DRAG CITY - Forced Exposure

$25.00 PREORDER RELEASE DATE: 11/22/2024

"For those of you who've mislaid your history goggles, this archival release recalls an ancient time in the world of recorded music. Yes, back in the dinosaur days of the 1990s, a creature known as Aerial M walked the earth, before evolving into Papa M and PAJO and beyond and back. Even then, the music of M had a next-wave vibe, walking upright among the knuckle-draggers (and having drinks in the evening with others of its genetic detachment). It was too much to last very long, of course -- but some things end up lasting forever, don't they? Fuck! So it is today that Drag City, an organization largely set up to bring you the best of all available M recordings, is proud to be there for the release of the only Aerial M session ever recorded for John Peel's BBC Radio One show, as it was originally recorded on March 3, 1998 and broadcast on April 2 of the same year. The studio versions of these songs, which appear on Aerial M's self-titled album and Papa M's Hole of Burning Alms comp, were played by "M" himself (now revealed to be David Pajo!), which makes this album a rare alternative view of the canonical M, played by an actual Aerial M band who, all too briefly, embodied the sound for a year or so before Papa brought a brand-new bag. This session found them fortuitously roadburned from several weeks in the European Theatre. OG-M's signature minimalist long-fuse sizzle is thrillingly intact here; in fact, even more so, as the tunes are jammed out past the studio versions' originally delineated borders, reaching rudely across the table in moments of liveness that the studio-bound project might have decided against when conferring only with the walls. For fans of their epic version of 'Turn Turn Turn,' this is more sweetmeats from that raucous old skull -- but if you've not been down this road before, be prepared: the taste will set you slowly aflame. And then, before you know it, the band is dined and dashed -- just like the band that Aerial M was, all too briefly amok on the earth that was too. Salute!"

$27.00 PREORDER RELEASE DATE: 11/22/2024

"Papa M is back, and he's talking 'bout Harry Houdini. This time, with a fresh, fine and fat-assed set of songs. Sometimes you never know when it comes to Papa M and his ol' left-shoulder angel, David Christian Pajo. After Slint's disbandment, he whiled away the '90s playing with literally everybody who asked, pausing long enough here and there to start his own band, called M. Two epic/classic albums and a forbiddingly large outstretched palm of singles (eventually collected into another epic full-length) later, David was looking a bit green around the gills. It'd been five years of Papa-ing off; time to do something/anything else for a while. Twelve long years go by before he sends in Highway Songs. Now comes Ballads of Harry Houdini. Following the path of M records from Aerial to Papa, (the just-released The Peel Sessions excepted!) David recorded Ballads of Harry Houdini on his own, receding deep inside himself and taking the time for ideas new and old, from soup to nuts, et al. Having his fun before spitting it all out onto the world -- setting down some tracks, getting lit, grabbing a guitar, getting a sound going, and soloing over 'em! With a bit of singing here and there too. Everything that's meant to be in the picture is in there. The shit that isn't, isn't. Frankly, the amount of hip-shaking sleaze oozing out of these pieces blows the idea that these are simple ad-hoc assemblies right the FUNK out of the water. Sure, when David does blues scaling, he sounds a little like Billy Gibbons. But then there's the insistent torn-n-fucked delirium that's accompanied every Papa M expression into the marketplace (with pride) since 1999. As ever, it's mixed extra-crispy, with earworms and easter eggs and lots of other surprising shit that's bound to change your whole personality. And so it is and so it does. Ballads of Harry Houdini: it can make you dance, sing or anything."

$25.00 PREORDER RELEASE DATE: 10/25/2024

"Picking up the pieces of the picked-up pieces, Wand ride on, baby. Three months since they dropped the incredible mass of Vertigo upon the world, here is more, plating the pre-release single 'Help Desk' alongside 'Goldfish,' an additional cog from Vertigo's assembly, and then, in the name of the ever-expanding viewpoint (and the much-required dream-extension app), adding three remixes for good measure. 'Help Desk' and 'Goldfish' are brethren of the eight epochal vibrations that make up Vertigo -- boiled down from a tremendous volume of jams, then squeezed through the pinprick called automatic writing. Or 'riding,' as in, the groove/as far as they can see/past the horizon line/Jupiter space/the infinity room/whatever you choose to call it. The remixes delve back into the material, integrating another set of concentric thought-spirals into the radiant action. The unique perspectives of Beat Detectives, Dead Rider, and Dean Spunt become one with the Wand material, igniting inevitable further expansions. This EP's like a handshake promise that's fulfilled after the action has gone down -- the thanks you get for staying open and hanging in there. The present you get for being present! But everything has a price in time."

$23.00 PREORDER RELEASE DATE: 10/25/2024

"Wand, having shifted smoothly into phase IV of their star-flung efforts on the wings of the latest, Vertigo, follow upon it with an LP release of the archival In a Capsule Underground. These demos and unreleased songs from Ganglion Reef, as they're so helpfully dubbed on the front facing of the jacket, are the earliest Wand recordings that Drag City knows of, preceding everything that's come so far. It's not simply a function of time and nostalgia at this late moment that they sound invariably like magical recordings by, and for, children, is it? From the reverse end of the telescope, it's not so easy to tell. Just because someone's young doesn't mean that they are absolutely gonna sound like a souped-up baby Moody Blues crossed with a young-wave Status Quo, Barrettian Pink Floyd, Genesis-era Genesis, and transitioning Barclay James Harvest, all letting loose in the post-punk garage, does it? Yes, it happens more than sometimes in rock and roll life. But with Wand, what if their desire to sound pixieish and ethereal while mowing down with buzzing guitars and bass set to stun was simply a tactile approach to the conceptualization of phase I? Whatever the case, it can be generally agreed that in 2014-2015, they managed to pump out three distinct progressions on this theme -- Ganglion Reef, Golem, and 1000 Days -- at a trot. And now that In a Capsule Underground's spinning on a turntable eternal, come to find out, they actually did it twice with Ganglion Reef. The light, fizzy versions here have distinctive, gleaming magic energies all their own and will provide quite the breathtaking thrill ride when endeavored upon by all who haven't yet heard them."

