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Cassette
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DC 865CS
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$12.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 7/26/2024
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LP
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DC 865LP
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$27.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 7/26/2024
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CD
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DC 865CD
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$13.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 7/26/2024
"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."
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Cassette
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DC 918CS
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$12.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 6/28/2024
Cassette 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."
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LP
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DC 893LP
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$33.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 6/28/2024
"What might appear to be the most unlikely collaboration of 2024 proves also to be one of the most invigorating listens of the year! Shackleton & Six Organs of Admittance are in full aural/metaphysical alignment in their mutual effort to become Jinxed by Being. On first listen, it becomes immediately clear that this fusion of Shackleton's bass-heavy cosmic dread and Six Organs' ritual folksong makes total sense. Longtime listeners know that both Shackleton and Six Organs of Admittance have been unafraid to pursue their muse into any and all encroaching depth of darkness or outer boundary of potential dissonance -- in fact, that has always been their default mode, finding more of resonance way out there in the process. They also share that ol' maverick psychedelic ritual transcendental music vibe, don't they? And a fascination with repetition and cycles. And a mutual inspiration drawn from alternative tunings and literature -- all this considered, it's been basically inevitable that Ben Chasny and Sam Shackleton would work together. It took a while for them to find each other -- and once they did, it was almost eerie, how preordained it felt. When the music started coming, though -- that's when it got really eerie. The mood rises from the music like smoke, a sure signal of total integration. Jinxed by Being finds Shackleton and Six Organs of Admittance delighting in their synthesis. Reveling in the unique sonic textures found in the collage, they launch small details that unfold into a massive space, then fracture into multiple lines of dimensional reality, crossing the stereo spectrum with enervating motility. Here lies all the proof you need against the danger of categorizing by perceived genre rather than intention -- encounters like Shackleton and Six Organs of Admittance might never have found the linear space in which they sit next to each other, beyond alphabets and other institutional organizing principles. Rearrange your libraries -- or you might miss getting Jinxed by Being.
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LP
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DC 902LP
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$25.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 6/28/2024
"Drummer Chris Corsano is a tireless collaborator. Among the 150 or so albums that he's contributed to over the past 25 years, only six have been credited to Chris alone, which makes the existence of The Key (Became The Important Thing [& Then Just Faded Away]) a rare instance of Chris going deep on his own vision. Indeed, this album finds him involved in every aspect of the process, from making the string-drums that the music is based upon, to playing all parts of the music, mixing them, and doing the cover art, too! This is a special album, bringing his encompassing focus on free improvisation and noise into a granular fusion with acoustic experiments and ideations of hard rock riffing and the post-punk sound. In Chris Corsano's collaborations over time with Paul Flaherty, Joe McPhee, Dredd Foole, Michael Flower, Paul Dunmall, Bill Orcutt, Nate Wooley, Mette Rasmussen, C. Spencer Yeh, Ben Chasny, and Sir Richard Bishop (as individuals, and together as Rangda), Bill Nace, Wally Shoup, Evan Parker, and dozens of other players, it's clear the vibe may get intense/heavy/OUT. Accessing this place, in itself, is an incredible calling -- but on The Key (Became The Important Thing [& Then Just Faded Away]), the intensity radiates entirely from inside Chris's process, in conversation with himself. And that's something that hit a bit different once he was done making it. The pieces here were largely built out of Chris's string drum playing, utilizing a setup he's created involving a silicone string, stretched across a snare drum with a bridge. When the string is hit, it resonates the drum -- a conception similar to that of the banjo, but with more of a bass tone. Several songs focus on Chris playing a bass string drum with a full kit, while the basic parts of two other pieces ('I Don't Have Missions,' 'The Full-Measure Wash Down') implied possibilities for full band arrangements which Chris was compelled to respond to himself. All the results on the tape, when listened back, found a higher order, transcending sequences of experimentation and technique, becoming much more than the sum of an internal conversation, standing together as a set of insistently compelling pieces of a whole. And so they became The Key (Became the Important Thing [& Then Just Faded Away]). They unlocked something in Chris Corsano."
