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FTR 416LP
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$18.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 12/14/2018
"Although I have lately taken to associating Louisville's Ryan Davis with the maniacal blurt of Tropical Trash, I am reminded by the release of the fourth State Champion LP, Send Flowers, that this is his original mothership. Send Flowers is State Champion's most fully realized Beard Rock expression to date. The surrealist underpinnings of Ryan's lyrics are heavier than ever, but that is balanced by the band's most epiphanically tasty licking. The pieces fit together with such easy organic grace, it's tempting to suspect they're simple. But the closer you listen to the parts the more complex they appear. This begins with Ryan's words, which are sung so gracefully you have to concentrate to pick up on the timeless phrases he invents here, but when you pay attention they jump up and just about bite you. The same thing goes for the instrumentation, which initially passes as a mere recreation of lost Topanga threads, but surpasses those bounds with the something approaching the same assurance as the David Lindley-led band on Terry Reid's River LP (the transcendent Beard Rock masterpiece). Send Flowers will almost surely be misapprehended by lazy farmers and the cows who follow them. It may also be anathema to folks who primarily head-link it to Tropical Trash, but for anyone who digs the new generation of singer/songwriters out there, from Wooden Wand to Ned Collette to the legacy of the Silver Jews. Peel slowly and see." --Byron Coley, 2018.
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FTR 405LP
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$18.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 12/14/2018
"You know that old phrase, 'Teach a penguin to cuss, and you'll never have to buy another comedy record' I'm sure you do. But what about its codicil? 'Teach a guitarist to play synth, and you'll never have to buy a new age record?' If you know that one, you might well be put off by the fact this album features one of New Zealand's most wickedly post-tongue guitar players fiddling about with oscillators and analog synths (in concert with a guy who does this stuff all the time). But you need not fear. The only New Age being brunted about here is the same one Fahey disemboweled back in '97. An ornery cuss, it has lived in the cracks some-damn-place, only re-emerging now that it has been called forth by Bruce Russell and Noel Meek. Much of the sound on Classical Music (how Fahey would have loved everything about this record!) makes me think of Chris Marker's classic film, La Jetée (1962). As you certainly recall, the central motif in that film is the main quay at Aéroport de Paris-Orly, where visitors gather to watch the jets land and take off (just as I did at New York's Idlewild Airport when I was a kid). Well, particularly on the second side, this record is a jolt of aural déjà vu for me. If I close my eyes I can almost see a parade of 707s and DC-8s careening around the flats of Long Island, missing collisions by what seem like a series of miracles to me. Mr. Russell's last LP for us was 2016's Howling and Instability at High Volume Settings (FTR 219LP), and it is a sheer pleasure to realize how unstable he can be on instruments besides the guitar. Mr. Meek is wildly successful at this as well, and the combination is as bracing as an early morning slap of Old Spice. Step up for blast of Classical Music-style reality today. You'll be oh-so-glad you did." --Byron Coley, 2018. Edition of 250.
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FTR 413LP
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$18.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 12/14/2018
"Newly remastered reissue of Willie Lane's 2009 solo guitar LP, Known Quantity, originally released on his own Cord Art label. Over the last few years, this album has been requested at the store more often than just about any other, but it sold out not long after it was issued and has risen in price consistently since that time. Listening to Known Quantity, it's not hard to understand why it has such a strong rep. Lane came out the Hampshire College scene that aligned itself with the Apostasy Records crowd (Krefting, Shaw, Rosenblum, etc.). His first known recordings were actually with some of the noisier experimental units associated with this cabal. Willie was based in Philadelphia for a long time after college, where he fell in with Jack Rose and the whole Fishtown scene of the early Oughts. Moving back to the Valley, Willie also began working with Matt Valentine's tribe, and his first solo album,Recliner Ragas, was issued as a C.O.M. CDR in 2006 before getting vinylized by the Humito label in 2012. And keen listeners out there will detect a certain "Spectrasound" feel to some of the electric passages here. The music on Known Quantity is a buttery mix of electric and acoustic string aktion. Samara Lubelski plays bass on one track, but it's all solo apart from that. And it's a wonderland of textures and sound shapes. Some of the pieces are almost straight ahead (somewhat more in tunes with the work Willie does when he plays live), but others are as wobbly and jagged as a drunk peacock. It's an amazing record, and rewards multiple listens with constantly unfolding details. Max Milgram (from Watery Love) did the new cover art (based on the original LP's photographic frontispiece) and the mastering by Carl Saff is mighty nice. Enjoy..." --Byron Coley, 2018. Edition of 500.
