Format: lp

New Parents - Transient Response ()

LP Edition of 200. Debut album by this Turners Falls-based quartet led by Adam Langellotti of Sore Eros and widely hailed for his engineering work. The sound on Transient Response is languid ruralist prog-pop, with help from Gary War, Ma Turner, Shannon & Beverly Ketch, and other Valley travelers. New Parents can be pretty raw live, but the overall vibe here is smoother and distinctly out-of-time. Different segments remind me of everything from Fraser & DeBolt to Brinsley Schwarz to Great Plains and back again. Something about the way the production is layered gives the record a feel quite redolent of the early ’70s, but the more you play it, the clearer its contemporary origins become. Amongst the classic rock… Read more »

Charlie McAlister - Country Creme / Victorian Fog

Charlie McAlister - Country Creme / Victorian Fog ()

Charlie McAlister “Country Creme / Victorian Fog” LP Edition of 500 FOUND A BOX OF THESE IN THE VAULT… A reissue comprised of material from some of Charlie’s fabulous late 90’s releases: Turn of the Photograph and Les Motifs Sont Fous. For those of you not familiar with the world of C. McAlister, it is a lo-fi country music landscape populated by awakened Bog Men, slave uprisings, shag dancing, fried sandwiches and booze. He has been recording for over two decades, spreading his twisted gospel to lands near and far. This is potentially the most “deluxe” release of his career. The gritty quality of the cassettes is lovingly preserved on the vinyl and his oil paintings look great on the… Read more »

Louise Bock - Repetitives in Illocality ()

LP Edition of 300. Louise Bock is one of the performing names worn by Taralie Peterson of that most excellent duo, Spires That in the Sunset Rise. And the music on Repetitives in Illocality recalls a few aspects of Spires’ recent live shows. It’s akin to a dreamily aggressive take on the outer fringes of early ECM-style improvisation. A lovely hover between out-chamber-jazz, new music and the unknown tongue. Using cello, sax and treated lap harp, Louise Bock creates surfaces that are sometimes as chopped as ice sculptures made with a chainsaw, and at other moments as smooth as the soft expanse of Brian Eno’s forehead. Those passages where the cello takes the lead are the most serious. Some passages,… Read more »

Tommy Jay & The General - Florida Songs ()

LP Edition of 250 OUT OF PRINT Tommy Jay and The General have been kicking around the Columbus scene (and various points on the map of that scene’s diaspora) since the days of the True Believers (the ur-group in the history of Columbus underground hubbub). And this newly recorded album shows them to be at the height of their own amazing arc. Florida Songs is only Tommy’s third proper LP under his own personal name and it’s a killer. Recorded with help from a few old friends, including Nudge Squidfish, Florida Songs is a classic Raunchy Rock formulation by every known standard. Although the mood and tone shift mightily from song to song, the main thrust of the music here… Read more »

Zach Phillips - How To Slip Away ()

LP Edition of 250. $20 Although I am not a painter, i urge you to sit down and listen to this, as if it were a game show, on prime time   ‘i won the prize, ring the bells’ somewhere between an interview and the world’s greatest puzzle someone would sing your songs for you regarding self-reference & identity an horsepower engine cruiser where it lacks in bathetic synth vortismuto in the afternoon it locks in an aplomb power balled tour d’fourths THE FOURTH WALL IS ON THE LANDSCAPE’S STAGE don’t you recontextualize the tritone add variety of style/attitude including will, weal, wheel, the liner notes you’ll def. want 2 read, the heartbeat of this music is Constantine. — Billy… Read more »

Laser Pace - Granfalloon ()

LP Edition of 500. Inserts / DL Included. RSD 2018. OUT OF PRINT. Reissue of the only prog LP Takoma Records ever released — the 1974 slab by L.A.’s Laser Pace. The album’s title, Granfalloon, is a term created by the late Kurt Vonnegut to describe a bunch of people who pretend to be an affinity group without having any actual affinity for each other. We’re uncertain if that is suppose to refer to factions inside Laser Pace, but no matter. The album is probably the strangest pieces of wax dripped by Takoma (apart from Charlie Nothing, natch) and seems wildly out of synch with the label’s presumed focus. But is a goddamn monster of odd charm, no two ways… Read more »

Omeed Goodarzi - Zoltar Hid All The Locks / Minnows ()

LP Edition of 300. Numbered. Silk-Screen Cover Printed by Monoroid Debut vinyl by the guitarist of Donkey No No presents two different sides of this mysterious maestro. Zoltar Hid All the Locks is a full on studio quintet session where Jeremy Latch (formerly of the Grudges) played clarinet, Adam Langellotti (ex-Grudges, Sore Eros, etc.) played percussion and ran the board, Matt Robidoux (ex-Speedy Ortiz, Curse Purse, etc.) played guitar and drum box, and Jen Gelineau (Donkey No No, Egg Eggs, etc.) handled the fiddle. The sound on this ranges from Donkey No No’s woodsy smoke house charm to segments that really channel early, just post-Barrett Floyd without doing any apery. The Minnows side is all Omeed, doing solos tunesterism then… Read more »

Hollow Deck - All The Roots ()

LP Edition of 300.     Bandcamp Second album by Western Mass’s most exciting live band is now in hand, and it’s a swirling web of dooziness. Recorded by Ted Lee at Fayre Lawn, the team of Mia Friedman and Andy Allen have created a masterpiece of strange familiarities. Using a large array of instruments — banjo, gourd banjo, fiddle, guitar, tenor sax clarinet, flute, drum machine, etc. — the duo easily transcends any real or imaginary boundaries of what’s possible to do with just four hands. The results are as amazing as they are hard to categorize. Listening to the album for the umpteenth time, brings to mind a wide variety of things: an album I have of a high… Read more »

Delphine Dora & Sophie Cooper - Divine Ekstasys ()

LP Edition of 300 Soundcloud First vinyl evidence of the dizzying, ongoing collaboration between France’s Delphine Dora and West Yorkshire’s Sophie Cooper. Delphine’s piano, organ, vocals and extended improvisation techniques have been documented in various places, and always serve up oceanic slabs of pure aural mystery. Comparisons have been made to Charlemagne Palestine, Marian Zazeela and other experimentalists, although Ms. Dora has long maintained her compositions are structurally rooted in folk music. Suffice to say the results are usually otherworldly and stunning. Cooper’s guitar, electronics, vocals and trombone have caused similar reactions (I am especially fond of her recent Globokar-like ‘bone-investigations). And the pair’s collusions (of which there have been several) are always eagerly anticipated. The main themes of the… Read more »

The Left Outsides - All That Remains ()

LP Edition of 650 (175 x Colour and 475 x Black (well 469 as we are 6 units short) Co-Released with Cardinal Fuzz Take Me Home Again BLACK VINYL – OUT OF PRINT PURPLE VINYL – OUT OF PRINT Counting their live CDR from 2007, All That Remains is the fifth album by Walthamstow’s finest duo since at least the halcyon days of Bevis Frond’s Inner Marshland. Hard to pin down with any certitude, the music created by The Left Outsides varies from track to track and even moment to moment. Alison Cotton’s vocals, harmonium and viola blend with Mark Nicholas’s voice, bass, guitar, piano and drums in ways that recall everything from Kendra Smith and David Roback’s drony duo, Opal (on… Read more »