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LP
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DC 931LP
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$25.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 1/31/2025
"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 D.S.. 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. 'D.S.' first released his own music under the moniker Highlife on 2010's Best Bless EP. 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. If you really know Doug, this incredible alchemy was just one of the amazing ways he could come through on the guitar -- and you probably also know that all his crazy shit is just massed up somewhere, ready to fill up a great album of his own. 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. He was so inspired by these mini-encapsulations of Doug's spirit that eventually he ran them through his modular system, editing and tweaking and looping as he went, creating new shapes and juxtapositions, instinctively rewiring the 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 D.S.'s guitar playing and the vibe of his expression, drawing out meditative waves in new forms while exploring the worlds within them. Geologist and D.S. 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."
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LP
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DC 911LP
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$31.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 1/31/2025
"Downstate, the second official Prison stint, stretches to insane new places while pumping out more of some of the toughest jams around. Leap-hogging from one vibe to the next, Prison cop a variety of grooves, from minimalist (like Guru Guru), sweat-shaking (Stooges) and chaotic (No Trend) -- it feels like they're coming from everywhere! They switched it up in almost every way they could this time. But that's just Prison being Prison. At its core, Prison's a multi-headed beast, and Downstate is built to showcase their swarming freakscene. Recording this one in Rockaway meant they could get Prison family and friends to drop in. Going Downstate with core Prisoners Sarim Al-Rawi, Matt Lilly, and Paul Major are guitarists Marc Razo and Adam Reich, bassist Matt Leibowitz, and Dave Smoota Smith on trombone. Also present is the late, lamented Sam Jayne, a fellow lifer whose spirit will act as a guide for the rest of Prison's time. With these many hands on deck, Prison plays all kinds of things, from insane distorted rock to dreamy psychedelia, plus some jazzy and gutsy blues shit too. They got some of the lighter side of Prison in there, of course. It was all recorded in a day, with a couple overdubs, but it took a while to get the mixes right. There were a lot of moments that they didn't know would lead to anything, but when listening back later, then they heard where they were going. All that had to get in there somehow. Another level to the sound on Downstate is in the hard cuts and savvy fades in the edit. Matt Lilly sequenced the mixes at home using two CDJs fed into a Numark DJ deck and dubbed down live to cassette, then they sent the tape to engineer Matt Walsh to duplicate timings and fades and all that. Like trapdoors taking you from where you thought you were standing to someplace entirely different, wondering if what just happened was ten seconds or one million years long. And if you still don't know -- man, it was both!"
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Book
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DC 871BK
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$20.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 1/31/2025
"Jim Franks is not a professional baker, because there are no such things as professional bakers. He is also not your father and never will be, nor is this a cookbook full of stories and recipes. Jim Franks is a baker and a poet who's written a love story about bread, which is to say he's written a life story about listening, learning, trying, failing, adapting, and above all, caring. Through humor, history, relentless curiosity, and refreshingly unsentimental poetry, Existential Bread teaches there are many ways to bake a loaf just as there are many ways to live a life." Paperback; 5.5" x 8.25" / 170pp "Existential Bread is a collected bakers' common sense from Jim Franks, one of the most knowledgeable people about modern baking in the United States today." --Matt Kedzie, Owner-Baker of Starter Bread "Part love letter, part philosophical manifesto, Jim Frank's book is an earnest and charming exploration of our human relationship with bread and what it takes to make it." --Fiona Cook, Author of The Wheel of the Year "In a world of samey-samey, this book is different. Jim Franks doesn't want you to make his bread (by providing glossy photos and detailed recipes); he wants you to make your bread (by sharing his practice and what he has learned). In a world of 'shoulds' and 'bottom lines,' Existential Bread creates space while providing structure for you to fall in love with the ancient act of making bread. Plus, it's a very fun read." --Abra Berens, Author of Ruffage, Grist and Pulp
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Cassette
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DC 938CS
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Cassette version. "Four years separate the release of Stateless and we will be wherever the fires are lit. In the interim, Tashi Dorji has seldom stood still, playing and touring almost constantly, continuing to record both as a solo and in collaboration with artists including Susie Ibarra, Alex Zhang Hungtai, Bill Orcutt, Michael Zerang, Elliott Sharp, Audrey Chen, Sally Gates, Marshall Trammell, Efrim Manuel Menuck, Aaron Turner, Dave Rempis, and Joe McPhee. For Tashi, the playing of this music is always political even in its most abstract iterations. In and of itself, music can't solve political problems -- but since no moment of life is without its political context, 'strumming in opposition to the towers' is therefore a universal state, a freedom of expression made while doing all the other things involved with playing, maintaining a sense of lineage and documenting forward movement. we will be wherever the fires are lit was recorded over a period of a month on a Zoom recorder in a cabin behind Tashi's home. His music, as ever, is all improvised, using different guitar preparations -- tape for muting, and metal for buzz. Different tunings and techniques; inspirations from all over. Tashi's sound is his own, but listeners can't help but feel the sound of many nations, in all hemispheres, storming through these acoustic expressions. Who else would it be for, if not for everyone?"
