Browse by Label: JAGJAGUWAR

Artist:	YOUNGS, RICHARD
Title:	Sapphie
Label:	JAGJAGUWAR
Format:	CD
Price:	$12.00
Catalog #:	JAG 019CD

"Originally issued in 1998 by Oblique recordings, Sapphie was Richard Youngs' fifth solo full-length and quite a unique album in his already unique oeuvre. Made up of three acoustic tracks -- spanning over 37 minutes in length -- featuring just classical guitar and voice, Sapphie is quiet and introspective. The songs feel like an intimate journey by hand through a song cycle of loss and renewal. Within the context of his massive and ever-growing body of work, Sapphie is his most song-based and arguably his most personal. Fans of reclusive sages like Nick Drake, Anne Briggs, and Robert Wyatt will most appreciate the timeless quality inherent in Youngs' songs."

Artist:	YOUNGS, RICHARD
Title:	Sapphie
Label:	JAGJAGUWAR
Format:	LP
Price:	$12.00
Catalog #:	JAG 019LP

"Now available for the first time as a vinyl LP. Originally issued as CD in 1998 by Oblique Recordings, Sapphie was Richard Youngs' fifth solo full-length and quite a unique album in his already unique oeurve. Made up of three acoustic tracks -- spanning over 37 minutes in length -- featuring just classical guitar and voice, Sapphie is quiet and introspective. The songs feel like an intimate journey by hand through a song cycle of loss and renewal. Within the context of his massive and ever-growing body of work, Sapphie is his most song-based and arguably his most personal. Fans of reclusive sages like Nick Drake, Anne Briggs and Robert Wyatt will most appreciate the timeless quality inherent in Youngs' songs."

Artist:	YOUNGS, RICHARD
Title:	Making Paper
Label:	JAGJAGUWAR
Format:	CD
Price:	$12.00
Catalog #:	JAG 026CD

"Richard Youngs' first three-song 'full-length' release shone down like a beacon from above. It opened with a chorus of tape hiss and a patently English-sounding piano. Eventually there was a British man pleading in song for mercy, for pardon, or, at the very least, for conviction to a lesser charge. This was Advent and it was 1990. Youngs had just introduced himself to the universe at large through his No Fans label. Fast forward to the New Year, 2000. Youngs is back on the stool, this time in Edinburgh, Scotland, with long-time collaborator Brian Lavelle engineering. Youngs has another three songs in him, and they show him to be a much wizened, more patient man. Distilled to only piano and vocals, the album is epic to say the least. Opening with 'Warriors', a 19-minute journey the size of Scotland, the song pleads, 'Warriors see through battle lines.' The second song, 'The World Is Silence In Your Head', is vintage Youngs fare, offering further evidence that there is significant kinship between him and the ranks of the late-60's to early-70's progressive rock set such as Peter Hammill and his Van Der Graaf Generator, as well as first wave Yes and King Crimson. The song is as sprawling and imaginative in its mythology as the most inspired of prog's deep canon ever got. Yet it tells the tale in less than three minutes and with only one phrase and one instrument, with unprecedented clarity and precision-not to mention poesy. Certainly it warrants that Youngs be crowned the king of the progressive minimalists. He preys on the most meditative tendencies in each of us, and he finds the essence in each of his songs (throwing out the rest) which endeavours to put erstwhile listeners in a trance-like state."

Artist:	FAIR & DANIEL JOHNSTON, JAD
Title:	It's Spooky
Label:	JAGJAGUWAR
Format:	CD
Price:	$12.00
Catalog #:	JAG 033CD

"First released in 1989 on Jad's own 50 Skidillion Watts Records, Jad Fair & Daniel Johnston's It's Spooky seemed like the perfect pairing of two of the most unique and idiosyncratic songwriters to emerge from the post-punk rubble of the late-'70s. On this new expanded reissue -- which contains 6 bonus tracks not on the original version -- It's Spooky stands up as a true masterpiece, sadly overlooked in its day. A magical trip through the child-like universe of two kids at heart, it is even more impressive now with twelve years of perspective that just how uninhibited Jad & Daniel are as they walk you through their best fantasies and worst dreams."

