|
|
|
|
viewing 1 To 11 of 11 items
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
LP
|
|
DR 044LP
|
"Penumbra, from the Latin paene (almost) and umbra (shadow), refers to the partially luminescent fringe of an opaque object, like the streetlight outlining the sole of a shoe hurtling towards your eye. Hypnagogic, from the Greek hupnos (sleep) and agōgos (leading), refers to the drowsy state before sleep. Crazy Doberman here comprises seventeen players from the greater Europe of the Midwest. Basement glyphs. Who's on the lease? And what's under the rug. The owner pays them to keep away the beast of busco. They do spontaneity, welcoming simultaneity, montaged in post. Further spool't month to month, basking in the stroboscope." --Sam Lefebvre
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
LP
|
|
DR 042LP
|
"Slugfuckers' sole full-length Transformational Salt, originally released on Tom Ellard's (Severed Heads) Dogfood Production System in 1981, is an absorbing slab of Australian DIY, dense with thought and fury. The album brings together reprobate dub poetics and thug-drubbing spite in a mangled collage of post-punk disjunct and proto-industrial churn. Art and subcultural adherents are roundly slagged throughout. The group emerged from a college milieu in Sydney, and they've been categorized alongside contemporaries Bleeding Arseholes, Rhythmyx Chymx and N-Lets as anti-music ensembles prizing untutored spontaneity. More useful comparisons include Desperate Bicycles and the Pop Group. Also credited for a sound that seems to collapse, but could also be described as openness or constant fluctuation, is the then-newly translated Anti-Oedipus by Deleuze and Guatarri. Terry Blake (guitar), John Laidler (guitar) and Graham Forsyth (bass) formed Slugfuckers in the late 1970s, with Austin Laverty (drums), Craig Wilcox (keyboards, percussion) and Gordon Renouf (saxophone, bass, guitar) joining later. Transformational Salt followed two 1979 singles, 'Three Feet Behind Glass / Live At Budokan' and 'Instant Classic'." --Sam Lefebvre
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
LP
|
|
DR 043LP
|
"I wrote about the debut cassette from Melbourne's The Shifters in the very first column that I did for MRR three years ago, which gives me all sorts of complicated and confusing feelings about the passage of time. And as evidence that sometimes it takes awhile for historical wrongs to be righted, that criminally limited tape is now finally available in its entirety as an LP [...], following the two songs that resurfaced on the 'Creggan Shops' 7-inch courtesy of It Takes Two back in 2016. The Shifters' stark, repetitive minimalism and shambolic charms always owed more than a little bit to The Fall in their early years, and revisiting the material from the cassette now after Mark E. Smith's passing only reinforces the psychic connection between the lackadaisical post-punk twang in 'Captain Hindsight' and the cracked melodies of something like The Fall's 'Your Heart Out' from the Dragnet era. 'Creggan Shops' is as close to a contemporary successor to those brilliant first two Mekons singles as I've come across, from the tense interplay between the melodica and a creaky violin, to the scritch-scratch guitar, to the nonchalantly harmonized dual vocals, all sounding like they're perpetually on the verge of coming undone. There's way more at play here than blatant UK DIY worship, though -- it's not a huge jump from the homespun, pastoral pop of '80s Australian DIY legends like The Particles and The Cannanes to the Shifters' raggedly melodic 'Colour Me In', and 'The American Attitude to the Law' sprawls into a lengthy Velvet Underground-addled haze, if only Lou Reed had written songs referencing 'drinking cough syrup to fall asleep' instead of heroin." --Erika Elizabeth, Futures & Pasts | MRR #421
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
LP
|
|
DR 041LP
|
"Digital Regress's foray into the fabled NZ underground hops over to the North Island for two exquisite pieces of acoustic DIY and shadowy, cracked pastoralia. After a few years spleen venting at the front of Wellington art brutes Shoes This High, Brent Hayward struck out on his own, self-releasing a few EPs as Smelly Feet before forming The Kiwi Animal with Julie Cooper in 1982. The duo released their first album, Music Media, on Massage Records (their own imprint) in 1984. With the addition of Patrick Waller on cello and sundry other instruments, 1985's Mercy finds an augmented Kiwi Animal trying on what at first glance is a more refined, melancholic sound. But the group's experimental bent, largely restrained on Music Media, soon shows its hand. Pinprick ur-folk guitar themes, blinking on and off, buffeted by radio interference and toy piano; woozy bedsit slow-burns; the arresting croak of Hayward's penpal, William S. Burroughs; even a foray into dosed synth-pop: Mercy presents a unique yield of fraying, autumnal DIY songcraft. The music of The Kiwi Animal, moody and intelligent and often abruptly gentle, works subcutaneously, propelled by guitars that churn and weave -- no jangle here -- and a his 'n' hers vocal delivery for the ages. Digital Regress is happy to make these essentially perfect records available again."
