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FTR 522LP
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London's kings of noise Sly & The Family Drone follow up their 2019 Love Love LP Gentle Persuaders with Walk It Dry, an eight-track LP collaboratively released by Love Love Records in the UK and Feeding Tube Records in the USA. Walk It Dry utilizes the familiar sound palette of scronked electronics, bulging noise blasts, wailing sax, and Kalashnikov drums that was found on Gentle Persuaders but is a very a different beast. The tracks here are shorter and punchier as the band digs deeper than ever to find increasingly potent sonic pockets. Bolstered with a directional force rare in this strain of noise the album begins at the deep end with "A Black Uniformed Strutting Animal", a raucous cacophony backed by a thick groove, before the bleeps and bloops of "Dead Cat Chaos Magician" kick in, sounding like a haunting in the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. "Swearing On The Horns" is a folk-sludge ditty scraping through a psychic wormhole that exits at the feet of "Bulgarian Steel" -- a grimacing march punctuated with metallic screams where the sax becomes an overstressed alarm siren. "Shrieking Grief", with its rapid fire drum rolls and megaton payloads of pummeling noise, concludes the A side loudly. Side B opens with stretched-out droning layers and winding loops on "Sunken Disorderly", providing a gloomy refuge for some cosmic meditation. The album at this point converges into the morbidly fascinating black-and-white horror of "My Torso Is A Shotgun", perhaps the most widescreen and immediate example of the band's progression, before playing out with the deathly lament of "Tsukiji". A suitable soundtrack to the end-times.
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FTR 532LP
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"Michael is the third LP we have done with Boston-based musician, Joseph Allred. The first, O Meadowlark (FTR 451LP, 2019) was a suite for guitar and banjo. For its follow-up, Traveler (FTR 491LP), Joseph added splendid vocals to the mix. With Michael, Mr. Allred gives airing to his fine harmonium playing, alongside string majesty and vocals. Maybe on the next one he'll teach us how to fly. Michael is an album with a dreamy narrative core. Its loose tale deals with the idea of the Archangel Michael appearing during a spirit ritual, performed by the character Faulkner (something like Allred's alter-ego) in hopes of remembering the contours of heaven. But this concept only emerged after the music was recorded. Allred compares the process of divining narrative content form musical improvisation to 'throwing an inkblot on paper.' I can dig it. All of the instruments as acoustic -- harmonium, autoharp, singing bowls, dulcimer, bowed guitar -- and the overtones and interplay on surfaces here is unbelievably rich. And even though they're connected, the individual tunes flow from different head spaces. 'Ascent + Return' is long-tone meditation, conceived for harmonium, singing bowls & autoharp soon after Allred performed a Tony Conrad piece as part of the big MIT Conrad exhibit. 'Every Thing in the Dim Night' (a random quote from Whitman's Blades of Grass) lies midway between that and a string improvisation with Indian tonalities. 'O Death' follows the original Lloyd Chandler lyrics (originally entitled, 'A Conversation with Death'), before evolving into swells of drone and strum. And so on. Each piece different, but expanding the boundaries of the drone-based universe has created for this album. Joseph Allred's music is an always evolving, constantly astounding wonderment. His live shows are quite otherworldly, but we're sure you'll find his records equally transportational." --Byron Coley, 2020
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FTR 541LP
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"Minneapolis guitarist, Matt Sowell, is another of the many great players we were first introduced to at the Thousand Incarnations of the Rose festival in Takoma Park, MD. Matt played a richly dark and brooding set at Rhizome, with a style deeply indebted to the American Primitive tradition. His set had the raw strength of Fred Gerlach, the precision of Peter Lang, showed a country/blues influence that seemed to reference Fahey, and possessed the raga-meets-ragtime eclecticism of Jack Rose. We were blown away. Later, talking to Matt while we watched Mark Fosson play in the bandshell, we talked about what he's up to. He's a family guy, a committed union member, and an all-around nice fellow besides being a killer guitarist. He said he'd get in touch when he had something together that might make a good LP, and we are proud to present the results. Organize or Die is both a call to collectivism as a way to fight crony capitalism, as well as a damn lovely record. Matt's technique and compositions continue to blend raw power, delicate note placement, and wild imagination into a unique alloy. While it's easy to close your eyes, lean back and know you are listening to a record in the great Takoma tradition, the borrowings here are solely of tone and mood. The specific approach is all Matt's. This allows his work to be familiar and all new at once. In this sense, he's akin to every new generation of finger picking guitarists who have found something special in the syncretic blend of traditional and modern that Fahey head-birthed. But Matt's playing is illuminated by a very special kind of light. And we think you are gonna dig it like crazy." --Byron Coley, 2020
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FTR 534LP
