|
|
|
|
viewing 1 To 25 of 37 items
Next >>
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
LP
|
|
FLENSER 150LP
|
"Ragana is a duo whose members alternate duties on drums, guitar, and vocals to produce some of the most unique and affecting dark music in metal today. The two-piece came together in 2011 in the DIY punk scene of Olympia, WA and are now based in Olympia and Oakland, CA. In their time together so far, Ragana have self-released five albums and teamed up with genre-favorite Thou for a split release in 2018. The following year, Ragana released their heralded We Know That The Heavens Are Empty EP and have quietly been working on new music ever since. The band signed with The Flenser in late 2022 and now present their forthcoming debut album for the label, Desolation's Flower. On Desolation's Flower, Ragana draws upon a number of influences from the flora and fauna of their Pacific Northwest origins to the darkly nostalgic folk of Mt. Eerie and, yes, their Olympian forebears Wolves In The Throne Room, synthesizing them into an experimental, highly idiosyncratic take on black metal. Held together by an intense focus on raw emotion and haunting atmospherics, Ragana shifts seamlessly from tender, mesmerizing vocal harmonies to piercing, heart-ripping screams and back again, yielding music that is heavy, beautiful and punishing all at once. Written over the past few tumultuous years, Desolation's Flower is the band's most devastating effort to date, containing seven incantations of loss, rage, pain and hope. Expertly engineered by the masterful Nicholas Wilbur at the Unknown Studio in Anacortes, Washington (Planning For Burial, drowse, Divide and Dissolve, Have a Nice Life), the album serves as the culmination of the past decade plus of the band's ethos and execution."
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
LP
|
|
FLENSER 150X-LP
|
LP version. Color vinyl. "Ragana is a duo whose members alternate duties on drums, guitar, and vocals to produce some of the most unique and affecting dark music in metal today. The two-piece came together in 2011 in the DIY punk scene of Olympia, WA and are now based in Olympia and Oakland, CA. In their time together so far, Ragana have self-released five albums and teamed up with genre-favorite Thou for a split release in 2018. The following year, Ragana released their heralded We Know That The Heavens Are Empty EP and have quietly been working on new music ever since. The band signed with The Flenser in late 2022 and now present their forthcoming debut album for the label, Desolation's Flower. On Desolation's Flower, Ragana draws upon a number of influences from the flora and fauna of their Pacific Northwest origins to the darkly nostalgic folk of Mt. Eerie and, yes, their Olympian forebears Wolves In The Throne Room, synthesizing them into an experimental, highly idiosyncratic take on black metal. Held together by an intense focus on raw emotion and haunting atmospherics, Ragana shifts seamlessly from tender, mesmerizing vocal harmonies to piercing, heart-ripping screams and back again, yielding music that is heavy, beautiful and punishing all at once. Written over the past few tumultuous years, Desolation's Flower is the band's most devastating effort to date, containing seven incantations of loss, rage, pain and hope. Expertly engineered by the masterful Nicholas Wilbur at the Unknown Studio in Anacortes, Washington (Planning For Burial, drowse, Divide and Dissolve, Have a Nice Life), the album serves as the culmination of the past decade plus of the band's ethos and execution."
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
2LP
|
|
FLENSER 137LP
|
"In 2017 The Flenser released a CD collection of material from Planning For Burial's early period entitled Matawan - Collected Works 2010-2014. Named after the bands long-term home-base in Matawan New Jersey, the collection included many of Planning For Burial's beloved rare tracks that originally appeared on seven inches, cassettes, or online. Since 2017, the band's own Thom Wasluck has re-examined the material found on the Matawan collection with the intention of releasing a vinyl version. This vinyl version of the second volume of the Matawan collection includes much of the first disc of the CD version tirelessly remixed and edited, and the inclusion tracks not found on the original edition specially prepared for the vinyl format."
