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FTR 389LP
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$18.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 2/15/2019
"For the first release in Feeding Tube's Unknown Province series -- a run of records dedicated to exploring little known nooks of the Canadian underground, curated by Alex Moskos -- we are delighted to bring you the first vinyl reissue of the 1968 zoner masterpiece by poet bill bissett and his fellow Vancouver freaks. We have always been shocked this LP was not included on the NWW list, but Canadian releases often seem to exist in their own universe, so we suppose that's the 'explanation.' Because, in a list of any free-form freakouts, Awake in th' Red Desert would surely have a high place. bissett was a sound/concrete poet of high repute when this was recorded, and he was also something akin to the king of the Vancouver underground scene. The original album was issued by Jim Brown's See/Hear label, which Brown founded as an adjunct to his Talon Books imprint. Backed by a band of interesting musicians (a few of whom went on to straighter afterlives), bissett created an insane mass of sound, comparable to what Mayo Thompson's Red Crayola was doing in Texas around the same time, laced with heavy Fugs overtones. Pure freaked sonics, created while stoned, for an audience that was similarly blasted, and was willing to decode what was going on using the very best acid logic available. Hard for me to describe how much I love this album. And I will attest that this version sounds better than any other available version ever has or could. It is jacked. Nice detailed liner notes by Alex Moskos set the scene as well as anyone ever will, and if you don't feel your teeth wiggling while this plays, I suggest you may never feel that particular feeling. In your life. bill bissett is still going today, and we heartily suggest that anyone who digs this album runs out and tries to nail down one or another of his wonderful books before the sun sets." --Byron Coley, 2019 Edition of 500.
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FTR 390LP
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$18.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 2/1/2019
"The 2006 Nightmare Before Christmas festival was one of the most bodacious assemblages of raw human talent assembled on our planet since the First Continental Congress. But it wasn't all just guys and it wasn't all just proto-Americans, so that means it was far better than any other such gathering before and/or after. One of the crazier highlights of the weekend-long event was the set by Italy's insane fraternal duo, My Cat Is An Alien. Using guitars and various other kaboobs, the Opalio boys set Red's (aka Stage 2) on fire that Sunday night, blasting out zoned croaks, wobbly drones and the kind of blabbermouth logic you usually can't access without written permission from a doctor. There were many ecstatic musical yawps during that long-ago weekend, but MCIAA's set left a deep groove in my memory. And it's a stone pleasure to revisit it after lo, these many years. Two blurts of side-ling mystery, packed in Roberto Opalio's wonderful art, with a little liner note booklet that can only hint at what you may have missed. Thankfully, if you slap on the disc, close your eyes and sniff a can of beer while lying down, you can approximate the whirling thrill ride of the set itself. And sometimes an approximation is both closer to home and more comfortable than an actual experience. So, yeah -- you're welcome!" --Byron Coley, 2019
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FTR 394LP
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$18.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 2/1/2019
"Eugene Chadbourne is one of the great guitar players of the modern era. At the time he began recording in Canada in 1975, his music was a unique syncretic formulation. While its most obvious component was free improvisation in a style then most widely associated with English and European players, his music also contained elements of jazz, country, folk, blues, psychedelic and international sounds, referencing these threads in ways that were so diverse and intensely personalized it would take scholars decades to decode them. Volume 2-1/3 is the second of four LPs devoted to documenting some of the music Dr. Chadbourne was creating during the years he was based in the provinces of Canada, while avoiding the conscriptive powers of Richard Nixon and his ilk. Exact details of the recordings are unknown, but that's trivial. There are six tracks of improvisational guitar madness at its most glorious. Describing them is almost impossible, but I can at least tell you their names 'Piazza del Duomo', 'Preperation Dimafbay' (sic), 'Father (You Opened)', 'That's All Water Under the Bridge' (purported to be the first lesson of a proposed guitar instructional record, which is a fairly brain-searing concept) and 'Rocket!' (which is a different take of the Oliver Lake classic first recorded on Volume Two). This last one might be my fave Chadbourne acoustic piece ever. Maybe yours too! If not, just give this a spin and let us know your favorite. Maybe you'll win a button. Solo Guitar Volume 2-1/3 is even more amazing than the last one, in our opinion. And there's more to come!" --Byron Coley, 2019 Edition of 400.
