Browse by Label: ST. IVES

Artist:	HANCOCK, JOHN
Title:	Antenna Death
Label:	ST. IVES
Format:	LP
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	SAINT 016LP

"Thank heavens, for adroit dance music of John Hancock, who, at every turn on Antenna Death, finds the perfect, sexiest balance of slick dance-pop and the rawer funk decadence of yore. It's future-pop that knows the grinding together of hips and the exploration of your own awkward physicality, while not always comfortable, is a part of the greater elation. Dance music is about trading sweat with other humans, not the cold seclusion of space. And Hancock's homebase of Miami is dripping all over Antenna Death. The sites and sounds of Hancock's neighborhood, Miami's Little Haiti, are often manifested through a pop pallet reared on Prince, Funkadelic, the best of Beck, Simple Minds and Jon Secada (yeah, I just said that). He's plucked wholly different but equally delicious fruits, and with them whipped up a fine, fine fruit salad, which you are expected to feed hand-to-mouth to your next lover." Custom stencil-sprayed front and back covers.

Artist:	VOLLMAR
Title:	Tell The Dirt
Label:	ST. IVES
Format:	LP
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	SAINT 018LP

Hand-decorated sleeves, limited to 300 numbered copies. "West Virginia native and Bloomington, Indiana resident Justin Vollmar has been making leftfield folk-rock for longer than most. He's toured the western world over with like-minded artists such as Half-Handed Cloud and Elephant Micah, and released a small library of critically-acclaimed home recordings. A mainstay in the Midwest scene, Vollmar has also lent his talents to countless bands (Mt. Gigantic, Bronze Float, Matty Pop Chart, etc.), and held at least one word-of-mouth music festival in the vacant field beside his house. Tell The Dirt is Vollmar's newest release as Vollmar, a band name accommodating two more musicians-drummer/brother/pianist Nathan Vollmar and bassist David Brant. Dirt finds the band in a formal studio environment, trying on a slightly more 'refined' sound. All the hallmarks of the Vollmarian approach, though, remain happily in place. Dirt is a characteristically sparse affair, featuring band performances that sound more 'live' than 'layered.' The brain-twisting songwriting and moments of experimental flourish that have historically set Vollmar's music apart from the indie-folk crowd are likewise here in spades."

Artist:	ANEMONES
Title:	Come Down Like a Cloud
Label:	ST. IVES
Format:	LP
Price:	$13.50
Catalog #:	SAINT 022LP

"Grounded and propelled by the boom and tick of a lazy yet indefatigable old-school drum machine, albeit augmented by occasional percussive crash, rattle and stick of a genuinely human kind, Anemones are all deep throb, jangled buzz, ambient drone, shiftless mumbling and, perhaps most importantly, rolling waves of reverberation so pronounced and significant as to be structurally necessary. Collected and combined, these elements make a warm, oceanic, somewhat totalizing music that operates inwardly, directed towards the uniquely fertile, semi-liquid quasi-agriculture of the mind. But although often performatively 'druggy' in character, Anemones' music isn't therefore 'about drugs' in the sense of being 'about being made by means of drugs' or even 'about being made for or on behalf of drugs,' as if simply copying such important stylistic and conceptual precursors as The Velvet Underground, Suicide, Spacemen 3 and the Jesus and Mary Chain. Rather, Anemones produce a kind of 'post drug' music, which here refers to a state of 'after-ness' and not prudish abstention or dumbbell reform. In fact this is a specific aesthetic strategy: after the drugs and drinks are long done and gone, sound itself remains the psychotropic trigger par excellence. Hence, altering perception. Anemones aim to turn listeners on ears first."

Artist:	LINFINITY
Title:	Live at Marcata: Demos
Label:	ST. IVES
Format:	LP
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	SAINT 023LP

"New York City-based Linfinity had seemed a bit bottle-necked for some time to frontman Dylan Von Wagner. Having written five volumes of his John Cale-meets-Alan Vega series The Manual For Free Living and having only recorded one full band album, he was getting an itchy trigger finger. He had been playing new songs with solo acoustic arrangements at live performances, and he liked the sparse arrangements. When approached by St. Ives, it seemed like a good opportunity to show some of his sketches that will appear on future albums. Von Wagner recorded the album live in Marcata Studios, a massive barn in upstate New York with producer Kevin McMahon. Perched on a 30-foot balcony overlooking the barn, Von Wagner recorded the album late in the evening, using a Marshall stack as a PA, giving it a unique bite and space. Staying up for 24 hours straight, Kevin McMahon did a quick mix and master of the proceedings. The result is a raw and thrilling document that would rest nicely somewhere between Cale's Vintage Violence and Roy Orbison's 'Blue Bayou' demos."

