Face it, the world is getting smaller, not bigger. That obscure stream in deepest Africa? We’re there, shooting underwater footage of the salamander nobody’s ever heard of. The crater closest to the sun? Currently under evaluation by scientists — and would you believe it, property developers! Where have all the horizons gone? you may be asking. Well, all of us here at the underground HQ of Drag City are slaving mirthfully over a series of forthcoming releases (not to mention several miles of catalog items) that will bring the mystery back into your life and leave you wondering what’s around the corner for us all. That’s the way the world ought to be — flat, primitive and full of the mystic. With your help as well as the world-wide financial collapse caused by the internet, we’ll all be there soon! And those of us who managed to scavenge a stereo and power generator will be able to enjoy the enigma of Drag City records. Keep reading to find out what we have up our tattered, threadbare sleeve...

Until our audaciously predicted global apocalypse, new music will be easy to come by! But understanding will be doled out on a case by case basis. For example: Singer. They’re just a good old rock and roll band — or so they claim. But what manner of rock and roll is this? The sounds of Singer appear to have been tortured together, squeezed from the tender places that cause grown men to whinny – or are those high-pitched sounds vocal harmonies? Or are they guitars? Or drums? Singer’s good old rock and roll is of the variety that emanates from dark art-filled basements, where shadowy figures play Twister without the colored dots to guide them. That’s why around the bunker, we refer to Singer’s debut album Unhistories as “songs for self-starters” — because you have to feel confidence in yourself and others to dip a beak into their heady, heedless brew. Singer pound out fat licks and stomp rockfully forward, scads of stinging-sweet vocal icing flying off into the air as they contort their way to a consensus. And like the fan of modern music and culture that you are, you have to decide for yourself about Singer and other bands like them (if indeed there are any such bands!). So peer into your local record hole — from now until the end days, Singer Unhistories is there to buffet you forward into the future. And Singer themselves are right behind the album, on tour throughout America in April and May. Do something new for yourself — get Singer Unhistories.

After the Singer world premiere, there’s probably a few record labels out there that would retire from the field for a long summer of accolade collection. Not us — we’ve got bills to collect along with the kudos! Plus, we’re just getting warmed up for an April frenzy of high-class activity involving novelty country tunes, soundtrack material, positive-vibes hardcore, global roots and grooves and the latest from the fringe fringe. I’m not just making this up! Check these thumbnail descriptions out —

J. Spaceman/Sun City Girls Mister Lonely: Music from a Film by Harmony Korine
Whew! That’s just the first one, and already it’s a full fruity mouthful! Tell you what — for future reference, you can just call the record Mister Lonely. And believe me, you’ll be making plenty of future reference to Mister Lonely. That’s partially because the two musical talents behind this soundtrack are Jason Spaceman and Sun City Girls. Now before you get visions of the two artists jamming their way to the heart of the sun together, Spaceman and Sun City Girls didn’t collaborate on a single recording here. When placed side-by-side however, they produced a flowing musical accompaniment to Harmony Korine’s latest visual weird-fest. Essentially, these esteemed musical artists collaborated with Korine’s spellbinding movie — how else to explain their shared (yet separate) vision? Their soundtrack is almost entirely instrumental, with a chanted vocal or two for good measure and a few audio clips from the film to keep you blasé listeners on your ear-toes. Packaged with arresting images from the film, Mister Lonely is a classic soundtrack experience (in other words, eccentric) as well as a fresh listen to sounds of our modern era, touched wth glitter and deep melancholy, sketching a narrative that remains unseen, waiting for you in a dark room somewhere.

Monotonix “Body Language”
The EP that walks like a man (on fire) is almost among us! We’ve been raving about Monotonix to everyone that enjoys raving on a bit of rock and roll (on fire) for a few months now... and to be honest, we’re getting a little hoarse! But we’ll keep going until the whole world knows to go down to the next Monotonix show – that’ll take care of everything. Because these guys rock it extremely convincingly with just a single guitar and a single drums and just one lead singer (yes, ladies, he's single too), and that’s something people like to see. And Monotonix like to see people, that’s why they set up in the midst of the areas designated for audiences in clubs all around the world. Once there, they let it all hang out and play their riff-driven tunes in a manner that causes people to party! Sometimes it’s fun, sometimes it’s fun and physical too — why do you think they call it “Body Language”? We haven’t witnessed such abandon in years and years. The whole Monotonix thing is based on how much of a blast rock music is – and when you hear their debut EP, you’ll hear the blast in equally awesome recorded form.

Neil Hamburger Sings Country Winners
Well, what else do we need to say about this? “America’s Funnyman” (“The World’s Funnyman,” actually) has decided to sing America’s music at last! The country crooning of Neil Hamburger (though some would call it moaning) fits the white blues that is country music to a T! Neil’s life story is perfect fodder for the “tear in the beer” genre as well – and Neil’s original tunes, such as “At Least I Got Paid,” “Three Piece Chicken Dinner” and “The Recycle Bin” bring his personality to the fore. His crack “Nashville West” band includes such luminaries as Dave Gleason, Atom Ellis, Prairie Prince, Rachel Haden and Joe Goldmark, all of whom play and sing their country-fried hearts out to create a sound that is decidedly old-school honky-tonk. All this plus cover versions of John Entwistle, Mark Eitzel and Billy Edd Wheeler add up to a powerful singing debut from America’s newest hat act, Neil Hamburger!