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FTR 434LP
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$18.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 12/14/2018
"Silk is the fantastic third LP by Maxine Funke, a New Zealand musician whose first recordings were with the legendary $100 Band (Funke, Alastair Galbraith, and Mike Dooley!), whose music was drifting experimental dust of a very high order. Maxine's first two solo albums, Lace (2008) and Felt (2012) (originally released as CDR on Galbraith's Next Best Way and a lathe on Epic Sweep, respectively), were reissued by Time-Lag to great acclaim in 2016, securing her place in the upper echelons of contemporary folk inventors. With the release of Silk, Ms. Funke manages to create an album that merges both of these style threads. Many of the tracks are cast in an intimate mood congruent with artists like Sibylle Baier, Barbara Manning, Myriam Gendron, Joanne Robertson, and other women who have pulled sweetly dark sounds from pockets of deep emotion, abetted largely by acoustic guitar. On a few other tracks, electronic instrumentals hearken back to her work with transceivers in the $100 Band days. The balance between these posts is delicately intoxicating. A readymade classic from start to finish, Silk travels a brilliant series of spaceways with grace and assurance. We should all be so lucky." --Byron Coley, 2018. Edition of 400.
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FTR 305LP
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$18.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 12/14/2018
"Patriots is the first actual vinyl record dedicated entirely to the music of Boston's boss post-core art-punk trio, (New England) Patriots. Their other two long players are splits, with Palberta (FTR166EP, 2015) and Skimask. And while those two bands are certainly estimable in their own rights, the unadulterated churn of (NE) Patriots gives this album a very special squirm. Certain aspects of the blabber still make me think of the late, lamented Cows, and their whole whizzing raunch shebang. But there's nothing in my personal listening history that has this exact brand of sonic adventurism. The Pats still just use guitars, drums and tongues at work in shaping their sounds (certain bass register tones being ascribed to fat strings, perhaps?), and they have a beautifully anarchic approach to song assemblage. Some of the tunes stretch out like worms in Gibby Haynes' colon, others are compacted the way the Hobson Brothers' nut sacs might have if they'd given each other cube-dunks back in Killdozer's heyday. A firm and mighty sound." --Byron Coley, 2018. Numbered edition of 300.
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FTR 414LP
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$18.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 12/14/2018
"The second LP by Mark Cunningham's current Spanish outfit, Blood Quartet, marks a directional shift from their 2016 debut LP, Deep Red (FTR 283LP). On Until My Darkness Goes the quartet abandons pure instrumentalism, including a few vocal takes by drummer Cândid Coll strewn amidst the album's various tangles. There is also a much more aggressively rockist focus shown at times. Rumor has always been that this is a firm part of the band's live trip, but recorded evidence of it has thus far been scarce. Of course, most of Until My Darkness Goes is in the same great vein as Deep Red. Noirish trumpet drifts across a rotten cityscape, batting down noise guitar rats that pop up from open manhole covers like goddamn Whack-a-Moles. But there are other things going on as well. "Surfing Rueda" sounds like some sort of unholy collaboration between the Raybeats and Sonic Youth. "Stress of Her Regard" plays like Robert Wyatt doing his version of hard rock vocals in front of the Tony Williams Lifetime. "Velvet Love" curls through the air like a smoky reconsideration on Eric Burdon & the Animals' soft-psych phase. It's crazy how fast this record drifts from style to style, although Blood Quartet always touches back to their basic Chet Baker meets Pete Cosey conception. The whole album is a collection of wild moves, as you might guess from the fact they cop a Stones quote for its title, and even name a track after the Representative from Corwood. I can't wait to hear what these guys get up to next, but for now we've all got plenty to digest. So dig in." --Byron Coley, 2018. Edition of 250.
