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FTR 650LP
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$25.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 7/5/2024
"It is absolutely appropriate the second volume of Wednesday Knudsen's Soft Focus suite appears as spring finally begins to take hold. Like the brilliant first section of this work (the whole of which was initially released on CD), the music here is a celebration of shimmering sunlight and the awakening of nature's tonal brilliance. But where the first LP focused on more bite-sized pieces of work, this one envisions and documents instrumental horizons that are ever expanding. The first of the three tracks, 'Sunshine,' is the shortest, and picks up where Volume One left off -- slow single note electric piano runs with lightly buzzing sustain that are darker than the song title suggests, but utterly devoid of overt bummer tongues. The way the keys' edges are muted for its ending feels like washing your hands in a bag of rough-cut diamonds. The second, 'Ariel's Letter and the Rain,' has a mysterious title that turns out to be far less abstract than you might imagine. It references a friend making some suggestions involving the rhythms and flow of nature at a crucial moment in the tune's gestation. As simple as that, and the resultant sounds are stunning. The final, side-long 'Soft Focus II' begins with the same slow-massed notes that end 'Soft Focus I,' but it mostly explores long tones generated by two or three notes that fluctuate and pulse like soft drops of dew on a car's window, drooling to the wind's commands while accreting size and strength. After a while, things shift to small piano figures that repeat and mutate casually, before cascading upwards with a sense of coalescent rebirth. Unlike Soft Focus Volume I, there are no vocals on this album, but the music creates its own meditative language that will transport you from wherever you happen to be, into warm sunshine and air filled with the languorous scents of earth awakening. Paradise is rarely this portable." --Byron Coley, 2024
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FTR 757LP
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Edition of 300. "For his fourth Feeding Tube release, Curtis Godino (now a resident of the greater Nashville area) has created a soundtrack album for a destroyed film that exists only in his mind. Playing with a raft of fine musicians, unencumbered by having to match his music up with actual extant images, Curtis has created a suite of tunes that are stylistically connected to his earlier works, yet expand themselves into hitherto unexplored realms. A well-regarded maestro of the organ and Mellotron, Curtis's music has long reminded certain listeners of Frank Zappa's best mid '60s instrumental work -- music tied to the friendlier edge of 20th Century avant garde traditions, infused with a sort of rockist approach. And this is still true on Discorporation (a term perhaps most famously used on the Mothers' Absolutely Free LP), although the music here also references Ennio Morricone, Wendy Carlos, and even Angelo Baldalamenti, with results that are as cinematic as all get out. There are ten players besides Curtis on Discorporation, and the only ones whose names I recognize are the D'Addaroio brothers from the Lemon Twigs. But they all sound great. Huge reeking waves of sound spill out of the speakers just about begging you to close your eyes, rub them hard and start creating a personal movie inside your skull. Something with a huge Technicolor expanse filled with rubbery little cactus plants and guys who walk their horses into phone booths and then disappear. The imaginational possibilities suggested by Godino's fat orchestral sound can haul your brain in almost any direction you're capable of visualizing. And frankly, it transports me back to my first immersive experiences with music, sprawled on the carpet of my parents' living room, listening to the Frank Chackfield Orchestra's recording of Ernest Gold's theme for Stanley Kramer's 1959 movie, On the Beach, on their Motorola console stereo. Never having seen the film, I was freed to imagine its story unfolding in any way I wanted, and doing just that was one of my favorite ways to spend a rainy afternoon in 1960. Sixty-four years later, Godino is offering us all the same chance once again. And anyone who doesn't take him up on the offer is a goddamn duffer. Brilliant stuff, man." --Byron Coley, 2024
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FTR 766LP
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LP version. Mayday is the third LP by Montreal-based artist, Myriam Gendron. It follows her earlier, critically acclaimed albums, Not So Deep As A Well (2014) and Ma Délire: Songs Of Love, Lost & Found (2021). Myriam began exploring the complex folk traditions of Quebec (and beyond), with Ma délire, which combines traditional and original songs with arrangements that make space for avant-garde musical interludes by such folks as guitarist Bill Nace (Body/Head) and renowned jazz percussionist Chris Corsano. Mayday presents an even more syncretic fusion of the elements Myriam uses to create her sound. Most of the songs are original, sung in both English and French, and they blend traditional and avant elements with abandon. She is often accompanied on this album by the guitarist Marisa Anderson and drummer Jim White (Dirty Three, Xylouris White), whose work provides a quietly aggressive sort of free-rock base. Additional players include Montreal bassist Cédric Dind-Lovie, Bill Nace and saxophonist Zoh Amba. Mayday is a thoroughly thrilling effort that manages to create new vistas of sound while maintaining a feel that is both intimate and familiar. The music here certainly possesses a richly serious tone, but Myriam Gendron (like Leonard Cohen) is able to infuse her darkness with a subtle, powerful light that reminds listeners that even the most pitch-black night is but a transitional state. Beautiful work. Recorded at home and at Hotel2Tango with Howard Bilerman and Shea Brossard. Mastered by Harris Newman.
