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LP
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FTR 456LP
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$20.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 8/30/2019
"Tax is the second vinyl from Taxidermists; the great Western Mass pop/punk duo comprised of guitarist/vocalist Cooper Handy and drummer Salvadore McNamara. Their first album, Honesty Box (2015) was a super interesting blend of screwed-up Sonic Youth/Pavement textures and straight-up power-pop. It had weirdly addictive properties and ended up getting a good number of spins. So, when a new album was ready, Ted Lee jumped on it like a badger attacking a kangaroo rat. And we're glad he did. Tax leans a little bit more in the pop direction than its predecessor, but it still has plenty of odd touches that keep it from being anything like a readymade confection. Some of this is surely due to the difficulty of going soft when you have an electric band with a duo line-up. Most better-known groups choosing such an arrangement are in the experimental or noise "bag," but there have also been examples of bands doing more overt "rock" action in this guise, ranging from the obscure (Smashchords) to the massive (White Stripes). But what the Taxidermists are doing is rather different; while they still show a certain raggedy edge, the bulk of the material on Tax seems like a reimagining of music by heavy British bands of the '60s. Elements of the Kinks, the Who, and the Shadows all pops up in unexpected ways, collaged and submerged in the Taxidermists' own medicated goo. In short, it sounds like a record Wes Anderson might have commissioned if he decided to do a soundtrack from scratch. What could be better for a summer spin? Not much!" --Byron Coley, 2019 Edition of 250, 45 RPM.
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LP
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FTR 448LP
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$18.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 8/30/2019
Following up on their eponymous debut LP, this Western Mass quintet has released a live album that expands their musical palette, while retaining the essential magic of their sound. Bill Meyer described Weeping Bong Band's music as a collision between Popol Vuh's Florian Fricke and Hash Jar Tempo (itself a collab between Bardo Pond and Roy Montgomery), and the same mix of drifty Germanic midnights and Bay Area Ballroom sizzle is present on Weeping Bong's sophomore slab. Recorded at the 1794 Meeting House in New Salem, MA -- the site of many finely smoked concert events -- all five key members are on hand (which is not always the case). Beverley Ketch, PG Six, Anthony Pasquarosa, Clark Griffin and Wednesday Knudsen are all present and up to their necks in the sonic swirl. A big new factor here is the piano, played in a style that makes me think of Grace Slick's keyboard work on Blows Against the Empire. This is appropriate given that Weeping Bong Band is a similar sort of multi-band-sourced collaboration as that classic 1970 Paul Kantner side. And since the same folks played on both Kantner's Empire and Crosby's If I Could Only Remember My Name, is it a coincidence that one track on this album is called "Remembering My Name"? You be the judge. Amidst the clouds of quiet presence, strings are plucked or bent, pulses emerge from the darkness, and your brain flows like butter. Just turn out the lights and do it. You will be so happy you did. -Byron Coley, 2019 Edition of 500
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FTR 422LP
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$22.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 8/16/2019
"Aircraft was the name Steve Cohen used for the largely unknown and quite fantastic synthesizer music he was creating in NYC in the '80s. This was in the same period Steve was in the late-period No Wave band, China Shop, along with guitarist Naux (who would go on to play with the Voidoids) and percussionist Richard Edson (whose next band was Sonic Youth). Steve had been active in the NYC sub-underground since the '70s, even playing at Giorgio Gomelsky's legendary 'Zu Music Festival' in 1978. Steve pops up playing bass on various odd sessions with various odd musicians like the late painter-turned-punker-turned-funkateer Snuky Tate, among others. But very few had heard the music Steve recorded as Aircraft apart from the handful of friends to whom he passed cassettes back in the day. We found out about Aircraft through Christopher Livengood of Video Nasties. Chris befriended Steve a few years ago and was blown away by the Aircraft tapes he heard. Steve eventually opened up his archives to Chris allowing him to assemble Sideways/Backwards -- an amazingly great LP's worth of synth/guitar/drumbox gabble that was darn near lost in the fogs of time. The album includes notes about where and how each track was put together, and the music will be a blast for anyone who digs the '80s output of the Residents or German groups like Der Plan. Very cool!" --Byron Coley, 2019 Edition of 250.
