DRAG CITY - Forced Exposure

$27.00 PREORDER RELEASE DATE: 6/27/2025

"Sharpie Smile's debut album has one question for you: is your heart good enough to take The Staircase? Sharpie Smile is Dylan Hadley and Cole Berliner. They met in 2015, a pair of musically-adept nonconformist teenagers, forming a songwriting and performance duo. Writing initially for a project called Kamikaze Palm Tree, with Dylan on drums and Cole on guitar, they produced two albums of thorny, earwormy art-rock. While continuing to play shows and write, there was some session work with other acts (Cate Le Bon, A. Savage, Tim Presley's White Fence). And then a shimmering new direction came into view. For Sharpie Smile, that direction is up. The Staircase is a lush and energizing contemporary pop record, scaling an ambitious gradient of minimal/maximal electronic production and deep feels. It's a dreamy and ethereal trip through something (you're not sure what yet), on a radiant melodic raft. Reality is breaking and rebirth is happening, one piece at a time -- essential questions deconstructed and pieced together again. Like scanning a new x-ray image of yourself. Finding is losing something else; there's the shadow of 'goodbye' here, too. When Dylan sings 'There is nothing I won't miss' on 'Love or Worship,' you feel broken up -- but if the breakup is with the old way of life (it is), then getting over the hump will provide its own sweet reward. Sharpie Smile's passage there is one of sensuous breaths and serpentine soul-terrain, as Dylan's blue vocal melodies drift glacially through a luminous wilderness of synth keys, guitars and percussion beats, cutting the melancholy milieu of New Romantic pop in sharp new relief. On The Staircase, Sharpie Smile ascend through waves of sound art in a sophisticated musical craft all their own. Inspired by SOPHIE, 100 gecs, Oklou, and other insane futurists, they allow the feeling of discovery to free their evolution, whenever needed. Their collaborators help facilitate and guide their astonishing transformations: The Staircase was engineered and produced by Cesar Maria, with additional engineering by Spencer Hartling, additional vocal engineering and production by Cairo Marques-Neto and mixing by Mikey Weiland. You're in the eye of the storm. A refuge from the unrelenting, where the journey to clarity can be glimpsed, accessed and shared."

$30.00 PREORDER RELEASE DATE: 6/27/2025

Hardcover. 51-pages. "Gabba Gabba We Accept You is a children's picture book that tells the story of how a kid who was bullied and felt like a misfit grew up to become a hero to so many as lead singer of The Ramones. This story speaks to one of the greatest silent majorities in the world -- all the kids who feel a little off. It contains an essential message that the world of punk rock has always meant to communicate. The challenging passages of life that brought Jeffrey Ross Hyman to the place where he became Joey Ramone provide a natural lesson to young folks navigating their way through the complexities of growing up. Working in collaboration with visual artist Lucinda Schreiber, Jay Ruttenberg guides the story of Gabba Gabba We Accept You in unexpected directions, with Lucinda's lyrical illustrations and colorful design opening the sense of possibility in what feels like the path less traveled on every page. About the inspiration for this book, Jay says: 'My daughter just turned 11, so I've spent recent years in children's book land. I think I've read her 97 books about Abraham Lincoln and 12,984 about Ruth Bader Ginsburg. It occurred to me that a lot of the life lessons I've been trying to teach her weren't learned through my family or school, but through punk stuff: the importance of being your own person, following your own radar instead of a group's, embracing uniqueness, etc. The Ramones, and in particular Joey, seemed like the perfect embodiment of that. So my big hope for the book is that it tells the story of Joey Ramone, but also, in kind of the biggest way, of what punk rock means, and how it might help a little kid wade through difficult social waters and be their own unique person." Gabba Gabba We Accept You speaks in well-grounded and wise verbal and visual language to inform and affirm children -- young ones and the adult children, alike -- that their individual personalities have an inspired and inspiring place in the world. In the process of becoming and being a person, there's no one set of rules. The sooner we all know that, the sooner we'll find ourselves in a much better place."

