You’re in the right place. You — wait a minute, you did wake up this morning with music on your mind, right? And a desire to be shown some of that good old new stuff that’s always being trotted out by the hungry like-minds of the world today?

Then yeah, you’re in the right place…

It’s approximately month 228 of the Drag City era — and we know where our children are. They’re out there somewhere, busy being born or dying! It’s all so easy when you know where everything is. And what with maps and clocks and calendars, not to mention GPS and all that digital shit, we’re fully confident of our coordinates. We know where everything is at —except for the elusive you! It’s you we’re constantly trying to win over, you we spend all time trying to reach, you, you, YOU!

So listen…you want to hear about something really great?

Let’s start with…no — wait how about!...hmm, where to begin? It’s a miracle we can even form sentences in this hear newsletter — there’s so dam much in the Drag City new release canon to fire upon you! And all of it is the kind of stuff you love to love – you know, non-obvious titles by artists you’re not always hearing from, music that makes you think (as well as dance and love, duh!). Like a DVD called Silver Jew with a minimum of performances by the Silver Jews on it, or a book called Musical Paintings. I mean, these things require explanation! And once our brains have started expanding with knowledge, they just keep on growing. This fall, they’re gonna feed on musical information from Brother JT3, Red Favorite, David Grubbs, The Howling Hex, Nimrod Workman, RTX, Heavy Hands, Mythical Beast and more!

I know…let’s break this stuff down chronologically!

Blowing to you from far away in time and long ago in space are our August releases, both of which are in the stores that built our country of music NOW! Both releases hail from unknown corners of the 90s, yet both carry a pedigree that open-eared listeners are gonna really enjoy. What are you waiting for? Read this thing!

Suarasama hail from North Sumatra, heard of it? You should have, it’s the sixth largest island in the world! Plus, we’ve been talking about how Suarasama are from Sumatra for weeks now. So pay attention now! This is important. Sumatra’s a part of Indonesia, which is a nation spread across a bunch of islands…like, thousands of Islands, dig? Each of which might have once had their own tribe with their own way of doing things, looking at the world, and (for our purposes here) singing things. So, Sumatran musical traditions are also a part of the larger mosaic of Indonesian musical traditions, which in turn, is a part of southeastern Asian traditions, Pacific Ocean traditions, and ultimately, traditions that all of us here in the world at large should be able to relate to.

This geographical inevitability inspired in Irwansyah Harahap and Rithaony Hutajulu (the musicians who formed Suarasama) a desire to play their indigenous music and to find the connections between their music and the music of their neighbors. Suarasama’s first album Fajar Di Atas Awan is thus a blend of sounds from Africa, the Middle East, India, Easter Europe and Southeast Asia, all worked together into the Sumatran musical tradition. And lest this description sound alarmingly eclectic, part of the beauty of Fajar Di Atas Awan is that the music sounds so natural, so relaxed, so unified — and that’s because it is. Part of the other beauty of Suarasama is the beauty. This is really fine-sounding music, really beautiful expressions of the soul. The songs and singing derive from Muslim devotionals, and the holy air spreads through every room that the music comes into. The record comes in a flower-printed jacket that could come from many of the marketplaces in this great wide world — look for it!

Also out today, August 19th, is a new Streamline release of, as mentioned above, a recording Jim O’Rourke made way back before you were born (again), though by the time he finished making it, whole families had probably been conceived. It’s just that epic! But seriously, Jim rolled this work out over the course of one very long night in 1990 (the very night that gives this piece its title!). Then he moved on and made another dozen records before the year was over — the kid was moving fast back in those days, and not just with the ladies. Like other pieces from the early years of O’Rourke (Tamper, anyone?), long night is a work of minimalism, and in fact, outright drone. Truth be told, both CDs of this double-disc release contain one single drone! Admittedly, it wiggles all over the place, but it’s undeniable one long-ass tone doing it’s minimal thang. Sure it could have been released in the early 90s — but who would have noticed? Just a bunch of high-nosed aficionados of avant sounds and egg-headed academic types. By waiting until now, Streamline is opening long night up to a whole new world of listeners born into a much more permissive time (in terms of music, that is — sadly, none of ‘em give a fuck without putting a sheet of plastic between ‘em — oh, for the days of truly free love!). Anyway, we’d like to congratulate Streamline for taking the time to put this out, as it should definitely be heard, double-CD or no. And, show of hands here, who’s up for a triple-LP version?