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FTR 408LP
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"Creative Healing is a new Massachusetts combo mixing the folks from Hollow Deck (Andy Allen and Mia Friedman) with three old pals who also passed through the Ran Blake Paddle Tunnel at NE Conservatory (Katie McShane, Jesse Heasly and Nick Neuberg). The results are, as the old men say, a real gas. Although it's not a constant, there are moments throughout this album where the swonky collision of sax, guitar and drums puts me in mind of several classic versions of Beefheart's Magic Band. Nothing along those lines in the vocal department (which are often delivered as casually as they might be by MX-80's Rich Stim), but some of the harmonic threads are definitely of a Vliet-ian ilk. But there's more horn and overt jazzliness here, and also a dual tendency towards straighter and skronkier passages that would be outside the Magic Band's realm. The female vocals, when they appear, lend an edge of sophisto-mystery. It's not entirely unlike the way Dagmar Krause's parts worked during the later days of Henry Cow. As you've probably gathered from the references, this is art rock played at a very high level. There's no real nostalgia in it, however, the essential whatsis of their music is fully contemporary, and has lots of mechanical detailing that places it squarely in the post-post-hardcore stream. But it's also rooted in the great eternal gush of progressive music is all its many guises. And if that makes it seem like there's a little bit of everything here, well so be it. RIYL anything anywhere between RWA, Slapp Happy and Men & Volts." --Byron Coley, 2018. Edition of 250.
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2LP
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FTR 298LP
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"Spielgusher represents the meeting of two of America's great artists, Richard Meltzer and Mike Watt. There is additional musical accompaniment by guitarist Hirotaka Shimizu and drummer Yuko Araki, but the basic semiotic brunt of this meeting is shouldered by Richard and Mike. A collaboration between the two had been postulated back when the Minutemen still walked the Earth, but that dream was canceled with D Boon met his tragic fate in December 1985. Still, Meltzer and Watt kept in touch and tried to think of what they might do together. Around 2011 they arrived at solution. Richard had recorded a bunch of material for Mike, and Watt finally decided to go into the studio with a couple of his Japanese musician pals to cut a long set of jams and splats to go along with the words. Mike put the finished session, also called Spielgusher, out as a CD on his own clenchedwrench label, but we never really felt a though that release got into the hands or ears or brains of the many folks who'd dig hearing it. Consequently, here is a 2LP reprise of the set, with lovely new cover art, provided by Raymond Pettibon (another long-time Meltzer fan, and one who actually witnessed the debut performance of VOM at Kahuna's Bearded Clam, back when we were all a lot younger). Meltzer's words range from hilarious to shocking, and anyone who has attended one of his readings will agree that his performance is fully on point here. The musical inventions the trio tosses up to meet his words are fantastic - abstract or pointed at various times, melodic or noisome as befits the mood, but all with the compact econo lines that are Watt's stock-in-trade. There are perhaps some out there for whom Meltzer's poems will prove to be stronger word-meat than they are used to, but most of us are surely made of stronger stuff. And this album will be welcome manna to ear-teeth everywhere. Chew slowly and see." --Byron Coley, 2018. Edition of 500.
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FTR 386LP
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"In March 1995, soon after the German Veracity label issued Wolfways, and just before they did Parsnips Snips (1995) (Hurley's first vinyl after a nine-year drought), the Great Snock undertook his first European tour. Joined by bassist Robert Michener (from the Richmond scene Hurley'd been involved in) and percussionist Mickey Bones (legendary Boston drummer & bones player), Hurley hit a bunch of places and Germany and also KLUB K4 in Llubjana, Slovenia, where this set was recorded. The sound is beautiful, the band plays with lazy perfection, and Hurley's vocals are energetically melodic. He does some songs that were only released on the series of cassettes that immediately preceded Wolfways ('Horse's Ass,' 'The Beggar's Terms'), stuff from Wolfways ('Letter in Neon,' 'Portland Water,' 'I Paint a Design'), classics like 'O My Stars,' and a few cover tunes. And More! Packed up in a new Hurley art cover design (based on the Euro tour t-shirt), with great liner notes detailing the rigors of a German press junket from right before the tour-proper, this package is sure to please discerning Snockophiles of all stripes. It's a fantastic spin. Dig in today." --Byron Coley, 2018.