$35.00 PREORDER RELEASE DATE: 5/30/2025

"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: colorfully 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. Counterclockwise began to take form in 2020, its songs brought together from over a span of fifteen years. Some came from commissioned projects about werewolves, Mother Goose, and other fairy tales. Others were rooted in familial traditions. Similarly, several cover songs salute crucial companions from different points in their individual and collective lives, making deep cuts from Yes and the Bee Gees -- as well as the theme song to '70s television program Grizzly Adams -- into further chapters of shaped time, well lived and loved, to indelibly light this collection. Counterclockwise is the first Faun Fables album engineered and produced by Dawn and Nils from start to finish. Taking the wheel in the tradition of the engineers that taught them, they have created a living atmosphere of songs and family. Dawn and Nils' wide-ranging vocal harmony tradition is enriched by the voices of their daughters Edda, Ura, and Gudrin, who contribute on keyboards and percussion, as well. Norwegian guitarist Arild Hammerø lends his singular guitar craft on the songs 'Ember Bell,' 'Hiawatha,' 'Wonderous Stories' (on which he also sings) and 'Maybe,' as well as the final, essential sounds that close the album. Dedicated with love to Dawn's late father, Edward 'Will' McCarthy, Counterclockwise is an evocation of the essential truth and joy of Faun Fables' relationship with time, the greatest value they can imagine to give to anyone who listens to their music."

$23.00 PREORDER RELEASE DATE: 5/30/2025

"Drag City and Yoga Records 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. Although unique enough to be called outsider, Young's new album occupies a musical world accessible to fans of many genres. Matthew Young, born in 1950, grew up in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. When he showed early musical interest, his parents bought an upright piano, and Matthew began taking lessons. In his teens, he attended concerts by Duke Ellington, Dave Brubeck, and Count Basie, and grew up to discover iconoclasts such as Eric Satie, Charles Ives, John Cage, Harry Partch, Brian Eno, and experimental rock groups such as Can and Harmonia. He also regularly attended and played at folk music gatherings in the nearby New Jersey Pine Barrens. His music began to appear in local theater productions, leading to the 1981 release of Recurring Dreams, through New York distributor NMDS. Later, Young became obsessed with the hammered dulcimer, and in 1986 he released a new album, Traveler's Advisory, which featured the instrument prominently, along with electronics, tape effects, and his first foray into vocals. Composed and recorded over the span of several decades, Undercurrents displays the wide range of Young's various sonic pallets. On the opener 'Reflexion,' a quartet of marimbas twist and turn over each other, while in 'One and All,' a harp melody is overtaken by various electronic effects. The 12-minute title track is an abstract weaving of piano and synthesis, with the six sections named after oceanic currents. 'A Game of Chess, a Game of Chance' consists of sparse electronic tones created on the Princeton University IBM mainframe during his studies in 1976. This all makes way for the second half of Undercurrents, where settings of Marion Lineaweaver's poems, 'The Summer Girls' and 'Her Key is Minor,' showcase Young's honest, fragile vocal approach, conveying a deep sense of soulful longing, and the latter even sweetly approaching something akin to synthpop. The piano on 'Inflexion' calls back to the end of 'Reflexion,' and in the album closer, 'Into the Woods,' Young plays the hammered dulcimer with the disciplined reverence of an alchemist. Simply put, Undercurrents is a triumph across many musical realms."

$12.00 PREORDER RELEASE DATE: 5/30/2025

Casette version. "With the quickness, time's still slipping into the future. Take it from Ty Segall. He's been on a few trips around the sun himself, making records in orbit as he charts his path forward. Modern life is here to stay, but also (to quote an old civil war scribe), everything rocks and nothing dies -- so for Possession, Ty's 16th album, he strikes up the orchestra in his head with an abiding view of some quintessentially American stories, a quest channeled into ten non-stop bangers. A year and a half removed from the trenchant identity opus of his 'Three Bells' song cycle, Ty's beamed himself out from deep within psychic interiors. Here, compulsive rhythm arrangements are joined in battle by sweeping movements of strings and horns that further the charge righteously. Be it de Toqueville, duBois, George H. Nash, Howard Zinn, Bob Dylan or Smile-era Beach Boys, it doesn't matter where you get your history: whether you wanna party like it's 1999 or 1699, the stories you like to tell yourself tend to reinforce what you already believe. Here, coursing through the irresistibly high music spirits, Ty foists social concepts that you won't read about in school. In the process, he manages to slip discreetly in and out of the ranks of silver-tongued bums, fly-by-nights and way-outs like Cheap Trick and Steely Dan, never tarrying long enough to retain their distinctive ordure. One of the keys to this new music involved tapping an old friend and collaborator, filmmaker Matt Yoka, to write with him. As a non-musician, Matt's language sense is different from the one Ty's amassed as a player of music. With the trust they've developed over the years -- brainstorming the visual worlds of Goodbye Bread, Manipulator, Emotional Mugger, and plenty more -- they throw the conceptual ball back and forth to translate general vibes and feels into wicked lyric imagery, each acting as writer and editor in the process. Rife with singing guitar leads and Wizzardian brass n' reeds lustily riffin' on the banks of Ty's harmony vocal choir, Possession features some of Ty's most inspired songs to date. Taking back alleys through complicated cityscapes, ripping riffs jaggedly out of past hits for a new purpose, Ty scans the wreckage scattered all around, singing about the end of the rope while resisting defeat -- suggesting an ecstatic new empire to build as he cruises the countryside in his glittering craft."

