DRAG CITY - Forced Exposure

$13.50 PREORDER RELEASE DATE: 3/29/2024

"High Llamas present Hey Panda -- a modern pop music/deep listening experience that could only issue forth from their personal quadrant of the galaxy. Hey Panda projects soulfully through an enervating abstract of today's popular music; the sound of the Llamas' stately melodies and expressive ditties laid open -- blissfully shattered -- with drums and vocals hitting different, burning sounds and contemporary production twists pulling the ear at every turn. For the past few decades, High Llamas have trafficked in contemporary pop sounds directed toward the avant end of the spectrum as much as not. But here the message was clear. Llamas' composer-in-residence Sean O'Hagan was determined to let go. Hey Panda does just that, with a set of tunes reflecting on multiple levels how definitions change over the course of a lifetime, radiating an optimism derived from the diverse conundrums of today. Hey Panda's wide reach is aided by two co-writes from Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, (who bonded with Sean over a shared love of gospel soul during writing sessions), guest vocals from Rae Morris and Sean's daughter Livvy, production twists from Fryars and the stalwart, flexible presence of High Llamas. For all of its sense of departure, Hey Panda is a movement in the High Llamas oeuvre that's been a long time in development. Aspects of soul music were addressed at the time of Can Cladders; similarly, aspects of electronic dance music were in the mix in the late '90s, around the time of Cold and Bouncy. But nothing up to now has refocused the music of High Llamas so completely. Sharing the impulse of late-period Miles Davis and Quincy Jones, with further inspiration from Steve Lacy, SZA, Sault, No Name, and Ezra Collective, among many others, Sean O'Hagan and High Llamas are living joyfully in the new and the now, with Hey Panda!"

$23.00 PREORDER RELEASE DATE: 3/29/2024

LP version.

$24.00 PREORDER RELEASE DATE: 2/23/2024

LP version. "Over the course of her career, spanning three-plus decades, Laetitia Sadier has never shied away from the hard topics, or stopped advocating for the possibility of self-determination and emancipation in the face of the powers that be, conscious or unconscious. This is an essential part of the foundation she co-built with Stereolab, showcasing her spiritual, scientific and sociopolitical inquiries. She's continued this process with Monade and under her own name and as a writer/singer/musician whose every album acts as a report on her journey of the self through time, space and the collective. On Rooting For Love, the report is set alight by the heat of a turbulent world, collapsing institutions and Laetitia's fully engaged process of expression as well as orchestration. The musical arrangements help to embody the layers of the issue, as with 'Who + What''s combination of organ, synths, guitar, bass, trombone, drum programming, vibraphone and zither, all working along intricate paths of chord and tempo changes. Leading from the inside is the implacable presence of Laetitia Sadier, herself interacting with a vocal assembly of men and women billed as The Choir. The regular reappearance of The Choir throughout Rooting For Love is a reminder of this music being one of a people in critical mass, in addition to an evolution that continues to deepen the rich harmonic fields in which Laetitia plays. The melodic funk of bassist Xavi Muñoz leads a Chic-adjacent slink to the occasional dance floor vibes and no-wave rockouts, while Hannes Plattemier and Emma Mario take turns in mixing the tracks and informing the far reaches of the material, with vibes, additional drum programming and synths alongside a talented cast of players and singers from Laetita's Source Ensemble and beyond. As with the cover image of the winter tree mirrored by the word patterns of Rooting For Love, Laetitia maintains that how we heal the world that's coming, and what we make of it, will be a co-creation. Alongside her collaboration with Modern Cosmology, last year's incredible What Will You Grow Now?, as well as her continued tours with a reformed Stereolab, Rooting For Love finds Laetitia back in the world, once again urging all our grounded inner alignment and heart power to make us better equipped for creating what's to come."

$13.50 PREORDER RELEASE DATE: 2/23/2024

"Over the course of her career, spanning three-plus decades, Laetitia Sadier has never shied away from the hard topics, or stopped advocating for the possibility of self-determination and emancipation in the face of the powers that be, conscious or unconscious. This is an essential part of the foundation she co-built with Stereolab, showcasing her spiritual, scientific and sociopolitical inquiries. She's continued this process with Monade and under her own name and as a writer/singer/musician whose every album acts as a report on her journey of the self through time, space and the collective. On Rooting For Love, the report is set alight by the heat of a turbulent world, collapsing institutions and Laetitia's fully engaged process of expression as well as orchestration. The musical arrangements help to embody the layers of the issue, as with 'Who + What''s combination of organ, synths, guitar, bass, trombone, drum programming, vibraphone and zither, all working along intricate paths of chord and tempo changes. Leading from the inside is the implacable presence of Laetitia Sadier, herself interacting with a vocal assembly of men and women billed as The Choir. The regular reappearance of The Choir throughout Rooting For Love is a reminder of this music being one of a people in critical mass, in addition to an evolution that continues to deepen the rich harmonic fields in which Laetitia plays. The melodic funk of bassist Xavi Muñoz leads a Chic-adjacent slink to the occasional dance floor vibes and no-wave rockouts, while Hannes Plattemier and Emma Mario take turns in mixing the tracks and informing the far reaches of the material, with vibes, additional drum programming and synths alongside a talented cast of players and singers from Laetita's Source Ensemble and beyond. As with the cover image of the winter tree mirrored by the word patterns of Rooting For Love, Laetitia maintains that how we heal the world that's coming, and what we make of it, will be a co-creation. Alongside her collaboration with Modern Cosmology, last year's incredible What Will You Grow Now?, as well as her continued tours with a reformed Stereolab, Rooting For Love finds Laetitia back in the world, once again urging all our grounded inner alignment and heart power to make us better equipped for creating what's to come."