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FTR 429LP
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"In my count, this is the 25th album by Amherst's Idea Fire Company. And it a marvel of creative whackery that unfolds its charms like a glamorous stripper doing a matinee show at a well-lit coal mine. Many key auxiliary members have passed through IFCO's ranks (Dr. Steve, Jessi Leigh Swenson, Meira O'Reilly, Franz de Waard, Graham Lambkin, Matt Krefting, etc.), but the core of the unit has always been Karla Borecky (catcher, piano) and Scott Foust (first base, trumpet/synth). On The Light they are joined by bassist, Mike Popovich (a long-time Foust colluder), and the results are an album of unqualified beauty. Karla's piano is the central focus here, employing a simple (almost Satie-like) approach to melody, with a physical touch reminiscent of Chris Abrahams' work with Necks. She combines mystery and familiarity with uncanny ease. Scott's trumpet work has kinda come into its own here as well, sounding like Franz Koglmann mocking Chet Baker. His synth playing also has its own distinct atmospheric quality. Sometimes it's like a distant fog horn guiding brine shrimp to safety, at others more like someone trying to make wood sculptures with a band saw. Popovich's bass playing uses an equally sneaky environmental approach, often appearing to be an immobile object that suddenly shifts its posture in a way that is contextually startling. Scott Foust has been one of the leading lights of the Western Mass experimental scene for many long years. That we have only done one record with him thus far -- Dead Girls Party (FTR 279LP, 2018), an overlooked masterpiece -- is mostly due to the fact that we keep very different hours. How nice to sync up for this one." --Byron Coley, 2019 Edition of 250.
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FTR 359CS
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"Herewith, the first expression of the newest project helmed by Brooklyn polymath, Curtis Godino (known for his work with light shows and visual art as much as for his most excellent musical combo, Worthless [FTR 417, 2019]). Mellotron is often Curtis' sonic weapon of choice, and his expressively modal use of the instrument makes Justin Hayward sound like, well... Justin Hayward. In Curtis' hands, this ungainly behemoth of a keyboard retains a massive sort of prog pompery that is equal parts majesty and idiocy. The instrumental sections build weirdly ornate sky castles, which are larded with presumably heisted spoken sections, or cloud-like vocals, often resembling Ummagumma-era Floyd (1969) in all its wheezy glory. There are also drums on a few tracks, employing a light spacey approach that's fully in keeping with the proceedings. You can hear some guitar squirreled away in the mix as well. The mellotron is such a huge strange presence, however, it really shapes things, making me recall (almost too vividly) dark winter nights in prep school dorms filled with In the Court of the Crimson King (1969), bad acid, and In Search of the Lost Chord (1968). For all that blunder-bussing, Nothing To Semble sometimes offers a very intimate vibe as well (even though the lyrics are not fully penetrable). Which makes it perfect listening for those who like using psychotropics, or at least like thinking about using psychotropics. Either way, count me in." --Byron Coley, 2019 Edition of 250.
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FTR 470LP
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"Welcome to the second solo vinyl album by Jeffrey Alexander, best known these days for the lysergic guidance he provides for SF's Dire Wolves. But Alexander has underground roots that go far beyond his work with the Wolves. Back in the '90s, when still based in Providence RI, he ran the Secret Eye label, helmed a couple of superb acid-folk units and was the person most responsible for bringing not one, but two editions of the Terrastock Festival to the city Lovecraft built. Since relocating to the Bay Area, Alexander has spent a good bit of time turning Dire Wolves into one of the most elegantly psychedelic bands on the scene, and has also managed to lend an occasional splash of sound to Jackie O Motherfucker. And all of these different arcs make themselves felt on Meditations for Beowulf. Buttressed by two tracks with vocals, there are six instrumentals that explore many nooks and crannies of experimental logic, running from the doodly keyboard larking of 'Turn Your Lights Down Low' to the crackly, throbbing space-wheeze of 'Iridescent Clouds.' The two vocal tracks have the lyrics printed on the back, so you can sing along if you like. 'Beowulf's Trip' has a stoned vibe that will make fans of the MVEE sound tingle deep down in their souls. And 'Sunsplash Your Mind' is a sort of answer song to the well-known question, 'What was it like to do acid with John Lennon?' The answer is especially intriguing because it posits that Lennon was able to predict the names of Hüsker Dü's three LPs for SST. And also that he could distinguish between and actual LP and a mere mini-LP (Metal Circus) when doing his augury. Pretty damn hep. As is rest of this splendid face full of smoke. Breathe deep. You'll be glad you did." --Byron Coley, 2019 Edition of 250.