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FTR 419LP
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$18.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 2/1/2019
"Dan Melchior is great randomizer of a musician. Born in the UK, based in the US for the last 20 years, his discography ranges from raw garage rock to avant garde tape collages, visiting a whole lots of other points in between. Exhibit A is his first collaboration with P.G. Six (aka Pat Gubler) the wonderful New England based multi-instrumentalist, who has previously appeared with Wet Tuna (FTR 364LP, 2018), Weeping Bong Band (FTR 313LP, 2018), MV & EE (FTR 167LP, 2015) and Joshua Burkett (FTR 196LP, 2015). This time out P.G. plays keyboards, recorder and electric 12-string guitar, leaving the vocals and acoustic guitar to Brother Melchior. The material on Exhibit A hearkens back to some of Melchior's early records, which had a bluesy British simplicity somewhere between Duster Bennett and Sexton Ming. The melodies are fully formed and horribly hook-laden, but there's roughness to the textural edges (and riff-qua-riffs) that gives the music an extra layer of surly magnificence. Some of the lyrics are funny as hell. I dare you to resist from smiling while listening to 'Never Trust a Man Without Sideburns' or 'It Was Good Fun'. And the cover of Creation's classic 'Painterman' is as beautiful example of form-evolution as you'll find this year. Or any other. Exhibit A is a great spin from first note to last. There are lots of strange instrumental textures and tropes, all more or less inside the confines of modernist folk invention, and the whole shimmers with a very special kind of light, while still sounding deceptively plain. It's hard to keep up with Melchior's many releases and style shifts, but it's always worth doing. And this one is a pip." --Byron Coley, 2019 Edition of 300.
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FTR 417LP
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$18.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 2/1/2019
"We were first made aware of this Brooklyn band by Gary Panter. When we asked Gary about some specific projectors for light shows, he said we'd be best off conferring with his colleague, Curtis Godino. And oh yeah, Curtis also helmed a dastardly psychedelic music unit called Worthless. Checking out some of Worthless's previous recordings for Beyond Is Beyond, Stupid Head, and Greenway, we were struck by the weirdness and seamlessness of their psych stretching; if ever there was music made for light shows, this was pretty much it. The Cave is Worthless' third vinyl LP and is as stellar a set of glistening sonics as you will hear this year. In a certain sense, this session marks the band's evolution in a direction that approaches the sweet spot with psychedelic and progressive music meet for long walks on the beach. The overall vibe of the album is free-form and floating, with the edges of the aural tapestry going in and out of focus with buzzing irregularity. There are big shards of Saucerful-era Floyd guitar zonerism, mixed with luminous Zappa-damaged pomp flourishes, a certain chunk of drama from the Nice, and a general sort of Vertigo/Dawn/Harvest gush that will keep your brain wonderfully off balance when you try to place this music in the context 21st century Brooklyn. The (often instrumental) passages of music on The Cave move like one of the nicest white whales from the class of '68, who has managed to remain uncaptured until now. It doesn't fall into any known style traps so common in music by young people who are reaching back into history for clues. This is music sweetly fried for the stoned future. Yours, we can only hope." --Byron Coley, 2019 Edition of 250.
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FTR 405LP
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"You know that old phrase, 'Teach a penguin to cuss, and you'll never have to buy another comedy record' I'm sure you do. But what about its codicil? 'Teach a guitarist to play synth, and you'll never have to buy a new age record?' If you know that one, you might well be put off by the fact this album features one of New Zealand's most wickedly post-tongue guitar players fiddling about with oscillators and analog synths (in concert with a guy who does this stuff all the time). But you need not fear. The only New Age being brunted about here is the same one Fahey disemboweled back in '97. An ornery cuss, it has lived in the cracks some-damn-place, only re-emerging now that it has been called forth by Bruce Russell and Noel Meek. Much of the sound on Classical Music (how Fahey would have loved everything about this record!) makes me think of Chris Marker's classic film, La Jetée (1962). As you certainly recall, the central motif in that film is the main quay at Aéroport de Paris-Orly, where visitors gather to watch the jets land and take off (just as I did at New York's Idlewild Airport when I was a kid). Well, particularly on the second side, this record is a jolt of aural déjà vu for me. If I close my eyes I can almost see a parade of 707s and DC-8s careening around the flats of Long Island, missing collisions by what seem like a series of miracles to me. Mr. Russell's last LP for us was 2016's Howling and Instability at High Volume Settings (FTR 219LP), and it is a sheer pleasure to realize how unstable he can be on instruments besides the guitar. Mr. Meek is wildly successful at this as well, and the combination is as bracing as an early morning slap of Old Spice. Step up for blast of Classical Music-style reality today. You'll be oh-so-glad you did." --Byron Coley, 2018. Edition of 250.