$24.00 PREORDER RELEASE DATE: 5/30/2025

LP version. "With the quickness, time's still slipping into the future. Take it from Ty Segall. He's been on a few trips around the sun himself, making records in orbit as he charts his path forward. Modern life is here to stay, but also (to quote an old civil war scribe), everything rocks and nothing dies -- so for Possession, Ty's 16th album, he strikes up the orchestra in his head with an abiding view of some quintessentially American stories, a quest channeled into ten non-stop bangers. A year and a half removed from the trenchant identity opus of his 'Three Bells' song cycle, Ty's beamed himself out from deep within psychic interiors. Here, compulsive rhythm arrangements are joined in battle by sweeping movements of strings and horns that further the charge righteously. Be it de Toqueville, duBois, George H. Nash, Howard Zinn, Bob Dylan or Smile-era Beach Boys, it doesn't matter where you get your history: whether you wanna party like it's 1999 or 1699, the stories you like to tell yourself tend to reinforce what you already believe. Here, coursing through the irresistibly high music spirits, Ty foists social concepts that you won't read about in school. In the process, he manages to slip discreetly in and out of the ranks of silver-tongued bums, fly-by-nights and way-outs like Cheap Trick and Steely Dan, never tarrying long enough to retain their distinctive ordure. One of the keys to this new music involved tapping an old friend and collaborator, filmmaker Matt Yoka, to write with him. As a non-musician, Matt's language sense is different from the one Ty's amassed as a player of music. With the trust they've developed over the years -- brainstorming the visual worlds of Goodbye Bread, Manipulator, Emotional Mugger, and plenty more -- they throw the conceptual ball back and forth to translate general vibes and feels into wicked lyric imagery, each acting as writer and editor in the process. Rife with singing guitar leads and Wizzardian brass n' reeds lustily riffin' on the banks of Ty's harmony vocal choir, Possession features some of Ty's most inspired songs to date. Taking back alleys through complicated cityscapes, ripping riffs jaggedly out of past hits for a new purpose, Ty scans the wreckage scattered all around, singing about the end of the rope while resisting defeat -- suggesting an ecstatic new empire to build as he cruises the countryside in his glittering craft."

$13.50 PREORDER RELEASE DATE: 5/30/2025

"With the quickness, time's still slipping into the future. Take it from Ty Segall. He's been on a few trips around the sun himself, making records in orbit as he charts his path forward. Modern life is here to stay, but also (to quote an old civil war scribe), everything rocks and nothing dies -- so for Possession, Ty's 16th album, he strikes up the orchestra in his head with an abiding view of some quintessentially American stories, a quest channeled into ten non-stop bangers. A year and a half removed from the trenchant identity opus of his 'Three Bells' song cycle, Ty's beamed himself out from deep within psychic interiors. Here, compulsive rhythm arrangements are joined in battle by sweeping movements of strings and horns that further the charge righteously. Be it de Toqueville, duBois, George H. Nash, Howard Zinn, Bob Dylan or Smile-era Beach Boys, it doesn't matter where you get your history: whether you wanna party like it's 1999 or 1699, the stories you like to tell yourself tend to reinforce what you already believe. Here, coursing through the irresistibly high music spirits, Ty foists social concepts that you won't read about in school. In the process, he manages to slip discreetly in and out of the ranks of silver-tongued bums, fly-by-nights and way-outs like Cheap Trick and Steely Dan, never tarrying long enough to retain their distinctive ordure. One of the keys to this new music involved tapping an old friend and collaborator, filmmaker Matt Yoka, to write with him. As a non-musician, Matt's language sense is different from the one Ty's amassed as a player of music. With the trust they've developed over the years -- brainstorming the visual worlds of Goodbye Bread, Manipulator, Emotional Mugger, and plenty more -- they throw the conceptual ball back and forth to translate general vibes and feels into wicked lyric imagery, each acting as writer and editor in the process. Rife with singing guitar leads and Wizzardian brass n' reeds lustily riffin' on the banks of Ty's harmony vocal choir, Possession features some of Ty's most inspired songs to date. Taking back alleys through complicated cityscapes, ripping riffs jaggedly out of past hits for a new purpose, Ty scans the wreckage scattered all around, singing about the end of the rope while resisting defeat -- suggesting an ecstatic new empire to build as he cruises the countryside in his glittering craft."

