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viewing 1 To 12 of 12 items
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LP
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SAB 110LP
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"Steven R. Smith is a wildly consistent and self-sufficient auteur making epic music far beyond his monk-like solo recording practices. On Olive, one gets more of Steven R. Smith's singular vision and musicianship, this time filtered through ensemble arrangement largely performed by others -- an approach he's explored in recent years. A micro-orchestra of horn and woodwind players was enlisted, as well as other collaborators including Kate Wright (Movietone, 1000 Dawns) and Yvonne Sone. The stunning results call to mind Mark Hollis' eponymous solo LP and Gerald Busby's masterful 3 Women score, not only in terms of sonics or tone, but also in the use of space. Smith has explored many angles to soundtrack-like mood music, but there is a satisfying dark rock element to even his more refined chamber pieces. Smith's dusky post-punk signature, borrowed from Australian artists such as Rowland S. Howard and Crime & the City Solution, synthesizes with the mannered arrangements to push his familiar, evocative sound into new spaces."
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LP
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SAB 104LP
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"'Hark! DIY sleaze-rock henchpersons, ascend from your cellars and rejoice... Midwestern anti-folk hero Christopher Alan Durham (The Bibs, All Gone Recs) arrives on high horse in full-length mode with a band of merry menaces in tow. Following a string of cassette and 7" releases for labels like Spacecase and Soft Abuse (whom are also responsible for the gift in hand), Kicks Or Macabre is CAD's first LP outing under his own name, and we're all the better for it. Recorded in and around modern-day Detroit, the record certainly has that street-walking cheetah energy that one might expect from a protagonist presumably raised on the teet-to-mouth diet of Destroy All Monsters youtube vids, vending machine snacks, trucker speed 'n' malt liquor laced with the ever present back-and-fore ground pollins of our patron Jim Shepards, Pussy Galores, Gibson Bros and countless other unscrewed basement saints who shook, rattled and rolled before us... but wait, there's so much more. Durham and his trusty Peacetime Consumers (ex-Quilt Boy/Roachclip cohorts) conjure up a thicker-than-usual, borderline soulful junk sick blooze that slinks and swaggers like a lean-drunk Flamin' Groovies or Gulcher/Richie-era KV if you traded his happy-go-lucky, confidently carefree dopiness for the frantic urgency of a paranoid loner whose slumlord is putting the screws to him, and look... there ain't enough grass left in that bag to even pack a bat... But the band plays on, and if Durham's long-running development as a mainstay in the American sub-underground proves to hit its peak with Kicks, we should consider ourselves lucky to have ever had such good seats in this, the theater of his own strange little lower-middle-class tragedy songs, often reflecting less on the overarching and impossibly big / bad times than they do on the smaller, more understandable, more feelable good ones. Even luckier for us, he may have only just begun.' --Ryan Davis, 2023"
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LP
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SAB 101LP
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"Longtime Aotearoa/New Zealand producer Kraus has been a fixture in various underground North and South Island circles for twenty years, and his solo music has covered a lot of ground in that time. In recent years he's shifted focus from guitar-based recordings to synthesis-oriented electronic work, an approach that blooms in full color on Fire! Water! Air! Kraus!, his 19th full-length album and first all-electronic affair. Kraus obsessives will once more revel in the inventive use of melody and texture here, as well as the primitive futurist fusion of eastern/western psychedelia and tonal explorations of electronic pioneers like Suzanne Ciani and Laurie Spiegel, with a dash of exotica for good measure. Fire! Water! Air! Kraus! is a joyful, immersive listen, and Soft Abuse is thrilled to share it with the known universe."
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CD
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SAB 105CD
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"Pumice returns with an exquisite experimental bathroom sink pop record in hand, dubbed Phylis. This time out the long-running Aotearoa band, currently a duo consisting of Stefan Neville and Jade Farley, fracture sore-thumbed folk songs into crumpled bricks with riffs written on the toilet. Wonky South Pacific skiffle careens into heady organ dirges followed by galloping blurts of afterlife feedback. As ever, texture and accidents rub up against melodies, rhythms are not strict and words are grubby. But with Phylis, the restless band tenders its most exuberant, straightforward and enjoyable pop record yet. Recorded at Neville's Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland studio in 2021, Neville and Farley have returned to the simple and joyful instincts of the earliest Pumice recordings. Nylon strings, drums with the feet, the empty and the absurd. Impossible to think of something analogous to the cosmic comforts on offer here, Phylis once more presents songs that could only come from the world of Pumice."
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LP
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SAB 100LP
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"Long into his varied, restless recording life, Steven R. Smith continues to deliver moments of wonder. Spring, like much of his very best, explores small notions that shift and expand to reveal a private sort of grandeur. Joining Smith on Spring is Gareth Davis, the Amsterdam-based bass clarinetist and occasional collaborator of Machinefabriek, Merzbow, Elliot Sharp and Smith himself, and his presence here is crucial. The restrained interplay between Smith (on guitar, piano, percussion etc.) and Davis create a warmth and intimacy akin to Mark Hollis' masterful eponymous solo LP. Steven R. Smith has been a quiet force in underground psych/post-punk circles since the mid-90s. In addition to a handful of classic releases under his own name, Smith is perhaps better known for the material releases under various pseudonyms (e.g. Hala Strana, Ulaan Khol, Ulaan Markhor, etc.) or as a member of cult acts like Mirza and Thuja. Spring is the latest entry point into his own particular version of cinematic composition."