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
LP
|
|
FLENSER 135LP
|
"In an artistic landscape fueled by gamified promotional tactics, spasmodic virality, and manufactured controversy, the amount of noise that independent artists must cut through can seem overwhelming. Yet, it's the most genuine statements -- often those expecting no audience at all -- that overcome. The Origin Of My Depression, the 2019 album from Australian experimentalist Uboa, proves just that; presenting such a deeply affecting mix of dark ambient, noise, and extreme metal, it all but demanded its unplanned but unsurprising cult following. With several tracks that began as live improvisations recorded in the living-room-turned-bedroom, and others recorded from live sets in venues, The Origin Of My Depression exhibits the spontaneity and ineffability of extreme emotions. Xandra Metcalfe, the mind behind Uboa, offers sonic representations of her anxieties, depressive thoughts, and lived experiences throughout the record's seven songs, even if the origins of these feelings escape her. The result, intensely and authentically personal, undeniably resonates, as The Origin Of My Depression spread through online communities through sheer word of mouth upon its initial release. Now, four years later, the record stands as a defining statement of late 2010s underground music, and it takes just one listen to see why. Uboa has spent the better part of a decade dipping into every corner of heavy music. From harsh noise to dark ambient, glitch to doom metal, Metcalfe's output, though sonically varied, remains consistent in her use of such styles to express her mental state at the time of writing. Whether it's her live performances (described as a panic attack presented on stage) or her recorded material, her eclectic approach to dark music has led Uboa to become an unlikely but deserving cult figure in online music."
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
LP
|
|
FLENSER 136LP
|
"Midwife's Madeline Johnston has gone through several different iterations of her music project. In 2015, she moved into Denver's premier DIY space Rhinoceropolis, where she began learning recording on her own and primarily focusing on Sister Grotto, a long-form ambient based project. Working alongside artists like Colin Ward and Dani Rev, she was inspired by her roommate's tenacity and artistic outpouring. Madeline recorded Born to Lose / Born to Leave, Blindside, and Song For An Unborn Sun during the first half of her residency (before she started the project that would soon become Like Author, Like Daughter). Time is a major element in this group of recordings. Tracks were played in real time, slowed down, and played on top of, repeatedly, and has been referred to as an ambient sludge record. Components like the Casio SK-1, endless loop cassettes, delay and pitch shifters distort the passage of time -- layers, repetition, and analog delay fold it back in on itself. Not unlike the sentimentality and difficulty distinguishing landmark moments of this time period for Madeline, the music itself is a sort of frenetic and meditative blur. Some of the tracks on Song For An Unborn Sun were later re-worked for the first Midwife album. Most importantly, 'Song For An Unborn Sun' and 'Placeholder' which became the song 'Way Out.' Song For An Unborn Sun was originally released as a split in 2016 on the small run cassette label Terrible Pleasures. Side A was by Sister Grotto, and Side B was by Devin Shaffer (who at the time was releasing music under the name Yarrow). The Flenser 2023 reissue will solely highlight the Sister Grotto material, remastered, along with previously unreleased songs that serve as a timestamp of that particularly magic creative era. 'Placeholder (Slide Edit)' is a postcard from Madeline Johnston and Tucker Theodore's early collaboration. 'Live at Wazee Union' is a recording of a guerrilla show in a former co-op art studio in the process of being demolished and replaced. It was presented and played with the help and additional instrumentation of Braeyden Jae and H Lite's Anton Krueger. The group created a shrine with about 50 votive candles to set the scene: a temporary refuge from the growing pains of gentrification. 'ESP' is a play on Song For An Unborn Sun's closing track, 'Hex,' and was made using modified tape loops and field recordings from the industrial neighborhood where Rhinoceropolis once stood."