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FTR 305LP
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"Patriots is the first actual vinyl record dedicated entirely to the music of Boston's boss post-core art-punk trio, (New England) Patriots. Their other two long players are splits, with Palberta (FTR166EP, 2015) and Skimask. And while those two bands are certainly estimable in their own rights, the unadulterated churn of (NE) Patriots gives this album a very special squirm. Certain aspects of the blabber still make me think of the late, lamented Cows, and their whole whizzing raunch shebang. But there's nothing in my personal listening history that has this exact brand of sonic adventurism. The Pats still just use guitars, drums and tongues at work in shaping their sounds (certain bass register tones being ascribed to fat strings, perhaps?), and they have a beautifully anarchic approach to song assemblage. Some of the tunes stretch out like worms in Gibby Haynes' colon, others are compacted the way the Hobson Brothers' nut sacs might have if they'd given each other cube-dunks back in Killdozer's heyday. A firm and mighty sound." --Byron Coley, 2018. Numbered edition of 300.
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FTR 414LP
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"The second LP by Mark Cunningham's current Spanish outfit, Blood Quartet, marks a directional shift from their 2016 debut LP, Deep Red (FTR 283LP). On Until My Darkness Goes the quartet abandons pure instrumentalism, including a few vocal takes by drummer Cândid Coll strewn amidst the album's various tangles. There is also a much more aggressively rockist focus shown at times. Rumor has always been that this is a firm part of the band's live trip, but recorded evidence of it has thus far been scarce. Of course, most of Until My Darkness Goes is in the same great vein as Deep Red. Noirish trumpet drifts across a rotten cityscape, batting down noise guitar rats that pop up from open manhole covers like goddamn Whack-a-Moles. But there are other things going on as well. "Surfing Rueda" sounds like some sort of unholy collaboration between the Raybeats and Sonic Youth. "Stress of Her Regard" plays like Robert Wyatt doing his version of hard rock vocals in front of the Tony Williams Lifetime. "Velvet Love" curls through the air like a smoky reconsideration on Eric Burdon & the Animals' soft-psych phase. It's crazy how fast this record drifts from style to style, although Blood Quartet always touches back to their basic Chet Baker meets Pete Cosey conception. The whole album is a collection of wild moves, as you might guess from the fact they cop a Stones quote for its title, and even name a track after the Representative from Corwood. I can't wait to hear what these guys get up to next, but for now we've all got plenty to digest. So dig in." --Byron Coley, 2018. Edition of 250.
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FTR 416LP
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"Although I have lately taken to associating Louisville's Ryan Davis with the maniacal blurt of Tropical Trash, I am reminded by the release of the fourth State Champion LP, Send Flowers, that this is his original mothership. Send Flowers is State Champion's most fully realized Beard Rock expression to date. The surrealist underpinnings of Ryan's lyrics are heavier than ever, but that is balanced by the band's most epiphanically tasty licking. The pieces fit together with such easy organic grace, it's tempting to suspect they're simple. But the closer you listen to the parts the more complex they appear. This begins with Ryan's words, which are sung so gracefully you have to concentrate to pick up on the timeless phrases he invents here, but when you pay attention they jump up and just about bite you. The same thing goes for the instrumentation, which initially passes as a mere recreation of lost Topanga threads, but surpasses those bounds with the something approaching the same assurance as the David Lindley-led band on Terry Reid's River LP (the transcendent Beard Rock masterpiece). Send Flowers will almost surely be misapprehended by lazy farmers and the cows who follow them. It may also be anathema to folks who primarily head-link it to Tropical Trash, but for anyone who digs the new generation of singer/songwriters out there, from Wooden Wand to Ned Collette to the legacy of the Silver Jews. Peel slowly and see." --Byron Coley, 2018.