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2LP
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DC 892LP
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$31.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 6/28/2024
"Drag City presents the first ever vinyl pressing of guitarist Lee Underwood's under-sung 1988 acoustic guitar opus, California Sigh. Lee Underwood had been Tim Buckley's stalwart, inspiring, accompanying and being inspired by Buckley as they both navigated a heady set of changes in the late '60s and early '70s. Then, he abruptly stopped working as a professional musician, leaving behind a body of work, that, as noted by Eugene Chadbourne, was the work of 'a loner, who didn't quite march under any one flag, whose improvisations involved the level of sophisticated harmonic development one finds in jazz, floating as freely as Ornette Coleman.' 35 years later, yet still in time, train your ears on the meditations of California Sigh! As Byron Coley's liner notes observe: 'The music is guitar-based acoustic instrumental melodicism with a lovely tone and alternately ruminative and jazzy structuring. The playing is generally in the vein of William Ackerman and Alex de Grassi rather than progenitors like Basho and Fahey, although 'Lady of the Streams' does display a bit of a Fahey lilt at times. Throughout these pieces there are also flashes of single string runs straight out of the Django Reinhardt playbook. But the overall mood is tranquil -- reflecting the musical joys Underwood found when surrounded by nature.' The tenor of the production is transcendent to be sure. The playing of Chas Smith and Kevin Braheny Fortune, on pedal steel and soprano sax respectively, lend additional colors to Lee's music on several songs, but it is largely the soulful depth of Lee's guitar figures, limned by Steve Roach's synthesizers and the Roach/Underwood co-production, that give dynamic shape and elevation to Lee's lovely cycle of songs. And now, with this remastered vinyl edition, the air around the instruments -- both real and implied -- and the full sonic impact of California Sigh -- alternately gentle and mighty, like the natural world that inspired it -- is magnified incomparably. In the years following the release of California Sigh, Lee wrote and recorded two solo piano CDs, Phantom Light and Gathering Light. He continues to live in Northern California. California Sigh is 'dedicated with love and respect' by Lee to his late wife, Sonia Crespi, for the friendship and inspiration she brought."
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CD
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DC 918CD
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$14.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 6/28/2024
"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."
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LP
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DC 918LP
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$24.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 6/28/2024
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."
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LP
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DC 934LP
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$23.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 6/28/2024
"Evil Does Not Exist is an expansive new soundtrack undertaking from Eiko Ishibashi, a stellar further display of her ability to explicate the depths of the unspoken in her music. That it is also the soundtrack to the new Ryusuke Hamaguchi feature is marvelous news for all who loved her score for his Oscar-winning 2021 film, Drive My Car. That her music harmonizes effortlessly with the state of nature as depicted in his film, a nuanced tale of humans' uneasy efforts to maintain co-existence with the delicate state of the planet, is a further profound achievement. At play here, though, is much more than fantastic new music from a powerful new film -- it is evidence of a vital recomposition of the relationship of sound to narrative, and composer to filmmaker. The impetus for this came when Eiko was asked by overseas promoters for a program of live performances backed by visuals. After some thought, she asked Hamaguchi if he would make something for her to use for this purpose. This led Hamaguchi to develop the script further, with sequences of dialogue. In the end, he made two works: Gift, a silent film to act as a visual score for a live performance by Ishibashi, and Evil Does Not Exist, his new narrative feature film, which provided the visual material for the silent film Gift and features Eiko's music as its soundtrack. This is a fittingly synergistic exchange within their two disciplines, in which the moods and intentions of the music and the film acted in practical conversation: each one a sovereign statement, made possible by its relationship with the other. Eiko's compositions are scored for violin, cello, guitar, drums and keyboards. Her longtime partner Jim O'Rourke played the guitar and mixed and mastered the recordings when they were done, eliciting further the necessary nuances of atmosphere and mood that one would expect in one film, much less two!"