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FTR 766X-LP
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LP version. Green color vinyl. Mayday is the third LP by Montreal-based artist, Myriam Gendron. It follows her earlier, critically acclaimed albums, Not So Deep As A Well (2014) and Ma Délire: Songs Of Love, Lost & Found (2021). Myriam began exploring the complex folk traditions of Quebec (and beyond), with Ma délire, which combines traditional and original songs with arrangements that make space for avant-garde musical interludes by such folks as guitarist Bill Nace (Body/Head) and renowned jazz percussionist Chris Corsano. Mayday presents an even more syncretic fusion of the elements Myriam uses to create her sound. Most of the songs are original, sung in both English and French, and they blend traditional and avant elements with abandon. She is often accompanied on this album by the guitarist Marisa Anderson and drummer Jim White (Dirty Three, Xylouris White), whose work provides a quietly aggressive sort of free-rock base. Additional players include Montreal bassist Cédric Dind-Lovie, Bill Nace and saxophonist Zoh Amba. Mayday is a thoroughly thrilling effort that manages to create new vistas of sound while maintaining a feel that is both intimate and familiar. The music here certainly possesses a richly serious tone, but Myriam Gendron (like Leonard Cohen) is able to infuse her darkness with a subtle, powerful light that reminds listeners that even the most pitch-black night is but a transitional state. Beautiful work. Recorded at home and at Hotel2Tango with Howard Bilerman and Shea Brossard. Mastered by Harris Newman.
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FTR 766CD
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Mayday is the third LP by Montreal-based artist, Myriam Gendron. It follows her earlier, critically acclaimed albums, Not So Deep As A Well (2014) and Ma Délire: Songs Of Love, Lost & Found (2021). Myriam began exploring the complex folk traditions of Quebec (and beyond), with Ma délire, which combines traditional and original songs with arrangements that make space for avant-garde musical interludes by such folks as guitarist Bill Nace (Body/Head) and renowned jazz percussionist Chris Corsano. Mayday presents an even more syncretic fusion of the elements Myriam uses to create her sound. Most of the songs are original, sung in both English and French, and they blend traditional and avant elements with abandon. She is often accompanied on this album by the guitarist Marisa Anderson and drummer Jim White (Dirty Three, Xylouris White), whose work provides a quietly aggressive sort of free-rock base. Additional players include Montreal bassist Cédric Dind-Lovie, Bill Nace and saxophonist Zoh Amba. Mayday is a thoroughly thrilling effort that manages to create new vistas of sound while maintaining a feel that is both intimate and familiar. The music here certainly possesses a richly serious tone, but Myriam Gendron (like Leonard Cohen) is able to infuse her darkness with a subtle, powerful light that reminds listeners that even the most pitch-black night is but a transitional state. Beautiful work. Recorded at home and at Hotel2Tango with Howard Bilerman and Shea Brossard. Mastered by Harris Newman.
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FTR 750LP
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"MB Jones and Rey Sapienz first encountered one another in 2018. Jones was living in South Korea and visited Kampala, Uganda with his partner. Before their trip he was surprised to find that the Nyege Nyege label knew of him through his ROK SPY record, which had even led certain label associates to wonder if, because of that project's presentation, he was an actual secret agent. Jones stayed for a few days at Villa Nyege, where label co-founder Arlen Dilsizian introduced him to Rey Sapienz. Prompted by a question Jones had about a man in Uganda building rockets in his backyard, Dilsizian had the notion to name the band after a Congolese rocket program, and recording ensued. Plans for Jones to return were dashed by a global pandemic, and thus the pair were forced, like so many, to work remotely. Processing of their initial sessions yielded the Grey Parrots cassette, released in an edition of 100. For this next album, they wanted something that more closely resembled songs. Jones crafted instrumental tracks and sent them to Sapienz, who handled the vocals and written word. Results were returned to Jones to be wrangled into their final versions. Along the way, a host of guest artists contributed as well. Jones was chuffed to get Otim Alpha on a track, and Northeast underground heads will be pleased as punch with the riotous appearance of Fat Worm of Error's Tim Sheldon. Among others. The music draws from disparate cultural touchstones to create its own vernacular. Enticing and unpredictable rhythms abound, punctuated by groovy loops, layers, and conglomerates of mechanical tones and atmospheres. Some songs are full of high frequencies and high energy, some swim in darker psychedelic waters. Some are spastic and crammed with information, some embrace space and breath. The vocals are uniformly excellent. The elements are mashed up, but it's a far cry from the stale concept of a 'mashup,' where familiar elements get bolted together in a clever manner that makes adults say, 'Wow, that's neat!' The music of Troposphere 7 blends sounds and styles as painters mix pigments to create something magical. To Keyi Toko Zonga a stunning experience, showcasing a highly sophisticated sense of possibility. Whether or not there will be another Troposphere 7 album remains to be seen and, to a degree, doesn't matter. What counts is that we have this marvelous LP. Given the creative restlessness of the participants, who knows if they'd want to do it all again anyway. This is art made for the moment it's in, reveling in the reality it conjures. So be here now, you won't regret it." --Matt Krefting, 2024
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FTR 758LP
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"A very nice return to unadorned acoustic guitar playing by one of the form's masters. Allred's last album for FTR, What Strange Flowers Grow in the Shade (FTR 656LP) was more of an imaginary band outing, but Folk Guitar plays it straight. Joseph reports they'd been listening to a lot to pieces by 16th-century composer, John Dowland, and the solo work of Pentangle's John Renbourn while this album was gestating. They also note Hammer Studio horror-film soundtracks as a touchstone for certain tunes, while others were inspired by the music in Chinese fantasy TV shows, and poetic fragments by Sappho. All of which means, this is another deeply considered and beautifully rendered set of tunes by this Tennessee-based rambler. Unlike some of Allred's early solo work, which manifested the same sort of syncretic brassiness as Robbie Basho's Takoma-era work, several of the pieces here display an extreme clarity of attack that reminds me a bit of British guitarist, John Pearse, whose work also explored folk and classical traditions (sometimes simultaneously). But of course, Allred's playing is as original as always. They manage to blend whatever influences they have consumed into perfect gems of musical karma -- each facet glimmering like a transcendental star. Folk Guitar is a work of unalloyed brilliance, and will prove to be a boon companion for anyone attuned to the art of solo guitar music." --Byron Coley, 2024