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FTR 400LP
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"... When I first met Chris, Jess and Dan, they were all living in Western MA and I was in Eastern MA. And when they recorded this album in the Pacific Northwest, I had just moved to the Pacific Northwest. Though Chris and Jess had lived and created music in the Bay Area and Portland, Maine prior to their tenure in Western MA and have since moved back to the Bay Area, their music (Fat Worm of Error, Angst Hase Pfeffer Nase, Schurt Kwitters, White Limo) came to define certain aspects of the Western MA 'noise' scene of the late '90s/early aughts... while Dan Greenwood's music as Diagram A came to define an almost photonegative of these qualities, sharing some of the absurdity, conceptualism and instability with an added intensity, viscerality and violence . . . Once in Washington, they recorded multiple sessions of Chris' floortop guitar and electronics, a guitar Dan had modified with motors and springs, Dan's homemade cracked electronic circuitry, and one of Seattle instrument builder Dave Knott's stringboards. Combined with these were recordings made in and around Port Townsend's historic, decaying military installation at Fort Worden State Park, including recordings in Fort Worden's legendary two-million-gallon cistern, which has a dizzying 45 seconds of natural reverb. The cistern is well known as being the recording site of the very first Deep Listening Band album by Pauline Oliveros, Stuart Dempster and Panaiotis, released in 1989. Chris, Jess & Dan brought down an analog synth, a clarinet, a Marantz tape recorder (and some tapes) and wandered throughout the cistern's roughly 200-foot diameter. Side one begins and ends with a heavy emphasis on skittery, sometimes abrasive, anxiously controlled electronics, particularly the idiosyncratic sound of Dan's crackling devices. Things become more mechanistic and open before offering a glimpse of the cistern recordings which will come to dominate side two, but the side closes out with more sonic steel wool. This serves to highlight the spaciousness of side two. The group utilizes the unique acoustic properties of the cistern to great effect, allowing the sounds to activate the space's resonance and then step aside. Amidst this Gothic cathedral of reverberating tones are delicately interwoven recordings of trains and thistly electronics creating a palpable foreground and background . . ." --Greg Kelley, Seattle WA, 11:11pm, 11/11/18
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FTR 413LP
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"Newly remastered reissue of Willie Lane's 2009 solo guitar LP, Known Quantity, originally released on his own Cord Art label. Over the last few years, this album has been requested at the store more often than just about any other, but it sold out not long after it was issued and has risen in price consistently since that time. Listening to Known Quantity, it's not hard to understand why it has such a strong rep. Lane came out the Hampshire College scene that aligned itself with the Apostasy Records crowd (Krefting, Shaw, Rosenblum, etc.). His first known recordings were actually with some of the noisier experimental units associated with this cabal. Willie was based in Philadelphia for a long time after college, where he fell in with Jack Rose and the whole Fishtown scene of the early Oughts. Moving back to the Valley, Willie also began working with Matt Valentine's tribe, and his first solo album,Recliner Ragas, was issued as a C.O.M. CDR in 2006 before getting vinylized by the Humito label in 2012. And keen listeners out there will detect a certain "Spectrasound" feel to some of the electric passages here. The music on Known Quantity is a buttery mix of electric and acoustic string aktion. Samara Lubelski plays bass on one track, but it's all solo apart from that. And it's a wonderland of textures and sound shapes. Some of the pieces are almost straight ahead (somewhat more in tunes with the work Willie does when he plays live), but others are as wobbly and jagged as a drunk peacock. It's an amazing record, and rewards multiple listens with constantly unfolding details. Max Milgram (from Watery Love) did the new cover art (based on the original LP's photographic frontispiece) and the mastering by Carl Saff is mighty nice. Enjoy..." --Byron Coley, 2018. Edition of 500.
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FTR 434LP
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"Silk is the fantastic third LP by Maxine Funke, a New Zealand musician whose first recordings were with the legendary $100 Band (Funke, Alastair Galbraith, and Mike Dooley!), whose music was drifting experimental dust of a very high order. Maxine's first two solo albums, Lace (2008) and Felt (2012) (originally released as CDR on Galbraith's Next Best Way and a lathe on Epic Sweep, respectively), were reissued by Time-Lag to great acclaim in 2016, securing her place in the upper echelons of contemporary folk inventors. With the release of Silk, Ms. Funke manages to create an album that merges both of these style threads. Many of the tracks are cast in an intimate mood congruent with artists like Sibylle Baier, Barbara Manning, Myriam Gendron, Joanne Robertson, and other women who have pulled sweetly dark sounds from pockets of deep emotion, abetted largely by acoustic guitar. On a few other tracks, electronic instrumentals hearken back to her work with transceivers in the $100 Band days. The balance between these posts is delicately intoxicating. A readymade classic from start to finish, Silk travels a brilliant series of spaceways with grace and assurance. We should all be so lucky." --Byron Coley, 2018. Edition of 400.