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LP
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DC 926LP
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"The High Llamas' classic '90s output comes back to life on vinyl for the first time in over twenty years. The vibrant and colorful sweep of their remarkable six-album arc shines in new pressings of the original masters, which include the first-ever vinyl pressing for their debut album, Santa Barbara. The High Llamas were founded by Sean O'Hagan, Jon Fell, Marcus Holdaway, and Rob Allum. After debuting as a tart and sweet guitar-pop act with a reasonably definable bent on Santa Barbara, Sean fell in with Stereolab. His adventures in their art-band collective, playing space-age batchelor pad music, profoundly influenced the delightful extremities that were to come."
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LP
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DC 912X-LP
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$25.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 11/22/2024
"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 detachment). 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 March 3, 1998 and broadcast on April 2 of the same year. The studio versions of these songs, which appear on Aerial M's self-titled album and Papa M's Hole of Burning Alms comp, 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. 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. Salute!"
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LP
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DC 907LP
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"This one to me is a time capsule more than most any of my recordings. All music is a time trapped in time that preaches timelessness -- preaching either convincingly or not. But with a radio session such as this, there is a different aspect. It's all live, all first take, no overdubs. Also I think having the BBC engineers at the controls, with their own aesthetic, not one I am bringing to the studio, that makes it more encapsulated ? 'remember that day we did that?' The circumstances and the memory of the smell of the studio makes it stand out. So it's more of a performance maybe than a usual recording, because the audience (engineer and producer) were foreign to us. British, milk in tea. So we gave them something to show them who WE were -- Dale Coopers with our black coffees. Somebody said this EP is very Twin Peaksy. Not in a Badalamenti, torch-song way -- a deeper connection. I can see that. 'Beautiful Child' has been turned into a minor key song because, well, it really should have been one in the first place! 'Cold Discovery' was a live staple then and some nights it could really catch fire. We got a pretty good one for BBC. 'Dirty Pants' here is probably better than the LP version. And then there's 'Jesus.' Sweet, sweet 'Jesus.' Here sounding like a deathbed plea shot through with visitations from the angel of mercy." -- Bill, 2024
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2LP
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DC 932LP
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$36.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 11/22/2024
"The High Llamas' classic '90s output comes back to life on vinyl for the first time in over twenty years. The vibrant and colorful sweep of their remarkable six-album arc shines in new pressings of the original masters, which include the first-ever vinyl pressing for their debut album, Santa Barbara. The High Llamas were founded by Sean O'Hagan, Jon Fell, Marcus Holdaway, and Rob Allum. During the emerging electro-exotica trend of the late '90s, O'Hagan conceived another shift for the next album -- a stripped-back sound, with lots of acoustic guitars, influenced by folk movements in Latin and world music. Stereolab's Mary Hansen (forever remembered) and Laetitia Sadier were drafted in to sing vocals, and sessions were split between London and Chicago, where Jim O'Rourke and Bundy K. Brown engineered at Electrical Audio, and Tortoise's John McEntire mixed it down at Soma. Snowbug was a lovely album, with great songs and sounds pirouetting away from the Hawaii/Cold & Bouncy phases with ease and elegance. It suffered the indignity of being released at the time that V2 had nothing more to offer to the band, and it passed under the radar as the Llamas passed out the door. Reissuing Snowbug for the 21st-century listeners is one of Drag City's great pleasures in this reissue campaign."