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FTR 393LP
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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 1-1/3 is the first of four LPs devoted to documenting some of the music Dr. Chadbourne was creating during the years he was based in the provinces of Canada, while avoiding the constrictive powers of Richard Nixon and his ilk. Exact details of the recordings are moot, but that's trivial. The music on this record is a joyous celebration of traditions of liberation, using approaches that range from the ridiculous to the sublime. But regardless of the humor level (which can be very high at times), the quality of the musicianship and the originality of Chadbourne's compositional theories is staggering. Today there are charts and maps that can lead anyone into and out of the conceptual jungles Eugene was exploring. In the mid '70s, when these tracks were laid down, this was all terra incognita. While still in his early '20s, the Doc was figuring all this shit out for himself. And doing so at a level that can still make your jaw drop. Today Chadbourne continues making some of the most exciting music on the planet, but these examples of his early work should serve as a challenge to many musicians who would like to imagine they're doing something new. That they're also a total gas to hear is just gravy. Delicious, hot and very juicy." --Byron Coley
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FTR 411LP
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"Lauri McNamara is one of the crazies who make the New England sub-underground such a richly interesting universe to inhabit. She worked off and on with the late, lamented Egg, Eggs, but her main focus has always been on solo performance, accompanying herself on ukelele. A few other people make their presence felt on her debut LP, Knobby Knoll, but let's not get bogged down in their details. 'Cause really, this is Lauri's show, no matter who else might be sitting in. Unlike the many idiots who play uke, emphasizing its child-like qualities, Lauri handles the little axe like an adult. In her hands the instrument is just a guitar with a more compressed palette. And one gets the impression that what some people would view as the limitations of the instrument are appreciated by McNamara for their inherent intimacy. Knobby Knoll is nothing if not an intimate experience. The lyrics are filled with Lauri sharing aspects of her persona, alternately affectionate and judgmental, but always melodic. Many artists who inhabit similarly idiosyncratic creative space eschew compositional beauty as a necessary element, but Ms. McNamara has a very dab hand creating hooks inside a context where they seem almost anomalous. In many ways, the songs here resemble classic 'parlor music' of the late 19th century. For a moment, it can almost make you forget we live in the age of Trump. What a gift!" --Byron Coley, 2018 Edition of 200.
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LP
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FTR 324LP
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"In 1975, the critic Lester Bangs was seen moaning in the pages of Creem about the anti-emotionalism of the German band, Kraftwerk, and their whole concept of the man-machine. Skip ahead 43 years. Bangs is long dead, and the man-machine is thriving. As proof of this, one need look no further than the new Tarp LP, Part. Trapped inside its insanely lovely cover art (courtesy of Greta Svalberg), one finds the two hulking man-machines (Conrad Capistran and Joshua Burkett) attempting to figure out if it's okay for robots to hug each other in public. Right in the center of the highway, even. Heard in the most boorish way, the music on Part is all the work of unemotional man-machines (to use Bangs's moldy fig of a term). 'Anybody could play this stuff,' Chuck Berry fans will pout. But that's both untrue and beside the point. I mean a goddamn giraffe can play 'Johnny B. Goode' given a 30 minute head start. Music as subtle and fully communicative as the music on Part is a heavy conceptual lift. It occurs only after a lot of thought, a massive amount of jacking around, and about a ton of boo. One needs to be a committed freak to pull off such an elegant space-hack as this. But, of course Conrad and Joshua are lifers not dilettantes. Tarp is what they do. And no one could do it better. Their previous eponymous LPs (FTR 117, FTR 323) have been dandy, but Part is a real push into new areas of the void that amplify the duo's kosmiche wing beats. You can hear little pieces of the millions of records these guys have heard poking up now and then, but the way these elements are collaged into the whole is absolutely unique, absolutely Tarp. And not the mere burps of some man-machines. Roll over Lester Bangs, and tell Chuck Berry the news." -Byron Coley, 2018. Edition of 300.
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FTR 350LP
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"Limited Grace is a lyrical hitchhike expedition through a psychedelic rural universe where time is nebulous and navigational tools are frowned upon. Through words, voice and sound, Gillig take us through cosmic swamps, ghostly clearings, mountain tops at night without a tent, shacks built along riverbanks but without running water, and dark desert highways soaked in silence except for the sound of a gas tank running on little more than fumes. Using the imagery of small, concrete moments, he tells us unique yet epically familiar stories without the frills of any particular plotline. While his first release, Cave Trilogy (FTR 188LP), was a 3LP set of songs recorded solo under a bridge, this is a more honed effort to take that same rawness into a studio and build on it while maintaining its authenticity. With contributions from friends like Matt Valentine, the FDOME collective, and other members of the Turners Falls music community, this effort is decidedly fruitful. Whatever qualities might have been lost while emerging from under the bridge, are replaced with musical elements that bring all subtleties to light. Well-placed backing vocals, sludgy yet swirling guitar leads and minimalist organ are the sparkplugs and pistons on Gillig's likely unregistered vehicle as he shows us all-points-off-grid. Many of these songs would not sound a bit out of place if they somehow found their way onto an Alexander "Skip" Spence album or a collection of Warren Zevon demos. At times taking the offbeat elements of Spence or Zevon a step further, at other times more straightforward, boldly reminiscent of early Dylan or Townes Van Zandt. Bryan Gillig's Limited Grace is an artisanal demonstration of song craft and sensibility that is not so much forgotten as rarely attempted, let alone successfully." --Travis Long, 2018. Edition of 200. Comes with download code.