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
LP
|
|
DR 040LP
|
"Digital Regress's foray into the fabled NZ underground hops over to the North Island for two exquisite pieces of acoustic DIY and shadowy, cracked pastoralia. After a few years spleen venting at the front of Wellington art brutes Shoes This High, Brent Hayward struck out on his own, self-releasing a few EPs as Smelly Feet before forming The Kiwi Animal with Julie Cooper in 1982. The duo released their first album, Music Media, on Massage Records (their own imprint) in 1984. Billing itself 'New Acoustic Music,' the Kiwi Animal's debut is a set of introverted and austere yet lambent folk songs. Textural, gently hypnotic guitar chords anchor minimal arrangements, as Hayward and Cooper's entwined vocals -- think Pip Proud meets The Vaselines -- project paranoia and forlorn, diffident cool. Wry, imagistic lyrics somewhere between the stoned political economy of D. Boon and the head-fuck soliloquies of Robert Ashley complete The Kiwi Animal effect. The music of The Kiwi Animal, moody and intelligent and often abruptly gentle, works subcutaneously, propelled by guitars that churn and weave -- no jangle here -- and a his 'n' hers vocal delivery for the ages. Digital Regress is happy to make these essentially perfect records available again."
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
LP
|
|
DR 038LP
|
"From Melbourne Australia, EXEK are proud to unveil their third album, Some Beautiful Species Left. Like their previous releases, Some Beautiful Species Left is the cultivation of numerous edits and overdubs, where once again EXEK subscribe to Brian Eno's philosophy of the studio as an instrument. This MO allows the songwriting process to develop simultaneously alongside the recording process whilst privileging greater sonic control. The result is a record difficult to pigeonhole but post punk is perhaps the easiest way to categories EXEK's music -- post-modern and containing the defiance inherent within punk whilst incorporating elements of dub production, classical arrangements, hip hop and krautrock rhythms and the use of kitchen appliances as instruments."
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
LP
|
|
DR 039LP
|
"Recorded in Oakland and San Francisco last year, SPF is Adam Keith (Cube, Mansion) Will Isengole, and Dave Easlick (Jackie O Motherfucker). There is something both listless and challenging about Paul's McCartney, something of our time, and something that, in that respect, demands to be taken seriously, and made sense of. The music which follows is capricious but interesting, its themes transitory, and its coherence provided primarily by the percussion. Nevertheless, its melodies, when they appear, are disarming and lovely. In only the first few minutes of the recording I hear: a siren, a jammed printer, church bells, the beeping of an heart rate monitor (a profoundly sad sound, if one is in possession of the right experiences), and finally what sounds to me like an homage to the tension producing minor key synth sounds that constituted a certain staple of horror film scores in the 1980s. Excepting the last as nominally musical, there is a tendency here to aestheticize the non-musical. This is not unique to the present case, of course. For some genres, e.g. industrial, it is the very reason for being. However, in that case the transfiguration of non-musical elements into musical ones is obvious; in this case, the process is less complete, and so, it seems to me, the final product more obscure."
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
LP
|
|
DR 037LP
|
2021 restock. "For a decade, Maxine Funke has cut an idiosyncratic path as a singer-songwriter, all the while avoiding the parochial retreads of that worn-out label. Funke's music is intimate and deeply intelligent, buoyed by a sense of effortlessness that belies a scrupulous attention to the smallest of details. Felt appeared in 2012 in a vinyl edition of 100 on the Epic Sweep imprint. This album has an altogether more crepuscular feel, making slightly fuller use of the sonic palette -- an increase in dissonance, errant drum rumbles, and nigh-ambient instrumental murmurings around which flow Funke's basically perfect songs. The brevity, yet fullness, of the tracks and Funke's unadorned if oblique arrangements lend a sense not of sketches but of fields of color, the sensation of late fall foliage glimpsed through the window of a quickly passing train. Indeed, as much as these recordings suggest the close quarters and warmth of a small home, Maxine Funke makes music for traveling, providing accompaniment through the rough, unfeeling vectors of a disenchanted world and, as she does on the last song of Felt, imagining it differently. As the titles of these albums suggest, Funke's is a tactile art, as warm and tangible as the tape hiss bathing it, her words and music rescuing everyday moments from traps of distraction and defeat. Following limited edition vinyl reissues in 2016 -- a swansong for Nemo Bidstrup's sorely missed Time-Lag Recordings imprint -- we're happy to make Felt and Lace widely available. Maxine Funke's music, immediate and entirely unpretentious, suggests a world in which Katherine Mansfield rubs shoulders with Liz Harris, or Vashti Bunyan grows up on the Flying Nun catalog. Absolutely essential."