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FTR 465LP
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"Vinylization of a self-released cassette issued earlier this year by our favorite Virginia-based guitar player. Witness Tree is a brilliant follow-up to Perry's eponymous debut LP (FTR 376LP, 2018), and expands upon the form-abstractions he first displayed there. Mr. Perry has a firm and solid touch to his string wrangling, but unlike many of his contemporaries, he doesn't seem to feel compelled to resolve all the melodic questions he raises. Perry often stops in a place he finds interesting, repeating rhythmic figures while trying out variations on the note/chord sequence that stopped him in the first place. It's a goddamn fascinating approach and allows him to explore textual aspects of the acoustic guitar that are not investigated often enough. In a certain sense, Perry's playing feels akin to that of Jon Collin's, since both guitarists appear to acknowledge the American Primitive School, while approaching its compositional orthodoxy with an attitude that substitutes experimental tendencies for blues-base thinking. But the way they resolve these themes is quite different. Perry's slower pacing and precise string selection eschews the aleatory for a kind of mindfulness that is as invigorating as I usually find randomness. A deep and lovely dig into the outer edges of acoustic guitar rambling." --Byron Coley, 2019 Edition of 400; includes download slip. 45rpm.
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FTR 467LP
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"The world has been sleeping on William Austin Clay for far too long! For those unfamiliar with him, WAC is an elementary school music teacher from Denton, TX who doubles as a prolific DIYer creating a heartfelt yet humorous music that is all his own thing. On this latest album ...Oops!, Mr. Clay has really out done himself. The production is legit and the lyrics are profound. Topics of device addiction, internet trends, and social injustice backed by an experimental and progressive rap/pop music that he produced entirely by himself. This is an album made for these times. Highly recommended!" --Joey "Pizza Slice" Agresta, 2019 Edition of 250.
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FTR 452LP
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"Great debut album by the new trio led by Detroit/Boston guitar legend Roger Miller. Roger has been going at it since he was a tiny baby, with a recording career that stretches back to Sproton Layer in 1970. He is still probably best known for his work with Mission of Burma, but cognoscenti wallow in his work with the original Destroy All Monsters, F.U.K., Empool, the Farmers, his crazy solo stuff, and recent jamming with M2. With Trinary System, Roger manages to get wild trio aktion going that touches on all phases of his magnificent trajectory. Things start off in classic Burma mode, but everything feels a bit more straightforward than it did with that rascally outfit. There is a garageyness and almost pre-punk feel to some of the playing here that has been a footnote to some Burma tunes, but is allowed full rein with Trinary System. The drummer, Larry Dersch, was half of the electric piano/drums duo, Binary System, in the '90s. His collaborations with Roger continued into later versions of Birdsongs of the Mesozoic (Boston's premier prog band for over 20 years). Bass and synth are handled by Andrew Willis (an ex-pat from the Louisville sub-underground). Together, they create a sound employing a powerful retro-futurist vibe. At times it's almost like hearing a mid '70s power trio having a collective dream about the post-punk future. But there's a distinct Motor City feel to the proceedings as well. The music is just perfect for barreling down the highway (as I tested on a recent drive to Pittsburgh) with thick, chunky riffs, odd vocals harmonies, and proletarian lyrics, all tied together with the kind of whizzing guitar parts you didn't think anyone but J Mascis made anymore. There are also miasmic psych flows, which the trio tends to emphasize a bit more in live concert, but you should just buy the thing & figure it out yourself. Pleasure guaranteed." --Byron Coley, 2019
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FTR 395LP
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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 3-1/3 is the third of four LPs Feeding Tube is releasing, 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 conscriptive powers of Richard Nixon and his ilk. Exact details of the recordings are vague, but that's trivial. Here are seven tracks of improvisational guitar madness at its most glorious. Describing them is almost impossible, but I can at least tell you their names 'East Was,' 'Texas Was,' 'The Shreeve,' 'Evil Was,' 'What Was,' 'Superman's Problem,' and 'Reflections.' The 'Was Tetrology' was a piece I believe to have been originally conceived and performed while in the lair of Davey Williams, R.I.P. (and associated members of the Alabama Surrealist Cabal). 'The Shreeve' is another take of a track originally recorded for the timeless Volume Two LP. 'Reflections' and 'Superman's Problem' probably date to a Clouds & Water session in early '79. Heard together they suggest an entire parallel universe of guitar history. Solo Guitar Volume 3-1/3 is an even more amazing spin than the last one. And there's still one more to come!" --Byron Coley, 2019 Edition of 400.