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FTR 402LP
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"Time Machine is a reissue of a 2017 cassette, and represents the first vinyl issued by Wendy Eisenberg, a peripatetic improviser and composer currently based in Amherst. We first heard of Wendy when she was playing with a blasted quartet called Birthing Hips, whose NNA cassette was an instant classic. Since then she's begun a solo career that branches off in a lot of directions simultaneously. She has an album of post-form noise-metal (in trio with Trevor Dunn and Ches Smith) due soon on John Zorn's Tzadik label. She has an LP of acoustic guitar improvs coming up on Steve Lowenthal's VDSQ imprint. And then there's Time Machine -- a gloriously intimate suite of bedroom pop miniatures that makes us suspect she can do about anything she sets her mind to. The music on Time Machine is arranged sparingly and sung with real warmth. Although everyone thinks I'm nuts for mentioning it, I am reminded in spots of the Space Lady's outsider take on keyboard pop. But there are also large parts of this record that put me in mind of Elisa Ambrogio's solo work as well as the singing she does with 200 Years, meaning there's a sense of inherent wildness being reined in a bit, all for the sake of the songs. Time Machine is a wonderfully flowing album. Small parts of the instrumentation hint at the stranger vistas Ms. Eisenberg's music can explore, reminding us that this is but one of her guises. But it's a damn good one, and we're very happy she let us help document it." --Byron Coley, 2018. Edition of 250.
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LP
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FTR 375LP
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"Jerman Barnes sounds like a fancy men's shoe brand, but it's actually a duo comprised of two of the American underground's most prolific wanderers -- Jeph Jerman and Tim Barnes. Jeph has explored everything from primitively brilliant free jazz with Blowhole to deep electronic explorations under the name Hands To, although in the latter part of the 1990s he shifted his focus to music made with found natural objects. Tim Barnes entered our consciousness as fluent master of experimentally canted percussion before he threw us a curve by joining Matt Valentine's Tower Recordings ensemble and going deep-prole for a while. Regardless, he and Jeph started releasing duo recordings almost 15 years ago, and they all brim with a very specific type of spectral weirdness. The instruments listed in the credits are: metal, bamboo temple blocks, springboard, wood, feathers and electrics. Furthermore the sho is played by Ko Ishikawa. So what about the three horn players pictured on the cover? In fact, they are Alex Bruck, Ramón Del Buey, and Misha Marks. This ensemble is briefly heard as distorted source material on the a-side (a penny to the first listener who finds them), but it turns out for this project they're mostly just dancers who use the horns as props, visually key to the process; aurally, not as much. But as you listen to The Finger'd Remove you'll probably start to wonder, 'Hey, where are the instruments not listed? Because surely that's the sound of a dead horse full of bees being dragged down gravel road. Or, wow -- a Texas rain-toilet.' Right? Well, Jeph and Tim aren't saying, but maybe it's just that there are instruments too complicated to notate. Dig? The wild collection of sounds here are designed to live primarily in your imagination. Do you really need to name all that stuff? Our suspicion is you'll be just fine if you lay back, close your eyes, and open your mind to the infinite possibilities suggested here. Words are just too drab to fully capture it all." --Byron Coley, 2018 Edition of 200; Includes download code.
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FTR 407LP
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"Vinylization of a CD-R released by Josh Burkett's Mystra Records by this great cassette manipulator, who was long a central part of the Boston Whitehaus scene. Bloodroot Spitball is a bit different from Arkm Foam's other Feeding Tube releases, since it incorporates a bunch of 'real' instruments into the mix. This hearkens back to Mr. Foam's first solo LP, The Foam Doesn't Fall Far From The Shore (2013), on Hot Releases. As on that one, there's another player heard here, when Andy Allen (who was all over that first LP) joins a tune to play clarinet. That track, 'Clarimello', may be one of my faves here because the friction between live music and taped/manipulated music is always a treat to hear when it's done well. And this is. The second side is a suite, recorded on the street in Greenfield, while doing something or another. Sounds sort of like he's trying to vacuum dust off of peoples' shoes as they pass by, but that's probably an illusion. Whatever's happening, it's a fine slab of disorganized urban field recording, and makes a very nice contrast to the more evolved work on the a-side, making for another beautiful addition to the Arkm Foam section of every connoisseur's collection." --Byron Coley, 2018. Edition of 200.
