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FTR 506LP
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$22.00
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RELEASE DATE: 5/1/2020
"FTR is proud to present what is only the second solo album by Borbetomagus' sax giant, Don Dietrich. Crazily, Option documents the FIRST solo performance Don ever did. It was recorded in 2019 as part of the OPTION series in Chicago, where Dietrich appeared at the invitation of Ken Vandermark (who also wrote the liner notes). The cover photo shows one of Don's polycarbonate sculptures, after which the album is partially named. Twisted, compressed, and strangely inviting, it is emblematic of the eruptive ruckus Don creates using amplified tenor sax and effects pedals. This music possesses some of the same cerebral overload as the sounds Dietrich invents inside his long-lived trio. But without the specters of Jim Sauter's sax and Donald Miller's guitar, the sonic envelope here feels somehow less hermetic. There are no sneak attacks from his brothers about to happen. The shape of the solo improvisations here are under his control. The pedals allow Don to make all sorts of un-sax-like textural moves. A few spots bubble down into solo electronics that would not be out of place on a Basil Kirchin LP. But most of Option has a crazy flow, constantly bending and folding back on itself, in order to make the sound richer and darker. Like a black hole star, Don sometimes seems to be pulling raw sounds out of the air towards himself. It's a totally wild process, and something we hope you will enjoy, before you file this title as a JAZZ record. Which Don says is where it belongs. And who are we -- really -- to argue?" --Byron Coley, 2020 Edition of 300.
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FTR 499LP
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$22.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 4/24/2020
"Vinylization of last year's cassette by UK duo, The Slowest Lift. Comprised of Julian Bradley (Vibracathedral Orchestra, etc.) and Sophie Cooper (whose Divine Ekstasys LP, (FTR 342LP, 2018) is a dang classic), The Slowest Lift has been producing high-quality avant-pop form-waffling for several years. Their eponymous debut album was on VHF (2017), and Plutonic Shine continues their drive into the heart of some very weird beast. Sophie's vocals sometimes breath like the air itself, although they can also surface as distorted puffs of lung-powered color, melodically-oriented, but trapped by no ordinary sense of song structure. The instrumental portion seems to be built with electronics and guitars, which create mounds of sound for the vocals to hide behind and dodge around. Although the sound is as 'now' as any hep cat could wish. there is really very little to date this music archeologically. The basic tools for what The Slowest Lift do have been around for decades. It is what Julian and Sophie choose to do with these tools that will knock that beaver hat right off your head. Gorgeous stuff." --Byron Coley, 2020 Edition of 250.
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FTR 513LP
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$22.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 4/17/2020
"A glorious re-match for Chicago's superb free-rock trio, Mako Sica, and the jazz world's percussionist of choice, Hamid Drake. Their last collaboration, Ronda (FTR 409LP, 2018) was a glorious, open-ended studio conversation spread across two LPs. Balancing Tear is a mix of studio and live recordings, awash with calmly oceanic passages, interspersed with compressed and feverish form-blurts. As with Ronda, the heft of the material is dynamically advanced. The album begins with passages worthy of Morricone's western soundtracks, but the action mutates with rapid surety. There's a track that will make you think of a micro-dosed Vic Damone singing balled for the Sephardic Justice Society with chunky, obtuse piano accompaniment recalling the work of Chris Abrahams (Necks). There are stretches of proggy soundtrack-y expansion with muted trumpet and deep bass roiling that make me think of Mark Cunningham's superb electro-jazz combo, Blood Quartet. There are even shadows of tango that emerge in places like sharks' fins breaching. Having played together as much as they have over the intervening years, Hamid's presence inside the overall gestalt of the sound is a natural fit. Mako Sica's sound expands without making it seem like there's a new element grafted to it. It's just bigger and better. As all freedom should be." --Byron Coley, 2020
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FTR 511LP
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"Vinylization of an insane and legendary CDR that Nashville's Cherry Blossoms collective issued when they did a 2007 tour of Upper and Lower Rangoon with Josephine Foster as a special guest member. The Cherry Blossoms are a musical entity not easily described, but I feel as though their essential whatsis was grasped by Michael Hurley. We were talking a few weeks ago and when the Blossoms were mentioned, Mike said, 'Oh Yeah. I remember the last time I played a gig with those guys. Their van pulled up, and each of them got out, already playing an instrument and singing, and each of them was doing a different song.' And so it is here. This is a blend of roots music unimaginable to the average No Depression type listener. Various threads of beauty are woven together into a tapestry of such psychedelic magnitude you can barely comprehend the individual elements. Listening to this album one hears a blend of Pindar Family-style Bahamian ecstasy, slightly tipsy Protestant psaltery, jump rope songs, and just the sort of rag-taggery that Snock described. Josephine's distinctive voice is deep in the mix sometimes, at others it emerges for semi-solo highlighting. And the whole thing is a thoroughly provocative series of unfolding wonders. So sad you missed the tour. So glad we could help." --Byron Coley, 2020 Edition of 400.
