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LP
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ITR 276LP
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2023 release. "Back in print on white vinyl. Following up their debut full-length on Ty Segall's God? label, Wand presents their second album, Golem, on In The Red. Recording with Chris Woodhouse at his Hanger studio in Sacramento, Wand summons the dark and heavy power of the riff. Back in September 2013, Wand was quietly dismembered and ritually eaten in the hills near Dodger Stadium. Wand was reborn as 'Wand' -- an obese organ falsely organized as four overjoyous nerds. Four flesh balloons betting on a few aging amplifiers. Rumor has it they listen to Here Come the Warm Jets on loop all day and plot mail fraud. What's more, they allegedly stole Dale Crover's car and sacrificed it to the weather near the Los Angeles County Line. A few things, at least, are certain: Wand hears ghosts. Wand prefers serpents. The Sun is the mother of every fiction. All phenomena will be consumed in alphabetical order, but desire will recirculate ad infinitum. If all else fails, Wand will just devour more hands. Wand is coming your way soon."
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2LP
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DC 744LP
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2023 repress. 2019 release. "Almost two years on from 2017's Plum, Californian scrap polymorphs Wand is prepared to launch their fifth, and newest long-playing record, Laughing Matter. By now, Wand is the shifting but unmistakable collaboration between Sofia Arreguin (keys, vocals), Cory Hanson (guitar, vocals), Robert Cody (guitar), Lee Landey (bass) and Evan Burrows (drums). Laughing Matter is marked by the confidence and exuberance of a band that has lived, feuded, thrived and grown together through years of dedicated jamming, touring and recording, across western and eastern states, continents and mind-sets. In this world that insists we must increasingly rely upon ourselves, Wand listens to each other, and this is the sound. Largely recorded on the infamous southern border of broken, decadent America, Laughing Matter belongs to the after-life. After the dull flood. As rock n roll lurched sideways and fell away, drunkenly lost in a funhouse mirror of . . . recycled Funhouses. With no major label funding, no management or lawyers, no corporate distribution, near zero social media presence and no commercial dealings whatsoever (with only poor, pitiful Drag City to help them carry the flag!), Wand have toured the world a bajillion times in five years and made four varied and compelling records while accumulating a devoted following . . . Swerving between out-of-focus parable, travel diary, pep talk, polemic, love song, and lullaby, Laughing Matter is a tough and tender album, its eyes on a lot of prizes. Where Plum held the tension of its five band members getting on their feet, the songs on Laughing Matter are concentrated and relaxed, even as they search for the right accusations to hurl at cynics and megalomaniacs. The music is distilled and sculpted from an ash heap of collected improvisations, riven with audio-verité; the methods and instrumentation are traditional handmade rock n' roll . . . This music is not revivalism or throwback; Wand is a precision instrument, a band that probes and teases style, genre, trope and anachronism into material, according to a law of motion that is aimed directly toward an uncertain future. Laughing Matter is a record about love in a time of terror, and how to make the best use of the surveillance technology available today . . . The 15 songs on this record face their energy outward, to take with you through a common world that can't suffer its human abusers much longer..."
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LP
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DC 673LP
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2023 repress. "Plum is Wand's fourth LP since the band formed in late 2013 but their first new album in two years. After a whirlwind initial phase of writing, recording, and touring at a frenetic clip, their newest document marks a period of relative patience; a refocusing and a push toward a new democratization of both process and musical surface. In late winter of 2016, the band expanded their core membership of Evan Burrows, Cory Hanson, and Lee Landey to include two new members -- Robbie Cody on guitar and Sofia Arreguin on keys and vocals. From the outset, the new ensemble moved naturally toward a changed working method, as they learned how to listen to each other and trust in this new format. The songwriting process was consciously relocated to the practice space, where for several months, the band spent hours a day freely improvising, while recording as much of the activity as they could manage. Previously, Wand songs had generally been brought to the group setting substantially formed by singer and guitarist Cory Hanson; now seedling songs were harvested from a growing cloudbank of archived material, then fleshed out and negotiated collectively as the band shifted rhythmically between the permissive space of jamming and the obsessive space of critique. This new process demanded more honest communication, more vulnerability, better boundaries, more mercy and persistence during a year that meanwhile delivered a heaping serving of romantic, familial and political heartbreak for everyone involved. They learned more about their instruments and their perceived limitations. Much else fell apart in their personal lives, in their bodies, and the bodies of those near to them. In this way, Plum lengthened like a shadow underneath a dusking Orange; or rather 'Weird Orange,' an affectionate name given to the color of a roulette-chosen, tour-rushed batch of Golem vinyl... an idiom, an inside joke, a talisman, a bookmark, a mood ring. And meanwhile all the shifting weather, the wireless signals, the helicopters overhead. Weird orange softened, darkened delicately, and rouged itself to a Plum. The music of Plum focuses teeming, dense, at times wildly multichromatic sounds into Wand's most deliberate statement to date, with a long evening's shadow of loss and longing hovering above the proceedings. Plum delicately locates the band's tangent of escape from the warm and comfortable shallows of genre anachronism, an eyes-closed, mouth-open leap toward a more free-associative and contemporary logic of pastiche that more honestly reflects the ravenous musical omnivorousness of the five people who wrote and played it."