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LP
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DC 909LP
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LP version. "The Emmy-winning 'Comeback Kid' himself comes back yet again with a blunt, brilliantly quotable stand-up special. Baby J takes the form of a wide-ranging conversation between John Mulaney, a kid in the balcony named Henry, and the rest of the sold-out crowd at Boston's Symphony Hall. And now, you! John dominates the chat, of course -- and while his cautionary tales are a bit too convulsive to be functionally preventative, you probably aren't here to be cautioned. So have at it!"
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2CD
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DC 836CD
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"Like a bolt echoing back from the blue, We Have Dozens of Titles restrikes the iron of Gastr del Sol, plunging the listener back into the maelstrom of their all-too-brief passage of 1993-1998 via an assembly of previously uncollected studio recordings and beautifully captured unreleased live material. Gastr del Sol's music was of the transformative variety -- or was it transfiguration they were up to? Or transmigration? Flux was key, to be sure. David Grubbs formed Gastr from the final lineup of Bastro; on Gastr del Sol's debut, The Serpentine Similar, Grubbs, Bundy K. Brown and John McEntire downshifted from a thrashing electric outfit into a droning, acoustic-based one. Following this, the lineup shifted again, decisively -- Brown and McEntire departed to focus on the project to be known as Tortoise, and Jim O'Rourke arrived, pairing with Grubbs to make a sequence of unpredictable leaps across genre and practical approach alike, over three LPs and a pair of EPs. We Have Dozens of Titles contains nearly an hour of previously unreleased live recordings, alongside another near-hour of studio recordings culled from previously uncollected singles, EPs, and compilations. As much as Gastr del Sol's albums showcase a group eminently at home in the studio, they were inclined to thoroughly reinvent their compositions in performance. While reviewing live tapes for this compilation, the studio versions of most things felt more and more definitive, with the exception of the live takes included here, which essay startling new qualities in pieces that have been in the public ear for several decades. The majority of these live performances come from a miraculous find in the CBC archive -- a broadcast-quality recording of Jim and David from the 1997 Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville. The extended company of players on these numbers includes Jeb Bishop, Bundy K. Brown, Steve Butters, Gene Coleman, Thymme Jones, Terri Kapsalis, John McEntire, Günter Müller, Bob Weston, and Sue Wolf. We Have Dozens of Titles revisits the slow-burning incendiaries of Gastr del Sol, finding, once again and after so much time elapsed, another, further set of reinventions."
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CD
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DC 909CD
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"The Emmy-winning 'Comeback Kid' himself comes back yet again with a blunt, brilliantly quotable stand-up special. Baby J takes the form of a wide-ranging conversation between John Mulaney, a kid in the balcony named Henry, and the rest of the sold-out crowd at Boston's Symphony Hall. And now, you! John dominates the chat, of course -- and while his cautionary tales are a bit too convulsive to be functionally preventative, you probably aren't here to be cautioned. So have at it!"