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FTR 391LP
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"This is the second volume of our series collecting the odds & sods of the immortal Nudge Squidfish. Nudge is one of the singular figures to emerge from the Columbus sub-underground rock scene of the 1970s. He was a member of The True Believers (along with Mike Rep & Tommy Jay). He cut a single for the New Age label in '82, and couple of odd solo LPs while he was living in Nashville later in the '80s. He was a member of V-3 (along with Jim Shepard) after that. He also released a bonkers full-length cassette on Old Age that was subsequently vinylized by Columbus Discount. More recently, he has become a highly regarded disseminator of UFO videos (Google it). The first volume of this series, You Can't Have Aliens Without The Squid (FTR 321LP, 2017), was met with gasps of amazement and other tomfoolery. Robot Wars, featuring material recorded between 1974 and 2017, covers even wider stylistic ground than Aliens, and is certain to provoke as many questions as there are answers. The material here is performed by Nudge solo, Root Cellar (a band with Charles Cicirella on smutty vocals), Jayfish (Nudge + Tommy Jay), and V-3. And while Nudge (left to his own devices) has shown signs of being a pop artist, the music here does not hew to that notion. From fine, straight bar blues readymades to spaced-up electro doo-dads to neo-Nig Heistian raunch polemicism, to guitar bursts worthy of Crazy Horse, Robot Wars presents many the faces of the Squid. And yeah, it includes his pop side, but the breadth and balance are kinda staggering. Roll on, Big N!" --Byron Coley, 2020 Edition of 200.
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FTR 493LP
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"Here is the third of our LPs documenting the new work of Vienna-based expatriate guitarist, Eric Arn. The first was the solo Orphic Resonance (FTR 281LP), the second, Paranza Corta (FTR 384LP), documenting duo work with Austrian guitarist Margaret Unknown. And now the third features duet recordings with English avant garde cellist Jasmine Pender, who also performs more noisily using the soubriquet, Rotten Bliss. Pender and Arn first met at a 2018 festival in Krems, Austria. They played a duo show soon after, and this recording session followed in August of that year, when Ms. Pender was passing through Vienna. The blend of their instruments is a strange and delicate meeting. The music involves a conversation of tonal improvising in which the separation of the instruments (so different on the surface) manages to blend in a way that component parts submerge fully into a sort of Third Mind-style musical language. The material here is basically live and, according to Eric, 'lightly-edited, no overdubs or post-processing.' The first side-long piece. 'In illo tempore,' is a mosaic of layered sheets of sound, fitted together as they gently float through space and time. The second side-long piece, 'The Serpent Ophis,' is a slowly built, chiming, breathing mass of circular gesticulation that effortlessly rises to create a shimmering, expanding plateau of sound. As with Eric's other LPs, Hyrdomancy is a wonderful dive into the unknown. Can't wait for the next one." --Byron Coley, 2020
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FTR 495LP