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2LP
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DC 785LP
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Double LP version. "Since 2014, Wand have made five albums (and an EP) in the studio and a living playing on the road. Business/pleasure: the two sides of their (multiverticed, decagon) coin, flipping in the strobe light of ongoing self-actualization. And yet, by doing both at the same time -- making a record of them playing live -- they've now made their best one yet. How do you get Spiders In the Rain? Start by going all the way back to January 2020. Do you remember? Wand do. They'd been touring Laughing Matter for ten months. They'd done the coast, spanned the country, crossed the water twice, came back home and kept on going . . . driving, flying, occasionally floating (or maybe just thinking they were?), always on to the next town. They did all kinds of shows -- clubs, ballrooms, festival gigs with no roof overhead -- the songs expanding and contracting according to the dimensions of each day. Seventy-nine shows, and everything that was involved -- the miles that ran beneath them, the different places and people everywhere, the music as it breathed, making everyone change every night -- alchemized the band, and they drove deeper into their far horizon than they'd ever previously gone. The essential truth of the live vibe -- that it's always better when everybody's here -- was clear, so they booked a few shows more in Cali, from L.A. up to Marin. They brought along light and projections from The Mad Alchemist Liquid Light Show and Mike Kreibel and Zac Hernandez too, to tape everything -- to get the big-deck energy out of performances in S.F. and L.A., but also to draw it out of the margins in Sacramento, Novato and Big Sur. It all happened, too. Everyone brought their experience -- the kids in the audience and the folks behind the boards, all along with Wand, where it meant something different for everybody in the van. Packaged sumptuously with artwork from Sam Klickner, Spiders In the Rain is an arc of natural beauty and man-made abstraction inside and out, on an epic scale. Wand are orchestra and machine on Spiders In the Rain, one with the audience, able to get inside any dimension of their sound, whether its songs from their second album or their last one. It almost felt okay that they couldn't play any more shows immediately after, until it didn't again. But the change was made: when they started up again doing shows in December of 2021, the energy moved just as fluidly through the room and the band."
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CD
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DC 785CD
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"Since 2014, Wand have made five albums (and an EP) in the studio and a living playing on the road. Business/pleasure: the two sides of their (multiverticed, decagon) coin, flipping in the strobe light of ongoing self-actualization. And yet, by doing both at the same time -- making a record of them playing live -- they've now made their best one yet. How do you get Spiders In the Rain? Start by going all the way back to January 2020. Do you remember? Wand do. They'd been touring Laughing Matter for ten months. They'd done the coast, spanned the country, crossed the water twice, came back home and kept on going . . . driving, flying, occasionally floating (or maybe just thinking they were?), always on to the next town. They did all kinds of shows -- clubs, ballrooms, festival gigs with no roof overhead -- the songs expanding and contracting according to the dimensions of each day. Seventy-nine shows, and everything that was involved -- the miles that ran beneath them, the different places and people everywhere, the music as it breathed, making everyone change every night -- alchemized the band, and they drove deeper into their far horizon than they'd ever previously gone. The essential truth of the live vibe -- that it's always better when everybody's here -- was clear, so they booked a few shows more in Cali, from L.A. up to Marin. They brought along light and projections from The Mad Alchemist Liquid Light Show and Mike Kreibel and Zac Hernandez too, to tape everything -- to get the big-deck energy out of performances in S.F. and L.A., but also to draw it out of the margins in Sacramento, Novato and Big Sur. It all happened, too. Everyone brought their experience -- the kids in the audience and the folks behind the boards, all along with Wand, where it meant something different for everybody in the van. Packaged sumptuously with artwork from Sam Klickner, Spiders In the Rain is an arc of natural beauty and man-made abstraction inside and out, on an epic scale. Wand are orchestra and machine on Spiders In the Rain, one with the audience, able to get inside any dimension of their sound, whether its songs from their second album or their last one. It almost felt okay that they couldn't play any more shows immediately after, until it didn't again. But the change was made: when they started up again doing shows in December of 2021, the energy moved just as fluidly through the room and the band."
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CD
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E#100K
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"To quickly address the elephant in the room -- certainly, collections of demos, outtakes and home recordings are mostly bogus, but obviously you're reading this, so obviously I've somehow been coerced into releasing this batch of tunes, and you've bought it or stolen it or borrowed it or gotten a promo or whatever, so let's cut to the chase. In my defense, all of the cuts contained herein are 'songs' in the traditional western sense -- my experiments in 'surf harmonica' and 'doom zydeco' will not be chronicled here, deep and plentiful as those archives may be. Everything here was recorded by me on either a Roland BR-8 digital 8-track or it's flashier, more cosmopolitan cousin, the BR- 1600, with incalculable assistance from Jexie Lynn, who accompanies me on many of these songs and who's encouragement and creativity allowed many of them to be. Most of the recordings were done at my then-home in beautiful Knoxville, TN between October 2002 and January of 2007, just prior to the retirement of the Wooden Wand name. You've already pardoned the narcissism, now pardon the cliché: I stand behind these songs as snapshots and enjoy them despite their many flaws. I hope you do, too." -- The Wand
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