DRAG CITY News

A two-headed, four-handed groove-and-space-based understanding & alignment of purpose laid out in pure BCMC DNA. Cooper Crain and Bill MacKay"s keyboard and guitar duo make unbridled electro-ecstatic, intuitive assembly of deep and wide trans-hemispheric sounds. Even if you only like Ummagumma, Nino Rota, King Crimson, Sandy Bull, Crystal Silence/Hotel Hello, you will still want to dig deep into BCMC"s Stash.

The second OM album, Conference of the Birds, also features Al Cisneros and Chris Hakius, with production by OM, originally released in 2006 on Holy Mountain. With Billy Anderson (of the Melvins, among others), they deliver an intelligent, hypnotic doom drone album featuring elements of dub and psychedelia, alongside monotonous vocals. Two tracks: minimalist and a logical continuation of Sleep"s sound.

The first OM album, Variations on a Theme, features Al Cisneros bass, vocals and Chris Hakius drums. It was produced by OM and originally released in 2005 on Holy Mountain. Variations on a Theme is comprised of three long songs employing a series of rhythmic chants whose cadence-like textural drive conveys flight. Recorded with Billy Anderson.

Guitarist/composer Cole Berliner"s writing, arranging and playing highlights an album of rich-grained, acoustic, west coast parlor music and modern electro-acoustic instrumentals in the challenger tradition of Bert Jansch"s Avocet, Marc Ribot"s Saints and Jim O"Rourke"s Bad Timing. Initially conceived as solo acoustic guitar tunes, Cole"s songs demanded the dynamics of an acoustic ensemble - a departure from his work with Kamikaze Palm Tree and Sharpie Smile. His arrangements form intricate passages for acoustic, electric and lap steel guitars, acoustic/electric bass, piano, drums, percussion, violin, viola, horns, woodwinds and synthesizers; Cole himself is on guitar and lap steel (plus synths and percussion on a few songs), mixing and co-producing alongside Cesar Maria.

What"s new for the first time in over a decade? Squirrel Bait"s self-titled 12" EP and Skag Heaven in the black. In "85-"87, their screamin" teenage psycho dilemmas stood way out in the emerging field of metal damaged hardcore punk. "Kid Dynamite" would ring in your head like a #1 single that had just unseated "Sun God" from the vaunted top spot. Every week. Anthems for the freaks! It happened fast. After a couple of records, guitarists David Grubbs and Brian McMahan split for Bastro and Slint (and Gastr del Sol and The For Carnation, respectively) With Grubbs went bassist Clark Johnson, original Bait batterie mate Britt Walford joined McMahan in Slint. Leaving only the stuff of legend: records eternally exploding with youthful feels through all the endless winters and summers of hearts and minds. Repressed, Squirrel Bait can now continue to dialogue with the young in the creation of new useful and unforgettable experiences. For the children of tomorrow as well as your own damn selves, get copies now.

What"s new for the first time in over a decade? Squirrel Bait"s self-titled 12" EP and Skag Heaven in the black. In "85-"87, their screamin" teenage psycho dilemmas stood way out in the emerging field of metal damaged hardcore punk. "Kid Dynamite" would ring in your head like a #1 single that had just unseated "Sun God" from the vaunted top spot. Every week. Anthems for the freaks! It happened fast. After a couple of records, guitarists David Grubbs and Brian McMahan split for Bastro and Slint (and Gastr del Sol and The For Carnation, respectively) With Grubbs went bassist Clark Johnson, original Bait batterie mate Britt Walford joined McMahan in Slint. Leaving only the stuff of legend: records eternally exploding with youthful feels through all the endless winters and summers of hearts and minds. Repressed, Squirrel Bait can now continue to dialogue with the young in the creation of new useful and unforgettable experiences. For the children of tomorrow as well as your own damn selves, get copies now.

Forever's spirit is high and tight, its sinews rumbling with communal joy as Glyders' power-trio formation, in it "for life", grooves deep into their own thing. Shuffling the deck with road-tested jams and a couple immaculate old-school tunes, Forever hits with the energy of a first album - which it kinda is, now that founders Joshua Condon and Eliza Weber have met their true other, the relentless traps-man Joe Seger. Forever starts now!

Orange is an unstill life, a bowlful of new White Fence concepts for guitar band, grown larger through thoughts, feelings/SONGS. Rock "n balladry play with genre in uncrowded space. Orange is KILLER POP thru clean lines of power, outlined with an emphatic/unalterable (minimalist) frame. Dark magik at its most bright! A trance-like chronology of consciousness/SONGS captained by producer Ty Segall in opalescent diamond tightness and ice fidelity.

Just east of Hollywood, Tommy Peltier"s made sweet music in the Echo Park hills for over sixty years. A jazzman first, he recast himself in 1970 as an LA troubadour, crafting a set of glitter-light pop tunes that somehow missed release "til now. Recorded "70-"76 all over town & mixed and mastered by Jim O"Rourke, Echo Park is an encompassing trip through a whole other time and place. Echo Park captures the smooth sounds, glamour "n free spirits to be found just down the street from Tinseltown in its golden day. Tommy has continued to play music, releasing new stuff with Plastic Theatre Art Band in 1996, and a number of releases under his own name, most recently in 2011. And at the ripe young age of 90(!), he"s still playing today!

Joshua Abrams" piece for two violas, harmonium and electronics - written in dialogue with Lisa Alvarado"s 2023 REDCAT exhibition - sonically considers her matrix of geographic, geologic and personal histories. On its own, the LP ensures that the exhibit"s expansive ambiance persists, via Alvarado"s graphics and the music"s mesmerizing stream of subtle sonics and polarities, spiraling in and out of change and recurrence on multiple planes.

The music of these Louisville-NYC art-punk-rockers continues to exist bafflingly outside of time - so when better than 42 years after initial release to reissue their album debut on vinyl? New listeners will find, in addition to the roiling compulsion of its odd, dance-damaged clockwork and synthesis of feral and aestheticized values, a refined understanding of the width and breadth of "post-punk" music, from any era, known or unknown.

My Days of 58 is the eighth Bill Callahan album, his first since 2022. The twelve tunes here open uncanny depths of expression as Bill continues to blaze one of the most original songwriting-and-performance trails out there. Applying the living, breathing energies of his concerts to this album production, he sharpens his slice-of-life portraiture to cut deeper, releasing a stream of singalong consciousness: poetic, cinematic, novelistic, comedic - and above all - musical.

Refracting beatifically through realities and mirages flickering along his aural parade route, Animal Collective"s Geologist rides the high country on a hurdy gurdy of many colours. Via the mystery science of musical engagement, we take his sonic kaleidoscope of encounters into our own experience as we listen. That"s the beauty of Can I Get a Pack of Camel Lights?, the debut solo transmission of the heart and soul and life and times of Geologist.

Mess Esque are a duo featuring music and instruments by Mick Turner
and words and voice by Helen Franzmann. Their self-titled album is a
beguiling travelogue of restless, somnambulant wanderings.
Perhaps best known as one of the Dirty Three, Mick’s been playing
guitar and making music with many collaborators for forty years. He’s
loved his paintings too but revered especially for his solo music - since
1997, Drag City have released four of his albums, plus an EP and an
album of the Tren Brothers (Mick with percussionist and fellow Dirty
Three-ite, Jim White) and two EPs featuring Mick as the Marquis de Tren
with Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy.
Mick’s last record was 2013’s ‘Don’t Tell the Driver’, a work that found
him departing from his traditional hermetic instrumental template by
employing a rhythm section and brass charts and even collaborating with
a vocalist. After all the purely instrumental music he’s made with Dirty
Three and solo, a singer is now part of the sound he’s hearing in his
head these days; while demoing new material, he realized that he was
again writing music that needed lyrics - and for that matter, someone
other than himself to sing them. But who? In 2019, he was introduced to
Helen through a mutual friend who’d produced her last album. Under the
name Mckisko, Helen has released three albums over the past 12 years,
working and touring with a range of Australian musicians along the way.
Her music has been described as numinous and transformative. Her
most recent album, ‘Southerly’, saw her moving into a more expansive
sound which led to an openness and excitement around further
collaboration.
Helen’s words are carefully observed, her phrasing responding intuitively
to Mick’s looping guitar figures with vocal repetitions of her own. Starting
with a feeling or a voicing, there are often no words - both players are
searching on their own paths. Then suddenly they have arrived and are
passing the emerging meaning back and forth, the rising intensity
forming a kind of undertow that pulls the listener deeper into their world.
Often, Helen would record her vocals in the middle of the night, seeking
that 2am flow, a moment of greatest isolation through which to trace her
melodie with fragility and strength. This crystallizes Mess Esque’s
intention: riding the sleepy drift through the blurred edges of the day…
time-traveling to that moment beyond stasis where sense and no sense
coincide and share space and time and energy. Viewing from afar the
immense peace of this planet when its ghost world of spirits below - the
madness of crowds, people sliding past each other faraway in the night -
are quieted at last.

Tashi"s latest punk anthems: electric guitar improvisations to brutally impact us with... gentle lyricism and introspective depth! In a time of extraordinary institutional inhumanity, seeing the faces of the many deprived, what is there to feel but exhaustion? What to want but silence? Tashi seeks it all out actively, with intention. Hard truths absorbed, he enjoins power to reconstitute as spirit, to disseminate to everyone outside the walls.

From out of the dark, sparks of feedback birdsong signal a return to the singular sonic environments of Rafael Toral"s sound-world. A year after Spectral Evolution, his acclaimed album of electric guitar conceptions, comes the companion work Traveling Light. Sharpening his focus around a set of jazz standards, his move from abstract form to solid song elicits glints from beyond time and space, crafting a unique listening lens for deep listeners. In the early years of his practice, Toral used the guitar as a generator to create discreet texture and droning tones. Later, he abandoned the guitar entirely, focusing on self-made electronics to render his music with a post-free jazz perspective. For the music of Spectral Evolution and Traveling Light, Toral has combined his methodologies: radically expanding the space within their harmonies with his self-made machines, while engaging directly with his instrument and the chords of the material. In addition to Toral"s proxy orchestra of guitars, sine wave, feedback and bass guitar, Traveling Light features the sounds of clarinetist José Bruno Parrinha, tenor saxophonist Rodrigo Amado, flügelhorn player Yaw Tembe, flautist Clara Saleiro, who each guest on one song. In every contour of Traveling Light"s path - arrangement, improvisation and production - the spring of the old pours through the new in an unstoppable flow. The result is a listening experience of these standards that remains "in the tradition", even as the elongated harmonies seem to alter time such that, as Toral notes, "the chords become events on their own."

On Beacon Hill: at twilight we find Anthony Moore, roots winding backwards to the halcyon days of Slapp Happy and the "70s progressive art rock scene, at guitar and piano. With the atmospheres and accompaniments of AKA & Friends, he breathes infernal new life into songs from his six decades of multivarious music making. This new delivery system is unto a séance, a communal incantation, twining Anthony"s avant and pop traditions together in a darkly radiant coil of folky chamber music; a rope to lower the listener through cobwebs and murk, unveiling new life beneath Anthony"s mad old lines. AKA are Anthony Moore, Keith Rodway and Amanda Thompson. A pagan family of sound worshipers hailing from that unholiest of all places: Hastings UK, home of Crowley and Turing. Like their sinister forbears in that infamous tradition, this latest trinity shares a passion for subverting pattern and number, factoring unlikely permutations arising from sea and horizon, greensward, the southerly aspect, and the planisphere as half-world. Their equatorial shore speaks of a planet of water and earth, fire and air. AKA"s humble tools of choice for this endeavor are guitar, piano, organ, synthesizer and vocals. The Friends of AKA are Tullis Rennie, trombone and electronics; Olie Brice, double bass; Richard Moore, violin; and Haydn Ackerley, guitar. They too navigate the shoreline of the south coast, haunt the same taverns and regularly play together in whatever combinations fit the bill. Leaving the drums (and their drummer) at home to realize anew these dreamladen songs, AKA & Friends ensure that the notes fall around the beat and not on it, so as to define the pulse with absence. As such, time is liberated, prised free from the merciless clock; a rhythm of waves, passing through a steady-state universe of no beginnings and no endings. Discontinuities are dissolved, all is transition.