$25.00 PREORDER RELEASE DATE: 10/25/2024

"Anthony Moore's post-Slapp Happy output, for years an underrated-to-outright unknown quantity, achieves another dimensional plane with this third archival release from his personal tape library. Home of the Demo triangulates upon the art-pop qualities found in his previously unreleased OUT (1976, officially issued 2020) and the new wave-adjacent Flying Doesn't Help (1979, reissued 2022), finding Anthony's early/mid-'80s compositions drifting into the actual mainstream, just moments before it began giving way to the inevitable Next Waves. Home of the Demo unpacks ten tracks from what might otherwise be called a lost era. Subtitled 'from the dawn of bedsit recording,' this collection largely represents something nearer to DIY than any of your fancy modern kit! As Anthony remarks in his liner notes, 'We are talking about a few hundred quid's worth of gear balanced precariously on bookshelves and table tops in bedrooms and basements.' And yet, the tracks sound right dreamy. Anthony was a songwriter and musician whose first decade-plus in the music 'business' had brought him outside-in, through experimental/avant projects into the pop music world he'd loved as a youngster. He was an old hand at getting sounds as well; distinctly '80s elements that might abrade the ear instead benefit from his tactile deployment of that gear stacked up on tables and bookshelves in the basement. In this manner, he produced well-appointed, ambitiously clever songs for himself and others, such as his friend David Gilmour's band, who used a couple pieces on Home of the Demo for their 1987 comeback album. Amidst the assiduous work of writing the Next Big One, a relaxed, almost playful mood prevails throughout the pieces assembled here -- as one might imagine at home demo sessions where one man plays all the parts. It's also true for the numbers that feature special guests, such as the ominously monikered 'Page The Oracle' on lead guitar -- or the singer simply dubbed, 'Guest' -- no doubt a safe alias for a hot young Bunnyman rising to his commercial peak in those halcyon days."

$27.00 IN STOCK

"Six Organs of Admittance extend their annum of unlikely delights -- begun in March '24 with Time is Glass, the first new 6OOA album in four years, and joined in June with the most unlikely awesome collab of '24: Shackleton & Six Organs of Admittance, Jinxed by Being -- with the release of Companion Rises (Twig Harper Remix), which expands the zone of disbelief simply by being the third Six Organs-branded release in one year! Also by pushing the boundaries in all the manners that matter -- psychologically, spiritually, philosophically and sonically -- into a new dimensional space. Companion Rises dropped in February 2020. Its new techniques in sound generation called for an aggressive new moment, with heavy Six Organs touring scheduled for the year ahead. As Ben Chasny picked up the pieces following the 'Big Blink,' he had to think of what could have been. By then, Six Organs had moved on -- both Time is Glass and Jinxed by Being were in the works -- but here was a thought: Companion Rises was a record about the weirdness of California. Right then, Twig Harper was touching down in Cali after stints in Baltimore and Chicago. Ben'd been onboard with Twig's shit since the days when Nautical Almanac burst out of Michigan like an engorged, inflamed, screaming blood vessel. When Ben asked him if he would do whatever he wanted, it felt like full circles were colliding when Twig said yeah! Once Twig had measured out the physics of Companion Rises, most of his remix was done up in his van where he, otherwise homeless, was living. In the 'Twig Harper Remix,' the maximal qualities of original Companion Rises DNA are evoked via omission: to recreate the implied construction of Six Organs' spirit realm, Twig isolated source sounds, triggered new data off those sounds, then edited the new readouts. To the naked ear, it sounds to be a highly stimulating new example in modern electronic minimal classical music. The assiduous Organs-head will no doubt find a few Easter eggs here, but mostly, this is new dimensional space made of the not-so-old one. Companion Rises (Twig Harper Remix) is like two journeys in one, juxtaposing Twig's new-to-Cali musings with Six Organs' original borne-and-bread wanderings."

