Releases

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 »

Louise Bock / PG Six - All Summer Long Is Gone ()

LP Edition of 400. DL included with LP. bandcamp  $23 Finally a vinyl edition of this amazing instrumental pandemic album recorded by a somewhat unlikely duo. There was a cassette version released a while back as a stop gap, but here now is the REAL THING! PG Six (aka Pat Gubler) is based in the New England and is known for his mastery of many stringed objects. He has appeared on six earlier Feeding Tube LPs, the most recent of which is the great PG Six Live at the Tavern (FTR 556). Louise Bock (aka Taralie Peterson) is a multi-instrumentalist long associated with both the Midwest and Spires That in the Sunset Rise, but she has other axes in the… Read more »

Myriam Gendron - Ma délire ( / )

SECOND PRESSING – Quebec City edition. 2LP. Bandcamp link. $32 / CD Edition of 800. $10 / Cassette Edition of 200. $9 2nd Edition  – It has been a while since the release Myriam’s acclaimed 2014 debut album, Not So Deep As a Well (FTR 148). The intervening years have brought a smattering of live performances, a bouquet of children, Trump’s Pandemic, and much more. For someone who likes to read and ponder as much as Ms. Gendron does, there has been plenty to mull over. Different concepts for a new album were broached, but the seed of Ma Delire was planted when Myriam recalled a paper she written in university. It was about Leonard Cohen’s recording of “The Lost… Read more »

Loren Connors - 9th Avenue ()

LP 180 Gram Vinyl Edition of 300. Co-Release with Carbon Records A few copies left on the FTR bandcamp…. For me, this is the blues. Utterly wailing “solos” over a base of thick distorted guitars, Loren Connors’ music conjures up scenes of lonely streets, dark nights, but also hopeful and joyful mornings. 9th Avenue is the first vinyl reissue of a CD Loren released on his Black Label in 1995, a view into his mid-90’s heavier electric guitar era, back when he was going by his Loren Mazzacane Connors moniker. 9th Avenue fits right alongside releases from that same time period, such as Long Nights (Table of the Elements) and Crucible (Black Label, with his partner Suzanne Langille), as well… Read more »