2005...it"s 20 years since already? We can still feel the sensuous tickle of the wind at our back during that marvelous time. It was, as the Scorps promised, a wind of change, and we were drawn to a number of like-minded birds floating in that breeze! Today, we salute Six Organs of Admittance; their School of the Flower was just the record we"d never dreamed of when we asked them if they wanted to do one with us. Turned out their pronoun of choice was "him." "He" was Ben Chasny and we"ve been happy collaborating with him ever since. Coming on the heels of records like Dark Noontide and Compathia, School of the Flower found Six Organs riding high. Having achieved much in his traditional home-recorded kingdom, he too was looking for something different. What our Ben recalls: "It was the first time Six Organs was in a studio, so that"s cool. I wanted to play with Chris Corsano to expand on some of the rhythms in my playing, to kind of suggest some different forms for the way the folk-psych/folk music were being played at the time. The title track was inspired by John Cale and Terry Riley"s Church of Anthrax - I remember we had a big tape loop stretched around the whole studio to form the basis of that. I was taking a lot of cold medicine that week - not the coolest drugs to be on, but, you know..." School of the Flower was indeed a whole new thing - containing enduring fan favorites like "All You"ve Left," "Words for Two," Ben"s revelatory take on Gary Higgins" "Thicker Than a Smokey" (pointing the way for our reissue of Red Hash later that year) and a deep vibe of spiritual folk-jazz throughout. And best of all? It was just the beginning of twenty years of sending the inspiration of Six Organs of Admittance out into the world! But today, we"re happy to send you back to School of the Flower. There"s nothing like it.

Ambarchi, Berthling and Werliin are back, a little looser and wilder than before. Their ability to lock in and focus on the smallest of details is enhanced here by a sense of increased immediacy. Great news for fans of stimulating variations of tone and mood within a potentially infinite universe of rhythm and sound! The more you listen to Ghosted III, the better your hearing becomes. Or maybe it"s just that you hear more every time you play it.

In March 2024, Jim White released his first-ever solo album, All Hits: Memories. Coming forty years into his career, it felt like some kind of breakthrough happening. His second solo album confirms it: Jim"s deep percussive intuition is fueling a new musical vehicle in his life. Inner Day finds him dancing ever more deftly with himself on an expressionistic set of drum kit and keyboard duets. Developing meditations on his personal arcana into expressive keyboard feels, he crafts parts as he would on the kit, further interacting with them on drums as well. Jim takes another big step on Inner Day, singing on two standout tracks, "Inner Day" and "I Don"t Do / Grand Central," his words and voice in the mix for the first time. A drummer of exquisite powers, great and small - his Dirty Three compatriot Warren Ellis contends his playing long ago "split the atom" - Jim"s capable of driving a band one minute, then slipping past accompaniment and into the cracks of the subliminal in the next breath. He"s got qualities - deep pockets, a lovely sense of the moment - that serve him and those he drums with well. His collaborators include Bill Callahan, Cat Power, Marisa Anderson, Daniel Blumberg, T. Griffin, Phosphorescent, Jess Ribeiro, Ed Kuepper and Mess Esque, alongside communal experiences in Xylouris White, The Double, Beings, The Hard Quartet and Dirty Three. And all that"s just in the past five years!

The endless churning wheel of time revolverates once again, spinnin" out the latest evolution of timeless rock revival sounds native to Boston"s Major Stars! More Colors of Sound features eight new slabs of hard-hitting post-lysergia, their storied guitar trio buzz-and-squallin" in service of some sweet lyrical melodies. Writing"s divided, for the 1st time ever, between Wayne Rogers and the team of Tom Leonard & Noell Dorsey. More Colors forever!

Our favorite six-string shaman is waving that axe around again! Sir Richard Bishop wrenches forth fresh damnable truth and beauty from a musical kamikaze run through histories both known and unknown. Turning a gimlet eye to the American Primitive guitar style, Sir Rick applies his own bloodthirsty interpretive methods on a self-described "excursion into the dark woods," to locate - and play along with - the Primitive"s moonshine-fed inner savage.

Fred Armisen, long known as one of the most curious actor/comedian/musician/ producer/ author/all-round good guys in the business, likes unusual ways of entertaining people. Like this one: 100 Sound Effects is an album that can be used as a library, an industrial tool for your own entertainment projects, or simply for brain-stimulating deep listening. From basic sounds to more abstract scenarios, 100 Sound Effects is an album like no other!

The successor to 2022"s Bajascillators glides easily into frame, but once there, Inland See is deceptively immediate. It"s so dialed in, you hardly even feel how present the music (and you the listener) is. Time wharping"s always been a resident magic for Bitchin Bajas, as is flow, which is translucent like water here. That"s the Inland See vibe, unique unto itself. In turn, each of the four songs here are entirely within themselves, all together forming an essential whole. The coincision"ll cause yer breath to shorten, like an exciting and non-fatal kind of exercise! New freedoms, yet more molecular structure in each one. With every successive Bitchin Bajas release, we see that the real key for them is a sense of discovery, that tingle that comes when you feel something breakíing through. The sky opening up. The stuff that fills this Inland See holds you up powerfully, as if you"re floating, saltwater or helium-wise - effervescent, effortless, elemental.

The 1st clash of the necks from polymath guitarists MacKay & Walker, taped live at Chicago"s own Whistler bar for release on the Whistler label. Reissued by us "cause of these dudes" uncanny alchemy and their constant, ever-melding flow. It"s an imperative: there"s not enough records around with such intense properties! Coincidentally, it came out 10 years ago. Big deal! We"d have done it when it was only 9 years old too - we just got busy, okay?

Their final LP, recorded with Jeremy Lemos, Purple On Time dropped in late 2003, and found new drummer Adam Vida cannily replacing the fairly departed Pat Samson. With consolidations and developments heavy on the ground, the band once more surged and retarded in near-orchestral precision, as Johnson"s voice swooped through fresh ranges. The songs were tangy, more rock than ever, yet just as potent when it came to drawing forth that thrusting, demented hip-shake that they induced in their faithful. 180-gram DELUXE with a die-cut sleeve and contains an extra song and a poster.

Gastr del Sol"s second album returns at last to the vinyl format - its first physical manifestation in well over a decade. Once again, a drop of the needle may ignite any number of queries, summed simply in one: What IS this music? Such is the potent energy of Crookt, Crackt, or Fly, retaining its otherworldly qualities some 32 years and countless musical movements since. Crookt, Crackt, or Fly expands upon The Serpentine Similar"s minimalist stance in unexpected ways, imposing further austerity in the soundscape but for an unpredictable expansive quantity periodically overflowing, waves of blood sluicing through the elevator doors. This is partially due to a change within the group dynamic: the departure of bassist Ken "Bundy" Brown and the arrival of a new partner for guitarist and singer David Grubbs - guitarist and sound fuckerer Jim O"Rourke. O"Rourke"s initial work with Gastr involved editing and recomposing recordings of the Grubbs-Brown-&-sometimes-John-McEntire lineup, producing an utterly outré collage of cut-ups and other types of tape processing. This became the "20 Songs Less" single, after which he was invited to play with the group. It was a time of flux; Brown recalls playing a Gastr show at the Metro around this time featuring himself, John McEntire, Grubbs and O"Rourke - and one of the pieces played was a Tortoise song! Throughout these shifts, Gastr del Sol"s music was never less than fully considered and composed, even in moments redolent with the suggestion of the random and the non-sequitur. Grubbs and O"Rourke made no attempt to replicate Serpentine"s arrangement of thick, scaly drones and hypnotic song-visions in their own partnership, finding Crookt, Crackt,"s sound instead in spiny, gamelan-like interactions between their (mostly acoustic) guitars, played precisely in and out of formation with bright, fleet-fingered abandon. O"Rourke"s fondness for field recordings and his capacity for tape manipulation intersected with Grubbs" sensibilities, edifying his evolving song style: written with increased sharpness and sly surreal humor, sung closer to silence. Halfway into "Work from Smoke", the sudden collapse of the sound-walls around us signals Crookt, Crackt"s major departure. From the thicket of guitars, a swell of drones and free-jazz squeals, made up of bass clarinet, vibraphone and organ, pulls the listener into an entirely other acoustic space. "Every Five Miles" derails in similarly tactile fashion: a guitar duet boils up thunderously, then fragments and spirals apart. As a free electric guitar part crops up, improbably holding the center, the acoustic space around it continues to disintegrate in ambient stereo. A wedding of folk music idioms to classical, improvised and modern compositional modes (including Gastr"s own formative post-punk mode), Crookt, Crackt, or Fly is a song-based reality steadily giving way to its alternative alchemies playing out within.

Back from the undead in the fresh (because we believe in upgrades & afterlifes!) is this new pressing of the first of all Gastr del Sol records, The Serpentine Similar. It is one of several distinct initiators of a definitive musical drift in the 1990s, and a drift all of its own, to boot! At the time, this album was largely heard within an underground whose boundaries were clearly defined - but if today"s sound-pool of "commercial" music is deeper and wider than it was back then, it is without a doubt due to the cracking open of certain doors of perception by Gastr del Sol, alongside their esteemed others. The year was 1992. After a bruising run of tour dates the year before, the final lineup of Bastro, a power-trio of David Grubbs, Ken (Bundy) Brown and John McEntire, retired, exhausted. Shortly thereafter, they were rebirthed, sans drums, via a new set of ideas composed in the cut-down configuration of Grubbs on guitars, keyboards and vocals and Brown on bass. Playing in duo format opened up sound and intention, leaving the need for speed (and the stock in rock) out, while letting in an expanse of brooding, droning acoustic space that highlighted the songs" serpentine shapes. This was something so radically different as to require a new calling card: henceforth, Gastr del Sol. Signing to Teen Beat, Gastr del Sol completed The Serpentine Similar in late 1992 for release the following year (the DC reissue came in "97). In the final rendering, Serpentine"s roof-rent, white-sky execution was attenuated with several percussion appearances from the prodigal John McEntire. Over the next five years, his cameo presence was a constant in Gastr del Sol"s steadily-evolving tradition of significant breaks from tradition at every turn. There would be an even more significant tradition-breaker onboard for all this; following the release of The Serpentine Similar, Jim O"Rourke joined Grubbs in Gastr as Brown exited (to focus on Tortoise, with McEntire et al). For the new Gastr duo, a world of new directions in music awaited, the future became the past, and the music of Gastr del Sol emerged from the thin air, then returned there. Now, The Serpentine Similar has been returned to vinyl from the temporal streams of contemporary music listening, a glorious rematerializing of all its spatial details on LP for the first time in 20 years.

For this collaborative release, Eiko & Jim edited and remixed material captured at shows they played during a lovely two week tour through France, Switzerland, Italy and Ireland in April 2023. Pareidolia shapes an ideal collage from the best resonances and relationships from those nights. A dynamic medley of colour and shape to pulse through earbuds, speaker cones and the air around you, appealing to your suggestibility, wherever you find it.