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DC 845LP
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"Papa M is back, and he's talking 'bout Harry Houdini. This time, with a fresh, fine and fat-assed set of songs. Sometimes you never know when it comes to Papa M and his ol' left-shoulder angel, David Christian Pajo. After Slint's disbandment, he whiled away the '90s playing with literally everybody who asked, pausing long enough here and there to start his own band, called M. Two epic/classic albums and a forbiddingly large outstretched palm of singles (eventually collected into another epic full-length) later, David was looking a bit green around the gills. It'd been five years of Papa-ing off; time to do something/anything else for a while. Twelve long years go by before he sends in Highway Songs. Now comes Ballads of Harry Houdini. Following the path of M records from Aerial to Papa, (the just-released The Peel Sessions excepted!) David recorded Ballads of Harry Houdini on his own, receding deep inside himself and taking the time for ideas new and old, from soup to nuts, et al. Having his fun before spitting it all out onto the world -- setting down some tracks, getting lit, grabbing a guitar, getting a sound going, and soloing over 'em! With a bit of singing here and there too. Everything that's meant to be in the picture is in there. The shit that isn't, isn't. Frankly, the amount of hip-shaking sleaze oozing out of these pieces blows the idea that these are simple ad-hoc assemblies right the FUNK out of the water. Sure, when David does blues scaling, he sounds a little like Billy Gibbons. But then there's the insistent torn-n-fucked delirium that's accompanied every Papa M expression into the marketplace (with pride) since 1999. As ever, it's mixed extra-crispy, with earworms and easter eggs and lots of other surprising shit that's bound to change your whole personality. And so it is and so it does. Ballads of Harry Houdini: it can make you dance, sing or anything."
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2LP
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DC 933LP
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$36.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 11/22/2024
"The High Llamas' classic '90s output comes back to life on vinyl for the first time in over twenty years. The vibrant and colorful sweep of their remarkable six-album arc shines in new pressings of the original masters, which include the first-ever vinyl pressing for their debut album, Santa Barbara. The High Llamas were founded by Sean O'Hagan, Jon Fell, Marcus Holdaway, and Rob Allum. One year after the release of Hawaii, Cold And Bouncy delivered again, organically incorporating the glitch, dub and electronic inspirations burbling up from the underground into the Llamas signature sound. Respect here is due to co-producer Fulton Dingley's contributions as programmer, engineer and mixer. Without shifting away from their pop-rooted songwriting, Cold And Bouncy was also a grand example of the emerging electro-exotica of the late '90s."
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2LP
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DC 928LP
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$36.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 11/22/2024
"The High Llamas' classic '90s output comes back to life on vinyl for the first time in over twenty years. The vibrant and colorful sweep of their remarkable six-album arc shines in new pressings of the original masters, which include the first-ever vinyl pressing for their debut album, Santa Barbara. The High Llamas were founded by Sean O'Hagan, Jon Fell, Marcus Holdaway, and Rob Allum. Looking for greater distribution, The High Llamas signed to V2 -- an arm of Universal -- and produced two widescreen epics for the '90s: Hawaii and Cold And Bouncy. Hawaii (1996) charted an alternative path to and through America, discovering fresh iterations of exotica, soundtrack expressionism and jazz, forming a singular conception of neo-Americana in its exquisite sweep. It was not simply gorgeous; it utterly elided any concept of aggro; this was hand-made, non-heavy music at a new level of purity."
