Format: lp

Bryan and the Haggards Featuring Dr. Eugene Chadbourne - Merles Just Want to Have Fun

Bryan and the Haggards - Merles Just Want to Have Fun ()

LP  Co-Release with Northern Spy Edition of 300 It’s hard to know exactly what was going through saxophonist Bryan Murray’s head when he first conceived of Bryan & the Haggards, basically an avant-garde jazz ensemble dedicated to playing instrumental covers of tunes by Merle Haggard. Haggard is, of course, the author of such C&W classics as “Okie from Muskogee”, “Fightin’ Side of Me”, “Mama Tried” and other blasts of Bakersfield Baroque. Regardless, the Haggards first two albums were well received, making Wire’s Top Ten list and being lauded in places like the Village Voice. Now, for their third effort, Murray has enlisted the genius of Dr. Chadbourne — singer, banjo player, diehard C&W fan (see such previous efforts as LSDC&W… Read more »

Noise Nomads - Ernest, Thrasher

Noise Nomads - Ernest, Thrasher ()

LP Edition of 300 Back when I was about six months older than I am now, I used to see these bumper stickers around town that said, “There is Nothing Like a Grateful Dead Concert.” My first reaction was to say, “Thank Fuck,” since the last Dead show I saw (Jersey City 8/6/74) pretty much blew. Then I remembered that last goddamn Dead show anyone saw was almost twenty years ago (Chicago 7/9/95) and it makes me wonder what kinda stupid pills the cars’ occupants have been snorting. ‘Cause jesus, there’re all sorts of things like a goddamn Dead show. I won’t name ’em since they mostly suck. But there are plenty of ’em. What there are not plenty of,… Read more »

Los Condenados - Yeppers!

Los Condenados - Yeppers! ()

Los Condenados “Yeppers” LP Edition of 300 Three hot chunks of explosive improvisation fill the debut LP by Los Condenados, one of the Boston area’s most resolutely form-destroying units. Blending electronics, woodwinds and vocals into searing blasts of audio-thuggery, Los Condenados create a gibbering racket that sounds like a collaboration between Voice Crack, the Synder/McPhee Duo, and Schimpfluch. Andrea Pensado, an Argentinian expatriate (by way of Poland’s Krakow Academy of Music), handles laptop and vocals. Her voice contains some of the birthing-terror described by Yoko Ono, but manages to fit itself into treated-packaged-sequences rather than long-form squack-yodeling. Her laptop work is the essence of beautiful noise. Jules Vasylenko plays invented woodwinds — bamboozle sax and trombax — with furious circular… Read more »

tooth ache. - flash & yearn

tooth ache. - flash & yearn ()

LP with download Edition of 300 MATADOR VIDEO Winters get cold in New England. This is especially true up around Burlington VT, where the icy wind whips pine cones around so hard they can pierce metal. Thankfully, Burlington-based musician, Alexandria Hall brooks none of winter’s guff. Using the nom de musique Tooth Ache, she creates oppositional swirls of pure elctronic heat, her voice blending and bending amidst the beats and fat key chords she uses to keep her yurt warm. There are elements of deep club music in Alexandria’s work, but her sound has an ecstatic wobble that constantly shifts its gravitational center up and down a long rubbery sonic shaft. This can leave it dangling dangerously, just beyond reach,… Read more »

Mark Cunningham - Blood River Dusk

Mark Cunningham - Blood River Dusk ()

LP Edition of 300 Magnesia Convolution $20 The debut solo album by Mark Cunningham (Mars, Don King, Raeo, Convolution,Bestia Ferida, etc.) was originally released on CD in 1997. The label went out of business almost immediately, however, so the project has been more or less unheard since it was recorded. We only learned about its existence in the course of working with Mark on our recent Mars LPs, and when he gave us a copy it pretty much blew us away. Mark’s trumpet tone on much of it reminds us all what a goddamn central record Miles Davis’s On the Corner was for the whole No Wave scene. The same weird muted tone is smeared all over this record, whether… Read more »

Fat Creeps / ZEBU! 12" Split

Fat Creeps, ZEBU! - Fat Creeps / ZEBU! 12″ Split ()