Ty Segall follows 2022"s acoustic introspection opus "Hello, Hi" with a deeper, wilder journey to the center of the self. With Three Bells, he"s created a set of his most ambitious, elastic songs, using his musical vocabulary with ever-increasing sophistication. It"s an obsessive quest for an expression that answers back to the riptide always pulling him subconsciously into the depths. Questions we all ask in our own private mirrors are faced down here - and regardless of what the mysterious "Three Bells" mean in the context of the album"s libretto, you can be assured that Ty"s ringing them for himself, and for the rest of us in turn.

With a room fulla fine pickers and a set of Hollywood orchestral cues to kill for, Cory Hanson proclaims I Love People! His 4th solo album drills down (baby) on a dryly parallax worldview, with songs about all those people he loves and all the crazy things they get up to. As ringmaster for a circus show of classic folk and rock tropes, Cory tugs at our heartstrings with expert misdirection, embracing tradition by throwing it out, into the wind.

Way back when, Upgrade & Afterlife was the umpteenth release from the individual and collective forces of David Grubbs (known then for Bastro, The Red Krayola, Codeine, Squirrel Bait) and Jim O"Rourke (known for O"Rourke), whose further history has since numbered at least another umpteen or so essential listens. What is it though, wrapped up in delectable sonic amber here, that defines this Upgrade? To be sure, we hear these young men dashing through the joys of youth-their actual young youth-as well as a version captured in memory and relived with a performative touch. Time remembered as tones, with gravity gained via perceptions. The stuff of memory and sentiment as selective and potentially deceptive in their nature. Who needed "em? As part of its time-traveling function, Upgrade & Afterlife is a return to roots, but not always necessarily Gastr"s. They were more than happy to stand on branches up above other folks in order to see any next thing worth leaping for. In addition to the elder-statesman Conrad, Gastr del Sol drew upon a memorable spectrum of players for the sounds of Upgrade & Afterlife, including Anthony Burr, Steve Braack, Gene Coleman, Mats Gustafsson, Terri Kapsalis, John McEntire, Günter Müller, Jerry Ruthrauff, Ralf Wehowsky and Sue Wolf. When issued, this combination of players, parts and play - packaged in an impressively broad tip-on Stoughton gatefold sleeve emblazoned with Roman Signer"s instantly iconic "Wasserstiefel" image - became the fastest-moving Gastr del Sol record to date. A delightful result, to our way of thinking, of the band"s ability to push at the far boundaries of their music while consolidating upon pleasure points within sounds and songs. Gastr used these polarities to compulsively draw the listener intimately close with sudden injections of g-force and an uncanny interpolation of space.

A lush, energizing contemporary pop record, built on heart-swelling minimal/maximal electronic production + deep feels. Reality"s breaking and rebirth is happening, one day at a time - essential asks deconstructed and refitted in new ways. Unconventional songwriting/performance duo Sharpie Smile ride inspired waves of futurist sound art, a dreamy, ethereal vision-quest through serpentine soul-terrain. RIYL: SOPHIE, 100 gecs, Ouklou

2024"s retrospective box We Have Dozens of Titles brought the revelatory 1993-"98 output of Gastr del Sol back into the world of physical objects, following a decade in which most of their music was mostly available online. The ruckus that the box generated in the so-called real world was intense enough to warrant some more fun excursions; thus, we begin our vinyl reissue series of the Gastrlog at the end of the line, with their "art-pop masterpiece" somebody"s words, not ours - but we"ll take "em): Camoufleur. Gastr del Sol released Camoufleur in February of 1998. It was a ringing down of the curtain on an extraordinary five years of music making (and unmaking) with one of the best albums of that era - or any other. Once out in the world, Camoufleur went over like gangbusters. Listening in today, it still does - time has only burnished its unique superpowers. Upon release, of course, and with the same sense of enigma in which they"d issued their music, Gastr del Sol abruptly vanished, leaving all that stuff to time. And by golly, in time we"ve found it again, and huzzah almighty, have recommitted it to ol" reliable, the singular magic of the vinyl platter, for the enjoyment and edification of a new nation.

Drag City and Yoga Records are delighted to return to the music of Matthew Young. Following Recurring Dreams (1981, reissued 2014) and Traveler"s Advisory (1986, reissued 2010), Undercurrents (2025) collects eight oddly dissimilar pieces that somehow fit together perfectly. Ranging from heady synthesizer experiments to earthy dulcimer meditations, Undercurrents is unique enough to be called outsider while still occupying a musical world accessible to fans of many genres. Composed and recorded over the span of several decades, Undercurrents displays the wide range of Young"s various sonic pallets: similar to Recurring Dreams, the electronic landscapes meander coherently, and much like Traveler"s Advisory, the album skews from the nearly algorithmic computer music of side one to the moving pastoral folk of the second.

Faun Fables, the long-running collaboration between Dawn McCarthy and Nils Frykdahl, have returned with Counterclockwise, the follow-up to 2016"s Born of the Sun. With the longest space between albums in the band"s twenty-seven year history, the nature of time and experience spent raising a family and negotiating life"s changes have much to do with the incredible listening companion Faun Fables have gifted us here. Counterclockwise"s songs and production are the most encompassing, richly lived-in sonic world of their seven full-length albums. From start to finish, it is an exquisitely etched portrait of their aesthetic and worldview: colourfully studded with fine-hewed jewels of song, tinged with the traditional sounds of past and future nations. Their timeless "songtelling" practice is entwined with a holistic view of a life in music - embracing and celebrating the mundane details of home, partnering and family, elevated by a mystical and fantastical perspective. The new discovery here is their creative relationship with time.

Ty hits the big sky trail of our good ol" frontier empire, discovering non-stop bangers and inspired new sonics around every bend. With lyrics co-written by long-time collaborator, filmmaker Matt Yoka, Ty"s glittering rhythm arrangements move with fresh scansion, inviting in sweeps of strings and horns to further the charge righteously. You"re invited too! Don"t miss the trip - the country inspires awe from up on Ty"s high-octane ride.

Totality! It can only be good news. The second convergence of Natural Information Society and Bitchin Bajas, years removed from the first, misses no steps and posits low-key revolutions in gravity for everyone instead. LPs divide inevitably into two halves; here, the first side could be typed "space" and the second side "time". With loads of totally principled playing in the communal feel, both sides blur the edges warmly.

The first official reissue of Dorothy Carter"s folk-music exegesis comes 46 years after its original release, 20 years after Dorothy passed, and 11 years before the centennial of her birth. Yet it seems right on time for a new celebration of her music. Appalachian folk tunes, old and ancient psalms and hymns, Scottish, Irish, French and Israeli melodies, and original tunes flow together effortlessly in hypnotic gardens of eternal world musics. A highly energized, alternately meditative and proselytic recital whose vitality has only burgeoned in the decades since it appeared. As it should be: the music of Dorothy Carter is akin to a portal, linking her and us with the eternal. This edition of Troubadour reproduces the original album package, adding an insert adorned with additional photos of Dorothy and her collection of instruments, as well as notes from Eric Demby exploring the era - his childhood - from a vantage point of some 50 years. This reissue is a long-held family dream come true, and it is dedicated in loving memory to Bob Rutman, Constance Demby, David Demby and Dorothy Carter.

The debut album from Whitney Johnson & Lia Kohl has evolved over several years from their initial practice of free improvisation on viola and cello into (for the moment), this: a neophonic orchestral expression. At once stimulating and soothing, For Translucence is a living, breathing meditation in which layers of acoustic strings, synthesizers, field recordings, radio and sine waves illuminate each other as they twine and grow.

Mess Esque is an Australian duo who sound like they literally dreamed themselves into being, made up of Helen Franzmann (McKisko) and Mick Turner (Dirty Three, Tren Brothers). The two enjoy moving at an unhurried pace, but what: here"s their third album in less than five years! "Jay Marie, Comfort Me" feels a hemisphere away from Mess Esque"s first efforts, and a whole new atmospheric level above. The duo began as a correspondence course in 2020, swapping tracks remotely between Melbourne and Brisbane to experiment with pairing Mick"s guitar, keys and loops with Helen"s ruminative vocals. Their third effort arrives after the two actualised into the same space - that is, touring and performing together! - but they"ve continued the absentee ballot as before, collaborating from some 800 miles apart to write another great album. One with an edge... rocking, we daresay! Along with Keeley Young and Kishore Ryan from the live band, the album features cellist Stephanie Arnold and a couple of Australia"s living legends of percussion: Bree van Reyk and Mick"s ol" Dirty Three partner-in-crime, Jim White.

Antigone is a chilling look at our already-alternate reality, coming from inside Eiko Isibashi"s own head. Her band brings a wide array of sounds and moods, shading pop, funk and jazz, ambient, electronic and musique concrète in a bittersweet latticework. Interlocking her new songs in seamless long-play flow with the compositional ambitions of her acclaimed soundtrack work, Eiko"s expressions are epic and intimate. 2025 will never be the same!

Bag People were Chicagoans who outgrew their home in the maelstrom of the early 80s NYC post-punk/ no-wave scene. They weren"t around long, but their compulsive noise-rock sound, unearthed from tapes lost for 40 years, looms large and stands tall next to the efforts of better-known contemporaries like Sonic Youth and Swans. A righteous puke of art-punk from a time of incredible brokenness in the world - in other words, savage sounds for today!

Unearthed from the neolithic tar that eventually swathes all history, Aerial M"s early-98 Peel Session is once again among us. Compared to the studio takes, played strictly and singly by Aerial/Papa M-astermind David Pajo, these versions swing from the necks of road-burned players, breathing more bestially than their canonical cousins, glinting "pon the dark metallic roots that fed all of Pajo"s best guitar lines, winding thru time immemorial.

LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY has had more than its share of out-of-nowhere bands following from the second big bang that was punk rock. The Babylon Dance Band, Circle X, Your Food, Squirrel Bait, Bastro...these are but some of the exceptional music acts originating in Louisville after 1977. Now it"s time for the great secret of the Louisville first-wave punk scene to be revealed: The Endtables. The Endtables were the crazed brainchild of guitarist Alex Durig, brooding chess-master of the amplified freak-out, and singer Steve Rigot, a flamboyant transgender giant from the shores of southern Indiana who reinvented himself as a Warhol Factory superstar. Like Scarlett O"Hara wrapped in a green velvet curtain, Rigot crafted his own glamorous reality from what was available in the blasted cultural landscape of 1970"s Kentucky. Gold spray paint, duct tape, Ace bandages ... a spectacularly other trailblazer who caused folks to toss their received ideas of beauty and go with the new thing instead. The band first took the stage in late 1978 and was finished by the summer of 1980. In the fall of 1979 they recorded six tracks at a Louisville studio, four of which came out on a 7" EP on their own Tuesday Records. The two remaining tracks ("White Glove Test" and "Trick or Treat") were issued as a single on Self Destruct records in 1991. Both records are among the rarest of any American punk release - more sought after than seen, passed on disintegrating cassette tapes and shouted over upon impact. The music of The Endtables is another chapter in pure American weirdness, as jaw-locking today as the day it was recorded. The scent of modern can be detected in Steve Rigot"s remote vocalese, set against Alex Durig"s guitar outbursts, while drummer Steven Jan Humphrey and bassist Albert Durig (age fifteen!) supply frenzied rhythm. The band rocks its fevered vision to a ferocious degree while Rigot grimly rhymes the truths that remained locked out of the public"s pop tastes in "79-"80. Thirty years of rap and roll later, The Endtables seem inevitable.