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FTR 451LP
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"Currently based in the Boston area, Joseph Allred was one of the players we first encountered at 2018's Ten Thousand Incarnations of the Rose festival in Takoma Park MD. Allred's playing had some Basho-esque sequencing that was highly engaging, and the rest of the set was a killer, off-center swathe of string quiver we could not resist. O Meadowlark is Allred's third solo vinyl (there are cassettes as well), and will surely please many heads. Here're Joseph's words on how the album came together. 'I recorded this stuff at the end of last year all in one night without really intending anything in particular with it. After I sat and listened back to it a narrative came together really quickly and I reflected that in the song titles. Poor Faulkner is a name I released music under for the first recordings I made several years ago, but he's since become a character I sometimes tell stories about in my music, or sometimes I assume his perspective and play songs from there. He's a very lonely middle-aged man who lives in a house in a remote part of Tennessee. He thinks the house is haunted, and the ghosts he sees range from the ghost of a kitten to a woman's ghost that his grandfather brought back from WWII. O Meadowlark tells a story about him, partially from an outside perspective and partially from his perspective. He hears a bird and follows it into the woods, where he finds a cabin and is visited by an angel. He stays the night at the cabin, and struggles to understand what the angel is trying to convey to him. The next day the angel reappears and eventually takes him to a celestial place where he's shown a vision. The album ends with his ascent, but doesn't include the vision. I think that's part of something new I'm working on at the moment.' Using guitars and banjos the way they were meant to be used, Allred's narrative unfolds like a strange movie just for you. Dig it now." --Byron Coley, 2019 Edition of 300.
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FTR 444LP
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"The debut album by Western Mass trio, Mozzaleum, is an unholy union of hot cheese pie, cool Italian prog, and wanton horror movie lust. One gets the feeling this's the sort of band that Roky Erickson dreams about after a few mugs of cocoa and a slasher flick watch-a-thon. The three tracks on the first side all take their names from actual films (none related to the films' music as far as I can tell), the five on the flip carry on in a more thematic manner. But the music on side two -- keys, samples, effects, and Pinto's amplified bowed-saw -- are more in line with the band's extremely visual live shows. With two lauded visual artists in the group ('Condread' Capistran and 'Terrorica' Pinto) that's to be expected. 'A Damned' Parker is the third member, and a 'recording virgin' (as in Pinto). Capistran is a seasoned vet of such units as Sunburned, Tarp, Galacto Fidelity Unit and so on. There is also a 'ghost' fourth member in 'Germz' Pisani (aka Red Favorite), whose post production touches give Dark Ride the bizarre quality it maintains throughout, Mozzaleum's visual presence is so fucking strange it's easy to get hung up on when seeing them play. But on record, you get to appreciate their sheer sonic attack, and it's just amazing. Cinematic in all the cheesiest ways imaginable, the collage of elements manages to transcend any kind of ironic zone you might suspect it would inhabit, existing as a full throated and truly original roar. I can't wait until some smart film directors hear this shit, start having personal visions of carnage and enlist this troupe to do some actual soundtrack work. Get ahead of the curve. Shoot a movie in your own brain today. Call it Dark Ride." --Byron Coley, 2019 Pressed on cloudy orange/clear vinyl; edition of 200.
