DRAG CITY - Forced Exposure

$13.50 PREORDER RELEASE DATE: 11/17/2023

"Drag City presents its first-ever Christmas/Holiday album -- Neil Hamburger Presents Seasonal Depression Suite. This song-cycle is filtered through the lens of various guests stuck in a perfectly average chain-hotel during the holiday season, wallowing in self-pity and paranoia, re-living personal catastrophes both real and imagined, or simply trying to use the hotel vending machine. Influenced by everything from Thom Bell to Tommy to the troll-ish misery of Trip Advisor reviews, Seasonal Depression Suite provides another entry in the sprawling satirical critique of America that Greg Turkington has been engaged in with his multifarious enterprises and collaborations since the early '90s. The musical tapestry woven by Turkington and Erik Paparozzi draws from the stage musicals, pop vocal albums, film scores, rock concept albums, new wave mini-masterpieces, and singer-songwriter epics that have captured their imaginations since childhood, in pitch-perfect support of their fictitious hotel guests and their tormented concerns. To sing these parts, a once-in-a-lifetime all-star cast was assembled -- including Neil Finn (Split Enz, Crowded House, Fleetwood Mac), Annabella Lwin (Bow Wow Wow), Alan Bishop (Sun City Girls), Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, acclaimed singer/performance artist Puddles Pity Party, voice actress Natalie Peyser, J.P. Hasson (Pleaseeasaur), enigmatic vocalist (and Frank Sinatra's granddaughter) A.J. Lambert, Paparozzi himself and, of course, Neil Hamburger. Among the many musicians accompanying the cast were Scarlet Rivera, Danny Heifetz (Mr. Bungle), Bär McKinnon (Mr. Bungle), Prairie Prince (The Tubes), Atom Ellis (Dieselhed), Jason Schimmel (Secret Chiefs 3), and Alex Jules (The Monkees band) -- an international assemblage whose talents give Seasonal Depression Suite its epic sweep. With all hands-on board, Turkington and Paparozzi created their own kind of masterpiece, like Sinatra's late-period concept album Watertown fused with the misfit comedy of Neil Hamburger -- a work that looks at a cast of characters both ordinary and bizarre, as they make their way from one grievance to another, traveling from place to place, hoping to live, while waiting to die. There won't be another album like Seasonal Depression Suite anytime soon -- if ever."

$25.00 PREORDER RELEASE DATE: 11/17/2023

LP version. "Drag City presents its first-ever Christmas/Holiday album -- Neil Hamburger Presents Seasonal Depression Suite. This song-cycle is filtered through the lens of various guests stuck in a perfectly average chain-hotel during the holiday season, wallowing in self-pity and paranoia, re-living personal catastrophes both real and imagined, or simply trying to use the hotel vending machine. Influenced by everything from Thom Bell to Tommy to the troll-ish misery of Trip Advisor reviews, Seasonal Depression Suite provides another entry in the sprawling satirical critique of America that Greg Turkington has been engaged in with his multifarious enterprises and collaborations since the early '90s. The musical tapestry woven by Turkington and Erik Paparozzi draws from the stage musicals, pop vocal albums, film scores, rock concept albums, new wave mini-masterpieces, and singer-songwriter epics that have captured their imaginations since childhood, in pitch-perfect support of their fictitious hotel guests and their tormented concerns. To sing these parts, a once-in-a-lifetime all-star cast was assembled -- including Neil Finn (Split Enz, Crowded House, Fleetwood Mac), Annabella Lwin (Bow Wow Wow), Alan Bishop (Sun City Girls), Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, acclaimed singer/performance artist Puddles Pity Party, voice actress Natalie Peyser, J.P. Hasson (Pleaseeasaur), enigmatic vocalist (and Frank Sinatra's granddaughter) A.J. Lambert, Paparozzi himself and, of course, Neil Hamburger. Among the many musicians accompanying the cast were Scarlet Rivera, Danny Heifetz (Mr. Bungle), Bär McKinnon (Mr. Bungle), Prairie Prince (The Tubes), Atom Ellis (Dieselhed), Jason Schimmel (Secret Chiefs 3), and Alex Jules (The Monkees band) -- an international assemblage whose talents give Seasonal Depression Suite its epic sweep. With all hands-on board, Turkington and Paparozzi created their own kind of masterpiece, like Sinatra's late-period concept album Watertown fused with the misfit comedy of Neil Hamburger -- a work that looks at a cast of characters both ordinary and bizarre, as they make their way from one grievance to another, traveling from place to place, hoping to live, while waiting to die. There won't be another album like Seasonal Depression Suite anytime soon -- if ever."

$30.00 PREORDER RELEASE DATE: 11/10/2023

"Cylene II is the new materialization of the collaboration between François J. Bonnet & Stephen O'Malley, initiated in 2018 and continued without interruption since then, taking form in a myriad of contexts ranging from common practice to recording sessions, concerts and tours. Cylene II bears witness to these different contexts, offering a multifaceted sound signature developed on different occasions The epic opening track 'Four Rays (Anti Divide)' welcomes, for the first time, other musicians -- in this case a wind quintet -- expanding the duo's sonic palette without betraying the fundamental component of their music, namely the driving of sonic energy. Elsewhere, Bonnet and O'Malley propel the energy between themselves, extending the singular climate that has characterized their musical development over the past five years. Among their minimal presentation of tones and resonances, as glacial harmonic intersections slowly elevate with massive physicality to an orchestral degree, new refinements become evident: the music's relationship to silence, and a brightening of the fine metallic edge glowing at its core. For the listener, Cylene II is a sound that reaches from the deep and scales up to the far firmament in its careful motion, drawing emotions viscerally from the chest, giving rise to the suggestibility of the soul. A séance of sorts for all who witness it, whether playing or listening."