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
2LP
|
|
FLENSER 122LP
|
2021 release. "In 2017 The Flenser released a CD collection of material from Planning For Burial's early period entitled Matawan - Collected Works 2010-2014. Named after the bands long-term home-base in Matawan New Jersey, the collection included many of Planning For Burial's beloved rare tracks that originally appeared on seven inches, cassettes, or online. Since 2017, the band's own Thom Wasluck has re-examined the material found on the Matawan collection with the intention of releasing a vinyl version. This vinyl version of the first volume of the Matawan collection includes much of the first disc of the CD version tirelessly remixed and edited, and the inclusion tracks not found on the original edition specially prepared for the vinyl format." "Wasluck's longing and misery plays such a role in Planning for Burial's music that it often receives equal credit alongside the instrumentation." --Pitchfork
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
CD
|
|
FLENSER 062CD
|
"Some time in the Spring of 2009, I tried to kill myself. Six months before that, I used a Voor's Head Device for the first time.' This line opens the 150-page book that accompanies Giles Corey, an intensely personal, intimate portrait of depression that took me almost four years to make." --Dan Barrett "Giles Corey is the gloomy folk-driven solo project from Have A Nice Life mastermind Dan Barrett. Here, Barrett forgoes the post-industrial trappings of Have A Nice Life in favor of an intimate singer-songwriter approach. While thematically related to his other work -- dealing with subjects like suicide, death and the paranormal -- Giles Corey feels more personal, with impressive shifts from quiet desperation to cathartic outburst. Over the years the album has gained a fervent following, and has sometimes been compared to a religious experience. It is dark yet purgative enterprise not for the frail of heart. In Barrett's own words: 'The album follows a story arc of emotions that are detailed in the accompanying book, as much a part of this record as the music. The text switches between personal tales of struggles with depression, suicide, and a feeling of being lost, and the story of cult-leader and afterlife theorist Robert Voor. Voor's writings on death and the afterlife feature prominently across Have A Nice Life's Deathconsciousness, Nahvalr's self-titled debut, and Giles Corey, making him the unifying factor behind most of the music I've written in the last ten years. This record is as personal and raw as anything I've ever done.'"
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
Cassette
|
|
FLENSER 140CS
|
Cassette version. "In 2019, Drowse's Kyle Bates set out to produce a self-recorded new album. Marked by moving across state lines, long-distance relationships, and deaths in the family, the following years proved to be metamorphic. Now, three years later, he's emerged with Wane Into It, continuing a distinctly Pacific Northwestern tradition of self-recording indie experimentalists (Grouper, The Microphones, Unwound's Leaves Turn Inside You). One of the most impactful moments came during the looming passing of a family member. With death expected, the choice was made to conduct a bizarre 'living-wake' gathering -- with the soon-to-be-deceased in attendance. Shortly after, Bates found himself disturbed, preoccupied with the abstraction of memory. The experience led him to reassess the tool one uses to curate our selective memories: the internet. The internet, which creeped into even more aspects of life during the pandemic, serves as our self-made digital link to the past. Its uncaring presence layered over humbling thoughts of death and his own childhood memories of the Oregon Coast as he worked on Wane Into It; life's hyperreal texture sank into the recordings as he felt his body age and wane. Big sounds were captured in bedrooms, hallways, practice spaces, forests, and on highways throughout West Coast -- vibraphones chime over black metal guitars, a mellotron drones under degraded samples, violins splinter against granular field recordings. In the process of documenting these aural moments Bates completed an MFA at Mills College, coloring the album with shades of avant-electronic and minimalist composition (Pauline Oliveros, Terry Riley, Maryanne Amacher, Sarah Davachi etc?). To realize this scope Drowse collaborated with Madeline Johnston (Midwife), Alex Kent (Sprain), Lula Asplund, a chamber ensemble and more. Bates's songwriting and production have never been more lucid; sounds flicker as he sings with fragile intensity. The record, Drowse's third for The Flenser, impressionistically distills loss, distance, mystery, prescription drugs, the preservation of memory via recording, and ambient anxiety through its titular act: to Wane Into It, to disappear awaiting the next moon phase, water returning to sea before reemerging as a wave."