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LP
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SAB 093LP
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"Pumice -- now the duo of Stefan Neville and Jade Farley -- stretch time further out, leaning heavily on drones and moans in making their modern-day Aotearoa folk rock masterpiece. The fruits of their time together as a pair has come to bear in the buzzing, swirling epic: Table. Table! Table primarily finds Pumice deep in a pastoral expanse, with Farley's violin lines and Neville's organ drones serving collectively as guide. Elsewhere the dense fog of synth, guitar, F/X, chants and melodies create warm miniature zones to tuck into. With each new recording, Pumice finds a way to achieve new levels of rugged grandeur. Table is the latest example."
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LP
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SAB 094LP
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"Matthew De Gennaro goes to gothic country with his wry, intense soundtrack of temporary isolation in Kansas, Laughing Lost In The Underground. This new collection of songs finds De Gennaro glinting at darkness, light, and the in-between. Laughing Lost leans less on De Gennaro's plaintive Andean-indebted folk songs, and more on salient instrumentals that shift and dance, bridging the natural world with humanistic ruminations. Laughing Lost In The Underground was created in the reclusive De Gennaro's home studio, set on the edge of town, as close to wilderness as civilization. Though crafted with an array of arcane instruments and otherworldly sounds, the ardor and vitality of De Gennaro's recordings resonate in the present moment."
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LP
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SAB 096LP
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"Absalom is the fourth full length release from Donovan Quinn (Skygreen Leopards/New Bums), and his first solo outing in seven years. Coming out of the psychedelic underground school of '01, Quinn has slowly built an idiosyncratic catalogue that combines obsessive long-form metaphors and oblique arrangements with simple song structures. As on previous albums, there is a consistent lyrical narrative that runs through shifting sonic spaces. Sparse singer-songwriter arrangements, outsider art piano ballads, loping numbers with a folk rock combo, and baroque pop string arrangements all find their way into the brew. Reuniting with frequent collaborators Ben Chasny, who mixed the record, Elisa Ambrogio, Jessica Roberts, Jason Quever, Michael Tapscott and Eric Amerman, Quinn recorded Absalom in several home and professional studios to achieve a veritable collage effect with instrumentation and musicians changing from song to song. The idea for Absalom started with an abandoned project called 'Fan Fiction,' intended to build songs based on the lore of other artists, as well as expanding on originals previously written by Quinn. Tucked away in the vaults are demos continuing the stories of characters from two Squeeze hits, Clarice Lispector's Aqua Viva, Jozef Czapski's lectures on Proust in a Soviet prison camp, Jackson C. Frank's 'Tumble In The Wind', and the biblical story of Absalom. Bored by the limitations of the project, 'Fan Fiction' was scraped, but the themes of familial dissolution and love in the Absalom story that provided a genesis for what became the Absalom album. Printed on the back of the LP sleeve are two quotes that provide a good starting point to the type of blues contained in therein."
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LP
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SAB 095LP
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"For their first meeting, Richard Youngs (Glasgow) and Raül Refree (Barcelona) have created a suite of stately, circular longform songs that manage to connect Tim Buckley's Happy Sad to Federico García Lorca to plainsong liturgy. The largely acoustic and quietly urgent All Hands Around The Moment finds Youngs in an impassioned and emotional space he's rarely inhabited since Sapphie, elevated by lush chamber folk/jazz compositions that incorporate piano, guitar and more, performed by both Youngs and Refree. The four pieces that build the whole of All Hands Around The Moment harness transcendence in repetition, and feature gorgeous progressive minimalism in full spectrum. Dark existential themes flow into mystic uplifting expressions of humanity, without missing a beat. In its timelessness and prescience, the realities present in All Hands Around The Moment make for a powerfully engrossing listen from top to bottom."
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LP
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SAB 086LP
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"The Jingling World Of The Skygreen Leopards is a collection of songs from the first two Skygreen Leopards CDRs on Jewelled Antler; two mini-albums written and recorded in the distant days of 2001, a year with a name that evokes a psychedelic future but which now seems very much part of the psychedelic past. Guided by Tall Dwarfs, The Monkees and The TVPs, the early SGLs concept was to mix automatic songwriting, two voices, California 12-string and put it on reverb smothered 1/4" tape. The restrictions were that no songs could break the three-minute mark, no jamming allowed, and you never went back to fix mistakes. All songs were written and performed by Glenn Donaldson and Donovan Quinn; both switching instruments and overdubbing until Donaldson's Tascam 388 had run out of open tracks. From the womb of fanzines, flea market record crates of the '90s and San Francisco's fading victorians, it's The Jingling World Of The Skygreen Leopards."
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LP
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SAB 058LP
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2016 repress. Originally released in 2012. "Hard to believe our planet had not yet been graced with Nathan Bowles solo recordings until now, but such is the case. After years of playing in celebrated ensembles, touring the world, and honing his skill on a host of instruments, Bowles unveils his first solo effort: A Bottle, A Buckeye. The spacious, rollicking, meditative, and above all powerful record bridges the methods and constructs of his two most notable groups - The Black Twig Pickers (old-time) and Pelt (outer limits) - while inhabiting a space all its own. LP version includes a download."
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CD
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SAB 050CD
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"Deep into a genius career, Pumice still surprises with his subtle mastery of broke-down sounds, slowed-down Magic Band rhythms, crumbling chord organ hymns & tragic ballads that reach deep into the very soul of Flying Nun/Xpressway/Root Don Lonie For Cash anti-pop pop music. PUNY is as difficult to fathom & as easy to love as all his best work." - Glenn Donaldson.
"Another wistful & unique -- yet familiar -- offering from this modern Kiwi noise-pop auteur."
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