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FTR 756LP
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Feeding Tube announces The Band Whose Name Is A Symbol LP. Verdun is the first studio LP this war-torn group have recorded in some time and boy oh boy what a magnificent freewheelin', incendiary and blissed out racket TBWNIS have conjured. Over the last 15 years there are few groups that have been more prolific or dedicated to pushing psychedelic rock and all things cosmic to its limits. With Verdun their sound has become even more expansive -- Scott Thompsons' outer zone zonk horn blowing... Jason Vaughan and Chris Laramee deep space swirling on synth/keys... Bill Guerrero's twelve-string is shimmering and Brydsian but this is the jangle of nails down your spinal chord? Dave Reford untamed and unleashed and going full tilt with Nathaniel Hurlow, and John Westhaver precise and driving. Verdun contains three monstrous compositions where shimmering tones unfold into sinister drone-territory which resemble German pioneers Neu! playing "This Heat!," where abrasive guitars and wild riffing, repetitive beats and raw primitivism are densely packed into a larger-than-life sound that never stops climbing skywards -- never have TBWNIS sounds so euphoric playing their brand of ecstatic rock 'n' roll. For anyone that likes to get lost in sound -- Verdun is a sonic amusement part -- close your eyes and climb aboard this rollercoaster, strap yourself in tight and let yourself get lost in the heaviest of vibrations as you go for a breathless physical/visceral ride. TBWNIS are one of the essential groups of the world's psychedelic underground and Verdun is a freaked-out trip.
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FTR 399CS
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"Tekla Peterson is the new pop-oriented solo project helmed by Wisconsin's Taralie Peterson. Peterson has been a member of Spires That In the Sunset Rise since their founding in 2001. Most recently a duo with Ka Baird, Spires has a sound that began deeply rooted in underground folk music, but evolved into a much more overtly jazzoid space. We released their 2017 collaboration LP with Chicago percussionist Michael Zerang, Illinois Glossalia (FTR 285LP). But Peterson has always had solo projects going. First she had Tar Pet, an exceedingly fine exploration of so-called wyrd folk. Later there was more avant/jazz-oriented, Louise Bock, with whom we did a 2017 solo LP, Repetitives in Illocality (FTR 374LP) and 2021's All Summer Long Is Gone (FTR 382LP) -- a duo album with string wizard, Pat 'PG Six' Gubler. More recently we have been introduced to a 'pop' persona, Tekla Peterson, who debuted with a 2022 cassette called Heart Press. Heart Press was created in reaction to the end of a long personal relationship, and is a cool, uneasy pairing of contempo-pop readymades and lyrics questioning some foundational aspects of romance. Mine to Give is Tekla's similarly-styled, though constantly evolving, sophomore effort. Assisted by Rob Jacobs on bass and beats, Peterson's vocals, keys, bass and sax are up front at all times, and do a massively fine job defining a musical/emotional space that is simultaneously pop-oriented and avant-garde. The songs and arrangements often have a surface feel akin to something you'd hear on commercial radio, but there are lots of strange experimental textures and techniques that enliven, enrich and transform the material into something that is transcendently 'other.' Parts sound a bit like what I imagine Taylor Swift has going. Inside those walls you'll hear echoes of acid folk, avant-jazz and post-industrial compositions, but only if you pay careful attention. As with other female artists who began their journey in the sub-underground and kept going (Natalie Mering's Weyes Blood, Meg Remy's U.S. Girls), Peterson creates deeply coded music with enough surface sheen to keep slow pokes from ever perceiving what's going on in the depths. The spelunker's pay-off. Great stuff." --Byron Coley, 2024
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FTR 765LP
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"Engelchen" literally translates as "little angels," and for many in the febrile, dangerous era of the 1930s in Nazi-occupied Europe, as they wrote letters to arrange their paths out of danger as refugees, these were Ida and Louise Cook. Ida and Louise spent much of their early years in Sunderland, and in adulthood lived in a suburb of London with their parents. They were enormous fans of opera, and led relatively quiet and unfussy lives, Ida working for the civil service as a secretary and Louise as a writer of Mills & Boon romances under a pseudonym. Yet secretly these resourceful and eccentric women were using their musical obsessions as a means to help dozens of refugees escape with their lives. Their secretive heroics now almost beggar belief, and when Alison Cotton, herself from Sunderland, first discovered their story, she couldn't understand why it wasn't more widely known. Furthermore, she was inspired by their courage, fortitude and derring-do to compose Engelchen, a musical tribute to the duo's lives and work, first performed at Seventeen Nineteen Holy Church in Sunderland and now a full-length release by Rocket Recordings. Engelchen is a work which builds a bridge between the emotional intensity of the music that inspired the Cook sisters and the bravery and jeopardy of their lives. This story is relayed by Alison Cotton, whether acapella or by means of richly emotive string arrangements, with a deftness of touch, sensitivity and intensity that matches the feverish nature of the experiences and the unforgiving environs in which they took place. Summoning foley work to sum up the atmospheres of the sister's journeys (from train noises to the sound of gulls on the English coast, to the ominous military drumbeat) Engelchen is a transporting work whose spirit is situated in a very specific time and place. In putting together Engelchen, Alison met up with refugees living in the UK today via the charity North East Rise to discover the challenges they've faced on their journey, and those experiences ultimately found their way into a new version of the piece's eponymous track, connecting the Cook sisters' story to 2024. This is more than merely an inspirational tribute to two mavericks who beat the odds in an unforgettable feat of altruism. It's a celebration of the human spirit, one that reflects a universality in its narrative which transcends the boundaries of history and impacts very urgently on our daily lives. Whatever attempts may be made to tell this story, it's hard to imagine one that resonates deeper than Engelchen. Co-release with Rocket Recordings.
