Coyote is back with a third volume of its Special Editions series and once again it is one that will transport you to some steamy dance floor by the Med at sundown. The opener 'Ritter' is a glorious mix of downbeat chords and Balearic beats with 80s synths and an exotic vocal. 'Takin It' then slows things down to reevaluate some lush acoustic guitar frets and languid funk grooves, then 'The Woman' gets even more deep, more seductive, and horizontal. It's got a fat, lazy bassline and go-slow grooves that cannot fail to reduce your pulse before 'Dover' picks it up again with some more psyched-out and cosmic disco-funk sounds.

STAFF COMMENTS

Mine says: Magic Wand and Coyote once again prove what a dream team they are. The 10th edition of the Magic Wand Special Editions marks the third invitation for Coyote and the four edits on offer are every bit as addictive as the ones on the previous two 12"s - I might even go so far as to say this one's the best. Do yourself a favour and snap up a copy of this dreamy record, you won't regret it.

TRACK LISTING

Side 1
Ritter
Takin It

Side 2
The Woman
Dover

Who doesn't love a good edit, some nice Balearic, and especially some mystical Balearic edits? Well, that's just what we have here from Matsoaka who taps into several worldly flavours on this new six tracker courtesy of Magic Wand. 'Parlband Utmed Kusten' starts slow and steady, wet and dubby. 'Jah Banana' is a supremely horizontal and sun-kissed beach groove and 'Alligator' cuts loose on glistening melodies and playful chord vamps. Gentle breakbeats power the seductive 'Shish Balearic' and 'Asian Dance Groove' closes out with loose, percussive rhythms and funky guitar rifts. A truly global sonic trip.

TRACK LISTING

Parlband Utmed Kusten
Jah Banana
Alligator
Shish Balearic
Asian Dance Groove

Magic Wand welcomes Baz Bradley for a series of Special Editions that keep blissed-out late summer dancing sessions alive and possible even as days shorten and the sun fades away. He opens up with 'Soul Boys' (Acetate edit) which is an 80s disco jaunt with superb vocals and noodling funk rifts. 'Super Maxi' is a more stripped-back and aloof groove with sung-spoke vocals and hook melodies making for a weird yet wonderful vibe. 'Flight 207' (Gate One) is another slow-motion and dubbed-out disco funker then 'Burn The Candle' has a raw percussive twist.

STAFF COMMENTS

Mine says: I'm more than partial to the odd edit and I have to say Baz Bradley has knocked it out of the park here. Weird but catchy is my jam!

TRACK LISTING

Soul Boys (Acetate Edit)
Super Maxi
Flight 207 (Gate One)
Burn The Candle

It is time to succumb to the sounds of the Magic Wand label once more and this eighth sonic spell is another one that will leave you happily helpless. It finds the Coyote lads step away from their fine work on Is It Balearic? to cook up four top edits. First up they offer 'Lonely' - a broody, steamy and shimmering tropical Balearic workout and then comes the organic and lazy drums of 'Western Revolution' with an iconic gravelly vocal. There are folk-tinged Americana sounds on 'Love Home' and laid-back disco licks on the seductive 'Luca' to make this a summer party essential.

STAFF COMMENTS

Mine says: Coyote are back on Magic Wand Special Edition duties for the second time and are sure to turn Balearic heads all over with this one. Absolutely lush!

TRACK LISTING

Lonely
Western Revolution
Love Home
Luca

Since 2014, Wand have made five albums (and an EP) in the studio and a living playing on the road. Business / pleasure: the two sides of their (multiverticed, decagon) coin, flipping in the strobe light of ongoing self-actualization. And yet, by doing both at the same time - making a record of them playing live - they’ve now made their best one yet.

How do you get ‘Spiders in the Rain’? Start by going all the way back to January 2020. Do you remember? Wand do. They’d been touring ‘Laughing Matter’ for ten months. They’d done the coast, spanned the country, crossed the water twice, came back home and kept on going... driving, flying, occasionally floating, always on to the next town. They did all kinds of shows - clubs, ballrooms, festival gigs with no roof overhead - the songs expanding and contracting according to the dimensions of each day.

The essential truth of the live vibe - that it’s always better when everybody’s here - was clear, so they booked a few shows more in Cali, from LA up to Marin. They brought along light and projections from The Mad Alchemist Liquid Light Show and Mike Kreibel and Zac Hernandez too, to tape everything - to get the big-deck energy out of performances in SF and LA, but also to draw it out of the margins in Sacramento, Novato and Big Sur. It all happened, too. Everyone brought their experience - the kids in the audience and the folks behind the boards, all along with Wand, where it meant something different for everybody in the van:

Sofia: “At the end of 2019, the live show had become our (my) home. It was the most familiar and comfortable place to be after consistent touring for years. An access point into the language we created together, and something that was constantly evolving and refining.”

Lee: “Breakfast in Big Sur, lots of liquid lights, redwoods, a short mossy hike, a dark tunnel and seaspray, friends, my fav Echo shows, Bernie polls, Delany books from City Lights, mounds of elephant seals honking at dusk. God bless Zac and Mike.”