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2LP
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FTR 425ABCD-LP
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"Two mind-bending slabs of acoustic and electric guitars, wandering into corners of acid-logic only accessible to bravest explorers. Elkhorn is a duo -- Jesse Sheppard and Drew Gardner -- from NYC. Their earlier records (Elkhorn on Beyond Is Beyond, The Black River on Debacle) would have blown us away, even if we didn't know Jesse from his work as a film-maker (he directed the Glenn Jones/Jack Rose doc, The Things That We Used to Do) and organizer (he put together the 1,000 Incarnations of the Rose festival). Elkhorn's music, which we had suspected might be in a fairly traditional American Primitive vein, was anything but. And these two LPs (released individually, but recorded more or less simultaneously) explore a whole warren of new style caverns. Sun Cycle was recorded at Jason Meagher's Black Dirt Studio and is closer to their pure duo sound (although guitarist Willie Lane and percussionist Ryan Jewell are along for the ride). There are elements of the American Primitive thread present, but these touch mostly on the outer reaches of the form, like Gene Estibou & Jean-Claude Pickens' Intensifications, or the crazy distentions of MV and PG Six. Layers of pluck and soar and light percussion mix at the upper edge of the cosmic barrier, and Sun Cycle is, to our ears, Elkhorn's most adventurous and fully realized album yet. On Elk Jam (FTR 425CD-LP), Willie Lane and Ryan Jewell function more as members of a psychedelic folk-rock quartet, and the troupe takes things even deeper in a Bay Area-styled trip zone. Recalling the classic ruminations of Mountain Bus, the full four man Elkhorn is exactly what the doctor prescribed for a generation of sack-butts who imagine John Mayer's pudgy phallus-riffs have shit to do with transcendental psych exploration. Elkhorn are the true sonic dealio. Instrumental music doesn't get much better than this. As Capt. Beefheart once said, 'If you got ears/You gotta listen!' We couldn't agree more." --Byron Coley, 2019 Edition of 500; gatefold sleeve.
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FTR 464CD
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"Here is the first physically graspable music available by this mysterious Western Massachusetts duo, whose sound has been called 'Synthetic ASMR love balladry,' by more than one canny listener. Asking them to describe themselves, we received this missive: 'Plants of the Bible started in a bedroom in Florence with a tape machine and a poem about an unkillable dog android before it quickly spiraled out of control into a real band with a real record. Their first album is a dreamy cast of imagined characters and everyday events built with elaborately layered sounds. Driven by their array of cheap keyboards and a wide range of influences from La Boheme to Fabio Frizzi to Justin Bieber, their music is deceptively inviting and playfully disorienting. They are currently working on an EP of hot songs and researching a more long-term project about the history of lesbian porn.' Not sure what more we can add, except that, according to inter-web sources, there are more than 120 plants mentioned in the Bible, ranging from 'Abraham's Bush' to 'Wormwood.' If you need more information consult a priest of some sort. If you need be confused in a way that involves wonderfully deep hooks, get this album instead. Go ahead, all will be forgiven. By actual plants!" --Byron Coley, 2019
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FTR 443LP
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"Feeding Tube is pleased to be able to offer the first domestic release, helmed by the superb British guitarist, Chris Joynes. For this album, Joynes has assembled a polyglot ensemble comprised of folks from Dead Rat Orchestra (a splendidly bizarre experimental völk outfit), guitarist Nick Jonah Davids (with whom Joynes recently did a split LP of solo electric guitar improvs) and Cam Deas, who records both as a sound artist and as an acoustic guitarist. The music they have created for The Bormatez Tree (itself a semi-mythical tree found largely in travellers' tales of the 1500s) is a difficult to describe hybrid of approaches and techniques, drawn from the vast collective imagination of the group. From swirls of North African string design, accompanied by dream-time percussion, to banjo/fiddle duets redolent of documentaries about the American Civil War, to flowing free form jams where everyone piles on psychedelic licks. The all-instrumental unit sound ranges all over the place, but after sinking in its warm tomes for a while, I am most put in mind of some of the guitar-led UK post-units of the '70s (Fairport, Trees, Pentangle, et al) playing loose and free at some nameless pub at the edge of peat bog, just letting things go in whatever direction the winds blew them. It's not all like that, of course. But in the main, the scent of Scotch, smoke and adventure is hard to ignore." --Byron Coley, 2019 Edition of 500.