$20.00 NOT IN STOCK

2025 repress. "1995: new composition methods involving the dirty textures of rock guitar, a synthesis of disparate elements -- a nexus where Alvin Lucier, Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine, and Eno blend together. A prescient vision of the next phases of listening space. CD version originally released in1998 on Dexter's Cigar."

$12.00 NOT IN STOCK

Cassette version. "Years past the space time of Automaginary, Bitchin Bajas and Natural Information Society have reported back at last from beyond. If the new title doesn't clue you, Totality brings good news. Since their first collaboration, the path ways that lead from Natural Information Society's ecstatic all-world jazz to Bitchin Bajas' microtonal soundscapes have grown ever finer in their articulation. Across the spectrum, the septet balance a deeply searching mood with wonderfully in-pocket production feel. This makes for collective aural transport of the highest order to all those listening in. In the time since their 2015 first convergence, the Natural Information Society have released four albums (one in collaboration with Evan Parker, one with Ari Brown) and Bitchin Bajas five (one a soundtrack, one with Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, one featuring the songs of Sun Ra). Given the multivarious paths both groups have traveled, it makes sense that their second convergence seems to emanate from centuries, eons beyond or below -- some undefinable elsewhere -- from their first. Totality is that. These days, Natural Information Society is populated differently. From the sextet NIS that co-created Automaginary, Joshua Abrams, Lisa Alvarado and Mikel Patrick Avery remain. In the stead of the departed former players is Jason Stein on bass clarinet. This might account for some mere impression of aspects of time, space and evolution to be found here -- but then again, Bitchin Bajas flow on in their long-standing trio configuration (Cooper Crain, Dan Quinlivan, Rob Frye), so the 'people in the room' theory of how Totality ever got this way will only take us so far. Recorded in a single day with Greg Norman at Chicago's Electrical Audio, then slowly considered into the finished record we hear here, Totality is a sweet-tempered second child. It experiences time in ways the first kid didn't. If you're in it for slow-shifting trance formations, it's gonna be cool. There's lots here for you, lots of simmering time and synth atmospheres dappled with radiant woodwinds -- but there's some head-snapping hypno-rhythms that stand apart from the groove energies of the first one. It's just natural facts: two different days in time separated by years, with the experience of several live encounters between the two groups in between. Beyond that, only the music can say anything else. That said, here are a few thoughts from this listener's log... The low-key revolutionary thump of 'Nothing Does Not Show' and 'Clock no Clock' notwithstanding, Totality charts impressive new launch angles from NIS & BB's improvisatory heart, with their careful listening and response time continually redefining the space in a relaxed manner that rewards deep zoners. Additionally, their blended corps assimilate marvelously on Abrams' composition, 'Always 9 Seconds Away.' Here, and with the aforementioned groovers, the collective resonates beyond familiar kraut/spiritual/minimal power lines, bringing new time conceptions to bear in the always-expansive space of this album event. It's about time we got back to the singularly-divined space of Natural Information Society & Bitchin Bajas with Totality. That's the best way to way to define this new music -- it's about time."

