Monthly Archives: January 2018

“I was lucky to have been brought up in a vinyl household. I don’t think my parents had any clue how cool they were to have their giant vinyl collection, but they are to blame for my obsession.”

“The love affair started in the early eighties in Belfast, Northern Ireland. My uncle Eamon worked at some sort of record pressing plant or distributor and would get “free” records for my parents. One of my earliest memories is lying on our living room floor with Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in front of me and being fascinated by the artwork and the weird men in peculiar clothes.

The Beatles were a constant in our household but I remember staring at the inside of the album and asking my dad which one was dead. I’m guessing that John Lennon was just shot? Or, perhaps I was aware of the whole Paul is dead rumour?

By the ’90s I was living in Santa Monica, California and luckily lived in walking distance to The House of Records. My friend Naomi (who played on our album) and I used to go there all the time. I’m pretty sure I bought my first Pixies album Doolittle there.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Deep, diverse, and unheralded, the Philadelphia ambient electronic music scene of the 1980s is explored with The Nightcrawlers’ The Biophonic Boombox Recordings, an expansive archival collection documenting the hard-knuckled kosmische synthesizer trio’s home recordings self-released and distributed over 35 cassettes between 1980 and 1991.

Featuring the farthest reaching spacescapes of those cassette releases – improvised straight into the mic of a JVC Biphonic Boombox – none of these performances have been released beyond the original format, and essentially went out of print when Nightcrawler Peter D. Gulch got tired of dubbing them to blank tapes to mail-order through his Synkronos label and sell at live shows. Restored and recalibrated from the original cassettes, The Nightcrawlers’ music has never sounded better or so readily accessible.

Both salt-of-the-Earth Jersey-ites (Peter was a chemist, while brother Tom Gulch was a mailman, and younger third member Dave Lunt was a graphic designer) and eccentric technicians (particularly when it came to MIDI innovations), The Nightcrawlers created a sound which both evoked the heights of German synth pioneers of the previous decade, such as Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze, while reflecting their classical influences, particularly in the minimalism and pattern-based music of Steve Reich and Philip Glass. This was music that the Gulch brothers and Lunt were absorbing through Philadelphia outlets such as WXPN, the University of Pennsylvania’s radio station, and the Painted Bride Art Center, both eventual – and strong – supporters of the group.

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1970 was a dark year in American history. Students opposed to the Vietnam War were being gunned down by the National Guard at Kent State. Richard Nixon was ordering the invasion of Cambodia. U.S. soldiers were massacring the people of My Lai. Hard hats were attacking student demonstrators protesting Kent State. The first Ford Pinto was rolling off the assembly line, just itching to explode.

But I have saved the worst for last. On January 26, 1970 the band Chicago (shortened from the original Chicago Transit Authority) released its sophomore album, Chicago (or Chicago II as it’s sometimes royally called; these guys didn’t put out albums, they put out successors to the throne). There are atrocities and then there are atrocities, and this double LP of “horn-based rock,” upped a notch for awful on the basis of its classical pretensions, is about as atrocious as they come. The Weathermen were then in the business of blowing things up. Why they didn’t blow up this clear threat to public safety is beyond me.

I’ll be the first to admit I’m prejudiced; from Electric Flag to Blood Sweat & Tears right on down to the lesser-known likes of Cold Blood and The Ides of March, I have always assiduously avoided rock bands with horn sections of the sort that don’t just jump in and wail, but play careful, jazz-inflected arrangements that stand front and center in virtually every song. Never put the horns up front is my motto; you’ll end up sounding like a precociously good high school jazz band.

I’m not opposed to horns in my rock’n’roll; I simply don’t want to listen to a rock band whose chief sources of inspiration are the big bands of Glenn Miller and Jimmy Dorsey. It’s sordid and unhip; I can’t listen to Blood Sweat & Tears or Chicago without imagining them stinting at some garish showroom in a Vegas casino, wowing the socks off the high-rolling Middle American squares out for an “edgy” night of “toe-tapping musical entertainment” designed to allow them to tell themselves, ‘I’m hip! I just saw Chicago!”

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Upon post-punk’s emergence in the late ’70s-early ’80s, it’s doubtful anyone thought it would develop into such an enduring genre; really, it was just a group of artists, most of them British, who were straining against restrictiveness toward new possibilities. Today, post-punk is still going strong, with no signs of slowing down, and the results are unsurprisingly mixed. Amongst the stronger recent examples is the Aussie outfit EXEK. Dark, arty, sometimes dubby, while wielding synth and a saxophone, their second album is Ahead of Two Thoughts, and it’s out on vinyl with download card January 26 through W.25TH, the new music sublabel of Superior Viaduct.

EXEK hail from Melbourne, where they started out as the studio project of their frontman Albert Wolski. Having songs written but no band to realize them, the vocalist-guitarist recruited Andrew Brocchi on synth, Henry Wilson on bass, Sam Dixon on drums, and Neil Grant on sax. After getting their sound together, a self-released eponymous 4-song cassette emerged in 2014.