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2LP
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FTR 362LP
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"We were introduced to the music of Ned Collette by guitarist Julia Reidy, another Melbourne ex-pat currently based in Europe. Julia's word is good as gravy around here, so we checked out Ned's new work and were blown clean out of our socks. Old Chestnut is a haunting prog-folk song cycle for the ages. Ned's approach to voice and guitar resemble various models at various times. You'll hear smatterings of Leonard Cohen, Lou Reed, Pip Proud in lyrics and phrasing, but these are always just spices, added to the beautifully melancholic vistas Ned arrays before our ears. On the epic track, 'June,' there is a piano part by Chris Abrahams (of The Necks) so perfect in its conception it stops time. Working with longtime drum partner, Joe Talia, and a few other guests, Collette has made a goddamn whale of an album. The songs are brilliant, the arrangements have an addictively sparse genius, and the production is so full and delicate it reminds us of folks like Jim O'Rourke, Van Dyke Parks and Roger Waters. We are strangely unfamiliar with the bulk of Ned's previous recordings, but it doesn't really feel like it matters that much. With an album as strong as Old Chestnut, his history restarts here." --Byron Coley Edition of 300.
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FTR 408LP
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"Creative Healing is a new Massachusetts combo mixing the folks from Hollow Deck (Andy Allen and Mia Friedman) with three old pals who also passed through the Ran Blake Paddle Tunnel at NE Conservatory (Katie McShane, Jesse Heasly and Nick Neuberg). The results are, as the old men say, a real gas. Although it's not a constant, there are moments throughout this album where the swonky collision of sax, guitar and drums puts me in mind of several classic versions of Beefheart's Magic Band. Nothing along those lines in the vocal department (which are often delivered as casually as they might be by MX-80's Rich Stim), but some of the harmonic threads are definitely of a Vliet-ian ilk. But there's more horn and overt jazzliness here, and also a dual tendency towards straighter and skronkier passages that would be outside the Magic Band's realm. The female vocals, when they appear, lend an edge of sophisto-mystery. It's not entirely unlike the way Dagmar Krause's parts worked during the later days of Henry Cow. As you've probably gathered from the references, this is art rock played at a very high level. There's no real nostalgia in it, however, the essential whatsis of their music is fully contemporary, and has lots of mechanical detailing that places it squarely in the post-post-hardcore stream. But it's also rooted in the great eternal gush of progressive music is all its many guises. And if that makes it seem like there's a little bit of everything here, well so be it. RIYL anything anywhere between RWA, Slapp Happy and Men & Volts." --Byron Coley, 2018. Edition of 250.
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2LP
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FTR 298LP
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"Spielgusher represents the meeting of two of America's great artists, Richard Meltzer and Mike Watt. There is additional musical accompaniment by guitarist Hirotaka Shimizu and drummer Yuko Araki, but the basic semiotic brunt of this meeting is shouldered by Richard and Mike. A collaboration between the two had been postulated back when the Minutemen still walked the Earth, but that dream was canceled with D Boon met his tragic fate in December 1985. Still, Meltzer and Watt kept in touch and tried to think of what they might do together. Around 2011 they arrived at solution. Richard had recorded a bunch of material for Mike, and Watt finally decided to go into the studio with a couple of his Japanese musician pals to cut a long set of jams and splats to go along with the words. Mike put the finished session, also called Spielgusher, out as a CD on his own clenchedwrench label, but we never really felt a though that release got into the hands or ears or brains of the many folks who'd dig hearing it. Consequently, here is a 2LP reprise of the set, with lovely new cover art, provided by Raymond Pettibon (another long-time Meltzer fan, and one who actually witnessed the debut performance of VOM at Kahuna's Bearded Clam, back when we were all a lot younger). Meltzer's words range from hilarious to shocking, and anyone who has attended one of his readings will agree that his performance is fully on point here. The musical inventions the trio tosses up to meet his words are fantastic - abstract or pointed at various times, melodic or noisome as befits the mood, but all with the compact econo lines that are Watt's stock-in-trade. There are perhaps some out there for whom Meltzer's poems will prove to be stronger word-meat than they are used to, but most of us are surely made of stronger stuff. And this album will be welcome manna to ear-teeth everywhere. Chew slowly and see." --Byron Coley, 2018. Edition of 500.
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FTR 386LP
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"In March 1995, soon after the German Veracity label issued Wolfways, and just before they did Parsnips Snips (1995) (Hurley's first vinyl after a nine-year drought), the Great Snock undertook his first European tour. Joined by bassist Robert Michener (from the Richmond scene Hurley'd been involved in) and percussionist Mickey Bones (legendary Boston drummer & bones player), Hurley hit a bunch of places and Germany and also KLUB K4 in Llubjana, Slovenia, where this set was recorded. The sound is beautiful, the band plays with lazy perfection, and Hurley's vocals are energetically melodic. He does some songs that were only released on the series of cassettes that immediately preceded Wolfways ('Horse's Ass,' 'The Beggar's Terms'), stuff from Wolfways ('Letter in Neon,' 'Portland Water,' 'I Paint a Design'), classics like 'O My Stars,' and a few cover tunes. And More! Packed up in a new Hurley art cover design (based on the Euro tour t-shirt), with great liner notes detailing the rigors of a German press junket from right before the tour-proper, this package is sure to please discerning Snockophiles of all stripes. It's a fantastic spin. Dig in today." --Byron Coley, 2018.
