Releases

A: Pfeffer Kwitter - Peller ()

LP Edition of 200. Includes Download slip. OUT OF PRINT What effect does geography have on music? Whereas I consider this group a quintessentially Western MA group of individuals, I consider this a very Pacific Northwest album. Part of this is my own bias – when I first met Chris, Jess and Dan, they were all living in Western MA and I was in Eastern MA. And when they recorded this album in the Pacific Northwest, I had just moved to the Pacific Northwest. Though Chris & Jess had lived and created music in the Bay Area and Portland Maine prior to their tenure in Western MA and have since moved back to the Bay Area, their music (Fat Worm… Read more »

Bruce Russell / Noel Meek - Classical Music ()

LP Edition of 250. Comes with Download Code. OUT OF PRINT You know that old phrase, “Teach a penguin to cuss, and you’ll never have to buy another comedy record?” I’m sure you do. But what about its codicil? “Teach a guitarist to play synth, and you’ll never have to buy a new age record?” If you know that one, you might well be put off by the fact  this album features one of New Zealand’s most wickedly post-tongue guitar players fiddling about with oscillators and analog synths (in concert with a guy who does this stuff all the time). But you need not fear. The only New Age being brunted about here is the same one Fahey disemboweled back… Read more »

Dire Wolves - Paradisiacal Mind ()

LP Edition of 500. Co-Released with Cardinal Fuzz. BLACK VINYL OUT OF PRINT COLOR VINYL (deep mauve marble) OUT OF PRINT Downbeat Review Unfettered and Alive Music Video  Paradisiacal Mind, the group’s tenth (or possibly twelfth?) full-length since 2008, conjures a floating stellular kraut Americano with quite a lot to pull you in to the mix and then drift you right back out again. Following two simultaneous 2017 releases – on Feeding Tube and Beyond Beyond Is Beyond – that explored out-of-body experience, this latest work turns decidedly inward. Psychic rock that guides your vision to heaven, and heaven is in your mind. When cover artist Kyla Quigley asked the band to draw from the tarot to inform her new… Read more »

Michael Hurley - Living Ljubljana ()

LP. No Download included. $20 Vulcher Review by Eddie Flowers Vinyl District Review Aquarium Drunkard Review Raven Sings The Blues Review Paste Magazine Review In March 1995, soon after the German Veracity label issued Wolfways, and just before they did Parsnips Snips (Hurley’s first vinyl after an nine year drought), the Great Snock undertook his first European tour. Joined by bassist Robert Michener (from the Richmond scene Hurley’d been involved in) and percussionist Mickey Bones (legendary Boston drummer & bones player), Hurley hit a bunch of places and Germany and also KLUB K4 in Ljulljana Slovenia, where this set was recorded. The sound is beautiful, the band plays with lazy perfection, and Hurley’s vocals are energetically melodic. He does some… Read more »

ZEBU! - Owsley ()

LP Edition of 100. Includes Insert / Download Slip. BANDCAMP! Out of Print! Fifth vinyl LP by this bi-coastal duo whose last record (2012’s Chill Wave FTR082) was a goddamn SURF album. And indeed, there are still grains of sand audible in the tones Steve D’Ag wrenches out of his guitar, but the main influence/what-have-ya this time is mind-expanding drugs, and their influence on music. As all good heads know there was a direct connection between surf rock and acid rock. Rick Griffin did the early fliers for his high school buddies, The Challengers, long before he became the king of underground comix/poster art. And listening to an album like Beat of the Earth’s eponymous debut, you can almost hear… Read more »

Trimdon Grange Explosion - S/T ()

LP Edition of 500 Comes with Download Code. Co-Released with Cardinal Fuzz BLACK VINYL – OUT OF PRINT COLOR VINYL – OUT OF PRINT Back in the early Oughts, there was a great UK folk rock combo called The Eighteenth of May. They did one album and cut out. Trimdon Grange Explosion is that band, minus two members, and their debut LP kicks up one of the finest blends of UK folk and West Coast psych since the glory days of Fairport. Alison Cotton and Mark Nicholas (also of Left Outsides) comprise half the band, alongside guitarist Ben Phillipson and drummer Karl Sabino. And their vibe is akin to a classic Witchseason production. Ringing layers of psychedelic guitars, backed by throbbing… Read more »

Creative Healing - Low Effort Social Events ()

LP Edition of 200 OUT OF PRINT New Massachusetts combo mixing the folks from Hollow Deck (Andy Allen & Mia Friedman) with three old pals who also passed through the Ran Blake Paddle Tunnel at NE Conservatory (Katie McShane, Jesse Heasly and Nick Neuberg). The results are, as the old men say, a real gas. Although it’s not a constant, there are moments throughout this album where the swonky collision of sax, guitar and drums puts me in mind of several classic versions of Beefheart’s Magic Band. Nothing along those lines in the vocal department (which are often delivered as casually as they might be by MX-80’s Rich Stim), but some of the harmonic threads are definitely of a Vlietian… Read more »

State Champion - Send Flowers ()

LP Edition of 1000. Co-Release W/ Sophomore Lounge FADER LEO WEEKLY OUT OF PRINT Although I have lately taken to associating Louisville’s Ryan Davis with the maniacal blurt of Tropical Trash, I am reminded by the release of the fourth State Champion LP, that this is his original mothership. Send Flowers is State Champion’s most fully realized Beard Rock expression to date. The surrealist underpinning of Ryan’s lyrics are heavier than ever, but that is balanced by the band’s most epiphanically tasty licking. The pieces fit together with such easy organic grace, it’s tempting to suspect they’re simple. But the closer you listen to the parts the more complex they appear. This begins with Ryan’s words, which are sung so… Read more »

Jim Shepard - The Letter Tapes ()

CS82 Edition of 99. Numbered. Comes with Download Code. THRENODY  BOOKLET LETTERS / TRACK LISTING  CS-82 FIRST PRESSING OUT OF PRINT. CS-82 SECOND PRESSING OUT OF PRINT. It has been two decades since Jim Shepard died. In the intervening time, large parts of his crazy DIY ethic (shared by such fellow travelers as Mike Rep, Tommy Jay, Ron House and Don Howland) has wormed its way close to the surface of the sub-underground slag heap, at least now and then. But really, it’s an outsider stance. Not hewing to any actual tradition apart from a strange form of rugged individualism, practiced in the name of art. The Letter Tapes is a compilation of material Jim sent to his buddy, Nudge… Read more »

Weeping Bong Band - Weeping Bong Band ()

LP Edition of 500   Cover Art by Anthony Pasquarosa Vulcher Review by Eddie Flowers FIRST PRESSING – OUT OF PRINT SECOND PRESSING – PSYCHEDELIC SPLATTER / CLEAR VINYL – OUT OF PRINT Sub-underground super-groups are not common. This is less a function of the concept’s oxymoronic nature than of the fiercely independent stance of musicians toiling in this area. By definition, they are doing what they do simply because they love it. It can be quite difficult to distract them from their main focus long enough to get them to do anything else. Weeping Bong Band is a lovely exception that proves this rule. Three members — Clark Griffin, Wednesday Knudsen and PG Six — are in the current… Read more »