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FTR 742LP
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"Beautiful third LP helmed by multi-instrumentalist/tape manipulator, Brian Lucas. Following up on 2021's The Incandescent Switch (FTR 606LP) and 2022's The Air's Chrysalis Chime (FTR 675LP), Quartz Hive is a post-pandemic swirl of cloud sound based on the kind of music that makes all your inner walls melt like wax. Lucas has a wonderful way of creating clusters of texture that circle the room, slowly accreting bits of lovely ambient sound that transform themselves from vague suggestions into full-blown songs without adhering to any logic other than their own. Some of the players colluding here are Old Million Eye vets, like Steven R. Smith, Sheila Bosco, and Kevin Van Yserloo. But there are many new heads on the scene as well, like harpist Ceylan Hay (Bell Lungs) and saxophonist Zekarias Thompson (Agnes Martian), who adds a distinct Canterbury flavor to the tunes on which he plays. Like Lucas's other current outfits, like 43 Odes and Dire Wolves, Old Million Eye makes psychedelic music that glides through your head with startling originality. There's very little here that hews to stereotypical psych formulae, but its tendrils still manage to engage all your dream receptors with delicate power and grace. Music as deep as any tab in any ocean. Quarts Hive is a sonic delivery vehicle of singular beauty. Gorgeous stuff." --Byron Coley, 2024
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FTR 754LP
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"Finely thuggish debut LP by a trio led by guitarist Micah Blue Smaldone, a well-known figure in the same South Portland Maine scene that gave us Big Blood and other treats. Indeed, Micah's fourth solo album was a split with Big Blood, but the fingerpicking sound of his solo recordings is a far cry from Wake in Fright. WIF are a trio. Micah plays guitar, Greg Bazinet plays bass, Jonas Eule plays drums, and all of them add vocals. It was Greg who sort of got things going when he convinced Micah to record some demos in 2022. Because of the lousy quality of almost everything in that year, the material Micah put together ended up being a lot harsher and hard-edged than anything he'd done since his days with the Pinkerton Thugs. Greg and Jonas eventually decided to assemble WIF to perform these songs the way they were supposed to be played -- loud, proud and punky. The models Micah had used while writing were largely '70s Australian bands -- from AC/DC to the Saints -- but to my ear, he has gotten pretty close to recreating the same vibe as that which drove early '80s Mission of Burma. Indeed, many of WIF's songs have the same lop-sided anthemic weirdness that Clint Conley's tunes in Burma did. There is also a whiff of the Twin Cities in their propulsion. I can hear echoes of both the Suicide Commandos and mid-period Husker Du inside WIF's manic churn. And like both those bands, they display a lot of attention to central riffs as a compositional motif, with the vocals howling to keep up. Very cool stuff. I can almost close my eyes and imagine these guys on stage at the Underground in Allston during the long cold winter of 1981, when Reagan had just been sworn in as president and we really thought the world was gonna end. So maybe this is just the kinda music everyone needs when it's Crisis Time. Which means we probably need Wake in Fright right now. As much as we've ever needed anything in our lives. Selah, motherfucker." --Byron Coley, 2024
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FTR 755LP
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"From the sui generis pop Wonsongwriting mind of Ryan Power comes World of Wonder, his first album since 2020's Mind the Neighbors (FTR 519LP). Following a string of influential releases on the Vermont label NNA tapes, World of Wonder is Power's second release on Massachusetts imprint Feeding Tube Records. While its predecessor presented Power in a largely stripped down, acoustic setting with lush horn and string arrangements, World of Wonder has Power return to his characteristic hyper-produced, high-fidelity home studio to craft a set of ten songs which harmonically undulate, consistently surprise, and which all further solidifies him as one of the most engaging songsmiths of our time. Power, 48, describes the lyrical content of this album as reckoning with a 'midlife crisis' -- or maybe more appropriately, myriad crises -- which encompass breakups, regrets, reconciliations, a horrific bike accident, childhood traumas, and personal forgiveness through it all. Despite the remarkable candor with which these morose issues are delivered, Power makes sure to convey them with levity and a surprising amount of humor. Power has always lyrically been an open-book, and World of Wonder is perhaps his most personally revealing statement to date. To that point, he says: 'I love art where at one second it's hysterically funny, but then at the next it's tugging at your heartstrings.' World of Wonder is laden with imminently catchy earworms, and even as they oscillate in mood and approach, Power never once sacrifices his penchant for songcraft and intricate, crystalline structures. The album opens with the infectious masterpiece 'Psychic Mechanic,' whose fitting opening line has Power wondering about 'how many people [he's] disappointed,' within a 'jungle of misguided faith.' Other highlights include the buoyant 'Was That Love,' a reckoning of previous relationships; the highly emotive ballad 'Back Online' where Power croons about how 'everything is a little precarious;' 'Silent Star' where Power mourns the loss of a friendship with the potent 'It's true, I still love you/it's true, we are through,' the meaning of which comes across despite the line being delivered in something of a British accent; 'Dracula Reality' where the singer reflects on being painted as Dracula by his grandfather for Halloween in 1983 but using that as a trojan horse for questions of identity and anxiety of attention on himself. World of Wonder concludes with the exquisite eponymous track where Power begins by asserting that '[he's] amazed by the world around [him]' and that he gets 'lost in the world of wonder' -- within Ryan Power's idiosyncratic pop universe, we listeners likewise get lost and are astounded by his singular accomplishments." --Sam Weinberg, 2024
