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Ticker-tape and soot cascade through the air as Michael Donovan's parade rolls on down the road, this time in collab with The Mighty Flashlight (aka Mike Fellows). On this latest long player, Mike ‘n Mighty lead us into a stereo maze of sweet and hot noise, soaked in the purifying waters of rock and passed through a variety of sonic sieves, making a jolly hallucinatory racket, at that!

At least it did on the first single, the carnival of sound "Planet Metley"! For the... (read more)

Moments of eternity: the first plucks at the strings, a bass note cementing the drift into place a little more than a minute in. The organ drones, iterating unlivable ancient history, a chiming note of the church. Guitar strings, climbing that stairway to heaven. Gossamer-light when viewed from a distance; up close, the gears grind with a visceral physicality.

With BCMC, Cooper Crain (Bitchin Bajas, CAVE) and Bill MacKay unite to create Foreign Smokes: provocalogues, equal parts avant-garde... (read more)

Could it be? Is he risen? The late master re-materializes before us, in the form of something resembling the Oracle of Delphi or Clown Prince at Olympus. Recorded circa 1995/1996, mostly in John Fahey’s room at a Salem, Oregon boarding-house, the performances on Proofs and Refutations prefigure the ornery turn of the page that marked Fahey’s final years, drawing another enigmatic rabbit from his seemingly bottomless musical hat, making delightfully confounding demands upon your listening (and thinking) ear.

Mounting a thundering dialectic... (read more)

P.G. Six's latest offering, Murmurs & Whispers, features lots of what you simply love about P.G. Six: songs sung from the heart and played with mostly acoustic instrumentation, intricate finger-picking patterns and expansive, spacious arrangements. As he has done over the past two decades, Pat blends influences from traditional music and psychedelic rock in new ways unique to him on Murmurs & Whispers. It is a contemplative, immersive listening experience.

The third single from Murmurs & Whispers is "I Don't Want to Be... (read more)

Last year's YTI⅃AƎЯ is this year's YTI⅃AƎЯ. The album came out ten months ago and we now have our first video. A video that feels like it gestated that long, that it needed to gestate that long to become what it is. There's a lifetime portrayed in this video. In the same way that the song plays with only a few images, the video matches that minimalism -- suspended in a pleasant and rich purgatory.

Bill Callahan deals out a character portrait of the... (read more)

Lost in time yet always in season, here’s a blast of that ol’ perennial, the punk rock, representative of the swiftly changing times around Bailey’s Crossroads, just outside Washington, D.C., in the early 80s. Skam recorded this stuff in ’82–’83, then broke up, leaving these songs to be released . . . maybe never? Or more preferably, now, to race into the bloodstream of jaded, faded today with all the vigor and rigor of Skam’s eternal youth.

Though they didn’t release any records... (read more)

Finally! Vinylly! The Prison break of our dreams at long last. Freedom is the goal for Rockaway Beach’s very own state-of-mind jam band. Everybody’s got their point of view, and one slamming riff at a time unites all of them: five guys, four vocals, three guitars together outrageously, melding a craft that runs on it’s own rock and roll synergy, and lots of it. Sure, it goes too far! How the hell else you gonna get Upstate?

Prison embrace a loose, free-flowing... (read more)

Resolve acts in dialogue with the minimalist inspirations of the first Arnold Dreyblatt & The Orchestra of Excited Strings release, 1982’s Nodal Excitation – in effect, looking beneath the hood of several decades of progression to review and renew the revolutionary intent of their microntonal foundation credo. This new Orchestra – Oren Ambarchi, Konrad Sprenger and Joachim Schütz – combine effortlessly to explore new scalar dimensions.

The compositions found within Resolve demonstrate the Orchestra’s unique feel — incorporating rhythmic accents that act as microbeats within Dreyblatt’s... (read more)

The return of P.G. Six’s deep acoustic focus, a devotional style honed from childhood, oozes forth from every pore of his new LP, Murmurs & Whispers. Based in hypnotic figurations on his Triplett Celtic Harp (and hurdy gurdy, guitar and keyboards), Pat Gubler effortlessly projects a whirlwind of emotions, from wistful melancholy to dark remonstration and ethereal exultation.

P.G.'s progressive visions radiate from ancient traditions; on Murmurs & Whispers' second single, “I Have A House,” he adapts lyrics from a 13th... (read more)

Since 2011, Mike Donovan has been a Drag City stalwart, first with Sic Alps, then as a solo and with The Peacers — but Mike “The Mighty Flashlight” Fellows has been a behind-the-scenes figure at Drag City since the early early days, playing live and on record with Royal Trux, Silver Jews and Will Oldham. A multi-hyphenate, Fellows has also contributed to releases from Endless Boogie, Pigeons, Weeping Bong Band and Prison in recent years. So when these two rambling musicians found... (read more)