$33.00 IN STOCK

"Jill Fraser is a composer and electronic music pioneer, active since the 1970s. Her credits are many and varied -- yet her new album, Earthly Pleasures, takes a unique place among all her work: a luminous suite of electroacoustic music examining the bones of hymnal harmony, speculating on how the spirit of songs might be interpreted after people are gone. Playing electronic music was what Jill's seen for herself almost from the beginning. Switched on Bach was an early influence, blowing up her understanding of what she was learning on the piano. So was Silver Apples of the Moon, evolving recognizable aspects of classical music into a fantastic elsewhere. She studied at CalArts, working with Morton Subotnick (her mentor) and taking master classes with John Cage and Lou Harrison, among others. She composed film scores with Jack Nitzsche and played her synthesizer at punk shows opening for Minutemen and Henry Rollins. When her daughter Sofia was playing with Wand, Jill contributed electronics to one of the songs on Laughing Matter. Earthly Pleasures stands out from all these things Jill's done. Balancing composition, technology and introspection, it is a fluent expression that also considers mortality and loss; not simply our own lives and the lives of those we love, but the mortality of the very age we live in, the intelligence of our time. For Earthly Pleasures' composition, Jill began by researching revival hymns of the late 19th and early 20th centuries (with an instinctive bias towards those composed by women). Her workstation combines both the newest technology and some of the oldest analog electronic sound sources, a combo involving her original 1978 Serge Modular, a new Prism Modular and Ableton Push 3. The sound world of Earthly Pleasures accesses a seeming infinity of dimensional sound in which the human hand is always keenly felt, no matter how deep the space. It's a breathtakingly transcendent album that suggests inclusion within a diversity of genres: ambient, electronic, new age, modern classical, gospel, healing, sacred. It is the work of a veteran composer and synth master at the peak of her powers, meditating upon the detritus of memory, the passage of all consciousness, and the rebirth of meaning in a new era."

$27.00 IN STOCK

"The work of Whitney Johnson a.k.a. Matchess, is, in their own words, 'a material history of reproduction.' From our grateful vantage point, it sounds like sequences of hypnotic and engaging forms, a combination of musical concepts and available materials for the purpose of transcendence. Hav and Stena challenge linear description, and even language, reflecting the perceived values and details of multiple times/intentions/places into essential aspects, repurposed as music. Hav and Stena (DC 923Z-CS) began to exist in 2021 while Whitney was researching the Cult of Hermaphroditus and visiting all the available sites of the cult's activity in Cyprus and Greece. She collected materials from the sites via VHS footage, 35mm photos, and field recordings. The cover image for Hav is from that trip, as are some of the field recordings included on Stena. During her travels, Whitney read Shelley's Frankenstein for the first time. As a sequel to that harrowing moment, and with respect to Shelley, the two new releases feel within and without themselves like creatures of post-mortem assembly, collaged more than birthed. In the fall of 2023, thanks to a grant from DCASE in Chicago, Whitney returned to Sweden to finish both records as an artist-in-residence at Inkonst in Malmö and at Elektronmusikstudion (EMS) in Stockholm. During this time, she assembled the pieces she was working on as a multi-channel A/V installation at Inkonst, and Hav emerged more fully, as a composition for sine waves, marimba, viola, Arp Odyssey and Halldorophone. Finished mixes for both were later achieved at Electrical Audio in Chicago with Cooper Crain, capturing the spirits and intents in all the times and places enumerated above. Fleetingly and forever, they become the sounds we hear on Hav and Stena. As with 2022's Sonescent, one way to examine these records is how they resonate in the body. Throughout their gestation, attention was given to the use of certain frequencies as a focused means of transport; the Solfeggio Frequencies, a conception in sound healing, are referenced often in these new works."

$25.00 PREORDER RELEASE DATE: 9/27/2024

"Dean Spunt's all-new Basic Editions is an excursion in electronic sound that instrumentally unpacks his fascination with language -- in this case, the syntax of systems and processes. By turns meditative, compulsive and consumptive, Basic Editions distills a 64-voice module through a headful of ideas -- somewhat like pouring a cornucopia of possible ambient moods and EZ listening impulses backwards through a funnel, inspiring a deceptively absurd rainbow of soul to spray out the other end. With this new release, Dean IDs his process as 'using sounds, rather than making sounds.' This approach to music-making is a train of thought that's been rolling out from the far horizon of the past for ages now -- but for Dean, whose previous works within and without No Age depended on their making of sounds, it's a fresh work stance. Basic Editions delivers further unexpected hard-rights and lefts in the non-aesthetic aesthetic that has defined Dean's path over the past two decades. Steering toward wacked digital soundscapes that bounce colorfully across the stereo azimuth, Dean creates a kind of post-ambient neo-exotica that hinges upon a giddy conflation of cosmic and comic. This 'urban dance synth' was made great use of in hip-hop productions around the turn of the millennium. There's lots more to know about the machines of that time -- choose your own rabbit hole -- but the takeaway here is that it generates a finite amount of very circa-2000 sounds and he got it for fifty bucks. Inspired, Dean spent a minute getting its basic capacities in hand, while acquiring a few other boxes with compatible cards (more sounds!). In one way of thinking, Basic Editions is the sound of Dean not being influenced by anything -- how could he be? The sounds were all preset! There is, however, an instinctiveness to pushing a closed system in a curatorial manner, and it's here that Dean's inclinations took the wheel of the proceedings, bending the farmed sounds in and out of color and shape, creating improbable constructions whose gears clash together and revolve with an odd combination of nerviness and chill. Further refinements are provided with the artwork, which reprocesses generic graphic information sourced from various modules, while the album title tips its cap to a fine rank-and-file clothing line offered at K-Mart. RIYL: Moebius, Nuno Canavarro, General Magic, Pita, Carl Stone, Jon Hassell."