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"A single LP compiles another two installments in the Water & Rock Music series by Jon Collin, UK ex-pat guitarist currently based in Sweden. Once again, Collin has put together a riveting set of acoustic guitar pieces, these recorded around Stockholm between April and October, 2018. There is a wistful, bluesy quality to the playing and inventions here. John Fahey once told me that blues was 'about anger.' But this work seems suffused with delicately scrambling melancholia, like a tangle of vines trying to reach for a breath of sunlight. Sometimes this attempt is rewarded, other times it just turns back on itself for further rumination. Which I guess is really just another kind of reward. Interestingly, while the playing here is nothing like Loren Connors's, Collin begins to vocalize along with his guitar lines in places. He also employs a good bit of rough string sliding, both of which were features of Connors's very early work. This suggests they two share parallels in terms of thinking that are deeper than mere style. Jon's melodic inventions remain as open-ended as they have ever been, but he has begun to add an extra chiming element ay the end of some lines. It almost sounds like he's using a small harp, but I'm guessing it is not. Just another stone in the path Jon Collin is following, ever deeper into the forest of his imagination. His most gorgeous album yet." --Byron Coley, 2020
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FTR 406LP
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"Mind-blowing set of duo improvisations from a string player once known as the King of the Dobro, and the original drummer for Morphine. Long based in the Boston area, Lloyd Thayer is a master musician as well as a teacher, a street performer (retired, I think) and a collector of esoteric stringed instruments (many of which are played with a slide). We were introduced to his work by Glenn Jones, who more or less grabbed us by the collars and hauled us to see him down at the 1000 Incarnations of the Rose festival. Thayer's set of eastern-tinged material, played on instruments we could not easily name, was absolutely mesmerizing. Glenn made sure we kept in touch, and when Lloyd had some new material ready we got an early listen to it. So, after 30+ CDs and cassettes, Feeding Tube is proud to present the first full-length vinyl LP by the great Lloyd Thayer. Using a Weissenborn-style lap guitar (the same type favored by Fahey) and a gorgeous 22-stringed instrument called a Chaturangui, Lloyd unwinds four long improvs accompanied by the quietly flowing drum work of Jerome Deupree. And if this makes you imagine the incredible blends recorded by Sandy Bull and Billy Higgins back in '63 and '65, you are definitely in the right dreamscape. Deupree has been around for a long time, starting off in the legendary Bar-B-Q Records scene in Bloomington, then new-waving it up in Santa Cruz with the Humans, eventually co-founding Morphine in Boston, while simultaneously moving into jazz with Joe Morris and the Either/Orchestra. Jerome has played on a crazy assortment of records, but the subtle interplay he displays with Lloyd's strings here is a perfect match. The music is beautiful, shifting and abstract. And the song titles are equally interesting. One is a blues for Fahey cohort Al Wilson, another for dobro pioneer Melvyn Marshall. Those make sense. The other two are for hip-hop artist Rammellzee and the British house duo, PBR Street Gang. Lloyd, naturally, claims the PBR Street Gang ref has to do with Martin Sheen's patrol boat in Apocalypse Now. But after the Rammellzee shout-out, who could believe him? Ha. But ultimately, who gives a tinker's cuss? Duets is an album of dizzying accomplishment. Not exactly like anything you've heard before, but such a satisfying spin you'll wonder where it's been all your life." --Byron Coley, 2020 Edition of 200.
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FTR 530LP
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"First issue in the Drowned Lands series, assembled by Jason Meagher, is the debut duo recording by Wednesday Knudsen and Willie Lane. Long Time 'Til Tomorrow is a gorgeous instrumental collaboration by guitarist Lane and multi-instrumentalist Knudsen that will knock your Smartwool socks off. Recorded at Meagher's Black Dirt Studio, the album documents the first time the pair played together. They are, of course, well known to Feeding Tube fans. Willie's first three Cord Art LPs have been reissued over the last two years (FTR 413LP, FTR 437LP, FTR 438LP) and Wednesday's two albums with Weeping Bong Band (FTR 313LP, FTR 448LP) have slain stoned listeners across the globe. Wednesday is also one of the founding members of the great Pigeons, and if you don't know their music, you should correct that pronto. Anyway, Willie plays guitars, Wednesday plays electric guitar, alto saxophone, flute and even adds a little voice at one point if I'm not mistaken. And the blend is awesome. Gently improvised melodic nuggets that make me think of everyone from John Renbourn to Spires That in the Sunset Rise. The sounds flow so wonderfully it's hard to believe they haven't been playing together for a while. But hey, when a concept works. It just does. And this one works like a very strong pony! Long Time 'Til Tomorrow was originally released by Jason, in a digital format, on his Natch imprint. Now it's available to a wider audience. There will be more titles in the Drowned Land series coming soon. So keep your ears peeled." --Byron Coley, 2020
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FTR 494LP