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
LP
|
|
FLENSER 140LP
|
"In 2019, Drowse's Kyle Bates set out to produce a self-recorded new album. Marked by moving across state lines, long-distance relationships, and deaths in the family, the following years proved to be metamorphic. Now, three years later, he's emerged with Wane Into It, continuing a distinctly Pacific Northwestern tradition of self-recording indie experimentalists (Grouper, The Microphones, Unwound's Leaves Turn Inside You). One of the most impactful moments came during the looming passing of a family member. With death expected, the choice was made to conduct a bizarre 'living-wake' gathering -- with the soon-to-be-deceased in attendance. Shortly after, Bates found himself disturbed, preoccupied with the abstraction of memory. The experience led him to reassess the tool one uses to curate our selective memories: the internet. The internet, which creeped into even more aspects of life during the pandemic, serves as our self-made digital link to the past. Its uncaring presence layered over humbling thoughts of death and his own childhood memories of the Oregon Coast as he worked on Wane Into It; life's hyperreal texture sank into the recordings as he felt his body age and wane. Big sounds were captured in bedrooms, hallways, practice spaces, forests, and on highways throughout West Coast -- vibraphones chime over black metal guitars, a mellotron drones under degraded samples, violins splinter against granular field recordings. In the process of documenting these aural moments Bates completed an MFA at Mills College, coloring the album with shades of avant-electronic and minimalist composition (Pauline Oliveros, Terry Riley, Maryanne Amacher, Sarah Davachi etc?). To realize this scope Drowse collaborated with Madeline Johnston (Midwife), Alex Kent (Sprain), Lula Asplund, a chamber ensemble and more. Bates's songwriting and production have never been more lucid; sounds flicker as he sings with fragile intensity. The record, Drowse's third for The Flenser, impressionistically distills loss, distance, mystery, prescription drugs, the preservation of memory via recording, and ambient anxiety through its titular act: to Wane Into It, to disappear awaiting the next moon phase, water returning to sea before reemerging as a wave."
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
LP
|
|
FLENSER 127LP
|
"There's a real sense of loss on Brooklyn experimental black metalists Scarcity's debut album Aveilut, an inescapable presence of the realities of death. Multi-instrumentalist Brendon Randall-Myers (conductor of the Glenn Branca Ensemble since Branca's passing) wrote Aveilut while processing the sudden deaths of two people close to him, tracked it while caught in Beijing's first lockdown of 2020, and finished it while surrounded by the overwhelming plague visuals of New York's early COVID peak. Back in Brooklyn, vocalist Doug Moore (of Pyrrhon, Weeping Sores, Glorious Depravity, and Seputus) soon found himself in the midst of an equally bleak lockdown experience -- living next to a funeral home when New York City was America's COVID epicenter. From conception through development, tangible death surrounded Aveilut. The result of such a profound closeness with death is this grief-stricken release, which takes its name from the Hebrew word for mourning. 72-note octaves, alternate tunings, psychoacoustic phenomena and macro-phrases embody the hugeness of loss, the inexplicable space of death's void that Randall-Myers faced both on a personal and existential scale. Together with Moore's gripping vocal delivery and stark lyrics, the album takes the form of a hyperobject, an entity with such vastness and reach that it's difficult for the human mind to comprehend. Consisting of one 45-minute composition, the music is black metal roughly in the vein of Jute Gyte, Krallice, Mare Cognitum, and Enhare -- with hefty doses of post-Branca microtonal guitar abuse, and a cinematic scope that draws on Randall-Myers' work with orchestras. Aveilut's mathematical abstraction and lyrical focus on the greatness of the void breed raw emotion, attempting to represent a catastrophe, the vastness and inevitability of things outside one's control, as well as a direct expression of grief, a kind of requiem. Though born of Randall-Myers and Moore's intense intimacy with absence, Aveilut is an attempt to present a harrowing universal representation of death's true form."
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
2LP/BOOK
|
|
FLENSER 042LP
|
Reissue, color vinyl. Originally released in 2008. Includes 75-page book. "Have a Nice Life released their debut double-album Deathconsciousness in 2008 to a whimper and critical non-interest; six years later, the band followed it up with 2014's stunner The Unnatural World. In the meantime, Deathconsciousness has become a cult classic whose seamless blend of shoegaze, post-punk, new wave, industrial and noise influences inspire fanatic obsession. Now, longtime Have a Nice Life collaborator The Flenser reissues Deathconsciousness on colored vinyl with deluxe packaging. The band commented, 'Working with Flenser lets us keep things comfortable on our end, while also pressing enough copies to actually meet the need and not creating an artificially inflated collector's market, as happened with some of our past releases.' Rhythmic, primal and expansive, Deathconsciousness offers a meditation on death, loss and unrequited love, with repeated listens revealing new layers of depth and meaning. The Flenser's reissue is accompanied by a 75-page booklet detailing the dark and forgotten history of the Antiochean cult -- an engrossing narrative that blurs the lines between liner notes, novella and academic text." "A masterpiece of depression" --The Quietus.