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LP
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DC 876LP
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"Bill MacKay and Drag City are delirious with pride to announce the discovery of a new territory: Locust Land, a record which seeks to reflect the nerve-shredding consciousness run amok in our world today -- and somehow allay it with sound. Bill's music is a visceral crackling where it meets the air, and Locust Land can't help but reflect its era more than any other in his discography. It's been five years since the release of Fountain Fire -- but in the interim, Bill has barely stopped moving, collaborating with artists across the spectrum, including cellist Katinka Kleijn, banjo player Nathan Bowles, and keyboardist Cooper Crain. He's also contributed to recordings by Steve Gunn, Ryley Walker, Bill Callahan & Bonnie Prince Billy (Blind Date Party), and Black Duck (on their self-titled record featuring Douglas McCombs and Charles Rumback). Bill's sense of music as art is constantly modulating -- lifting off from where it is found and naturally migrating to some other place. Sometimes, that's elsewhere -- others, it's simply to be found deeper inside the starting point. And so, the action of moving on informs the landscape of Locust Land. Within the arrangements, there's also departure from previous norms -- in addition to the brilliant guitar work for which he is known, Bill plays a variety of keyboards, from piano to organ to synth, extending his music with the available voicings, while enriching the sound field without abandoning his signature brevity. Also different: on his previous solo recordings, Bill played every sound. Here, he has invited other illustrious Chicagoans to join him: Sam Wagster (The Father Costume, Mute Duo) plays bass on three songs, two of which feature the percussion playing of Mikel Patrick Avery (Natural Information Society, Jeff Parker, etc.). Additionally, Janet Beveridge Bean (Eleventh Dream Day, Freakwater) adds otherworldly vocal textures to the elegiac 'Neil's Field.' With cover art also by Bill MacKay (the third of his albums on Drag City to feature his work), Locust Land stands as a thoroughly personal statement from Bill to everyone everywhere."
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7"
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DC 913EP
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"Should the name Jim Rafferty sound a tad familiar, he is in fact the older brother of Gerry Rafferty, of 'Baker Street' and 'Stuck In The Middle with You' fame. As a songwriter, Jim had signed a solo deal with Decca in the late '70s. Times were changing across the music business, and Jim, always seeking new challenges, continued to write interesting, idiosyncratic material. He signed a self-penned, nervy and minimalist new work 'I See Red,' to Hit & Run publishing, which was picked up by Phil Collins for Abba star Frida's solo album. The song's outsider narrative and implied reggae rhythm, made somewhat cartoonishly explicit in Frida's version, also found favor with a number of other artists, notably Clannad, whose album Magical Ring included their near identical version of 'I See Red,' and gained chart placing in the UK. The flip-side of Jim's 'I See Red' has its own cover history -- 'Fear Strikes Out' first appeared on Ian Matthews' 1984 LP, Shook. Matthews, a journeyman who'd once sung in Fairport Convention alongside Judy Dyble and Sandy Denny and later hit the charts several times as a solo act, roots his version firmly in Jim's ineffable arrangement, which makes sense -- but Jim's version notches up the excitement brightly, showcasing sharp guitar and keyboard textures in the mix. And sounding more like a hit. Shortly after this, Jim teamed up with producer Hugh Murphy and his then-wife, American born singer songwriter Betsy Cook, to form The Urbane Planners, working out of Hugh's Buckinghamshire studio on smart pop singles, such as 'Spirit of the Thing,' for release on Mays Records. These gained radio exposure in the UK, but failed to get the kind of promotion they deserved, possibly a little too smart for the charts at that point. Jim continued to write, and returned to his earlier career as a graphic designer, then moved to Canterbury, where he found to his surprise that multi-instrumentalist Geoffrey Richardson of prog-rock outfit Caravan lived right across the street. The two struck up an immediate musical friendship and began working on material together at Geoffrey's studio nearby. And to the present, where Jim's relatively unheard 1982 recordings finally make their splendidly remastered debut on Drag City. It's a surprise and delight, not just for Jim, but for collectors of sublime pop songs all around the world."