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"First graspable release by Leaf Peepers, a Massachusetts duo comprised of Turner Falls' Omeed Goodzari and Worcester's Nick Bisceglia. Omeed is well-known hereabouts as member of Donkey No No, and also for his solo recordings, which include the superb Zoltar Hid All the Locks / Minnows LP (FTR 349LP, 2018). Nick has recorded with his band Husks, and has also participated on sessions by Wendy Eisenberg and Chris Weisman among others. In fact, the both of them helped out on Chris's last album, Romantics. Be that as it may, the sound of the Leaf Peppers is located somewhere near the orthocenter of these references. Because Omeed is present, there is a distinct whiff of classic hippie paranoia, usually expressed via acoustic guitar figures that are both simple and complex at the same time. Meanwhile, the vocals display lots of the same weird pop displacement as the tuneage of Brattleboro's finest. Although it also seems as if there's a lot of speed manipulation on the vocal tracks, so that sometimes you'd swear you were listening to ghost-lassies singing about CIA operatives and monkey glands and various other topics. But whatever speed you hear it at, Lunchtime for Birdy is a trip. Rolling circles of guitar-chords, toots of the pan flute, with vocals and lyrics that range from softly lyrical to something that recalls the ecstatic-chaos of the Fugs. Prepare thyself to deal with lunch. As a miracle." --Byron Coley, 2020
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FTR 512LP
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iji (pronounced "ee-hee") is songwriter Zach Burba's tenured, pop coalition. Bred in Phoenix and fully flowered in Seattle, iji has been touring the American underground for 14 years, releasing a countless number of beloved LPs and tapes and pressing pause only for Zach to join the roving swarms of friends like Mega Bog, Dear Nora, and Clyde Peterson, whose Torrey Pines film (2016) featured a live touring soundtrack by Zach and others. iji, their self-titled 11th release, is a crucial wander through a gummi jungle that thrums with living things. When it came time to record, iji live band alums Jake Jones (drums), Will Murdoch (bass), Evan Easthope (guitar), Tyler Martin (synths), Erin Birgy (vocals), and Jade Tcimpidis (vocals) lined up to help alongside a large number of friends, guests, and new collaborators including Zach's dad, David Burba (who plays harmonica on the opening track). Zach also recruited collaborators, James Krivchenia (Big Thief) and Erin Birgy (Mega Bog) to engineer and co-produce respectively, with eternal heroes like Arthur Russell, Laura Nyro, Peter Ivers, and Squeeze swimming in the clouds above. Although iji consistently slips from genre assignment, it has been an earnest pop experiment since its inception. The dancing procession of iji albums have reliably been about goofing, dreaming, love, and adventures through both inner- and outer-space, with lyrics and arrangements that sparkle with good-natured self-awareness. The theme of movement -- necessary, joyful, and dizzying -- zigs through the record, most notably with the minty-blue "Faster", and duet "In Motion", featuring vocals from fellow road dog Greta Kline (Franky Cosmos). Present, too, are the loss and loneliness that come with endless flux, whether it's in feeling alone-together in the social anxiety warble "Party's Turn", missing old kinship of absent pals ("Where Are You?"), accepting bewilderment at your own reflection ("I Don't Ever Wanna Go Back", "Lizard", "Much Oblige"), or even in singing a requiem for a favorite tape whose warped reels can't light the brain like they used to ("The Ultimate in Relaxation"). Other songs are stories told in harmony with these ideas; an artist's performative self wriggles out of being truly known in "Something to Say", we stop to gawk at the dude within ("Chewing"), and thumbs twirl in the sunny one-room cottage of "Salmon Ladder". The album's synaesthetic palette, pocked and splashed with noises, is a direct nod to iji's relationship with visual art. One of Zach's paintings appears on the cover and is, quite literally, a still-life of the music. Includes lyric sheet and download code; edition of 500.