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FTR 393LP
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"Eugene Chadbourne is one of the great guitar players of the modern era. At the time he began recording in Canada in 1975, his music was a unique syncretic formulation. While its most obvious component was free improvisation in a style then most widely associated with English and European players, his music also contained elements of jazz, country, folk, blues, psychedelic and international sounds, referencing these threads in ways that were so diverse and intensely personalized it would take scholars decades to decode them. Volume 1-1/3 is the first of four LPs devoted to documenting some of the music Dr. Chadbourne was creating during the years he was based in the provinces of Canada, while avoiding the constrictive powers of Richard Nixon and his ilk. Exact details of the recordings are moot, but that's trivial. The music on this record is a joyous celebration of traditions of liberation, using approaches that range from the ridiculous to the sublime. But regardless of the humor level (which can be very high at times), the quality of the musicianship and the originality of Chadbourne's compositional theories is staggering. Today there are charts and maps that can lead anyone into and out of the conceptual jungles Eugene was exploring. In the mid '70s, when these tracks were laid down, this was all terra incognita. While still in his early '20s, the Doc was figuring all this shit out for himself. And doing so at a level that can still make your jaw drop. Today Chadbourne continues making some of the most exciting music on the planet, but these examples of his early work should serve as a challenge to many musicians who would like to imagine they're doing something new. That they're also a total gas to hear is just gravy. Delicious, hot and very juicy." --Byron Coley
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FTR 411LP
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"Lauri McNamara is one of the crazies who make the New England sub-underground such a richly interesting universe to inhabit. She worked off and on with the late, lamented Egg, Eggs, but her main focus has always been on solo performance, accompanying herself on ukelele. A few other people make their presence felt on her debut LP, Knobby Knoll, but let's not get bogged down in their details. 'Cause really, this is Lauri's show, no matter who else might be sitting in. Unlike the many idiots who play uke, emphasizing its child-like qualities, Lauri handles the little axe like an adult. In her hands the instrument is just a guitar with a more compressed palette. And one gets the impression that what some people would view as the limitations of the instrument are appreciated by McNamara for their inherent intimacy. Knobby Knoll is nothing if not an intimate experience. The lyrics are filled with Lauri sharing aspects of her persona, alternately affectionate and judgmental, but always melodic. Many artists who inhabit similarly idiosyncratic creative space eschew compositional beauty as a necessary element, but Ms. McNamara has a very dab hand creating hooks inside a context where they seem almost anomalous. In many ways, the songs here resemble classic 'parlor music' of the late 19th century. For a moment, it can almost make you forget we live in the age of Trump. What a gift!" --Byron Coley, 2018 Edition of 200.
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FTR 324LP
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"In 1975, the critic Lester Bangs was seen moaning in the pages of Creem about the anti-emotionalism of the German band, Kraftwerk, and their whole concept of the man-machine. Skip ahead 43 years. Bangs is long dead, and the man-machine is thriving. As proof of this, one need look no further than the new Tarp LP, Part. Trapped inside its insanely lovely cover art (courtesy of Greta Svalberg), one finds the two hulking man-machines (Conrad Capistran and Joshua Burkett) attempting to figure out if it's okay for robots to hug each other in public. Right in the center of the highway, even. Heard in the most boorish way, the music on Part is all the work of unemotional man-machines (to use Bangs's moldy fig of a term). 'Anybody could play this stuff,' Chuck Berry fans will pout. But that's both untrue and beside the point. I mean a goddamn giraffe can play 'Johnny B. Goode' given a 30 minute head start. Music as subtle and fully communicative as the music on Part is a heavy conceptual lift. It occurs only after a lot of thought, a massive amount of jacking around, and about a ton of boo. One needs to be a committed freak to pull off such an elegant space-hack as this. But, of course Conrad and Joshua are lifers not dilettantes. Tarp is what they do. And no one could do it better. Their previous eponymous LPs (FTR 117, FTR 323) have been dandy, but Part is a real push into new areas of the void that amplify the duo's kosmiche wing beats. You can hear little pieces of the millions of records these guys have heard poking up now and then, but the way these elements are collaged into the whole is absolutely unique, absolutely Tarp. And not the mere burps of some man-machines. Roll over Lester Bangs, and tell Chuck Berry the news." -Byron Coley, 2018. Edition of 300.