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"An incredible, primitive and ecstatic teenage garage rock explosion from the suburbs of 1968 Orlando, Florida. With an instrumental line-up consisting of just guitar and drums, this is a version of rock & roll as raw and naked as only a duo can manage. Think Half Japanese, the Work Dogs, the Bassholes and so on -- Two Much are cut from the same wicked cloth. I remember a cassette of some of this material circulating around sub-underground Boston back in the 1980s. Might have been around the time Robin Amos's post-Girls band, Shut Up (with Glenn Jones), was finishing up their run. Robin was a well-known player on the scene both as a musician and a recordist, and people were jazzed to check out his teenaged roots. But the pummeling racket created by this two-man demolition squad -- with Robin on drums and his buddy, John Chadwick, on guitar and vocals -- was way too much for the squares to handle. None of the era's hep new wave labels knew what to do with the tapes either, so back into storage they went. But Robin was pleased with the results of the Girls' Punk-Dada-Pulchritude LP (FTR 220LP, 2012), and a year or so ago he asked if we'd be up for giving the tapes a listen. My faulty memory banks recalled a band that mostly did covers (their versions of 'Break on Through' and 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds' are both stuck deep in my brain.) But Robin assured us that Two Much did mostly originals, and lo and behold -- when the files arrived they were rich with crazy tunes the pair had written themselves between the ages of 10-12 (Johnny) and 12-14 (Robin). Amazing! Many bands then only had one 'original,' and it was usually a dull blues readymade. Two Much had tons of short tracks that spoke directly to the heart of junior high desire, and also managed to create a distorted, 6+ minute, political opus called, 'State of the Union '68.' That track is so far from what you'd expect that it kinda DESTROYS in all imaginable ways. Plus, in 'Who Says,' you get to enjoy the immense pleasure of hearing a 12-year old sing, 'Most of my life I've been working/Slaving my life away/Working in the king's mine fields.' Insane! Two Much's one session was recorded by Robin's dad, in their living room, right before John Chadwick and his family moved from Florida to California. Sadly, John and Robin fell out of touch over the years, but the sound of Two Much is an eternal beacon of teenage truth & justice. Burning in the dark suburban night of pre-Disney Orlando. We should all have back pages like this!" --Byron Coley, 2020 Edition of 200.
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FTR 520LP
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"The fourth album that Samara Lubelski and Marcia Bassett have recorded as a duo -- the second for us, following 2017's Live NYC (FTR 302LP) -- is much less about drones than some of their previous work. Morning Flare Symmetries blares like a ram's horn blown as a call to angelic battle. Everyone has been unanimous in agreement that this improvising duo has achieved a new highpoint in the musical histories of both Samara and Marcia. They each have deep roots in the East Coast sub-underground, with a whole dang lot of band names between 'em, but in this configuration they just continue to get weirder and better on every outing. The string blend they manage to invent is a hugely psychedelic wave that washes over everything in its path. And when you're enveloped in its massive flow, you are hauled along by sonic forces that are way beyond your control. Some parts are soothing, others are eruptive, but they work a really amazing push-pull on your brain, so that the individual sections don't feel competitive so much as complimentary. Like thousands of tiny thumbs urging your spirit to free itself? Sure, why not? I absolutely encourage you to check out all of their albums. but this new one is a particular killer, so maybe you ought to start right here." --Byron Coley, 2020
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FTR 529LP
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"Over the many years we've known each other, Joe Carducci had several times mentioned his brother Mark had a cool band back in the pre-punk '70s. Then a couple of years ago, he added that tapes of this project were around, and asked if might we be interested in hearing them. Midknight 1975 is the result. Two different line-ups of the band are documented here -- a quintet studio session recorded on location at the Hippie House, and a live one with a different drummer and one less guitar -- and both are wailing, raw instrumental dives into what you'd have to call hard underground prog. There are some 'chops' displayed, but they're usually more in line with stuff like Hawkwind, the Pink Fairies, and Third World War than something more delicate. It's just great, driving, drug-fueled noise from the Chicago suburbs. Here's what Joe wrote, when I asked him for a few words on the band. 'When Jimi Hendrix died In 1970 the Tribune put him on the cover of the Sunday Arts section and my Grandma, who lived with us, asked me if Hendrix could possibly deserve such an honor -- she wrote Dick Locher a fan letter when he had Dick Tracy unmask hippies as criminal degenerates . . . Mark named his band after the greatest tune on any of those, the instrumental 'Midnight' from the War Heroes album. The 'K' got added to the name soon after, I suspect at my suggestion, but luckily nobody can remember. MidKnight mostly just practiced in our basement . . . If I was home when they played out at a school or church I would go to record them on Mark's 4-track reel-to-reel. I remember that certain passages in their music would inspire the girls in the audience to start dancing, but then the time signature would change and the girls would stop and try to get their bearings all over again. I quit college and moved to Hollywood in the fall of 1976 and though I wasn't connected to any scene there I tried to convince Mark to move his band out; rent was cheap and it seemed that something was bound to happen. But they'd all graduated from high school and gone separate ways." That said, this is the documentary evidence Midknight left behind. There were bands something like this all over the States in those days, but I can't think of any I ever saw in high school or college auditoriums back then who had the good sense to play without a lousy singer. Without some Robert Plant wannabe simpering over the top, you can get a real sense of how wild their sound was..." --Byron Coley, 2020 Edition of 200.