Artist:	YOUNGS, RICHARD
Title:	May
Label:	JAGJAGUWAR
Format:	CD
Price:	$12.00
Catalog #:	JAG 043CD

"May, recorded at various times in Harpenden, England, is Richard Youngs' newest solo meditation. His music is magical, but not in the sense that it merely conjures up fantastical imagery or 'transports the listener to another place'. None of that is really happening. Richard Youngs' spell lies in the transformative qualities of his music. From so little we get so much. It is minimalism without pretense, songwriting that abhors artifice. It resides in the spiritual nexus between the oft disparate realms of traditional folk and the avant-garde. Following in the same spirit of his more celebrated solo works, Advent (1990), Sapphie (1998) and Making Paper (2001), May is, like Sapphie, just acoustic guitar and Richard Youngs' voice. Like the others it has an unmistakable 'drone-like' quality that has, over time, become one of Youngs' trademarks. But what sets May apart is that it is almost a conventional record; six songs, just over 36 minutes, no song over 8 minutes. If you listen carefully enough to the plaintive, stripped-down and gentle rumbling of the songs on May (and squint hard enough), you can almost discern a semblance of verse-chorus-verse structure. And, for sure, May derives much of its glory from the traditional and the hymnal. If there is a 'psych' or 'trance-like' quality to Youngs' music, it is charged only by internal endorphins, nature's most underrated drug-mechanism at work. Richard Youngs treats his body of work very much like his own body. He is very careful with what he lets in."

Artist:	NAGISA NI TE
Title:	On The Love Beach
Label:	JAGJAGUWAR
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	JAG 045CD

"Shinji Shibayama recorded and released On The Love Beach, a beautiful, slow and entrancing work pulling equally from American and British rock traditions. Thus was born Nagisa Ni te, which means 'on the beach' in Japanese, an homage of sorts to Neil Young's 1975 masterpiece. Their psych folk tendencies notwithstanding, Nagisa Ni te also did well to take cues from the avant rock world around them at the time, comfortably implementing the minimalist credo 'less is more' throughout this record. Though On the Love Beach was Nagisa Ni te's debut, it is the second Nagisa Ni te record brought to the United States and Europe by Jagjaguwar. And like Feel, it does bring to mind the very best of sixties' and seventies' psychedelic, progressive and folk rock (i.e. early to middle-era Pink Floyd, George Harrison, Crazy Horse, and Roxy Music). Maher Shalal Hash Baz's Tori Kudo may describe Nagisa Ni te best when he says: 'Nagisa Ni te's naked Progressive rock-based worldly songs, which are sung not so much deliberately as seriously, on their love beach, now fill a blank somewhere between underground hi-fi and overground lo-fi.'"

Artist:	NAGISA NI TE
Title:	Feel
Label:	JAGJAGUWAR
Format:	CD
Price:	$12.00
Catalog #:	JAG 046CD

"Feel, the new record by the Osaka band Nagisa Ni te (aka Shinji Shibayama and Masako Takeda) is now available for the first time outside of Japan, the first in a series of Nagisa Ni te records to be released in the United States and Europe by Jagjaguwar. Nagisa Ni te ('On the Beach' in English) are on the vanguard of the burgeoning psych-avant-folk movement in Japan. Their contemporaries include Maher Shalal Hash Baz and Naoki Zushi, artists who also have work on the inspirational Osaka-based label Org (founded by Nagisa Ni te's Shibayama). The songs within Feel bring to mind the very best of sixties' and seventies' psychedelic, progressive and folk rock (i.e. early to middle-era Pink Floyd, King Crimson, or George Harrison) while steadfastly remaining in the modern by introducing to the mix avant touches ala' Eric Dolphy, Derek Bailey or Robert Wyatt. Soaring Gilmour-esque guitar solos abet the colliding forces of heaven and nature. And that is where Shibayama and Takeda reside, either on their way towards or in the process of departing the Garden of Eden."

Artist:	ASPERA
Title:	Oh Fantastica
Label:	JAGJAGUWAR
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	JAG 053CD

"Oh Fantastica is full of minimal yet memorable melodies driven by Drew Mills' most upfront and un-effected vocal performance to date. The beats are intentionally raw?composed of deep, 808 / 909 textures and laced with gated, acoustic percussion takes and dirty synth bass lines. On Oh Fantastica, Aspera ride a dream-like wave enjoying and sharing the fruit of parallel universes -- where the epic '80s pop production (as heard in early work of Simple Minds and Tears for Fears) exist side by side with hip-hop's old school (Afrika Bambaataa) and new school (Swizz Beats, Anti-Pop Consortium, Missy Elliott & Timbaland, and producers the Neptunes), and, perhaps most-notably, electronic music's contemporary experimentalists (Boards of Canada) as well as its early trailblazers (such as the pop soundscapes of Another Green World-era Brian Eno; Giorgio Moroder's militant electro; and the early-80's tech-adventurism of musical veterans as manifested in Herbie Hancock's Future Shock and Paul McCartney's McCartney II)."

