Browse by Label: 3 BEADS OF SWEAT

Artist:	MOUNTAIN GOATS, THE
Title:	Protein Source Of The Future...Now!
Label:	3 BEADS OF SWEAT
Format:	CD
Price:	$11.00
Catalog #:	3BOS 1001CD

"Protein Source of the Future...Now! is the first volume (in a series of three) of compilations collecting songs by the Mountain Goats from the myriad 7"s, cassettes, and compilation appearances made over the years. This is a reissue of the 23-track Ajax compilation that originally came out in 1999. This volume spans the period of their early-ish material ('93/'94), when John Darnielle was still insisting that the band was a 5-piece, up through the development of his modern, more mature solo style, albeit before he started recording in 'real' studios. For many folks, this period features some of his best, most poignant and funniest work."

Artist:	BACULUM
Title:	My Friends Became Junkies
Label:	3 BEADS OF SWEAT
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	3BOS 1004CD

"My Friends Became Junkies is the debut album from a San Francisco 'studio' band headed up by Michigan transplant Sam Goldman, who performed on the final recordings of the late great Slovenly. There's no way to neatly encapsulate what it is that Baculum do over the 19 songs here, since the results are so wide-ranging and uncategorizable. There is some great, wiry rock, rustic Americana-tinged campfire songs, atmospheric ambient studio fuckery, slinky noir-nightclub shuffle, ethereal John Fahey-meets-This Kind of Punishment art-rock, and more. It's a sonic cousin to such fellow travelers as the aforementioned Slovenly, Mayo Thompson's Red Krayola, This Kind of Punishment, the Toiling Midgets, the Fish & Roses country-blues side-project Peach Cobbler, and Tom Waits."

Artist:	ART OF FIGHTING
Title:	Wires
Label:	3 BEADS OF SWEAT
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	3BOS 1005CD

"Wires is the debut album by Melbourne, Australia-based quartet Art of Fighting, originally released in 2001 by the Trifekta label (home of Gersey, Sodastream, Minimum Chips, Life Without Buildings, Preston School of Industry and Superchunk) in Australia. The album showcases the band at the peak of their game, delivering a delicate, atmospheric (yet occasionally thundering), sophisticated take on moody rock that evokes at various points such artists as Low, Seam, the Sarah Records 'sound', Luna, Belle & Sebastian, Red House Painters, Lush, Galaxie 500, and even Radiohead and Coldplay. Recorded and mixed by Tim Whitten (former live soundman for the Smiths and Go-Betweens), the album is the first accurate representation of the band's mix of restrained tension and release, ethereal beauty and undeniable hooks."

Artist:	MOUNTAIN GOATS, THE
Title:	Zopilote Machine
Label:	3 BEADS OF SWEAT
Format:	CD
Price:	$11.00
Catalog #:	3BOS 1006CD

"Zopilote Machine bears the distinction of being the first 'proper' full-length album by the Mountain Goats, which with the passage of time since the band's inception in 1990 and the growth of the song catalog and immense discography of the ever-evolving band lineup is no minor feat. Originally released on CD only in a small pressing on the Chicago-based Ajax Records in July, 1994, Zopilote was the first foray by Claremont, California-based John Darnielle and his 'Bright Mountain Choir' into the world beyond Shrimper cassettes and the quasi-hermetic universe of 7" records. Over the album's 19 songs, the subject matter touches on everything from Russ Meyer's asskicking vixen Tura Satana to the Mesoamerican god Quetzalcoatl (the 'zopilote' in the album's title is an ancient Mesoamerican term for 'vulture', and the album is sprinkled with Aztec references) to the mother of Beowulf's man-eating troll Grendel to an impudent, vengeful version of a Roman Caesar. The overall style is vintage Mountain Goats: mostly home-recorded songs lasting around two minutes, featuring just John Darnielle's voice, his somewhat primitive acoustic guitar freneticism, and memorable hooks a-plenty."