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FTR 523LP
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"We discovered the experimental work of the late Letha Rodman Melchior through her husband Dan. Our first release was the amazing Mare Astrale LP (FTR 432LP, 2019), and we have now reissued 2009's Treteman as an LP. Tretetam was actually the operating handle Letha originally used for her sound collages. And this music was first issued on CDR as Tretetam's eponymous debut for the Finnish Ikuisuus label. A few other releases appeared under this soubriquet before she began using her own name on such projects. Letha displays her absolutely original approach to musique concrete from the very beginning of her investigation of the form. Using field recordings, found sounds and invented instrumental passages, she creates bizarre landscapes blending natural and synthetic elements into a seamless whole. Then she tales our hand and leads us through the maze with whispers of comfort echoing across the boundless spaces. The journey she leads is as intoxicating as any you'll ever take. Close your eyes and lean back into it and just go... you can thank us later. Incredible." --Byron Coley, 2020 Edition of 250.
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FTR 506LP
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"FTR is proud to present what is only the second solo album by Borbetomagus' sax giant, Don Dietrich. Crazily, Option documents the FIRST solo performance Don ever did. It was recorded in 2019 as part of the OPTION series in Chicago, where Dietrich appeared at the invitation of Ken Vandermark (who also wrote the liner notes). The cover photo shows one of Don's polycarbonate sculptures, after which the album is partially named. Twisted, compressed, and strangely inviting, it is emblematic of the eruptive ruckus Don creates using amplified tenor sax and effects pedals. This music possesses some of the same cerebral overload as the sounds Dietrich invents inside his long-lived trio. But without the specters of Jim Sauter's sax and Donald Miller's guitar, the sonic envelope here feels somehow less hermetic. There are no sneak attacks from his brothers about to happen. The shape of the solo improvisations here are under his control. The pedals allow Don to make all sorts of un-sax-like textural moves. A few spots bubble down into solo electronics that would not be out of place on a Basil Kirchin LP. But most of Option has a crazy flow, constantly bending and folding back on itself, in order to make the sound richer and darker. Like a black hole star, Don sometimes seems to be pulling raw sounds out of the air towards himself. It's a totally wild process, and something we hope you will enjoy, before you file this title as a JAZZ record. Which Don says is where it belongs. And who are we -- really -- to argue?" --Byron Coley, 2020 Edition of 300.
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FTR 524LP
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"Hot on the heels of last year's Matthew J. Rolin LP (FTR 502LP, 2019), here is a new duo recording featuring Rolin's acoustic twelve-string and the hammered-dulcimer of Jen Powers. They've had a couple previous cassettes, but I've never seen 'em! If you have, I can offer you something fine in trade. As with his first LP, Rolin's command of his guitar is quite wonderful to hear. He uses the whole breadth of the twelve-string's harmonic potential, which creates a wide surging stream of sound. Powers' work with the hammered dulcimer (an instrument we hear far too rarely these days!) utilizes a similar approach, which means we are afforded access to wide aural river into which we can dip our aching heads. A more soothing splash will be hard to find. Matt and Jen have been playing together since early 2018, when Rolin relocated from Chicago to Columbus, where they are now based. They've also worked as a trio with Jayson Gerycz playing singing bowls and like, but the tape of that session has eluded me thus far as well. Still, this duo record is a wonderful dive into their sound. The music is open and upful and filled with a kind of joy that seems in short supply these days. Recorded by Lisa Bella Donna (of the great underground prog band, EYE), mastered by Brian Sulpizio (Ryley Wakler's guitarist of choice, among other things), the debut LP by the Powers/Rolin Duo is an object of power and beauty. Let it shine, motherfucker. Let it shine." --Byron Coley, 2020 Edition of 250.