Evan: “Maybe this quiltwork of live recordings reflects a certain screwy, fugitive energy we bring that I think will feel familiar to people who have seen us at shows all these years, and that more or less refuses to be domesticated for posterity in recording studios. These shows were so much fun and so much else—loud and living. I hope this record can be a vivid little token of all those buzzing and broken and ecstatic times we shared that lately feel more fleeting, precious and poignant than ever.”

Robbie: “John Cage said that ‘art and our involvement in it... somehow introduc[ing] us to the very life that we are living...’ is for an artist the highest goal imaginable. If that’s the case then this record is Wand’s high water mark. Both because it accurately represents the way I have most often heard Wand’s music over the past six years (in rooms filled with other people) and because it is a document of the choice I made to seek out a life for myself through music. I’m happy it exists.”

Cory: “The live show has always been a means of cracking open the hi-fi-neuroticism of our studio records; to reach back into the essence of what made the composed music possible to begin with, and tap that essence as the basis for expressive unison improvisation, ‘Spiders in the Rain’ is a document of our live efforts, and I do believe it is our strongest record until we can produce a studio LP that adequately captures and expands on what is essentially displayed here.”

TRACK LISTING

1.  HARE
2.  WONDER
3.  PLUM
4.  WHITE CAT
5.  EVENING STAR
6.  BLUE CLOUD
7.  THE GIFT
8.  SELF HYPNOSIS
9.  MELTED ROPE

A little less than two years on from 2016’s Plum, Californian scrap polymorphs Wand are prepared to announce their newest, and fifth long playing record, Laughing Matter. By now, Wand is the shifting but unmistakable collaboration between Sofia Arreguin (keys, vocals), Cory Hanson (guitar, vocals), Robert Cody (guitar), Lee Landey (bass) and Evan Burrows (drums). Laughing Matter is marked by the confidence and exuberance of a band that has lived, feuded, thrived and grown together through years of dedicated jamming, touring and recording, across western and eastern states, continents and mind-sets. In this world that insists we must increasingly rely upon ourselves, Wand listen to each other, and this is the sound.

Largely recorded on the infamous southern border of broken, decadent America, Laughing Matter belongs to the after-life. After the dull flood. As rock n roll lurched sideways and fell away, drunkenly lost in a funhouse mirror of…recycled Funhouses. With no major label funding, no management or lawyers, no corporate distribution, near zero social media presence and no commercial dealings whatsoever (with only poor, pitiful Drag City to help them carry the flag!), Wand have toured the world a bajillion times in five years and made four varied and compelling records while accumulating a devoted following. There may be a future in rock music beyond slapping rote regurgitations onto a lifeless syntactic grid. Wand are proof you don’t have to be an industry toy to sell records – that, with devotion and time, the seeds you plant with intention and care will grow back into the world.

Swerving between out-of-focus parable, travel diary, pep talk, polemic, love song, and lullabye, Laughing Matter is a tough and tender album, its eyes on a lot of prizes. Where Plum held the tension of its five band members getting on their feet, the songs on Laughing Matter are concentrated and relaxed, even as they search for the right accusations to hurl at cynics and megalomaniacs. The music is distilled and sculpted from an ash heap of collected improvisations, riven with audio-verite; the methods and instrumentation are traditional handmade rock ‘n’ roll. Yet the unorthodox arrangements of “Scarecrow”, the joyous embrace of pastiche and disruption on “Walkie Talkie”, the radical eclecticism of shapes and approaches on “Thin Air”, the ascendant choruses of “Wonder” are all decidedly contemporary. This music is not revivalism or throwback; Wand are a precision instrument, a band that probes and teases style, genre, trope and anachronism into material, according to a law of motion that is aimed directly toward an uncertain future.

Laughing Matter is a record about love in a time of terror, about making the best use of the surveillance technology available today. It calls you down from panic room labyrinths, to work the deep tissue of unravelling trauma we all carry so dear. The 15 songs on this record face their energy outward, to take with you through a common world that can’t suffer its human abusers much longer. Laughing Matter encourages you to shake hands with your old demons, to lay your pathologies to rest, to hold your spirit close, and let your body do what’s next.

TRACK LISTING

1 Scarecrow
2 Xoxo
3 Bubble
4 High Planes Drifter
5 Walkie Talkie
6 Thin Air
7 Hare
8 Wonder
9 Evening Star
10 Tortoise
11 Rio Grande
12 Airplane
13 Lucky's Sight
14 Wonder II
15 Jennifer's Gone

If the emblem of Wand’s ‘Plum’ was the stark blue cloud - a condensation, a linking between longing molecules, data hungering for more data, a flotilla of vapor between eye and sky - then Wand’s new release reeks of something more forceful, more seductive, more intoxicating, more insidious: this is ‘Perfume’.

Here are seven electric hues, shocks of light that flagrantly provoke the dark, a posy’s clutch of purple, fuchsia, green and snowy white that curl against a stench of plague.