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FTR 519LP
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"Music doesn't have to be self-expression, but for Ryan Power that's the only way it can be. Every note, melody, turn of phrase, and point of view in Power's carefully-crafted songs is intravenously infused with his particular way of moving through the world. It's a curious, probing, never-satisfied mode; he's always searching for the perfect combination of chords, the most precise arrangement of words, the most complete capturing of a mood. As one song on his eighth album Mind the Neighbors puts it, his songs are 'dreams on the run' -- part of an exhilarating chase for elusive ideals. That chase leads to some wonderfully weird discoveries. On the wind-blown 'The Slime', sweetened tones inspire surreal visions: 'your feet are burning on thoughts of coal / slowly seeping through the walls of your soul.' Whitetail deer and tectonic shifts get equal footing in the breezy sway-rock of 'Spirit Animal', which takes place during 'pot therapy at brain camp'. And in the deliberate, meditative 'Breathe Deep John', a robot turns into a human but feels like a mirage: 'Everybody wants to see the monster,' Power hums. 'So everyone's out getting wrecked.' Those kinds of inimitable reflections put Power's personality all over the music on Mind the Neighbors. But these tunes are not without precedent: his own obsessions with Brazilian music -- particularly Bossa nova -- as well as jazz (a form in which he's trained) and folk all flutter through his songs, and you can hear some remnants of '60s French pop careening around as well. But Power's been at this for almost 20 years, and any echoes you might hear in Mind the Neighbors are merely intriguing footnotes to the autobiography his music continues to write with precision and, yeah, power. You don't want to miss this chapter." --Marc Masters, 2020
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FTR 500LP
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Forthcoming in April: 2020 repress on neon magenta vinyl. "Wow! Great new LP by the full trio version of Maine's Big Blood. Colleen, Caleb, and Quinnisa are all present and accounted for at every turn on this one! Unlike their last LP, The Daughter's Union (FTR 459LP, 2019) (which seemed like some sort of experiment involving glam-rock-readymades), Do You Wanna? is awash with crazily re-imagined girl group dynamics. Some of these tight-sparkly-dress recreations have a savage teenage authority, but others wiggle more like dreams stolen from the nodes of Julee Cruise, Angelo Badalamenti, or David Lynch. Sometimes there are style-ghosts standing in all the expected places, but none of them are behaving the way we'd expect. But I do not wish to paint the sound here as monochromatic. There are many of Big Blood's classic elements employed with trademark pluck -- witchy patches recalling early Spires That in the Sunset Rise, small balloons filled with glitter & gas-pulses, bubbling pools of pure psychedelic confusion. But the strange sophistication of children wearing Diana Ross masks is something new. And it's such a mesmerizing vision, I find myself paying extra attention to it. But then again, that's just the surface. The lyrics here are of a piece with Big Blood's patented approach of creating surrealist poetry in a rural and arrestingly original American style. Quinissa's newly rampant influence seems to be grounding some of the lyrical imagery in more quotidian scenes ('Insecure Kids,' etc.), but with the parental examples she's afforded on a daily basis, this may just be a phase. But whatever else it is, Do You Wanna? is another amazing spin from Big Blood. And there's even a poster you can pin on your memory board. Talk about your win/win situations!" --Byron Coley, 2020
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FTR 396LP
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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 4-1/3 is the fourth of four Feeding Tube LPs in this series, devoted to documenting some of the music Dr. Chadbourne created in the years he lived in Canada, avoiding the shadow of Richard Nixon. As always, exact details of the recordings are vague, but trivial. Here are four tracks of improvisational guitar madness at its most glorious. Describing their textures is a fool's errand, but that is the job I was born to do. 'Bow' is new to me, but the sonics suggest the title may be a practical description of how some of the effects are achieved. 'The Bird', which has been issued on cassette previously, is a wonderful example of Eugene's most swinging jazzbo playing. 'Be' is another piece that's new to me, with long sequences of bent-string attack accruing epic grandeur as they unspool. And 'Mao Tse Tung Did Not Have to Deal with People Who Were Watching Seven Hours of Television Every Day', which was a bonus track on the CDR version of Solo Guitar Volume Two, is a sidelong ode to revolutionary techniques of all kinds, employing a bunch of them as it evolves, with results that are pure bananas. If you play all four volumes of this set in order, you will begin to imagine a whole new universe of guitar technique. We hope they fill in some gaps for you. We have been blown away by each and every one. And would like to thank Doctor Chadbourne for sharing his archives with us." --Byron Coley, 2020 Edition of 400.
