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viewing 1 To 16 of 16 items
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7"
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DC 622EP
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"'Butterfly' and 'Party Shoes' are compact pop songs with lyric hooks, vocal harmonies, guitar leads, crazy rhythms and themes of love and peace, mixed together into a beguilingly physical sound. As per the standards of the format, both songs compress all their virtue into classic two-and-a-half minutes flat -- the perfect length for popular music in the days when rock and roll radio was the supreme voice of America's youth."
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LP
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DC 277LP
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"Dateline, December 2013. Ten years after the sinister first stirrings of The Howling Hex, Drag City finally gets the picture as to the truthiness of it all: All-Night Fox needs to live on as a vinyl LP in the 21st century. All-Night Fox brought the new border sound of The Howling Hex into sharp focus: songs free from structural cliché, with 'verse,' 'chorus,' and 'solo' incorporated into a stream that runs through the entire album. The generic designations 'rhythm and blues' and 'rock and roll' are observed, respected, and surpassed as The Howling Hex play their music beyond genre, with the generic realities inherent in the music, regardless of whether or not they choose to exploit it for their image."
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CD
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DC 545CD
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"The Howling Hex are back in town -- you can feel them in the air, man. The Best of The Howling Hex is a new album of new music by a new incarnation of The Howling Hex, now broadcasting as a band from the big town of Denver, Colorado. After years staked out in the border country of southern New Mexico, guitarist and leader Neil Hagerty is back in the phonebook, giving The Hex an urban soapbox on which to stand for the first time in their ten years of re-re-revisionist history. Mile high style seems to be a good match for the mercurial back-road attire of The Howling Hex. For this new album, the wide open spaces and new border rhythms of recent albums have been telescoped and accelerated into a high-stepping, up-tempo night on the tiles. Kicking the beat with new border funk is a rhythm section complete with drummer, last heard on a Howling Hex record back in 2007. Also redux is the functionality of the 'ditty' -- most recently experienced on Earth Junk. The Best of The Howling Hex includes seven shortish songs that weave the wild spirits and far-flung textures of Wilson Semiconductors into tightly compressed sing-songs, before turning the jam out to bring the levee home. Hagerty's guitar tone is an alien wonder, and the careening beat of the band unleashes him to fill solo spots with fervor."
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LP
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DC 545LP
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CD
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DC 501CD
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"The Howling Hex, Wilson Semiconductors: one guitar, four songs, a multitrack recording unit. Out of the desert and into the mountains, the Howling Hex are at large once again, upping the ante by lowering the body count this time around. They wager that you're the gambling type. If you're still reading this, you're curious at least. Very curious."
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LP
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DC 501LP
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4CD
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DC 077CD
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"In 1997, Drag City published Victory Chimp, a paperback book. This had been committed to text by Neil Hagerty from memories, wire photos, sheet music, cobol computer printouts and his own typewritten notes circa 1980-88. The story had to be told, but in '97 the long-form radio show was not quite the fashion and we certainly weren't thinking about the coming onslaught of media mash-ups that would develop in our new millennium collage culture. But now, in 2011, Victory Chimp returns as an audio book. Not just any audio book, but a nextlevel audio book, which is only fitting given Victory Chimp's once-and-future status as an out-level sci-fi paperback. The concept of reading with your ears is surely a nonsequitur that fits the logic of Victory Chimp, where sound is used not simply to create atmosphere, but to pace and forward the narrative. It's not quite the 'total work of art' imagined by Wagner before he soundtracked the Holocaust, but VC pictures fascism as well, albeit from a radically different angle. And so we make the comparison. Not many things compare to Victory Chimp when it comes to form, largely due to its elusive play with it. Even Dos Passos caught shit for skewing structure once upon a time."
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CD
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DC 372CD
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"Come back to the world of the all-new, all-different Howling Hex, the planet of Earth Junk. Three targets are routinely sighted during the genesis of new music in The Howling Hex's free-ranging New Border Sound: observation and incorporation of space/time around the band in the period preceding the recording of the album (aka, the writing process); a consideration of the nature of the worldwide audience of The Howling Hex, whoever they may be (i.e., the marketing meeting); and additionally, the consideration of equally unpredictable future listeners (with nominal input from Drag City account executives). Each time around, this method elicits new sounds from The Howling Hex in a divergent, entirely refreshing manner. What does that make Earth Junk? Take a guess. If you figured on an electric country-pop hoedown for small ensemble (featuring circus organ), as minimal and repetitive as all rock and roll, you'd be getting somewhere. If you're concerned it might create a bit of curiosity or perplexity, you're on the right track. The Howling Hex are convinced that as musical entertainers, they owe the audience (an audience? Any audience!) something of value for their money. Emblematic identity and presentation doesn't fall under their umbrella of worthwhile experiences -- and furthermore, what seems dire and spacious can also be sly and hellacious. With The Howling Hex, you're free to get up or get down, and know there's room for one more -- and another beyond it. As test listeners, we concur. Recorded in Austin in the late winter of early 2008, Earth Junk is a ramble in the dappled sunlight of the American southwest, twisted metallic folk-art in the ever-changing breeze, an offering to all nations. Throw Earth Junk in your sound-trunk and keep on rolling. The Howling Hex will be there to greet you whenever -- and wherever - you arrive."