The next year a pair of splits followed, one a tour 7-inch with the Austin, TX band Spray Paint, and the other a cassette with fellow Melbournians Halt Ever. EXEK’s contribution to that tape, the nearly 17-minute track “Baby Giant Squid,” filled the second side of their full-length debut Biased Advice, which came out in 2016 on the Another Dark Age label.

“Baby Giant Squid” productively mingles a dub foundation with ample moodiness and shifting instrumental textures, and the results underscore EXEK’s ambition as they remain tethered to precedent; Another Dark Age’s website cites a connection to the Australian Innocent label of Dave Chesworth and Philip Brophy crossed with the Germanic post-punk offered up by the imprints No Fun and Zickzack.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Nina Simone was only 25 years old in 1958 when she entered Beltone Studios in midtown Manhattan for a one-day recording session for her debut album, Little Girl Blue, on Bethlehem Records. The 14 songs she recorded that day reveal just how well developed Simone’s sound — her powerhouse vocals, her classically-trained piano-playing, her inventive, genre-blind arrangements, and her dynamic personality — already was. Bethlehem, a small and financially faltering jazz label, picked 11 tracks for Little Girl Blue. This unheralded debut yielded Simone’s biggest hit, a cover of the Gershwins’ “Porgy (I Loves You, Porgy),” as well as her last one, “My Baby Just Cares for Me,” which charted in 1987 after being used in a TV commercial.

By the time “Porgy (I Loves You, Porgy)” was moving up the charts, Simone had moved on to larger and financially stronger Colpix Records. Wanting to capitalize on Simone’s hit, Bethlehem made the most of their Simone material. On Nina Simone and Her Friends, they placed “Porgy’ and the three songs left off of Little Girl Lost (“He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands,” “African Mailman,” and “For All We Know”) with songs by her label-mates Chris Connor and Carmen McRae. Between 1959-62, Bethlehem also put out six singles utilizing all of their Simone tracks. To commemorate the 60th anniversary of these recordings, BMG/Bethlehem now has compiled these singles together as Mood Indigo: The Complete Bethlehem Sessions, due out on February 9, 2019.

The 14-track CD version of Mood Indigo follows the chronology of Bethlehem’s single releases, starting with the first A-side “Porgy (I Loves You, Porgy)” and ending with the last A-side, “My Baby Just Cares Me.” The collection contains an alternative take of “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands,” as well as seven single-only tracks that previously have only been available on the original 45s. The LP version, pressed in standard black and limited edition blue vinyl, holds 12 tracks plus a bonus 7″ replica of Simone’s first single, “Porgy (I Loves You, Porgy)” backed with “Love Me or Leave Me.”

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“I remember breaking up with my first serious girlfriend when I was eighteen. It was young love, but it hurt nonetheless. I remember I was miserable. During those times it’s always difficult to find any music that doesn’t remind you of that person in some way or another.”

“There was an afternoon when I was over at my friend’s apartment who had a record collection that he treasured. I had never really understood vinyl. It always seemed to me like a pastime meant for people older than us. It felt like my friends collected vinyl for the art—to put it up on the wall—never to listen to it. Anyway, that afternoon my friend put on a Nick Drake record, Pink Moon. I said it sounded familiar while knowing I’d honestly never heard it before.

I remember watching the vinyl spin and realizing I’d never actually listened to a record before. The crackle and warmth made the songs sound so close. Hearing that album on vinyl finally made me feel ok again and ended up inspiring me to buy a record player soon after that.

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Dommengang are a young band, formed in Brooklyn, who now reside in Los Angeles. Their forte is hard rock with psychedelic touches and electric blues at the root; it’s the specialty of countless well-intentioned dullards, but on their new sophomore effort the trio acquit themselves nicely by resisting the urge to wallow in cliché as a virtue. Instead, they embrace the style’s expansive possibilities, with results that register as both familiar and fresh. Love Jail is out January 26 on vinyl and compact disc through Thrill Jockey.

Comprised of guitarist Dan “Sig” Wilson, bassist Brian Markham, and drummer Adam Bulgasem, Dommengang brandish some of the heaviness established by the great rock trios of yore, but without falling victim to the common pitfall of plod. To the contrary, there’s a fleetness to the band’s sound, and on their 2015 debut Everybody’s Boogie, even hints of an experimental side.

Given Wilson’s past collaborations with Ancient Sky, Castanets, and Holy Sons, Dommengang’s experimentation, and propensity for psychedelia, shouldn’t be a surprise. In fact, in 2015 the band were effectively part of the Holy Sons, touring as Emil Amos’ backing outfit (while opening the shows in support of Everybody’s Boogie), a connection that should hopefully reduce any hard rock retread worries.