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LP
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FTR 350LP
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"Limited Grace is a lyrical hitchhike expedition through a psychedelic rural universe where time is nebulous and navigational tools are frowned upon. Through words, voice and sound, Gillig take us through cosmic swamps, ghostly clearings, mountain tops at night without a tent, shacks built along riverbanks but without running water, and dark desert highways soaked in silence except for the sound of a gas tank running on little more than fumes. Using the imagery of small, concrete moments, he tells us unique yet epically familiar stories without the frills of any particular plotline. While his first release, Cave Trilogy (FTR 188LP), was a 3LP set of songs recorded solo under a bridge, this is a more honed effort to take that same rawness into a studio and build on it while maintaining its authenticity. With contributions from friends like Matt Valentine, the FDOME collective, and other members of the Turners Falls music community, this effort is decidedly fruitful. Whatever qualities might have been lost while emerging from under the bridge, are replaced with musical elements that bring all subtleties to light. Well-placed backing vocals, sludgy yet swirling guitar leads and minimalist organ are the sparkplugs and pistons on Gillig's likely unregistered vehicle as he shows us all-points-off-grid. Many of these songs would not sound a bit out of place if they somehow found their way onto an Alexander "Skip" Spence album or a collection of Warren Zevon demos. At times taking the offbeat elements of Spence or Zevon a step further, at other times more straightforward, boldly reminiscent of early Dylan or Townes Van Zandt. Bryan Gillig's Limited Grace is an artisanal demonstration of song craft and sensibility that is not so much forgotten as rarely attempted, let alone successfully." --Travis Long, 2018. Edition of 200. Comes with download code.
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LP
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FTR 402LP
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"Time Machine is a reissue of a 2017 cassette, and represents the first vinyl issued by Wendy Eisenberg, a peripatetic improviser and composer currently based in Amherst. We first heard of Wendy when she was playing with a blasted quartet called Birthing Hips, whose NNA cassette was an instant classic. Since then she's begun a solo career that branches off in a lot of directions simultaneously. She has an album of post-form noise-metal (in trio with Trevor Dunn and Ches Smith) due soon on John Zorn's Tzadik label. She has an LP of acoustic guitar improvs coming up on Steve Lowenthal's VDSQ imprint. And then there's Time Machine -- a gloriously intimate suite of bedroom pop miniatures that makes us suspect she can do about anything she sets her mind to. The music on Time Machine is arranged sparingly and sung with real warmth. Although everyone thinks I'm nuts for mentioning it, I am reminded in spots of the Space Lady's outsider take on keyboard pop. But there are also large parts of this record that put me in mind of Elisa Ambrogio's solo work as well as the singing she does with 200 Years, meaning there's a sense of inherent wildness being reined in a bit, all for the sake of the songs. Time Machine is a wonderfully flowing album. Small parts of the instrumentation hint at the stranger vistas Ms. Eisenberg's music can explore, reminding us that this is but one of her guises. But it's a damn good one, and we're very happy she let us help document it." --Byron Coley, 2018. Edition of 250.
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LP
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FTR 375LP
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"Jerman Barnes sounds like a fancy men's shoe brand, but it's actually a duo comprised of two of the American underground's most prolific wanderers -- Jeph Jerman and Tim Barnes. Jeph has explored everything from primitively brilliant free jazz with Blowhole to deep electronic explorations under the name Hands To, although in the latter part of the 1990s he shifted his focus to music made with found natural objects. Tim Barnes entered our consciousness as fluent master of experimentally canted percussion before he threw us a curve by joining Matt Valentine's Tower Recordings ensemble and going deep-prole for a while. Regardless, he and Jeph started releasing duo recordings almost 15 years ago, and they all brim with a very specific type of spectral weirdness. The instruments listed in the credits are: metal, bamboo temple blocks, springboard, wood, feathers and electrics. Furthermore the sho is played by Ko Ishikawa. So what about the three horn players pictured on the cover? In fact, they are Alex Bruck, Ramón Del Buey, and Misha Marks. This ensemble is briefly heard as distorted source material on the a-side (a penny to the first listener who finds them), but it turns out for this project they're mostly just dancers who use the horns as props, visually key to the process; aurally, not as much. But as you listen to The Finger'd Remove you'll probably start to wonder, 'Hey, where are the instruments not listed? Because surely that's the sound of a dead horse full of bees being dragged down gravel road. Or, wow -- a Texas rain-toilet.' Right? Well, Jeph and Tim aren't saying, but maybe it's just that there are instruments too complicated to notate. Dig? The wild collection of sounds here are designed to live primarily in your imagination. Do you really need to name all that stuff? Our suspicion is you'll be just fine if you lay back, close your eyes, and open your mind to the infinite possibilities suggested here. Words are just too drab to fully capture it all." --Byron Coley, 2018 Edition of 200; Includes download code.