$30.00 PREORDER RELEASE DATE: 1/26/2024

Double LP version. "Ty Segall follows 2022's acoustic introspection opus Hello, Hi with a deeper, wilder journey to the center of the self. With Three Bells, he's created a set of his most ambitious, elastic songs, using his musical vocabulary with ever-increasing sophistication. It's an obsessive quest for an expression that answers back to the riptide always pulling him subconsciously into the depths. It's a growing up and out of your head parable, but the farther out you get, the farther in you go. Since Ty deals in sounds, Three Bells rings with them most of all: sounds signaling the next phase, ringing to keep you stuck, or to set you free, with guitars like voices, questioning and answering the others in their turn. Since 2008, the singer/guitarist/puzzled panther has played out his hunger to be free over a dozen solo LPs and a series of other-named projects. In his music, freedom has taken the form of a rippling eclecticism in songs and production sounds, all of them conversing from album to album in a mad diversity of voices. With all fifteen songs brimming with perspectives, shape-shifting incessantly, not even waiting for a new song to work into the next idea, Three Bells steps into the shoes of both his previous doubles at the same time, designing finally to do the extended format justice. Three Bells kind of goes beyond songs. The fifteen of them work together as a mosaic, creating the larger work at the same time as they stand on their own. Composing the album as a piece, Ty formed certain chord shapes over and over again, making thematic material that each song moves through in its own way, building a claustrophobic/paranoia vibe, cycling bold thrusts forward into ego deaths, the one-step-forward, two-steps-back patterns framing an overriding ask: what we can do to get past the back-and-forth conversation, to arrive at a place of acceptance. Three Bells takes Ty Segall's trips so much deeper and farther than they've gone before -- a masterpiece of personal expression, expressed through words, music and production, parabolically addressing malaise with compassion in a flowing, unstoppable hour-plus of intoxicating sound."

$33.00 PREORDER RELEASE DATE: 1/26/2024

"nehan is a Japanese free improvisation and avant-garde rock quintet formed in August 2022. Their performances are initiated by a 9hz brain wave emitted from a testee who has been brought into a deep meditative state via either hypnosis or acupuncture. nehan doesn't begin until the testee has gotten into the state of 'nothingness.' It is only then that the improvisation can begin. The role of improvisation has been key to all the musical projects of Masaki Batoh. In 2010, as Batoh was winding down the activity of his long-standing 'heavy chamber folk' group, Ghost, he became involved in the design of a machine to generate sonic data based on brain waves. An acupuncturist as well as a musician by trade, his interest was spurred by the rhythms of the body and the brain, and a desire to access the 'pulses' of brain waves to initiate improvisations. Following the release of Brain Pulse Music, Batoh toured Japan and the US, making demonstrations of his process using a local volunteer and guest performers, when available. Today, nehan arrive at their performance space prepared with a Brain Pulse testee, bringing a wide array of instruments including gongs, timpani, tabla and other drums and percussion, Crumhorn, bagpipes, mellotron, oscillators and additional sound effects. Their performance is a transformative electro-acoustic display that passes through the prism of music styles, from east to west, from traditional folk and classical to rock, jazz, and avant electronic. While nehan's performance presentation invokes a sense of ritual, they understand their process as being far removed from any type of spiritual endeavor; this is an action of improvisation, occurring in reality between the five musicians on stage, in response to the brain waves of an individual. For the personnel of nehan, Masaki Batoh asked players with whom he had good previous experiences in improvisation: Futoshi Okano (Ghost, Acid Mothers Temple, The Silence), Haruo Kondo (Espvall & Batoh) and Junzo Tateiwa (Ghost), along with female Brain Pulse testee Gozen on oscillators. The performance here, recorded live in August of 2022 at GOK SOUND in Tokyo, demonstrates their communal dedication to the improvisation. The players act as listeners and musicians simultaneously, inspired to make extended pieces of music out of the 'nothingness' of brain waves. The possibilities of nehan's chosen approach are almost infinite; An Evening With Nehan is only the beginning of their journey."