Artist:	YOUNGS, RICHARD
Title:	Airs Of The Ear
Label:	JAGJAGUWAR
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	JAG 059CD

"Richard Youngs' impressive body of work continues to mount. It resembles, unwittingly for sure, a slow zig zag march towards some Hegelian musical ideal in the distant horizon. Youngs, the leading wizard of droney and minimal psychedelic folk, has unleashed Airs of the Ear, his new opus invoking new magic looking for new ears to ensnare. Building on his esteemed recordings Advent (1990), Sapphie (1998), Making Paper (2001) and May (2002), Airs of the Ear goes beyond merely residing in what is the essential ecology of Richard Youngs -- the spiritual nexus between the oft disparate realms of traditional folk and the avant-garde; it now embodies this ecology. Acoustic instruments coexist perfectly with electric ones, while neither class of instrumentation is ever trumped by the other contraptions on the record, namely ring modulation, the square wave or the theremin. Perfect balance is almost achieved. There is harmony, true emotional resonance, even on what is Youngs' most captivating work on the record, 'Fire Horse Rising'. Despite the ever-escalating nature of this song, where Youngs powerfully and repeatedly invokes '...and I don't understand, ...and I don't want to know...', the listener is never allowed to feel overwhelmed or be pushed out of that special meditative and trance-like space. The spell is never broken."

Artist:	ONEIDA
Title:	Secret Wars
Label:	JAGJAGUWAR
Format:	CD
Price:	$12.00
Catalog #:	JAG 060CD

"Oneida's Secret Wars is a Pacific summer jam. It's got Balinese gongs, Hawaiian ukuleles, red wine, injuries, glee, and a song called 'Wild Horses' that's written by Oneida. It's also got a lot of good advice. With their new full-length record, Brooklyn sons Oneida simply start where they left off with Each One Teach One. Their trademark iterated and psych-tinged noise attack is still fully intact, both nervous and subdued at the same time -- like what happens when you give meditative children trained in the ways of yoga an excessive amount of caffeine. If there are any new wrinkles to be discovered, it is perhaps that, even more so than on Each One Teach One (Oneida's Tago Mago), Oneida seem to be mining the same fertile ground as Kraut-rock visionaries Can, effortlessly shedding the constraints of pop forms and structures while still remaining soulful and spiritually centered all along. Like spazzing out in the Lotus position."

Artist:	YOUNGS, RICHARD
Title:	Advent
Label:	JAGJAGUWAR
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.50
Catalog #:	JAG 062CD

Listed as #11 on Alan Lichts' "Minimal Top Ten". "Jagjaguwar is excited to reissue Richard Youngs' Advent, Youngs' very first record originally released in 1990 in the vinyl format on Youngs' own No Fans label. Only 300 LPs were released initially. It was then later released on the Table Of The Elements label and quickly went out of print. It became a true underground success story, a critical darling, with Alan Licht, for example, putting it on his 'Minimal Top Ten list' in the publication Halana Simply put, it is an essential work in the body of work of one of the most important modern day progressive minimalists. Includes a new essay by Richard Youngs. 'A three-part composition for piano, voice, and ultra-nasty oboe and electric guitar, Advent indicated signs of life in a genre long dormant in the 80s 'experimental' scene. It continues the tradition from [Terry Riley's] Reed Streams on down with gusto.' -- Alan Licht's 'Minimal Top Ten List', Halana.

Artist:	YOUNGS, RICHARD
Title:	Advent
Label:	JAGJAGUWAR
Format:	LP
Price:	$12.00
Catalog #:	JAG 062LP

"Originally released in 1990 in the vinyl format on Youngs' own No Fans label, this title has been reissued numerous times in the CD format (most recently by Jagjaguwar). Jagjaguwar is now proud to reissue this very important work on vinyl as well. Advent became a true underground success story, a critical darling, with Alan Licht, for example, putting it on his 'minimal top ten list' in the publication Halana. 'It is a record by an intense young man,' writes Richard Youngs, in an essay packaged with the record." Kinda amazing to have this record back on vinyl, in the year 2006. Originally recorded in 1988, it features Richard on electric guitar, piano, oboes and vocals. When first released, it came out of nowhere more than just about any record you could name. In a world swimming in wrongs, everything about this LP is just perfectly right.

Artist:	BEVEL
Title:	Down the Puppet String, Marionettes
Label:	JAGJAGUWAR
Format:	CD
Price:	$9.00
Catalog #:	JAG 063CD

"Bevel makes pastoral folk music in the same vein as Vashti Bunyan, Nick Drake and Maher Shalal Hash Baz. Bevel is the project of Via Nuon (lead guitarist of Manishevitz and now defunct Drunk). Down the Puppet String, Marionettes began in the early parts of 1998, is now being introduced for the first time since its original conception 6 years ago. Comprised of old and new songs diligently re-worked and re-recorded between 2001 and 2002, it also includes a chilling rendition of a Civil War-era traditional and a suitably deconstructed version of Donovan Leitch's 'Teas'. Melodious and interwoven throughout this mini-album are the lull-like tones of Deanna Varagona's baritone sax exhalations. Sometimes an undulating piano line -- played by Michael Krassner -- can be heard punctuating against the textural rhythms tapped out by Gerald Dowd. Although only 19 minutes in length and operating in a stream of consciousness-like fashion, Down the Puppet String, Marionettes, captures a transitory world, whose bucolic plains and uncharted beaches are characteristic results as one awakens, diluted and immersed, such as from an afternoon reverie."