"Whistle from Above" is David Grubbs" first Drag City release in over a decade and his first-ever instrumental album for the label. The suspiciously youthful Grubbs is four decades into his career, with former bands including Gastr del Sol, Squirrel Bait, and Bastro, along with a wild ride of collaborators including f.e. Bitch Magnet, Codeine, The Red Krayola, Royal Trux, Dirty Three, Will Oldham, The Underflow and The Wingdale Community Singers. "Whistle from Above" is the first solo collection David has released since 2017"s Creep Mission. During the 2020 shutdown, David played what he precisely quantified as "a shit-ton of guitar," more than he could recall playing ever previously. Reinvigorated by this period of enforced woodshedding, he produced a series of new pieces, mostly for guitar, but also a piano composition and an exceptionally eerie bit of musique concrète. Meanwhile, David was reconnecting with the Gastr del Sol archive, as a new collection of old performances was being prepared from extensive archival material. The duo magic of that storied collaboration (released in 2024 as We Have Dozens of Titles) left David hungry to play in this format again - as he had recently with Loren Connors, Alan Courtis, Manuel Mota, and Liam Keenan. These duo experiences showed David the path forward to complete this new solo material. Thus he sought out collaborations with folks he"s called "some of the musicians whom I adore most on the planet" - Rodri Davies, Andrea Belfi, Nikos Veliotis, Nate Wooley, and Cleek Schrey - and their stunning contributions flesh out Grubbs" innate, deeply person brand of minimalism. "Whistle from Above" is a colourful, compulsive set of instrumental pieces in which David and his chosen collaborators interact amid the steady roll of an expansive landscape based in the hypnosis of David"s immediately recognizable guitar style.

After a near-total silence of twenty years, Edith Frost is back again, and in full bloom with In Space. Her first new record since 2005"s It"s a Game is just in time - the world needs Edith"s voice back in the conversation. And her ineffable way with a tune . . . It seems Edith needed something, too: from the notebooks of her long hiatus, a line like "I say too much/I wait too long/I wait forever/And notice that it"s gone" speaks volumes about feelings of lack. Overwhelmed by the demands of day-to-day living and the details and anxieties that always come, Edith squirreled herself away for as long as she could - only to find herself isolated, spun even farther into the doldrums. In Space isn"t simply a song-cum-album title so much as a very real exploration of the remote place she"d found herself, with her songs registering this recognition and measuring the vast distances between herself, the life that is and the life that was. It was the only way back in! Over the years away, Edith was immersed in music everyday, and spent lots of time learning - in addition to new lyric perspectives, her reinvention of herself as a keyboard player is one of the waves lifting the album In Space. The keys suggested different places within Edith"s harmonic palette; for us listening, this attenuation seems to create a deep focus on emotional life within the songs and a breathtakingly visceral presence in the performances. Her voice as well, in all its iterations, sounds quite fine and vital. The songs, as ever, are low-key brilliance elevated by the vitality of Edith"s voice. Mark Greenberg, alongside longtime Frost A&R man Rian Murphy, brought fresh arrangement ideas to complement the strange-new-world vibe of Edith"s songs. Recorded at The Loft in Chicago, with invaluable contributions from Jim Becker (Califone, Air Blue Gowns), Sima Cunningham (Finom, formerly OHMME), Bill MacKay and Jeff Ragsdale, In Space feels like the most Edith Frost record yet made, pulled from deep inside with great feeling, awash in harmonized voices and - more often than ever before - featuring her own playing. Alternatively approaching and avowing connection, Edith"s crafty songwriting orbits the human exchange with an increasing sense of possibility. It"s what the world needs the most of today.

Some things take a long time. And some things are meant to last. But how you know that, or learn how to find out, that’s a more intangible thing. That’s A Shaw Deal – intangible. A communal meeting place for two old friends and their different musics. A Shaw Deal is the first album by Geologist and DS. They go back a long ways – back before Highlife, before Shaw joined White Magic – back to the early childhood of Animal Collective. Basically, Doug Shaw touched down in NYC around 2003, and he and Brian Weitz have been friends ever since.

“DS” first released his own music under the moniker “Highlife” on the album “Best Bless” EP, in 2010. Listeners were lifted by the sound – a vital new transmission imbued by the popular African guitar music, British folk-pop, desert blues and the ritual spirit energy that Doug had been evoking in White Magic with Mira Billotte. And really, if you knew Doug, this incredible alchemy was just one of the amazing ways he could come through on the guitar.

A couple years back, Doug was posting bits of his playing on Instagram, and Brian found them to be a much-needed escape from reality – he’d just let them loop for stretches of time, get lost in there, and emerge with recharged energies. They were such perfect mini-encapsulations of Doug’s fantastic spirit. Brian was inspired. Eventually, he ran them through his modular system, editing and tweaking and looping as he went, creating new shapes and juxtapositions, instinctively rewiring Doug’s original sounds to extend the feeling of peace they’d given him. Once it was all together, it would make a cool birthday present to regift to Doug! And once the gift was given, it was sounding like an album too…

From start to finish, A Shaw Deal taps into DS’s guitar playing and the vibe of his expression, drawing out meditative waves in new forms while exploring the worlds within them. Geologist and DS collaborate in a manner that’s brought comfort and release to them both. A Shaw Deal leaves no doubt, as it radiates further into the world and beyond – it will bring a new range of views and feels to everyone who listens in.

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

Following their collaboration on 2021"s Oscar winning Drive My Car, Eiko Ishibashi & filmmaker Ryusuke Hamaguchi up the ante with a deeply inspired synergistic exchange: music for images, visuals for sounds. Eiko"s score initiated the project that has become his celebrated new film (Best Picture - BFI London Film Fest, Asian Film Awards, Silver Lion - Venice Film Fest, Best Score - Asia Film Awards). Eiko"s compositions are scored for violin, cello, guitar, drums and keyboards. Her longtime partner Jim O"Rourke played the guitar and mixed and mastered the recordings when they were done, eliciting further the necessary nuances of atmosphere and mood that one would expect in one film, much less two!

Bill meets Mickey on the street of impossible, unstuck-in-time dreams - as the late Mickey sings his back in "73, while Bill sings his "today." Both these master songsters put their own inevitable brand on Mickey"s peerless original, but it"s a new thrill hearing Bill cover a tune, something he rarely does. When it comes to the great Mickey Newbury, the answer should always be "yes." Help your own heavenly inner child by picking up and playing the grooves of these two sides of the same story.

Having passed - at least figuratively - through hundreds of years over the course of their previous two albums, the good ship High Llamas docked, fully loaded, into a congenial present moment for once in its life. O"Hagan"s continued work with Tim Gane and Stereolab caused a healthy dose of electronica to spike the Llamas" already heady brew, creating an apex of late 90s-style neo-exotica. RIYL: Mouse On Mars, Oval, Grand Royal, Dots and Loops.

After the high times and critical-mass arrangements of the previous two records, Snowbug exuded a breezy, spare, morning-after vibe. Edified by all manner of world-folk, classic Brazilian pop and the first volumes of the Ethiopiques comp, the Llamas recorded in London with Fulton Dingley and in Chicago with Bundy K. Brown and Jim O"Rourke engineering at Electrical Audio and John McEntire mixing at Soma. Snowbug is an understated, underrated gem.

The High Llamas discover America - yes, it had been done before, but not via their envisaged pilgrims" passage. Energized by the breakthroughs of Gideon Gaye, they went all-in, producing a wide-screen epic further exploring their unique agenda. The reference points multiplied, stretching through realms of classic pop and jazz, soundtrack music, exotica and neo-Americana, while charting a journey through musical landscapes of abiding lightness.

For the Llamas" 1992 debut, Sean O"Hagan, working the sextant to navigate a post-Microdisney course in the musical world, posted them up as a guitar pop band (RIYL: NRBQ, Big Star, Steely Dan), with nine exquisitely crafted examples of the oft out-of-step sound. Had there been no more after this, Santa Barbara would still be sought-after buried treasure by the perennial waves of voyagers seeking these sweet, jangling spices to this very day. 1st ever LP pressing!

We Will Be Wherever The Fires Are Lit, a sort of sequel to Tashi"s first DC release Stateless, takes the torch and storms forward, with ten improvised acoustic guitar anthems. These musical thoughts are torn from the fabric of Tashi"s life and music. "Strumming in opposition to the towers" (as he puts it) is part of an existence that is always political, even in its most abstract iterations - a truth laid bare in these deep, raw performances.

December 2001, Maida Vale: Bill Callahan"s "Smog" perform with demonstrative zeal for their British witness at the BBC, shimmering and hissing with a Lynchian vibe of U.S. darkness in the invariable shadows of the fallen towers. Callahan & band (Jessica Billey, Mike Saenz and Jim White) cover Stevie Nicks, Lou Reed and Smog with grey, ashen resolve and tour-torn flexibility, amassing a bruised, plaintive essence of humanity with their efforts.

The "Great Escape Artist" is back! No, not THAT one - dude"s dead! We"re talking about Papa M. And HE"s talking "bout Harry Houdini - in the album title, anyway, not sure about anywhere else. So, six years since his last LP, the all-acoustic A Broke Moon Rises, Papa M rolls into the shred zone, buns glazing, with his fifth full length in 25 years of Papa M-itude! Six fat-assed songs - a couple ballads, yeah, but mostly real all-out groovers here.

Mere months after inflicting a massive case of Vertigo on the world, Wand ride on, plating the pre-release digi-single "Help Desk" alongside "Goldfish", a bonus dose of oceanic luminescence from Vertigo"s Big Bang. Plus, in the name of the ever-expanding universe (and the much-needed dream-extension app!), three remixes - from Beat Detectives, Dead Rider and Dean Spunt - for good measure. Not sure where you"re at? Check in with the "Help Desk".

Demos and unreleased songs from Wand"s salad days, the time of the immortal Ganglion Reef. Available for download since 2017, this album"s at last firmly sunk into vinyl grooves that realize its fullest potential in a listener"s ears. These light, fizzy versions have distinctive gleaming magic energies all of their own and they fly thrillingly through the air. Catch a wave through beautifully-abandoned space on your turntable eternal!

Anthony"s post-Slapp Happy output, for years an underrated-to-outright unknown quantity, achieves a new dimensional plane with this third archival release from his personal tape library. Home of the Demo triangulates upon the art-pop qualities found in his previously unreleased 1976 LP OUT, and "79"s new wave-adjacent Flying Doesn"t Help, finding Anthony"s early/mid-80s home recordings drifting whimsically in and out of the actual mainstream.

Whitney Johnson, alter-ego of psychoacoustic voyager Matchess, presents a new composition for sine waves, marimba, viola, Arp Odyssey and Halldorophone. Meditating on the duality of the human body (it collects/collates all the sensory info, allowing us the gift of hearing music; it is a fallible structure, wearing down often on the long path to final breakdown), Whitney compassionately radiates healing frequencies to inspire inspired response.

Dean Spunt"s all-new Basic Editions is an excursion in electronic sound that instrumentally unpacks his fascination with language - in this case, the syntax of systems and processes. By turns meditative, compulsive and consumptive, Basic Editions distills a 64 voice module through a head full of ideas - somewhat like pouring a cornucopia of possible ambient moods and EZ listening impulses backwards through a funnel, inspiring a deceptively absurd rainbow of soul to spray out the other end. With this new release, Dean IDs his process as "using sounds, rather than making sounds". This approach to music-making is a train of thought that"s been rolling out from the far horizon of the past for ages now - but for Dean, whose previous works within and without No Age depended on their making of sounds, it"s a fresh work stance. Given, however, No Age"s traditional sonic manipulations (via loops and treatments), Basic Editions delivers further unexpected hard-rights and lefts in the non-aesthetic aesthetic that has defined Dean"s path over the past two decades. Steering toward wacked digital soundscapes that bounce colorfully across the stereo azimuth, Dean creates a kind of post-ambient neo-exotica that hinges upon a giddy conflation of cosmic and comic.