$13.50 PREORDER RELEASE DATE: 1/26/2024

"Ty Segall follows 2022's acoustic introspection opus Hello, Hi with a deeper, wilder journey to the center of the self. With Three Bells, he's created a set of his most ambitious, elastic songs, using his musical vocabulary with ever-increasing sophistication. It's an obsessive quest for an expression that answers back to the riptide always pulling him subconsciously into the depths. It's a growing up and out of your head parable, but the farther out you get, the farther in you go. Since Ty deals in sounds, Three Bells rings with them most of all: sounds signaling the next phase, ringing to keep you stuck, or to set you free, with guitars like voices, questioning and answering the others in their turn. Since 2008, the singer/guitarist/puzzled panther has played out his hunger to be free over a dozen solo LPs and a series of other-named projects. In his music, freedom has taken the form of a rippling eclecticism in songs and production sounds, all of them conversing from album to album in a mad diversity of voices. With all fifteen songs brimming with perspectives, shape-shifting incessantly, not even waiting for a new song to work into the next idea, Three Bells steps into the shoes of both his previous doubles at the same time, designing finally to do the extended format justice. Three Bells kind of goes beyond songs. The fifteen of them work together as a mosaic, creating the larger work at the same time as they stand on their own. Composing the album as a piece, Ty formed certain chord shapes over and over again, making thematic material that each song moves through in its own way, building a claustrophobic/paranoia vibe, cycling bold thrusts forward into ego deaths, the one-step-forward, two-steps-back patterns framing an overriding ask: what we can do to get past the back-and-forth conversation, to arrive at a place of acceptance. Three Bells takes Ty Segall's trips so much deeper and farther than they've gone before -- a masterpiece of personal expression, expressed through words, music and production, parabolically addressing malaise with compassion in a flowing, unstoppable hour-plus of intoxicating sound."

$12.00 PREORDER RELEASE DATE: 1/26/2024

Cassette version. "Ty Segall follows 2022's acoustic introspection opus Hello, Hi with a deeper, wilder journey to the center of the self. With Three Bells, he's created a set of his most ambitious, elastic songs, using his musical vocabulary with ever-increasing sophistication. It's an obsessive quest for an expression that answers back to the riptide always pulling him subconsciously into the depths. It's a growing up and out of your head parable, but the farther out you get, the farther in you go. Since Ty deals in sounds, Three Bells rings with them most of all: sounds signaling the next phase, ringing to keep you stuck, or to set you free, with guitars like voices, questioning and answering the others in their turn. Since 2008, the singer/guitarist/puzzled panther has played out his hunger to be free over a dozen solo LPs and a series of other-named projects. In his music, freedom has taken the form of a rippling eclecticism in songs and production sounds, all of them conversing from album to album in a mad diversity of voices. With all fifteen songs brimming with perspectives, shape-shifting incessantly, not even waiting for a new song to work into the next idea, Three Bells steps into the shoes of both his previous doubles at the same time, designing finally to do the extended format justice. Three Bells kind of goes beyond songs. The fifteen of them work together as a mosaic, creating the larger work at the same time as they stand on their own. Composing the album as a piece, Ty formed certain chord shapes over and over again, making thematic material that each song moves through in its own way, building a claustrophobic/paranoia vibe, cycling bold thrusts forward into ego deaths, the one-step-forward, two-steps-back patterns framing an overriding ask: what we can do to get past the back-and-forth conversation, to arrive at a place of acceptance. Three Bells takes Ty Segall's trips so much deeper and farther than they've gone before -- a masterpiece of personal expression, expressed through words, music and production, parabolically addressing malaise with compassion in a flowing, unstoppable hour-plus of intoxicating sound."

$19.00 IN STOCK

Released in 2014. "Dan'l Boone is Charles Ballas (Formant), Neil Hagerty (ex-Royal Trux, Howling Hex, etc.), Nate Young (Wolf Eyes, Regression, etc.) and Alex Moskos (Drainolith). The crew convened in Denver, CO to work on the forthcoming Drainolith record and decided to make another record at the same time. Neil and Nate really ran things at the sessions at Uneven Studios. There were lots of electronics that Young would set up and Hagerty would give some direction. Hagerty had various lyric sheets and scores that the group worked with but once the record started to take shape Young became very involved in plotting out the flow of the record. 'I'd come downstairs into Charles' basement and Nate and Neil would be making competing diagrams that represented the record. I was so lost,' says Moskos. The new planet recently discovered, in the Goldilocks Zone -- the habitable range that is neither too hot nor too cold and thus can support liquid water -- by NASA's Kepler telescope is earth-sized and earth like. It is in fixed orbit?called a tidal lock -- meaning that on one side it's always night and one side it's always day. It's about 5000 light years away from earth. It is said humans can't reach this planet without first discovering a new physics. So like the original city dwellers who wanted to reach Planet Rock, like those who wished to originally attain the Trip Metal Moons or those who created the mothership with which to raise the funky planet... you have to create a NEW music to really leave the depressed and turgid and lifeless zones behind and truly get somewhere."

