News

When it's all looked back upon and counted, the moments may seem like few in this life that we're required to stand tall and shine out to the world before us. Yet they are legion. With "Squid Eye", from the now-out I Made a Place, Bonnie 'Prince' Billy counts the ways, extolling the promise of a future once we're prepared to "take from the awful an awesome". Cascades of guitar, flute and sax herald this celebration of knowing and persevering, as strength... (read more)

A new year is on the horizon. While many of us are struggling through the inevitable tangled mess that has amassed over the course of the last quarter or two, with the finish line in blurred details somewhere ahead of us, OM have already moved on. Thoughts of this year, and of their splendid BBC Radio 1 release, while pleasurable, have already been dealt with - and now, 2020 is fast being written into the books. This Friday, tickets go on sale for a month... (read more)

Hamerkop is a pair of Baltimore-based sound nerds: Annabel Alpers, the composer, singer and instrumentalist formerly of New Zealand's Bachelorette, and Adam Cooke, a Baltimorean drummer/audio engineer with credits that include Beach House, Wye Oak and Future Islands. Together, they have created a song-cycle that contrasts the often-mundane (yet often satisfying) everyday world with that of the idealized, longed-for fantasy, to find the spaces in between these things, the place where we all feel good about our existence.

Hamerkop's... (read more)

Corky's Debt To His Father is a solo album by Mayo Thompson, a founder of the Red Krayola. It was recorded and released in 1970 on the independent label Texas Revolution. The record is an experiment in the genre of solo singer-songwriter format and as Thompson says, it "embraces the personal and treats the instrumental power of music for the sake of expression."

Thompson will perform a single show at New York City's (Le) Poisson Rouge on December 8th. Other than the 2013... (read more)

Six Organs of Admittance is back with a new record, new techniques in sound generation, and a new energy. Arriving three years after Burning the Threshold, Companion Rises has a driving force only hinted at previously. 

Methodologically, Companion Rises sometimes recalls the early-mid lo-fi Six Organs records, with digital processes substituting for the analog techniques of yore and, instead of Ben's hand percussion overdubs, algorithmic programs generating rhythms. Ben created all sounds and programs, did all the recording and... (read more)

Seasons, they come and go - then they come again. It's not always true of records, but the best ones do have a way of becoming perennial in the long-suffering jukeboxes of our lives and minds. Since the untimely passing of David Berman, the Silver Jews catalog and the Purple Mountains album disappeared from record stores, vanished by the incredible demand that grief and memory incurred. Now, the first buds of a new season are appearing - some Silver Jews CDs, David's lone volume... (read more)

2019 has been another year of ups and downs for most of us - but not OM. Their quest for worldwide vibrational uplift has taken them around the country and across the face of the globe for intense concert events everywhere, including a session at the BBC's fabled Maida Vale studio, where the results were so fantastic that they immediately planned for a release. And now, with one show left before year's end (Brooklyn, yo), it's here, on two-toned double 10" vinyl! Finally, a... (read more)

                                                             "It's not obsession, it's persistence"

                                                                               Ascension
                                                Music Xylouris/White, Lyrics Mitsos Stravrakakis
                                                   Η μοίρα μου με στράβωσε, ή μ'άνοιξε τα μάθια?
                                                Και βρέθηκα στο δρόμο σου ρόδο μου με τ'αγκάθια

                                                         Has fate blinded me or opened my eyes?
                                                I have... (read more)

You KNOW that voice murmuring out at you from You Tube! You've been hearing that voice over and over again since...way back in June, when Bill Callahan's first album in (too many) years, Shepherd in A Sheepskin Vest, finally happened! At 20 songs, it's hip-deep in gentle spacey numbers that take on folk and roots music like no other. Man, it was good to hear from him! Well, it's four months later, and now, here's one of the many highlights from that now classic release -... (read more)

America is having an extended String-Keys Incident moment - and like the weather these days, there's no telling how long these swells will last. However, this week, like autumn's hunter's moon or winter's bursting pipes of the Midwest, we are able to confirm that Joanna Newsom will arrive in Austin, TX on January 15th and 16th, 2020, where she'll play two nights at the Bates Recital Hall. This follows her September extended stay in Philadelphia & New York City, this month's near-week in Chicago & Milwaukee,... (read more)