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LP
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DC 938LP
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"Four years separate the release of Stateless and we will be wherever the fires are lit. In the interim, Tashi Dorji has seldom stood still, playing and touring almost constantly, continuing to record both as a solo and in collaboration with artists including Susie Ibarra, Alex Zhang Hungtai, Bill Orcutt, Michael Zerang, Elliott Sharp, Audrey Chen, Sally Gates, Marshall Trammell, Efrim Manuel Menuck, Aaron Turner, Dave Rempis, and Joe McPhee. For Tashi, the playing of this music is always political even in its most abstract iterations. In and of itself, music can't solve political problems -- but since no moment of life is without its political context, 'strumming in opposition to the towers' is therefore a universal state, a freedom of expression made while doing all the other things involved with playing, maintaining a sense of lineage and documenting forward movement. we will be wherever the fires are lit was recorded over a period of a month on a Zoom recorder in a cabin behind Tashi's home. His music, as ever, is all improvised, using different guitar preparations -- tape for muting, and metal for buzz. Different tunings and techniques; inspirations from all over. Tashi's sound is his own, but listeners can't help but feel the sound of many nations, in all hemispheres, storming through these acoustic expressions. Who else would it be for, if not for everyone?"
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LP
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DC 927LP
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"The High Llamas' classic '90s output comes back to life on vinyl for the first time in over twenty years. The vibrant and colorful sweep of their remarkable six-album arc shines in new pressings of the original masters, which include the first-ever vinyl pressing for their debut album, Santa Barbara. The High Llamas were founded by Sean O'Hagan, Jon Fell, Marcus Holdaway, and Rob Allum. Gideon Gaye was written and recorded on a small budget with almost military resolve. Shifting to a piano-based sound and obsessively chasing retro aspects of '60s and '70s production to dizzying new heights, The High Llamas put a marvelously austere frame around O'Hagan's already-filmic song constructions. Light and accessible, the sound of Gideon Gaye gobsmacked grunge-soaked listeners with its new twist on classic art-pop design elements. Special note should be made of the work of Charlie Francis throughout the creation of the first three albums. As engineer/backing vocalist/synth player/and co-producer, his long hours of dedication and commitment earned him the title of honorary High Llama."
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LP
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DC 929LP
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$23.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 11/22/2024
"The High Llamas' classic '90s output comes back to life on vinyl for the first time in over twenty years. The vibrant and colorful sweep of their remarkable six-album arc shines in new pressings of the original masters, which include the first-ever vinyl pressing for their debut album, Santa Barbara. The High Llamas were founded by Sean O'Hagan, Jon Fell, Marcus Holdaway, and Rob Allum. Following their earlier releases, The High Llamas' popularity was ascendant. They toured America in 1996-97, experiencing great heights on the indie charts, but without producing 'hits' of the proportion that V2 required. O'Hagan's arrangement skills were called upon by groups like Saint Etienne, Super Furry Animals, Doves, and Sondre Lerche. A remix album was mooted -- to reach another growing audience demographic, perhaps? With Lollo Rosso (1998), the assembled remixers -- Mouse On Mars, Jim O'Rourke, Kid Loco, Schneider TM, Stock, Hausen & Walkman, Cornelius, and The High Llamas themselves -- provided a scintillating trip through the cutting edge of avant electronics -- yet another unique set of variations for the Llamas' sound to filter though."
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LP
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DC 916LP
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"Anthony Moore's post-Slapp Happy output, for years an underrated-to-outright unknown quantity, achieves another 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 OUT (1976, officially issued 2020) and the new wave-adjacent Flying Doesn't Help (1979, reissued 2022), finding Anthony's early/mid-'80s compositions drifting into the actual mainstream, just moments before it began giving way to the inevitable Next Waves. Home of the Demo unpacks ten tracks from what might otherwise be called a lost era. Subtitled 'from the dawn of bedsit recording,' this collection largely represents something nearer to DIY than any of your fancy modern kit! As Anthony remarks in his liner notes, 'We are talking about a few hundred quid's worth of gear balanced precariously on bookshelves and table tops in bedrooms and basements.' And yet, the tracks sound right dreamy. Anthony was a songwriter and musician whose first decade-plus in the music 'business' had brought him outside-in, through experimental/avant projects into the pop music world he'd loved as a youngster. He was an old hand at getting sounds as well; distinctly '80s elements that might abrade the ear instead benefit from his tactile deployment of that gear stacked up on tables and bookshelves in the basement. In this manner, he produced well-appointed, ambitiously clever songs for himself and others, such as his friend David Gilmour's band, who used a couple pieces on Home of the Demo for their 1987 comeback album. Amidst the assiduous work of writing the Next Big One, a relaxed, almost playful mood prevails throughout the pieces assembled here -- as one might imagine at home demo sessions where one man plays all the parts. It's also true for the numbers that feature special guests, such as the ominously monikered 'Page The Oracle' on lead guitar -- or the singer simply dubbed, 'Guest' -- no doubt a safe alias for a hot young Bunnyman rising to his commercial peak in those halcyon days."