$20.00 IN STOCK

Released in 2014. "With Valdez, Birds of Maya are back in flight. And like the first song title explicitly states, this latest is a soaring blast of riffers, rife with punk rock abandon, sludge, treble, distortion, neck-throttling rock n roll solos, pummeling drums and bass and half-shouted/half-gargled vocals, all of it half on and half off the mic. Somewhere in Philadelphia, Jason Killinger, Ben Leaphart, and Mike Polizze played on. Still making it happen as always: taping everything they play -- with bass, drums, guitar and vocals fighting for space in the condensing mics of cheap recorders -- then tossing the tapes aside, for consideration at a later moment. Time is a test that Birds of Maya recordings need to pass before they see the light of day. Valdez is a good example, although it's also an exception to their regular M.O. It was recorded in 2014 at Black Dirt Studios in other-state New York. After a Purling Hiss session there, Mike and Ben talked with Jason about how it would be a great time for Birds of Maya too, so they got a bunch of tunes they liked into shape -- that is, different shapes on different days. But nice shapes. Once they got to the studio, they loaded in and set up, curious to see how they felt playing in a different room. Pretty good as it turned out -- running through the songs that first night, they accidentally recorded the whole album! At the time this was recorded, Birds of Maya were standing on the other side of ten years kicking around town, suddenly far away from the primordial ooze they'd flopped forth from. The streets where all this had happened on were changing, with new money rolling in, but they were the same old Birds, content with their libations and ear-splitting variations on old favorite Stooges chords. The cover art of Valdez is a couple images from those days, glimpses at the old grass roots before they were ripped up by developers to build condos. But nothing ever really goes away. Valdez is a totem of the wildness that refuses be tamed."

$40.00 IN STOCK

Released in 2018. "The CD box set called Rebajas is a seven-disc, six-hour and 42-minute second time around through the Bitchin Bajas catalog to date, including all 11 of their solo releases: eight albums and the Bajas sides of three split records! None of these records have previously been released on CD. The music on the Rebajas box represents the dawn and early pleastoric period of Bitchin Bajas. In the time of their conception, none of these releases were issued on anything other than vinyl. Now, there's finally enough material to make a really deep listening experience, all put together! The limitless vast that Bitchin Bajas music implies even in its smallest sampling is well-served by a multi-disc set. From the beginning, Bitchin Bajas have made music to enhance the moment they and you are sharing, and details above and beyond that have been relatively unimportant. In the time since then, they've gone from a one-person band to a duo, then a trio. That information, plus the recording and original release details, the additional personnel and the original jacket, label and insert artwork for all the releases is included here, along with a few schematic details, to provide a true overview into the parameters of their world. What's more, additional information can be heard in the material in its transferred-for-CD form, which has corrected inadequacies in several of the original pressings. Plus, all the Bitchin Bajas material can now be heard without any surface noise! So too ends the first Bajaian epoch -- when the band returns with new music, it will be moving away from even the most recent material on Rebajas, released earlier this year. Moving, always flowing -- but with Rebajas, the whole Bitchin Bajas thing to date is captured in the unending amber of digital sound."

$20.00 IN STOCK

Released in 2016. "Bitchin Bajas and Bonnie 'Prince' Billy be in righteous and true collaboration on this one, flowing ideas through the air between them, which seems a rare thing in this age where records course forth without wires. The air's meant to be shared, and that's how Epic Jammers and Fortunate Little Ditties came to pass -- a morning, afternoon and evening of frisson in blissed acceptance of the eternal recurrence. And it always came. These guys get each other. They share a passion for arresting the moment in the process of now, and both of them get music from this action in their way. Bajas have a fan in Bonny; their ability to stretch time and get in between the grains scratches his itch to live in those instances. And this makes him a worthy co-jammer, a fourth plane to the BB triangle that quantifies and dimensionalizes the sound. Their first blend was for the Shirley Collins tribute comp, a rendition of 'Pretty Saro' that built from the starkness and tonal monophony of the auld ballads and opened the hatch to timeless stasis. But if more was desired (which it was), more would be needed -- the full trio of Bajas in the room together, in audience with the 'Prince.' Following one of their many mini-jaunts around the country, Bitchin Bajas stopped by Bonnie's aerie one day after tour to make it so. It was an epic and fortunate day. Epic Jammers and Fortunate Little Ditties contains moments of tranquility and trance, with the players integrating their separate ways, vibing off each other, making songs together. Bonny is at his spirit-melting celestial best wandering through a lifetime of fortunes that amount, when incanted, to a prayer to the god of many names. The Bajas' access to the universal aural paintbox is unparalleled; their reach is deep. And it all went down onto a two-track reel-to-reel in primitive left-right seps that helped to define their ability to finish it in mixing. Epic Jammers and Fortunate Little Ditties is simple and stark and empyrean and inspirational... and pretty modal, too -- probably never more than three chords! -- as Bonny and the Bajas pursue the life of the spirit down ever-fading vapor trails, in a bottomless space."

$20.00 IN STOCK

Released in 2017. "Ed Askew recorded the sublimely gorgeous LP Ask the Unicorn in 1968 for the legendary proto-DIY label ESP records, which has now been recognized as a god-damn underground classic. Armed only with a tiple (sort of a South American mandolin) and his lilting neigh of a voice (and bearing superficial resemblances to labelmates Pearls Before Swine, and heady UK acoustic folkers Incredible String Band), Askew spun tales of doomed sisters, crashing universes, budding gay love, and a serious fondness for roses on his rare, precious and beautiful album. After this lone release, Ed Askew seemingly vanished in the romantic mists of time, until a second, previously unreleased album, surfaced in 2003, Little Eyes -- recorded but a few years after Ask the Unicorn, and every bit as honey-dipped by the musical gods. Since then, Askew has undergone a rightful resurgence, and surely everyone that ever dug a Donovan or Devendra tune has taken notice, so Ed's obscure 1984 cassette Imperfiction was also reissued by Galactic Zoo Disk/Drag City in 2011. Ed has since resumed making music, and has released several albums over the last decade -- but meanwhile, it appears the Askew historical goldmine had not been fully tapped! To wit, Ed unearthed four reels of radio sessions taped in 1969?70, performing songs from his first two albums (and the totally previously unreleased track, 'Green Song')! The tapes were meticulously studied by Galactic Zoo Disk honcho Plastic Crimewave (of Galactic Zoo Dossier, er, fame), and the best versions were extracted for this release -- absolutely stunning renditions of Askew standards like 'Fancy That' (with a sense of propulsive urgency not on the LP version, we'd say!) or 'Red Woman' and 'Mr. Dream' -- which are perhaps even more gooily gorgeous than the originals. In short folks, this new archival Ed Askew release A Child in the Sun, which features never-before-seen vintage photos, is astro folk gold."