$27.00 PREORDER RELEASE DATE: 11/3/2023

"These two early cassette-only titles from the renowned guitar improviser Tashi Dorji were released a decade ago -- this reissue marks their debut on vinyl." "Guitar Improvisation and Tashi Dorji are the first physical releases of my guitar improvisations. They were put out by a small local, now defunct, label called Headway Recording in 2012 and 2013. The friends who ran the label had heard some of my guitar music and reached out to me about doing a cassette release. Guitar Improvisations was really my first recording of improvisation -- in a semi-studio setting at my friend's basement space. It really was a formative time for me because it felt like everything opened, as far as the possibilities of what music-making meant. Like improvisation walked in and then there was a volcanic eruption . . . The self-titled session was recorded at a nice studio at the local university here in Asheville. I had some friends that were studying music there and had access to studio time. This session focused more on extended/prepared guitar ideas. My interest in percussive elements of sounds, timbre, harmonics, and dynamics plays a lot in this recording." --Tashi Dorji, 2023

$27.00 PREORDER RELEASE DATE: 11/3/2023

"These two early cassette-only titles from the renowned guitar improviser Tashi Dorji were released a decade ago -- this reissue marks their debut on vinyl." "Guitar Improvisation and Tashi Dorji are the first physical releases of my guitar improvisations. They were put out by a small local, now defunct, label called Headway Recording in 2012 and 2013. The friends who ran the label had heard some of my guitar music and reached out to me about doing a cassette release. Guitar Improvisations was really my first recording of improvisation -- in a semi-studio setting at my friend's basement space. It really was a formative time for me because it felt like everything opened, as far as the possibilities of what music-making meant. Like improvisation walked in and then there was a volcanic eruption . . . The self-titled session was recorded at a nice studio at the local university here in Asheville. I had some friends that were studying music there and had access to studio time. This session focused more on extended/prepared guitar ideas. My interest in percussive elements of sounds, timbre, harmonics, and dynamics plays a lot in this recording." --Tashi Dorji, 2023

$25.00 PREORDER RELEASE DATE: 10/13/2023

"Since 2011, Mike Donovan's been a Drag City stalwart, first with Sic Alps, then as a solo and with The Peacers -- but Mike "The Mighty Flashlight" Fellows has been a behind-the-scenes figure at Drag City since the early early days, playing live and on record with Royal Trux, Silver Jews, and Will Oldham. A multi-hyphenate, Fellows has contributed to releases from Endless Boogie, Pigeons, Weeping Bong Band and Prison in recent years. So when these two rambling musicians found themselves in adjacent communities in upstate New York, Mike D brought Mike F into the process of his new solo album. There The Mighty Flashlight turned on, bringing his recording, writing, performing and mixing talents to the tabletop with such a seasoned vibe that he bought himself real estate in the album title itself! The two-Mike combination makes the fourth Donovan solo album a one that hits all kinds of high water marks for the most and the best of what he's capable of/plus inclined to do. Mike D's music, in all phases, takes the form of a next-phase roots-pop: soaked in the traditional waters of rock and roll and passed through a variety of after-punk sonic sieves, highlighted with DIY and lo-fi values. He prefers a particular density of obtuse angles colliding sweet and hot noise, an arrangement he has perfected over all his Sic Alps/solo/The Peacers years; his innate understanding of the mechanics of a pop song wends purposefully through the junk-strewn landscape, sharing secrets with cipher in hand. Playing in this cracked kingdom of sound/garden of verse, Mighty Flashlight alternately accents and balances Mike's eccentricities with his playing and knob-spinning. Mighty's own kind of stereo imagining informs Donovan's smoky subterranea with additional depth of field, while still allowing all the wayward details within the arrangement to diverge as one. Mike and Mighty wind it all together: art punk utterance and top 40 radio junk of yore, the primitivity that formed recorded music in its youth, honkytonk romanticism, liminal chamber-folk and ever-present disassociated psychedelia, transformed via self-medication into a gleeful, extramusical ennui while giving the listener impetus to sing along with Mike's patented unlikely combos of melody and lyric. The sprawl of sounds and tunes, wayward, yet compact, is so easy to admire. Slip inside an eternal jukebox of the mind with Mike Donovan Meets the Mighty Flashlight."

$23.00 PREORDER RELEASE DATE: 10/6/2023

"Moments of eternity: the first plucks at the strings, a bass note cementing the drift into place a little more than a minute in. The organ drones, iterating unrelivable ancient history, a chiming note of the church. Guitar strings, climbing that stairway to heaven. Gossamer-light when viewed from a distance; up close, the gears grind with a visceral physicality. With BCMC, Cooper Crain and Bill MacKay unite to create Foreign Smokes: provocalogues, equal parts avant-garde noir and fire-and-icy jams to recall bright shades and warm stretches of infinity drawn through the buzzy overdrive of this side of life's strange and sunny days. Cooper's organ and synths and Bill's guitar draw songs from spontaneous statements and elegiac scraps, floating closer, then farther, and closer again to the sounds of the other. Starting with a melody, a set of progressions or even as little as a scale or just a key, gives room for either one of 'em to take the lead, depending on where they are or are going at any given time. The reigning motif most often seems to be, to melt and wind around each other's sound, part of a singular undulation, handed back and forth, a slowly emerging trip up into and through an ideal of exuberance. As BCMC beam through the universe, their light intersects with yours, creating a new arc. Every turntable they spin upon becomes a new prismatic stream; every bud blooming in ears across the known plane, another voicing. Every resonance, every redolence -- hushed and encompassing, prayerful yet omniscient, intimate and universal -- Foreign Smokes!"

