Releases

More Klementines - Who Remembers Light ()

LP Edition of 340. Co-Release with Twin Lakes Records. $22 Four years after their magnificent, eponymous debut, this Connecticut trio returns to vinyl with another brain-blurring set of tunes. Picking up where that LP left off, drummer Michael Kiefer, guitarist/vocalist Jon Schlesinger and guitarist/bassist/mandolinist/electronics/mark tree-rep, Steubs, dig ever deeper into the pulse of the Earth. The first track here, “Hot Peace,” sounds like stuttering, shimmering emanations from the core of the planet. Remember that episode of the Superman TV show, where mole men come up out of the world’s deepest oil well? The instrumental parts of this album remind me of those little dudes. Because everything they touched started glowing. And even though one gets the feeling there’s more than… Read more »

4 Letter Words - Band in Boston ()

LP Edition of 200. $30 As the ’80s dawned, Phil Milstein was living in Central Square in Cambridge, setting type and working on the machinations of the Velvet Underground Appreciation Society. He was also beginning to explore his musical alter-ego, Pep Lester, with the first evidence of this appearing on an L.A.F.M.S. comp tape. Phil was also a maniacal tape trader in those days, and one of the people he regularly swapped mixes with was a juvenile delinquent from Athol, Massachusetts named Dana Hatch, whom he’d met when he bought a copy of Phil’s VU fanzine What Goes On from him. Dana and a couple of his high school pot buddies started a band called The Rags to make a… Read more »

Mako Sica / Hamid Drake featuring Tatsu Aoki & Thymme Jones - Formless ()

CD Edition of 400. Preorder available on bandcamp.  $10 Gorgeous quintet improv space explored at Chicago’s ProMusica studios. Long-time partners Przemyslaw Drazek (trumpet, strings, percussion) and Brent Fuscaldo (voice, guitar, percussion, harmonica) join up again with Hamid’s percussion, Tatsu’s bass & shamisen, and Thymme’s piano & various, just as they did on last year’s amazing Ourania (FTR513). The sounds now are spacious, comfortable explorations of unknown sonic turf. There may be a bit less of the aggressive edge that marked their earlier work, but the music generates an equal amount of head-shaking wonder. Thymme’s piano and the hails of percussive energy now sometimes set the stage in the way the band’s trumpet and guitar once did. There’s a magnificent moodiness… Read more »

Jeffrey Alexander - Flutterings ()

CD Edition of 300. Bandcamp. $11 Jeffrey Alexander is one of those guys whose brain and hands are constantly in motion whether working with bands, doing solo stuff, installations, paintings, label shit…whatever. Anyway, he’s always a pleasure to work with, and we have done so on many occasions. That said, I sorta feel as though this new CD might be closer to taking a walk through Jeffrey’s head than anything else I’ve heard. Flutterings was done using guitars, keys, percussion, electronics and gimcracks of all descriptions. The pieces were created specifically to be used inside the Tactile Dome at San Francisco’s Exploratorium, which is one of the more delightful places yet invented by humans. The Dome itself is almost like… Read more »

Eugene Chadbourne - Mourning of the Praying Mantis / Worms With Strings ()

LP Edition of 330. Bandcamp. $25 This is the first in a series of Feeding Tube vinyl releases devoted to the Insect and Western catalog of recordings, newly mastered and often with added material. “Mourning of the Praying Mantis” was created in the earliest series of Insect and Western scores, first performed by the “Bull Fiddle” contrabass quartet of Oakland in 1996. Following what I felt was a classic interpretation by the Insect and Western Party trios and quartets, the piece circulated through the evenings devoted to my Insect and Western music at concerts taking place around the United States. By 1997 I had an interesting and diverse set of recordings in a variety of media and assembled a long… Read more »

Elkhorn - Distances ()

LP Edition of 400. OUT OF PRINT Brilliant new instrumental fork-bending from the always amazing Elkhorn, presented here in a quartet setting I had not heard before. The basic band remains Drew Gardner on electric guitar and Jesse Sheppard on acoustic, but as often seems to happen with these guys, there are a couple more faces in the studio. This time it’s two drummers. One is Ian McColm, a Virginia tub monster who has played in many excellent situations, including a 2012 Feeding Tube duo cassette with Daniel Bachman (FTRCS107). The other drummer is DC-based Nate Scheible who does his own records and has also worked with everyone from Mark McGuire to Matt Wascovich. The wide foundational base these two… Read more »

rootless - What The Truth Leaves Out ()

CS Edition of 100. Bandcamp. $10 Rootless (or, more properly, rootless) is a solo project that’s been going for better than five years now, helmed by Brooklyn’s Jeremy Hurewitz. Two types of sounds are created under this banner — low key electronics is one, and fingerpicked acoustic guitar is the other. what the truth leaves out focuses on the latter. The shared thread between these styles is a highly personal and intimate feel. When listening to rootless, you often get the sense this is music created solely for the pleasure of the artist himself. The aura of introspection is as deep as the night, so it’s possible to almost feel like a voyeur while listening in. But hey, Jeremy sent… Read more »

Kool Music - Dagobah ()

LP Edition of 200. $28 Dagobah is the first LP (following a couple of cassettes & a CD) by Kool Music, the solo guitar project helmed by Glasgow-based polymath, Jasper Baydala. Jasper has previously had some exposure on the label, when his image appeared on the cover of Joanne Robertson’s Black Moon Days LP (FTR179). At that point we knew of Jasper as a video artist and writer, but Joanne assured us he was an excellent musician as well. And so began the road to Dagobah. The soubriquet Kool Music has a bit of a hip-hop heft to it, but the 14 tracks here present a very different picture. Jasper has said that when he first hoisted the Kool Music… Read more »

Old Million Eye - The Air’s Chrysalis Chime ()

LP Edition of 300. Co-Release with Cardinal Fuzz. $22 The Air’s Chrysalis Chime is the second LP from Old Million Eye, primarily a solo project of Brian Lucas. This beautifully transcendent and deeply explorational album sees Lucas widening his spectral and woozy palette to include musical contributions from Gayle Brogan (Pefkin/Burd Ellen), Steven R. Smith, Sheila Bosco (Dire Wolves), and Jeff Jefferson (3 Moons/The Lodestones). The album’s darker more drifting songs, “Ruby River ” and “Tales from Copperopolis” feature the vibrational voice of Georgia Carbone, erstwhile vocalist of Dire Wolves. Lucas and Carbone’s eerie vocal duet on the lengthy “Ruby River” is stunningly haunting and unexpected. This mysteriously anomalous album utilizes such elements as tape collage, improv jazz type drumming,… Read more »