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LP
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DC 372LP
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CD
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DC 345CD
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"Off in the distance, the sounds of cities and towns groan, rumble and heave. It might be bustling industry or some strange storm that stuck around so long that inhabitants forgot it was ever supposed to leave. In some places, it is rumored that sirens are forgotten altogether. Can you imagine? OMG! With this in mind, The Howling Hex congregated. A tour had been booked and there was work to do. Working collaboratively with each other, the band descended upon each city in turn. Nightly, they gathered with the citizens and took note. Wherever The Howling Hex went, they heard the sirens -- howling, screaming, soothing. They put them in the grooves of their new songs. Writing songs on the road and playing them, night after night, led them and us to this moment-defining statement: XI. After all, Odysseus tied himself to a mast for a reason. A piece of every city can be heard on XI. In fact, spin XI on and you will find as well several states of mind and sound in the funky-swift, breviloquent songs. Think of The Minutemen playing Blue Oyster Cult's 'Godzilla' backwards (and underwater) to the post apocalyptic denizens of Hendrix's '1983' -- but think fast because another song is coming and there's a riot going on. Guitar leads conversing with fat bass leads in front and behind you as saxophones wail before stripped-down drums, the frenetic beating of the conga and other percussive instruments. This unnameable thing we know as rock is matched on XI with sharp-eyed lyricism and a multiplicity of vocal approaches."
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LP
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DC 345LP
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LP version, limited to 400 copies.
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CD
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DC 320CD
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"Existing simultaneously below the crust of the earth's war-torn culture and on the main street of consumer America, The Howling Hex spend their time pushing their trademark New Border Sound to the bold, the curious, and the jaded alike, crafting sonic pleasures for all needs. Albums such as All Night Fox and 1-2-3 have explored frontier sounds and sampled local cultures while brewing an unmistakable essence of rock and roll as never heard before. The A-V approach of You Can't Beat Tomorrow caught these two Americas in the frame as The Howling Hex jammed their unmistakable sound. Now come seven new songs that take it higher. Nightclub Version Of the Eternal builds, builds and builds in the manner of The Howling Hex live shows seen across America funking on and on with a collective abandon, while dispensing information with g-g-generous style. The wide net of The Howling Hex sound this time around shows the influence of Wolf Parade, Fela and The White Stripes."
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CD
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DC 308CD
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"Quick and easy as 1-2-3 we present the long awaited and much requested digital compact disc release of the '03 -'04 limited-edition vinyl-only series from The Howling Hex. Streamlined to their atomic essences, each song on 1-2-3 is a diamond of soulful tunage pre-prepared to incite and excite and invite further investigation. From the crisply electronic automation of 'Hero' through the homespun operatic mourn of 'Breakaway' to the seven-step border beats of the seductive 'Doing Fine' -- leave alone the always present electric guitar."
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CD/DVD
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DC 291CD
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"The DVD contains the pilot episode of The Howling Hex's variety show, You Can't Beat Tomorrow, while the CD is the soundtrack of the same name, containing complete versions of the songs featured in the show -- and more. Listeners who've already sampled the high-energy sounds of The Howling Hex (as heard on their CD, All-Night Fox) will be thrilled by the expanded lineup, featuring The Theatre Fire on banjo, violin, trumpet and pedal steel guitar and Neil Michael Hagerty on lead vocals and guitar. The video presentation weaves a collage of every-day images, musical segments and a hilarious animated serial following a group of all-American types down at Henry's bar."
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CD
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DC 277CD
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"Deeply grooved and stomping, alive with a triple-headed vocal attack, aloft on clouds of reverb, All-Night Fox can be heard in a variety of tongues. As in so much of life, meaning comes after the moment of impact. This is built into the design. The songs on All-Night Fox are free from structural cliché -- 'verse,' 'chorus' and 'solo' have been incorporated into a stream that runs through the entire album. Additionally, the generic designations 'rhythm and blues' and 'rock and roll' are surpassed. The Howling Hex play their music beyond genre, with the reality of rhythm and blues inherent in the music, regardless of whether or not it is exploited for their image. The Howling Hex features Neil Michael Hagerty on guitar, vocals, production and songs."
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LP
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DC 276LP
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"Pissing in the wind, flying the flag in a fogbank, watching pornography featuring the Invisible Man -- and so, whereas, we aren't doing that, as I mentioned, no hoarding on our part is invoked and we are grateful to you. It is consistent with this to exploit specific interests in the form of questionnaires or persuasive invitation and to invoke expectation confounded by events both current and persistent. Elements include: the day I handed the singer from the Durango Scorpions a laundry list and he sang it straight from the page in a crippled accent, the audience loved him for it; strict diagram of what the resulting development this is, to be used as a model for all future Howling Hex to be repeated without question; hiding in a tower that was overlooked -- perhaps it didn't exist yet it is erect."
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viewing 1 To 16 of 16 items
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