Veteran electronic music composer Jill Fraser"s new work takes stock of generations and lifetimes of memory, speculating on how the spirit of our songs might be interpreted after we"re gone. With her 1978 Serge Modular, Prism Modular and Ableton Push 3 in the circuit path, she recomposes a stack of American revival hymns, making new creations for the future. A fluent meditation upon mortality and rebirth amid numinous infinities of dimensional sound. The sound world of Earthly Pleasures accesses a seeming infinity of dimensional sound in which the human hand is always keenly felt, no matter how deep the space. It"s a breathtakingly transcendent album that suggests inclusion within a diversity of genres: Ambient, Electronic, New Age, Modern Classical, Gospel, Healing, Sacred... . It is the work of a veteran composer and synth master at the peak of her powers, meditating upon the detritus of memory, the passage of all consciousness, and the rebirth of meaning in a new era.

6OOA"s 2020 opus is reunmanaged by sound composer Twig Harper, whose unlimited brief takes this REMIX places no other remix record could dare to go. In the process, it affords the wizard of Six Organs, Ben Chasny, the chance to re-present the record in a form as insane as the world into which the record was - and is - headed. A soundtrack to California chaos, done two ways, sometimes at the same time! RIYL: Electronic, New Age, Modern Classical

Reissue

'Find Me Finding You', the new album from the new organization called the Laetitia Sadier Source Ensemble, manages to strike new chords while touching familiar keys in the song of life.
From its percolating opening beat, 'Find Me Finding You' locates new systems within the sound-universe of Laetitia Sadier. This in itself isn't a surprise - Laetitia has relentlessly followed her music through different dynamics and into a variety of dimensions over the course of four solo albums since 2010 (not to forget her three albums with Monade and the long era of Stereolab) - but the nature of the construction here stands distinctly apart from her recent albums. Laetitia was inspired by a mind's-eye envisaging of geometric forms and their possible permutations. As she sought to replicate the shapes in music, this guided the process of assembly for the album.
Part of the freshness of 'Find Me Finding You' comes from working and playing within the Source Ensemble and exploring new sound combinations via a set of youthful and evolving musical relationships. Laetitia recognized the energy of the tracks in their initial form and sought to preserve their vitality by not retaking too many performances - instead, the rawness in the tracks was retained and refined at the mixing stage, maintaining an edge throughout. When we hear synth lines diving, lifting and drifting, unusual guitar textures, the plucked sound of flat wound bass strings or the bottomless pulsing of bass pedals stepping out of the mix with an exquisite vibrancy, this is the sound of the Source Ensemble.
A key to Laetitia's music is her use of vocal arrangements. Throughout 'Finding Me Finding You' the shifting accompaniment creates space to bring this element gloriously forward. Arranged by Laetitia with Joe Watson and Jeff Parker making string charts that were subsequently transposed to vocal parts for several songs, richly arranged choirs of voices provide depth along with the thrilling presence of extra breath in the sound. Laetitia's community-politic is well-served by the groups of voices lending support to the machining of the song craft, providing additional uplift to her quintessentially forward-facing viewpoint - as well as massed voices from three different countries sharing space in harmony.
Working in collaboration is Laetita's tradition and a key to this album's view on being free together. The designation of Source Collective implies a new togetherness phase, alongside long time collaborators Emmanuel Mario and Xavi Munoz, keyboard and flutes parts played by David Thayer (Little Tornados) were essential contributions, as well as further keys, synths and electronics from Phil M FU and several intense guitar sequences from Mason le Long. Chris A Cummings (aka Marker Starling, Laetitia's favourite composer) graciously wrote 'Deep Background' for her. The duet with Hot Chip's Alexis Taylor on 'Love Captive' (not to mention Rob Mazurek's distinctive coronet playing) gives voice to an ideological cornerstone of 'Find Me Finding You'

For those of you who"ve mislaid your history goggles, this archival release recalls an ancient time in the world of recorded music. Yes, back in the dinosaur days of the 1990s, a creature known as Aerial M walked the earth, before evolving into Papa M and PAJO and beyond and back. Even then, the music of M had a next-wave vibe, walking upright among the knuckle-draggers (and having drinks in the evening with others of its genetic detatchment). It was too much to last very long, of course - but some things end up lasting forever, don"t they? Fuck! So it is today that Drag City, an organization largely set up to bring you the best of all available M recordings, is proud to be there for the release of the only Aerial M session ever recorded for John Peel"s BBC Radio One show, as it was originally recorded on 3rd March 1998 and broadcast on 2nd April of the same year. The studio versions of these songs, which appear on Aerial M"s S/t album (DC114) and Papa M"s Hole of Burning Alms comp (DC231), were played by "M" himself (now revealed to be David Pajo!), which makes this album a rare alternative view of the canonical M, played by an actual Aerial M band who, all too briefly, embodied the sound for a year or so before Papa brought a brand new bag. This Session found them fortuitously roadburned from several weeks in the European Theatre. So much the better for our archival ears, as OG-M"s signature minimalist long-fuse sizzle is thrillingly intact here; in fact, even more so, as the tunes are jammed out past the studio versions" originally delineated borders, reaching rudely across the table in moments of liveness that the studio-bound project might have decided against when conferring only with the walls. For fans of their epic version of "Turn Turn Turn", this is more sweetmeats from that raucous old skull - but if you"ve not been down this road before, be prepared: the taste will set you slowly aflame. And then, before you know it, the band is dined and dashed - just like the band that Aerial M was, all too briefly amok on the earth that was too.

Love Rudiments is a meditation by Ty Segall on his first love: the drums. Known popularly as a singing guitar player, he generally starts the recording of his songs by laying down a drum track. Love Rudiments kicks off with drums and percussion then adds a few other percussive and production aspects. It travels a great journey in this configuration. However, Love Rudiments wasn"t written or performed to present as some kind of solo drums album - it"s just another music album, with vibes (figurative as well as literal), feels, a theme and a through-line. Never one to shy away from a challenge, Ty"s made an instrumental album of percussive music that rides the wild surf of a waxing-then-waning love affair - from the first blinding look, to the eventual recognition, that look back at love"s rudiments, viewed from beyond and outside that seemingly infinite sensation And why not? Drums are a melody instrument too. Ty plays them with precision and sensitivity, delving deep into the textures of timpani, vibraphone, xylophone, percussion and e-drums, all of them occupying space within the luxe stereo spread of the drum kit. In the process, a psychological space is opened - a private emotional location where only two can meet. Love Rudiments reembodies the passion and compulsion that drives all of Ty Segall"s music in a suite of moments played on orchestral batterie to explore the most delicate passages of human interaction - playing on the bones of love.

"This is a live album that was taken from the tour for YTILAER. Songs tend to mutate after they"ve been recorded. These songs were mutating faster than usual. Like whatever happened to Bruce Banner in the lab - I knew these songs were about to get superpowers. As far as I was concerned, this change needed to be documented. The best thing about documenting something is that it gives the creator permission to move on should they wish to move on. I usually prefer to move on. These songs were recorded in Chicago, America"s heart. And at one of the best clubs in the country - I try to only work with venues that are not entangled with LiveNation/Ticketmaster. Thalia Hall, baby. Stay free. The date was mid-point in the tour, so I knew we"d be as hot as we were going to get. Not too green, not too brown. There was the thought, "let"s take this op to make it something special." So we took advantage of Chicago"s easily accessible players - we got Nick Mazzarella to add alto sax to one song, and from the opening band, Pascal Kerong"A to sing on a song, and Nathaniel Ballinger on piano on one song - and I couldn"t pass up the opportunity to invite Joshua Abrams and Lisa Alvarado to play on "Natural Information." The hardest part of making the record was cutting songs out - it could have been a triple album. But I don"t know, maybe the show should have been this short?" - Bill Callahan

"Are Possible" is a spark-throwing, undulating fusion of styles played (mainly) on banjo, upright bass and drums, made possible by the individual perspectives of Nathan, double-bassist Casey Toll (Jake Xerxes Fussell, Mt. Moriah) and drummer Rex McMurray (CAVE) work together in an easy-rolling manner, but one that contains an expansive, ass-shaking confabulation of ideas. Music is time in redux: Are Possible"s many moments in time carry details from all over the place. Rex brought a rhythm to the table after drumming on buckets at work, Casey provided a bassline that redirected a previous jam, Nathan brought in a song he"d been fucking with forever and they figured it out together. Their diversity of sources moves easily within the arrangements, rendering a far-ranging set of feels, from transcendental to new country funk to good ol" jazz and the folk-rock, even - all of it drawn out exquisitely when they mixed at Electrical Audio in Chicago with the delicate hands of Cooper Crain upon the faders. The Nathan Bowles Trio have done their due diligence, passing their music through time and space on their way to now.

Sliding between the bodies in the street, cutting across the contrails that bisect our sky, Wand find melody and the anxiety beats as they hum the soundtrack for a new gravitational center. Seeking connections against the plan of niche interest and anonymity, Vertigo is the sound of slippage, rocks of contradiction (in soft focus); feet lost, regained, lost again, a multi-chromatic swaying, more automatic, associative, directed, in time. Determining to work backwards (or at least insideout) this time, Wand recorded everything in their own studio; pieces cut from improvisations and reshaped, writing from within the performance, without the woodshed. Unconsciously, in the shadow of themselves, and turning round and round (and round), they kept finding that empty space and playing what it implied. Everybody took on a new position in addition to the old one. It was intuitive, strangely ego-less . . . going somewhere they"d never been and not knowing what they were doing, but committing and recommitting, unafraid to eject in a constant positive forward momentum.

A feverish essay of transcendent drumming: Chris" solo approach, rooted in the exploration of elements of extended technique, sought another level, via possibilities facilitated by a self-made string drum! The Key (Became The Important Thing & Then Just Faded Away) brings his encompassing focus on free improvisation and noise into a granular fusion with acoustic experiments and hot-wired ideations of hard rock riffing and the post-punk sound.

Drag City is excited to present the first ever vinyl pressing of guitarist Lee Underwood"s under-sung 1988 acoustic guitar opus, California Sigh. Guitarist Lee Underwood"s syncretic blend of jazz, folk, and blues was a tremendous force behind Tim Buckley"s genre-stretching late 60s/early 70s music - but his 1988 acoustic guitar opus California Sigh has remained a unsung footnote to his story. Until now! This first time vinyl-edition reveals Lee"s free-floating acoustic moods, with synths and co-production from ambient avatar Steve Roach, as a soulful work of tranquility and transcendence. In the years following the release of California Sigh, Lee wrote and recorded two solo piano CDs, Phantom Light and Gathering Light. Additionally, he wrote Blue Melody: Tim Buckley Remembered, a memoir of their time together, as well as three books of poems, Timewinds (2010), Diamondfire (2016) and Into Light (Poetic Matrix Press, 2021). He continues to live in Northern California.

What might appear to be the most unlikely collaboration of 2024 proves also to be one of the most invigorating listens of the year! Shackleton & Six Organs of Admittance are in full aural/metaphysical alignment in their mutual effort to become Jinxed By Being. On first listen, it becomes immediately clear that this fusion of Shackleton"s bass heavy cosmic dread and Six Organs" ritual folksong makes total sense. Longtime listeners know that both Shackleton and Six Organs of Admittance have been unafraid to pursue their muse into any and all encroaching depth of darkness or outer boundary of potential dissonance - in fact, that has always been their default mode, finding more of resonance way out there in the process. They also share that ol" maverick psychedelic ritual transcendental music vibe, don"t they? And a fascination with repetition and cycles. And a mutual inspiration drawn from alternative tunings and literature...all this considered, it"s been basically inevitable that Ben Chasny and Sam Shackleton would work together. It took a while for them to find each other-and once they did, it was almost eerie, how preordained it felt. When the music started coming, though-that"s when it got really eerie. The mood rises from the music like smoke, a sure signal of total integration. Jinxed by Being finds Shackleton & Six Organs of Admittance delighting in their synthesis. Reveling in the unique sonic textures found in the collage, they launch small details that unfold into a massive space and often multiply into lines of dimensional space, crossing the stereo spectrum with enervating motility. Here lies all the proof you need against the danger of categorizing by perceived genre rather than intention-encounters like Shackleton & Six Organs of Admittance might never have found the linear space in which they sit next to each other, beyond alphabets and other institutional organizing principles. Rearrange your libraries-or you might miss getting Jinxed By Being.