Artist:	YOUNGS, RICHARD
Title:	River Through Howling Sky
Label:	JAGJAGUWAR
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.50
Catalog #:	JAG 068CD

"If the 'musical' real number line is infinitely dense, then the most recent work of Richard Youngs endeavors to fill in all of the holes on it. River Through Howling Sky is Youngs' latest full-length. It returns to the more meditative and drone-y side of his songcraft (circa Sapphie (1998) and Making Paper (2001)), although this is no true devolution: all of his recordings to date have some measure of these qualities. So what is it that sets River Through Howling Sky apart from its predecessors? It is the density on the recording, both intra-spatial and otherworldly. The howling guitar that points unerringly to some imagined horizon line. Throughout, Youngs is the calm and steady wolf, chanting odes to infinity. Expose the ancient Brotherhood of Pythagoras to River Through Howling Sky, and you would find knowing nods, pursed lips, and secret incantations in caves. An unwitting acceptance that not everything is rational or conceptually circumnavigable. Our western tonal system relies on ratios, i.e. strings whacked at particular intervals. Young's howling guitar and circular chants -- with the help of a spartan amount of percussion and electronics -- may just encompass all the possible ratios and, mystically, more."

Artist:	NAGISA NI TE
Title:	The Same As a Flower
Label:	JAGJAGUWAR
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.50
Catalog #:	JAG 069CD

"Nagisa Ni te (aka Shinji Shibayama and Masako Takeda) are back. Their new record The Same As A Flower, recorded between 2002 and the beginning of this year, is the third to be released by Jagjaguwar. Much like on previous records, the songs on the new record by this Osaka, Japan-based group are about nature, about the singularity of two people immersed in nature together, and about experiencing life as 'being', not 'becoming' or 'recovering from'. And like their previous full-length record, Feel, The Same As A Flower still brings to mind the very best of sixties' and seventies' psychedelic, progressive and folk rock (i.e. middle-era Roy Harper, Pink Floyd, 13th Floor Elevators and early Neil Young)."

Artist:	MINUS STORY
Title:	The Captain Is Dead, Let the Drum Corpse Dance
Label:	JAGJAGUWAR
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	JAG 073CD

"Minus Story's mystical third full-length, The Captain is Dead, Let The Drum Corpse Dance, is fuzzy and full of sunshine but also full of dark clouds and cold rain and is wistful and billowing, much like the music of The Zombies, Smile-era Beach Boys, Circulatory System and Neutral Milk Hotel. It also embraces those indefinable qualities found on records like Mt. Eerie by Microphones or Fragile by Yes. It is experimental pop, through and through, with all the attendant haunted edges, including a story-line about some young boy who rallies together an army of children, a black cloud that eats birds, and a girl who comes back as a ghost in a marching band. A masterpiece that will creep into your consciousness and lay anchor."

Artist:	OKKERVIL RIVER
Title:	Sleep & Wake-Up Songs
Label:	JAGJAGUWAR
Format:	CD
Price:	$8.50
Catalog #:	JAG 074CD

"On Sleep and Wake-Up Songs, Okkervil River and principal songwriter Will Sheff take advantage of a break between albums to present a small collection of five more meditative songs that toss little boomerangs across the distance between what is and what could never be. They try on a loose-fitting felt suit of Tim Hardin-esque folk-pop, wade until soaked into a misty psychedelic duet, strap on an electric guitar for a lark, stack the overlapping refrains of Sheff and Minus Story's Jordan Geiger into a Phil Spector-esque ecstasy of sexual confusion, and finally strip things down to naked and initiate a straightforward love song."

Artist:	JOYNER, SIMON
Title:	Beautiful Losers: Singles & Compilation Tracks 1994-1999
Label:	JAGJAGUWAR
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.50
Catalog #:	JAG 076CD

"The early 90's lo-fi explosion coincided with and was precipitated by the emergence of hundreds of small independent tape labels, many of which only existed long enough to release one compilation. It was during this heyday that Simon Joyner contributed some of his finest material to various intrinsically limited edition releases. Beautiful Losers: Singles and Compilation Tracks 1994-1999 collects all such compilation appearances and the few singles made during these years, including the perennial favorite 'One for the Catholic Girls' and 'Burn Rubber,' recently covered by Bright Eyes. This was such a prolific period for Joyner that he usually contributed his best songs of the moment to whoever requested a track, instead of reserving them for his proper albums. You'll find here varying degrees of sound quality and various approaches to songs, from solo acoustic to full band, but what ties the collection together is the strength of the material. This isn't filler."

