News

WAND FREAKS UNITE: Who are you? Where are you? How are you? After a massive tour of place both large and small across America this May/June, the quintet is back on the road again at the end of this month for a straight shot up the coast into the northwest and over the border (gasp!) into British Columbia - and across Vancouver Island even! To coastal Tofino! With "Perfume"'s redolence still wafting in the wind, Wand are throwing open the creative floodgates, packing each... (read more)

July, and the temperature's soaring, beyond even what we generally accord to this high season! Something's wrong, and it's not as simple as figuring out what your summer jam's gonna be - but we've got a suggestion for that: Blueberry! "Blueberry Jam" by Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, that is - all-new, country-fried-yet-cool-and-soothing, a song of appreciation for the natural pleasures in life; tipping the cap to love and relaxation and blessed relief with a bounding beat that reaches to the sky among cascades of high-flyin'... (read more)

When Will Oldham was working with Andy Bruntel on the “Cursed Sleep” video in Atascadero, CA, he got a telephone call from his mother announcing that his father had died very suddenly and unexpectedly. This event began a distinct shift in color and practice for Bonny endeavors. Oldham advanced to Louisville, KY to see what was what. He decided to buy a house there, and to lay low for a spell. The first time he ventured out of Louisville after his father’s death, it was... (read more)

The CD box set Rebajas is a 7-disc, 6 hour and 42 minute second time time around - for some of you, anyway - through the Bitchin Bajas catalog to date, including all 11 of their solo releases: eight albums and the Bajas sides of three split records! It's a musical second time around - but on this format, it's a first.  

The music on the Rebajas box represents the dawn and early pleastoric period of Bitchin Bajas -in the... (read more)

Like GREATEST PALACE MUSIC before it, ASK FORGIVENESS was more explicitly a master class than a regular record-building session. In the case of the former, Mark Nevers facilitated an experience in which Will Oldham could butt heads, in the best of ways, with the seasoned and storied top-tier session musicians of Nashville. And the meat of those sessions was that interaction and the subsequent interactions with Oldham’s friends and comrades on previously-recorded songs. ASK FORGIVENESS was about working with Meg Baird and Greg Weeks,... (read more)

With Joy, Ty Segall & White Fence's new collaborative set of songs accelerate wildly from where we last found them, sharing one debaucherousmind. Their hits are like mementos buried in the ground, crawling up from the earth with attractive deformity - an auditory return to Salem's Lot with fresh, mutated sounds bubbling from beneath the surface!

The new album drops July 20th and whatta Joy it is! Patience is a virtue, good things come to those who wait blah, blah, blah--- all that's totally... (read more)

At forever's long last, King Kong are back in our stratosphere with new explorations in funky electro pop that hypothesize, stupefy, and are guaranteed to leave you in stitches! King Kong leader and mad genius Ethan Buckler takes you on three tales that will out-leap the maddest of imaginings any primate could ever imagine! You read that right; not one, not two but THREE new Kong jams to feast upon. Get those hips ready to get up and shake with the wildest of thrills: "60s... (read more)

If they hadn’t before, the Bonnie recording sessions by 2006 started to resemble the assemble-the-team movie genre a la THE DIRTY DOZEN or THE DOGS OF WAR. Here’s how the LETTING GO team members, all experts in their own spheres of musical excellence, came to be a part of the recording session that yielded such a record.

Of course, Paul Oldham was deeply enmeshed in the Bonny zone, having recorded and/or played on almost all of the Bonny sessions up to this point.... (read more)

Way back in 2005, Drag City welcomed Six Organs of Admittance to the fold with the release of School of the Flower, the first Six Organs album to be recorded in a studio. School of the Flower was dubbed an instant classic upon release, and with 13 years full of 20/20 hindsight, that declaration has proven to be spot on! A video was made for one of that album's most beautiful tracks, "All You've Left", which somehow never received a proper premiere or position... (read more)

In 1996, Masaki Batoh, who'd spent the previous decade recording, playing and living in a hippie communal environment with the heavy chamber folk outfit Ghost, formed a new unit to play in a different manner. He'd just finished making an incredible new Ghost album, Lama Rabi Rabi, but making music with Ghost was a spiritual endeavor; and for a change, Batoh wanted just to enjoy the playing of the kind of music that he and his musical friends had grown up with;... (read more)