on Thrill Jockey).

‘Doubled Exposure’ was recorded by Jason Meagher at the increasingly legendary Black Dirt Studios in upstate New York, where Blues Control, Expo 70, Jack Rose and Psychic Ills have also recorded.

The Helix band member Hans Chew (keyboards) has released solo music on Three Lobed, while Marc Orleans (pedal steel) has performed with Catherine Irwin, Steve Gunn, Meg Baird and Chris Forsyth.

‘Drifter’s Temple’ is Plankton Wat (aka Dewey Mahood)’s second album for Thrill Jockey, following last year’s ‘Spirits’.

Mahood utilized 6 and 12 string guitars, lap steel, bass, organ, and synth to realize these richly detailed songs. ‘Drifter’s Temple’ harkens back to Mahood’s childhood in Northern California, both sonically and conceptually. A loose narrative is woven through these ten instrumental tracks, touching on the Gold Country and Mt. Shasta that populate his native countryside.

The album unfolds with the grace and contour of the landscape that inspired it, with fingerpicked melodies slowly growing to gigantic peaks of lysergic bliss. His guitar style is as far reaching as ever on ‘Drifter’s Temple’, which shows him seamlessly integrating his love of the Appalacian folk music of Dock Boggs and Roscoe Holcomb into the subtle Grateful Dead-isms, nods to 70s cosmic music, and overt Crazy Horse moves he has explored on recent releases.

‘Drifter’s Temple’ features contributions from Dustin Dybvig (Horse Feathers and Edibles), Matt McDowell (Sagas) and John Rau (Royal Baths and Edibles).

Dewey Mahood was a founding member of Eternal Tapestry and has performed in Gärden Söund (with Barn Owl), Edibles, Bloodbiker, and Jackie-O Motherfucker.

TRACK LISTING

Toward The Golden City
Changing Winds
Klamath At Dusk
Nightfall
Empire Mines
Hash Smuggler’s Blues
Dance Of Lumeria
Western Lament
Bread Of Dreams
Siskiyou Caverns

Limited deluxe LP edition (150 copies for the UK, exclusively available to independent retailers) includes a bonus 7” with two unreleased non-album tracks (‘Night Train To Tuscan’ / ‘Believers II’). The 7” is packaged in its own jacket and included with the LP.

Peals is a new band led by William Cashion (Future Islands) and Bruce Willen (Double Dagger), members of two of Baltimore’s most dynamic live bands.

The instrumental music on ‘Walking Field’ was created with acoustic and electric guitars, keyboards, tambourines, toy pianos, and other sonic tools to create a stripped-down, warm living room atmosphere.

The music that sprang from these sessions, simultaneously exultant and cerebral, took the duo into unexpected territory. While the emotional intensity of their other projects is on full display here, a more gentle, melancholic and often abstract expression recalls Robin Guthrie and minimalist recordings from the sonic pioneers of the 1970s German scene - all direct inspirations for Peals as the songs that would become ‘Walking Field’ took shape.

‘Walking Field’ was recorded with no bass guitars or drums - all percussion sounds were generated by contact with guitars and microphones - the emphasis here is placed on texture and feeling.

TRACK LISTING

Floating Leaf
Blue Elvis
Belle Air
Pendelles
Tiptoes In The Parlor
Lonestar
Believers
Koan 1

Peals is a new band led by William Cashion (Future Islands) and Bruce Willen (Double Dagger), members of two of Baltimore’s most dynamic live bands.

The instrumental music on ‘Walking Field’ was created with acoustic and electric guitars, keyboards, tambourines, toy pianos, and other sonic tools to create a stripped-down, warm living room atmosphere.

The music that sprang from these sessions, simultaneously exultant and cerebral, took the duo into unexpected territory. While the emotional intensity of their other projects is on full display here, a more gentle, melancholic and often abstract expression recalls Robin Guthrie and minimalist recordings from the sonic pioneers of the 1970s German scene - all direct inspirations for Peals as the songs that would become ‘Walking Field’ took shape.

‘Walking Field’ was recorded with no bass guitars or drums - all percussion sounds were generated by contact with guitars and microphones - the emphasis here is placed on texture and feeling.

TRACK LISTING

Floating Leaf
Blue Elvis
Belle Air
Pendelles
Tiptoes In The Parlor
Lonestar
Believers
Koan 1

Survival are a New York trio featuring Hunter Hunt-Hendrix (Liturgy), Greg Smith, and Jeff Bobula.

This self-titled debut was recorded by Colin Marston (Krallice, Dysrhythmia) at The Thousand Caves and mastered by Heba Kadry at Timeless Mastering.