Artist:	PARTS & LABOR
Title:	Stay Afraid
Label:	JAGJAGUWAR
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.50
Catalog #:	JAG 077CD

"Brooklyn trio Parts & Labor combines tumultuous noise with enormous, triumphant melodies on their latest album, Stay Afraid. Malfunctioning electronics howl in agony, drums rupture like fireworks, battle cries are belted through a monolithic layer of distorted bass and guitar. P&L revel in day-glo noise, charred drones, punk velocity and phoenix-like hooks -- a unique blast influenced by the clamor of Husker Du, the bluster of Boredoms and the homemade spirituals of Neutral Milk Hotel."

Artist:	NAGISA NI TE
Title:	Dream Sounds
Label:	JAGJAGUWAR
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	JAG 079CD

"Dream Sounds may be the closest Nagisa Ni te ever gets to a greatest hits record. And although there are only four tracks on this compact disc (some previously released, but all re-recorded, re-mixed and re-mastered for this special edition), the record clocks in over forty minutes, runs the whole gamut of the sounds and moods of Nagisa Ni te's songcraft over the years, and contains their most moving moments. This full-length record is the perfect introduction to the dreamy and nature-obsessed universe of Nagisa Ni te. Nagisa Ni te is Shinji Shibayama and Masako Takeda are from Osaka, Japan. This is their sixth album."

Artist:	OKKERVIL RIVER
Title:	Black Sheep Boy
Label:	JAGJAGUWAR
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	JAG 080CD

"Black Sheep Boy is Okkervil River's most ambitious and cinematic record yet, a love story and adult fable that evokes the mature songcraft of Leonard Cohen's New Skin for the Old Ceremony, the sophistication of Scott Walker's Scott 4, the shambling slow-motion bravado of Neil Young's On the Beach, and the raw nerves and trick effects of Big Star's Third/Sister Lovers. It also occasionally echoes Lou Reed's Transformer in that it is actually the band's most playful and confident record by far, delighting in linguistic games, scrapping all caution and reserve, reveling equally in sheer pop, lacerating rock and roll, and straight-up country weepers. The most fully-realized and wildly adventurous Okkervil River record yet also introduces into the modern folk bellwether's traditional palette of mandolin, pump organ, steel guitar, Wurlitzer, strings and horns such previously foreign elements as children's keyboards, digitally-manipulated field recordings, and dirty splatters of distorted guitar."

Artist:	SKYGREEN LEOPARDS, THE
Title:	Life & Love in Sparrow's Meadow
Label:	JAGJAGUWAR
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.50
Catalog #:	JAG 082CD

"With Life & Love in Sparrow's Meadow, The Skygreen Leopards expand on their strange pastoral folk-pop and enter center stage as one of the most unique voices in the new folk movement. The Skygreen Leopards are Donovan Quinn (Verdure) and Glenn Donaldson (Thuja, Blithe Sons, Franciscan Hobbies, Birdtree, Ivytree, etc.). The Skygreen Leopards originate from the Bay Area-based Jewelled Antler forest of bands. Donaldson co-founded the Jewelled Antler label in 1999, which has since released over 25 CD-R's ranging from straight field recordings & outdoor improv-folk to noise & fractured pop music. The Skygreen Leopards are without a doubt the most structured and accessible of these projects. Much of the Jewelled Antler music is recorded live outdoors on mini-discs & boomboxes while the Skygreen Leopards primarily focus on a surreal form of multi-layered folk-pop recorded on an old reel-to-reel housed in a moldy trailer on the back of a horse ranch. 12-string guitars, banjos, dulcimers, Jew's harps, organs, maracas, mandolins, harmonicas, ocarinas & reed flutes harmonize with the field-recorded songs of birds, barnyard animals & insects. This hedge of sounds is the backdrop for Quinn & Donaldson's mythological rants & hazy melodies."