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2LP
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FTR 362-2LP
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Second edition of 500. Pressed on bottle green and blue bell color vinyl. "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
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FTR 447LP
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"It's fair to say that what the world needs now is love. And not just a drop here or there. Enter the Hurricane. This latest offering is a high point in a career that is all about being high and impossible to put a point on. Life is Spiritual -- it's an evocation, a flowering of a singular vision. There is nothing static in Hurricane's world, even if he is drawing on more recognizable forms than in the past. He's mastered the elusive art of being in the moment. His car is a character, the road is his friend, but what stands out the most is the string of places. The places don't so much define the people in them as they act on their inhabitants spiritually. Like ghosts. Out of the gate, yeti powder, pills, and spiritual rivers lead him to the corrupt town of Sneedville, TN. We meet Cricket O.G., who warns of weed laced with PCP, and even though a boy falls into a gasoline fire, the Sneedville blues can't get our Frank down. 'Susquehanna River Blues' spins a yarn about hitting a Burger King with a group of Juggalos and wrings bright beams of profundity out of the experience with the simplest language imaginable. 'Gatlinburg Blues' augments its colorful tale with eerie strings sawing away in the background, summoning ineffable drama and on 'Holy Mountaintop Rainstorm,' Frank sings against a phalanx of horns. 'Johnson City Blues,' with its fascist bovine building a pipeline, is a tale of a haunted devil town, sinners in the hand of an angry god, and the terror of early America that's never left us. The only peace is to be found in breezes and natural beauty. Frank wails like a banshee. The title track finds Frank reflecting, distilling not just the album but his worldview into a head-nodding jaunt. 'Life is spiritual' becomes an incantation, which Frank and Rene Bailey belt out like a call to the cosmos. 'Beneath Tha BP Lights' is an ethereal tale of a game of pool, and 'Mooneye Travelin Blues' is a lament of the highest order. 'Lonely Love' is just what it sounds like, Hurricane style. The road, for all of its adventure, is also a lonely place. 'Chattahoochee Flow' takes us out of this LP, but we know Frank's still rolling on..." --Matt Krefting, Holyoke, MA 2019 Cover art by Turner Williams. Includes a download card.
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FTR 460CD
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"On the morning of January 20th, 2019, I was woken up especially early at 8am (that's early for me anyway) by the sound of freezing rain bouncing off my bedroom window. Rather than trying to go back to sleep I impulsively got up, put on some clothes, brought my two autoharps, a digital recorder, a plastic tote (to protect the recorder from the elements) and an old card table outside, I set the autoharps up on the table so the freezing rain would hit the strings, placed the recorder in the tote next to the autoharps, pressed record, and this is what happened." --Id M Theft Able, 2019 Edition of 300.
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FTR 441LP
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"Shimmering dream pop readymades are the heart of Cosine, the debut release by Ancient Pools (originally a cassette, and now an LP). Ancient Pools are a duo (Anna Jeter and Kevin Christopher), recently relocated from Olympia to Portland, where Kevin was offered a good set-up at a new studio. Anna is from Pensacola, FL, where she was in a folk-tinged pop band called 100 Watt Horse. Kevin remains the bassist for a more rockist Northwest quartet called Oh, Rose. But Ancient Pools, with its intimate, electronics-dappled approach to minimalist pop-tones is a whole different thing. The songs began gestation after Anna exiled herself to the woods of North Carolina for a summer, before moving to Olympia, where she met Kevin. They wrote the second half of the album in collaboration, but there's no obvious demarcation between the halves. Gently struck drums and quiet strings emerge through a hazy wave of vocals and synth that keep reminding me of the dreamy grace exuded by the duo version of Yo La Tengo, right about the time Georgia started singing. The effect of listening to Cosine on repeat (which actually resembles its creation process in certain ways) is like sinking into sweet cloud of sound, baked by the sun, with sounds of nature piping themselves into your system on a subliminal level. Quite a magnificent glide." --Byron Coley, 2019.