$25.00 IN STOCK

LP version. "Drag City presents its first-ever Christmas/Holiday album -- Neil Hamburger Presents Seasonal Depression Suite. This song-cycle is filtered through the lens of various guests stuck in a perfectly average chain-hotel during the holiday season, wallowing in self-pity and paranoia, re-living personal catastrophes both real and imagined, or simply trying to use the hotel vending machine. Influenced by everything from Thom Bell to Tommy to the troll-ish misery of Trip Advisor reviews, Seasonal Depression Suite provides another entry in the sprawling satirical critique of America that Greg Turkington has been engaged in with his multifarious enterprises and collaborations since the early '90s. The musical tapestry woven by Turkington and Erik Paparozzi draws from the stage musicals, pop vocal albums, film scores, rock concept albums, new wave mini-masterpieces, and singer-songwriter epics that have captured their imaginations since childhood, in pitch-perfect support of their fictitious hotel guests and their tormented concerns. To sing these parts, a once-in-a-lifetime all-star cast was assembled -- including Neil Finn (Split Enz, Crowded House, Fleetwood Mac), Annabella Lwin (Bow Wow Wow), Alan Bishop (Sun City Girls), Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, acclaimed singer/performance artist Puddles Pity Party, voice actress Natalie Peyser, J.P. Hasson (Pleaseeasaur), enigmatic vocalist (and Frank Sinatra's granddaughter) A.J. Lambert, Paparozzi himself and, of course, Neil Hamburger. Among the many musicians accompanying the cast were Scarlet Rivera, Danny Heifetz (Mr. Bungle), Bär McKinnon (Mr. Bungle), Prairie Prince (The Tubes), Atom Ellis (Dieselhed), Jason Schimmel (Secret Chiefs 3), and Alex Jules (The Monkees band) -- an international assemblage whose talents give Seasonal Depression Suite its epic sweep. With all hands-on board, Turkington and Paparozzi created their own kind of masterpiece, like Sinatra's late-period concept album Watertown fused with the misfit comedy of Neil Hamburger -- a work that looks at a cast of characters both ordinary and bizarre, as they make their way from one grievance to another, traveling from place to place, hoping to live, while waiting to die. There won't be another album like Seasonal Depression Suite anytime soon -- if ever."

$13.50 IN STOCK

"Drag City presents its first-ever Christmas/Holiday album -- Neil Hamburger Presents Seasonal Depression Suite. This song-cycle is filtered through the lens of various guests stuck in a perfectly average chain-hotel during the holiday season, wallowing in self-pity and paranoia, re-living personal catastrophes both real and imagined, or simply trying to use the hotel vending machine. Influenced by everything from Thom Bell to Tommy to the troll-ish misery of Trip Advisor reviews, Seasonal Depression Suite provides another entry in the sprawling satirical critique of America that Greg Turkington has been engaged in with his multifarious enterprises and collaborations since the early '90s. The musical tapestry woven by Turkington and Erik Paparozzi draws from the stage musicals, pop vocal albums, film scores, rock concept albums, new wave mini-masterpieces, and singer-songwriter epics that have captured their imaginations since childhood, in pitch-perfect support of their fictitious hotel guests and their tormented concerns. To sing these parts, a once-in-a-lifetime all-star cast was assembled -- including Neil Finn (Split Enz, Crowded House, Fleetwood Mac), Annabella Lwin (Bow Wow Wow), Alan Bishop (Sun City Girls), Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, acclaimed singer/performance artist Puddles Pity Party, voice actress Natalie Peyser, J.P. Hasson (Pleaseeasaur), enigmatic vocalist (and Frank Sinatra's granddaughter) A.J. Lambert, Paparozzi himself and, of course, Neil Hamburger. Among the many musicians accompanying the cast were Scarlet Rivera, Danny Heifetz (Mr. Bungle), Bär McKinnon (Mr. Bungle), Prairie Prince (The Tubes), Atom Ellis (Dieselhed), Jason Schimmel (Secret Chiefs 3), and Alex Jules (The Monkees band) -- an international assemblage whose talents give Seasonal Depression Suite its epic sweep. With all hands-on board, Turkington and Paparozzi created their own kind of masterpiece, like Sinatra's late-period concept album Watertown fused with the misfit comedy of Neil Hamburger -- a work that looks at a cast of characters both ordinary and bizarre, as they make their way from one grievance to another, traveling from place to place, hoping to live, while waiting to die. There won't be another album like Seasonal Depression Suite anytime soon -- if ever."

