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LP
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NFA 004LP
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"Numbered, limited edition LP with hand-made covers featuring a very detailed stencil of Frank's face. Compiles some of the best of his early cassette and CDr recordings, including the first known versions of songs he later recorded in a proper studio, and which he typically stretches out into 30-minutes or more live. If you haven't seen him before, you really need to. Frank Hurricane, a.k.a. Hurricanes of Love, is an unstoppable force of nature, a crazy hippy griot, and a personified shit-eating grin all stuffed into one large meatball sub. With multiple albums under his belt via Feeding Tube Records we decided the world needed better access to some of his super rare, early cassette recordings -- which were in editions of 50 or fewer-- dating from when he first set out on the road singing and telling stories and spreading hilarious mayhem (we even hand-made the LP covers to match the spirit of the original homemade cassette art.) This is the first in a planned multi-part series of numbered limited editions of early Hurricanes of Love music. While the "freak folk" label is still accurate, some of these recordings sound a lot more traditional than you might expect? songs that usually get drawn out into 30-minute long tall-tale-ragas are here concise 3-minute fingerpicked haikus, like an Appalachian Bert Jansch, or an acid-inspired Jackson C. Frank. While the sound is sometimes a bit rough (Frank used whatever cheap cassette recorders he had) the music shines through, and will make even casual listeners say 'wow. . . who the hell is this guy?'"
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LP
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FTR 197LP
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"In a world with nothing to love, you can't love anything that's of this world. You need something holy. Better yet, you need something holy and spiritual. EVEN better would be something holy and spiritual that fights for righteousness instead of destruction. Well, your fuckin' troubles are over, dude -- the Holy Spiritual Gangsta Frank Hurricane is back! There are parts of this new Frank Hurricane record that sound like perhaps he actually built a shirt from one of those 'rap music' Casio keyboards and then had baby elephants squeeze him between two waterbeds with his arms outstretched so he could tap out melodies. Frank moves through the murk of this lo-fi paradise with ease and, most importantly, space. This record's got air in it, the tones blow together like the leaves of a tree that sprouts degraded VHS tapes instead of fruit. It's recorded in a way that calls to mind cheap cassettes and British bedrooms in the early 1980s. But it's here and now. You could excerpt bits from this record and sneak them onto a Snatch Tapes compilation and no one would bat an eye. But this is Frank Hurricane, the guy who raps about pizza and tells outrageous stories about his travels while he warms up for a song about mountains, using the word 'psychedelic' as freely and as tonally as Miles Davis used the word 'motherfucker.' There's always been something to Frank that hints at hidden depths in his persona -- he operates with a wink and a smile but with simultaneous earnestness, and if you're not tuned in, his subtleties could whiz right past you. What he's doing here isn't out of character at all, it's an embrace of the twinkling possibility of low fidelity to teach lessons about cosmic potential, and Frank's interests are nothing if not geared toward cosmic potential. Last I checked, Bill Hicks once said this: 'It doesn't matter because it's just a ride. And we can change it any time we want. It's only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings of money -- a choice, right now, between fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your door, buy guns, and close yourself off. The eyes of love, instead, see all of us as one.' What side do you think Frank Hurricane is on?" --Matt Krefting, Holyoke, MA, 2015
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