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FTR 461CD
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Dutch Science is a musical venture, produced by Jesus Vio, with collaborators Cornelia Overton (back-up vocals, violin, and bass) and Austin Edwards (back-up vocals, piano, and drums). It's a 12-song full-length record comprised of poetry, strings, rock n' roll, art, vocal harmonies, and twee songs written by Vio and accompanied by Overton and Edwards. It was recorded in the summer of 2017 in Nashville, Tennessee at the punk rock house, The Pet Cemetery. The cover was embroidered by local Nashville artist Kate Madeira with the concept revolving around traditional art aestheticizing new technology, hence the microchip behind the portrait. The back cover photograph was taken by Marcus Maddox, a local Nashville photographer who has worked with Vogue and was featured in the Nashville Scene for his photography book, Pom Poms, about the crowds at Nashville underground shows. Edition of 300.
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FTR 455LP
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"The debut LP by Spiral Wave Nomads introduces a new psych duo comprised of two musicians with active histories inside the New England sub underground. Guitarist Eric Hardiman is one of the many hardened string wranglers for Albany's legendary Burnt Hills, as well as the proprietor of the Tape Drift label and half of the prolific experimental unit, Century Plants. Drummer Michael Kiefer is best known as a member of Myty Konkeror and the exquisite trio that emerged from them -- More Klementines, whose eponymous album (2018) has made brains tingle all around the globe. The Spiral Wave Nomads set is a lovely sprawl of electric guitar improv (aided in spots by bass, sitar and double-tracked guitar) mixed with elegantly tumbling drum work, guaranteed to illuminate many tunnels of spiraling trip-time. Parts of the album may momentarily recall Rangda at their most lysergic, but the crossed-eyed way the two players have of busting up and hanging on to shards of melody and rhythm is all their own. If you liked the More Klementines album, I dare say you'll like this as well. But it's in a slightly different bag as well. Vibrationally consonant without resorting to apery. A beautiful sonic spread." --Byron Coley, 2019 Edition of 250.
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FTR 435LP
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"First LP by this rather berserk Portland Oregon duo, made up of vocalist/electronics-scrambler Noa Ver and drummer/electronics-scamperer Zach D'Agostino. Our experience with Portland music had led us to believe it often has a mellow and/or gentle edge, but Sea Moss offer none of that. Their raucous, face-to-face approach to duo dynamism is as weirdly aggressive as anything that's ever come out the dag end of Brooklyn or Providence, and that's saying something. Using homemade electronic devices that generate vast heaps of splutter and careenage, employing a percussive technique that would make Fred Flintstone proud, and singing into a microphone that makes everything sound like someone howling curses through an elevator's intercom, Sea Moss have arrived at a modus operandi that will makes weaklings poop eggs. The wildness of their approach is most evident in live concert, where they spend all their energy hurling figurative rolling p[ins, frying pans and glottal pronouncements directly into each other's faces. But on vinyl, it's possible to ponder the structural and lyrical gambits they use to attack each other. The lyrics, at least what I think I can make out of them, explode like strings of haiku written during a particularly hectic game of Exquisite Corpse. And the instrumental portions of the tunes often sound as though they were written for a Chrome tribute concert to be performed by lighthouse foghorns. The other day, while I was playing this in the store, someone commented that the vocals reminded them of very early Guerilla Toss. I pointed out that while there might be some small surface similarities, the utter weirdness of the underlying music pretty much negated comparison. Then I threw them out. Sea Moss is doing some crazy shit. Don't beggar them with comparisons. Listen with all your holes open and pass the goddamn drool cup." --Byron Coley, 2019 Edition of 250.