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FTR 734LP
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"Jaw Guzzi is the ninth LP Melted Men have released since 1995. This is reportedly the year they formed, but as with all Melted Things, there is little hard information to back this up. Like an earlier experimental 'rock' band from Northern California (by way of Louisiana), Melted Men have embraced something akin to Nigel Senada's Theory of Obscurity. Facts regarding the band's details are smudgy at best, and that's the way they like it. About all I could get out my contact for the group is that they are currently a six piece, with members based in France, Croatia, Holland and America. They seem to have initially been centered in or around Athens, Georgia. And while they play live infrequently, the reviews of shows I've managed to dig up seem to be amazingly freaked out and fucked up. Which comes as no surprise. I've not heard all their records, but the ones I have are as bizarre as they are beautiful, and the same is certainly true of Jaw Guzzi. The music is a tough-to-untangle bramble of live racket, pre-taped material and audio fuckery of unknown origins. There are surely comparisons to be made with artists like Orchid Spangiafora and Glands of External Secretion, but Melted Men display more overt musical structure than those collage-oriented maestros. I have the (perhaps misplaced) notion that Melted Men are able to recreate larger portions of this sonic smut in live performance. Like the aforementioned (or at least aforalluded-to) Residents, Melted Men mix 'actual' and pre-recorded material in a way that taps deep into the artistic vein of surrealist/dada-damage that has pumped through the best fringe culture for a century. There are also similarities to certain units of the L.A.F.M.S, as well as the Birmingham Alabama Surrealist coven that birthed the Say-Day-Bew and Trans Museq scenes. Most of the material here is instrumental, using sly pinches of style ranging from lounge-exotica to Gary Wilson-style porn-funk to noisy ethnic forgeries, the music flows like sweet hot lava, igniting everything it touches into woozy gouts of flame. Jaw Guzzi is a bracing goddamn spin, sure to please anyone who likes buzzing guitars, clonky percussion and cascades of dark weirdness. In the immortal words of Roald Dahl, 'better coffee than this, there isn't.'" --Byron Coley, 2023
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FTR 751LP
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"Having listened to this disk 20 or so times over the past week, I have been struck time and again by the gently naif quality of Dan Beckman-Moon's songwriting. I keep thinking of Neil Young's earliest solo tunes, particularly 'Sugar Mountain,' as a sort of spiritual touchstone, although truthfully the music doesn't really sound anything like that. Still, the emotional core of the material has a similar sweetness and simplicity, while managing to steer clear of mawkishness with a nimble delicacy that parallel's Neil's early work. I have come to think of Valley of Spaces as a collaborative effort between Dan and his partner, Amy Moon, but this album often feels much more like Dan's solo effort. Amy definitely shows up in spots, but I miss the weird edge she brings to everything she does. I mean, there's a reason she was one of the first people Chris Corsano picked when he was putting together the original Ecstatic Yod crew back in the '90s -- her off-kilter perspective adds depth and subtle strangeness to her entire oeuvre. The same is often true of Dan as well (he was in Impractical Cockpit, after all), but That's Understanding has a purist hippie quality that owes karmic debts to the waves and hills of Santa Cruz, where Villages was based for the Plague Years (the years during which this music was written and recorded.) Most of Villages's avant proclivities are put on-hold this time. And whether or not that was the plan, this decision provides a folky balm for the last few lost years. Amy, Caleb Mulkerin (Big Blood), Don Godwin (Impractical Cockpit), and others -- especially violinist Kaethe Hostetter -- add to the gentle vibes that abound on this album. It's a set of music that bears up to many repeated spins. A very charming slice, for sure." --Byron Coley, 2023
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FTR 733LP
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First Nod release from 1992, now on vinyl for the first time. Originally self-released as a CD, a subset of the recordings were perfectly re-mastered by James Plotkin for this slab of black vinyl. During the "year punk broke," this trio (and sometimes four-piece) were holed up in a Western NY enclave, perfecting their craft of imperfections. A combination of studio and home recordings, this self-titled gem perfectly introduces you to the charming shambly rock which Nod has been creating for the past 30+ years. And after many self-released CDs and singles, and while getting "this close" with a stint on Steve Shelly's Smells Like Records (Steve was the drummer of Sonic Youth), the band has been producing a solid string of releases for Rochester NY based Carbon Records. The release includes driving/catchy tunes like "Summertime" and "Running Into Trees," while "It Don't Bring Me Down" has a perfect overlay of strumming guitar, similar to the guitar interplay of Bowie and Ronson circa '72, on top of an intense groove, while then breaking down into a slow warble, giving you enough time to take a swig. The meat of the release consists of a great combination of scratchy-guitar rockers -- transitioning into the Dada-esque blues of "Hot Potatoes," and then finally ending with "Wooden Chair" and "Queens of Lattice," which could almost be cassette out-takes from Reed & co. Co-released with Carbon Records.