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3LP BOX
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DC 836LP
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LP version. "Like a bolt echoing back from the blue, We Have Dozens of Titles restrikes the iron of Gastr del Sol, plunging the listener back into the maelstrom of their all-too-brief passage of 1993-1998 via an assembly of previously uncollected studio recordings and beautifully captured unreleased live material. Gastr del Sol's music was of the transformative variety -- or was it transfiguration they were up to? Or transmigration? Flux was key, to be sure. David Grubbs formed Gastr from the final lineup of Bastro; on Gastr del Sol's debut, The Serpentine Similar, Grubbs, Bundy K. Brown and John McEntire downshifted from a thrashing electric outfit into a droning, acoustic-based one. Following this, the lineup shifted again, decisively -- Brown and McEntire departed to focus on the project to be known as Tortoise, and Jim O'Rourke arrived, pairing with Grubbs to make a sequence of unpredictable leaps across genre and practical approach alike, over three LPs and a pair of EPs. We Have Dozens of Titles contains nearly an hour of previously unreleased live recordings, alongside another near-hour of studio recordings culled from previously uncollected singles, EPs, and compilations. At long last, vinyl purchasers will hear the full range of 'The Harp Factory on Lake Street,' 'Dead Cats in a Foghorn,' 'Quietly Approaching,' and 'The Bells of St. Mary's' for the first time on vinyl -- all of it, live and studio alike, lovingly mastered and remastered by Jim O'Rourke, and packaged in a three-LP box set with a wicked Roman Signer image on its removable lid, interior printing on the box bottom and inner sleeves for each LP with performance credits for all the songs. As much as Gastr del Sol's albums showcase a group eminently at home in the studio, they were inclined to thoroughly reinvent their compositions in performance. While reviewing live tapes for this compilation, the studio versions of most things felt more and more definitive, with the exception of the live takes included here, which essay startling new qualities in pieces that have been in the public ear for several decades. The majority of these live performances come from a miraculous find in the CBC archive -- a broadcast-quality recording of Jim and David from the 1997 Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville. The extended company of players on these numbers includes Jeb Bishop, Bundy K. Brown, Steve Butters, Gene Coleman, Thymme Jones, Terri Kapsalis, John McEntire, Günter Müller, Bob Weston, and Sue Wolf. We Have Dozens of Titles revisits the slow-burning incendiaries of Gastr del Sol, finding, once again and after so much time elapsed, another, further set of reinventions."
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Cassette
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DC 876CS
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Cassette version. "Bill MacKay and Drag City are delirious with pride to announce the discovery of a new territory: Locust Land, a record which seeks to reflect the nerve-shredding consciousness run amok in our world today -- and somehow allay it with sound. Bill's music is a visceral crackling where it meets the air, and Locust Land can't help but reflect its era more than any other in his discography. It's been five years since the release of Fountain Fire -- but in the interim, Bill has barely stopped moving, collaborating with artists across the spectrum, including cellist Katinka Kleijn, banjo player Nathan Bowles, and keyboardist Cooper Crain. He's also contributed to recordings by Steve Gunn, Ryley Walker, Bill Callahan & Bonnie Prince Billy (Blind Date Party), and Black Duck (on their self-titled record featuring Douglas McCombs and Charles Rumback). Bill's sense of music as art is constantly modulating -- lifting off from where it is found and naturally migrating to some other place. Sometimes, that's elsewhere -- others, it's simply to be found deeper inside the starting point. And so, the action of moving on informs the landscape of Locust Land. Within the arrangements, there's also departure from previous norms -- in addition to the brilliant guitar work for which he is known, Bill plays a variety of keyboards, from piano to organ to synth, extending his music with the available voicings, while enriching the sound field without abandoning his signature brevity. Also different: on his previous solo recordings, Bill played every sound. Here, he has invited other illustrious Chicagoans to join him: Sam Wagster (The Father Costume, Mute Duo) plays bass on three songs, two of which feature the percussion playing of Mikel Patrick Avery (Natural Information Society, Jeff Parker, etc.). Additionally, Janet Beveridge Bean (Eleventh Dream Day, Freakwater) adds otherworldly vocal textures to the elegiac 'Neil's Field.' With cover art also by Bill MacKay (the third of his albums on Drag City to feature his work), Locust Land stands as a thoroughly personal statement from Bill to everyone everywhere."