$19.00 IN STOCK

"In the time since the 2009 release of ...For the Whole World to See, happenings in the world of Death have occurred at warp speed. The raw rock and roll that the Hackney brothers made in the 1970s became a belated punk rock sensation, leading to shows and tours round the world, as well as two further compilations of old material. Since a series of US dates in 2019, things have been relatively quiet externally, but evolution has continued, with this Death/Rough Francis split single representing the inauguration of a new phase in the Death history. Keeping it in the family and pointing toward the future has been a way of life for Death since the beginning. For this new recording, Bobby Hackney's sons have joined Bobby and Dannis in the band they formed with their late brother David nearly 50 years ago. Urian, Julian, and Bobby Jr. have made music under the name of Rough Francis since 2010, and will continue that journey while also making Death music old and new happen with their father and uncle. 'World In Disguise' and 'Haunted' are produced by Urian, who is gaining recognition as a drummer, artist and producer, playing with Converge and The Armed. 'World In Disguise' was developed from a demo in the Death 70s archive -- and more songs from that archive will be coming in the future, as part of the full-circle Hackney experience going forward. 'Haunted' presents the Rough Francis sound, driven just as powerfully as the parent band and inclined to the same depth of introspection that is a part of Death's signature. Bobby Jr.'s vocals and lyrics are in turn, rawly aggro and ethereally philosophical, as the Rough Francis production sound encompasses the wide spectrum of their shared vision."

$30.00 IN STOCK

"Cylene II is the new materialization of the collaboration between François J. Bonnet & Stephen O'Malley, initiated in 2018 and continued without interruption since then, taking form in a myriad of contexts ranging from common practice to recording sessions, concerts and tours. Cylene II bears witness to these different contexts, offering a multifaceted sound signature developed on different occasions The epic opening track 'Four Rays (Anti Divide)' welcomes, for the first time, other musicians -- in this case a wind quintet -- expanding the duo's sonic palette without betraying the fundamental component of their music, namely the driving of sonic energy. Elsewhere, Bonnet and O'Malley propel the energy between themselves, extending the singular climate that has characterized their musical development over the past five years. Among their minimal presentation of tones and resonances, as glacial harmonic intersections slowly elevate with massive physicality to an orchestral degree, new refinements become evident: the music's relationship to silence, and a brightening of the fine metallic edge glowing at its core. For the listener, Cylene II is a sound that reaches from the deep and scales up to the far firmament in its careful motion, drawing emotions viscerally from the chest, giving rise to the suggestibility of the soul. A séance of sorts for all who witness it, whether playing or listening."

$27.00 IN STOCK

"These two early cassette-only titles from the renowned guitar improviser Tashi Dorji were released a decade ago -- this reissue marks their debut on vinyl." "Guitar Improvisation and Tashi Dorji are the first physical releases of my guitar improvisations. They were put out by a small local, now defunct, label called Headway Recording in 2012 and 2013. The friends who ran the label had heard some of my guitar music and reached out to me about doing a cassette release. Guitar Improvisations was really my first recording of improvisation -- in a semi-studio setting at my friend's basement space. It really was a formative time for me because it felt like everything opened, as far as the possibilities of what music-making meant. Like improvisation walked in and then there was a volcanic eruption . . . The self-titled session was recorded at a nice studio at the local university here in Asheville. I had some friends that were studying music there and had access to studio time. This session focused more on extended/prepared guitar ideas. My interest in percussive elements of sounds, timbre, harmonics, and dynamics plays a lot in this recording." --Tashi Dorji, 2023

$27.00 IN STOCK

"These two early cassette-only titles from the renowned guitar improviser Tashi Dorji were released a decade ago -- this reissue marks their debut on vinyl." "Guitar Improvisation and Tashi Dorji are the first physical releases of my guitar improvisations. They were put out by a small local, now defunct, label called Headway Recording in 2012 and 2013. The friends who ran the label had heard some of my guitar music and reached out to me about doing a cassette release. Guitar Improvisations was really my first recording of improvisation -- in a semi-studio setting at my friend's basement space. It really was a formative time for me because it felt like everything opened, as far as the possibilities of what music-making meant. Like improvisation walked in and then there was a volcanic eruption . . . The self-titled session was recorded at a nice studio at the local university here in Asheville. I had some friends that were studying music there and had access to studio time. This session focused more on extended/prepared guitar ideas. My interest in percussive elements of sounds, timbre, harmonics, and dynamics plays a lot in this recording." --Tashi Dorji, 2023

$13.50 PREORDER RELEASE DATE: 10/20/2023

2023 repress. Originally released in 1996. "Come home to the old world of Silver Jews -- theyʼve been waiting patiently for your return. Back in the October of 1994, Silver Jews released Starlite Walker, their first LP and one that certainly confirmed all the fevered rumors of the group's promise. They were heard to play pop music with a rustic air, old-fashioned fervor and an excess of words, singing them out in a flat and honest voice, as if to say, 'There is no other way.' For the initial settlers of rock, its true; there was no other way. But the early '90s gave birth to a new generation of rockers: 'Silver Jews Fans,' appreciating Jews music and the lifestyle it implied. Unlike their forebears, these kids could have anything they wanted. And so, another era was underway. Now, some two years later, we can begin to understand why and of wherefore. The Natural Bridge attempts to bridge the gap between generations, and generations of people as well. While not blatantly a youth angst statement, nor a precise document of a coming of age, the LP has enough of everything to make someone's rite of passage a smoother ride. There is the acoustic melancholy of 'Black and Brown Blues,' electrical storms in 'Pet Politics' and 'The Ballad of Reverend War Character,' the breezy despair of 'Dallas' and 'How to Rent a Room,' and more, much more. Calling over time from the communities of rural Massachusetts and Virginia (and all points south), Silver Jews deliver performances steeped in history, though its more personal than public history that's outlined here. Ten songs an album make."