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FTR 499LP
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"Vinylization of last year's cassette by UK duo, The Slowest Lift. Comprised of Julian Bradley (Vibracathedral Orchestra, etc.) and Sophie Cooper (whose Divine Ekstasys LP, (FTR 342LP, 2018) is a dang classic), The Slowest Lift has been producing high-quality avant-pop form-waffling for several years. Their eponymous debut album was on VHF (2017), and Plutonic Shine continues their drive into the heart of some very weird beast. Sophie's vocals sometimes breath like the air itself, although they can also surface as distorted puffs of lung-powered color, melodically-oriented, but trapped by no ordinary sense of song structure. The instrumental portion seems to be built with electronics and guitars, which create mounds of sound for the vocals to hide behind and dodge around. Although the sound is as 'now' as any hep cat could wish. There is really very little to date this music archeologically. The basic tools for what The Slowest Lift do have been around for decades. It is what Julian and Sophie choose to do with these tools that will knock that beaver hat right off your head. Gorgeous stuff." --Byron Coley, 2020 Edition of 250.
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FTR 513LP
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"A glorious re-match for Chicago's superb free-rock trio, Mako Sica, and the jazz world's percussionist of choice, Hamid Drake. Their last collaboration, Ronda (FTR 409LP, 2018) was a glorious, open-ended studio conversation spread across two LPs. Balancing Tear is a mix of studio and live recordings, awash with calmly oceanic passages, interspersed with compressed and feverish form-blurts. As with Ronda, the heft of the material is dynamically advanced. The album begins with passages worthy of Morricone's western soundtracks, but the action mutates with rapid surety. There's a track that will make you think of a micro-dosed Vic Damone singing balled for the Sephardic Justice Society with chunky, obtuse piano accompaniment recalling the work of Chris Abrahams (Necks). There are stretches of proggy soundtrack-y expansion with muted trumpet and deep bass roiling that make me think of Mark Cunningham's superb electro-jazz combo, Blood Quartet. There are even shadows of tango that emerge in places like sharks' fins breaching. Having played together as much as they have over the intervening years, Hamid's presence inside the overall gestalt of the sound is a natural fit. Mako Sica's sound expands without making it seem like there's a new element grafted to it. It's just bigger and better. As all freedom should be." --Byron Coley, 2020
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FTR 391LP
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"This is the second volume of our series collecting the odds & sods of the immortal Nudge Squidfish. Nudge is one of the singular figures to emerge from the Columbus sub-underground rock scene of the 1970s. He was a member of The True Believers (along with Mike Rep & Tommy Jay). He cut a single for the New Age label in '82, and couple of odd solo LPs while he was living in Nashville later in the '80s. He was a member of V-3 (along with Jim Shepard) after that. He also released a bonkers full-length cassette on Old Age that was subsequently vinylized by Columbus Discount. More recently, he has become a highly regarded disseminator of UFO videos (Google it). The first volume of this series, You Can't Have Aliens Without The Squid (FTR 321LP, 2017), was met with gasps of amazement and other tomfoolery. Robot Wars, featuring material recorded between 1974 and 2017, covers even wider stylistic ground than Aliens, and is certain to provoke as many questions as there are answers. The material here is performed by Nudge solo, Root Cellar (a band with Charles Cicirella on smutty vocals), Jayfish (Nudge + Tommy Jay), and V-3. And while Nudge (left to his own devices) has shown signs of being a pop artist, the music here does not hew to that notion. From fine, straight bar blues readymades to spaced-up electro doo-dads to neo-Nig Heistian raunch polemicism, to guitar bursts worthy of Crazy Horse, Robot Wars presents many the faces of the Squid. And yeah, it includes his pop side, but the breadth and balance are kinda staggering. Roll on, Big N!" --Byron Coley, 2020 Edition of 200.
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FTR 493LP
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"Here is the third of our LPs documenting the new work of Vienna-based expatriate guitarist, Eric Arn. The first was the solo Orphic Resonance (FTR 281LP), the second, Paranza Corta (FTR 384LP), documenting duo work with Austrian guitarist Margaret Unknown. And now the third features duet recordings with English avant garde cellist Jasmine Pender, who also performs more noisily using the soubriquet, Rotten Bliss. Pender and Arn first met at a 2018 festival in Krems, Austria. They played a duo show soon after, and this recording session followed in August of that year, when Ms. Pender was passing through Vienna. The blend of their instruments is a strange and delicate meeting. The music involves a conversation of tonal improvising in which the separation of the instruments (so different on the surface) manages to blend in a way that component parts submerge fully into a sort of Third Mind-style musical language. The material here is basically live and, according to Eric, 'lightly-edited, no overdubs or post-processing.' The first side-long piece. 'In illo tempore,' is a mosaic of layered sheets of sound, fitted together as they gently float through space and time. The second side-long piece, 'The Serpent Ophis,' is a slowly built, chiming, breathing mass of circular gesticulation that effortlessly rises to create a shimmering, expanding plateau of sound. As with Eric's other LPs, Hyrdomancy is a wonderful dive into the unknown. Can't wait for the next one." --Byron Coley, 2020
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FTR 511LP
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"Vinylization of an insane and legendary CDR that Nashville's Cherry Blossoms collective issued when they did a 2007 tour of Upper and Lower Rangoon with Josephine Foster as a special guest member. The Cherry Blossoms are a musical entity not easily described, but I feel as though their essential whatsis was grasped by Michael Hurley. We were talking a few weeks ago and when the Blossoms were mentioned, Mike said, 'Oh Yeah. I remember the last time I played a gig with those guys. Their van pulled up, and each of them got out, already playing an instrument and singing, and each of them was doing a different song.' And so it is here. This is a blend of roots music unimaginable to the average No Depression type listener. Various threads of beauty are woven together into a tapestry of such psychedelic magnitude you can barely comprehend the individual elements. Listening to this album one hears a blend of Pindar Family-style Bahamian ecstasy, slightly tipsy Protestant psaltery, jump rope songs, and just the sort of rag-taggery that Snock described. Josephine's distinctive voice is deep in the mix sometimes, at others it emerges for semi-solo highlighting. And the whole thing is a thoroughly provocative series of unfolding wonders. So sad you missed the tour. So glad we could help." --Byron Coley, 2020 Edition of 400.