Yoro Sidibe
Last years’ New Label of the Year is back with more scintillating talent from the Malian hinterlands! Yaala Yaala’s latest discovery is Yoro Sidibe, a donso ngonifola (hunter’s musician) from the Wasulu village of Babbala, in the southwest of Mali. His music recounts myths and legends meant to harden and strengthen the men as they take to the hunt. The music is popular with the non-hunting populace as well, and this CD contains several performances from the many cassettes Yoro has released over the years. It’s low-burning hot stuff!

Festival Come, Arrow, Come
Language of Stone presents Festival! Festival is a band of sisters: Lindsay and Alexis Powell, to be clear (there’s brothers in the band too, but this isn’t the time or place). The sound of Festival marches from tribal to American traditional to psychedelic pop in colorful and melodic formation, an animating listening experience throughout. They’ve already played some tour dates and will be branching out for even more — stay alert!

Lights self-titled
Language of Stone also presents Lights, whose eerie tromp belies their Brooklyn origins. Or does it? There’s an awful lot of spooky roots muse floating above the borough there and now Lights are poised to float over the planet! Coming on like a latter-day Roches, Lights are less whimsical and more quasi-goth mythological in their dark-hued psychedelic rock, which features the kind of bottomless jamming that the Airplane flew with way back when. Singing together in a group of three, Sophia, Linnea and yes, Wizard Smoke (that darling girl) do cast a witchy shadow — but the rhythm keeps them in the land of the living. They too are touring all over the place — their MySpace page tells the tale.

After an April like that, where is there to go? Hawaii, right. But we’re too busy riding the wild surf here to fuck off for a lovely, life-affirming fortnight away — check out what’s happening in May!

Desolate without the presence of Jim O’Rourke in our lives, we’ve taken to setting up a series of reissues that will bring his idiosyncratic early sounds to fresh ears all around the world, as well as a few titles that slipped between the American cracks over the years. To wit — ever heard of Mimodokodesuka? This is the one and only album by Osorezan, a band of improvisers comprised of O’Rourke, Darin Gray and Chris Corsano. Recorded and released in Japan in 2005, Mimodokodesuka is finally seeing the light of day here in the lower 50, as well as seeing the light of vinyl for the first time ever for all the children of the world. The music, as the line-up might hint to you, is a couple of excursions in the drums-bass-and electric guitar vein guaranteed to thrill Bailey-heads and Sharrock-ers everywhere. There’s that plus a CD reissue of the relatively ancient (1990, anyone?) Tamper to represent our first triumphant salvo in the O’Rourke O’Reissue campaign. Tamper’s a lot of fun too, finding young James Michael O’Rourke frustrated with people listening to musical clichés of playing yet ignoring the sounds themselves. So Tamper goes, highlighting the pure tones of instrumentation without the distracting sound of instruments’ definitions. It’s an arresting listening experience, with dreamy moments of undefined sound leading to moments of undefined violence and thence to beauty and so on and on — a perfect launch for the O’Rourke O’Rediscovery Trip we’ve got planned for you. A trip that will include a drone work on Streamline this summer called long night that’s nearly three hours in length! A trip that won’t be complete until we release the first new Jim O’Rourke solo album in six years later this fall!

The cherry on top of our May monster sundae is a CD reissue on Blue Chopsticks that’s been blowing our minds around the office this week: Circle X, Prehistory. We’ve long been fans of this band thanks to the dexter’s cigar reissue of “untitled”, their 1979 EP. Matter of fact, we were convinced that was the only Circle X record the world had to offer (damn you, AllMusic Guide!) – but happily, we were wrong. Prehistory was recorded in 1981 and released in ’83 and has the distinction of sounding both of its time and out of time, with funk-dub bass, clattering polyrhymic percussion and punk guitar and voice creating a truly unique sound and a second trail blazed by Circle X that nobody’s gone down since. All the better, for it helps make May 2008 an eternal date in Drag City world history.

Or is it world tour? With Monotonix, it’s hard to tell — they’re combing the landscape so intensely, we figure they’ll cover the planet before they’re done. After this extensive shaking-down of America, they’re off to Europe. Europe, where Baby Dee is queen of all she surveys, from London to Moscow and back through early May. Europe, where Bill Callahan takes over in mid-May and battles it out with Silver Jews, who are warming fans up for their June release date with shows and festivals alike! Yeah, as summer comes it seems to be all about Europe — but don’t forget about us back here in the U.S.A. We’ve got the Singer tour where the mysteries of Unhistories will be revealed (we think), Neil Hamburger in a series of non-singing shows (but he’s going to have to tour for Sings Country Winners, right fans? Send your postcards to us begging for this to happen!) and Major Stars, The Valerie Project and Faun Fables in short runs around different regions of this great country o’ ours. See all the details here – and jump a freight to the date nearest you! With the good weather coming, we could all use a little time on the bum. What with the way the economy’s going, we might all get it too.

What comes after all this? Who knows?! We may just fall out of the sky if we don’t find out soon...so come back to see if we figure it out, or just flame out instead. Come for our destiny — stay for the shirts!

With endless hope for the future,

Rian Murphy
Drag City Inc.