I won’t deny that prior to listening, the title of their first record triggered thoughts of another band with a Brooklyn affiliation, namely Endless Boogie, but upon investigation there are some marked differences. For starters, where Endless Boogie have a Krautrock tendency informing their jams, Dommengang’s psych inclination, at least on their debut, is more reminiscent of Hawkwind.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | On February 23rd, Craft Recordings will reissue the definitive version of one of the most ambitious, groundbreaking records in the Stax catalog: The 24-Carat Black Ghetto: Misfortune’s Wealth.

Composed, arranged, and produced almost entirely by longtime Isaac Hayes collaborator Dale Warren, the album draws marked comparisons to the lush, transformative arrangements penned by Warren for the seminal trio of Hayes albums, Hot Buttered Soul, The Isaac Hayes Movement, and …To Be Continued. Often cited as one of the first concept albums in the soul, funk, and R&B genres at a time when such boldly artistic statements were reserved for progressive rock bands like Pink Floyd, this ‘soul opera,’ featuring just eight tracks, is an entrancing mixture of lush, orchestral soul ballads and Blaxploitation-era funk grooves, split into vignettes dealing with aspects of everyday life in some of America’s poorest areas. Its unique blend of immaculately arranged grooves and socially conscious narrative launched the album into cult-classic status among DJs and producers who have sampled it for tracks, most recently by Kendrick Lamar, Jay Z, Digable Planets, Dr. Dre, and many others.

This pressing, released as part of Craft Recordings’ “Made In Memphis Series,” features 180-gram vinyl cut at Ardent studios on the original Stax lathe and pressed in Memphis at Memphis Record Pressing. The Old-school style tip-on jacket with printed inner sleeve contains new liner notes by Rob Bowman, Grammy® Award winning author of Soulsville U.S.A.: The Story of Stax Records. Ghetto: Misfortune’s Wealth will also be available at streaming outlets, mastered for iTunes, and in Hi-Res digital (96/24 and 192/24) on street date.

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“When I think vinyl, my mind splits into three distinct eras.”

“The first would have to be ‘Mom’s Records.’
My mother has a good ear, and a love of music she got from her father (Grandpa Elmer).
Mom came up in the ‘50s and ‘60s, and was a real radio sponge.
Throughout the ‘70s we would listen to—and sing along with—whatever came on in the car, basically what we now know as ‘Classic Rock,’ although then it was impossibly new; it’s difficult to imagine ‘You’re My Best Friend’ by Queen having just come out, but it had, in my mother’s orange Chevy, some Summer on the way tp Park Synagogue Day Camp.
Her record collection was slim, but essential to me.
The Doors, The Doors
Elton John’s Greatest Hits
Pippin, The Original Broadway Cast Recording
The Beatles, Abbey Road
Simon and Garfunkel, Bridge Over Troubled Water (or maybe Greatest Hits)
And most fundamentally, Hot Rocks by The Rolling Stones.
I still have these albums, and they’re in the DNA of music I make every day, from film/TV soundtracks to Shudder To Think songs, to more personal, experimental stuff of my own.
My new record, Adult Desire, is some kind of shattered, 21st Century inversion of Simon and Garfunkel…at least it feels that way to me.

Let’s call Phase 2 ‘The Formative Years, Part 1 and 2.’
Part 1 begins with family members buying me records on special occasions—Grandpa Elmer loved me so much, he bought me the first Plasmatics album New Hope For The Wretched on an outing one day in Downtown Cleveland.
Butcher Baby.
Aunt Marlene handed me Diary Of A Madman by Ozzy Osbourne like it was a bag of vomit one Chanukah.
And my mom and dad would buy me albums and singles on occasion—chief among them Kiss Alive ll, which I would force my friends to air-play along to (they could be Paul or Peter; Ace and Gene were strictly reserved for ME) when they came over to play, and the Grease and Saturday Night Fever soundtracks.
I just assumed everybody felt the way that I did about music—and these records in particular—so of COURSE my friends would want to air guitar, spit blood, grease their hair and make up line dances all afternoon.
Every afternoon.
I feel like this must’ve been 1977 (I was 8ish) because I associate these particular obsessions—three in an endless parade—with a strange, sad apartment we lived in briefly just after my mom remarried that year.

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Press Play is our Monday recap of the new and FREE tracks received last week to inform the next trip to your local indie record store.

Blind The Thin King – Hail The Newborn Killer
Nathaniel Bellows – Keep in Mind
Echo Bloom – Comet
Noble Son – Joy In Violence
Dream System 8 – Losing All of You
Lowpines – Broken Wing
HELEN KELTER SKELTER – 21st Century

TVD SINGLE OF THE WEEK:
Alela Diane – Ether & Wood

Narrow Head – Bulma
Red Black Red – Kindness
Eric Benoit – Taos
Felsen – Vultures on Your Bones
Her’s – Loving You (Minnie Riperton Cover)
Jodee Lewis – Buzzard’s Bluff
Paulaa – Know You
Matt Hectorne – Only Way Into Your Heart