$25.00 IN STOCK

2023 restock. "In 1987, Rafael Toral began making his own compositions and solo recordings. 30 years later, these recordings sound remarkably prescient and perfectly timeless -- almost fresher today than when they were first released. Rafael has spent the time since then developing his conceptions, with continued explorations in the many records that have followed. On the 30th anniversary of his start, we are reissuing Sound Mind Sound Body and Wave Field, his first two long out-of-print albums, on vinyl for the first time. Sound Mind Sound Body was partly inspired by exploring some of the working principles of Brian Eno and Robert Fripp, extrapolated by Rafael via a unique signal path leading out of his guitar. He paid notice to the massive impact of discreet gestures, creating slow-moving tones and spacious orchestral resonances, drifting and droning with glacial majesty, hardly recognizable as guitar much of the time. The first of these pieces were recorded in 1987, and in 1994, they were released on Portugal's AnAnAnA, with material evolved in the years between, producing a remarkable equilibrium over an hour's listening. Further evidence of the necessity for gradual development exists in subsequent reissues: for the 1998 Moikai reissue, AE 1 was recorded, and for this edition, AER 7 E was rerecorded and the material for AE 2 was recorded for the first time ever -- all from original processes as noted, and none of which will cause the listener to notice a change in the otherworldly atmosphere. Wave Field, released in 1995, was a departure from the first album into new composition methods involving the dirty textures of rock guitar, sounding in the open ears of many listeners (like Jim O'Rourke, who issued the disc in the US on dexter's cigar) as a synthesis of disparate elements -- a nexus where Alvin Lucier, Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine and Eno blend together. Here, the clangorous potential of the guitar was emphasized, giving a metallic edge to the two extended pieces and 'radio edit' coda. The jacket paid subtle tribute to My Bloody Valentine, which, along with the radio edit, suggested a harmony between musical directions as wildly disparate as minimalist experimental and rock. Today, such a paradoxical intent is more widely considered as a part of the artist's purview. This allows the sounds of Wave Field and Sound Mind Sound Body to sit perfectly among the forward-reaching music of today -- as it continues to evolve in our ears, moving ever towards the next conception of listening space."

$20.00 IN STOCK

"Recorded in 1995 and 1996, mostly in John Fahey's room at a Salem, Oregon boardinghouse, the performances on Proofs and Refutations prefigure the ornery turn of the page that marked Fahey's final years, drawing another enigmatic rabbit from his seemingly bottomless musical hat. Cloaked in the language of dogma, this is Fahey dancing a jig in the Duchampian gap, jester cap bells a-jingling. Right out of the gate, Fahey re-materializes before us, somewhere between Oracle of Delphi and Clown Prince at Olympus. Mounting a thundering dialectic from on high, 'All the Rains' resembles nothing else in his extensive discography -- betraying roots in everything from Dada to Episcopal liturgical chant -- and contains nary a plucked guitar note. When the lap steel of yore appears on 'F for Fake,' it serves more as soundbed for an extended sequence of vocal improvisations, running the gamut from wordless Bashoian caterwauling to free-form (but decidedly fake) Tuvan, even revealing a burnished falsetto in the process. Fahey takes on a different kind of provocation in the two acoustic guitar-based tracks closing Side 1 -- 'Morning' parts 1 and 2 -- the first of four recordings in this session that have him wrestling with the ghost of Skip James, perhaps Fahey's effort to wrench the 'bitter, hateful old creep' (his words) back into the grave. Anchoring Side 2 is the two-part 'Evening, Not Night,' the second half of his extended cathexis on James. The opening and closing pieces again feature Fahey's guitar as drone soundbed -- employing distortion, oscillation, and an altogether absurd quotient of reverb to create texture and harmonics that are --if we wanna go there -- not dissimilar to the sustained tonic clusters of Tibetan singing bowls, the hurdy gurdy, Hindustani classical music, or La Monte Young. Portions of this material appeared on obscure late '90s vinyl in the 7" or double-78 rpm format, but as a 'session' it has lain dormant more than a quarter century now. Taken together, we can now see these tracks as secret blueprints to latter-day Fahey provocations, several years prior to records like 1997's City of Refuge and Womblife."

$36.00 IN STOCK

"Straight outta Rockaway Beach, Queens, New York City, Prison is a state of mind, an experience, a loose collective, a band, a jam band and a bunch of psychedelic dudes who aren't your average bunch of jambanders. You get what you're dealing with here? No...you don't. The only way to REALLY get it is to go to Prison -- and if you're not from greater NYC and haven't showed at any of the shows, here's your best bet: their breakout album, Upstate. And what a breakout! So high, you can't get under it; so wide, you can't get over it! How wide? Every song has two titles, that's how wide. And almost everybody sings, like, all the time. That wide. Sure, you can break down the numbers -- five guys, five songs and four sides of vinyl in one gatefold sleeve -- but that won't get you Upstate, either. Prison is the sound of everybody in the room figuring out where to go, individually and collectively. As they go through it, the meaning changes, the destination changes, the words mean something different. It's meaning and no meaning, rising and falling, sinking and flying on the back of something massive cacophonized by three guitars, four vocals, a bass and drums. A lot of information bouncing around and enough time to really get you out of yourself! Take a look at the titles: each one a dichotomous inquest that the assembled Prison-ers march upon with fervor, glee, vengeance -- a whole spectrum of feels and perspectives woven into the jam for you to see. This'll take you places! The Prison population changes with the seasons, and during the season this album was recorded, Sarim Al-Rawi, Mike Fellows, Sam Jayne, Matt Lilly and Paul Major were in Prison. Sarim you might know from Liquor Store; Mike's made a bunch of scenes and records as Mighty Flashlight; Sam, who passed away in 2020 (R.I.P., brother) was in Love as Laughter -- and Paul Major you know from Endless Boogie, and despite being 'just a skateboarder who loves music' with no previous experience on the drums, he and Sarim inaugurated the Prison experience, like, seven years ago. Since then, it just fell together and it keeps doing so. A free thing called Prison. Just go for it! Follow the signs, listen up, have fun. That's how Prison got Upstate."