No, this isn’t the tour dates section! What kind of title would that be to encourage our artists, and bands everywhere, to take their sorry insurance-less asses out into the world and entertain, for christ’s sake?!? No, this section wants to assure you, the fans of music everywhere, that we’re committed not only to bringing out new releases with different sounds on a monthly basis, but we’re also committed to bringing back old releases with their diversity of sounds too! After all, it would be criminal to have put out as many releases as we have over the last ten years or whatever it’s been (it’s been nineteen, stoney! – ed.) just to let them all lapse and go out of print. Sure, some of them are – but have you seen the line waiting to get vinyl repressed these days? It’s off the hook! Show of hands — who wants RTI to take on a graveyard shift? Regardless of what the man...ufacturer says, we’re still keep on pushing!

And to this end, we’re glad to bring back vinyl for Palace Music’s classic of 1995, Viva Last Blues, not to mention Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy’s seminal 1999 release I See a Darkness. And to go along with the Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea purchase you’re making (if you haven’t already — tsk, tsk!), the previous Silver Jews LP, Tanglewood Numbers. We ordered them, and that’s why they’re out there!

Perhaps most excitingly of all is the one and only Merzbow release we’ve got in our extended catalog — the dexter’s cigar CD entitled Rainbow Electronics II. The only dexter’s cigar album that ever had its own t-shirt (out of print, sadly…and no, it’s not coming back. We're not there yet, kids)!This was recorded back in the old days of Merzbow releases – analog tape, not laptop, but even then with a seamless quality that looked toward the coming technology. Merzbow was aware of noise musics ghettoization as “industrial music” and created these recordings as a demonstration of the colorful nature of his own private noise. Rainbow Electronics II has been out of print for seven or eight years now, but listening to it again brings the color back into our cheeks. If you made the mistake of missing this the first time around, hunt a copy down for yourself now – and play it LOUD! The only way to learn from the mistakes of the past is to not make them again — isn't that what ol' Shakespeare so famously said? Or wait, was is Einstein? If we could reissue those guys' records too, we would, okay?

Speaking of the past, if you’ve missed out on the releases of ours from last month, you haven’t really missed out on them at all. They’re still out there, making their own personal statements in their own little part of the record store (or online retailer, sheesh). We’re talking about the space-folk collaboration of Masaki Batoh & Helena Espvall, the electro-pop remix that is The Red Krayola’s Fingerpointing and the chamber-folk EP from Faun Fables, “A Table Forgotten.” They’re all as relevant today as the day they were all released, July 22, 2008. Your job — find ‘em. And then enjoy them for the rest of time.

That’s before — but what about after? My brag above seemed to be saying that we’ve got plenty on the docket for the forthcoming months — and guess what, it wasn’t just a brag! No, as it turns out, it was a just simple recitation of facts — like so. In September, we have three new releases…

Garsh, it’s been a long time since we’ve heard from The Howling Hex. They’re always busy with the blog and there have been some shows, but what’s become of their three-releases-a-year pace? The answer may be found in the grooves of the new Howling Hex album, Earth Junk. Encoded into the lyrics is the message — they’re not getting older, they’re getting better! The mysterious path less traveled that The Howling Hex ride exclusively on has once again taken them into uncharted musical territory — a barren landscape but for puffs of circus organ and stands of electric guitar riffage, a loneliness traversed by male and female vocal interjections with their tall tales to tell. The New Border Sound keeps getting farther and farther out there! Earth Junk — it might just save us after all.