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LP
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DC 734LP
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2024 repress. Originally released in 2019. "Fountain Fire is Bill MacKay's second solo album on Drag City. The Chicago-based guitarist's continued sonic journeys in conversation with himself follow a travel-worn map written in his own hand. Bill has followed the trail from familiar confines to unknown places, catalyzing a style equally enamored with the traditional and the avant-garde to make his most expansive and forceful music to date. You can hear it in the opening track; as the lava and lakes of 'Pre-California' simmer to boiling, Bill assembles a bridge of guitars, layering beams of rumbling acoustic, distorted electric, and arcing slide parts. By leaping boldly from fixed points, he makes synergetic discoveries in mid-air. This is the MacKay writing style in its most evolved state thus far, following serpentine paths within the patterns, lunging in and out of tonality with instinctive flair and a stoic sense of inevitability, forging a sonic mosaic that breathes and grows organically as it fills the space of a song. Yet there is far more here than straitlaced sonic captures of picker's prowess and captivating harmonic motivation. Bill's pieces are informed by meditation and memory, impressionistic as cinematic miniatures, inspired as much by filmic and literary passions as by sure-playing hands, and always rooted with deep soul and steady intention. As the pieces move in and out of focus in enticingly hallucinogenic fashion, Bill throws another element into play: a pair of stark and emotionally-charged vocal numbers that cause the hair to raise on the listener's neck, etched as they are with a haunting and eerie beauty. Alongside the ever-shifting flows of instrumental color running through Fountain Fire, these moments shine blindingly, like mirages in the desert. The fire in the album title is a continuity in Bill's life -- part of his genealogy, his living history, his astrology, the scorching effect of the overdriven slide in the penultimate 'Arcadia.'"
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2LP
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DC 274LP
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"Mother Twilight is the second Faun Fables album. It has since been noted by Scottish author R.J. Stewart as a work containing true artifacts of the oral underworld tradition. Dawn and Nils made a hand-assembled first pressing and peddled it to nearly every bar and rural hall across North America from 2001 to 2003. Drag City reissued the CD in 2004. Things are glowing outside, enough to bring any sun worshiper in for the night. But you must remain outside and begin walking. It'll prepare you for the night, which otherwise comes as a chilling surprise. If you pay attention this time, maybe you'll understand why you're becoming invisible. When your memory began, it wasn't startling, wasn't a mistake. It came out of an old, dark and familiar thing, like a storyteller, like Twilight."
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LP
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DC 917LP
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"Oren Ambarchi has been collaborating with the Fire! trio (Mats Gustafsson, Johan Berthling, and Andreas Werliin) for over a decade -- and both Johan and Andreas played on Oren's Live Hubris as well. Oren and Johan began music-making together back in the early aughts -- but it wasn't until 2021 that the three of them got together to record music. That became the first Ghosted album. When they were done, it was clear they had founded a new group. A music of sustained tension and deep atmosphere marked by subtle, shifting dynamics, Ghosted was released in May of 2022 to psyched response everywhere; the trio embarked upon an ongoing series of concert bookings around Europe, with loads of other people in the world still hoping to have the chance to be in the room at the next show. Two years on, Ghosted has gone through several represses; now, it's time for the 'dreaded follow up album.' What made the most sense was to go back to Daneil Bengtsson at Studio Rymden in Stockholm for a couple days, then have Oren and Joe Talia mix and Joe master it at Good Mixture in Melbourne again, then get Pål Dybwik to do some well-distinctive cover art, and once more, call it a record. Ghosted II has a definitively fresh quality radiating throughout it. The mutual feeling among the three players goes deep, allowing for lots more to say every time they get together -- a further recombination of elements, a new expedition through alternative angles. There's always more, and incredibly, it's all improvised, with next-to-nothing prepared going in and minimal overdubs after they've laid things down. As noted, these guys balance their music improbably between a relaxed feel and a nervy resolve, as each member holds down their corner in an open sound field. Making Ghosted II, the band found that there's a different kind of tension making something for an established project rather than the kind one feels making something for the first time -- and they used this new variety, as before, as a kind of fuel --driving their terse minimalism fruitfully through the process of succumbing to and then transcending guilty pleasures. Finding fresh territory in funk sketches, jazzy heads, ambient pastorals and droning soundtrack pieces, Ambarchi, Berthling and Werliin compellingly haunt a mad variety of spaces."
