Releases

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 »

Wednesday Knudsen - Soft Focus: Volumes One and Two ()

CD Edition of 400. Bandcamp.  $11 First off, I should probably mention that this CD contains what might one day be two separate LPs. But if you have even a scintilla of info about the state of record pressing these days, you’ll also know that all our best laid plans could go sideways. Fast. Still, this is a damn nice way to hear all this music without a lot of the endless huffing and puffing required by the flipping of individual LPs. Which means, for now you can just let the sweet swelter of Soft Focus wash over you like a warm, mid-summer wave on a tropical island. And if you want to have a cocktail while listening, go right… Read more »

Donkey No No - BLOOM ()

Edition of 100. pro-dubbed. Mastered by Caleb Mulkerin at Tank 28. Riso-graph cover printed at LOOKYHERE.   BANDCAMP.  $10 Deep new Quarantine Vibes from this hard lovin’ Western Mass trio. Two of the tracks were recorded during Donkey No No’s superb appearance on the QuaranTunes Zoom concert series (Friday May 14, 2021), the third was done three months later at an undisclosed location. The building blocks, as usual, are Omeed’s alternately chipper and fragmentary guitar lines, Jen Gelineau’s fluid viola / violin runs, and the weep & sizzle dynamism of Ted Lee’s Bowed cymbals. If their namesake metal donkey was harmed at any point during these sessions, you won’t prove it by me.  There is a bit less of rural… Read more »