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FTR 489LP
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"Eddie Flowers is a legend of the American rock sub-underground. Starting as an Alabama-bound fanzine scribe back in the early '70s, Eddie drifted to Bloomington to lend his presence to the Gizmos in the days before 'punk' was codified. Next, he turned up in L.A., where he founded the legendary acid squawlers, Crawlspace. Crawlspace was a thoroughly nuts collection of loosely rotating heads, who existed from 1985 into the new century. They played few actual 'shows,' but still managed to churn out endless documents of their music making. Still, Crawlspace's few vinyl offerings are exquisitely fucked, and include some of the first heavy deployments of Can-generated riff-pulsing heard anywhere on the scene. Anyway, L.A. has a way of eating its children, and Eddie was darn near gobbled by the Sunshine Monster before he was spirited away to Indiana by some old and solid friends. Once there, he lost no time getting a new 'situation' together, and this album is its first graspable evidence. The music created by The Wax-Lip-Swamp-Dub unit is thick with acid-haze (generated by a real random assortment of instruments) and powered into fields of Can-like glory by the superb drumming of Tyler Damon (previously heard on (Manas III (FTR 330LP, 2017)). Eddie's vocals sprawl across the top of it all, giving an entirely new meaning to R. Meltzer's phrase, 'blabbermouth lockjaw of the soul.' The vocals here are all that, but they lay out like a beatnik rattlesnake frying happily in the Texas sun. It is a beautiful trip. Hint to travelers: the higher you fly, the better your view" --Byron Coley, 2019. Edition of 300.
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FTR 504LP
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"A very whacked new outing from Baltimore keyboard genius Liz Durette. Her earlier albums had a certain avant jazz approach, tempered perhaps by certain new music proclivities. And while I do not doubt she still has the chops for such things, Delight is a horse of an entirely different color. What's here was all done on keyboards, but at times it sounds like insane calliope music for wicked children with a taste for that old waltz beat. The whole first side could be the soundtrack for a surreal film about dead Viennese courtiers high-stepping their way around the Bardo as though it were a hedge maze. The more I listen to the record, the more circular its matrix appears, and the less certain I am of the direction in which gravity is pulling me. No surprise then, to learn that part of Delight's inspiration was drawn from A Genuine Tong Funeral, Gary Burton's amazing '68 LP, comprised of a full set of Carla Bley's wildest early compositions. On the flip, Durette is in a similar fettle, but seems keener on exploring the faux percussive aspects of her 'axe.' This involves the simulation of little people tap dancing on a xylophone, as well as very many other transgressive-if-meditative sonic activities. And they are all done with such flair and attention to detail you really have to wonder what sort of visions Liz has accessed. They seem to exist somewhere between romance and math. The universe of sounds she creates on Delight is wildly complex, but also it appears to operate by a set of congruous rules throughout. Like I said earlier, GENIUS!" --Byron Coley, 2019 Edition of 250.