Missing out on that super-chill, uber-jittery minimal groove thing? Let"s get real, real Ghosted again. Oren Ambarchi has been collaborating with the Fire! trio (Mats Gustafsson, Johan Berthling and Andreas Werliin) for over a decade - and both Johan and Andreas played on Oren"s Live Hubris as well. Oren and Johan began music-making together back in the early aughts - but it wasn"t until 2021 that the three of them got together to record music. That became the first Ghosted album. When they were done, it was clear they had founded a new group. A music of sustained tension and deep atmosphere marked by subtle, shifting dynamics, Ghosted was released in May of 2022 to psyched response everywhere; the trio embarked upon an ongoing series of concert bookings around Europe, with loads of other people in the world still hoping to have the chance to be in the room at the next show. Two years on, Ghosted has gone through several represses, now it"s time for the "dreaded follow up album"! Rather than go back to the well, the guys decided to tear everything down and start all over again, reimagining themselves from scratch. Just kidding! As we"ve noted, Oren, Johan and Andreas have been playing together for years and years, developing an essential telepathy within their shared space. They get each other and feed each other"s music processes on an elemental level. Why change that? What made the most sense was to go back to Daneil Bengtsson at Studio Rymden in Stockholm for a couple days, then have Oren and Joe Talia mix and Joe master it at Good Mixture in Melbourne again, then get Pål Dybwik to do some well-distinctive cover art, and once more, call it a record. That"s just what they did - and it should be no surprise at all that the new Ambarchi/ Berthling/Werliin album looks and sounds as engrossing as their debut, if not more so! Ghosted II has a definitively fresh quality radiating throughout. The mutual feeling among the three players goes deep, allowing for lots more to say every time they get together - a further recombination of elements, a new expedition through alternative angles... there"s always more, and incredibly, it"s all improvised, with next-to-nothing prepared going in and minimal overdubs after they"ve laid things down. References are shared in shorthand, with just a single word, like "Santana," or "Police" acting as working titles for certain pieces on this record (have a guess!). It"s a disservice to call them jams: above and beyond the innate feel of the songs, there"s a strong sense of structure, informed by the band"s communal aesthetic, and edified immeasurably by their time spent in concert the last couple years. As noted at the top, these guys balance their music improbably between a relaxed feel and a nervy resolve, as each member holds down their corner in an open sound field. Making Ghosted II, the band found that there"s a different kind of tension making something for an established project rather than the kind one feels making something for the first time - and they used this new variety, as before, as a kind of fuel - driving their terse minimalism fruit-fully through the process of succumbing to and then transcending guilty pleasures. Finding fresh territory in funk sketches, jazzy heads, ambient pastorals and droning soundtrack pieces, Ambarchi, Berthling and Werliin compellingly haunt a mad variety of spaces, leaving us wanting to get Ghosted II.

Attention, aficionados of sublime pop music! Jim is, in fact, the older brother of pop singer Gerry Rafferty. Following two albums of sophisticated, melodic material with strong emphasis on vocal harmonies (not dissimilar to his brother"s work), Jim entered the 80s with no record deal, but good new tunes to shop. His original demos provided chart fodder for Frida (late of Abba), Clannad and Ian Matthews, but Jim"s versions outshine them all!"I See Red" was picked up by Phil Collins for Abba star Frida"s 1982 solo album.The flip-side of Jim"s "I See Red" has its own cover history - "Fear Strikes Out" first appeared on Ian Matthews" 1984 LP, Shook. Now, some 40 years later, the superior versions of these two Jim Rafferty originals arrive on a 7" single.

The Emmy-winning Comeback Kid himself comes back yet again with a blunt, brilliantly quotable stand-up special. "Baby J" takes the form of a wide-ranging conversation between John Mulaney, a kid in the balcony named Henry, and the rest of the sold-out crowd at Boston"s Symphony Hall. And now, you! John dominates the chat, of course - and while his cautionary tales are a bit too convulsive to be functionally preventative, you probably aren"t here to be cautioned. So have at it!

Bill MacKay and Drag City are delirious with pride to announce the discovery of a new territory: Locust Land, a record which seeks to reflect the nerve-shredding consciousness run amok in our world today - and somehow allay it with sound. Bill"s music is a visceral crackling where it meets the air, and Locust Land can"t help but reflect its era more than any other in his discography. It"s been five years since the release of Fountain Fire - but in the interim, Bill has barely stopped moving, collaborating with artists across the spectrum, including cellist Katinka Kleijn, banjo player Nathan Bowles and keyboardist Cooper Crain. He"s also contributed to recordings by Steve Gunn, Ryley Walker, Bill Callahan & Bonnie Prince Billy (Blind Date Party), and Black Duck (on their self-titled record featuring Douglas McCombs and Charles Rumback). Forget five years - how"d he even get Locust Land squeezed out of his temporal lobes? Bill"s sense of music as art is constantly modulating - lifting off from where it is found and naturally migrating to some other place. Sometimes, that"s elsewhere - others, it"s simply to be found deeper inside the starting point. And so, the action of moving on informs the landscape of Locust Land. This manifests in several different ways. A restless energy and urgency is repeatedly felt - in the driving momentum of "Keeping in Time," "Glow Drift," and "When I Was Here" - while a dogged persistence radiates from the tone colors and percussion of "Oh, Pearl." Mating a dirge-like desolation with sparkling guitars, "Radiator" adds darkness and depth. The sense of searching, displacement and longing in vocal tracks "Keeping in Time," "Half of You," and "When I Was Here" speak literally to the tumult of current vibrations. Within the arrangements, there"s also departure from previous norms - in addition to the brilliant guitar work for which he is known, Bill plays a variety of keyboards, from piano to organ to synth, extending his music with the available voicings, while enriching the sound field without abandoning his signature brevity. For fans of his singing, and following in the recent tradition of Fountain Fire as well as his collaboration with Nathan Bowles, Keys, Locust Land expresses with an increased vocal presence - and heightened engagement, with Bill"s words and melodies drawing us closer. Also different: on his previous solo recordings, Bill played every sound. Here, he has invited other illustrious Chicagoans to join him: Sam Wagster (The Father Costume, Mute Duo) plays bass on three songs, two of which feature the percussion playing of Mikel Patrick Avery (Natural Information Society, Jeff Parker, etc.). Additionally, Janet Beveridge Bean (Eleventh Dream Day, Freakwater) adds otherworldly vocal textures to the elegiac "Neil"s Field." Whether played alone or with companions, this music projects the strength of a universal collective. Even with a piece that might earlier have passed for blissful pastorale, Bill displays some declamatory motives. The reverie which opens the album, "Phantasmic Fairy," embodies both transcendent and desperate moods, with Bill"s ineffable slide guitar playing afloat, with organs and synths, in a dream state suffused with a sense of foreboding - a requiem, perhaps for the days of unencumbered bandwidth? On the other side of the album, the strength to continue to hope appears in the lifting melodicism/exoticism of the album-closing title track, leaving the listener with the sense of having achieved a hard-won space - a place of personal contemplation and dissent, one that everyone on the planet deserves to visit every single day on earth. With cover art also by Bill MacKay (the third of his albums on Drag City to feature his work), Locust Land stands as a thoroughly personal statement from Bill to everyone everywhere.

Nearly twenty-five years after disbanding, Gastr del Sol have unpacked their archive, stringing together an alternative view to their genre-melting 1993-1998 run.
This assembly of previously uncollected studio recordings and beautifully captured unreleased live performances forms a spacious ode to the flux that was their métier;
a further set of reinventions that continue to alter the manner in which we hear music, and literally everything else!

Soft rock"s seminal band, The Blue Jean Committee, originated from blue-collar Chicago when the now legendary Clark Honus (Bill Hader) and Gene Allen (Fred Armisen) dropped out of sausage school to create the band of their dreams. With the help of famed music manager Alvin Izoff, the band reinvented their hard Chicago-blues image to instead transcend the laid-back essence of California. After studying bands like The Beach Boys, The Blue Jean Committee as able to find their signature sound and rise to the top of music charts. Despite Chicago"s resistance to their "vegetarian" facade and "hippy" vibe, the band became known for creating the quintessential California album. Their debut album, Catalina Breeze, spawned six consecutive hit singles for the band and for a moment it seemed like they would be a long-term fixture on the American musical landscape. However, some relationships are more complicated than they appear on the surface, and nowhere did this ring more true than for Gene Allen and Clark Honus, as their infamous on-stage fight at the Hollywood Bowl Animal Rights Now Benefit and subsequent break-up has since become the stuff of legend. Fans of the "Chicago band with the California sound" can celebrate once more! After over 30 years apart, Gene and Clark were recently reunited for their induction into the Hall of Fame in April 2015.

After 20 years of living on the road in different places, Six Organs of Admittance had returned home to Humboldt County - a far country, to some, but still part of the world through which creatures of all kinds are moving through and contributing to. And some of them are human. Alone together - forming connection and exchange out of thought and expression - no different from the people on the other side of the Redwood Curtain. It was there, where Six Organs had long ago emerged, in the name of everything cycling, of circles that spiral concentrically and remain unbroken, the new music was conceived. In moments, it was as if the future had somehow wrapped around 360 degrees; elsewhere, the systems and patterns inside the writing and recording only became evident later - like a recognition that cumulus and nimbus clouds which passed through the sky the day before contained familiar shapes. Informing the songs accordingly as he went, Ben picked up on modes both musical and lyrical, threading backward through the time of Six Organs of Admittance. Almost marinating in it as a way of life. Working on the music and the vocals, then spending some time with them while stepping away from them. Walking the dog and coming back to them Time is Glass is made of that kind of time. Alone time. Recorded in the visceral environs of home, Time is Glass is sharply focused, even as misty impressionist mountains float through the background. Sweet and spiny, "The Mission" sings its purpose, before turning abruptly to the orchestral rumble of "Hephaestus": rural industrial psychedelia, ecosystem goth, synths arcing to lift a helplessly earthbound community into the firmament above. Winding almost imperceptibly back into song with "Slip Away", the time of the record becomes clear, moves fluidly, relaxed but aware, from event to event. People and things coming around again. The intuit, passing through wormholes and time, sounding deep then dissolving into the universal. The acoustic sounds ringing, layered suddenly, then clear again. Explosions of a new kind of distortion. Ecstatic melodies. Communing. The space of a day. The space of a season. Time is Glass, and Six Organs of Admittance is here and will be here, again.

Once again, Six Organs of Admittance showcases the intricate tangle of fingers on the fretboard and flash of lens flare slicing the air, as the future arcs 360 degrees around to become a part of the past as well. Oscillations in this glass bowl ripple outward eternally, but are rooted on the ground where all the creatures are moving and communing; humans too. An intimate cosmic expression, file under: rural-industrial psych, ecosystem goth.

