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Mess Esque, the Australian duo of Mick Turner (Dirty Three) and Helen Franzmann (McKisko), got off to a fast start in 2021 with two quietly electrifying albums: Dream #12 and their self-titled debut for Drag City. That electricity sparks from Mick’s aquatic guitar moods meeting with Helen's vocals and dream imagery, causing nights, tides and empty landscapes to simmer with raw passion. You feel like being moved in a deep and fulfilling way? Then Mess Esque is for you, and no... (read more)

Time passes slowly - until it don't! For instance: the year it's been since the release of Nathan Bowles and Bill MacKay debut album. It's only now that they're set to take their musical keys to the kingdom on tour, for all subjects to hear - but really, what's 'only now'? The end of a long time, or a short one? Fortunately, it's no matter: if you ain't already, slip Keys into any little eyelet you find in your day, and prepare to unlock a lovely... (read more)

The UK pop charts in 1979 breathlessly reported on the changing spectrum serenading a new generation, made of equal parts aging hippie and prog delicacies alongside new ascendant sounds: rough-hewn pub and punk rock, dub reggae, disco, ska, among Stiff and Krautrock.

Flying Doesn’t Help presented Slapp Happy's Anthony Moore in a spiky art-punk reinvention - a cult masterpiece to be joined several decades later by the revelation of 1976's lost-then-found OUT. At the time however, Flying Doesn't Help was Anthony only known contribution to the... (read more)

“Hello, Hi”! Welcome in, to a new room to play the styles and feels that lie under Ty Segall’s fingers, easing fresh air into acoustic space with an assortment of love songs flowering in righteous unconsciousness. Plaintive and wistful, unafraid. Like rain washing away yesterday, “Hello, Hi” pushes open the door, inviting you to pass through all the old shades and degrees of hot and cold. Dark paths turn off abruptly into absurd darkness, then wind back through the broken rocks, ecstatic again.... (read more)

Veteran noisemakers (and good pals!) Dean Spunt (No Age) & John Wiese (Sissy Spacek) debut as collaborators on The Echoing Shell, a fantastic conception in contemporary musique concrète. John Wiese’s stunning reassemblage of Dean Spunt’s drumming noise, is abstraction, sure - but only implied abstraction; drawing from the rumble and crash of the traps, finding dimensions of hiss and crunch beyond the sounds of a traditional drumkit.

Utilizing a variety of techniques, Wiese's commitment to working through the process of editing and tape-manipulation... (read more)

Nah. Nah! How can it be two years since Jackie Lynn's Jacqueline album? If so, let's celebrate the wild ebb and flow of the our timestream, while we simultaneously raise a glass to the anniversary of Jackie's very real milestone in musical evolution!
And what then's a celebration without gifts? A song for each year!

April 2020: Jacqueline plunges into the glittering American darkness headfirst, driving and dancing through new identities, dreams and realities. Jackie Lynn, electric in their natural state – electrique, even -... (read more)

We are commemorating the 20th year anniversary of the passing of John Henry Timmis IV aka J.T. IV (b. Sept 21, 1961, d. April 1 2002). John was a street-smart rock rebel whose whole design was to shock, woo, and fabricate. Living amid the public health crises, economic problems, and wars of the 1980s—much like we are experiencing today—John’s self-reflection, vulnerability, and primal scream converged in a short yet highly ambitious glimmer of time. His music and films were unflinchingly political, and as... (read more)

With their collaborative duo debut, Dean Spunt and John Wiese invite you to experience the frenzy of percussive space and discreet sound found inside The Echoing Shell.

This is the first official collaboration between the two veteran music-makers, though their connection goes back to 1999. As John recalls, “[Dean] was in a high school arts program at CalArts. A friend and I were recording the first Sissy Spacek demo in the design studios there, and taking a tape to my car over and over... (read more)

40-plus years since its original release, the pop-punk-new wave inventions of Anthony Moore’s Flying Doesn’t Help are freshly remastered, blasting the sparkling, angular sounds into today with perfect vitality.

After spending the early years of the 1970s making experimental music first as a solo artist, then with Slapp Happy and Henry Cow, Anthony Moore's 1976’s OUT sessions had reinvigorated his youthful love of pop radio's naïve melodies, the undeniable rush of a song. England was roiled as violently as it had been in counter-cultural days a... (read more)

The music of Oren Ambarchi, Johan Berthling and Andreas Werliin'sGhosted, put forth with a steady flow of small details on bass, guitar and drums, is a remarkable display of minimalist, rhythmic flexibility. Those three go deep as it is, but the latest single from Ghosted, "I", also features the legendary Swedish reed player Christer Bothén on donso n'goni, the sound of which syncs like a 4th dimensional cog in the revolving spectral watch Oren, Johan and Andreas have created. Bothén's knowledge of the guimbri and... (read more)