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FTR 401LP
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"First album -- maybe even first physical release? -- by this exquisitely odd Massachusetts-based trio of sound-collagers. Violinist, Jen Gelineau, is well known to FTR lovers via her work with Eggs Eggs and Donkey No No. Laptop cruncher Andrea Pensado has likewise released a solo album with us -- Without Knowing Why (FTR 203LP, 2015) -- as well as one with her old combo, Los Condenados -- Yeppers! (FTR 126LP, 2013). New to us is electronics-and-tapes-shuffler Stephanie Germaine, but she proves to be a dab hand at making sonic events wiggle in the air like some many Chinese ash-snakes. Phurnne is around five years old at this point, but they have kept a low profile until now, thinking (perhaps) that the long-form pieces they create are better suited to live performance than passive homebound listening. From my own personal viewpoint that's a crock of whale shit. The music Phurnne invents is so texturally subtle in spots you really need to be able to examine it inside a dark and quiet safe space. Their sound really only achieves its true stature when you actively listen to it (something that's not always possible in a live setting). The music is so tactile and original in the way it's layered, it kept reminding me of the one Nurse With Wound live show I caught. As with that concert, the difference between 'ordinary' (read: identifiable) sounds, and shards of pure imagination is destroyed here. Standard perceptual delineations are erased. And new terra incognito is being continuously uncovered. This is an album full of wonders. And as cool as the trio is in concert, it's very nice to have their music captured to examine at one's own leisure." --Byron Coley, 2019 Edition of 250.
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FTR 354CS
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Cassette version. "It takes audacity to start a song with questions as big and unanswerable as 'Where did we come from? Who are we really?' But for Western Massachusetts duo Home Body, those kind of grand cosmic queries are totally natural, fitting snugly into music that digs deep and shoots for the stars. The soaring voice of Haley Morgan and the throbbing, hovering electronics of Eric Hnatow create songs that are always on the rise, grounded by cardiac beats but unafraid to fly into the sun. On their ambitious second full-length record, Spiritus, Home Body ruminates on darkness, the light, and all the tiny intangible shifts that add up to transformation and change. Three years in the making, the self-produced album is lush with character and detail, displaying moments of ecstatic high energy melting into soft expansion, coaxed along by ghostly textured synths, momentum mounting, spirit settling. Romantic partners for over a decade and collaborators for almost as long, Morgan and Hnatow have been creatively telepathic for a while, and on Spiritus their innate connections produce songs in which every joint and muscle works in consort. 'The pieces of the puzzle fit together like voices,' Morgan sings in 'Lightning,' succinctly describing the duo's tightly-knit music. Home Body aren't afraid to sprawl, though. Their live performances are often dizzying spectacles featuring a home-made light show and elements of modern dance. Spiritus may present only the audio portion of that two-person extravaganza, but in its wide arrangements, sharply-honed turns, and ever-ascending moods, Home Body's music is as three dimensional as real life." --Marc Masters, 2019
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FTR 421LP
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"Brilliant new album from Village of Spaces, a combo once described as, 'Dan and his raggle taggle band of hippies' by Michael Hurley, a guy who knows about such things. The Dan in question is Dan Beckman-Moon who, along with his partner Amy Moon Offermann-Sims, is the central core of this constantly evolving, psychedelically-inclined, folk juggernaut. V.O.S. has had many name variations and members in the 17 years since Dan and Amy formed this more perfect union, but all of their recordings are possessed by a singular sense of rurality and otherness. They've been based everywhere from Santa Cruz to New Orleans to Belfast (Maine), and this album was recorded in expectedly nomadic fashion. Using various players and rooms from their network of collusionists, Shaped by Place offers a smoother ride than some of its predecessors. The two covers they do of songs by Gordon Bok (the legendary Maine folksinger/woodworker who was Dan's mentor when he was coming up) have a very sweet traditional swing. On 'Shoreline Birds,' the way Dan's voice interacts with the pedal steel puts me in mind of Mike Nesmith's classic collabs with Red Rhodes (like 'The Great Ennui' off Nevada Fighter (1971)). Other parts move like some unreleased Raccoon label album, with the same mix of straight and weird that whole crew managed to conjure up so effortlessly. Players on Shaped include members of Big Blood, Amps for Christ, Dire Wolves, and all manner of stylistic drifters. Sorta like what Hurley said, but better. A true feast of the mind, ears and soul. Dig in now or be forever hungry for something you can't quite put your finger on. Mystery is rarely served up so neat." --Byron Coley, 2019 Edition of 300.
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