$25.00 IN STOCK

"Since 2011, Mike Donovan's been a Drag City stalwart, first with Sic Alps, then as a solo and with The Peacers -- but Mike "The Mighty Flashlight" Fellows has been a behind-the-scenes figure at Drag City since the early early days, playing live and on record with Royal Trux, Silver Jews, and Will Oldham. A multi-hyphenate, Fellows has contributed to releases from Endless Boogie, Pigeons, Weeping Bong Band and Prison in recent years. So when these two rambling musicians found themselves in adjacent communities in upstate New York, Mike D brought Mike F into the process of his new solo album. There The Mighty Flashlight turned on, bringing his recording, writing, performing and mixing talents to the tabletop with such a seasoned vibe that he bought himself real estate in the album title itself! The two-Mike combination makes the fourth Donovan solo album a one that hits all kinds of high water marks for the most and the best of what he's capable of/plus inclined to do. Mike D's music, in all phases, takes the form of a next-phase roots-pop: soaked in the traditional waters of rock and roll and passed through a variety of after-punk sonic sieves, highlighted with DIY and lo-fi values. He prefers a particular density of obtuse angles colliding sweet and hot noise, an arrangement he has perfected over all his Sic Alps/solo/The Peacers years; his innate understanding of the mechanics of a pop song wends purposefully through the junk-strewn landscape, sharing secrets with cipher in hand. Playing in this cracked kingdom of sound/garden of verse, Mighty Flashlight alternately accents and balances Mike's eccentricities with his playing and knob-spinning. Mighty's own kind of stereo imagining informs Donovan's smoky subterranea with additional depth of field, while still allowing all the wayward details within the arrangement to diverge as one. Mike and Mighty wind it all together: art punk utterance and top 40 radio junk of yore, the primitivity that formed recorded music in its youth, honkytonk romanticism, liminal chamber-folk and ever-present disassociated psychedelia, transformed via self-medication into a gleeful, extramusical ennui while giving the listener impetus to sing along with Mike's patented unlikely combos of melody and lyric. The sprawl of sounds and tunes, wayward, yet compact, is so easy to admire. Slip inside an eternal jukebox of the mind with Mike Donovan Meets the Mighty Flashlight."

$23.00 IN STOCK

"Moments of eternity: the first plucks at the strings, a bass note cementing the drift into place a little more than a minute in. The organ drones, iterating unrelivable ancient history, a chiming note of the church. Guitar strings, climbing that stairway to heaven. Gossamer-light when viewed from a distance; up close, the gears grind with a visceral physicality. With BCMC, Cooper Crain and Bill MacKay unite to create Foreign Smokes: provocalogues, equal parts avant-garde noir and fire-and-icy jams to recall bright shades and warm stretches of infinity drawn through the buzzy overdrive of this side of life's strange and sunny days. Cooper's organ and synths and Bill's guitar draw songs from spontaneous statements and elegiac scraps, floating closer, then farther, and closer again to the sounds of the other. Starting with a melody, a set of progressions or even as little as a scale or just a key, gives room for either one of 'em to take the lead, depending on where they are or are going at any given time. The reigning motif most often seems to be, to melt and wind around each other's sound, part of a singular undulation, handed back and forth, a slowly emerging trip up into and through an ideal of exuberance. As BCMC beam through the universe, their light intersects with yours, creating a new arc. Every turntable they spin upon becomes a new prismatic stream; every bud blooming in ears across the known plane, another voicing. Every resonance, every redolence -- hushed and encompassing, prayerful yet omniscient, intimate and universal -- Foreign Smokes!"