$15.00 LOW STOCK LEVEL

"The work of Whitney Johnson a.k.a. Matchess, is, in their own words, 'a material history of reproduction.' From our grateful vantage point, it sounds like sequences of hypnotic and engaging forms, a combination of musical concepts and available materials for the purpose of transcendence. Hav (DC 923A-LP) and Stena challenge linear description, and even language, reflecting the perceived values and details of multiple times/intentions/places into essential aspects, repurposed as music. Hav and Stena began to exist in 2021 while Whitney was researching the Cult of Hermaphroditus and visiting all the available sites of the cult's activity in Cyprus and Greece. She collected materials from the sites via VHS footage, 35mm photos, and field recordings. The cover image for Hav is from that trip, as are some of the field recordings included on Stena. During her travels, Whitney read Shelley's Frankenstein for the first time. As a sequel to that harrowing moment, and with respect to Shelley, the two new releases feel within and without themselves like creatures of post-mortem assembly, collaged more than birthed. Stena in particular sifts through fragments of once-was, surgically bonded and given electric shock treatment to induce music. Its sequence contains a hidden cover of The Nuns' 'It's a Dream.' A lot of Stena was recorded in Miller Beach, Indiana. Other recordings were made in a barn in rural Sweden during the winter of 2022, where Whitney was living alone and working on music while mulling over considerations of biological and symbolic ancestry. The cover image for Stena is a burial cairn photographed while there. As with 2022's Sonescent, one way to examine these records is how they resonate in the body. Throughout their gestation, attention was given to the use of certain frequencies as a focused means of transport; the Solfeggio Frequencies, a conception in sound healing, are referenced often in these new works."

$23.00 IN STOCK

"Laetitia Sadier's Something Shines is a joy! It was recorded and matured more slowly than either Silencio or The Trip. It took nine months, and you know what that means, baby! Something Shines was initially recorded in Switzerland, where Laetitia's collaborator David collects amazing old keyboards and organs from people who have inherited them but find no space or usage for them -- so they let go of these useless things for a symbolic franc. Scattered through Europe are the component players of the Something Shines band; drummer Emmanuel Mario in Paris and bassist Xavi Munoz in Castellon near Valencia, so additional parts were laid down in those cities. The strings were done in St. Etienne by Jean-Christophe Chante, whom Laetitia had met on a tour with French band, and friends, Angil in the fall; she found his playing mesmerizing and felt compelled to ask him if he would like to participate on her album -- which he did, bringing a great emotional charge to the record. Laetitia recorded a lot of the content in London, including all the vocals, guitars, additional electronics and soundtrack effects as well as final mixing. The desire was for the songs of Something Shines to alternate between a riveting caress and an invigorating shake. Something Shines is an exploration through Debord's La Société du Spectacle, and how it is still up to listeners to guide and shape their fate, individually and collectively. Therefore, Something Shines examines several relevant questions. All these thoughts and many others are communicated throughout a delicately textured production, twinkling and shifting with the subtlety of nature -- and often sounding like the world outside, whooshing and chirping and clicking in time, placing these concerns in the place where we live. The production is relaxed and expert; Laetitia's choices fit the breathing quality of the songs, and wear their arrangements easily. The many tiny details within the sound-scope of Something Shines reflect the lives that hang in the balance between the issues, lives that are often too small to see yet contribute to the world as a whole. Even in the face of realities that continue to cripple so many in the name of so few, Something Shines consistently elevates itself, addressing its audience with lyrical confidence and intimacy and an arcing musicality that allows it to go to the hearts and minds of every listener."

$23.00 IN STOCK

2024 repress. "Purple Mountains is the new nom-de-rock of David Berman. Purple Mountains is also the name of what will be known as one of his greatest albums -- full of double-jointed wit and wisdom, up to the neck in his special recipe of handcrafted country-rock joys and sorrows that sing legendary in cracked and broken hearts. The songs are produced impeccably by Woods' Jarvis Taveniere and Jeremy Earl, buffed up like a hardwood floor ready to be well-trod upon for an evening of romance and dance. The songs of Purple Mountains are a potent brew, stitched together from lifetimes, knitting the drift of the years with the tightest lyric construction Berman's ever attempted. Honesty is archly in the air, but lines of incredible bleakness somehow give way to playful distraction and the hiding of surprises for close listeners. Even still, as the songwriter once wrote, 'every single thought is like a punch in the face.' It won't take long after slapping the record on the platter for you to hear that this is one of THOSE albums. The portrait is David Berman's most to-the-bone yet, very frankly confessing a near-total collapse from the first moment, then delving into the layers of nuance with twin lasers of personal laceration and professional remove. This etches a picture that cries to be understood in the misbegotten country that made everything great about Purple Mountains. America's fate is that of its treasured icons: the cowboy, the outlaw, the card sharp and the riverboat gambler, who all face simple resignation in the end. There are no perfect crimes. Berman's poet-thief of so many precious moments, now stripped and chastened, recalls his latest lowest moments in perfect detail, hovering ghostly above the tumescent production sound as it echoes with tragic majesty and the sound-fragments of former glory, evoking the defeated-king era of late Elvis, southernfried and sassy still on his countrypolitan way down, and somehow still solid-gold at the bottom. Berman's songwriter's bone's never been laid more-bare, either. Where are you tonight, America? The things that used to be have slipped away into the darkness without you knowing it, and your children are wandering in a blasted landscape, with only Purple Mountains left to comfort them, and David Berman's shattered fables for company."