Artist:	PINK MOUNTAINTOPS
Title:	Axis of Evol
Label:	JAGJAGUWAR
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.50
Catalog #:	JAG 083CD

"With Axis of Evol, Pink Mountaintops' second full-length record, Mcbean has once again created something much greater than the sum of his influences. Axis of Evol begins with a foreboding spiritual. It then almost immediately ramps up into a thumping, buzzing, blissful haze, at various parts sounding like the Velvet Underground or Spacemen 3 or the Jesus and Mary Chain circa Psycho Candy, and then ends with a hypnotic, Smog-like meditation. Throughout the record, Mcbean sings about love and war, the love of war, and the war of love-on the body, on the mind and on the soul. Home-recorded and largely self-produced, Axis of Evol is a further testament to the vital prolificacy of Stephen Mcbean."

Artist:	SPOKANE
Title:	Little Hours
Label:	JAGJAGUWAR
Format:	LP
Price:	$13.50
Catalog #:	JAG 087LP

"Little Hours is the patient sheen of stillness after a short, violent burst of intention. The lingering, resonant decay of a nail being hammered into wood. A piano laden marriage of small hopes and quiet violence. In Church Hill, a borough of Richmond, Virginia, there is a small yellow 19th century, white Federal period house. The members of Spokane hand-built the structure over the course of 2006 while recording and revising their first new album in four years, Little Hours. The record is both a document of and an aural parallel to that difficult, meticulous process. In the emotional vein of folk singer Jackson C. Frank, with the textural emaciation of composers Zbigniew Preisner and Morton Feldman, the songs themselves are hinged on concepts of failure and stillborn ideas, on the conflicted process of building or birthing a cerebral image into the world. There are the echoes of insistent cats running through the skeletal frame of the house, pillaged, infant birds in their mouths, left half-dead at the foot of the hole where the stair would be. Little Hours is packaged in a vinyl sleeve with both record and CDR inside. It features the core ensemble of 2003's Measurement, which Mojo magazine called 'a uniquely enthralling treasure,' along with contributions from members of Brooklyn's orchestral, minimalist band, Gregor Samsa."

Artist:	SWAN LAKE
Title:	Beast Moans
Label:	JAGJAGUWAR
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.50
Catalog #:	JAG 098CD

"Swan Lake is the new band featuring Daniel Bejar (Destroyer, New Pornographers), Spencer Krug (Wolf Parade, Sunset Rubdown) and Carey Mercer (Frog Eyes). Beast Moans is their debut record featuring, among other things, beast moans, starling voices, cobra hi-hats and arpeggiating pianos. The songs are great weaves, showcasing the famous and very distinctive songwriting styles of Bejar, Krug and Mercer. The sum is definitely greater than the parts, and at distinct points on the record a new 'combined' style emerges that throws whole heaps of magic into the air, sounding like nothing else. When the three 'come together' (as if stuck in a sea-storm, in a sinking boat, forced to bail together), we first glean some grudging camaraderie. But, like rugged individualists after the storm, parting at dry crossroads, their work on Beast Moans can still be the sounds of each individual muttering under his breath, and not the chorus of exclamation and supplication to the raging maelstrom that is the hallmark of 'collaboration'. It's good either way."

Artist:	ALEX DELIVERY
Title:	Star Destroyer
Label:	JAGJAGUWAR
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.50
Catalog #:	JAG 099CD

"Alex Delivery have gleefully exposed their myriad gifts and influences with their debut full-length Star Destroyer, almost two years in the making. On it the New York-based quintet have demonstrated their penchant for the electro-organic, seamlessly blending the sharp and gentle, like a chain-gang draped in organza. You can hear the chattering of insects resonating from the inside of a kettle drum, and you can imagine this colossal robo-beast wobbling and waltzing down an abandoned carnival boardwalk. Sylphs soar across strings, occasionally descending to enjoy some wiggle-worthy poly-rhythms. These and many more colorful characters have climbed aboard the Star Destroyer."

Artist:	ONEIDA
Title:	Happy New Year
Label:	JAGJAGUWAR
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.50
Catalog #:	JAG 100CD

"No band has been so praised for such a wide range of music over the last ten years than Brooklyn's Oneida. Nobody has come close to matching their output of dazzlingly creative, uncategorizable music. Psychedelia, minimalism, maximalism, one-step, infinitewave, blah blah blah blah -- it's all there, all the time; and Happy New Year, the band's ten billionth album, is Oneida's zenith. Simultaneously the most eclectic and most coherent album they have yet released, Happy New Year flows flawlessly from a traditional hymn of grim beauty ('Distress') through hypnotic rounds, thunderous kraut grooves, severe ballads, and other, indescribable music. Phil Manley of Trans AM and the Fucking Champs and experimental pianist Emily Manzo return for encores of their guest appearances on 2005's The Wedding."