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FTR 495LP
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"First graspable release by Leaf Peepers, a Massachusetts duo comprised of Turner Falls' Omeed Goodzari and Worcester's Nick Bisceglia. Omeed is well-known hereabouts as member of Donkey No No, and also for his solo recordings, which include the superb Zoltar Hid All the Locks / Minnows LP (FTR 349LP, 2018). Nick has recorded with his band Husks, and has also participated on sessions by Wendy Eisenberg and Chris Weisman among others. In fact, the both of them helped out on Chris's last album, Romantics. Be that as it may, the sound of the Leaf Peppers is located somewhere near the orthocenter of these references. Because Omeed is present, there is a distinct whiff of classic hippie paranoia, usually expressed via acoustic guitar figures that are both simple and complex at the same time. Meanwhile, the vocals display lots of the same weird pop displacement as the tuneage of Brattleboro's finest. Although it also seems as if there's a lot of speed manipulation on the vocal tracks, so that sometimes you'd swear you were listening to ghost-lassies singing about CIA operatives and monkey glands and various other topics. But whatever speed you hear it at, Lunchtime for Birdy is a trip. Rolling circles of guitar-chords, toots of the pan flute, with vocals and lyrics that range from softly lyrical to something that recalls the ecstatic-chaos of the Fugs. Prepare thyself to deal with lunch. As a miracle." --Byron Coley, 2020
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FTR 512LP
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iji (pronounced "ee-hee") is songwriter Zach Burba's tenured, pop coalition. Bred in Phoenix and fully flowered in Seattle, iji has been touring the American underground for 14 years, releasing a countless number of beloved LPs and tapes and pressing pause only for Zach to join the roving swarms of friends like Mega Bog, Dear Nora, and Clyde Peterson, whose Torrey Pines film (2016) featured a live touring soundtrack by Zach and others. iji, their self-titled 11th release, is a crucial wander through a gummi jungle that thrums with living things. When it came time to record, iji live band alums Jake Jones (drums), Will Murdoch (bass), Evan Easthope (guitar), Tyler Martin (synths), Erin Birgy (vocals), and Jade Tcimpidis (vocals) lined up to help alongside a large number of friends, guests, and new collaborators including Zach's dad, David Burba (who plays harmonica on the opening track). Zach also recruited collaborators, James Krivchenia (Big Thief) and Erin Birgy (Mega Bog) to engineer and co-produce respectively, with eternal heroes like Arthur Russell, Laura Nyro, Peter Ivers, and Squeeze swimming in the clouds above. Although iji consistently slips from genre assignment, it has been an earnest pop experiment since its inception. The dancing procession of iji albums have reliably been about goofing, dreaming, love, and adventures through both inner- and outer-space, with lyrics and arrangements that sparkle with good-natured self-awareness. The theme of movement -- necessary, joyful, and dizzying -- zigs through the record, most notably with the minty-blue "Faster", and duet "In Motion", featuring vocals from fellow road dog Greta Kline (Franky Cosmos). Present, too, are the loss and loneliness that come with endless flux, whether it's in feeling alone-together in the social anxiety warble "Party's Turn", missing old kinship of absent pals ("Where Are You?"), accepting bewilderment at your own reflection ("I Don't Ever Wanna Go Back", "Lizard", "Much Oblige"), or even in singing a requiem for a favorite tape whose warped reels can't light the brain like they used to ("The Ultimate in Relaxation"). Other songs are stories told in harmony with these ideas; an artist's performative self wriggles out of being truly known in "Something to Say", we stop to gawk at the dude within ("Chewing"), and thumbs twirl in the sunny one-room cottage of "Salmon Ladder". The album's synaesthetic palette, pocked and splashed with noises, is a direct nod to iji's relationship with visual art. One of Zach's paintings appears on the cover and is, quite literally, a still-life of the music. Includes lyric sheet and download code; edition of 500.