$23.00 IN STOCK

2024 repress. "Find Me Finding You, the new album from the new organization called the Laetitia Sadier Source Ensemble, manages to strike new chords while touching familiar keys in the song of life. From its percolating opening beat, Find Me Finding You locates new systems within the sound-universe of Laetitia Sadier. This in itself isn't a surprise -- Laetitia has relentlessly followed her music through different dynamics and into a variety of dimensions over the course of four solo albums since 2010 (not to forget her three albums with Monade and the long era of Stereolab) -- but the nature of the construction here stands distinctly apart from her recent albums. Laetitia was inspired by a mind's-eye envisaging of geometric forms and their possible permutations. As she sought to replicate the shapes in music, this guided the process of assembly for the album. Part of the freshness of Find Me Finding You comes from working and playing within the Source Ensemble and exploring new sound combinations via a set of youthful and evolving musical relationships. Laetitia recognized the energy of the tracks in their initial form, and sought to preserve their vitality by not retaking too many performances -- instead, the rawness in the tracks was retained and refined at the mixing stage, maintaining an edge throughout. A key to Laetitia's music is her use of vocal arrangements. Throughout Finding Me Finding You, the shifting accompaniment creates space to bring this element gloriously forward. Arranged by Laetitia with Joe Watson and Jeff Parker making string charts that were subsequently transposed to vocal parts for several songs, richly arranged choirs of voices provide depth along with the thrilling presence of extra breath in the sound. The designation of Source Collective implies a new togetherness phase; alongside long-time collaborators Emmanuel Mario and Xavi Munoz, keyboard and flutes parts played by David Thayer (Little Tornados) were essential contributions, as well as further keys, synths and electronics from Phil M FU and several intense guitar sequences from Mason le Long. Chris A Cummings (aka Marker Starling, Laetitia's favorite composer) graciously wrote 'Deep Background' for her. The duet with Hot Chip's Alexis Taylor on 'Love Captive' gives voice to an ideological cornerstone of Find Me Finding You. Find Me Finding You combines a rigorous process for music-making with a deeply invested mindset, making captivating music that promises many stimulating spins to come!"

$24.00 IN STOCK

"Love Rudiments is a meditation by Ty Segall on his first love: the drums. Known popularly as a singing guitar player, he generally starts the recording of his songs by laying down a drum track. Love Rudiments kicks off with drums and percussion, then adds a few other percussive and production aspects. It travels a great journey in this configuration. However, Love Rudiments wasn't written or performed to present as some kind of solo drums album -- it's just another music album, with vibes (figurative as well as literal), feels, a theme and a through-line. Never one to shy away from a challenge, Ty's made an instrumental album of percussive music that rides the wild surf of a waxing-then-waning love affair -- from the first blinding look, to the eventual recognition, that look back at love's rudiments, viewed from beyond and outside that seemingly infinite sensation. And why not? Drums are a melody instrument too. Ty plays them with precision and sensitivity, delving deep into the textures of timpani, vibraphone, xylophone, percussion and e-drums, all of them occupying space within the luxe stereo spread of the drumkit. In the process, a psychological space is opened -- a private emotional location where only two can meet. Love Rudiments reembodies the passion and compulsion that drives all of Ty Segall's music in a suite of moments played on orchestral batterie to explore the most delicate passages of human interaction -- playing on the bones of love."

$12.00 IN STOCK

Cassette version. "Love Rudiments is a meditation by Ty Segall on his first love: the drums. Known popularly as a singing guitar player, he generally starts the recording of his songs by laying down a drum track. Love Rudiments kicks off with drums and percussion, then adds a few other percussive and production aspects. It travels a great journey in this configuration. However, Love Rudiments wasn't written or performed to present as some kind of solo drums album -- it's just another music album, with vibes (figurative as well as literal), feels, a theme and a through-line. Never one to shy away from a challenge, Ty's made an instrumental album of percussive music that rides the wild surf of a waxing-then-waning love affair -- from the first blinding look, to the eventual recognition, that look back at love's rudiments, viewed from beyond and outside that seemingly infinite sensation. And why not? Drums are a melody instrument too. Ty plays them with precision and sensitivity, delving deep into the textures of timpani, vibraphone, xylophone, percussion and e-drums, all of them occupying space within the luxe stereo spread of the drumkit. In the process, a psychological space is opened -- a private emotional location where only two can meet. Love Rudiments reembodies the passion and compulsion that drives all of Ty Segall's music in a suite of moments played on orchestral batterie to explore the most delicate passages of human interaction -- playing on the bones of love."

$31.00 IN STOCK

2024 repress. "With Best Troubador, Bonnie 'Prince' Billy pays homage to a long-time and forever hero, the late Merle Haggard. A singer who, some 25 years previously, first performed in public by playing a Merle Haggard song, Bonny has often cited Merle's work in performance, on records and in conversation with anyone who was around, even talking to Merle himself for Filter magazine in 2009. Merle's body of work was considered by Bonny for a record such as this for some time, but his passing in April of 2016 almost put a stop to it. The goal was to participate in the handing forward of the songs of a living legend, as Merle had done so many times in his own career. Writing for Juan and Only in 2012, Bonnie put it this way: 'Merle Haggard is a channeler who has paid ample tribute to those that came before him. He has demonstrated explicitly and implicitly his standing on the shoulders of Tommy Duncan/Bob Wills, Jimmie Rodgers, Floyd Tillman, Lefty Frizzell and many others." With Merle gone, some of the impetus of the project was in peril. A plan to make the album in Nashville studios was abandoned. The songs still called to be played again, however -- and so sessions were endeavored at home, capturing feeling, memory and new expression in familiar confines with the full-hearted playing and singing of the Bonafide United Musicians: Van Campbell, Nuala Kennedy, Danny Kiley, Drew Miller, Cheyenne Mize, and Chris Rodahoffer, with special guests Mary Feiock, Emmett Kelly, A.J. Roach and Matt Sweeney. The songs sung on Best Troubador are pulled from all over -- from Haggard's third album in 1967 through to his 47th in 2011 -- but this is no simple hits compilation. Seven of the sixteen songs are from his later period, after his long run at the top of the country charts had ended, but before encroaching mortality could finally cease the singular and indefatigable creativity of Merle Haggard. Best Troubador flips through his song book, landing on pages unmoored from their time and located anew. Moving from 1978 to 1969 to 2003 to 1981 allows the album to circle Haggard's music in a simulation of thought and memory, slipping around from spot to spot as if they were discrete impressions, unknown but knowable yet."

