News

GUARAPERO success notwithstanding, Will Oldham’s connections with the Dirty Three’s Mick Turner and Jim White continued to strengthen.  All three participated in the European tour by the Boxhead Ensemble in support of the documentary film DUTCH HARBOR.  Later, Turner sent Oldham some recordings he’d been working on.  These were solo recordings done on guitar and organ, using loops in an organic fashion still pretty much unique to Mick Turner.  The pieces were meditative, organic, and inspiring.  Turner asked Oldham if there was... (read more)

Something has been missing from the last few mini-millennia we've all been living through here in the two-thousand-teens, but it is a discreet thing; have you noticed at all? Listen freak - if you can raise your thousand yard stare from the heart of the campfire embers, you might be roused by the sign that's been posted on your cabin wall: our old favorite neo-troubadours Espers are manifesting once again! Re-birthed into an inextricably changed world after the interminable gap of nearly a decade, Espers... (read more)

Ty Segall's Goblin Phase One North American tour is just about over. Whoa. EPIC. Now that he and the Freedom Band have knocked the rust off cages all around the country, it must be time to get alone, right? Yeah man! For a couple weeks - then the European tour. So, alone time later in June, then? Sure, for a little minute. But then it's time for the BEST kind of alone time - a solo acoustic tour. Just Ty, the guitar - and... (read more)

1980: it was the dawn of a new age, a generation and more plunged into the abyss. But what of Death?

The Hackney brothers were no different from anybody else - in the heat and tumult of the 1970s, they'd seen that new world coming. They'd raised their voices righteously, transforming with outrage and hunger their all-in-the-family power-trio Rock Funk Fire Express into the proto-punk legends called Death. These were the sounds the world knows today as For the Whole World... (read more)

The new scent of Wand has almost arrived! And as Wand gets closer, their vision comes into a blur of focus and other things. Like dig the effortless anthem-itude of "Pure Romance".  And the video - boy howdy! It recalls days of absorbing the dim flicker of a television set into the wee hours of the morning just to catch a glimpse of new music videos by somebody GOOD! "Pure Romance", shot and directed by Cory Hanson, emits a warm glow hearkening back... (read more)

"LITTLE JOYA"

There was a song left out of the sessions for JOYA, called “Joya”.  The idea for the title of the song and the record was to pay tribute to the Minutemen’s 7” Ep “Joy” as well as to, well, just JOY, and then to augment both and all with an extra vowel.  After the JOYA recording, Will Oldham and Bob Arellano went to Mexico.  They landed in Monterrey and discovered that there was a soft drink factory there which... (read more)

Back at the end of last year, we were frankly excited and ready to take you back down the years to the first two Rafael Toral records, Sound Mind Sound Body and Wave Field, remastered and repackaged to appear on vinyl for the first time ever! They were scheduled for February release, and then the unexpected happened - goblins, not of freedom so much as production, got in the way. The test pressings sounded wack, which is always a drag, but is especially distressing... (read more)

 Haley Fohr, of experimental folk project Circuit des Yeux, performs an original soundtrack for one of the first art films ever made---Salomé, the 1923 silent film adaptation of a play by Oscar Wilde.

The plot of Salomé has long been an inspiration for moving musical work, most notably for Strauss's opera of the same name, which reflects the shock of modernity in Wilde's text. Like Strauss, Fohr finds contemporary resonance in Salomé's sensuality and violence, scoring the film with extended... (read more)

LOST BLUES AND OTHER SONGS

The 1990s were a time of transition in the music business; but then, what decade isn’t?  Vinyl was on its way out and compact discs were embraced by most buyers.  The 7” single already had a limited audience: a potential buyer needed to have access to a store that carried singles; the buyer had to have a functioning record player; the buyer needed the energy and dedication required to perform the act of putting a single onto her... (read more)

Oooh-ooh that smell, can't you smell that smell? The smell of Wand surrounds you! Yes - "Perfume" is on the wind, and time is inching closer and closer to the much-anticipated May 25th EP drop, but how about another snoot-ful to carry you through until then? A bit of "Pure Romance," perhaps, with chimes of guitars, crisp and fresh melodies and a core-shattering thump that takes hold with an iron grip, drawing you tight into a dangerous liaison of pop and rock, as both long... (read more)