$24.00 IN STOCK

"Back from the silence from which P.G. Six always emerges, the new album release Murmurs & Whispers is the first proper P.G. Six album since 2011's Starry Mind. Time passes slowly, as they've been known to say out in the country, and before you know it, there's a bunch of it behind you. After five releases in the first decade of P.G. Six, it may seem a bit of a surprise to have not heard something new in the past twelve years -- but a cursory listen to Murmurs & Whispers will answer why, as the deep acoustic focus of the tracks imply an investment of the type of compassion and understanding that takes time and concentrated effort to conjure. Additionally, Pat Gubler's always got a few pots going at once in his ever-expanding musical universe. He's been active since the mid-90s, first with Memphis Luxure and Tower Recordings, then as P.G. Six, and as a member of Metal Mountains, Wet Tuna, Garcia Peoples and Weeping Bong Band. Additionally, some time was spent making collaborative records with Dan Melchior (in 2019) and Louise Bock (in 2021). Pat's been playing the harp for more years than he's been in bands, but when he realized that he was writing a set of songs centered around harp compositions, he spent some time in the woodshed with his instrument, a late 80s model Triplett Celtic 34 String Harp (which replaced a lovely Paraguayan harp he'd played for years previously). After the previous P.G. albums of electric band arrangements, he was in a place of writing songs with more silence in them. He ended up playing a lot of the parts himself on Murmurs & Whispers, adding guitar, bass, keyboards, recorder and hurdy gurdy, in addition to his harp and vocals. Clark Griffin and Wednesday Knudson, who Pat plays with in Weeping Bong Band, played and sang a bit themselves, and the record was recorded piece by piece in houses around upstate New York by Mike Fellows. Returning to the quiet acoustic sound of the first couple of P.G. Six albums, Parlor Tricks and Porch Favorites (which has seen a much-needed reissue in the past year after too many years OOP) and The Well of Memory, Murmurs & Whispers is more straightforward in expressing its vision of rural celestial wonder. Bucolic and comfortably lived in, Murmurs & Whispers nonetheless projects the transcendent heart of P.G. Six once again..."

$27.00 LOW STOCK LEVEL

"After Math retails what becomes of the cast of characters introduced in Art, Mystery, joint and severally pursuing an erotic Rinascimento statuette attributed to Antonio Pollaiuolo, a pursuit that lands them in court. On the way, their collective and singular fates are unfolded and accounted for, the consequences of the truth of matters for them are brought to bear and a kind of rough justice is seen to have been done, as is appropriate in rough trade." "After Math begins where Art, Mystery, the first installment in Mr. Thompson's two-part novel, left off. The chrome trader Perlat Tile has just witnessed the criminal Pablo Palbon attempt to smuggle a small erotic bronze by Pollaiuolo out of Tirana disguised as a funeral urn. The ensuing trial -- described in After Math -- pits the gallerist Ms. Jasmine, who wants to acquire the work legitimately, against the state of Albania, which also claims ownership of it. Written in the impeccable prose that we have come to expect from Mr. Thompson, After Math proves that what happens after a plot is foiled can be just as delightful as the action itself." --Michael Sanchez 132 pages; hardcover; 7.25"x4.25".

$20.00 IN STOCK

"Following several releases over the past decade of archival Arnold Dreyblatt & The Orchestra of Excited Strings material and collaborations with other ensembles, on labels including Black Truffle, Choice Records, Megafaun and Superior Viaduct, Drag City is excited as well to be able to introduce Resolve, the first release of new Excited Strings music from Arnold Dreyblatt since 2002. Resolve acts in dialogue with the minimalist inspirations of the first Arnold Dreyblatt & The Orchestra of Excited Strings release, 1982s Nodal Excitation -- in effect, looking beneath the hood of several decades of progression, reviewing and renewing the revolutionary intent of their foundation credo. The reference points, then as now, include La Monte Young, Tony Conrad and Phill Niblock, as well as Jim O'Rourke, whose support for Arnold's music in the 1990s sparked new life. Konrad Sprenger, Joachim Schütz and Oren Ambarchi form the current Orchestra of Excited Strings, first initiated in Berlin in 2009. In the case of Resolve, each of the members, as composers, producers, D.J.s, and artists in their own right, brought their own unique angles. Konrad Sprenger (aka Jörg Hiller)'s treatments involved solenoids, sine waves and a computer-controlled multi-channel electric guitar (as well as a relentless style behind the drum kit and overseeing the sound production), while Joachim Schütz's individual conception of electronics and electric guitar and Oren Ambarchi's undeniable innovations with signal path work together with Arnold's Excited Strings bass as magnetic component parts of Resolve. Side one features three potent new compositions demonstrating the Orchestra's unique feel -- incorporating rhythmic accents that act as microbeats within Dreyblatt's microtones, implying shuffling funk and metallic rock at times, yet never deviating from the driving intensity of the harmonic play. Side two is taken up by the piece 'Auditoria,' in which Ambarchi and Sprenger's production methodologies turn the Orchestra inside out, working expansively backwards through harmonic overtones to Dreyblatt's original tempo in a mesmerizing spatial redistribution of the music. The music of Resolve uses a variety of vehicles to find avenues back to the inaugural intent of the Orchestra of Excited Strings. This effort is, in ways both tactile and inadvertent, a timely one. With over 40 years of work as a solo artist, collaborator, composer, educator and bandleader, and with his 70th birthday approaching, Resolve is an important expression for Arnold Dreyblatt. The album title's tendency to mean different things is an indicator of the dynamic qualities of his music with The Orchestra of Excited Strings -- an evolution that continues to produce new dimensions in acoustic sound with every new release."