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LP
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DC 937LP
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"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 headful 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. 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. This 'urban dance synth' was made great use of in hip-hop productions around the turn of the millennium. There's lots more to know about the machines of that time -- choose your own rabbit hole -- but the takeaway here is that it generates a finite amount of very circa-2000 sounds and he got it for fifty bucks. Inspired, Dean spent a minute getting its basic capacities in hand, while acquiring a few other boxes with compatible cards (more sounds!). In one way of thinking, Basic Editions is the sound of Dean not being influenced by anything -- how could he be? The sounds were all preset! There is, however, an instinctiveness to pushing a closed system in a curatorial manner, and it's here that Dean's inclinations took the wheel of the proceedings, bending the farmed sounds in and out of color and shape, creating improbable constructions whose gears clash together and revolve with an odd combination of nerviness and chill. Further refinements are provided with the artwork, which reprocesses generic graphic information sourced from various modules, while the album title tips its cap to a fine rank-and-file clothing line offered at K-Mart. RIYL: Moebius, Nuno Canavarro, General Magic, Pita, Carl Stone, Jon Hassell."
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DC 922LP
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"Wand, having shifted smoothly into phase IV of their star-flung efforts on the wings of the latest, Vertigo, follow upon it with an LP release of the archival In a Capsule Underground. These demos and unreleased songs from Ganglion Reef, as they're so helpfully dubbed on the front facing of the jacket, are the earliest Wand recordings that Drag City knows of, preceding everything that's come so far. It's not simply a function of time and nostalgia at this late moment that they sound invariably like magical recordings by, and for, children, is it? From the reverse end of the telescope, it's not so easy to tell. Just because someone's young doesn't mean that they are absolutely gonna sound like a souped-up baby Moody Blues crossed with a young-wave Status Quo, Barrettian Pink Floyd, Genesis-era Genesis, and transitioning Barclay James Harvest, all letting loose in the post-punk garage, does it? Yes, it happens more than sometimes in rock and roll life. But with Wand, what if their desire to sound pixieish and ethereal while mowing down with buzzing guitars and bass set to stun was simply a tactile approach to the conceptualization of phase I? Whatever the case, it can be generally agreed that in 2014-2015, they managed to pump out three distinct progressions on this theme -- Ganglion Reef, Golem, and 1000 Days -- at a trot. And now that In a Capsule Underground's spinning on a turntable eternal, come to find out, they actually did it twice with Ganglion Reef. The light, fizzy versions here have distinctive, gleaming magic energies all their own and will provide quite the breathtaking thrill ride when endeavored upon by all who haven't yet heard them."
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LP
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DC 114LP
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2024 repress. "Back in 1997, David Pajo was a little over a half decade removed from the future sensation known as Slint, who released two albums over the course of a three-year existence; the second album came out when they band were already defunct. During the next five years, Pajo played with Palace Brothers, King Kong, Tortoise, The For Carnation, and Stereolab. All during that period, the idea of his own music was slowly simmering, building flavor like a good rage. When it broke, it was a 1996 7" single on Palace records, attributed to 'M' with no further edification -- but upon hearing it, there could be no doubt that this fucker was of the Slint lineage. So David jumped up to Drag City with a full length album, this time to be released under the name Aerial M. Two years after that, he came back with an album called Live From a Shark Cage, this time to be credited to Papa M, and Aerial M was heard of no more, until the 2024 release of their late-'90s Peel sesh. And now the album that started to continue it all is pressed anew on vinyl. Dig Aerial M."