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LP
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FTR 519LP
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"Music doesn't have to be self-expression, but for Ryan Power that's the only way it can be. Every note, melody, turn of phrase, and point of view in Power's carefully-crafted songs is intravenously infused with his particular way of moving through the world. It's a curious, probing, never-satisfied mode; he's always searching for the perfect combination of chords, the most precise arrangement of words, the most complete capturing of a mood. As one song on his eighth album Mind the Neighbors puts it, his songs are 'dreams on the run' -- part of an exhilarating chase for elusive ideals. That chase leads to some wonderfully weird discoveries. On the wind-blown 'The Slime', sweetened tones inspire surreal visions: 'your feet are burning on thoughts of coal / slowly seeping through the walls of your soul.' Whitetail deer and tectonic shifts get equal footing in the breezy sway-rock of 'Spirit Animal', which takes place during 'pot therapy at brain camp'. And in the deliberate, meditative 'Breathe Deep John', a robot turns into a human but feels like a mirage: 'Everybody wants to see the monster,' Power hums. 'So everyone's out getting wrecked.' Those kinds of inimitable reflections put Power's personality all over the music on Mind the Neighbors. But these tunes are not without precedent: his own obsessions with Brazilian music -- particularly Bossa nova -- as well as jazz (a form in which he's trained) and folk all flutter through his songs, and you can hear some remnants of '60s French pop careening around as well. But Power's been at this for almost 20 years, and any echoes you might hear in Mind the Neighbors are merely intriguing footnotes to the autobiography his music continues to write with precision and, yeah, power. You don't want to miss this chapter." --Marc Masters, 2020
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LP
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FTR 500LP
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2020 repress on neon magenta vinyl. "Wow! Great new LP by the full trio version of Maine's Big Blood. Colleen, Caleb, and Quinnisa are all present and accounted for at every turn on this one! Unlike their last LP, The Daughter's Union (FTR 459LP, 2019) (which seemed like some sort of experiment involving glam-rock-readymades), Do You Wanna? is awash with crazily re-imagined girl group dynamics. Some of these tight-sparkly-dress recreations have a savage teenage authority, but others wiggle more like dreams stolen from the nodes of Julee Cruise, Angelo Badalamenti, or David Lynch. Sometimes there are style-ghosts standing in all the expected places, but none of them are behaving the way we'd expect. But I do not wish to paint the sound here as monochromatic. There are many of Big Blood's classic elements employed with trademark pluck -- witchy patches recalling early Spires That in the Sunset Rise, small balloons filled with glitter & gas-pulses, bubbling pools of pure psychedelic confusion. But the strange sophistication of children wearing Diana Ross masks is something new. And it's such a mesmerizing vision, I find myself paying extra attention to it. But then again, that's just the surface. The lyrics here are of a piece with Big Blood's patented approach of creating surrealist poetry in a rural and arrestingly original American style. Quinissa's newly rampant influence seems to be grounding some of the lyrical imagery in more quotidian scenes ('Insecure Kids,' etc.), but with the parental examples she's afforded on a daily basis, this may just be a phase. But whatever else it is, Do You Wanna? is another amazing spin from Big Blood. And there's even a poster you can pin on your memory board. Talk about your win/win situations!" --Byron Coley, 2020
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LP
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FTR 396LP
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"Eugene Chadbourne is one of the great guitar players of the modern era. At the time he began recording in Canada in 1975, his music was a unique syncretic formulation. While its most obvious component was free improvisation in a style then most widely associated with English and European players, his music also contained elements of jazz, country, folk, blues, psychedelic and international sounds, referencing these threads in ways that were so diverse and intensely personalized it would take scholars decades to decode them. Volume 4-1/3 is the fourth of four Feeding Tube LPs in this series, devoted to documenting some of the music Dr. Chadbourne created in the years he lived in Canada, avoiding the shadow of Richard Nixon. As always, exact details of the recordings are vague, but trivial. Here are four tracks of improvisational guitar madness at its most glorious. Describing their textures is a fool's errand, but that is the job I was born to do. 'Bow' is new to me, but the sonics suggest the title may be a practical description of how some of the effects are achieved. 'The Bird', which has been issued on cassette previously, is a wonderful example of Eugene's most swinging jazzbo playing. 'Be' is another piece that's new to me, with long sequences of bent-string attack accruing epic grandeur as they unspool. And 'Mao Tse Tung Did Not Have to Deal with People Who Were Watching Seven Hours of Television Every Day', which was a bonus track on the CDR version of Solo Guitar Volume Two, is a sidelong ode to revolutionary techniques of all kinds, employing a bunch of them as it evolves, with results that are pure bananas. If you play all four volumes of this set in order, you will begin to imagine a whole new universe of guitar technique. We hope they fill in some gaps for you. We have been blown away by each and every one. And would like to thank Doctor Chadbourne for sharing his archives with us." --Byron Coley, 2020 Edition of 400.