Artist:	MOUNTAIN GOATS, THE
Title:	Nothing for Juice
Label:	3 BEADS OF SWEAT
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	3BOS 1007CD

"1996's Nothing for Juice stands apart in the vast Mountain Goats discography as being the first album by the band recorded mostly in an actual studio (by engineer pal and Inland Empire fixture Bob Durkee), featuring the mid-'90s touring lineup of singer/songsmith John Darnielle on guitar and bassist Rachel Ware on harmonies. And that's not all: there are interesting covers of Robert Johnson's 'Hellhound on My Trail' and a tune that Chet Baker once covered ('Moon and Sand'), current setlist mainstay 'It Froze Me,' a redux version of an earlier Mountain Goats favorite in 'Alpha Double Negative: Going to Catalina,' and a real sonic treat in the transcontinental, through-the-mail collaboration with Germany-via-New Zealand guitarist/stringed instrument mastermind Graeme Jefferies (This Kind of Punishment, the Cakekitchen) on three of the album's standout tracks. The album is an incredibly varied explosion of ideas and inputs that finds the band spreading its wings and prodding at the edges of its signature sound, and it truly stands alone in the band's repertoire. Nothing for Juice has been out of print for 4 years."

Artist:	ANTI-CLOCKWISE
Title:	Artificial Light
Label:	3 BEADS OF SWEAT
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	3BOS 1008CD

"Anti-Clockwise is the latest name for New Zealand multi-instrumentalist Brian Crook's solo project, following his eponymously titled solo debut released on the Medication label in 1998 and a more C&W-influenced album under the moniker Bible Black in 2002. Brian has a rich and varied history in New Zealand underground music circles, but is probably best known as one half of the songwriting duo (along with his wife Maryrose) in the primordial alt-country band the Renderers. Haunted keyboard oscillations, overcaffeinated careening drumbox beats, webs of sinewy sinewave menace, undercurrents of strange noises lost down a wormhole, along with Brian's trademark languid alien-blues guitar work and his unmistakably Antipodean voice make up the veritable portable soundlab that is Artificial Light. Evocative of everything from an acutely introverted Ron Asheton to the isolationist vibe of Loren Mazzacane Connors to the psych-lasso approach of solo Wayne Rogers to noise pointillists like Wolf Eyes, as well as the entire Stomach Ache Records roster, Anti-Clockwise's songs bridge the gap between the slow, measured melancholy of the Renderers and more formless out-rock/keyboard-based experimentation proferred by such labels as Last Visible Dog and Metonymic."

Artist:	CROOK WITH THE RENDERERS, MARYROSE
Title:	Ghosts of Our Vegas Lives
Label:	3 BEADS OF SWEAT
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	3BOS 1009CD

"Renderers singer/guitarist Maryrose Crook's first solo album and the first new recordings by New Zealand's primordial alt-country band the Renderers in nearly a decade. The wait has definitely been worth it, as Ghosts of Our Vegas Lives represents a significant leap in the career of the Renderers as they approach nearly two decades of existence. The album features ten dreamlike dark, soulful songs that burst with life (as well as its opposing force). Recorded with the then Renderers lineup of Maryrose on vocals and rhythm guitar, husband Brian Crook on lead guitar and keyboard, bassist Thom Bell (also in David Kilgour's backing band the Heavy Eights), and famed NZ drum basher Robbie Yeats (Dead C), Ghosts of Our Vegas Lives oozes through the speakers with the arid barrenness of a Clint Eastwood desperado Western and the subterranean muculence of a David Lynch rabbit-hole headtrip, giving life to the dead-end tales of an unnamed couple tethered to each other in a forlorn doom scenario. The Renderers' singular approach -- half thoroughly tweaked garage/country/psych propulsiveness and half restrained noir-beauty -- fleshes out each of the album's songs with the perfect dose of restraint and release, and the band has never sounded better on record. One could easily envision these songs being performed in a sordid West Texas nightclub just as easily as a smoky San Francisco ballroom or a grimy Dunedin pub. Along the way, the band manages to evoke everything from the Dirty Three to Palace to the Stooges to the Handsome Family to the Dead C...clean, dirty and in between, you might say."

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