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FTR 368LP
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"After five long years of waiting, rural psych masters, Sore Eros, return with an extended statement of purpose. Although their partial spatial dislocation from Western Mass has seemly rendered them a studio-oriented outfit, the lovely tangles of sound they create are as optimally fried as ever. The album was helmed by engineer/producer Adam Granduciel (War on Drugs) who was the only one capable of coaxing the whole band into the studio. Aided by players like Daniel Oxenberg (ex-Supreme Dicks) and Kurt Vile (ex-Nest of Saws), the music on Sore Eros was recorded between Philly and L.A., and seems to owe some its creative modeling to those cities as well. Indeed, the side-long ending track, 'Mirror,' feels like it's equally indebted to left-coast canyon-hugging surf-pop and cheese steak-powered garage-volk readymades. The rest of the album is just as sizzling. The tunes move between large-scale rock moves with Deadly intent and strangely-drifting pop aktion that gets close to Bobb Trimble's version of otherness. The overall heft is more woodsy than beachy, but maybe I'm just saying that 'cause I'm listening to the thing in the middle of a forest. Pressed at 45 RPM for extra high fidelity, packed up with a poster insert you can throw darts at (just like an earlier generation threw darts at the insert from the first Silver Apples LP), the theoretical swan song of Sore Eros is all a head could hope for. And then some." --Byron Coley, 2019
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FTR 454LP
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"Three:four Records (Switzerland) and Feeding Tube Records (USA) are pleased to announce the release of Early Abstractions, Vol. 1 by Danny Oxenberg (Supreme Dicks), Bear Galvin, and Friends (Pillow Mt. Conspiracy). Early Abstractions, Vol. 1 is the follow-up their 2016 release Late Superimpositions (three:four records), and contains recordings made in New York, Western Massachusetts, and Los Angeles -- some old, some older, some relatively new, some borrowed, some blue . . . Around the world in 90 days, it feels like, this album has taken many forms. Originally it was going to be a double album of all older music that I recorded mainly at 76 Charles Street in NY in the '90s, and since then this has evolved to include other stuff from the 2000s. So originally this was going to be titled Early Abstractions (a nod to Harry Smith) and now it is kind of still half that, and other stuff. Still I would like to thank all of the friends who have played on this and helped record it. Like Julian Koster who played the Banjo, did some vocals, and recorded the track here called 'Banjo-Coke' (I 'played' the Coke) at his Grandmother's house, I believe in Long Island. I would also like to thank Shannon Ketch and Adam Langellotti who both played on and helped to record, 'Crackers'. And also thanks to Jenna and Les and Beverly and of course Mark Hanson for playing with us over the years. And I would also like to give a big thanks I guess to Steve Shavel, who we are all missing a lot and hope he reappears, but he played the majestic lap steel slide guitar here on 'Waves', and also did the background talking vocals. Mark Hanson played drums on that track. And maybe someday we will release an album of the Blinded Sphinx music we recorded back then. Also, I would be remiss not to thank Jane F. King and Tim Wilson for playing on 'Star Spangled to Death'." --Danny Oxenberg, NYC, March 2019. Original art by Hippolyte Hentgen and design/layout by Darryl Norsen. Produced by Maxime Guitton. Edition of 300.
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FTR 491LP
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"Welcome to the second album we've done with string maestro, Joseph Allred. Unlike O Meadowlark (FTR 451LP), this one features a smattering of Joseph's vocals, although his main thrust is still glistening instrumentals. The title song is a goddamn sad one, sung with reedy elegance, dealing with a kidnapped dog that serves as a stand-in for all earthly beings, full of both frailty and resilience. Another vocal track, 'The Crown' (which inspired the cover art), stems from a long conversation Joseph had with Max Ochs. It squeezes the inherently surreal aspects of dream-walking into semi-conventional blues tautology, and the fit is just right. The third and last vocal, 'O Columbia,' is a particular favorite, based as it is upon the some of the same melodies Fahey swiped for 'In Christ There Is No East or West,' although Allred takes things in all new directions. I had been a tad leery when I heard Joseph would be singing on this new session -- being so enamored of his unadorned instrumental technique -- but these tunes won me over in the course of a few plays. Maybe there'll be more verbal-content in his future? We would not say, 'no.' But the meat of this album remains Joseph's splendid inventions for guitar and banjo. His piece for Glenn Jones, 'The Giant Who Shrank Himself,' is a beautiful suite, worthy of its concept (that Jones is a behemoth who has to shrink himself in order to deal with us normals). It flows like the sweetest stream of wine you, I or anyone might imagine. 