$25.00 IN STOCK

LP version. "Bonnie Prince Billy has made a number of them, and heard a bunch more in his time of knowing. He's found them hewn from moments, admired them as small and accountable -- the communication of music in emotion, release and catharsis; to edify, to entertain, in two sides and less than an hour. There's room for albums in everyone's home, and there's a place for everyone to listen -- or space for just one person at a time, when privacy is needed. Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You presents simply -- an album made as it was meant to be heard, in a room. The sound of people together -- a sound we'd so recently feared that we'd lost -- playing, communing, strings and wood and keys and voices singing. In the starkness of space, the complexities of life and time are unfurled, then refurled again. As strings ebb and flow with voices and their words, careful hands unwrap the gift of paradox in its many forms -- and rewrap, for regifting. For giving to everyone. Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You presents simply, and is sung along easily and happily with in time BUT -- Is it family portrait or fairy tale? How does it think the world was made, and will end? . . . This record, you might could call it a bastard child of Master and Everyone and The Letting Go. You might say lots of things. But you can't say this ain't a record that sings and dances, repeatedly, through moments of joy and terror and together . . .Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You was recorded in Louisville by Nick Roeder, featuring Sara Louise Callaway on violin, Kendall Carter on keys, Elisabeth Fuchsia on viola and violin, Dave Howard on mandolin, Drew Miller on saxophone and Dane Waters' voice. The presence of so many local educators in the band (Sara Louise runs the Louisville Academy of Music, Kendall is the director of music at his Louisville church, Dave runs the Louisville Folk School and Dane is a music educator as well) lends not only to a flow of moments so fluidly encompassing a wide range of musics from classical to traditional Hawaiian and elsewhere, but perhaps even more importantly, to the sense of community, heredity and the triumph of inheritance that is the marrow and life blood of this music..."

$12.00 LOW STOCK LEVEL

Cassette version. "Bonnie Prince Billy has made a number of them, and heard a bunch more in his time of knowing. He's found them hewn from moments, admired them as small and accountable -- the communication of music in emotion, release and catharsis; to edify, to entertain, in two sides and less than an hour. There's room for albums in everyone's home, and there's a place for everyone to listen -- or space for just one person at a time, when privacy is needed. Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You presents simply -- an album made as it was meant to be heard, in a room. The sound of people together -- a sound we'd so recently feared that we'd lost -- playing, communing, strings and wood and keys and voices singing. In the starkness of space, the complexities of life and time are unfurled, then refurled again. As strings ebb and flow with voices and their words, careful hands unwrap the gift of paradox in its many forms -- and rewrap, for regifting. For giving to everyone. Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You presents simply, and is sung along easily and happily with in time BUT -- Is it family portrait or fairy tale? How does it think the world was made, and will end? . . . This record, you might could call it a bastard child of Master and Everyone and The Letting Go. You might say lots of things. But you can't say this ain't a record that sings and dances, repeatedly, through moments of joy and terror and together . . .Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You was recorded in Louisville by Nick Roeder, featuring Sara Louise Callaway on violin, Kendall Carter on keys, Elisabeth Fuchsia on viola and violin, Dave Howard on mandolin, Drew Miller on saxophone and Dane Waters' voice. The presence of so many local educators in the band (Sara Louise runs the Louisville Academy of Music, Kendall is the director of music at his Louisville church, Dave runs the Louisville Folk School and Dane is a music educator as well) lends not only to a flow of moments so fluidly encompassing a wide range of musics from classical to traditional Hawaiian and elsewhere, but perhaps even more importantly, to the sense of community, heredity and the triumph of inheritance that is the marrow and life blood of this music..."

$20.00 IN STOCK

"It seems a while ago, but it wasn't -- not in days and months... whatever time is. But in terms of phases -- we've been in and out of all kinds of bags since last summer, right? There's the us before we heard the rest that 2022 had to offer, and then there's us today. And coming on seven months later, fresh as it still is, 'Hello, Hi' is disappearing in the rearview, like everything else that's going down the road. But July 2022, it was in the headlights, dead ahead. We weren't there yet, we couldn't know what it would mean, but we were excited to find out. And in L.A., with the release show at Teragram coming up, Ty and the Freedom Band were working and playing to get it together. There'd be a little acoustic set to open things up, which was something different, so a last-minute show was drummed up, for Ty and Emmett to work it out in front of some people. And that kind of became the REAL record release show. Word went out afternoon of the 21st -- free show tonight in Highland Park -- YEAH! A crowd showed up that evening and crammed in among the vintage clothes to hear some music and share some times. And most of us missed it! But nobody missed it quite like your present scribe did -- I went down, stopped in, said hi -- my lady-friend bought a hat -- and then we split, regretfully, a previous engagement to attend. What suckers we were! This show clearly ruled, just hearing the five songs included here. With the incredible feelings of the crowd and the spontaneous play in the songs we now know from the album almost miraculously captured to tape (by the capturer himself, Mike Kreibel) at FULL WARMTH, none of us can say we missed it at all anymore -- drop the needle and you're there, at the launching of sounds that added to the evolution of the world we've been living in ever since! So that's the story -- 'Hello, Hi', goodbye."

$13.50 IN STOCK

"Bonnie Prince Billy has made a number of them, and heard a bunch more in his time of knowing. He's found them hewn from moments, admired them as small and accountable -- the communication of music in emotion, release and catharsis; to edify, to entertain, in two sides and less than an hour. There's room for albums in everyone's home, and there's a place for everyone to listen -- or space for just one person at a time, when privacy is needed. Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You presents simply -- an album made as it was meant to be heard, in a room. The sound of people together -- a sound we'd so recently feared that we'd lost -- playing, communing, strings and wood and keys and voices singing. In the starkness of space, the complexities of life and time are unfurled, then refurled again. As strings ebb and flow with voices and their words, careful hands unwrap the gift of paradox in its many forms -- and rewrap, for regifting. For giving to everyone. Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You presents simply, and is sung along easily and happily with in time BUT -- Is it family portrait or fairy tale? How does it think the world was made, and will end? . . . This record, you might could call it a bastard child of Master and Everyone and The Letting Go. You might say lots of things. But you can't say this ain't a record that sings and dances, repeatedly, through moments of joy and terror and together . . .Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You was recorded in Louisville by Nick Roeder, featuring Sara Louise Callaway on violin, Kendall Carter on keys, Elisabeth Fuchsia on viola and violin, Dave Howard on mandolin, Drew Miller on saxophone and Dane Waters' voice. The presence of so many local educators in the band (Sara Louise runs the Louisville Academy of Music, Kendall is the director of music at his Louisville church, Dave runs the Louisville Folk School and Dane is a music educator as well) lends not only to a flow of moments so fluidly encompassing a wide range of musics from classical to traditional Hawaiian and elsewhere, but perhaps even more importantly, to the sense of community, heredity and the triumph of inheritance that is the marrow and life blood of this music..."