$30.00 NOT IN STOCK

"Years past the space time of Automaginary, Bitchin Bajas and Natural Information Society have reported back at last from beyond. If the new title doesn't clue you, Totality brings good news. Since their first collaboration, the path ways that lead from Natural Information Society's ecstatic all-world jazz to Bitchin Bajas' microtonal soundscapes have grown ever finer in their articulation. Across the spectrum, the septet balance a deeply searching mood with wonderfully in-pocket production feel. This makes for collective aural transport of the highest order to all those listening in. In the time since their 2015 first convergence, the Natural Information Society have released four albums (one in collaboration with Evan Parker, one with Ari Brown) and Bitchin Bajas five (one a soundtrack, one with Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, one featuring the songs of Sun Ra). Given the multivarious paths both groups have traveled, it makes sense that their second convergence seems to emanate from centuries, eons beyond or below -- some undefinable elsewhere -- from their first. Totality is that. These days, Natural Information Society is populated differently. From the sextet NIS that co-created Automaginary, Joshua Abrams, Lisa Alvarado and Mikel Patrick Avery remain. In the stead of the departed former players is Jason Stein on bass clarinet. This might account for some mere impression of aspects of time, space and evolution to be found here -- but then again, Bitchin Bajas flow on in their long-standing trio configuration (Cooper Crain, Dan Quinlivan, Rob Frye), so the 'people in the room' theory of how Totality ever got this way will only take us so far. Recorded in a single day with Greg Norman at Chicago's Electrical Audio, then slowly considered into the finished record we hear here, Totality is a sweet-tempered second child. It experiences time in ways the first kid didn't. If you're in it for slow-shifting trance formations, it's gonna be cool. There's lots here for you, lots of simmering time and synth atmospheres dappled with radiant woodwinds -- but there's some head-snapping hypno-rhythms that stand apart from the groove energies of the first one. It's just natural facts: two different days in time separated by years, with the experience of several live encounters between the two groups in between. Beyond that, only the music can say anything else. That said, here are a few thoughts from this listener's log... The low-key revolutionary thump of 'Nothing Does Not Show' and 'Clock no Clock' notwithstanding, Totality charts impressive new launch angles from NIS & BB's improvisatory heart, with their careful listening and response time continually redefining the space in a relaxed manner that rewards deep zoners. Additionally, their blended corps assimilate marvelously on Abrams' composition, 'Always 9 Seconds Away.' Here, and with the aforementioned groovers, the collective resonates beyond familiar kraut/spiritual/minimal power lines, bringing new time conceptions to bear in the always-expansive space of this album event. It's about time we got back to the singularly-divined space of Natural Information Society & Bitchin Bajas with Totality. That's the best way to way to define this new music -- it's about time."

$13.50 LOW STOCK LEVEL

"As many Scots from both Highlands and Lowlands have done before them, musicians Màiri Morrison and Alasdair Roberts made the long journey over the ocean to Canada in June 2023. However, theirs was not a perilous sea voyage, nor a permanent relocation; rather it was for a transatlantic collaboration instigated by Nova Scotian bass player and musical arranger Pete Johnston. The trip resulted in a new album, Remembered in Exile: Songs and Ballads from Nova Scotia, Màiri and Alasdair's long-overdue second album together following 2012's critically acclaimed Urstan. The album's title is an allusion to John Lorne Campbell's book Songs Remembered in Exile, a collection of songs of Scottish Gaelic origin found in Cape Breton and Antigonish County, Nova Scotia. Featuring ten traditional Canadian songs with Scottish roots, Remembered in Exile draws heavily on the pioneering work of Nova Scotian folklorist Helen Creighton, who collected a vast amount of traditional song material on Canada's eastern seaboard. The album's songs are drawn from Creighton's published works including Songs and Ballads from Nova Scotia and Gaelic Songs in Nova Scotia. They are musical artifacts of the westward journey undertaken by Scottish fishers, crofters, merchants and their families as they migrated -- willingly or otherwise -- to Canada from the 1600s to the mid-1800s. A native of the Isle of Lewis, Màiri takes the lead on a handful of Gaelic language songs, mostly collected in Cape Breton, while Alasdair leads on some Canadian variants of the types of Scots ballads for which he has become well known. There are also a couple of 'macaronic' songs in both English and Gaelic. Anchored around Pete's steadfast bass playing and sensitive arrangements, as well as Alasdair's guitar work, the songs are further enlivened by the skills of a fine group of players: Sarah Frank on fiddle, Jake Oelrichs on drums, Mike Smith on banjo and Andrew Killawee on harmonium. Produced by Pete Johnston and Mike Smith at Fang Recording in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Remembered in Exile is by turns genial and playful, somber and brooding. It constitutes a fine and fitting follow-up to Màiri and Alasdair's first album together, charting new waters and reforging the longstanding bond between old Scotland and Nova Scotia."

$20.00 IN STOCK

"This is the first collaboration between Al Cisneros (OM, Sleep) and David Eugene Edwards (Wovenhand, 16 Horsepower)."