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FTR 279LP
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"Recorded in fits and starts, while the artists worked on their moontans amidst strong waters, the sole release by Dead Girl's Party was originally issued on cassette by the Entr'acte label. Since that tape now goes for a ben-and-a-half, we realized it was time to make a vinyl document of these young jazz immortals. Scott 'Pfennig' Foust (XX Committee, IFCO, Tart and the founding philosopher of the Anti-Natural movement) and Matt 'Ha'Penny' Krefting (Son of Earth, Believers, Duck, MK Unit, etc.) decided to do this stuff because they were hanging out a bunch, and 2009 seemed like a 'down' year to them. What better to inflate its core than a totally-inscrutable duo, dedicated to creating noise-pop with no clear precedent? The three tracks on the first side run from the Francis Bebey-like 'The First Pill,' through 'I'm a Tick Tock Bomb' (basically a distillation of every good move the Fall made in the '90s), onto the Apocalypse-as-a-carnival-midway-game of 'Spin the Wheel!' It's what I sort of thought the Sleaford Mods might sound like when I first heard about them (boy, was that a disappointment). Just a weird, sometimes wordy collection of electronics and mood and barely suppressed outrage. The two tracks on the flip are sort of a post-Apocalypse song suite about pirates in a submarine who have to get rid of a lot of ballast, although they know they're gonna die anyway. And wasn't life grand? To which we say, 'yeah!' Impossible to categorize or to get off the stereo, The Things I've Lost is a monster for the ages. Listen in the light. Listen in the dark. Just listen." --Byron Coley, 2018 Edition of 300; Includes download code.
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2LP
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FTR 397LP
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"Although their name suggests they're Nijinsky-obsessed acid folk wanderers, nothing could be farther from the truth. 2014-2016 is the second album by this Atlanta-based nontet, and it presents a wide swathe of styles and contrasting textures that are wildly eclectic but never very acid-folky. The name stems from the fact that when the band began, some seven years ago, their line-up often changed and they tended to use a different band name every time they played a show. Faun & A Pan Flute somehow got used for a couple of shows and it stuck, not least because it's a fairly ridiculous piece of misdirection. The music on this 2LP set, recorded during the period encapsulated by the album's title, are a wonderful expansion on the music heard on their eponymous debut LP. The sounds are complex and fully composed instrumental pieces that mix elements of jazz, prog and post-rock shimmer with equal assurance. Hard to imagine keeping such a large ensemble together these days, considering the financial privations of the underground, but they manage to pull it off, and even make it seem easy. The music on this album shifts between genres with lazy ease. Some of it sounds like Italian soundtrack action by one of the '60s masters, other parts recall everything from Waka/Jawaka-era Zappa to Steve Reich's late '70s ensembles to the Nels Cline Singers to some of Keith Tippetts' larger bands. Crazy stuff, but all totally great, and all of it eventually sounding like nothing other than Faun and A Pan Flute. If you got ears, you gotta listen." --Byron Coley, 2018
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FTR 287LP
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"Reissue of an exceptional album of improvisations, recorded when percussionist Charles K. Noyes was lured to the Bay Area in the summer of 1979 by Henry Kaiser. Noyes and Maercks had played regularly as a duo when Owen was still based in Worcester, MA. But he'd shifted his ass westward in the wake of the Teenage Sex Therapist session (FTR 153-2LP), which had been organized by Kaiser following their collaborations in the band, Monster Island. Half of the album was recorded live at Woody Woodman's Finger Palace, with Kaiser on guitar and Greg Goodman on piano. The web of cluttered notes and interwoven melodic lines they created that night was incredible. And the duo studio session a few days later was massive as well. Free Mammals has long been a notoriously scarce document in the history of the West Coast's free music scene of the late '70s. And the album (nominally released on Owen's Visible label, although everything was handled by Charles) almost always sounded as though it had been pressed onto concrete. With the help of Jeremy Pisani and Carl Saff, we have attempted to present this extraordinary music with the best sonics possible. And it sounds mighty dandy. There is also a liner note insert, as well as full size repros of two fliers from both the show at which this was partially recorded, and also a subsequent trio set with Noyes/Kaiser/Goodman. They will look fine on your wall, should to choose to thus deface them. Regardless. Count your lucky stars and dive in. All of your dreams are about to come true." --Byron Coley, 2018 Edition of 500.