Silver Jews fans! If you’re wearing out your copy of Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea (or vice-versa), if you can’t purchase tickets fast enough for your creepy Deadhead-like pursuit of their forthcoming U.S. tour, take a time out! We’ve got something else for you to exhaust yourself on — the DVD called Silver Jew! It’s a documentary of a very special time David Berman and the gang spent in Israel back in 2006 when they were exploring the world as a band for the very first time ever! This brought them in front of a lot of loving crowds in a lot of far-flung places around the map, but the few days spent in Israel turned out to be very profound for the band half-named after the inhabitants of that venerable old nation — born-again Jew David Berman in particular. Yeah, there’s some music, but mostly the hour-long documentary is about finding a place in the world — not necessarily Israel, but a place inside oneself — the soul, perhaps? Buy Silver Jew in September (or better yet, pre-order now!) and find out.

Hey, when’s the last time you heard a Gastr del Sol record? If you’re like us (and if you are, we pity you — funny how that works, isn’t it?), you listened to one recently and the richness of that faraway time (they bowed out in early ’98) felt like a whole other world, a virgin planet that deserves further investigation. Of course, the brain trust of Gastr del Sol – David Grubbs and Jim O’Rourke — haven’t necessarily stood still in the time since then, making many solo records and recordings with others. Lately, David’s been almost more busy releasing records on his fine Blue Chopsticks imprint (such as the recent CD reissue of Circle X’s long-lost Prehistory album), including collaborations of his with poet Susan Howe (like Souls of the Labadie Tract). As cool as all that’s been, we’re pleased to announce a new David Grubbs solo album for the first time since June 2004’s A Guess at the Riddle. The new album is called An Optimist Notes the Dusk and beyond that mouthful, we find a classic set of David Grubbs music — optimistic, yes – but darkly so, making an economy of expression in an ever-expanding territory and finding the fascination in between spaces we might take for granted on anyone else’s record. In this way, it relates to those albums of the former era – but being David Grubbs means looking forward even while reflecting the things that fit from Back There. This makes An Optimist Notes the Dusk a bold and invigorating album and a lovely, intriguing listen as well.

No, we’re not pitching three more things here, we’re just describing our other September release. Have you heard of this Musical Painting thing? Back in 2002, High Llama Sean O’Hagan collaborated with Belgian artist Jean Pierre Muller on just that — an audio-visual work that produced elements of a complete musical work when different panels in the painting were touched — bringing the remix concept to good old-fashioned gallery shows in the UK and Europe. Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to convince them to bring the painting over here — it’s pretty big — and in the meantime, they’ve come up with another take on the concept, called the Musical Wheel — but until they pack them carefully up and bring them over here, we’ve got a cut-down item to fill the hole you didn’t even know you had yet! That’s where the Musical Painting Book comes in, a nice little hard-cover item of nearly 100 pages of full-color reproductions of the two paintings. Naturally, a CD is included that contains both musical works — bright, beautiful works from the hand and pen of Sean O’Hagan with all the flair and color we expect from him. Can’t wait? You don’t have to! Just wait until September 23, and you’ll be able to get a copy for yourself from the local record-or-art-hole. Or order it from good old Drag City – like so!

Imagine our coronary when we cracked open the new issue of Vanity Fair and found this:

Yeah, it's an ad for Bloomie's with a fashionably-attired young beauty — but do you see what she's got her delicate fingertips on? Children of the Sixth Root Race, Songs From the Source!! You can't buy publicity like this! Well, you can, but we certainly can't pay for it. Oh, if only the LP were in print right now! Well, it's gonna be back soon, so if you're the type who buys things because you see them in magazine adverts, well hold on, we're comin'! Oh, and by the way, we're curious — if you are a girl of such exquisite taste n curves who regularly finds yourself anywhere near records like Songs From the Source, please send a photo our way. If we get more than one, we'll have us a Hottest Fans of Drag City contest or something. Shee, what an alternate reality that would be!

This newsletter is long enough, don’t you figure? We’ve got bands on tour (see about them here) and loads of stuff coming in October and November — you heard the names up top, Brother JT3, RTX, Red Favorite, Heavy Hands, Mythical Beast and so forth…but we’re going to let the mere mention of them bring that familiar tingle of anticipation to you until next time. We’ve got things to take care of in the hear and now!

And if you don’t have your new Suarasama double-LP or Jim O’Rourke, double-CD, then you’ve got some work to do too.

Let’s get to it!

Rian Murphy
August 2008