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2LP
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DC 262LP
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"Happy 20th birthday to Family Album, the third recording of Faun Fables and the first one released on Drag City. These songs belong to sons and daughters, entwined and orphaned, domesticated and feral; to all the family vines unraveling from a ball of yarn. In this family album, runaways graze the wild together, a mother finds her courage playing the piano, dogs become thieves and wolves, and a son is taken too soon. Fourteen-year-old nymphs sit dangerously at the crossroads, a younger brother tries to find his place, packs of girls defeat fear with a march, and the nightly adventures of the household mouse are spied upon."
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CD
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DC 869CD
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"With Time is Glass, Six Organs of Admittance is captured once again in the intricate tangle of the fretboards, soaring in open skies above. Like lens flare cutting through the speakers; spiderwebs cracking the windshield that holds back all the onrushing reality. Blowing the dust away, cutting a new path for cognition. After 20 years of living on the road in different places, Six Organs of Admittance had returned home to Humboldt County -- a far country, to some, but still part of the world through which creatures of all kinds are moving through and contributing to. And some of them are human. Alone together -- forming connection and exchange out of thought and expression -- no different from the people on the other side of the Redwood Curtain. It was there, where Six Organs had long ago emerged, in the name of everything cycling, of circles that spiral concentrically and remain unbroken, the new music was conceived. In moments, it was as if the future had somehow wrapped around 360 degrees; elsewhere, the systems and patterns inside the writing and recording only became evident later -- like a recognition that cumulus and nimbus clouds which passed through the sky the day before contained familiar shapes. Informing the songs accordingly as he went, Ben picked up on modes both musical and lyrical, threading backward through the time of Six Organs of Admittance. Working on the music and the vocals, then spending some time with them while stepping away from them. Walking the dog and coming back to them. Time is Glass is made of that kind of time. Alone time. Recorded in the visceral environs of home, Time is Glass is sharply focused, even as misty impressionist mountains float through the background. The intuit, passing through wormholes and time, sounding deep then dissolving into the universal. The acoustic sounds ringing, layered suddenly, then clear again. Explosions of a new kind of distortion. Ecstatic melodies. Communing. The space of a day. The space of a season. Time is Glass, and Six Organs of Admittance is here and will be here, again."
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LP
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DC 869LP
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LP version. "With Time is Glass, Six Organs of Admittance is captured once again in the intricate tangle of the fretboards, soaring in open skies above. Like lens flare cutting through the speakers; spiderwebs cracking the windshield that holds back all the onrushing reality. Blowing the dust away, cutting a new path for cognition. After 20 years of living on the road in different places, Six Organs of Admittance had returned home to Humboldt County -- a far country, to some, but still part of the world through which creatures of all kinds are moving through and contributing to. And some of them are human. Alone together -- forming connection and exchange out of thought and expression -- no different from the people on the other side of the Redwood Curtain. It was there, where Six Organs had long ago emerged, in the name of everything cycling, of circles that spiral concentrically and remain unbroken, the new music was conceived. In moments, it was as if the future had somehow wrapped around 360 degrees; elsewhere, the systems and patterns inside the writing and recording only became evident later -- like a recognition that cumulus and nimbus clouds which passed through the sky the day before contained familiar shapes. Informing the songs accordingly as he went, Ben picked up on modes both musical and lyrical, threading backward through the time of Six Organs of Admittance. Working on the music and the vocals, then spending some time with them while stepping away from them. Walking the dog and coming back to them. Time is Glass is made of that kind of time. Alone time. Recorded in the visceral environs of home, Time is Glass is sharply focused, even as misty impressionist mountains float through the background. The intuit, passing through wormholes and time, sounding deep then dissolving into the universal. The acoustic sounds ringing, layered suddenly, then clear again. Explosions of a new kind of distortion. Ecstatic melodies. Communing. The space of a day. The space of a season. Time is Glass, and Six Organs of Admittance is here and will be here, again."