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
Cassette
|
|
FLENSER 131CS
|
Cassette version. "Cremation Lily's Dreams Drenched In Static exists at the horizon of consciousness and heavy experimental music. Through the use of frenetic vocal melodies, tape degradation, and guitar noise, the album documents the liminal moments at the edge of sleep, and the distressing thoughts that often accompany late-night R.E.M. disturbances. The lyrics were largely written at three in the morning and serve to evoke the depression and meditations on death that seem to haunt these early hours. Based in London, England, Cremation Lily is the project of Zen Zsigo. Like many Flenser artists, Cremation Lily is difficult to classify. Starting out in 2009 as a sample-based ambient artist, Cremation Lily has evolved to incorporate more rock-based guitar instrumentation and influence from a wide range of genres such industrial, shoegaze, tape loops, noise, and power electronics. Although rooted in electronic music, Cremation Lily shares similarities with other Flenser artists like Planning For Burial and Have a Nice Life, as well as black metal. Dreams Drenched In Static is the first Cremation Lily album to primarily rely on guitar and vocal-based contributions, and is the project's most intentional and developed work to date."
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
LP
|
|
FLENSER 131LP
|
"Cremation Lily's Dreams Drenched In Static exists at the horizon of consciousness and heavy experimental music. Through the use of frenetic vocal melodies, tape degradation, and guitar noise, the album documents the liminal moments at the edge of sleep, and the distressing thoughts that often accompany late-night R.E.M. disturbances. The lyrics were largely written at three in the morning and serve to evoke the depression and meditations on death that seem to haunt these early hours. Based in London, England, Cremation Lily is the project of Zen Zsigo. Like many Flenser artists, Cremation Lily is difficult to classify. Starting out in 2009 as a sample-based ambient artist, Cremation Lily has evolved to incorporate more rock-based guitar instrumentation and influence from a wide range of genres such industrial, shoegaze, tape loops, noise, and power electronics. Although rooted in electronic music, Cremation Lily shares similarities with other Flenser artists like Planning For Burial and Have a Nice Life, as well as black metal. Dreams Drenched In Static is the first Cremation Lily album to primarily rely on guitar and vocal-based contributions, and is the project's most intentional and developed work to date."
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
LP
|
|
FLENSER 126LP
|
"Mamaleek's Kurdaitcha is finally back in print! The San Francisco-based duo released their third album of weirdo black metal, Kurdaitcha, on the legendary cult label Enemies List Home Recordings (Have a Nice Life, Giles Corey), and it quickly sold out. For years the LP has been a hard-to-find collector's item. Kurdaitcha finds the project in its initial period of creating music influenced by black metal, hip hop, jazz, and spirituals. Founded in 2008 in the Bay Area by two anonymous brothers, Mamaleek has explored a vast sonic territory on the edge of a genre renowned for its aversion to change. Their expert utilization of left-field samples and unconventional instrumentation, and their insistent drive to experiment continues to set the band apart from their peers. This pressing of Kurdaitcha has been remastered and features a previously unreleased bonus track with a gold foil stamped jacket." "Mamaleek are the great destroyers." --Invisible Oranges "An incredibly rich and rewarding experience." --Heavy Blog Is Heavy "Is it good, though? It's fucking mental. It's amazing. It's absolutely horrible. It's barely listenable at times and yet you can't turn it off. The music is perfect. Like broken glass is perfect." --Echoes And Dust "The group cloaks its music in the kind of warm, hypnotic distortion that defines shoegaze, and underneath that haze is a style that's conceptually abrasive yet altogether beautiful." --Forbes
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
2LP
|
|
FLENSER 003LP
|
"First time on vinyl! Over the last decade, SF Bay Area's Bosse-de-Nage has operated at the forefront of the postblack metal movement, and with albums like All Fours and Further Still, the band cemented their place as touchstones of the genre. Their self-titled debut -- an early foray in the blackgaze sound -- was recorded in 2007, but not officially released until 2010. The CD version of the album was one of The Flenser's first releases, and a vinyl edition has always been a critical omission in both the band's and the label's catalogs. Remastered and sounding better than ever."