‘Survival’ is an album of dark and meditative heavy rock. Syncopated riffs, intricate rhythms and atypical time signatures create dramatic and complex melodic lines that provide a bed for chant-like lyrics. The group operate as a collective, writing lyrics, riffs and singing with one voice. The album is a unique document that harkens back to post-hardcore, Black Sabbath, Magma, Aphrodite’s Child, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Aaron Copeland, The Smashing Pumpkins, and the first wave of math rock.

Survival were formed out of the ashes of Birthday Boyz, whose 2007 tour of China was documented by Vice TV for an instalment of the Music World show ‘Rock Under The Red Flag’.

TRACK LISTING

Tragedy Of The Mind
Original Pain
Freedom 1
Second Freedom
Since Sun
Our Way
Freedom 3
Tragedy Reprise
Triumph Of The Good

Stygian Stride is the solo guise of the New York based musician Jimy SeiTang, who was a member of Psychic Ills and is currently a member of New York experimental / improve / psych trio Rhyton with Dave Shuford (D. Charles Speer & The Helix, No Neck Blues Band) and Spencer Herbst (Messages, Matta Llama). Rhyton released albums on both Thrill Jockey and Three Lobed in 2012.

Stygian Stride is an album of gauzy electronic music reminiscent of Gas and the classic era of Mille Plateaux and Chain Reaction, with nods to Manuel Göttsching, Tangerine Dream and Popul Vuh.

The album artwork was created by Arik Roper (Sleep, Sunn O))), Howlin Rain, Earth, High On Fire, Weedeater).

The album was recorded entirely on analogue equipment, without MIDI synching, at Black Dirt Studios by Jason Meagher (D. Charles Speer, Jack Rose, Expo 70, Blues Control).

TRACK LISTING

Celestial Stems
Hindsight
Drift
Taiga
Athanor Ascension
Fade Into Bolivian

Matmos deliver their first material for Thrill Jockey in the form of ‘The Ganzfeld EP’, which is nearly 30 minutes in length. A new full length album, ‘The Marriage Of True Minds’, is to follow in 2013.

The EP and the album have the same conceptual basis: Telepathy. ‘The Ganzfeld EP’ features two new Matmos tracks that are explicitly based upon psychic session material, and a throbbing minimal techno remix by RRose of the Matmos song ‘You’. Careening from widescreen electronic pop to eerie choral music, the results are eclectic, fun, and disorienting in equal measure. Matmos are one of the most prominent experimental electronic artists of the last decade. Their seven albums have been some of the most significant and acclaimed in the genre, and their high profile collaborations and shows with artists like Bjork and Kronos Quartet have given them definite exposure that extends far beyond the world of heady electronic music.

“Matmos are an innovative electronica duo... playing their tactile and thunderously crunchy work” - The New York Times

“Matmos have always heard symphonies in life’s smallest details, sampling things like thawing streams and liposuction vacuums and building busy pop tapestries out of them” – Pitchfork

TRACK LISTING

Very Large Green Triangles (Edit)
You (Rrose Mix)
Just Waves

White Hills newest and most energized recording to date is bursting with raw energy packed into their most concise songs to date. Fear not long time White Hills fans, there is still loads of killer guitar work and fuzzed out psychedelia on 'Frying on this Rock. The album opens with an under five minute scorcher and closes with a 15 minute track that reminds us why space rock gatekeepers like Julian Cope were very early supporters. The end result, Frying on this Rock, is an invigorating deep space rock album. An album that is at once able to channel the energy born of a collective anger into a swirling psychedelic, brutalizing musical statement that mainlines the thrill of defiance straight to the listener’s heart.

“...White Hills have established themselves as some of America’s foremost proponents of fuzz-driven space rock... Its latest effort H-p1 expands upon the the legacies of Hawkwind, Can, and early Tangerine Dream with synapse-frying deepspace epics” - SF Weekly; “A darkly hypnotic mix of churning guitar, distant vocals and swirling synth drones, this record conjures a riff-heavy psychedelic vibe that picks up where the Velvet Underground and Spacemen 3 left off. Far out.” - Los Angeles Times.

STAFF COMMENTS

Darryl says: More epic fuzz-psyche onslaughts from the current leaders of the pack, the White Hills. Molten guitars and a pummelling rhythm section, create a swirling wave of noise taking space rock to new dimensions.

TRACK LISTING

1. Pads Of Light
2. Robot Stomp
3. You Dream You See
4. Song Of Everything
5. I Write A Thousand Letters (Pulp On Bone)