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LP
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FTR 489LP
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"Eddie Flowers is a legend of the American rock sub-underground. Starting as an Alabama-bound fanzine scribe back in the early '70s, Eddie drifted to Bloomington to lend his presence to the Gizmos in the days before 'punk' was codified. Next, he turned up in L.A., where he founded the legendary acid squawlers, Crawlspace. Crawlspace was a thoroughly nuts collection of loosely rotating heads, who existed from 1985 into the new century. They played few actual 'shows,' but still managed to churn out endless documents of their music making. Still, Crawlspace's few vinyl offerings are exquisitely fucked, and include some of the first heavy deployments of Can-generated riff-pulsing heard anywhere on the scene. Anyway, L.A. has a way of eating its children, and Eddie was darn near gobbled by the Sunshine Monster before he was spirited away to Indiana by some old and solid friends. Once there, he lost no time getting a new 'situation' together, and this album is its first graspable evidence. The music created by The Wax-Lip-Swamp-Dub unit is thick with acid-haze (generated by a real random assortment of instruments) and powered into fields of Can-like glory by the superb drumming of Tyler Damon (previously heard on (Manas III (FTR 330LP, 2017)). Eddie's vocals sprawl across the top of it all, giving an entirely new meaning to R. Meltzer's phrase, 'blabbermouth lockjaw of the soul.' The vocals here are all that, but they lay out like a beatnik rattlesnake frying happily in the Texas sun. It is a beautiful trip. Hint to travelers: the higher you fly, the better your view" --Byron Coley, 2019. Edition of 300.
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LP
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FTR 504LP
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"A very whacked new outing from Baltimore keyboard genius Liz Durette. Her earlier albums had a certain avant jazz approach, tempered perhaps by certain new music proclivities. And while I do not doubt she still has the chops for such things, Delight is a horse of an entirely different color. What's here was all done on keyboards, but at times it sounds like insane calliope music for wicked children with a taste for that old waltz beat. The whole first side could be the soundtrack for a surreal film about dead Viennese courtiers high-stepping their way around the Bardo as though it were a hedge maze. The more I listen to the record, the more circular its matrix appears, and the less certain I am of the direction in which gravity is pulling me. No surprise then, to learn that part of Delight's inspiration was drawn from A Genuine Tong Funeral, Gary Burton's amazing '68 LP, comprised of a full set of Carla Bley's wildest early compositions. On the flip, Durette is in a similar fettle, but seems keener on exploring the faux percussive aspects of her 'axe.' This involves the simulation of little people tap dancing on a xylophone, as well as very many other transgressive-if-meditative sonic activities. And they are all done with such flair and attention to detail you really have to wonder what sort of visions Liz has accessed. They seem to exist somewhere between romance and math. The universe of sounds she creates on Delight is wildly complex, but also it appears to operate by a set of congruous rules throughout. Like I said earlier, GENIUS!" --Byron Coley, 2019 Edition of 250.
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2LP
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FTR 368LP
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"After five long years of waiting, rural psych masters, Sore Eros, return with an extended statement of purpose. Although their partial spatial dislocation from Western Mass has seemly rendered them a studio-oriented outfit, the lovely tangles of sound they create are as optimally fried as ever. The album was helmed by engineer/producer Adam Granduciel (War on Drugs) who was the only one capable of coaxing the whole band into the studio. Aided by players like Daniel Oxenberg (ex-Supreme Dicks) and Kurt Vile (ex-Nest of Saws), the music on Sore Eros was recorded between Philly and L.A., and seems to owe some its creative modeling to those cities as well. Indeed, the side-long ending track, 'Mirror,' feels like it's equally indebted to left-coast canyon-hugging surf-pop and cheese steak-powered garage-volk readymades. The rest of the album is just as sizzling. The tunes move between large-scale rock moves with Deadly intent and strangely-drifting pop aktion that gets close to Bobb Trimble's version of otherness. The overall heft is more woodsy than beachy, but maybe I'm just saying that 'cause I'm listening to the thing in the middle of a forest. Pressed at 45 RPM for extra high fidelity, packed up with a poster insert you can throw darts at (just like an earlier generation threw darts at the insert from the first Silver Apples LP), the theoretical swan song of Sore Eros is all a head could hope for. And then some." --Byron Coley, 2019
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