Mother Twilight is the second Faun Fables album. It has since been noted by Scottish author R.J. Stewart as a work containing true artifacts of the oral underworld tradition. Dawn and Nils made a hand-assembled first pressing and peddled it to nearly every bar and rural hall across North America from 2001-2003. Drag City reissued the CD in 2004. Things are glowing outside, enough to bring any sun worshiper in for the night. But you must remain outside and begin walking. It"ll prepare you for the night, which otherwise comes as a chilling surprise. If you pay attention this time, maybe you"ll understand why you"re becoming invisible. When your memory began, it wasn"t startling, wasn"t a mistake. It came out of an old, dark and familiar thing, like a storyteller, like Twilight... so save us from fear, mother, and tell your story. Dawn McCarthy"s creative background was forged in oral tradition amidst a large musical family in Spokane, Washington; studying piano, music theater, rock bands, guitar, folklore and ethnomusicology. Dawn cut her teeth as a singer and performer with various bands and cabarets in Madison, Wisconsin and New York City, most notably as yodeler with the Bindlestiff Family Cirkus, who inspired her to want a gypsy life with a kindred spirit someday. Her focus took a pivotal turn in that direction in 1997 with a solo quest through the UK and Ireland and their bardic traditions; singing songs in clubs and homes, all the while undergoing a pastoral, psychological experience with the land. Upon her return to the States, a fateful meeting with Oakland, CA born-and-raised Nils Frykdahl (Sleepytime Gorilla Museum) moved McCarthy back to the West to begin a new creative collaboration in the thriving hills and art community of the San Francisco Bay Area. Since 1999, Faun Fables have released six albums and performed their animist, otherworldly folk music across North America and Europe, with shows in Australia, New Zealand and Israel, as well. Dawn"s writing and voice (described by The New Yorker as "one of the more compelling instruments in contemporary music") opens hearts and minds with a whisper to a rallying battle cry, further animated by Frykdahl"s adventurous musicality and vocals. Dawn has written musical theater performed by the Idyllwild Arts Academy, among others, and has lent her vocals to Bonnie "Prince" Billy on The Letting Go and What the Brothers Sang. In 2022, Faun Fables debuted their family band, joined onstage by their daughters with vocals, percussion, keyboard and dance.

Happy 20th birthday to Family Album, the third recording of Faun Fables and the first one released on Drag City. These songs belong to sons and daughters, entwined and orphaned, domesticated and feral; to all the family vines unraveling from a ball of yarn. In this family album, runaways graze the wild together, a mother finds her courage playing the piano, dogs become thieves and wolves, and a son is taken too soon. Fourteen-year-old nymphs sit dangerously at the crossroads, a younger brother tries to find his place, packs of girls defeat fear with a march, and the nightly adventures of the household mouse are spied upon. Dawn McCarthy"s creative background was forged in oral tradition amidst a large musical family in Spokane, Washington; studying piano, music theater, rock bands, guitar, folklore and ethnomusicology. Dawn cut her teeth as a singer and performer with various bands and cabarets in Madison, Wisconsin and New York City, most notably as yodeler with the Bindlestiff Family Cirkus, whom inspired her to want a gypsy life with a kindred spirit someday. Her focus took a pivotal turn in that direction in 1997 with a solo quest through the UK and Ireland and their bardic traditions; singing songs in clubs and homes, all the while undergoing a pastoral, psychological experience with the land. Upon her return to the States, a fateful meeting with Oakland, CA born-and-raised Nils Frykdahl (Sleepytime Gorilla Museum) moved McCarthy back to the West to begin a new creative collaboration in the thriving hills and art community of the San Francisco Bay Area. Since 1999, Faun Fables have released six albums and performed their animist, otherworldly folk music across North America and Europe, with shows in Australia, New Zealand and Israel, as well. Dawn"s writing and voice (described by The New Yorker as "one of the more compelling instruments in contemporary music") opens hearts and minds with a whisper to a rallying battle cry, further animated by Frykdahl"s adventurous musicality and vocals. Dawn has written musical theater performed by the Idyllwild Arts Academy, among others, and has lent her vocals to Bonnie "Prince" Billy on The Letting Go and What the Brothers Sang. In 2022, Faun Fables debuted their family band, joined onstage by their daughters with vocals, percussion, keyboard and dance.

High Llamas present Hey Panda - a modern pop music/deep listening experience that could only issue forth from their personal quadrant of the galaxy. Hey Panda projects soulfully through an enervating abstract of today"s popular music; the sound of the Llamas" stately melodies and expressive ditties laid open - blissfully shattered - with drums and vocals hitting different, burning sounds and contemporary production twists pulling the ear at every turn. For the past few decades, High Llamas have trafficked in contemporary pop sounds directed toward the avant end of the spectrum as much as not. But here the message was clear. Llamas" composer-in-residence Sean O"Hagan was determined to let go. Hey Panda does just that, with a set of tunes reflecting on multiple levels how definitions change over the course of a lifetime, radiating an optimism derived from the diverse conundrums of today. Eight years since their last release, the pop musical Here Come The Rattling Trees, High Llamas have reinvented themselves again, mixing their peerless harmonic voice with what Sean regards as the "extraordinarily good" production sounds of today on Hey Panda. Choosing not to look backward to former golden ages celebrated in earlier Llamas eras, Sean"s instead found himself opened up by the sounds of music brought into the house by his adult children and the sounds encountered at sessions for which he"s recently written arrangements. In addition to the more traditional contributions he made to The Coral"s Sea of Mirrors album, plus his score for the Safdie brothers" 2022 film production, Funny Pages, Sean"s drawn great inspiration through working with Fryars, Rae Morris, King Krule, Pearl and The Oyster, while also soaking up the work of Tierra Whack and Chicago"s Pivot Gang, and being cheered on from a distance by longtime admirer Tyler The Creator. Thus, Sean"s producer procedural has evolved again, with upgrades first detected in his 2019 solo effort, Radum Calls, Radum Calls. With a cover of Billie Eilish"s "Wish You Were Gay" arranged for Bill Callahan and Bonnie Prince Billy"s Blind Date Party, along with his COVID-era solo single, "The Wild Are Welcome", Sean has leveled up again and again, leading to the delirious revelations of Hey Panda. Hey Panda"s wide reach is aided by two co-writes from Bonnie "Prince" Billy, (who bonded with Sean over a shared love of gospel soul during writing sessions), guest vocals from Rae Morris and Sean"s daughter Livvy, production twists from Fryars and the stalwart, flexible presence of High Llamas. For all of its sense of departure, Hey Panda is a movement in the High Llamas oeuvre that"s been a long time in development. Aspects of soul music were addressed at the time of Can Cladders; similarly, aspects of electronic dance music were in the mix in the late 90s, around the time of Cold and Bouncy. But nothing up to now has refocused the music of High Llamas so completely. Sharing the impulse of late-period Miles Davis and Quincy Jones, with further inspiration from Steve Lacy, SZA, Sault, No Name and Ezra Collective, among many others, Sean O"Hagan and High Llamas are living joyfully in the new and the now, with Hey Panda.

This is long overdue. I mean, looooooonnnnnng overdue. A solo album by Jim. The trap kit - so straightforward, so mysterious. What"s inside those things? Air and light - from which century? Which continent? Which planet? Depending on how and when you hit them it can be a vibration sent through a prehistoric breath, particles of Saturn"s atmosphere, the dead, wet leaves you walked through on the way to the first day of school. These are the memories of the drums on this record. Infinite and personal. Editing each other as they muscle to the front or soft shoe to the shadow. Cymbals can override/cancel everything out - wipe your memory clear or make the memory clearer. Drums are the instrument where you can feel the presence of the player the most - the full body - and sense the thoughts of the player the most. The instrument with the most choices to be made sends out the most brainwaves. A bouquet of brainwaves is on this LP. Jim oversees it all, surveys from the lost place we"re in, the void - the drumless song. We trust. We trust, Jim. His big green eyes search for the right tool (mallet, brush, etc), eyes that search you like you"re a song he wants to join, wants to see if he can add to or understand. Before humans, drums were playing - these drums. Genesis was a solo drum piece. After humans, these drums, this album. Someone - the last man - is out in a spaceship at the edge of space. He plays a single chord on a synth to set time free from its bind and then lets go. This album sets time free, lets it frolic, lets it graze, lets it remember. This is a record of thoughts, memories, surgery. A deft surgical operation you may not even realize is happening as it"s happening but you"re back on your feet when it"s over. Memories refreshed. Did you really even listen to it? -Bill Callahan, November 2023

Returned to us from early 90s Japan are the holy holy sounds of Ghost. Their collective, clearly inspired by various forms of transcendental music throughout history, created a new syncretic psychedelia with these albums, mixing the texture and vibe of multinational forms of traditional music, with strummed antique stringed instruments and the haunting wail of a recorder on top of their heavy beats and guitars. The considerable depth of this approach was explored through 2014 over another five Ghost LPs, as well as the further explorations to the present day of leader Masaki Batoh, as a solo artist and with The Silence, Damon & Naomi, Helena Espvall and most recently, nehan. These first three Ghost titles were originally released by P.S.F. on CD in 1990, 1992 and 1994, respectively, radiating enigma and energy in palpable waves with their original sound. After the acclaim that greeted Drag City"s 1996 US release of Lama Rabi Rabi, we quickly reissued all three on vinyl - and they quickly went out of print! At which point, Ghost had Snuffbox Immanence and Free Tibet ready to go. And then, Hypnotic Underworld. And then, and then . . . . Now, it"s been 25 years since they were last offered on vinyl. In the twenty-year sweep of Ghost history, these first three releases qualify as primitive early Ghost - sort of like a German Os Mutantes (or perhaps a Brazilian Amon Düül). The subterranean presence of a diversity of progressive/avant classic rock influences (Pink Floyd, Incredible String Band, Captain Beefheart, Scott Walker, Led Zeppelin, Popol Vuh, Third Ear Band, to name but a few) provokes further synthesis, making for an entirely new meditation on the traditional order of psychedelic music. The first two studio albums, each one an iteration of Ghost"s unique lysergic folk music, were followed by the monolithic "live in various places" happening of Temple Stone, which raised the trippiness levels considerably. But this was only the end of the beginning . . .

Returned to us from early 90s Japan are the holy holy sounds of Ghost. Their collective, clearly inspired by various forms of transcendental music throughout history, created a new syncretic psychedelia with these albums, mixing the texture and vibe of multinational forms of traditional music, with strummed antique stringed instruments and the haunting wail of a recorder on top of their heavy beats and guitars. The considerable depth of this approach was explored through 2014 over another five Ghost LPs, as well as the further explorations to the present day of leader Masaki Batoh, as a solo artist and with The Silence, Damon & Naomi, Helena Espvall and most recently, nehan. These first three Ghost titles were originally released by P.S.F. on CD in 1990, 1992 and 1994, respectively, radiating enigma and energy in palpable waves with their original sound. After the acclaim that greeted Drag City"s 1996 US release of Lama Rabi Rabi, we quickly reissued all three on vinyl - and they quickly went out of print! At which point, Ghost had Snuffbox Immanence and Free Tibet ready to go. And then, Hypnotic Underworld. And then, and then . . . . Now, it"s been 25 years since they were last offered on vinyl. In the twenty-year sweep of Ghost history, these first three releases qualify as primitive early Ghost - sort of like a German Os Mutantes (or perhaps a Brazilian Amon Düül). The subterranean presence of a diversity of progressive/avant classic rock influences (Pink Floyd, Incredible String Band, Captain Beefheart, Scott Walker, Led Zeppelin, Popol Vuh, Third Ear Band, to name but a few) provokes further synthesis, making for an entirely new meditation on the traditional order of psychedelic music. The first two studio albums, each one an iteration of Ghost"s unique lysergic folk music, were followed by the monolithic "live in various places" happening of Temple Stone, which raised the trippiness levels considerably. But this was only the end of the beginning . . .