$23.00 IN STOCK

LP version. "As many Scots from both Highlands and Lowlands have done before them, musicians Màiri Morrison and Alasdair Roberts made the long journey over the ocean to Canada in June 2023. However, theirs was not a perilous sea voyage, nor a permanent relocation; rather it was for a transatlantic collaboration instigated by Nova Scotian bass player and musical arranger Pete Johnston. The trip resulted in a new album, Remembered in Exile: Songs and Ballads from Nova Scotia, Màiri and Alasdair's long-overdue second album together following 2012's critically acclaimed Urstan. The album's title is an allusion to John Lorne Campbell's book Songs Remembered in Exile, a collection of songs of Scottish Gaelic origin found in Cape Breton and Antigonish County, Nova Scotia. Featuring ten traditional Canadian songs with Scottish roots, Remembered in Exile draws heavily on the pioneering work of Nova Scotian folklorist Helen Creighton, who collected a vast amount of traditional song material on Canada's eastern seaboard. The album's songs are drawn from Creighton's published works including Songs and Ballads from Nova Scotia and Gaelic Songs in Nova Scotia. They are musical artifacts of the westward journey undertaken by Scottish fishers, crofters, merchants and their families as they migrated -- willingly or otherwise -- to Canada from the 1600s to the mid-1800s. A native of the Isle of Lewis, Màiri takes the lead on a handful of Gaelic language songs, mostly collected in Cape Breton, while Alasdair leads on some Canadian variants of the types of Scots ballads for which he has become well known. There are also a couple of 'macaronic' songs in both English and Gaelic. Anchored around Pete's steadfast bass playing and sensitive arrangements, as well as Alasdair's guitar work, the songs are further enlivened by the skills of a fine group of players: Sarah Frank on fiddle, Jake Oelrichs on drums, Mike Smith on banjo and Andrew Killawee on harmonium. Produced by Pete Johnston and Mike Smith at Fang Recording in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Remembered in Exile is by turns genial and playful, somber and brooding. It constitutes a fine and fitting follow-up to Màiri and Alasdair's first album together, charting new waters and reforging the longstanding bond between old Scotland and Nova Scotia."

$23.00 IN STOCK

"Antigone is Eiko Ishibashi's new album -- a musical masterwork rife with chilling speculations, all calling from inside her own head! For Antigone, her first album of songs with lyrics and singing since 2018's acclaimed The Dream My Bones Dream, Eiko teases out images from a dystopia not unlike the one we've already got. Hers is suffused with a 'scene missing' quality, its continuity laced with sudden, odd details sprung like traps from within her music's smooth, expansive sound. It's a clash of context with Eiko's serene vocals and the well-appointed precision of the soundscape, uncanny, disturbing, not entirely okay. That's it working! And it keeps ticking like clockwork through the whole album. An accomplished keyboardist/multi-instrumental composer and improviser, Eiko consolidates her conceptions throughout Antigone. On her early song-based albums -- 2013's sci-fi-themed Imitation of Life and 2014's poptastic Car & Freezer, listeners sensed an album-oriented direction, built song by song into an inevitable whole. 2018's conceptually-united The Dream My Bones Dream allowed Eiko to tell stories closer to home. Her instrumental works since then -- 2022's For McCoy (Black Truffle) and the soundtracks for Ryusuke Hamaguchi's films, Drive My Car and Evil Does Not Exist -- have seen her diversity of musical ideas operating in an increasingly integrated long-form presentation. With these transformative encounters in hand, Eiko and her band -- drummer Tatsuhisa Yamamoto, bassist Marty Holoubek, Norweigan accordionist Kalle Moberg, Ermhoi on backing vocals, Joe Talia playing percussion and Jim O'Rourke on Bass VI, synths, etc -- bring a wide array of sounds and moods to the songs here, referencing pop, funk and jazz, ambient, electronic and musique concrète in a seamless flow. Antigone is a bittersweet look at our already-alternate reality, Eiko's jarringly personal vision glimpsed through a latticework of ambitious compositions and on-lock production techniques."