Edition of 600 in Red & Black Vinyl RED VINYL BLACK VINYL First vinyl outing by Fat Creeps, a Boston area trio (Lynn, Mass, actually), who have been brilliantly assaulting local audiences for the last year and a half. Like Montreal’s No Joy, Fat Creeps combine guitar tones developed specifically for shoegazing, with a garage-pop sensibility that will not be stilled. Vocally, I am also reminded of Barbara Manning’s classic early solo work (about the highest compliment I can offer), and there’s a great friction between alternating layers of lassitude and energy. This makes for a coarse and classic blend, sure to be gobbled like ear-candy by anyone who wanders anywhere near the disk. As Bryan Ferry might say, “Marvelous.”… Read more »

Home Body - In Real Life

Home Body - In Real Life ( / )

LP / CD Edition of 500 RAM Music Video CD: OUT OF PRINT LP: First LP by superbly talented Northampton MA duo, Haley Morgan and Eric Hnatow, who rewrite the basic DNA of electro-pop for their own nefarious purposes. They are capable of the sweet gesticulation for which the form is noted, and they do this with incredible aplomb. Staying away from the cute-ass rhyming-nada that so many of their peers use as stock-in-trade, when they opt for romantic aktion, they craft tunes that carry the weight of flat-out Buckingham/Knicks updates in terms of sheer perfection — multi-part femme-voiced songs of longing that explode with deep, fully-immersed emotional content, set inside of perfectly balanced guitar/key/percussion explorations. Outside of time or… Read more »

BeNe GeSSeRiT - MuLTiLiNGuaL SaD SoNGS, WeiRD JoKeS aND eXPeRiMeNTaL STuFF FoR uSe By GRoWN-uP CHiLDReN ()

BeNe GeSSeRiT “MuLTiLiNGuaL SaD SoNGS, WeiRD JoKeS aND eXPeRiMeNTaL STuFF FoR uSe By GRoWN-uP CHiLDReN”  LP Edition of 300 with download OUT OF PRINT Back when Dennis Tyfuss was still a goddamn baby, Alain Neffe and Naine Bal were already staining the Belgian soul with recordings released under the Bene Gesserit moniker. But here we are in 2013, and now, finally, the first US vinyl issue of this material has become available for human consumption. The performing name may have been copped from one of those priestess/nun types in Frank Herbert’s novel, Dune, but Bene hews to none of the known priestess/nun-ic forms of sound. There are admittedly, some space-whispers, but they quickly resolve themselves into something more annoying/interesting, so… Read more »

Tellavision - Music on Canvas

Tellavision - Music On Canvas ()

LP Edition of 300 OUT OF PRINT Gorgeous first LP by German visual/sound artist, Fee Kürten, whose previous work has been available only via the German Bloody Hands label. Singing in English, accompanying herself on electronics, harmonica and strings, Fee creates oddball vistas of minimal pop aktion reminiscent of early Young Marble Giants, mixed with overtones lifted straight from the women of the Neue Deutsch Welle, and the slangy delivery of Omnivore. The results are a beautiful, throbbing Euro-American art-pop hybrid that functions in truly Internationalist terms. Some of it is akin to the nudest American avant-garage inventions around, other parts bleed like the waffle-filled air of the deepest Belgian underground. Just when you think you have Tellavision’s modus operandi… Read more »

Great Valley - Continental Lunch

Great Valley - Continental Lunch ()

LP Edition of 300. $18 The third album by Brattleboro’s Great Valley, who walk as equals amongst the woggly dream pop giants from the charted region of the upper Connecticut River Valley. Like their brethren, Happy Jawbone (a member of whom surfaces hereon), Great Valley concoct a strange type of pop music, with certain similarities to musicians as disparate as California’s Van Dyke Parks and Pennsylvania’s Strapping Fieldhands, without yielding a single woof of their Brattleborian distinction. Blanche Blanche Blanche is also represented here by Zach Phillips, but Great Valley’s take on the Southern Vermont ethos remains unique. Much of the sound on Continental Lunch has a pointedly ruralist base. Individual notes could be credited to ZZ Top or even… Read more »