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FTR 735LP
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Albany, New York's Sky Furrows -- guitarist Mike Griffin, bassist Eric Hardiman, drummer Phil Donnelly and poet/vocalist Karen Schoemer -- release their second album, Relect and Oppose. Recorded in 2022 with Justin Pizzoferrato at Sonelab Studios and Pete Donnelly at Katonah Sound, the album's eight songs crush and crunch, agitate and sprawl. All songs were written by Schoemer/Grifin and arranged by Sky Furrows, except for "Koba Grozny," with music by Grifin and words adapted by Schoemer from Martin Amis's 2002 book Koba the Dread. Sky Furrows formed in 2016 and released their self-titled debut album in 2020 on Tape Drift/Skell/Philthy Rex Records, but band members had been crossing each other's paths for decades. Schoemer and Hardiman overlapped in the late '80s at WCWM, a college radio station in Virginia. In the late '80s and '90s, Donnelly used to trek from his home in Saratoga Springs to Hoboken, New Jersey to see shows at the legendary club Maxwell's, where Schoemer was a regular. By the mid 2000's all four were living upstate. Grifin, Hardiman and Donnelly have roots in the local experimental scene and are longtime members of Albany psych band Burnt Hills. Schoemer, a former music critic for the New York Times, was developing her craft as a poet and began contributing to music projects around 2013. She has an MFA in creative writing from The Writer's Foundry in Brooklyn, NY and collaborates with Mike Watt in the bassvoice duo Jaded Azurites and with Oli Heffernan and his rotating cast of free-jazzers in Ivan the Tolerable. Grifin records and performs as Parashi and with the band Valley of Weights; Hardiman operates solo as Rambutan and plays in Century Plants and Spiral Wave Nomads. Sky Furrows' aggregated knowledge of, dedication to, and participation in postpunk, psych and experimental music scenes is vast and deep. This institutional commitment infuses every moment of Relect and Oppose. Grifin's razor shred and calamitous distortion and a foil in Schoemer's semi-spoken delivery and onslaught of observations and images. In "Shopping Bags" a woman doesn't realize the loneliness she's carrying around, while "No Cause for Concern" relentlessly builds into a mental and physical breakdown. Hang on the words or cruise on waves of sound -- Relect and Oppose melds both, forcefully.
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FTR 730LP
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Co-released with Repetidor. With five albums released, several tours around Spain, Europe, Uruguay and the United States in which he has paired among others with Geoff Farina (Karate) or Glenn Jones and even performed at the legendary John Fahey tribute festival in Takoma Park, Maryland (The Thousand Incarnations of the Rose), the passing of time has consolidated Isasa's musical career to the point of winning the praise of such exquisite critics as Byron Coley or Wire magazine, the blessing of masters of the new guitar such as Max Ochs or Richard Osborn, as well as the unanimous admiration and recognition of his contemporaries. Now, after a decade of solo career and the recently released debut of his current side project, Burro (featuring Trice), Conrado Isasa presents this fifth studio album, entitled Canciones de amor (Love songs). Sublime artefact with which the guitarist from Madrid (of Uruguayan origin) celebrates love in capital letters, through one of the purest poetic articulations that exist: the form without words. In this case, song without words. Recorded with Carasueño in Lar de maravillas, Zaragoza, although the album incorporates new timbres as far as instrumentation is concerned; such as the autoharp of Lorena Álvarez, the voice of Trice, the synthesizers and the piano of Carasueño himself and even suggestive voices stolen in the intimacy; all of this works at the service of the melody. A narrative melody that responds, concatenates and harmonises, displaying a polyphonic palette of chromatic relations that is so expressive that it moves. Isasa masters the tempos of melodic language like almost no one else nowadays (much less in the genre). What's more, in these compositions his skill is such that the maestro gradually, partially and carefully -- in chiaroscuro -- unveils the refractory legacy of his life experience to place it, bravely, before us. In doing so, he achieves the most difficult thing: to turn his life into music, to touch the universal.