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
LP
|
|
DR 036LP
|
Limited 2021 restock. "For a decade, Maxine Funke has cut an idiosyncratic path as a singer-songwriter, all the while avoiding the parochial retreads of that worn-out label. Funke's music is intimate and deeply intelligent, buoyed by a sense of effortlessness that belies a scrupulous attention to the smallest of details. Lace was originally released as a CD-R in 2008 on Alastair Galbraith's Next Best Way label. Imagine the just-so arrangements of Josephine Foster and the knowing quotidian eye of Sibylle Baier meeting the realism of Funke's compatriots Turiiya or the acoustic textures of the Kiwi Animal and you're nearly there -- but in that gap lies the undeniable pull of Funke's music. Short songs for nylon string guitar, violin, piano, incidental snippets of bird song and furniture creaks, brief instrumental interludes in the vein of Funke's regular collaborator Galbraith: this is the realest of deals. The metaphysic of 'Second Hand Store' cuts to the uncompromised heart of this record, a rejection of the idea of ownership in favor of communal chance, the ragged comfort of things lived-in and passed on, a searching with no need to find, let alone possess. Indeed, as much as these recordings suggest the close quarters and warmth of a small home, Maxine Funke makes music for traveling, providing accompaniment through the rough, unfeeling vectors of a disenchanted world and, as she does on the last song of Felt, imagining it differently. As the titles of these albums suggest, Funke's is a tactile art, as warm and tangible as the tape hiss bathing it, her words and music rescuing everyday moments from traps of distraction and defeat. Following limited edition vinyl reissues in 2016 -- a swansong for Nemo Bidstrup's sorely missed Time-Lag Recordings imprint -- we're happy to make Felt and Lace widely available. Maxine Funke's music, immediate and entirely unpretentious, suggests a world in which Katherine Mansfield rubs shoulders with Liz Harris, or Vashti Bunyan grows up on the Flying Nun catalog. Absolutely essential."
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
LP
|
|
DR 027LP
|
"Oakland three-piece Preening is Max Nordile (saxophone, vocals), Alejandra Alcala (bass), and Sam Lefebvre (drums). Gang Laughter, mostly recorded in the summer of 2018 by HL Nelly at Santo in West Oakland, is Preening's first full-length. The album follows three 7"s on labels Ever/Never, Fine Concepts, and Digital Regress, and at least three self-released cassette tapes since 2017. Jackets screen-printed in Oakland by Fine Concepts. 'In an effort to ensure that as few people hear them as possible,' 'hot new Oakland trio' Preening's 'misshapen angles,' 'spittle,' and 'occasionally funky' 'guitarless no wave' is 'an interesting listen' and a 'slyly antagonizing joyful noise' that's 'as irritating as anything else in Preening's discography,' though 'I can't tell if it's a gag' and 'there's a charm.' Also, 'the vocals have a bewildering quality.'"
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
LP
|
|
DR 032LP
|
"A central figure of the New Zealand underground since his days in The Rip over three decades ago, Alastair Galbraith has worked alongside scores of Kiwi legends as a multi-instrumentalist and solo artist. Morse appeared in 1992, a Siltbreeze/Xpressway co-release, and despite Galbraith's centrality to the magical NZ mix, the record is an 'outsider' classic, a peerless piece of Antipodean collage, diverted folk, and minimal psychedelia. Galbraith plays almost everything on Morse, with periodic assists from Bruce Russell, Robbie Muir and others. Mutable, unfussy arrangements -- for acoustic and electric guitar, piano, violin, and some proper post-VU thudding--gather and crumble around obliquely phrased double-tracked vocals, sharing an enigmatic yet intuitive emotional quality with much NZ music of the period. And while his process might be homespun, don't call this lo-fi: listen close and hear microscopic layers of detail in Galbraith's plangent guitar work, the texture of amplified strings distinct from the notes they're sounding, melodies and sibilant murmurs swallowed as songs melt or careen into one another. Morse's fragmentary song suites conjure a post-70s in which Syd Barrett fucked off to Dunedin and started roadying for The Clean, or John Cale traded blow for tea and a Tascam. Untouchable in spirit and execution, Morse is a long-undersung gem of the international '90s underground by a bona fide NZ legend."
|
|
|
|