$27.00 NOT IN STOCK

Sold out, repress available in Nov... "Drag City presents the first official reissue of Dorothy Carter's 1976 album debut, her folk-music exegesis, Troubadour. In her lifetime, Dorothy, a self-made traveling musician and folklorist, brought forth masterful evocations on hammered dulcimer and psaltery from a myriad of times and places. Her music was played, produced and sold outside of that era's mainstream music distribution. Troubadour reissue producer Eric Demby can look back to a childhood spent off the grid: the early '70s in rural Maine, and later on, in Boston -- wherever his freewheeling father brought the family, at one point or another, there too was Dorothy, as she lived and breathed, playing her hammered dulcimer. The early '70s found everyone living up on the farm up in rural Maine; it was here that Rutman, Constance, Dorothy and some others formed Central Maine Power Company, a troupe of almost feral improvisers playing on a combination of self-made and found instruments, with live video feedback to boot. In 1976, Dorothy had been playing music for decades, but had yet to record any of it. That year, she went to Cambridge's Studio B with Rutman and friend Steve Baer at the console. Constance and Sally Hilmer accompanied her. The performances captured there were released later that year as Troubadour. In addition to hammered dulcimer and psaltery, Dorothy played the flute and sang. She chose songs from all over: Appalachian folk tunes, old and ancient psalms and hymns, Scottish, Irish, French and Israeli melodies, with a few of her own songs for good measure. They all flow together effortlessly under Dorothy and friends' hands in a syncretic space that we can identify today as a garden of world musics -- a highly energized, alternately meditative and proselytic recital whose vitality has only burgeoned in the decades since it appeared. As it should be: the music of Dorothy Carter is akin to a portal, linking her with the eternal. This edition of Troubadour reproduces the original album package, adding an insert adorned with additional photos of Dorothy and her collection of instruments, as well as notes from Eric Demby exploring the era -- his childhood -- from a vantage point of some 50 years. This reissue is a long-held family dream come true, and it is dedicated in loving memory to Bob Rutman, Constance Demby, David Demby and Dorothy Carter."

$13.50 IN STOCK

"The date was March 6, 2023. Bill Callahan strode onto the stage at Chicago's Thalia Hall, flanked by Matt Kinsey on guitar, Dustin Laurenzi on tenor sax and Jim White on the kit. They all were feeling good, and it seemed like the crowd was also. But that wasn't all. They had some special surprises planned."

"This is a live album that was taken from the tour for YTI⅃AƎЯ. Songs tend to mutate after they've been recorded. These songs were mutating faster than usual. Like whatever happened to Bruce Banner in the lab -- I knew these songs were about to get superpowers. As far as I was concerned, this change needed to be documented. The best thing about documenting something is that it gives the creator permission to move on should they wish to move on. I usually prefer to move on. These songs were recorded in Chicago, America's heart. And at one of the best clubs in the country -- I try to only work with venues that are not entangled with LiveNation/Ticketmaster. Thalia Hall, baby. Stay free. The date was mid-point in the tour, so I knew we'd be as hot as we were going to get. Not too green, not too brown. There was the thought, 'let's take this op to make it something special.' So we took advantage of Chicago's easily accessible players -- we got Nick Mazzarella to add alto sax to one song, and from the opening band, Pascal Kerong'A to sing on a song, and Nathaniel Ballinger on piano on one song -- and I couldn't pass up the opportunity to invite Joshua Abrams and Lisa Alvarado to play on 'Natural Information.' The hardest part of making the record was cutting songs out -- it could have been a triple album. But I don't know, maybe the show should have been this short?" --Bill Callahan

$25.00 LOW STOCK LEVEL

LP version. "The Nathan Bowles Trio's Are Possible is a spark-throwing, undulating fusion of styles played (mainly) on banjo, upright bass and drums. The individual perspectives of Nathan, double-bassist Casey Toll (Jake Xerxes Fussell, Mt. Moriah) and drummer Rex McMurry (CAVE) work together in an easy-rolling manner, but one that contains an expansive, ass-shaking confabulation of ideas. Nathan's solo music-making explorations with the banjo are evidence of the range of possible places to go in the world while still in contact with one's roots: clawhammer boogie, strummed, bowed and percussive techniques, original compositions and traditional tunes, all cutting a path between old-time Appalachian music and its long-lost cousin, ecstatic minimal drone. In conversation with Rex and Casey's own conceptions, with guitar, bass, mellowtone, keyboards, drums and percussion aboard, he continues to ride toward new vistas. It's been a long six years since these three players first appeared on Nathan's 2018 album, Plainly Mistaken, a stretch made weird by the period of time in which social music couldn't be played socially. But again, nothing ever really dies: the time since, experienced as individuals and as a band, informs everything about Are Possible's multitudinous group sound. The details along the road that the band traveled to get here, where one riff blossomed into ten, then melted back down, and parts were added and subtracted and became each other in moments of new collective understanding, lent a unique prog-nosticafication to the possibilities of Are Possible before they'd even recorded a note. Music is time in redux: Are Possible's many moments in time carry details from all over the place. Rex brought a rhythm to the table after drumming on buckets at work, Casey provided a bassline that redirected a previous jam, Nathan brought in a song he'd been fucking with forever and they figured it out together. Their diversity of sources moves easily within the arrangements, rendering a far-ranging set of feels, from transcendental to new country funk to good ol' jazz and the folk-rock, even -- all of it drawn out exquisitely when they mixed at Electrical Audio in Chicago with the delicate hands of Cooper Crain upon the faders. The Nathan Bowles Trio have done their due diligence, passing their music through time and space on their way to now; now, the real trip begins, as Are Possible travels on, through you."