$23.00 IN STOCK

"Emil Amos was originally commissioned by the legendary KPM music library to make this music for use in television and film. But after the executive overseeing their experimental wing exited the company, Emil brought Zone Black to Drag City and re-mixed it into a proper full-length album. While the record was originally inspired by old school '70s television music, like the grim, descending riffs that took us to commercial as the running back strained in anguish for the ball in slo-mo, it became a genuine attempt to reach towards a new kind of library music. Emil (Grails, OM and podcaster supreme) carves out a much more personal interpretation of what we think of as 'music for television' with Zone Black. Taking classic, dark pieces that he grew up with as inspiration, like the 'Lonely Man Theme' from the original Hulk TV series, he fantasized an alternate environment where composers were allowed to explore more extreme states of mind, while on much witchier drugs . . . fully separating library music from its outmoded commercial constraints. Imagine Brian Eno recording Another Green World equipped with Madlib's gear and a much darker sense of humor . . . or Kafka creating The Castle with a Juno keyboard and sampler instead. In the spirit of classic synth-based soundtracks like Firestarter or Midnight Express, the instruments narrate the experience. Urban landscapes in noirish chiaroscuro, fatal encounters unfurling beneath the persistent glow of riot lights, last-ditch meetings in pre-dawn discotheques . . . all evoked with synths, harpsichords and mellotrons drifting over drum machines and the arachnoid radiation of FX disappearing up into the darkness. Every track illuminates a different corridor of Emil's brain, but A.E. Paterra and Steve Moore of ZOMBI periodically step in to contribute sax solos and drum beats to amp the coloration up. Zone Black is a fully inhabitable world, its episodic narrative divided into an improbable balance between morbid, ambient anthems and insouciant hip-hop instrumentals. Emil hadn't heard it done quite this way before, so he took it upon himself to make the sound real. And if you don't hear it in the next, big horror feature (or in a new Zone Black game done up for Xbox, yeah!), it'll make great mood music for tripping in the bathtub while dreaming of a new horizon of music to take drugs to. Listening to Emil Amos' Zone Black evokes a variety of distorted, paranoid visions -- cue it up!"

$20.00 IN STOCK

2023 repress. "Poke it with a Stick -- the only record by Louisville legends Your Food -- is a sui generis gem of the American underground, now faithfully reissued for the first time by Drag City. Recorded in 1983 by four scarecrows from Kentucky subsisting largely on cheap beer and baked beans, the album is a burbling burgoo of hypnotic rhythm, uncoiling tension, and sharp invective -- a proud bastard of post-punk royalty. In the fall of 1981, the residents of 1069, Louisville's original punk house, began to spy three teenagers lurking outside the decrepit environs. Eventually the teens grew bold enough to approach, and soon two, John Bailey and Wolf Knapp, were learning guitar and bass in the trashed rehearsal space within. 'Their practices seemed interminable at first,' remembers Charles Schultz, 'and then picked up confidence and momentum.' Charles had been the drummer for Louisville's recently defunct Dickbrains. He started playing with John and Wolf. Douglas Maxson, the Dickbrains male singer, was lured back from New York with the promise of beer and cigarettes, and soon Your Food was playing weekly shows at the local Beat Club, mostly for free beer. Financed by a Pell Grant and what little cash the band could scrounge, the album was cut largely live in the studio by a guy who usually recorded church groups, and self-released on the band's own Screaming Whoredog label. The prevailing themes of restlessness and isolation are palpable in songs like opener 'Leave,' where ennui morphs into dark comic fantasy. The punk funk of 'Don't Be' fits perfectly with the downtown NYC groove of bands like ESG and Bush Tetras. Doug's sardonic wit laces each song with trenchant, first-class put-downs. The band became big brothers and bad influences for prepubescent Slint project Languid and Flaccid."

$20.00 NOT IN STOCK

"In addition to his day job transforming pop music with his own records, as well as those of Gastr del Sol, Loose Fur and Sonic Youth over the past few decades, Jim O'Rourke has been contracted for several dozen film scores over the years as well. It makes sense -- his abilities as an improviser, composer and producer allow him to interpret cinematic moments with a unique understanding for their construction and how they work. It doesn't hurt that Jim's a well-versed cineaste, a complete and total fan of watching films, which has given him a preternatural understanding of the role of music in movies. What doesn't make sense is how Hands That Bind is the first film soundtrack of Jim's to ever receive worldwide release! He's worked with filmmakers of international repute, like Olivier Assayas, Allison Anders, Werner Herzog and Kôji Wakamatsu! He served as music consultant on Richard Linklater's 2003 laff-fest, School of Rock! He's played in ensembles of award-winning documentaries and films alike! ... Made for an indie film that's been seen by festival audiences and not enough others, the soundtrack for Hands That Bind is a moody, atmospheric delight. Jim's roots in composition via tape-editing have evolved into a sophisticated assembly of found-and-processed sounds that achieve highly musical, near-orchestral majesty as they hang in the very air of the drama that unfolds in Kyle Armstrong's Hands That Bind. Described as a 'slow-burn prairie gothic drama' set in the farmland of Canada's Alberta province, and starring Paul Sparks, Susan Kent, Landon Liboiron, Nicholas Campbell, Will Oldham, and Bruce Dern, Hands That Bind is a spellbinding trip to the existential bone of rural working life in North America. As conflict rises over the hard-worked patches of land that provide a mere and mean existence, a desperate air settles in, as a series of mysterious, often supernatural occurrences rock the small community. O'Rourke's vaporous, serpentine musical backdrops and atmospheres reflect the obsessions and distractions of the film's principles; moods of all sorts seen or otherwise implied. Additionally, the music highlights cinematographer Mike McLaughlin's closely observed accounting of the farmers' environment, as well as the striking widescreen images of the big sky country with unnerving flair. For fans of Jim's ongoing steamroom series as well as collectors of soundtracks, Hands That Bind will provide hours of engrossing listening..."