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12"
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DC 925EP
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"Picking up the pieces of the picked-up pieces, Wand ride on, baby. Three months since they dropped the incredible mass of Vertigo upon the world, here is more, plating the pre-release single 'Help Desk' alongside 'Goldfish,' an additional cog from Vertigo's assembly, and then, in the name of the ever-expanding viewpoint (and the much-required dream-extension app), adding three remixes for good measure. 'Help Desk' and 'Goldfish' are brethren of the eight epochal vibrations that make up Vertigo -- boiled down from a tremendous volume of jams, then squeezed through the pinprick called automatic writing. Or 'riding,' as in, the groove/as far as they can see/past the horizon line/Jupiter space/the infinity room/whatever you choose to call it. The remixes delve back into the material, integrating another set of concentric thought-spirals into the radiant action. The unique perspectives of Beat Detectives, Dead Rider, and Dean Spunt become one with the Wand material, igniting inevitable further expansions. This EP's like a handshake promise that's fulfilled after the action has gone down -- the thanks you get for staying open and hanging in there. The present you get for being present! But everything has a price in time."
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LP
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DC 923A-LP
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"The work of Whitney Johnson a.k.a. Matchess, is, in their own words, 'a material history of reproduction.' From our grateful vantage point, it sounds like sequences of hypnotic and engaging forms, a combination of musical concepts and available materials for the purpose of transcendence. Hav and Stena challenge linear description, and even language, reflecting the perceived values and details of multiple times/intentions/places into essential aspects, repurposed as music. Hav and Stena (DC 923Z-CS) began to exist in 2021 while Whitney was researching the Cult of Hermaphroditus and visiting all the available sites of the cult's activity in Cyprus and Greece. She collected materials from the sites via VHS footage, 35mm photos, and field recordings. The cover image for Hav is from that trip, as are some of the field recordings included on Stena. During her travels, Whitney read Shelley's Frankenstein for the first time. As a sequel to that harrowing moment, and with respect to Shelley, the two new releases feel within and without themselves like creatures of post-mortem assembly, collaged more than birthed. In the fall of 2023, thanks to a grant from DCASE in Chicago, Whitney returned to Sweden to finish both records as an artist-in-residence at Inkonst in Malmö and at Elektronmusikstudion (EMS) in Stockholm. During this time, she assembled the pieces she was working on as a multi-channel A/V installation at Inkonst, and Hav emerged more fully, as a composition for sine waves, marimba, viola, Arp Odyssey and Halldorophone. Finished mixes for both were later achieved at Electrical Audio in Chicago with Cooper Crain, capturing the spirits and intents in all the times and places enumerated above. Fleetingly and forever, they become the sounds we hear on Hav and Stena. As with 2022's Sonescent, one way to examine these records is how they resonate in the body. Throughout their gestation, attention was given to the use of certain frequencies as a focused means of transport; the Solfeggio Frequencies, a conception in sound healing, are referenced often in these new works."