$12.00 IN STOCK

Cassette version. "Wand are back, and they're coming down slowly. With Vertigo, what hath Wand spawned? It's multichromatic, that's for sure, but it's too soon to tell. The way cells are replaced and all new again? That's it. Now they are ten and all new again, but in the sample set of the time between they've undergone the complex dimensional restructure, coming out a quartet. So, new-ish, in new ways anyway. The new Wand's built upon the exalted altars of old. There's flashes of sentiment and tension, nudity and evasion, theatrical elevation, giant pieces chunked throughout alongside little bits of things. Allowing for slippage, it's all one: the far horizon drawn in, nearer than ever before, allowing the chance for greater integration, if you stay open. Vertigo is the sound of feet lost, regained, lost again, equilibrium in soft focus, a swaying feeling, more automatic and associative: in time, direct. Determining to work backwards this time, Wand recorded everything in their own studio; pieces cut from improvisations and reshaped, writing from within the performance, without the woodshed. Unconsciously, in the shadow of themselves, and turning round and round (and round), they kept finding that empty space and playing what it implied. Everybody took on a new position in addition to the old one. It was intuitive, strangely ego-less, going somewhere they'd never been and not knowing what they were doing, but committing and recommitting, unafraid to eject in a constant positive forward momentum. It's like folk music for children, with synthesizers and other crap. Raw details with a lush velvet backing. Hear the articular evidence granular within the jams as it flows. Wand are funneling energy, pitching space your way -- more like to stand your hair on its toes with every verse-chorus. Pulling on segments of infinity, boiled down and resequenced, they've devised their own dream gear to drive the old moterik into wide open space, in atmospheric reverb, on perma-globular drift."

$27.00 LOW STOCK LEVEL

LP version. "Wand are back, and they're coming down slowly. With Vertigo, what hath Wand spawned? It's multichromatic, that's for sure, but it's too soon to tell. The way cells are replaced and all new again? That's it. Now they are ten and all new again, but in the sample set of the time between they've undergone the complex dimensional restructure, coming out a quartet. So, new-ish, in new ways anyway. The new Wand's built upon the exalted altars of old. There's flashes of sentiment and tension, nudity and evasion, theatrical elevation, giant pieces chunked throughout alongside little bits of things. Allowing for slippage, it's all one: the far horizon drawn in, nearer than ever before, allowing the chance for greater integration, if you stay open. Vertigo is the sound of feet lost, regained, lost again, equilibrium in soft focus, a swaying feeling, more automatic and associative: in time, direct. Determining to work backwards this time, Wand recorded everything in their own studio; pieces cut from improvisations and reshaped, writing from within the performance, without the woodshed. Unconsciously, in the shadow of themselves, and turning round and round (and round), they kept finding that empty space and playing what it implied. Everybody took on a new position in addition to the old one. It was intuitive, strangely ego-less, going somewhere they'd never been and not knowing what they were doing, but committing and recommitting, unafraid to eject in a constant positive forward momentum. It's like folk music for children, with synthesizers and other crap. Raw details with a lush velvet backing. Hear the articular evidence granular within the jams as it flows. Wand are funneling energy, pitching space your way -- more like to stand your hair on its toes with every verse-chorus. Pulling on segments of infinity, boiled down and resequenced, they've devised their own dream gear to drive the old moterik into wide open space, in atmospheric reverb, on perma-globular drift."

$31.00 NOT IN STOCK

Double LP version. "The date was March 6, 2023. Bill Callahan strode onto the stage at Chicago's Thalia Hall, flanked by Matt Kinsey on guitar, Dustin Laurenzi on tenor sax and Jim White on the kit. They all were feeling good, and it seemed like the crowd was also. But that wasn't all. They had some special surprises planned."

"This is a live album that was taken from the tour for YTI⅃AƎЯ. Songs tend to mutate after they've been recorded. These songs were mutating faster than usual. Like whatever happened to Bruce Banner in the lab -- I knew these songs were about to get superpowers. As far as I was concerned, this change needed to be documented. The best thing about documenting something is that it gives the creator permission to move on should they wish to move on. I usually prefer to move on. These songs were recorded in Chicago, America's heart. And at one of the best clubs in the country -- I try to only work with venues that are not entangled with LiveNation/Ticketmaster. Thalia Hall, baby. Stay free. The date was mid-point in the tour, so I knew we'd be as hot as we were going to get. Not too green, not too brown. There was the thought, 'let's take this op to make it something special.' So we took advantage of Chicago's easily accessible players -- we got Nick Mazzarella to add alto sax to one song, and from the opening band, Pascal Kerong'A to sing on a song, and Nathaniel Ballinger on piano on one song -- and I couldn't pass up the opportunity to invite Joshua Abrams and Lisa Alvarado to play on 'Natural Information.' The hardest part of making the record was cutting songs out -- it could have been a triple album. But I don't know, maybe the show should have been this short?" --Bill Callahan