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LP
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FTR 407LP
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"Vinylization of a CD-R released by Josh Burkett's Mystra Records by this great cassette manipulator, who was long a central part of the Boston Whitehaus scene. Bloodroot Spitball is a bit different from Arkm Foam's other Feeding Tube releases, since it incorporates a bunch of 'real' instruments into the mix. This hearkens back to Mr. Foam's first solo LP, The Foam Doesn't Fall Far From The Shore (2013), on Hot Releases. As on that one, there's another player heard here, when Andy Allen (who was all over that first LP) joins a tune to play clarinet. That track, 'Clarimello', may be one of my faves here because the friction between live music and taped/manipulated music is always a treat to hear when it's done well. And this is. The second side is a suite, recorded on the street in Greenfield, while doing something or another. Sounds sort of like he's trying to vacuum dust off of peoples' shoes as they pass by, but that's probably an illusion. Whatever's happening, it's a fine slab of disorganized urban field recording, and makes a very nice contrast to the more evolved work on the a-side, making for another beautiful addition to the Arkm Foam section of every connoisseur's collection." --Byron Coley, 2018. Edition of 200.
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LP
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FTR 279LP
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"Recorded in fits and starts, while the artists worked on their moontans amidst strong waters, the sole release by Dead Girl's Party was originally issued on cassette by the Entr'acte label. Since that tape now goes for a ben-and-a-half, we realized it was time to make a vinyl document of these young jazz immortals. Scott 'Pfennig' Foust (XX Committee, IFCO, Tart and the founding philosopher of the Anti-Natural movement) and Matt 'Ha'Penny' Krefting (Son of Earth, Believers, Duck, MK Unit, etc.) decided to do this stuff because they were hanging out a bunch, and 2009 seemed like a 'down' year to them. What better to inflate its core than a totally-inscrutable duo, dedicated to creating noise-pop with no clear precedent? The three tracks on the first side run from the Francis Bebey-like 'The First Pill,' through 'I'm a Tick Tock Bomb' (basically a distillation of every good move the Fall made in the '90s), onto the Apocalypse-as-a-carnival-midway-game of 'Spin the Wheel!' It's what I sort of thought the Sleaford Mods might sound like when I first heard about them (boy, was that a disappointment). Just a weird, sometimes wordy collection of electronics and mood and barely suppressed outrage. The two tracks on the flip are sort of a post-Apocalypse song suite about pirates in a submarine who have to get rid of a lot of ballast, although they know they're gonna die anyway. And wasn't life grand? To which we say, 'yeah!' Impossible to categorize or to get off the stereo, The Things I've Lost is a monster for the ages. Listen in the light. Listen in the dark. Just listen." --Byron Coley, 2018 Edition of 300; Includes download code.
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2LP
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FTR 397LP
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"Although their name suggests they're Nijinsky-obsessed acid folk wanderers, nothing could be farther from the truth. 2014-2016 is the second album by this Atlanta-based nontet, and it presents a wide swathe of styles and contrasting textures that are wildly eclectic but never very acid-folky. The name stems from the fact that when the band began, some seven years ago, their line-up often changed and they tended to use a different band name every time they played a show. Faun & A Pan Flute somehow got used for a couple of shows and it stuck, not least because it's a fairly ridiculous piece of misdirection. The music on this 2LP set, recorded during the period encapsulated by the album's title, are a wonderful expansion on the music heard on their eponymous debut LP. The sounds are complex and fully composed instrumental pieces that mix elements of jazz, prog and post-rock shimmer with equal assurance. Hard to imagine keeping such a large ensemble together these days, considering the financial privations of the underground, but they manage to pull it off, and even make it seem easy. The music on this album shifts between genres with lazy ease. Some of it sounds like Italian soundtrack action by one of the '60s masters, other parts recall everything from Waka/Jawaka-era Zappa to Steve Reich's late '70s ensembles to the Nels Cline Singers to some of Keith Tippetts' larger bands. Crazy stuff, but all totally great, and all of it eventually sounding like nothing other than Faun and A Pan Flute. If you got ears, you gotta listen." --Byron Coley, 2018
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