Recorded between tours and fire seasons in Grass Valley, California, by Tim Green, ‘Perfume’’s potent, expansive tunes were mixed in Woodstock, New York by Daniel James Goodwin. The band features Sofia Arreguin, Evan Burrows, Robbie Cody, Cory Hanson and Lee Landey.

There’s a kind of return here, a haunting, the déjà vu you only take in through a curious nose. Your nose invites the world inside your skull. A familiar fragrance finds you when you thought you’d let a lover go but it won’t linger like a lover, flickering away with the breeze toward a yawning future.

Plum is Wand’s fourth LP since the band formed in late 2013 but their " rst new album in two years. After a whirlwind initial phase of writing, recording, and touring at a frenetic clip, their newest document marks a period of relative patience; a refocusing and a push toward a new democratization of both process and musical surface.

In late winter of 2016, the band expanded their core membership of Evan Burrows, Cory Hanson, and Lee Landey to include two new members — Robbie Cody on guitar and Sofi a Arreguin on keys and vocals. From the outset, the new ensemble moved naturally toward a changed working method, as they learned how to listen to each other and trust in this songwriting process was consciously relocated to the practice space, where for several months, the band spent hours a day freely improvising, while recording as much of the activity as they could manage. Previously, Wand songs had generally been brought to the group setting substantially formed by singer and guitarist Cory Hanson; now seedling songs were harvested from a growing cloudbank of archived material, then ! eshed out and negotiated collectively as the band shifted rhythmically between the permissive space of jamming and the obsessive space of critique.

This new process demanded more honest communication, more vulnerability, better boundaries, more mercy and persistence during a year that meanwhile delivered a heaping serving of romantic, familial and political heartbreak for everyone involved. They learned more about their instruments and their perceived limitations. Much else fell apart in their personal lives, in their bodies, and the bodies of those near to them. In this way, Plum lengthened like a shadow underneath a dusking Orange; or rather “Weird Orange,” an affectionate name given to the color of a roulette-chosen, tour-rushed batch of Golem vinyl... an idiom, an inside joke, a talisman, a bookmark, a mood ring. And meanwhile all the shifting weather, the wireless signals, the helicopters overhead. Weird orange softened, darkened delicately, and rouged itself to a Plum.

The music of Plum focuses teeming, dense, at times wildly multichromatic sounds into Wand’s most deliberate statement to date, with a long evening’s shadow of loss and longing hovering above the proceedings. Plum delicately locates the band’s tangent of escape from the warm and comfortable shallows of genre anachronism, an eyes-closed, mouth-open leap toward a more free-associative and contemporary pastiche of logic that more honestly re! ects the ravenous musical omnivorousness of the " ve people who wrote and played it.

It usually goes without saying — we are so lucky to have had each other in this time, and we are more than lucky to have you all listen to this record.

TRACK LISTING

1 Setting
2 Plum
3 Bee Karma
4 CDG
5 High Rise
6 White Cat
7 The Trap
8 Ginger
9 Blue Cloud
10 Driving

Wand launch their third album, ‘1000 Days’, in what can only be called the relative blink of an eye.

August of 2014 was ‘Ganglion Reef’, Wand’s debut album release, on the GOD? label, revelling in their dark circuits and three-ring modulations. Following that, they ranged from their south-Cali base, towing their sound around this maze of interstates and state routes. Shows of all kinds were playing, plenty of people to meet up with on the way. Europe got booked and suddenly it was March of 2015 with a second album entitled ‘Golem’ (this time on In The Red) trailing Wand’s sound farther down the road, past the sky, into storm and casino food.

Recorded in Los Angeles and San Francisco in between tour days, ‘1000 Days’ finds Wand searching in corners. Where have all the people gone? Where have they put them? Panoramas of the body history are viewed through Wand’s spy-glass as it sweeps the horizon. · Never shy of a new machine, Wand found extra texture during ‘1000 Days’ via synthetic animation. Songs compelled them to reach across lifestyle, relying on broadcast to find out who might need the sound. The atmosphere is quicksilver and the space acoustic; as a beacon sparks electric, a cascade of hifi noises for everyone’s ear moles - raucous, impassive, inevitable musical expressions.

Over the course of their recording career, WWVV have proven to be a multi faceted and difficult to define. Their discography, which contains numerous cassettes, CDRs and a little bit of vinyl, all of which display their twisted and droning take on psychedelic folk has been constantly evolving and has seen each of their superb releases build upon the strengths of its immediate predecessor. "The Flood" is an exploration of the goodness inherent in the human heart and how that decency can help transform the world into a better place. WWVV recorded this record over the spring of 2005 to act as a sonic testament to this principal.

Little Wings is a diverse musical palette Kyle Field uses to paint stories with sound. With this album Kyle worked with producer Calvin Johnson at Dub Narcotic Studios, recruiting a variety of other artists, musical and visual, Phil Elverum (Microphones) Bobby Birdman, Lee Baggett amongst others. This album fits in perfectly with the current new-folk scene that has taken the USA and world by storm. File alongside Devendra Banhart, Vetiver, Cocorosie, White Magic, Six Organs Of Admittance and Joanna Newsom.