Releases

Fat Creeps / ZEBU! - Fat Creeps / ZEBU! 12″ Split (LP)

Edition of 600 in Red & Black Vinyl RED VINYL BLACK VINYL First vinyl outing by Fat Creeps, a Boston area trio (Lynn, Mass, actually), who have been brilliantly assaulting local audiences for the last year and a half. Like Montreal’s No Joy, Fat Creeps combine guitar tones developed specifically for shoegazing, with a garage-pop sensibility that will not be stilled. Vocally, I am also reminded of Barbara Manning’s classic early solo work (about the highest compliment I can offer), and there’s a great friction between alternating layers of lassitude and energy. This makes for a coarse and classic blend, sure to be gobbled like ear-candy by anyone who wanders anywhere near the disk. As Bryan Ferry might say, “Marvelous.”… Read more »

Home Body - In Real Life (CD / LP)

LP / CD Edition of 500 RAM Music Video CD: OUT OF PRINT LP: First LP by superbly talented Northampton MA duo, Haley Morgan and Eric Hnatow, who rewrite the basic DNA of electro-pop for their own nefarious purposes. They are capable of the sweet gesticulation for which the form is noted, and they do this with incredible aplomb. Staying away from the cute-ass rhyming-nada that so many of their peers use as stock-in-trade, when they opt for romantic aktion, they craft tunes that carry the weight of flat-out Buckingham/Knicks updates in terms of sheer perfection — multi-part femme-voiced songs of longing that explode with deep, fully-immersed emotional content, set inside of perfectly balanced guitar/key/percussion explorations. Outside of time or… Read more »

BeNe GeSSeRiT - MuLTiLiNGuaL SaD SoNGS, WeiRD JoKeS aND eXPeRiMeNTaL STuFF FoR uSe By GRoWN-uP CHiLDReN (LP)

BeNe GeSSeRiT “MuLTiLiNGuaL SaD SoNGS, WeiRD JoKeS aND eXPeRiMeNTaL STuFF FoR uSe By GRoWN-uP CHiLDReN” LP Edition of 300 with download OUT OF PRINT Back when Dennis Tyfuss was still a goddamn baby, Alain Neffe and Naine Bal were already staining the Belgian soul with recordings released under the Bene Gesserit moniker. But here we are in 2013, and now, finally, the first US vinyl issue of this material has become available for human consumption. The performing name may have been copped from one of those priestess/nun types in Frank Herbert’s novel, Dune, but Bene hews to none of the known priestess/nun-ic forms of sound. There are admittedly, some space-whispers, but they quickly resolve themselves into something more annoying/interesting, so… Read more »

Tellavision - Music On Canvas (LP)

LP Edition of 300 OUT OF PRINT Gorgeous first LP by German visual/sound artist, Fee Kürten, whose previous work has been available only via the German Bloody Hands label. Singing in English, accompanying herself on electronics, harmonica and strings, Fee creates oddball vistas of minimal pop aktion reminiscent of early Young Marble Giants, mixed with overtones lifted straight from the women of the Neue Deutsch Welle, and the slangy delivery of Omnivore. The results are a beautiful, throbbing Euro-American art-pop hybrid that functions in truly Internationalist terms. Some of it is akin to the nudest American avant-garage inventions around, other parts bleed like the waffle-filled air of the deepest Belgian underground. Just when you think you have Tellavision’s modus operandi… Read more »

Great Valley - Continental Lunch (LP)

LP Edition of 300. $18 The third album by Brattleboro’s Great Valley, who walk as equals amongst the woggly dream pop giants from the charted region of the upper Connecticut River Valley. Like their brethren, Happy Jawbone (a member of whom surfaces hereon), Great Valley concoct a strange type of pop music, with certain similarities to musicians as disparate as California’s Van Dyke Parks and Pennsylvania’s Strapping Fieldhands, without yielding a single woof of their Brattleborian distinction. Blanche Blanche Blanche is also represented here by Zach Phillips, but Great Valley’s take on the Southern Vermont ethos remains unique. Much of the sound on Continental Lunch has a pointedly ruralist base. Individual notes could be credited to ZZ Top or even… Read more »

Jane La Onda - Buy Buy Buy (Cassette)

Jane La Onda “Buy Buy Buy” CS Edition of 100 OUT OF PRINT! BANDCAMP! BOSTON HASSLE Jane La Onda (perhaps better known as Kassie Carlson of Guerilla Toss) has made an exercise cassette for the ages. Styled along the lines of early Laurie Anderson and/or Palmolive-era Slits, Jane provides a withering cultural critique that manages to function equally as experimental bedroom pop and an easy guide to home-exercise. Count along with the beat and watch those pounds melt away, even as you learn something about the consumerist dogma of cable television culture. Lo-fi has rarely sounded so beautiful and it has never been as slimming. Work it out! Pause! Enjoy! -Byron Coley, 2014