$13.50 LOW STOCK LEVEL

"Cory Hanson's third solo LP follows upon 2020's luminescent Pale Horse Rider, upping the heat to molten levels, six strings at a time. In search of further adventures, Cory draws with vampiric glee from the madness coursing through the world outside; a spiraling shitshow that's reawakened a compulsion in him -- an old ambition, even! -- to crush brutality and elegance together into a fresh set of rocks to hail down upon us. Western Cum is a high-stepping, hard-dancing, first love/heartbreak, tonight's-the-night, future nostalgia kind of good time -- the sound of guitars through the speakers of luxury cars. Like the dream you had once, alone, asleep in an amplifier, blasting Guns N' Roses through every last orifice in your body. And it's coming through! It's another side of midnight somewhere; high o'clock too, and the dark, cactaceaen fantasias of the previous incarnation have hardened and dried in Cory's pre-apocalyptic garden of choice, a sun-blinded plain of sedimentary rock. Down the highway, beyond the horizon, through the looking glass, etc. -- he's fixed for rough times ahead, a gunslinger/anti-hero of legend/infamy, back in town with axe blazing and a rhythm trio dubbed 'Slowhand' walking up the crazy horse he rode in on. You ready to boogie? Western Cum's map to the treasure is less about pastiche, though; more toward executing the songs by executioner's axe, rolling their decapitated rhythm heads and soaring melodies, the panoply of Cory's melodic impulses with guitars, guitars, guitars. Harmony leads are just the tip of the iceberg, but be quick -- the guitars like to melt everything in their path! The eight songs of Western Cum are driven by the stalwart bass of brother Casey Hanson and the drums of Evan Backer with a few passing acoustics from Cory and the intermittent spirit-moans of Tyler Nuffer's steel guitar. The quartet sound -- two guitars, bass and drums -- acts as beat-making principle/phrasing device, as well as template for Cory's layers of six-string and vocal textures. From the rooftop of their musical safe house -- the band in their makeshift hut and Cory ensconced in an outhouse -- they let loose with a blast both face-melting and mind-blowing: a social service that gives constipation a good name. With Western Cum, this debauched and shameless world is redeemed in the same breath as it is repudiated. A massing of voices and guitars form an almost post-gospel harmony, bright and burgeoning, engorging the thermostat, prising the pressure from your chest before the final wink-out. Maybe it's a mirage . . . but those things are just another part of reality, ain't they?"

$20.00 IN STOCK

2023 repress. "Nuno Canavarro's Plux Quba hails from three decades in the past, yet the simple profile of its abstract/ambient/cutup collage makes it a record that sits quite comfortably in our IDM-informed future. In 1988, Plux Quba was a primal dark horse in the world of pants-forward electronic music -- an obscurity issued with little explanation from the laid-back west coast of Europe: Portugal, of all places! -- though the casual listener could hardly know that from an examination of the LP jacket. The vanguard of electronics in late-80s Europe was being pushed by organizations like Nurse With Wound, The Hafler Trio, HNAS -- and yet, when Christoph Heemann came across this recording, it struck his ears and the ears of fellow listeners like nothing before. Plux Quba was handed around between the principles of the early '90s A-Musik scene: Jan St. Werner, C-Schulz, Frank Dommert, Georg Odijk, plus interested fellow travelers like Jim O'Rourke, to the intense curiosity of all. To ears that were already saturated with all things kraut, the dark corners of prog and the frontline of experimental and improvised music, it proved elusive. Not simply in how it sounded and how that sound was achieved, but in where it was coming from -- like later Robert Ashley at times; certain stretches of melody recalled some of Eno's ambient pieces -- but mostly, it was a completely alien soundscape! And who was it? Was the band called Plux Quba? The record? The label? These sorts of mysteries are at the heart of records that require close listening and re-listening. As it was absorbed, it grew to be an influence on the Köln sound -- Mouse On Mars, Lithops, and Heemann's many and varied projects -- as well as O'Rourke, Fennesz and many others. Music and sound of this nature have for many years been made available by bands like Autechre, labels like Mille Plateaux -- but for the first ten years of its existence, Plux Quba was rarely heard. O'Rourke reissued it as the first record on his Moikai label in 1998, and it had a good run through around 2005 before the last of the print parts were filled. It's been almost a decade since Plux Quba was available, which is way too long considering that we live in an era where it is necessary to have an LP of this on hand for your contemporary listening distractions. And so, Drag City has stepped in to reissue the Moikai reissue of Nuno Canavarro's classic Plux Quba."