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LP
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DC 688LP
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2024 repress. Originally released in 2017. "Drag City presents the second volume of Bill MacKay and Ryley Walker's inspired collaboration. Following their much-admired 2015 debut, Land of Plenty (Whistler Records), SpiderBeetleBee more than makes up for lost time with rich, resonant performances that elevate the sound of the guitar duo as they work with an ever-widening panorama of styles. Their first album was developed over a month-long live residency at Chicago bar The Whistler, and reflected MacKay and Walker's shared joy in a new relationship with a kindred spirit, in playing that might wordlessly finish a phrase or suggest a direction, as they spoke through their guitars. SpiderBeetleBee continues fluidly down the path of their initial psych-folk-blues-raga tandem, brewing further explorations in mixed-and-matched idioms, turning composed melodies inside-out via improvisation, and finding in the blend a shared Walker/MacKay pasture, serendipitously found somewhere between Appalachia and the Highlands. SpiderBeetleBee radiates forth with equal parts austerity and whimsy, opening with an almost-baroque dance before giving way to a Celtic theme, both featuring MacKay and Walker's acoustics in rambling conversation, picking through intricate passages as though they were exchanges, thoughts and afterthoughts. The second of these, 'Pretty Weeds Revisited' is enhanced by sonorous statements from Dutch cellist Katinka Kleijn (a veteran of the CSO), showing a deep, instinctive feel for the Walker/MacKay sound. The album then takes an unexpected turn at midpoint, slowly melting down and drifting soulfully through the expansive space of 'Naturita.' Side two picks up the tempo on 'I Heard Them Singing,' with the aid of MacKay's requinto (a kind of five-string Mexican guitar), Walker's rolling chords and the percolating tabla of Ryan Jewell, suggesting a hitherto unknown short-cut from Brazil to India. Drafts of slide guitar and bittersweet blues evocation illumine further fruitful travels before 'Dragonfly,' also featuring Ms. Kleijn's haunting cello, closes the cycle with a flourish. Adorned with Bill MacKay's colorful and wilfully primitive cover-art, SpiderBeetleBee wanders through styles, landmasses and hemispheres, capturing the further adventures of MacKay and Walker with spellbinding snapshots that only bloom larger the longer you take them in."
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CD
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DC 895CD
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"This is long overdue. I mean, looooooonnnnnng overdue. A solo album by Jim [White]. The trap kit -- so straightforward, so mysterious. What's inside those things? Air and light -- from which century? Which continent? Which planet? Depending on how and when you hit them it can be a vibration sent through a prehistoric breath, particles of Saturn's atmosphere, the dead, wet leaves you walked through on the way to the first day of school. These are the memories of the drums on this record. Infinite and personal. Editing each other as they muscle to the front or soft shoe to the shadow. Cymbals can override/cancel everything out -- wipe your memory clear or make the memory clearer. Drums are the instrument where you can feel the presence of the player the most -- the full body -- and sense the thoughts of the player the most. The instrument with the most choices to be made sends out the most brainwaves. A bouquet of brainwaves is on this LP. Jim oversees it all, surveys from the lost place we're in, the void -- the drumless song. We trust. We trust, Jim. His big green eyes search for the right tool (mallet, brush, etc), eyes that search you like you're a song he wants to join, wants to see if he can add to or understand. Before humans, drums were playing -- these drums. 'Genesis' was a solo drum piece. After humans, these drums, this album. Someone -- the last man -- is out in a spaceship at the edge of space. He plays a single chord on a synth to set time free from its bind and then lets go. This album sets time free, lets it frolic, lets it graze, lets it remember. This is a record of thoughts, memories, surgery. A deft surgical operation you may not even realize is happening as it's happening but you're back on your feet when it's over. Memories refreshed. Did you really even listen to it?" --Bill Callahan, November 2023
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