Artist:	LEONHART, MICHAEL
Title:	Hotel Music
Label:	ST. IVES
Format:	LP
Price:	$13.50
Catalog #:	SAINT 024LP

"Hotel Music is a pastiche of Serge Gainsbourg hooks, bedroom drone, California Pop (by way of Van Dyke Parks), and Downtown experiments. It is a musical portrait by Michael Leonhart, session player to the stars. It was written and recorded over the course of a five-month stint (if a worldwide tour that long can be accurately labeled a stint) playing horns with Steely Dan (yes, Steely Dan). He passed his downtime on the road abusing various camera & cell phone cameras, his portable sampler, laptop and whatever instruments that happened to be within reach. The result is a more experimental trip than his sadly under-heard pop masterpiece The Ballad of Minton Quigley (2007, self-released). Leonhart has recorded four solo records in as many years between Steely Dan and Lenny Kravitz touring, as well as sessioning with such diverse artists as Brian Eno, David Byrne, Slash, Steven Tyler and Wynton Marsalis." Hand painted numbered edition of 200.

Artist:	RACE, THE
Title:	Exiles
Label:	ST. IVES
Format:	LP
Price:	$13.50
Catalog #:	SAINT 025LP

"Exiles is meant to be an over-the-top experience sonically, lyrically and thematically, conjuring the desert, its dunes, mirages and holy mountains and the outsized personalities of the outlaws, searchers, escapists, wanderers, drifters, pariahs, prophets, misfits, mystics, miscreants and all the other sorry suckers who've called the dusty road home. As dark and serious as it may all sound it was a hell of a lot of fun to make and we hope an enjoyable listen. Exiles is available as a limited edition vinyl pressing of 220."

Artist:	NORMANOAK
Title:	Estra
Label:	ST. IVES
Format:	LP
Price:	$13.50
Catalog #:	SAINT 026LP

"Normanoak has another piece of vinyl to share with the world, a true follow-up to last year's A Double Gift of Tongues. This new album is called Estra, named after a powerful horned goddess whom Normanoak has been busy invoking recently in small performance spaces around the country. Everything was recorded in his bedroom in Bloomington, Indiana, on three different tape machines. The music on Estra shows more variety than any of his previous efforts. Chugging rock songs burn up into soft, dark dirges that feature a uniquely made-up language code. Screaming minute-long hardcore songs fade into freaky, fucked instrumentals. There is even a song which curses the current state government, and their excessive logging of Normanoak's home forests of Southern Indiana. Throughout these 14 pieces, Normanoak takes on many personalities, such as his alter-ego Poisonoak. Over time, the listener can begin to notice the shifts in perspective that the singer makes. Normanoak is more than just another musician. His work is pure sorcery at its most successful."

Artist:	LAZARUS
Title:	The Trickster
Label:	ST. IVES
Format:	LP
Price:	$13.50
Catalog #:	SAINT 028LP

"St. Ives has long been in love with the songs of Trevor Montgomery. Performing as Lazarus, Montgomery's nascent body of work began (after he left new kosmiche group Tarentel) in 2001 with the glorious Songs For An Unborn Sun (Temporary Residence Ltd.). Since then, two additional full-lengths have been released, further illuminating Montgomery's beguiling voice as both singer, arranger and lyricist and having earned him many comparisons to classic heavy bellowers such as Nick Cave and Leonard Cohen. After being commissioned by St. Ives to do a record, he decided to gather some songs together influenced by and referencing his teenage years. According to Montgomery: 'At the time I was polarized by meth, riding trains, heavy psychedelics, and a love of spending my time in the mountains walking around in the woods. At 14, I tried to sell my soul for the ability to draw the female form in perfection, I skirted death several times, always seeming to be saved at the last minute by some good soul or random occurrence. All and all leading me to believe that the coyote's and crow's of the canyons were watching out for me. The Trickster in many forms, laughing and crying.' Recorded wherever he could find space, but mostly in a photography studio in Old Town Orange, California owned by his brother. All songs were written, performed and recorded by Lazarus (William Trevor Montgomery). As with all St. Ives records, The Trickster is available in limited edition (300 copies), each with unique hand-made art, done by the artist." Brown-colored vinyl.

Artist:	VAMPIRE HANDS
Title:	Hannah In The Mansion
Label:	ST. IVES
Format:	LP
Price:	$13.50
Catalog #:	SAINT 029LP

"Born like a bolt of lightning, Vampire Hands are a quintessential kind of midwestern band. All of the personality and insular weirdness present in so many other Minneapolis groups' music, VH has taken all of their combined winters and created a cold and isolated sound that is hard to pin down but still strangely familiar. Their latest release, Hannah in the Mansion, focuses more on the band's collective obsession with the wilted calypso-cana of Mayo Thompson and the rickety blues of Neil Young than their previous four releases but still maintaining their swirling, modern psychedelic tendencies. Despite recording and touring at a break-neck pace since their inception in 2005, the band shows no signs of slowing down and only expanding exponentially on tapping into their idealized vision of classic American rock." On hand-decorated/painted sleeves.