$25.00 IN STOCK

2023 restock. "In 1987, Rafael Toral began making his own compositions and solo recordings. 30 years later, these recordings sound remarkably prescient and perfectly timeless -- almost fresher today than when they were first released. Rafael has spent the time since then developing his conceptions, with continued explorations in the many records that have followed. On the 30th anniversary of his start, we are reissuing Sound Mind Sound Body and Wave Field, his first two long out-of-print albums, on vinyl for the first time. Sound Mind Sound Body was partly inspired by exploring some of the working principles of Brian Eno and Robert Fripp, extrapolated by Rafael via a unique signal path leading out of his guitar. He paid notice to the massive impact of discreet gestures, creating slow-moving tones and spacious orchestral resonances, drifting and droning with glacial majesty, hardly recognizable as guitar much of the time. The first of these pieces were recorded in 1987, and in 1994, they were released on Portugal's AnAnAnA, with material evolved in the years between, producing a remarkable equilibrium over an hour's listening. Further evidence of the necessity for gradual development exists in subsequent reissues: for the 1998 Moikai reissue, AE 1 was recorded, and for this edition, AER 7 E was rerecorded and the material for AE 2 was recorded for the first time ever -- all from original processes as noted, and none of which will cause the listener to notice a change in the otherworldly atmosphere. Wave Field, released in 1995, was a departure from the first album into new composition methods involving the dirty textures of rock guitar, sounding in the open ears of many listeners (like Jim O'Rourke, who issued the disc in the US on dexter's cigar) as a synthesis of disparate elements -- a nexus where Alvin Lucier, Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine and Eno blend together. Here, the clangorous potential of the guitar was emphasized, giving a metallic edge to the two extended pieces and 'radio edit' coda. The jacket paid subtle tribute to My Bloody Valentine, which, along with the radio edit, suggested a harmony between musical directions as wildly disparate as minimalist experimental and rock. Today, such a paradoxical intent is more widely considered as a part of the artist's purview. This allows the sounds of Wave Field and Sound Mind Sound Body to sit perfectly among the forward-reaching music of today -- as it continues to evolve in our ears, moving ever towards the next conception of listening space."

$20.00 NOT IN STOCK

"Recorded in 1995 and 1996, mostly in John Fahey's room at a Salem, Oregon boardinghouse, the performances on Proofs and Refutations prefigure the ornery turn of the page that marked Fahey's final years, drawing another enigmatic rabbit from his seemingly bottomless musical hat. Cloaked in the language of dogma, this is Fahey dancing a jig in the Duchampian gap, jester cap bells a-jingling. Right out of the gate, Fahey re-materializes before us, somewhere between Oracle of Delphi and Clown Prince at Olympus. Mounting a thundering dialectic from on high, 'All the Rains' resembles nothing else in his extensive discography -- betraying roots in everything from Dada to Episcopal liturgical chant -- and contains nary a plucked guitar note. When the lap steel of yore appears on 'F for Fake,' it serves more as soundbed for an extended sequence of vocal improvisations, running the gamut from wordless Bashoian caterwauling to free-form (but decidedly fake) Tuvan, even revealing a burnished falsetto in the process. Fahey takes on a different kind of provocation in the two acoustic guitar-based tracks closing Side 1 -- 'Morning' parts 1 and 2 -- the first of four recordings in this session that have him wrestling with the ghost of Skip James, perhaps Fahey's effort to wrench the 'bitter, hateful old creep' (his words) back into the grave. Anchoring Side 2 is the two-part 'Evening, Not Night,' the second half of his extended cathexis on James. The opening and closing pieces again feature Fahey's guitar as drone soundbed -- employing distortion, oscillation, and an altogether absurd quotient of reverb to create texture and harmonics that are --if we wanna go there -- not dissimilar to the sustained tonic clusters of Tibetan singing bowls, the hurdy gurdy, Hindustani classical music, or La Monte Young. Portions of this material appeared on obscure late '90s vinyl in the 7" or double-78 rpm format, but as a 'session' it has lain dormant more than a quarter century now. Taken together, we can now see these tracks as secret blueprints to latter-day Fahey provocations, several years prior to records like 1997's City of Refuge and Womblife."

$36.00 IN STOCK

"Straight outta Rockaway Beach, Queens, New York City, Prison is a state of mind, an experience, a loose collective, a band, a jam band and a bunch of psychedelic dudes who aren't your average bunch of jambanders. You get what you're dealing with here? No...you don't. The only way to REALLY get it is to go to Prison -- and if you're not from greater NYC and haven't showed at any of the shows, here's your best bet: their breakout album, Upstate. And what a breakout! So high, you can't get under it; so wide, you can't get over it! How wide? Every song has two titles, that's how wide. And almost everybody sings, like, all the time. That wide. Sure, you can break down the numbers -- five guys, five songs and four sides of vinyl in one gatefold sleeve -- but that won't get you Upstate, either. Prison is the sound of everybody in the room figuring out where to go, individually and collectively. As they go through it, the meaning changes, the destination changes, the words mean something different. It's meaning and no meaning, rising and falling, sinking and flying on the back of something massive cacophonized by three guitars, four vocals, a bass and drums. A lot of information bouncing around and enough time to really get you out of yourself! Take a look at the titles: each one a dichotomous inquest that the assembled Prison-ers march upon with fervor, glee, vengeance -- a whole spectrum of feels and perspectives woven into the jam for you to see. This'll take you places! The Prison population changes with the seasons, and during the season this album was recorded, Sarim Al-Rawi, Mike Fellows, Sam Jayne, Matt Lilly and Paul Major were in Prison. Sarim you might know from Liquor Store; Mike's made a bunch of scenes and records as Mighty Flashlight; Sam, who passed away in 2020 (R.I.P., brother) was in Love as Laughter -- and Paul Major you know from Endless Boogie, and despite being 'just a skateboarder who loves music' with no previous experience on the drums, he and Sarim inaugurated the Prison experience, like, seven years ago. Since then, it just fell together and it keeps doing so. A free thing called Prison. Just go for it! Follow the signs, listen up, have fun. That's how Prison got Upstate."