Returned to us from early 90s Japan are the holy holy sounds of Ghost. Their collective, clearly inspired by various forms of transcendental music throughout history, created a new syncretic psychedelia with these albums, mixing the texture and vibe of multinational forms of traditional music, with strummed antique stringed instruments and the haunting wail of a recorder on top of their heavy beats and guitars. The considerable depth of this approach was explored through 2014 over another five Ghost LPs, as well as the further explorations to the present day of leader Masaki Batoh, as a solo artist and with The Silence, Damon & Naomi, Helena Espvall and most recently, nehan. These first three Ghost titles were originally released by P.S.F. on CD in 1990, 1992 and 1994, respectively, radiating enigma and energy in palpable waves with their original sound. After the acclaim that greeted Drag City"s 1996 US release of Lama Rabi Rabi, we quickly reissued all three on vinyl - and they quickly went out of print! At which point, Ghost had Snuffbox Immanence and Free Tibet ready to go. And then, Hypnotic Underworld. And then, and then . . . . Now, it"s been 25 years since they were last offered on vinyl. In the twenty-year sweep of Ghost history, these first three releases qualify as primitive early Ghost - sort of like a German Os Mutantes (or perhaps a Brazilian Amon Düül). The subterranean presence of a diversity of progressive/avant classic rock influences (Pink Floyd, Incredible String Band, Captain Beefheart, Scott Walker, Led Zeppelin, Popol Vuh, Third Ear Band, to name but a few) provokes further synthesis, making for an entirely new meditation on the traditional order of psychedelic music. The first two studio albums, each one an iteration of Ghost"s unique lysergic folk music, were followed by the monolithic "live in various places" happening of Temple Stone, which raised the trippiness levels considerably. But this was only the end of the beginning . . .

nehan is a Japanese free improvisation & avant-garde rock quintet formed in August 2022. Their performances are initiated by a 9hz brain wave emitted from a testee who has been brought into a deep meditative state via either hypnosis or acupuncture - a very relaxed but very alert state. nehan doesn"t begin until the testee has gotten into the state of "nothingness." It is only then that the improvisation can begin. The role of improvisation has been key to all the musical projects of Masaki Batoh. In 2010, as Batoh was winding down the activity of his long-standing "heavy chamber folk" group, Ghost, he became involved in the design of a machine to generate sonic data based on brain waves. An acupuncturist as well as a musician by trade, his interest was spurred by the rhythms of the body and the brain, and a desire to access the "pulses" of brain waves to initiate improvisations. Following the release of Brain Pulse Music, Batoh toured Japan, the US and Europe, making demonstrations of his process using a local volunteer and guest performers, when available. Today, nehan arrive at their performance space prepared with a Brain Pulse testee, bringing a wide array of instruments including gongs, timpani, tabla and other drums and percussion, Crumhorn, bagpipes, mellotron, oscillators and additional sound effects. Their performance is a transformative electro-acoustic display that passes through the prism of music styles, from east to west, from traditional folk and classical to rock, jazz, and avant electronic. While nehan"s performance presentation invokes a sense of ritual, they understand their process as being far removed from any type of spiritual endeavor - it has nothing to do with eastern thinking or any kind of religious ceremony - this is an action of improvisation, occurring in reality between the five musicians on stage, in response to the brain waves of an individual. For the personnel of nehan, Masaki Batoh asked players with whom he had good previous experiences in improvisation: Futoshi Okano (Ghost, Acid Mothers Temple, The Silence), Haruo Kondo (Espvall & Batoh) and Junzo Tateiwa (Ghost), along with female Brain Pulse testee Gozen on oscillators. The performance here, recorded live in August of 2022 at GOK SOUND in Tokyo, demonstrates their communal dedication to the improvisation. The players act as listeners and musicians simultaneously, inspired to make extended pieces of music out of the "nothingness" of brain waves. The possibilities of nehans"s chosen approach are almost infinite; an evening with nehan is only the beginning of their journey.

This split 7" unites the Hackney coalition, as the next gen kids join their father and uncle in Death, on one side, while continuing to forge their own path as Rough Francis on the other. The production, by on-call drummer Urian Hackney, ambitiously streamlines the hard-driving sound of both bands: Julian Hackney"s guitars, the vocals of Bobby Jr. and Sr. and all the rumbling rhythm unleashed! A new chapter in the history of Death has begun.

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

The initial cassette-only releases of Tashi Dorji turned lots of heads, including Six Organs of Admittance and Hermit Hut - now over a decade later, this release makes its full-album debut on vinyl. "It really was a formative time for me because it felt like everything opened, as far as the possibilities of what music-making meant. Like improvisation walked in and then there was a volcanic eruption" - Tashi Dorji "The self-titled session was recorded at a nice studio at the local university here in Asheville. I had some friends that were studying music there and had access to studio time. This session focused more on extended/prepared guitar ideas. My interest in percussive elements of sounds, timbre, harmonics, and dynamics plays a lot in this recording." - Tashi Dorji

The initial cassette-only releases of Tashi Dorji turned lots of heads, including Six Organs of Admittance and Hermit Hut - now over a decade later, this release makes its full-album debut on vinyl. "Guitar Improvisation and Tashi Dorji are the first physical releases of my guitar improvisations. They were put out by a small local, now defunct, label called Headway Recording in 2012 and 2013. The friends who ran the label had heard some of my guitar music and reached out to me about doing a cassette release. Guitar Improvisations was really my first recording of improvisation - in a semi-studio setting at my friend"s basement space. It really was a formative time for me because it felt like everything opened, as far as the possibilities of what music-making meant. Like improvisation walked in and then there was a volcanic eruption . . ." - Tashi Dorji

Dreyblatt"s minimalist conception - a rhythmic drone played on a double-bass strung with piano wire, playing in concert with other stringed instruments performing in 20 unequal microtones per octave and changing key but keeping the same fundamental pitch - dates back to the 1970s, while he studied under La Monte Young and Pauline Oliveros. Resolve acts in intermittent dialogue with the first Orchestra of Excited Strings release, 1982"s Nodal Excitation.

Since then, Dreyblatt has formed new orchestras across various countries and decades, with each phase of his music requiring several overlapping periods of gestation and arrangement.

The current Orchestra is formed by Konrad Sprenger, Joachim Schütz and Oren Ambarchi. On Resolve, each of the members" playing brings new angles to the compositions. Konrad Sprenger"s involves solenoids, sine waves and a computer-controlled multi-channel electric guitar (as well as a relentless style behind the drum kit and oversight of the album production), while Joachim Schütz"s individual conception of electronics and electric guitar and Oren Ambarchi"s undeniable innovations with signal path work together with Dreyblatt"s bass (still strung with piano wire) as magnetic component parts of Resolve.

These contributions lead to Resolve"s dialogue with the early Orchestra of Excited Strings canon - for instance, the track previewed here, "Flight Path" takes off at a pace not often found in the minimalist genre - a rolling lope! Yet the sense of play is palpable: the ensemble scale their microtonal keys with punkish brio, a stance sharing much with the original Orchestra"s downtown pulse, even as as the new Orchestra burn their own path through Dreyblatt"s music.

Approaching his 70th birthday, with over 40 years of work as a solo artist, collaborator, composer, educator and bandleader, Arnold Dreyblatt views Resolve as an important expression within the long story of The Orchestra of Excited Strings. The album title"s tendency to mean different things is an indicator of the dynamic qualities of his music in all its different phases - an evolution that continues to produce new dimensions in acoustic sound with every new release.

Since 2011, Mike"s been a Drag City stalwart, first with Sic Alps, then as a solo and with The Peacers - but Mike "The Mighty Flashlight" Fellows has been a behind-the-scenes figure at Drag City since the early early days, playing live and on record with Royal Trux, Silver Jews and Will Oldham. Mike D"s music, in all phases, takes the form of a next-phase roots-pop: soaked in the traditional waters of rock and roll and passed through a variety of after-punk sonic sieves, highlighted with DIY and lo-fi values, and making a jolly hallucinatory racket, at that! He prefers a particular density of obtuse angles colliding sweet and hot noise, an arrangement he has perfected over all his Sic Alps/solo/The Peacers years; his innate understanding of the mechanics of a pop song wends purposefully through the junk-strewn landscape, sharing secrets with cipher in hand. Playing in this cracked kingdom of sound/garden of verse, Mighty Flashlight alternately accents and balances Mike"s eccentricities with his playing and knob-spinning - and with the Flashlight shining bright upon him, Donovan"s serpentine path becomes ever so much more elastic, heightened from line to line, change to change, its motility creating different shapes in our ears. Mighty"s own kind of stereo imagining informs Donovan"s smoky subterranea with additional depth of field, while still allowing all the wayward details within the arrangement to diverge as one. Mike and Mighty wind it all together: art punk utterance and top 40 radio junk of yore, the primitivity that formed recorded music in its youth, honkytonk romanticism, liminal chamber-folk and ever-present disassociated psychedelia, transformed via self-medication into a gleeful, extramusical ennui while giving the listener impetus to sing along with Mike"s patented unlikely combos of melody and lyric.

Recorded in 1995 and 1996, mostly in John Fahey"s room at a Salem, Oregon boardinghouse, the performances on Proofs and Refutations prefigure the ornery turn of the page that marked Fahey"s final years, drawing another enigmatic rabbit from his seemingly bottomless musical hat. Cloaked in the language of dogma - what is he proving? refuting? - this is Fahey dancing a jig in the Duchampian gap, jester cap bells a-jingling. True believers? He"s got something for you: an uncompromising vision that you can sneer at ("guy can"t play anymore and refuses to concede!") or embrace as evidence of his genius ("the reinventor does it again!"). Skeptics? He"s there with you, too: sending up the fallacy of certitudes altogether. Institutions, systems, accepted wisdoms. Heroes. Alternative facts, indeed. Right out of the gate, Fahey re-materializes before us, somewhere between Oracle of Delphi and Clown Prince at Olympus. Mounting a thundering dialectic from on high, "All the Rains" resembles nothing else in his extensive discography - betraying roots in everything from Dada to Episcopal liturgical chant - and contains nary a plucked guitar note. You can"t fool him! When the lap steel of yore appears on "F for Fake," it serves more as soundbed for an extended sequence of vocal improvisations, running the gamut from wordless Bashoian caterwauling to free-form (but decidedly fake) Tuvan, even revealing a burnished falsetto in the process. Fahey takes on a different kind of provocation in the two acoustic guitar-based tracks closing Side 1 - "Morning" parts 1 and 2 - the first of 4 recordings in this session that have him wrestling with the ghost of Skip James, perhaps Fahey"s effort to wrench the "bitter, hateful old creep" (his words) back into the grave. Anchoring Side 2 is the two-part "Evening, Not Night," the second half of his extended cathexis on James (and the latter"s avowed castration complex - another story for another day, perhaps). Bit of a chill in the air - where"s the impish Fahey from earlier? Unmistakably working through some psychic wounds here, we might think: the unheimlich rendered in glistening viscera. Or is he playing with our notions of authenticity, of his reputation as troubadour of raw emotional states, a pilgrim of the ominous, the simmering unconscious? These cards are kept decidedly close to the vest. The opening and closing pieces again feature Fahey"s guitar as drone soundbed - employing distortion, oscillation, and an altogether absurd quotient of reverb to create texture and harmonics that are - if we wanna go there - not dissimilar to the sustained tonic clusters of Tibetan singing bowls, the hurdy gurdy, Hindustani classical music, or La Monte freaking Young. Portions of this material appeared on obscure late "90s vinyl in the 7" or double-78 rpm format, but as a "session" it has lain dormant more than a quarter century now. Taken together, we can now see these tracks as secret blueprints to latter-day Fahey provocations, several years prior to records like 1997"s City of Refuge and Womblife.