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LP
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FTR 373LP
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"We were first attuned to Dial by Bill Nace back in the early days of this century. He'd been sent over the moon by the incredible squall of the unit, a trio led by former UT-guitarist Jacqui Ham. We were so blown away by the re-emergence of Jacqui, we didn't even try to figure out who the other players were. But it turns out the other two dudes were Rob Smith, a most immaculate manipulator of drum dials and guitar feedback, and synth-pillager/bassist Dominic Weeks, who'd been in the most insane Rough Trade band of all times -- Furious Pig. This was news worth learning! Over the course of four CDs in 16 years, Dial managed to make a crazy amount of fully-braced guitar skronk, worthy of anyone you can name, without managing to get any of it onto that most durable of formats -- vinyl LP. Now. Finally. After more than a dozen years in the digital desert, Dial are being heard the way they were always meant to be heard. Noise Opera is an homage to Ornette Coleman's 1961 masterpiece, Free Jazz. The album consists of two side-long explorations of loud post-form guitar order and suggest different ways in which they can be organized, while remaining ecstatic throughout. The contours of the textures the quartet wrestle with in the dark halls of feedback and sheer skronk are incredible. Whole generations of New York post-form giants are referenced or destroyed in the course of Noise Opera. A statement as stunning as any you will hear this year." --Byron Coley, 2018 Edition of 250.
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2LP
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FTR 308LP
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"Hard to believe it has been 18 years since this set was first issued, but that's what the calendar says. Paul and Chris had been playing together for a while before this. I seem to recall rehearsals outdoors in Hartford beneath stretches of raised highway under construction. But that may have been Chris and Pete Nolan, back when Pete played guitar. Who can remember exactly? It's been a long time. But I do remember we put this set together because it seemed essential to document how amazing the communication was between these two musicians, from different generations, but tuned into the same insane frequency. When we told Paul we wanted to do it on the Ecstatic Yod label, with art by Gary Panter, and actual liner notes, he thought it wasn't the best idea he'd ever heard, but what the hell. The actual hope of the label was to raise the profile of this incredibly talented but ruinously humble saxophonist, so that he'd be thought of in the same way as the day's other great players. And hey -- it sorta worked. The CD got solid reviews, and more people heard it. But what most listeners took away from it was how intensely telepathic the music is. It's all lightning and smoke. These guys were deep inside each other's heads, and that made for a wonderful listening experience. In a way it's funny to hear how 'jazzy' Chris's playing is. He's gone so far beyond known-moves over the last years, you almost suspect he must be holding back. But he's not. He's throwing down as hard as he can to meet the ragged flowing genius of Flaherty's horn at every turn. He just had different chops back then. And the music is still amazing. The Hated Music is one of the best extended drum/sax forays you'll ever hear. If we could have done it on vinyl back then, we would have, but no one was buying the stuff much right then. Jerks. That has changed a bit now. For the good. And we got the great Gary Panter to do new cover, since the old one was CD sized and weird. But everything else is the same. And it totally rips a hole in the universe. Now and forever. Amen." --Byron Coley, 2018 Edition of 500; Includes download code.
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LP
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FTR 359LP
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"Stefan Neville is one of the busier beavers on the North island of New Zealand. Recording under his own name, as Pumice (or a variety of other soubriquets), running the Stabbies & the Rockets label, drumming for the Coolies and so on, he keeps his tail moving quickly so that it does not grow moss. Greg Malcolm is one of New Zealand's premier avant garde string-benders. He did a bit of band aktion with Jay Clarkson in Breathing Cage but has mostly hewed to stranger improv-based roads. He plays oddly crafted guitar-like instruments of all manners and has lots of great solo recordings as well as various ad hoc unit-spew and a duo record with Eugene Chadbourne. And NOW, at last, he has Nuance as well. For Nuance, Greg plays strings, tambourine, voice and 'things.' Stefan counters with drums, reed organ, tapes, throat, and synth. The material ranges from 'Prospectus' (one of Steve Lacy's great '80s compositions) to Joe Meek's 'Telstar' to 'Hora' and 'Serba' (Jewish wedding music by the Epstein Brothers) with various unexpected stops in between. Apart from Jenny Ward's second vocals on Daw Henson's 'I'm Crazy Over You' (an old Kentucky tune, originally recorded by Alan Lomax in '37), it's just Stefan and Greg here. And they shine in lots of weird ways. Greg's strings often have lots of overloaded vibrational qualities to the way they sustain notes ('though they know how to cluck like chickens, as well) and Stefan's work ranges from stark drumming in the Mississippi style to key drones that extend the fake bounds of infinity. The breadth of the material they tackle is almost insane, but they manage to infuse it with their own distinct personality traits, and unusually friendly experimental tactics. Hard to grasp? Sure. But it's just as hard to stop playing it. That's what we call real Nuance." --Byron Coley, 2018 Edition of 250.