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
LP
|
|
FLENSER 120LP
|
"Midwife is the moniker of multi-instrumentalist Madeline Johnston. She lives and works in San Miguel, New Mexico by way of Denver, Colorado, where she spent the better half of the past decade developing her experimental pop project. As a self-taught guitarist and recording engineer, Midwife explores dark subject matter in her anthemic, softgaze hits. Self-described as 'Heaven Metal,' or emotive music about devastation and catharsis. When 2020 began, Johnston had several national and international tours planned, but the pandemic shifted her focus back to recording, and back to her internal landscape. Midwife's third full length record, Luminol, was written and produced during quarantine. Luminol is a chemical used by forensic investigators to reveal trace amounts of blood left at a crime scene. When it reacts with blood, luminol emits a chemiluminescent blue glow that can be seen in a darkened room. In the same way this chemical reveals evidence at a scene, Midwife is interested in profound truth -- turning trial and tribulation into sources of light. Luminol navigates themes of incarceration, locus of control, clarity, self harm, confinement, agency, and truth-seeking, all erupting in a bioluminescent Rothko color-field of blue. The album cover shows a dark figure standing at the edge of a body of water. It symbolizes the way humanity had been on a precipice throughout 2020, to later find out they had been there all along. Being one of Midwife's most personal records, this cover artwork is a picture of Madeline Johnston's mother taken in the 1980s, when she was the same age as Madeline at the time of recording. By redacting the figure, Johnston hopes that anyone could see themselves there, by the water, as a form leftover when all the elements of their lives are stripped away and what is left is a host. Luminol features collaborations from Tucker Theodore, Angel Diaz (Vyva Melinkolya), Zachary Cole Smith, Ben Newman, and Colin Caulfield (DIIV), and Dan Barrett (Have A Nice Life)."
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
LP
|
|
FLENSER 119LP
|
"The prolific, Portland-based Randall Taylor is an audio/visual artist best known for his musical project, Amulets. Taylor's work uses analog tape and its imperfections to explore themes like degradation and nostalgia and their relationship to technology and to the self. By constructing and modifying tape loops and repurposing antiquated cassette players, Taylor creates dense, never-ending, looping soundscapes for both his live performances and sculptural sound art installations. Taylor's new album, Blooming, was fully written and recorded in quarantine in his home studio in early 2020. His personal life was in upheaval as was the world around him -- the isolation, sadness and change had Taylor missing '? what it felt like to feel alive and the need to feel that again,' he says. With widespread global pandemic and social distancing protocols in effect, Taylor would go on solo daily walks to clear his head and was struck by all of the blooming flowers surrounding him during springtime in Portland. Within that beauty came his realization that nothing lasts forever and that everything is cyclical -- ultimately resulting in themes of growth, decay, melancholy and beauty inherent throughout Blooming. Taylor says that the songs on the record became a part of his processing and journey, blossoming into a new life and outlook. Taylor has performed across the country at numerous festivals and opened for such acts as This Will Destroy You, Efrim Manuel Manuck (of Godspeed You Black Emperor), Benoit Pioulard, and Steve Hauschildt to name a few. His solo exhibition work has been on display in Austin, TX at Dimension Gallery and most recently installed in Portland, OR at Variform Gallery. Taylor was also recently published in the latest Kim Bjorn book series PEDAL CRUSH as an artist and inspirational creator. His last full-length, Between Distant And Remote, was released on Beacon Sound Records in late 2019, which he toured along the west coast in support of. Most recently, Amulets collaborated with Flenser family Midwife on the track 'Heaven' for her new split cassette. As Amulets, Taylor pays homage to the paradox of memory and growth, creating a deeply immersive musical landscape in the process."
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
2LP
|
|
FLENSER 115LP
|
"On the heels of Midwife's 2020 sophomore album, Forever, The Flenser is pleased to offer a new vinyl edition of her debut Like Author, Like Daughter, remastered as a double LP in a gatefold jacket. Like Author, Like Daughter is a portrait of Madeline Johnston's final year as a resident of Denver's famed D.I.Y venue Rhinoceropolis, which closed in a rash of politically motivated assaults on creative spaces across the United States. The album internalizes loss, addiction, and abandonment and wrings them through distorted power chords, melancholy leads, and sheets of drone to create building, aching monuments to past-selves and lost relationships as positivist statements of resilience and selflove. It's a record that is impossible to listen to without a lump in the throat. All songs on this release were written by Johnston between November, 2015 and January, 2017. It was performed and recorded by her and Tucker Theodore in Denver at Rhinoceropolis and INAMBULANCE in Olympia, WA."