Artist:	OKKERVIL RIVER
Title:	The President's Dead
Label:	JAGJAGUWAR
Format:	12"
Price:	$8.50
Catalog #:	JAG 101EP

"The President's Dead is the first release by Okkervil River since 2005's masterful Black Sheep Boy project. ocked in the grooves of this limited-edition vinyl-only release is what might be Okkervil River's most accessible and most contentious song, 'The President's Dead.' A two-minute and forty-two second serving of alternative historical fiction camouflaged as a folk anthem tarted up as a pop single that never was, 'The President's Dead' depicts with tenderness and empathy the shock felt by a sensitive young Republican upon hearing news of an assassination over the radio, its lyrics shifting sneakily from images of public horror to those of private tenderness as its music performs a similarly schizoid leap."

Artist:	PARTS & LABOR
Title:	Mapmaker
Label:	JAGJAGUWAR
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	JAG 103CD

"Mapmaker is the second Jagjaguwar/Brah album from Brooklyn noisepunks Parts & Labor. Expanding on the soaring melodies and cracked electronics of 2006's Stay Afraid, P&L explores a wider array of berserk, malfunctioning instruments and intricate, pummeling rhythms. These 12 political/personal anthems about ambition and distraction boast bigger choruses, denser drones and shinier hooks. Adding new textures to Parts & Labor's searing pop-squall, the album features guest spots from flautist/megaphonist/vocalist Natalja Kent (of The Good Good) and guitarist Joe Kremer (of label mates Pterodactyl)."

Artist:	SKYGREEN LEOPARDS, THE
Title:	Disciples of California
Label:	JAGJAGUWAR
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.50
Catalog #:	JAG 104CD

"The Skygreen Leopards started in 2001 as a duo, just Glenn Donaldson and Donovan Quinn. Working out of the Hobo Victoria district of San Francisco, they've since recorded five full-length albums and one EP in their five year history. Over these recordings the band has been given to metamorphosis but has always managed to sound distinctly 'Skygreen.' Their newest album, Disciples of California, continues in the alchemical tradition of change and inward-revolt. On it, the Skygreen Leopards mix pop melodies, minimal country truisms, jingle-jangling Californianism and angular folk with something the band refers to as 'our horse called Dire Arrow,' which roughly translates into family-friendly (sans the 'American Censorship' connotations)."

Artist:	ODAWAS
Title:	Raven and the White Night
Label:	JAGJAGUWAR
Format:	LP+CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	JAG 108LP

"Like watching an avalanche crushing a Bavarian cottage or a man being attacked by a lion, listening to Odawas while nestled safely in your phono-womb is an exercise in tuning into sublime frequencies from safe carriage. That huge dial has never made your hands so child-like, that cookie jar so high. Odawas skirt the cliff's edge like Jack Nietzsche hanging Christmas lights on the shark cage, Neil Young stoking the campfire in his babylon treefort, or a Jandek aria in a black armband march. Odawas' 2005 debut on Jagjaguar, The Aether Eater, was a fiery space oddity detailing the brave, the lost, and the maligned. The journey was epic. But the obstinate darkness and disastrous side-effects of space travel are getting lost, and thus turning inward on their follow-up album Raven And The White Night. This LP package also comes with a gratis compact disc version of the album."

Artist:	LIGHTNING DUST
Title:	Lightning Dust
Label:	JAGJAGUWAR
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	JAG 112CD

"Amber Webber and Joshua Wells have been playing together for many years as part of Black Mountain. They've toured the world and have played impenetrable space-rock to the unlikeliest of audiences. With an abundance of creative energy to spare, the two decided to start a separate project together, that they named Lightning Dust. Committing themselves to a more simplistic approach with Lightning Dust, Webber and Wells also decided to escape the comforts of their familiar instruments and writing styles. On their self-titled debut, minimal and spacious arrangements and a moody, theatrical vocal-style aptly expose the demons, creating songs that creep into your bones with a haunting chill. The album was recorded in a dank cave and a bright blue house, perhaps an unconscious yet obsessive protest of the sunny beach and beer world that surrounded them on the outside. But despite this unattractive external world, and while completing the album in small fits of insanity, the two were compelled to retreat to the coastal summer air from time to time, when they could take no more of the shadowy frame that they had decided to enclose themselves in."

Artist:	OKKERVIL RIVER
Title:	Black Sheep Boy
Label:	JAGJAGUWAR
Format:	2CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	JAG 120CD

"This is the definitive double-disc set which brings together Okkervil River's ground-breaking Black Sheep Boy project in its entirety -- including the original album, the 7-song Black Sheep Boy Appendix EP, the song 'The Next Four Months' (originally released on the 'For Real' CD single), the 'For Real' video as well as a new video of a magical alternate slower take of 'No Key, No Plan.' Enjoy this panoramic perspective of a modern masterpiece and one of the most critically acclaimed albums of the new millennium. Black Sheep Boy is Okkervil River's most ambitious and cinematic record to date, a love story and adult fable carved in lacerating rock and roll, desolate late-night country weepers, and a few shining moments of sheer, shameless pop."

