Releases

Victor Herrero - Astrolabio ()

LP Edition of 400 DUSTED The Portuguese guitar is a kind of weird instrument. It has a teardrop shaped body, twelve strings, an odd tuning scheme, and is generally associated with the mournful Portuguese musical style called fado. It’s not often used as an improv instrument, especially in avant garde settings, but that was before Victor Herrero got his hands on one. Probably best known for his work with Josephine Foster, Victor is a Spanish guitarist and composer, whose work ranges from very traditional to beyond contemporary. On a trip to Lisbon a decade or so ago, he and Ms. Foster became enthralled by the glittering tone qualities of the Portuguese guitar, and decided to go halves on one. A… Read more »

Eric Arn - Orphic Resonance ()

LP Edition of 300.  Live Video. 200 Words     Dusted     MXWDN Near the end of his days, John Fahey told me he was sick and tired of solo guitar records. This statement was partly designed to take me aback (as was often his tact), but it was also true. He seemed genuinely bored by most guitar players, especially those who were traveling in the shoes he’d first worn on his own early records. That said, I’m pretty sure he woulda loved Eric Arn’s Orphic Resonance. First time I ever saw Eric play was as part of the classic second line-up of Crystalized Movements. He was a monster of raunch-stun binary-functionalism, and this continued as he moved out of New… Read more »

Gregg Turner - Chartbusters! ( / )

LP – Edition of 450 OUT OF STOCK CD – Edition of 300 OUT OF STOCK WIRE REVIEW We were first introduced to the music of Gregg Turner when he was with VOM, the explicitly post-musical punk-tongue-monster he inhabited along with Richard Meltzer, Metal Mike Saunders and others. From there, he and Mike formed the Angry Samoans, who spewed an insane blend of garage/bubblepunk/hardcore noise to well-deserved acclaim. But the Samoans began including folk rock moves inside their spectrum with 1986’s Yesterday Started Tomorrow EP, and most of the work Turner’s done since then has contained this element to one degree or another. People who haven’t heard Gregg’s recordings from the post-Samoans era may be surprised by how straightforward and… Read more »

Angela Sawyer - On the Pedestrian Side ()

LP Edition of 400. Co-Release with WeirdEar I remember back when Herbert Khaury kicked the bucket, 20 years ago this month. Everyone was wondering who would be the next Tiny Tim? Who would save the ukulele from itself? Some said it would be Jim Beloff, but that guy’s too square to do anything. Some said it would be Keiji Haino, but he wouldn’t sing words. And so, here, two decades out, we have finally decided to toss the crown to Angela Sawyer. This new album, On the Pedestrian Side, has been compared to a more stripped down version of the work Ms. Sawyer does with Exusamwa, and there is a certain sense to that. But a canny listener will be… Read more »

Urochromes - Anthology ()

LP with Download. Edition of 413. $20 An overview of the vector, thus far anyway, of this bracing post-core duo/trio/whatever who were once based in Western Mass, and are now scattered between Mass, L.A. and Montreal. The hub of the band is vocalist, Jackieboy, and guitarist, Dick Riddick. According to Jackie, the initial idea was to do “a knuckle dragging hardcore chrome kinda mash up with drum machine. My concept as vocalist was to front the band as a Jewish New Yorker stand-up comedian who’s found himself fronting a punk band and is trying to roll with the punches. Originally I wanted the live performances to be half stand-up and half music but dropped this and just put occasional Zingers in… Read more »

Angela Sawyer - Croaks ()

LP Edition of 300 One of the highlights of early DEVO live shows was a song Booji Boy sang called, “The Words Get Stuck in My Throat.” It was kind of a sappy tune, about little hidden microphones and Viewmasters and shit, but it made a huge impression on Angela Sawyer when, still in swaddling clothes, she heard it on a bootleg tape recorded it at Max’s Kansas City. She would sit in front of the family Walkman all day and play that song over and over again. It became, what she calls, “the theme song of my youth.” In the years between that epiphany and this LP, Ms. Sawyer has worn many bonnets. She has been in “bands” like… Read more »

Palberta - Hot On The Beach ( / )

LP Edition of 360. $14 Remixed, remade, remodeled vinylization of Palberta’s JMC Aggregate cassette of 2016. Hot on the Beach is another great leap sideways by this glorious post-tongue trio. The four brutarian tracks on the a-side are shards of songs reductive enough to have earned their “no wave” deal of approval without breaking a sweat. But as usual, Anina Lily and Nina manage to make this ug-thrust co-exist with a whacked-out feel more in line with late ’70s UK scribblers like the Raincoats or Big in Japan. Really fine. On the second side they do a single extended track called “Prolly for the Best” that sounds something like a dance 12” released by 99 Records, recorded anonymously and very… Read more »

Four Thing - Four Thing ()

LP Edition of 500 with Mp3 Download – Digital Download Zach Phillips was a fixture in the Brattleboro scene for a good many years. As a member of Blanche Blanch Blanche and Big French (among others), as well as the creator of many solo projects under various guises, runner of the OSR label, and all around Renaissance handyman,  Phillips moved to Brooklyn a while back. Once ensconced there he began playing as half of CE Schneider Topical, and generally stirring up the same kinds of mytery-aktion which had marked his Northern existence. Four Thing is the result of one his more oblique strategies. Ostensibly a surrealist parlor game involving four objects, four players, and four potential event sequences, Four Thing (the record),… Read more »

Los Lichis - Dog ()

2LP with Inserts / Download PITCHFORK    SPECTRUM CULTURE    DUSTED    ROOTSWORLD This deep into the Internet Era it’s unusual to discover a weird-ass band who’ve been active and recording since the ’90s without ever appearing as a blip on any known radar screen. Yet, here are Los Lichis — a Mexican music/art collective whose recording history goes back 19 years and whose sound is as powerful and strange as any combo around. Some might suggest that Mexico is not known for its underground sonic emanations, but we’ve long dug artists like Loch Ness, Chac Mool, Lorelle Meets the Obsolete, Los Llamarada, and various improv-types we hear about from folks who tour down there. Some of Mexico’s punk and… Read more »

Guerilla Toss - Live in Nashville ()

LP. Edition of 800 $18 FACTMAG IMPOSEMAGAZINE Guerilla Toss Live in Nashville reminds me of the Frank Zappa You Can’t Do That Onstage Anymore series where the arrangements and delivery on the studio versions were so near impossible that they could not possibly be recreated live. Zappa and Co. gladly proved all naysayers wrong. Remember that time when Bill Graham bet the Grateful Dead they couldn’t pull off the Blues For Allah album live? Sure you do. The Dead went into the Great American Music Hall and kicked Graham’s ass. This is what G-Toss achieves here. What a band. I mean damn, what a band. Like one of the first great bands of the new century great. Who would you… Read more »