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LP
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DC 891LP
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"Six Organs of Admittance extend their annum of unlikely delights -- begun in March '24 with Time is Glass, the first new 6OOA album in four years, and joined in June with the most unlikely awesome collab of '24: Shackleton & Six Organs of Admittance, Jinxed by Being -- with the release of Companion Rises (Twig Harper Remix), which expands the zone of disbelief simply by being the third Six Organs-branded release in one year! Also by pushing the boundaries in all the manners that matter -- psychologically, spiritually, philosophically and sonically -- into a new dimensional space. Companion Rises dropped in February 2020. Its new techniques in sound generation called for an aggressive new moment, with heavy Six Organs touring scheduled for the year ahead. As Ben Chasny picked up the pieces following the 'Big Blink,' he had to think of what could have been. By then, Six Organs had moved on -- both Time is Glass and Jinxed by Being were in the works -- but here was a thought: Companion Rises was a record about the weirdness of California. Right then, Twig Harper was touching down in Cali after stints in Baltimore and Chicago. Ben'd been onboard with Twig's shit since the days when Nautical Almanac burst out of Michigan like an engorged, inflamed, screaming blood vessel. When Ben asked him if he would do whatever he wanted, it felt like full circles were colliding when Twig said yeah! Once Twig had measured out the physics of Companion Rises, most of his remix was done up in his van where he, otherwise homeless, was living. In the 'Twig Harper Remix,' the maximal qualities of original Companion Rises DNA are evoked via omission: to recreate the implied construction of Six Organs' spirit realm, Twig isolated source sounds, triggered new data off those sounds, then edited the new readouts. To the naked ear, it sounds to be a highly stimulating new example in modern electronic minimal classical music. The assiduous Organs-head will no doubt find a few Easter eggs here, but mostly, this is new dimensional space made of the not-so-old one. Companion Rises (Twig Harper Remix) is like two journeys in one, juxtaposing Twig's new-to-Cali musings with Six Organs' original borne-and-bread wanderings."
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2LP
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DC 919LP
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"Jill Fraser is a composer and electronic music pioneer, active since the 1970s. Her credits are many and varied -- yet her new album, Earthly Pleasures, takes a unique place among all her work: a luminous suite of electroacoustic music examining the bones of hymnal harmony, speculating on how the spirit of songs might be interpreted after people are gone. Playing electronic music was what Jill's seen for herself almost from the beginning. Switched on Bach was an early influence, blowing up her understanding of what she was learning on the piano. So was Silver Apples of the Moon, evolving recognizable aspects of classical music into a fantastic elsewhere. She studied at CalArts, working with Morton Subotnick (her mentor) and taking master classes with John Cage and Lou Harrison, among others. She composed film scores with Jack Nitzsche and played her synthesizer at punk shows opening for Minutemen and Henry Rollins. When her daughter Sofia was playing with Wand, Jill contributed electronics to one of the songs on Laughing Matter. Earthly Pleasures stands out from all these things Jill's done. Balancing composition, technology and introspection, it is a fluent expression that also considers mortality and loss; not simply our own lives and the lives of those we love, but the mortality of the very age we live in, the intelligence of our time. For Earthly Pleasures' composition, Jill began by researching revival hymns of the late 19th and early 20th centuries (with an instinctive bias towards those composed by women). Her workstation combines both the newest technology and some of the oldest analog electronic sound sources, a combo involving her original 1978 Serge Modular, a new Prism Modular and Ableton Push 3. 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."
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Cassette
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DC 923Z-CS
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"The work of Whitney Johnson a.k.a. Matchess, is, in their own words, 'a material history of reproduction.' From our grateful vantage point, it sounds like sequences of hypnotic and engaging forms, a combination of musical concepts and available materials for the purpose of transcendence. Hav (DC 923A-LP) and Stena challenge linear description, and even language, reflecting the perceived values and details of multiple times/intentions/places into essential aspects, repurposed as music. Hav and Stena began to exist in 2021 while Whitney was researching the Cult of Hermaphroditus and visiting all the available sites of the cult's activity in Cyprus and Greece. She collected materials from the sites via VHS footage, 35mm photos, and field recordings. The cover image for Hav is from that trip, as are some of the field recordings included on Stena. During her travels, Whitney read Shelley's Frankenstein for the first time. As a sequel to that harrowing moment, and with respect to Shelley, the two new releases feel within and without themselves like creatures of post-mortem assembly, collaged more than birthed. Stena in particular sifts through fragments of once-was, surgically bonded and given electric shock treatment to induce music. Its sequence contains a hidden cover of The Nuns' 'It's a Dream.' A lot of Stena was recorded in Miller Beach, Indiana. Other recordings were made in a barn in rural Sweden during the winter of 2022, where Whitney was living alone and working on music while mulling over considerations of biological and symbolic ancestry. The cover image for Stena is a burial cairn photographed while there. As with 2022's Sonescent, one way to examine these records is how they resonate in the body. Throughout their gestation, attention was given to the use of certain frequencies as a focused means of transport; the Solfeggio Frequencies, a conception in sound healing, are referenced often in these new works."