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
LP
|
|
FLENSER 107LP
|
"Los Angeles-based outsider artists Sprain play downer music at cacophonous volumes. Their new album, As Lost Through Collision, unfurls threads of spidery '90s rock (think Unwound, Duster, Slint, etc.) and is a complex and cathartic exercise in tension and restraint. Formed in L.A. in early 2018 by Alex Kent and April Gerloff, Sprain's initial home-recorded forays into minimalistic slowcore resulted in their self-titled EP (2018) that distinguished them from the lo-fi pack through visceral expressions of depressed life. Soon, guitarist Alex Simmons and drummer Max Pretzer joined, folding tumultuous noise rock, drone, and flirtations with the avant-garde into the band's arsenal. Touring converged these explorations into Sprain's current sound: pure 21st century panic strained through a wall of piercing, feedbacking guitar amps. Written at home and refined on the road, these five new tracks are parts monolithic and minimalist, manic and mellow. Engineered by Josiah Mazzaschi at The Cave (Built to Spill, The Jesus and Mary Chain) and mixed by Tim Green at Louder Studios (The Melvins, Lungfish, Jawbreaker), the music here retains its organic purity and captures the band in its truest state. While the noticeable persuasion from '90s post hardcore and noise rock is palpable, this release takes cues from 20th century avant classical such as Xenakis and Penderecki. The end result is freewheeling and urgent, dynamic and destructive, and Sprain is marked by an aggressive versatility that has been sorely lacking in recent guitar music."
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
LP
|
|
FLENSER 109LP
|
"Giles Corey is the gloomy, stripped-down solo project of Dan Barrett, one of the masterminds behind the cult act Have A Nice Life. Dealing with issues like suicide, depression, and the paranormal, Giles Corey is both incredibly bleak and intimate. Two years after the project's self-titled debut, Barrett recorded three minimalist tracks before a series of live performances, releasing them as Hinterkaifeck. Hinterkaifeck was released in February 2013 by Enemies List Home Recordings, and has existed exclusively as a digital release until now. The title is a reference to a gruesome and mysterious mass murder that took place on a remote farm in 1922 near Munich, Germany. The Flenser presents Giles Corey's Hinterkaifeck as a one-sided 12-inch record with a special etching on the b-side."
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
LP
|
|
FLENSER 106LP
|
"Mamaleek seeks to weaponize the tropes of blues, jazz, and black metal through an understanding of their respective formal structures. Known for flouting genre conventions, the band's newest album Come & See, marks yet another degree of separation from their black metal roots. Here Mamaleek draws inspiration from post-war public housing -- specifically Chicago's notorious Cabrini Green housing project -- seeking to analyze the emotional impact of the spaces one occupies, the surreal forces behind the appearance of physical reality, and the residues they leave behind. This is the band's third full-length album for The Flenser, and their first release written and recorded with a full band. Founded in 2008 in the Bay Area by two anonymous brothers, Mamaleek has explored a vast sonic territory on the edge of a genre often renowned for its aversion to change. Their expert utilization of left-field samples and unconventional instrumentation, and their insistent drive to experiment continues to set the band apart from their peers. Mamaleek will be making a rare live appearance at the 2020 edition of the acclaimed Roadburn festival in Tilburg, The Netherlands."
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
LP
|
|
FLENSER 102LP
|
"Consumer formed in 2017 to generate reptile-brain, late capitalist agitprop. Its main tools are over-processed riffs played at high volume, impressionistic slogans, and soundscapes built from analog synths, broken electronics, and tape loops. Past your well-stocked garage, descending into Mammon's deep world of darkness, with regional coupon circulars in hand, Consumer offers doomy, electro, post-whatever. Featuring Tim Macuga from Have A Nice Life as well as Have a Nice Life's live band Myke Cameron (bass), Rich Otero (drums, synths, programming), and Joe Streeter (guitar/engineering)."