$12.00 LOW STOCK LEVEL

Cassette version. "Cory Hanson's third solo LP follows upon 2020's luminescent Pale Horse Rider, upping the heat to molten levels, six strings at a time. In search of further adventures, Cory draws with vampiric glee from the madness coursing through the world outside; a spiraling shitshow that's reawakened a compulsion in him -- an old ambition, even! -- to crush brutality and elegance together into a fresh set of rocks to hail down upon us. Western Cum is a high-stepping, hard-dancing, first love/heartbreak, tonight's-the-night, future nostalgia kind of good time -- the sound of guitars through the speakers of luxury cars. Like the dream you had once, alone, asleep in an amplifier, blasting Guns N' Roses through every last orifice in your body. And it's coming through! It's another side of midnight somewhere; high o'clock too, and the dark, cactaceaen fantasias of the previous incarnation have hardened and dried in Cory's pre-apocalyptic garden of choice, a sun-blinded plain of sedimentary rock. Down the highway, beyond the horizon, through the looking glass, etc. -- he's fixed for rough times ahead, a gunslinger/anti-hero of legend/infamy, back in town with axe blazing and a rhythm trio dubbed 'Slowhand' walking up the crazy horse he rode in on. You ready to boogie? Western Cum's map to the treasure is less about pastiche, though; more toward executing the songs by executioner's axe, rolling their decapitated rhythm heads and soaring melodies, the panoply of Cory's melodic impulses with guitars, guitars, guitars. Harmony leads are just the tip of the iceberg, but be quick -- the guitars like to melt everything in their path! The eight songs of Western Cum are driven by the stalwart bass of brother Casey Hanson and the drums of Evan Backer with a few passing acoustics from Cory and the intermittent spirit-moans of Tyler Nuffer's steel guitar. The quartet sound -- two guitars, bass and drums -- acts as beat-making principle/phrasing device, as well as template for Cory's layers of six-string and vocal textures. From the rooftop of their musical safe house -- the band in their makeshift hut and Cory ensconced in an outhouse -- they let loose with a blast both face-melting and mind-blowing: a social service that gives constipation a good name. With Western Cum, this debauched and shameless world is redeemed in the same breath as it is repudiated. A massing of voices and guitars form an almost post-gospel harmony, bright and burgeoning, engorging the thermostat, prising the pressure from your chest before the final wink-out. Maybe it's a mirage . . . but those things are just another part of reality, ain't they?"

$23.00 IN STOCK

LP version. "Cory Hanson's third solo LP follows upon 2020's luminescent Pale Horse Rider, upping the heat to molten levels, six strings at a time. In search of further adventures, Cory draws with vampiric glee from the madsvness coursing through the world outside; a spiraling shitshow that's reawakened a compulsion in him -- an old ambition, even! -- to crush brutality and elegance together into a fresh set of rocks to hail down upon us. Western Cum is a high-stepping, hard-dancing, first love/heartbreak, tonight's-the-night, future nostalgia kind of good time -- the sound of guitars through the speakers of luxury cars. Like the dream you had once, alone, asleep in an amplifier, blasting Guns N' Roses through every last orifice in your body. And it's coming through! It's another side of midnight somewhere; high o'clock too, and the dark, cactaceaen fantasias of the previous incarnation have hardened and dried in Cory's pre-apocalyptic garden of choice, a sun-blinded plain of sedimentary rock. Down the highway, beyond the horizon, through the looking glass, etc. -- he's fixed for rough times ahead, a gunslinger/anti-hero of legend/infamy, back in town with axe blazing and a rhythm trio dubbed 'Slowhand' walking up the crazy horse he rode in on. You ready to boogie? Western Cum's map to the treasure is less about pastiche, though; more toward executing the songs by executioner's axe, rolling their decapitated rhythm heads and soaring melodies, the panoply of Cory's melodic impulses with guitars, guitars, guitars. Harmony leads are just the tip of the iceberg, but be quick -- the guitars like to melt everything in their path! The eight songs of Western Cum are driven by the stalwart bass of brother Casey Hanson and the drums of Evan Backer with a few passing acoustics from Cory and the intermittent spirit-moans of Tyler Nuffer's steel guitar. The quartet sound -- two guitars, bass and drums -- acts as beat-making principle/phrasing device, as well as template for Cory's layers of six-string and vocal textures. From the rooftop of their musical safe house -- the band in their makeshift hut and Cory ensconced in an outhouse -- they let loose with a blast both face-melting and mind-blowing: a social service that gives constipation a good name. With Western Cum, this debauched and shameless world is redeemed in the same breath as it is repudiated. A massing of voices and guitars form an almost post-gospel harmony, bright and burgeoning, engorging the thermostat, prising the pressure from your chest before the final wink-out. Maybe it's a mirage . . . but those things are just another part of reality, ain't they?"

$20.00 IN STOCK

2015 reissue. "Midnight is one of those 'shoulda/woulda/coulda' bands that might actually have made it -- had their utter youthfulness not got in the way. Hailing from the 'burbs of Olympia Fields, Country Club Hills, and Chicago Heights, Illinois, Dave Hill (keys), Scott Marquart (drums), Frank Anastos (guitar, vox), and John Falstrom (bass) were all record-obsessed teenagers taking music lessons at Homewood's Melody Mart in 1974. After meeting, they realized that Hill, Anastos and Falstrom went to Rich Central H.S. in Olympia Fields, while Marquart was just down the road at H-F High School in Flossmoor. That same year they formed Midnight, covering hot and heavy hard rock songs from the likes of Uriah Heep, James Gang and Sabbath (natch!) -- but they evolved quickly, playing house parties and high schools around the south suburbs in '75. By the following year, despite the teenaged years of their members, they were playing nightclubs and colleges in and around Chicago, while adding electrifying original songs to their repertoire. In the fall of 1977, still lacking either management or producer, the kids recorded their LP Into the Night at A-K Sound Recording Studio in Orland Park, IL -- privately releasing it in early 1978 in a small edition, making it a majorly sought-after hard rock rarity today (Falstrom regularly gets offers of $100 or more for a copy!). Distributed themselves (and barely promoted), the LP certainly covers all the heavy bases with a wickedly raw mix, at times sounding like proto-doomers Pentagram, with the odd, occasional boogie number and power-ballad as well. Following the release of Into the Night, the band continued to play out, including a show at the Aragon in late '79. Meanwhile, Midnight had recording sessions at multiple studios in and around the Chicagoland area -- but Falstrom reports with some considerable regret that they let the tapes 'slide though our fingers' over the years. He was recently able to locate and release the masters from a three-song EP recorded at Columbia College in 1979 and then lost for 30 years -- but Into the Night is the true legacy of Midnight. The end of Midnight came in 1980, when the band chose to stop playing live and focus on writing new material -- this insular existence led to irreplaceable powerhouse drummer Marquart quitting. And with that, the clock struck Midnight on this promising young rock group..."