$27.00 LOW STOCK LEVEL

"For Translucence is the debut album from Whitney Johnson and Lia Kohl. Their dialogue, found initially in free improvisation on viola and cello, has evolved over time into (for the moment) this: a neophonic orchestral expression. A living, breathing meditation in which layers of acoustic strings, synthesizers, field recordings, radio and sine waves illuminate and change each other as they twine and grow. Lia and Whitney began playing together in 2018, exploring the space between Lia's cello and Whitney's viola, with their shared tuning one octave apart. There was an ease in weaving their instruments and voices, whether playing outside, with extended technique; or inside, playing melodic lines with rich tones. Several years passed before they considered recording, as the shared parts of their identities -- string players, composers, and sound artists based in Chicago; both interested in solo composition as well as improvisation and collaboration -- soaked the fertile ground. Then their individual concerns -- Lia, exploring the possibilities and dualities of mundane and profound sounds; Whitney (as Matchess and herself) presenting the listener with the effects of sound on bodies and minds -- were able to be more finely articulated and integrated in this finished work. Recording at Experimental Sound Studio, Whitney filled out the low end of her sound with sine waves, making binaural beats through function generators and her ARP Odyssey synthesizer. Lia added an AM/FM radio and her Teenage Engineering OP-1 synthesizer. Using the open strings on both viola and cello to create the drones and establish a baseline of gravity, they improvised, building up phases of spontaneity before giving careful consideration to what they'd assembled, editing it to arrive at a final mix. The resulting sound isn't electro-acoustic, exactly; more like electronics and acoustics together, with each layer transforming the one next to it. Within the double layers of their four strings and added instruments, a symmetry emerges that is the key to For Translucence. The songs are two improvisations superimposed over each other, the titles derived from the two fundamental frequencies in which they improvise. The binaural beats form a sculptural structure of drone over which further improvisations are made. This is where surprise and laughter come into the focus; like all of time put together, both inside and outside history, their past and future selves unfolding with a flowing energy of fresh discovery breathing through it."

$25.00 IN STOCK

"Mess Esque is an Australian duo who sound like they literally dreamed themselves into being, and might even still be in the dream that made them! Helen Franzmann (McKisko) and Mick Turner (Dirty Three, Tren Brothers) initially partnered on Mess Esque's shared inner plane circa 2020. Since then, they've taken their preferred path -- the one less traveled -- at an unhurried pace. Yet Jay Marie, Comfort Me is their third album in less than five years, and the new music feels a hemisphere away from their first efforts: a whole new atmospheric level above, with greater depths to descend into as well. Mess Esque first launched as a correspondence course. The two swapped tracks between Melbourne and Brisbane, experimentally pairing Mick's guitar, keys and loops with Helen's ruminative vocals. They released Dream #12 through Australian label Bedroom Suck in April 2021, with a self-titled album on Drag City following six months later. Then it was time to actualize in the same spaces for some touring: Australia, the US, UK, Europe, and New Zealand. Jay Marie, Comfort Me has an edge to it: that savage grace that comes from actually drawing breath and stepping up in the witness of others. The process of becoming, in all its aspects, has made Mess Esque's efforts ever more visceral and incisive, their music billowing up to the skies while drawing close to the bone in the same moment. Jay Marie, Comfort Me is co-produced by Helen and Mick themselves, along with Nick Huggins, who recorded the Dirty Three's acclaimed Love Changes Everything, Mick's Don't Tell the Driver, and McKisko's Southerly album. 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. The title -- Jay Marie, Comfort Me -- is from a line in the song, 'That Chair.' That's Helen's sister in there, who died in her sleep unexpectedly. It feels right to have her name on the jacket. Jay Marie, Comfort Me reaches exciting new heights in the Mess Esque journey, propelling their uniquely twisted aural circus to a new level of dance-ability, exaltation and effect. Fitting the immediacy at their core with new dimensions, Mess Esque push themselves into more vivid states of being."