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
LP
|
|
FLENSER 095LP
|
"In April of 2018, Drowse's Kyle Bates left his home in Portland, OR, for an artist residency in barren northern Iceland. Much of Bates' time there was spent in self-imposed isolation, giving him ample space to ponder the nature of solitude, and what it means to be 'closed' or 'open' to the world. Upon returning home, Bates worked obsessively. Maya Stoner, his longtime creative partner, sometimes came to sing, but recordings were mostly done alone. The dichotomy of his Icelandic musings materialized in a very real way as he neglected his personal relationships in favor of his art. While he was confronting his life-long fear of intimacy, and reconciling himself to a diagnosis of Bipolar 1, Bates found that the means he employed to conquer these obstacles -- self-reflection through art -- carried with them an equal measure of misery. Light Mirror, Drowse's second album for The Flenser, is a subtle exploration of these contradictory attitudes and their consequences that can be heard as an artifact of sonic self-sabotage. Light Mirror falls within a lineage of overcast Pacific Northwest albums (think Grouper's Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill), but finds Drowse pushing past its slowcore roots. The album's prismatic sound reflects experimental electronic, noise pop, black metal, krautrock, and more through Kyle's distinct song-worlds. The lyrics are ruminations on the idea of multiple-selves, identity, paranoia, fear of the body, alcohol abuse, social media, the power of memory, the truths that are revealed when one is alone, and the significance of human contact. They were influenced by filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky and poet Louise Glück, who both address self-contradiction. Mastered by Nicholas Wilbur (Mount Eerie, Planning for Burial) at the Unknown, the album showcases a striking maturation in sound. Light Mirror is Drowse's most intimate and desolate work to date."
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
2LP
|
|
FLENSER 079LP
|
"San Francisco Bay Area-based black metal weirdos Mamaleek are set to release Out Of Time, their fifth full-length album and second for The Flenser. Musically, Mamaleek stands apart from the Bay Area's most well-known black metal exports (Weakling, Leviathan, et al), and their connection to the genre grows more abstract with each release. This is especially evident on this album, where the band has intensified their unique approach to heavy music with a variety of unusual samples, such as crooning from Turkish concerts, advertisements for items that long exist, and fragments of old pop songs. The band consists of two mysterious brothers who, until now, have kept entirely to themselves about the project. Just recently the duo made their first live appearance, and this release can be considered the final chapter of this era of anonymity. Out Of Time was recorded by Jack Shirley at The Atomic Garden (Deafheaven, Bosse-de-Nage, Botanist, etc.). This is Mamaleek's first double album and it is their most ambitious work to date."
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
LP
|
|
FLENSER 089LP
|
"In December of 2016, Denver, CO industrial act Echo Beds suddenly found themselves locked out of their rehearsal space. Their gear was being held hostage as city officials all over the country cracked down on unsanctioned artist collectives and the various DIY structures where many outsider creators lived and worked. This weighed heavily on the duo, who spent the next eight months experimenting and writing the material what would become Buried Language in their living rooms. Deprived of their usual tools, they were forced to improvise using unfamiliar electronics and various cobbled together devices in order to flesh out the embryonic ideas. With the plight of their colleagues fresh in their minds, these new working conditions served to shape the industrial landscape of this release, their second full-length album and first for The Flenser. Formed in 2010, Echo Beds is comprised of Keith Curts and Tom Nelsen. The project began as a one-off live set played in a local warehouse and quickly grew from there. Sensing immediately that they'd only scratched the surface of their potential, the duo began experimenting with hand-built instruments and manufactured sounds -- such as recordings of broken glass and a metal filing cabinet -- in order to explore and interpret the sounds of industry as a sonic landscape. Over the years they have made a name for themselves with their visceral and abrasive live shows that often include a modified oil drum as percussion. This album should be viewed as a kind of exorcism steeped in metaphor and brimming with social commentary. The title references widespread overnight evictions and boarded-up rehearsal spaces / DIY venues across the country. It deals with a lack of transparency, and is the culmination of all the heartbreak, frustration, grief and rage and the cyclical nature of these space closures."
|
viewing 1 To 25 of 37 items
Next >>
|
|