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2LP
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FTR 409LP
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"Brilliant, inspired and somewhat surprising collaboration between Chicago's premier free-rock trio and the truly legendary percussionist, Hamid Drake, who has played with everyone from Don Cherry to Peter Brötzmann to Lee Perry. This collusion was precipitated by Matt Jackowiak, a mutual friend, who thought a merging of their sounds might make for an ecstatic explosion. This feeling became mutual after they played a show together at Constellation. The set mixes Mako Sica tunes with improvisations that took everyone to places they hadn't expected, and the trip was deemed an utter success. Ronda was done at two sessions, scheduled around Hamid's insanely busy work schedule. The first was at Jamdek with Douglas Malone at the board, the second was at Electrical Audio with Taylor Hales. The Electrical session allowed the players access to a host of additional instruments, so the sonic palette on 'Dance With Waves' and 'Emanation' is wider and somehow more cosmic than usual. But the whole album has an extraordinary depth and width of sound. Even the great songs Mako Sica has had in its set for a while like 'The Old Book,' gain whole new levels of otherness here, and the material based in quartet improvisations, like 'The Wu Wei,' explores wild new territory for the band. Ronda (named after a town in southern Spain with a famous 18th Century bridge crossing a deep gorge) is the first span connecting the disparate musical worlds of Mako Sica and Hamid Drake. Let us hope it is but the first of many." --Byron Coley, 2018 Edition of 500.
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2LP
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FTR 362LP
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$24.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 7/27/2018
"We were introduced to the music of Ned Collette by guitarist Julia Reidy, another Melbourne ex-pat currently based in Europe. Julia's word is good as gravy around here, so we checked out Ned's new work and were blown clean out of our socks. Old Chestnut is a haunting prog-folk song cycle for the ages. Ned's approach to voice and guitar resemble various models at various times. You'll hear smatterings of Leonard Cohen, Lou Reed, Pip Proud in lyrics and phrasing, but these are always just spices, added to the beautifully melancholic vistas Ned arrays before our ears. On the epic track, 'June,' there is a piano part by Chris Abrahams (of The Necks) so perfect in its conception it stops time. Working with longtime drum partner, Joe Talia, and a few other guests, Collette has made a goddamn whale of an album. The songs are brilliant, the arrangements have an addictively sparse genius, and the production is so full and delicate it reminds us of folks like Jim O'Rourke, Van Dyke Parks and Roger Waters. We are strangely unfamiliar with the bulk of Ned's previous recordings, but it doesn't really feel like it matters that much. With an album as strong as Old Chestnut, his history restarts here." --Byron Coley Edition of 300.
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LP
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FTR 311LP
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"Finally, what the world has been eagerly anticipating for the last four decades -- an LP by EMPOOL! Empool was a whacked-out, Detroit-based prog-noise combo (usually a trio or quartet), that would eventually merge into the rock-band-era Destroy All Monsters. Guitarist Laurence Miller was a constant throughout. Organist Andre Cynkin was generally on hand as well. Laurence's brothers, Ben and Roger, showed up now and then, as did pianist Rick Scott. Empool only played three live shows, but they recorded everything, and their use of pre-recorded tapes as a live sound source may have informed Roger's decision to do the same when he formed Mission of Burma. The tracks on this album were recorded between December 1976 and September 1977, and they're pretty amazing. Structurally, the stuff is far away from No Wave, but it has a lot of the same rough structural textures and jumbled sonics, although there's also crazy tape noise (some of it resembling gushing synth sequencing) and stun guitar stirred into the mix. The fact that it's mostly instrumental gives things a certain prog/experimental thrust that feels a bit parallel to the bands on the Random Radar label, but it runs wildly against the grain of anything else you'd hear in that era. With an insert containing Laurence's memories of the project, and album art guaranteed to lull prog heads into submission, Empool's DOES do did done is a magnificent head scratcher. Can be filed neatly between Sproton Layer and Destroy All Monsters." --Byron Coley, 2018 Edition of 300.
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