Artist:	HORNS OF HAPPINESS, THE
Title:	Weathering Alterations
Label:	ST. IVES
Format:	LP
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	SAINT 030LP

"The Horns of Happiness return to the recorded world with their first release since 2007's What Spills Like Thread EP. Here we find the band in concept mode, balancing its pounding rhythms and airy melodies to create a soundtrack piece entitled Weathering Alterations. The band's normally speedy and structure-damaged tunes begin to stretch out, allowing repetition and space to create new moods. Originally performed as an accompaniment to the J. Shelley Harrison installation piece Don't Rain On My Parade, the recording focuses on the reaction of the psyche to unexpected changes in environment. While this is not the true follow-up to the band's only full-length album, 2004's A Sea As A Shore, the record is a moody, rocking, and nonsensical song cycle. As with all St. Ives releases, this album is available as a hand-made limited edition vinyl (only 200 copies)."

Artist:	RADICAL SONS
Title:	Throwing Knives
Label:	ST. IVES
Format:	LP
Price:	$13.50
Catalog #:	SAINT 035LP

"If it wasn't for shit music, Radical Sons probably wouldn't exist. Bummed out by the meathead Midwestern emo kids and aging hippie wannabes which they found themselves surrounded by, St. Louis teens Nick Risler and Benjamin Goldstein became fast friends. Hanging at the Delmar Loop. Sneaking into the monthly Chuck Berry gigs at Blueberry Hill. Playing old Television and Velvet Underground records after school on their local underground radio station. You could call it their own quiet rebellion. But like so many of these stories go, it wasn't long before the call to crank the volume overtook them. So Risler and Goldstein dutifully answered, picking up a couple guitars and enlisting the services of Geoffrey Phillips and Patrick Shields to fill out a rhythm section and bring Radical Sons to life. The boys soon got attention by opening for critically acclaimed bands like Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin, Be Your Own Pet, and Little Joy. In the summer of 2008, St. Louis' Radical Sons began writing songs that would eventually become their Throwing Knives EP. The songs are short and sweet -- complimented by Ben Goldstein's deadpan vocal delivery and a fleet of strummed-to-death guitars. The Sons crafted five songs that pay homage to the records they loved growing up, while adding something that only bored Midwestern kids could. Like all St. Ives releases, the record comes a highly limited 300-copy run of custom-designed vinyl, loaded with exclusive home-made demos."

Artist:	BLACK SWANS, THE
Title:	Words Are Stupid
Label:	ST. IVES
Format:	LP
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	SAINT 040LP

"The new album by The Black Swans, Words Are Stupid, is a batch of tunes recorded on 4-tracks and computers in kitchens, basements, and living rooms bound by the central theme of language letting us down and mucking us up. A little bit country and a little bit doom folk, the world of The Black Swans is where humans aren't animals as much as they admire them. A drunk boyfriend goes deaf in Buenos Aires; an artist paints a rooster; couples (don't) learn from the felines and the canines in the comics; cowards climb trees unable to assimilate with monkeys. Throughout, there is a lot of kazoo-ing, the wordless purr of joy. Pitchfork called The Black Swans' last album 'a sort of blues, full of thoroughly digested worry and world-weariness' and Dusted called their debut 'one of the best, most overlooked new folk records of the psych-folk revival.' Words Are Stupid is another left turn down the same WTF road traveled by kindred spirits like Hazelwood, Zevon, Robyn Hitchcock, and Michael Hurley. The vinyl LP features 200 different photographs of the same 40 poses from 5 photographers in a field of concrete corn framed in a silk-screened cock-and-balls drawing."

Artist:	MAN FOREVER
Title:	Man Forever
Label:	ST. IVES
Format:	LP
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	SAINT 046LP

"Recorded by Kid Millions (Oneida) over a weekend after seeing the Fireworks Ensemble's performance of Ulrich Krieger's transcription of Metal Machine Music, Man Forever is the maelstrom on the surface of a river. Kid Millions writes: 'A few months ago I went to see Fireworks Ensemble perform Metal Machine Music. I read the liner notes for the show, listened to the original record and learned how the piece was originally recorded. During the performance I was inspired to record an album right away. A conversation I'd had a year or so ago with Brian Chase (from the YYYs) about just intonation tuning with drums popped into my head and I visualized a monolithic recording that would utilize the rich tonality of carefully tuned acoustic drums, played powerfully and multi-tracked at different speeds onto the Ocropolis (Oneida's Brooklyn Studio) 16-track 1" tape machine. I asked Brian Chase to come to the studio and help me tune my drums so I could capture my ambition for the piece. Richard Hoffman (Sightings) added some bass to the final mix. The tempo is something like 180BPM. The piece moves fast at an almost imperceptible rhythm. It feels overwhelming and fluctuates constantly. Turn it up!'" Housed in a hand-made silkscreened sleeve.

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