Artist:	YOUNGS, RICHARD
Title:	Autumn Response
Label:	JAGJAGUWAR
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	JAG 121CD

"A spartan folk-'pop' record filled with tinder-box intimacies, composed of some of the shortest songs ever recorded by Richard Youngs. The simplest form of trickery comes from Richard Youngs' restrained use of an acoustic guitar, bringing it back to Youngs' basics. Twenty-six seconds into 'I Need The Light,' the first track off the album, the listener is confronted with the pivotal element of the record, the drawing line between the hardcore Youngs purists and fairweather fans: the track, like others on the record, features Youngs' double-tracked voice splitting in two -- as one overlaid performance veers away from the other. This gesture warrants such a title 'King of the Progressive Minimalists' -- which is often used beside his name by critics -- as the confident inclusion of such an effect grants it legitimacy. Youngs' voices slipping away from one another is on par with other intense representations of singularity such as Donald Judd and Malevich's Suprematicist Composition: White on White. Pop is a gesture, a stance, a pose. Autumn Response is a singer-songwriter album, as Youngs' fingers slip over the steel strings with little feet and whispery toes, his gently prophetic songs evoke Roger Waters and the folk phase play is sure to appeal to fans of Animal Collective's Sung Tongs."

Artist:	NAGISA NI TE
Title:	Yosuga
Label:	JAGJAGUWAR
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.50
Catalog #:	JAG 129CD

"It's been four years since the release of Nagisa Ni Te's previous album Dream Sounds, and now -- after much work -- their seventh album Yosuga has been completed. Jagjaguwar is once again very proud to deliver the band's most recent work to North America and Europe. Yosuga also marks the first time that Jagjaguwar has released a Nagisa Ni Te title on vinyl (not to mention the still popular compact disc format!). The Japanese duo of Shinji Shibayama and Masako Takeda deliver an album that consists of both beautiful arrangements and soft melodies. Yosuga -- the meaning of which refers to the source or grounds upon which the body and mind rely -- is one of Nagisa Ni Te's finest efforts."

Artist:	BLACK MOUNTAIN
Title:	In The Future
Label:	JAGJAGUWAR
Format:	2CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	JAG 130CD

"Favorite psych and prog-spiritual pioneers Black Mountain are back with In The Future, their second full-length album that resonates with the same epic ring, beloved deep rock touchstones and genuine folk fragility that made their self-titled debut full-length an instant classic. The new album possesses immense breadth, seamlessly showcasing short and classic folk-pop gems along with driving modern rock masterpieces, peaking with 'Bright Lights,' a 17-minute multi-dimensional opus that gives Pink Floyd's 'Echoes' a run for its money. This limited edition deluxe version includes a bonus CD with 3 additional tracks."

Artist:	WICKHAM-SMITH & RICHARD YOUNGS, SIMON
Title:	Veil (For Greg)
Label:	JAGJAGUWAR
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.50
Catalog #:	JAG 137CD

"Originally released in 1997 and having sat in a storage unit purgatory (growing finer) for the greater part of a decade, Jagjaguwar proudly unearths and re-distributes this visceral British take on American outdoor spirituality. 'Veil (For Greg) is a carousel ride inside a digital rock tumbler, a battle between gnomes and mercury termites for a maple tree's soul, and the reflection of a pile of Moog turtles in a bathroom mirror's swamp sweat. Throbbing Gristle reimagined as zen garden desk accessory.'" --William Gass

Artist:	CREELEY, ROBERT
Title:	Robert Creeley
Label:	JAGJAGUWAR
Format:	CD
Price:	$12.00
Catalog #:	JAG 901CD

"This is an unaccompanied recording of the internationally renowned poet Robert Creeley. Captured on tape at his home in Waldoboro, Maine in the summer of 2000, the poet reads a selection of new and previously uncollected poems. This marks the first occasion in which Mr. Creeley has appeared unaccompanied on a CD, his work read in all its bare and vital intimacy. His landmark importance as a modern and uncompromising voice in the 1950`s and 60`s has continued through subsequent decades with work as crucial and innovative as in those formative years. He has been a distinct and relentless documentarian of age and its changing perceptions. From the tender, inquisitive addresses of a father to his growing children to meditations on growth, memory and reality, these fifteen pieces reveal a poet in maturity. Among them is a 25-part poem in response to the paintings of Francesco Clemente."

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Artist:	OAKLEY HALL
Title:	Gypsum Strings
Label:	JAGJAGUWAR
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.50
Catalog #:	JAGBR 004CD