$13.50 IN STOCK

"The Nathan Bowles Trio's Are Possible is a spark-throwing, undulating fusion of styles played (mainly) on banjo, upright bass and drums. The individual perspectives of Nathan, double-bassist Casey Toll (Jake Xerxes Fussell, Mt. Moriah) and drummer Rex McMurry (CAVE) work together in an easy-rolling manner, but one that contains an expansive, ass-shaking confabulation of ideas. Nathan's solo music-making explorations with the banjo are evidence of the range of possible places to go in the world while still in contact with one's roots: clawhammer boogie, strummed, bowed and percussive techniques, original compositions and traditional tunes, all cutting a path between old-time Appalachian music and its long-lost cousin, ecstatic minimal drone. In conversation with Rex and Casey's own conceptions, with guitar, bass, mellowtone, keyboards, drums and percussion aboard, he continues to ride toward new vistas. It's been a long six years since these three players first appeared on Nathan's 2018 album, Plainly Mistaken, a stretch made weird by the period of time in which social music couldn't be played socially. But again, nothing ever really dies: the time since, experienced as individuals and as a band, informs everything about Are Possible's multitudinous group sound. The details along the road that the band traveled to get here, where one riff blossomed into ten, then melted back down, and parts were added and subtracted and became each other in moments of new collective understanding, lent a unique prog-nosticafication to the possibilities of Are Possible before they'd even recorded a note. Music is time in redux: Are Possible's many moments in time carry details from all over the place. Rex brought a rhythm to the table after drumming on buckets at work, Casey provided a bassline that redirected a previous jam, Nathan brought in a song he'd been fucking with forever and they figured it out together. Their diversity of sources moves easily within the arrangements, rendering a far-ranging set of feels, from transcendental to new country funk to good ol' jazz and the folk-rock, even -- all of it drawn out exquisitely when they mixed at Electrical Audio in Chicago with the delicate hands of Cooper Crain upon the faders. The Nathan Bowles Trio have done their due diligence, passing their music through time and space on their way to now; now, the real trip begins, as Are Possible travels on, through you."

$13.50 IN STOCK

"Wand are back, and they're coming down slowly. With Vertigo, what hath Wand spawned? It's multichromatic, that's for sure, but it's too soon to tell. The way cells are replaced and all new again? That's it. Now they are ten and all new again, but in the sample set of the time between they've undergone the complex dimensional restructure, coming out a quartet. So, new-ish, in new ways anyway. The new Wand's built upon the exalted altars of old. There's flashes of sentiment and tension, nudity and evasion, theatrical elevation, giant pieces chunked throughout alongside little bits of things. Allowing for slippage, it's all one: the far horizon drawn in, nearer than ever before, allowing the chance for greater integration, if you stay open. Vertigo is the sound of feet lost, regained, lost again, equilibrium in soft focus, a swaying feeling, more automatic and associative: in time, direct. Determining to work backwards this time, Wand recorded everything in their own studio; pieces cut from improvisations and reshaped, writing from within the performance, without the woodshed. Unconsciously, in the shadow of themselves, and turning round and round (and round), they kept finding that empty space and playing what it implied. Everybody took on a new position in addition to the old one. It was intuitive, strangely ego-less, going somewhere they'd never been and not knowing what they were doing, but committing and recommitting, unafraid to eject in a constant positive forward momentum. It's like folk music for children, with synthesizers and other crap. Raw details with a lush velvet backing. Hear the articular evidence granular within the jams as it flows. Wand are funneling energy, pitching space your way -- more like to stand your hair on its toes with every verse-chorus. Pulling on segments of infinity, boiled down and resequenced, they've devised their own dream gear to drive the old moterik into wide open space, in atmospheric reverb, on perma-globular drift."

$24.00 LOW STOCK LEVEL

LP version. "Emerging once again from the unending waves crashing upon fragile timecraft (adrift on the eternal ocean, and taking on water), Dirty Three are a) back, b) tangled in seaweed, rank with saltwater and possessed of three rather ominous thousand-mile stares, and c) not wasting another minute -- as nothing is guaranteed. For their first album in over a decade -- yep, it's been since 2012's Toward the Low Sun -- they flew in, got together and started playing. End of story. What else is there to say or do but that? Music's their language, their true love; they never stop listening to that. And like the label says, Love Changes Everything. The Dirty Three -- Warren Ellis, Mick Turner, and Jim White -- formed up in Melbourne in 1992, to play with guitar drums and violin or viola, and within a couple years, they'd broken out -- out of Australia, out of anything else they might have been inside of, to boot -- and got worldwide. Over the next ten years, they toured over and over the planet, ceaseless like, and cut seven albums out along the way. After this, their unique style of play, fitted together like puzzle pieces, was decoupled, more often than not, and pieced together in many other, fruitful collaborations with many other esteemed talents. Over the past 20 years, they've gotten together a few times, renewed the vow, revved the engines and played some shows, or made an album. These lot were born to be as weathered as they are today. Time doesn't matter. They make their gathered wisdom of the ages sing like something new every time. It renews. And Love Changes Everything."