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FTR 697LP
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"Like last year's brilliant Wings Dipped in Fire (FTR 398CS, 2023), this new album was recorded by Taylor Hales at Chicago's Electrical Audio. But this time, the duo (once known at Mako Sica) is joined not just by keyboard/trumpet master Thymme Jones, but also percussionist Hamid Drake, bassist Tatsu Aoki (on shamisen) and bassist Joshua Abrams. A total post-form all-star line-up, with more combined chops than a breakfast table crammed with lumberjacks. The mood on june 22 is weird and simmering. Blasts of heat alternate with spaced-out jam abstractions with Brent Fuscaldo's vocals and Przemyslaw Krys Drazek's guitar and trumpet dodging in and out of available crevices. As with all of this combo's recent music, exactly what genre they occupy is not easy to say. This is something they share with this generation of Chicago improvisers, who often seem to begin in jazz, but evolve into something much more intangible, mysterious and beautiful. Just as Abrams' Natural Information Society is making sounds requiring multi-hyphonic descriptives, so Drazek Fuscaldo have dissolved categorical confines, although their journey to this point began in a rock (or post-rock) formulation. By now the music contains multitudes -- jazz, folk, world music, avant-garde experimentalism and beyond. It defies being called anything other than MUSIC. Great music. And to quote the Captain once again, 'If you got ears, you gotta listen.' Don't know what else to say, except june 22 is a killer." --Byron Coley, 2023
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FTR 739LP
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"Vinylization of the splendid 2021 cassette, issued by Garden Portal. The music was recorded partially out west in San Francisco and Point Reyes (hence the title), as well as in Jeffrey Alexander's current locale of Philadelphia. An instrumental addition to Alexander's canon, the music was mostly generated on guitar, but other sonic elements include -- bass, pebbles, fake mellotron, waves, moog, shells, fife, magnetic tape, and talking book phonograph. The results are a sweet, rural stroll through the kind of mind gardens the various off-shoots of the Youngbloods explored back in the Raccoon Records era, when they were based in Point Reyes as well. Reyes's other main counter-culture avatar was Philip K. Dick, who lived there for a few years in the late '50s and early '60s. But Jeffrey's music displays none of the red-hot paranoia that flashed through PKD's work of that time. If anything, the mood is paranoia's antidote -- a rolling, casual float through cheeb-scented air with lots going on around the edges, but none of it in the least bit threatening. Given the loud sluice of Alexander's recent work with the Heavy Lidders, Reyes feels laid back and reflective, but there's nothing wrong with that. Indeed, there's everything right with it. In times like this, when the cultural shit storm shows no sign of abating, we can all use a record that allows us to lay back and center ourselves. Reyes is just that kind of record, and man is it ever perfectly timed for just such a moment as this." --Byron Coley, 2023
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FTR 751CD
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"First off, there will be an LP of this coming along, but as with Wednesday Knudsen's solo material, the analog manufacturing process is slower than the digital one. In the meantime, here's a CD for play in cars and kitchens everywhere. Having listened to this disk 20 or so times over the past week, I have been struck time and again by the gently naif quality of Dan Beckman-Moon's songwriting. I keep thinking of Neil Young's earliest solo tunes, particularly 'Sugar Mountain,' as a sort of spiritual touchstone, although truthfully the music doesn't really sound anything like that. Still, the emotional core of the material has a similar sweetness and simplicity, while managing to steer clear of mawkishness with a nimble delicacy that parallel's Neil's early work. I have come to think of Valley of Spaces as a collaborative effort between Dan and his partner, Amy Moon, but this album often feels much more like Dan's solo effort. Amy definitely shows up in spots, but I miss the weird edge she brings to everything she does. I mean, there's a reason she was one of the first people Chris Corsano picked when he was putting together the original Ecstatic Yod crew back in the '90s -- her off-kilter perspective adds depth and subtle strangeness to her entire oeuvre. The same is often true of Dan as well (he was in Impractical Cockpit, after all), but That's Understanding has a purist hippie quality that owes karmic debts to the waves and hills of Santa Cruz, where Villages was based for the Plague Years (the years during which this music was written and recorded.) Most of Villages's avant proclivities are put on-hold this time. And whether or not that was the plan, this decision provides a folky balm for the last few lost years. Amy, Caleb Mulkerin (Big Blood), Don Godwin (Impractical Cockpit), and others -- especially violinist Kaethe Hostetter -- add to the gentle vibes that abound on this album. It's a set of music that bears up to many repeated spins. A very charming slice, for sure." --Byron Coley, 2023
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FTR 738LP
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"One of the first things you notice about Dennis Tyfus is that his lips are too small for his mouth. This becomes especially obvious if you go out to eat with him late at night in Antwerp. He has to really grease up whatever sausage he chooses with a lot of mayonnaise in order to slide it through the taut sphincter that guards his mouthly cavern. This physical fact has made Dennis's speaking voice a thing of horror for many years, but we have only just realized he is able to sing pretty well through this tiny aperture. Indeed, if you are not watching closely, you might think he was actually able to open his mouth as wide a typical human. Which he is not. So it is all the more remarkable that the vocals he creates inside Jeugdbrand (a Flemish slang term for 'lips as of a pony') have a faux full-throated magnificence to them. But this is only one of the great surprises of this new record. Those who have not heard Jeugdbrand's brilliant debut, Siamese Dream (Team) will be shocked... to discover how utterly musical Dennis's new duo with drummer/etc-ist Jeroen Stevens actually sounds. Tyfus is one of his generation's most aggressively polymathic tricksters. The vast majority of his projects are... 'a slap in the face of public taste.' But there is something genuine and generous about the music on Smile. It's not not-weird, but the twisted pairings of vocals with percussion, piano, organ and recorder are not off-putting in the least. The vocals show touches of various Folkways Ethnic Library titles, but manage to create a wily and mysterious cloud of sound art, with which the skeletal musical arrangements play beautifully. Jeroen's instrumental inventions are as blasted as Dennis's in their own way. Stevens is probably best known for the insane De Stoeltjes project, on which he covers the entirety of the first Stooges album playing three chairs! But he has done jillions of things, including a quartet with Eric Thielemans, and Chris Corsano whose set is still being drooled over in the Low Countries. But in the context of Jeugdbrand, he is the man who sets the scene in which his partner's canary is allowed to warble." --Byron Coley, 2023
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FTR 740LP
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Co-release with Carbon Records.