$27.00 IN STOCK

"The fragmented shards from the history of punk rock are still being sourced! Thanks to the rediscovery of a long-lost cache of cassette tapes, Bag People can now be counted, the sounds of their feral stink sitting perfectly in the grime-streaked canon of NYC's early-'80s post-punk/no-wave era. Their lore commences in Chicago's western suburbs. In 1977, Carolyn Master and Diane Wlezien were juniors at Proviso West High and rock 'n rollers, with a particular taste for English rock -- The Who, The Stones, The Kinks, Bowie, T. Rex -- they were wild for it. They put an ad out for a guitarist, Gaylene Goudreau answered, and they clicked right away -- but after a year or so trying to make it in LA as the Runaways-like girl group Lois Lain, they were back in Chicago, disillusioned. Gaylene joined DA!, when, opening for DNA at Tut's one night, her life was changed. She got back with Carolyn and Diane and they started over again, this time as Bag People. Algis Kizys saw them one night in early '82 at Chicago's infamous Space Place, then beat out some kid named Albini in a tryout for the bass spot. Pete Elwyn, working for the weekend at Poppin' Fresh Pies while drumming. Their line-up set, they played on the Chicago scene for a while, with bands like The Cadavers and The Functionally Illiterate. In late 1982, they decamped to Brooklyn's Bed-Stuy neighborhood. Deep within NYC's atomized urban interior, with deserted and destroyed shit everywhere, dudes selling drugs on every corner, it was a zone of lawlessness and neglect. The amorphous horror of this scene echoes distortedly through these recordings, an onslaught converging Carolyn and Gaylene's scabrous guitar interplay, Algis and Pete's free-roaming rhythm and Diane's nihilistic gutter-siren vocal projections. A few songs were recorded at Hi Five Studio in the Gramercy Park neighborhood. They taped more at the practice space, and a set at CB's but, constantly fucked up on booze and the drugs being hawked around the Lower East Side, the chaos of the times was wearing them thin. By the end of '83, it was apparent that things were falling apart. Pete literally disappeared after Christmas, taking a large part of their recordings with him. They got other drummers, but in July of 1984, they dissolved. It would be nearly forty years before their lost recordings were heard again. After Carolyn finally found Pete (on social media, no less!), Algis drove up to Massachusetts to get them so they could be heard at last."

$27.00 IN STOCK

2025 repress. "Natural Information Society, like their partners in time Bitchin Bajas, live their days in flow motion. Rhythms come and go, instruments sound as a means to a greater end. Music is the way of their life. Their debut convergence, Automaginary, feels as natural as it does inevitable. Both groups were first heard in 2010, both emerging from solo endeavors that accessed a vastness, more room than a single player might ultimately fill -- a place then for fellow travelers! Joshua Abrams, a questing bassist and improviser by trade, with an extensive discography of solo recordings and collaborations with a wide variety of artists, formed Natural Information Society as a conduit for the live presentation of his guimbri music. Abrams had delved into the sound of the threestringed Gnawan lute on his own, intrigued by the instrument's ability to provide melodic and rhythmic direction with a minimal, hypnotic palette. Known for the drone also are Bitchin Bajas. Cooper Crain of CAVE started the Bajas to explore his fascination with vintage electronics and recording techniques. With Dan Quinlivan on keyboards as well, Bitchin Bajas' discography has explored a range of dynamic approaches, producing various proportions of atmosphere and soundtrack that move from becalmed stasis to synthetic beat-building with a prescient liquidity. Both Natural Information Society and Bitchin Bajas are in pursuit of the unconscious in their musical expression, and through their independent methods, both have ridden the wind to unseen places, using the playing as the carpet that will take them there. A multitude of influences swarm amoebically in their sounds, from the mud of ancient Afro-groove to 20th-century classical austerity, from the clatter of freedom jazz to the 4/4 of kraut and disco and fusion beyond -- and then beyond the music and into the air. Wrapped up in a screen-printed jacket from visual artist Lisa Alvarado, whose aesthetic sense is a touchstone for the vision of Natural Information Society, Automaginary is psychedelic and ambient and jazz -- yet none of it either, the whole being more than the sum of former parts. This is music of unique variance, a remarkably perfect congregation of the two tribes that are Natural Information Society & Bitchin Bajas."

$26.00 IN STOCK

"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. 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 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."

$26.00 IN STOCK

"Don't look up! 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 Bitch Magnet, Richard Buckner, Codeine, Tony Conrad, The Red Krayola, Royal Trux, Dirty Three, Edith Frost, Mats Gustafsson, Susan Howe, Will Oldham, Stefano Pilia, Taku Unami, The Underflow, Ryley Walker, Jan St. Werner, and The Wingdale Community Singers. If all that doesn't imply 'Trying something different,' what ever will? Whistle from Above is the first solo collection David's 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. These seemed to imply a solo set that would tour marvelously when the time was right again. 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' -- Rhodri 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 colorful, 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. Throughout the album, the listener may recall some places visited over the years, but will find them -- as David and his traveling companions have as well -- changed again, reactivated in a new light."

$25.00 IN STOCK

"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."

$20.00 LOW STOCK LEVEL

"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

$31.00 IN STOCK

"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!"

$25.00 IN STOCK

"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!"

$36.00 LOW STOCK LEVEL

"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."