Releases

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 »

Matthew J. Rolin - Matthew J. Rolin ()

LP Edition of 385. Bandcamp Repress – Purple Vinyl – $26 We’re excited to release the debut solo LP by Matthew J. Rolin, currently a resident of Columbus Ohio. Rolin cut his teeth with garage and psych outfits in Cleveland, appearing on vinyl by Shoreway, and Nowhere before he found himself adrift and wandering in the direction of Chicago at the end of 2016. Matthew had always been a fan of Jim O’Rourke’s brilliant Bad Timing LP (Drag City, 1997), and when he caught a set by Ryley Walker soon after arriving in the city, he decided to throw himself into developing his acoustic chops. Without really knowing much about the history or context of the American Primitive/Concert Steel String… Read more »

Mount Maxwell - Only Children ()

LP Co-Release with Cardinal Fuzz / Hotham Sound. Edition of 350 Pressing Heavy Black Vinyl. Bandcamp. $23 Mount Maxwell continues his run of 1970s themed releases with a full length meditation on the perceptual experiences of children born in the wake of the 1960’s cultural revolution. Highly ambivalent in tone, ‘Only Children’ marks a departure from earlier MM releases both in its use of acoustic instruments and in a newfound sense of criticality towards its subject matter; the back-to-the-land optimism of tracks like ‘Nature ID’ in uneasy proximity to the skeptical disquiet of ‘Weird Places’ and ‘Nomad’. A beautiful, emotionally complex examination of the ‘Me’ generation’s dubious decision to treat children like adults, and a haunting continuation of the Mount… Read more »

Mount Maxwell - The People’s Forest ()

LP Co-Release with Cardinal Fuzz / Hotham Sound. Edition of 350.Pressing Heavy Black Vinyl. Bandcamp. $23 ‘The People’s Forest’ is packed with micro-earworm moments, nourishing synths and playful crunchy percussion. It’s got a skyward gaze and nostalgia for futures never realized, packing a kind of childlike optimism inside an arpeggio-laden, hermetically sealed little sound world. When the loose, hip- hop fueled drums kick in over warm synthesizer pads, you’ll probably feel the same warm sense of familiarity I picked up. Music for fans of Boards of Canada, sure, but Mount Maxwell has a wide open pastoral landscape and identity all its own. – Optimistic Underground Composed of seemingly small sounds, ‘The People’s Forest’ has an oddly natural quality to it despite being… Read more »

Alison Cotton - QuaranTunes Series No.024 ( / )

12″ Lathe Edition of 26. Numbered. Risograph looseleaf cover and back art printed at LOOKYHERE. OUT OF PRINT Recorded on the evening of Friday Sept. 5, 2020 (Saturday morning where she was) at a secret location in London, this session captures Alison Cotton’s sound in gleaming late night clarity. All of the pieces, apart from “I Buried the Candlesticks,” are from one of Alison’s extant releases, but her approach to the material maintained a holistic feel shimmering with a ghostly precision.  Playing beautifully drone-canted viola, with the occasional glimmer of hanging wind chimes, Alison’s voice sounded incredible. Her work often has an out-of-time quality that makes its century of origin tough to nail down, but this performance was even more… Read more »