"It's my great pleasure to introduce you to guitarist Liam Grant and his debut album, Amoskeag... It's one of those records that critics, fans and musicians alike will look back at and say, 'This is where it all started'... [Liam] has since played with folks like Mike Gangloff, Glenn Jones, Trevor Mackenzie, Buck Curran, Dave Shuford, Joseph Allred... the list of heavy-hitters is already long and continues to grow. Every song on this album taps into raw, rich veins of sound that are simultaneously dense but easy to enjoy; vintage and modern; new yet timeless. The album kicks off with a monster track entitled 'Stratton-Eustis' -- one of those complex yet flowing tunes that makes you think overdubs were involved or the player has grown an extra set of limbs. Then there's 'Kenduskeag,' a raga-esque group recording in an abandoned New England Conservatory building with Ethan WL and the long-standing anonymous drone collective The Suncook Symphony that showcases his already masterful skills for composition and band leadership. The title track, 'Amoskeag,' is a powerful, overflowing whiskey glass full of deep, raw soul, drawn from ages past and times present. The closer, 'Androscoggin River Ragg,' is exactly that, an old-timey blues rag sucked straight from the ether of hundred years past, with Grayson McGuire on banjo and Mike Gangloff on jaw harp. This old, worn-out dog can't begin to express what an honor and privilege it's been to work with Liam and the other various musical misfits and mysticks that he's drawn into his circle. This album captures all that magick and then some. It's not just a good album... nor just a great one... it's a fuckin' important, much-needed beacon in the dark seas of overproduction, ephemera and watered down, easy-to-sell dullness of today...." --Rob Vaughn, 2023
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FTR 659LP
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"Recorded in Madison Wisconsin a year after In The River, the latest record from this amazing trio (Troy Schafer, Patrick Best, Mikel Dimmick) breaks a bit with Spiral Joy's drone-dominant tradition. There is a crackling, noise energy curtain surrounding much of the playing here that makes me remember the sound of the Richmond VA trio, Pelt, from whom Spiral Joy Band draw specific inspiration (as well as two members). The listed instruments are bowed gong, gong, bowed bowls, electric guitar, bowed materials amplified and acoustic, mouthpiece and effects, modified zither. So yeah, there is still a patchwork of drones at the heart of Elvehjem, but there is little in the way of uninterrupted flow. The music on this one is a cascade of sound events with a feel almost more in line with the less antic inventions of Gruppo Di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza than anything inside the 'rock' realm. But there has often been a certain rockist element lurking inside Spiral Joy Band's music (which supplanted the overt hayseed elements of their original iteration) and the direction and manner of their clangor here has the weight of rock rather than something more ephemeral. The two sides are presented as discreet pieces -- 'Shore' and 'Shine' -- but they run together seamlessly, both displaying surface pocks and tremors with a pride usually reserved for magic tricks. The drones are often created with a searing metallic edge, and their spiky protuberances brook no guff. If that ain't rock, at least attitudinally, I'll eat your fucking hat. In the meantime, Elvehjem, is a stone gas to listen to. And, by the way, the name is taken from a famous Wisconsin biochemist, and is not meant as a mean commentary on Orlando Bloom's obsession with the Dave Matthews Band. Although that would be warranted as well. Dig in!" --Byron Coley, 2023
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FTR 712LP
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"At last, the trade edition of Schiamachy has appeared, following the test-press/tour version by more than a couple of months. The album's title is a term used to describe mock battles between warriors. It's a fair description of the music on this record, although it's safe to say the battle was a friendly one. Michael Zerang is a very well-known percussionist, composer and improviser from Chicago, with an amazing jazz-based discography. He previously appeared on the Illinois Glossalia LP (FTR 285LP, 2017) playing with Spires That in the Sunset Rise. Asheville-based guitarist Tashi Dorji is a generation younger than Zerang, but has been an unstoppable force since he hit the scene in 2009, playing in all manner of rock and improv situations. He has appeared on four other Feeding Tube releases, most often with his free form power duo, Manas. It's also worth mentioning that both musicians are nice guys. But even nice guys can get a thrilling mock battle raging, and Schiamachy is surely one for the books. Recorded at Chicago venue, The Hideout, in August 2016, the music ranges from splotchy plucking in the British plink-plonk tradition to something more akin to sophisticated post-rock noise explorations. I kept expecting passages to emerge styled more in the vein of the free-fusion ecstasies explored by McLaughlin with Tony Williams, or what Bishop, Chasny and Corsano do with Rangda, but Michael and Tashi always opted to keep their battle plans more smudged and confounding. The music is not about edges and momentum, it's about textures and collaging. Zerang stays away from any sort of standard set-up here, choosing instead to play an instrument he calls 'Queequeg's Coffin.' He describes this as 'a large hurdy-gurdy like instrument where four cello strings are bowed simultaneously with a friction wheel that is hand-cranked.' It looks as wild as it sounds, creating vast fields of whizzing and ringing, while the guitar strings and knobs wrench and wobble and throb. The sounds on Schiamacy are all about unexpected interactions and the pleasure of new discoveries. The deeper you let these sounds into your head, the farther they'll transport you. Be not a moldy fig, embrace the unknown." --Byron Coley, 2023
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