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LP
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DC 605LP
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"Laetitia Sadier's Something Shines is a joy! It was recorded and matured more slowly than either Silencio or The Trip. It took nine months, and you know what that means, baby! Something Shines was initially recorded in Switzerland, where Laetitia's collaborator David collects amazing old keyboards and organs from people who have inherited them but find no space or usage for them -- so they let go of these useless things for a symbolic franc. Scattered through Europe are the component players of the Something Shines band; drummer Emmanuel Mario in Paris and bassist Xavi Munoz in Castellon near Valencia, so additional parts were laid down in those cities. The strings were done in St. Etienne by Jean-Christophe Chante, whom Laetitia had met on a tour with French band, and friends, Angil in the fall; she found his playing mesmerizing and felt compelled to ask him if he would like to participate on her album -- which he did, bringing a great emotional charge to the record. Laetitia recorded a lot of the content in London, including all the vocals, guitars, additional electronics and soundtrack effects as well as final mixing. The desire was for the songs of Something Shines to alternate between a riveting caress and an invigorating shake. Something Shines is an exploration through Debord's La Société du Spectacle, and how it is still up to listeners to guide and shape their fate, individually and collectively. Therefore, Something Shines examines several relevant questions. All these thoughts and many others are communicated throughout a delicately textured production, twinkling and shifting with the subtlety of nature -- and often sounding like the world outside, whooshing and chirping and clicking in time, placing these concerns in the place where we live. The production is relaxed and expert; Laetitia's choices fit the breathing quality of the songs, and wear their arrangements easily. The many tiny details within the sound-scope of Something Shines reflect the lives that hang in the balance between the issues, lives that are often too small to see yet contribute to the world as a whole. Even in the face of realities that continue to cripple so many in the name of so few, Something Shines consistently elevates itself, addressing its audience with lyrical confidence and intimacy and an arcing musicality that allows it to go to the hearts and minds of every listener."
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LP
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DC 680LP
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2024 repress. "Purple Mountains is the new nom-de-rock of David Berman. Purple Mountains is also the name of what will be known as one of his greatest albums -- full of double-jointed wit and wisdom, up to the neck in his special recipe of handcrafted country-rock joys and sorrows that sing legendary in cracked and broken hearts. The songs are produced impeccably by Woods' Jarvis Taveniere and Jeremy Earl, buffed up like a hardwood floor ready to be well-trod upon for an evening of romance and dance. The songs of Purple Mountains are a potent brew, stitched together from lifetimes, knitting the drift of the years with the tightest lyric construction Berman's ever attempted. Honesty is archly in the air, but lines of incredible bleakness somehow give way to playful distraction and the hiding of surprises for close listeners. Even still, as the songwriter once wrote, 'every single thought is like a punch in the face.' It won't take long after slapping the record on the platter for you to hear that this is one of THOSE albums. The portrait is David Berman's most to-the-bone yet, very frankly confessing a near-total collapse from the first moment, then delving into the layers of nuance with twin lasers of personal laceration and professional remove. This etches a picture that cries to be understood in the misbegotten country that made everything great about Purple Mountains. America's fate is that of its treasured icons: the cowboy, the outlaw, the card sharp and the riverboat gambler, who all face simple resignation in the end. There are no perfect crimes. Berman's poet-thief of so many precious moments, now stripped and chastened, recalls his latest lowest moments in perfect detail, hovering ghostly above the tumescent production sound as it echoes with tragic majesty and the sound-fragments of former glory, evoking the defeated-king era of late Elvis, southernfried and sassy still on his countrypolitan way down, and somehow still solid-gold at the bottom. Berman's songwriter's bone's never been laid more-bare, either. Where are you tonight, America? The things that used to be have slipped away into the darkness without you knowing it, and your children are wandering in a blasted landscape, with only Purple Mountains left to comfort them, and David Berman's shattered fables for company."
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