'Single Me a Stranger' is another literal killer, with sliding chords evoking the 1872 lynching and curse-fulfillment of an unlucky newcomer in the small Tennessee town where Allred grew up. It's spell-binding. As is 'Mark's Overture,' a banjo piece inspired by a homeless music critic in Cambridge, Mass. Another top-notch album by this great player. If you don't know Allred already, you will soon." --Byron Coley, 2019
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FTR 453LP
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"Amazingly, here is the glorious (long-delayed) follow-up to Fred Lane's 1988 Shimmy Disc LP, Car Radio Jerome. In the wake of that surreal masterpiece, Shimmy announced an LP called Icepick to the Moon, but it took 31 years to wrestle this slab of bacon to the mat. And you'll be glad we did. Icepick takes up where Jerome left off. As inhabited by visual artist, Tim Reed, 'Fred Lane' (I'll drop the quote marks after this) is a lounge crooner with smoothly classic vocal chops and a taste for lyrics shaped by Alfred Jarry's proto-Dada writings. Fred Lane is a creature of the 'Pataphysical South, inhabiting the same pocket universe as Bruce Hampton and Eugene Chadbourne. And we guarantee his music is as deeply fried as anything you've ever heard. Or eaten. The roots of Lane have been explored in Skizz Cyzyk's great documentary, Icepick to the Moon (to which this is not a soundtrack LP), and are traceable back as far as high school in the late '60s, where Lane and the late guitarist Davey Williams had a weird-o cover band. A couple years later, they both ended up in the Tuscaloosa Alabama student/hippie ghetto (near the University), where some older artists -- Craig Nutt (aka "Ron 'Pate") and a few odd others -- had formed an art collective, Raudelunas, to do all the whacked out stuff interesting people like to do . . . This was the beginning of a long Alabama Surrealist tradition that includes LaDonna Smith, Anne LeBaron, Wally Shoup, and many others. Anyway, at some point, Reed brought his Fred Lane persona to the party -- an accretion of totally insane lyrics and performance tropes, set to what almost sounds like swinging cocktail music until you start noticing the bizarre detailing and avant-garde highlighting. Coming at the same early '70s moment that lounge retro was functionally hip (Manhattan Transfer, Asleep at the Wheel, Capt. Matchbox, etc.) the results were a complete mindfuck . . . The music, penned by Reed with Roger Hagerty (aka Dick Foote), played by a band with Williams (aka Cyd Cherise) on guitar, is unbelievably fine. Sadly, this was Williams' last recording session, but the instrumental inventions are a wonderful extension of Jerome (which was notably more sophisticated, sonically, than earlier recordings)..." --Bryon Coley, 2019
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FTR 438LP
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"Proud we are to reissue the final piece of Willie Lane's original Cord-Art LP trilogy. It was recorded in various spots throughout Western Mass, in the years following the release of Guitar Army of One. Initially issued in 2016, in an edition of 350, this lovely session disappeared into the fog of the forest before most folks were able to catch its scent. Now it has re-emerged with re-interpreted cover art by Max Milgram, and sonics we think will please even the most finicky listener. A Pine Tree Shilling's Worth is my personal fave of Willie's first three Cord-Art LPs. It has a hazily unstoppable flow, incorporating elements of American Primitive and Bay Area Ballroom-era string greats in equal measure. Mostly played on electric (although there are some acoustic overdubs), the music manages to be abstract and melodic at the same time, with individual lines splanging off in oddball directions, then reasserting their formal qualities inside a single musical breath. The specific quotes that exist inside the playing are crafty, episodic and display a strange syncretic streak. A nice example of this is the sprawling track, 'New Arrivals,' on the first side. Lane manages to obliquely reference both John Fahey's improvisations for the soundtrack of Michelangelo Antonioni's film, Zabriskie Point (1970), as well as Jerry Garcia's work that was used in place of the bulk of Fahey's music after he and the director had a savage falling out. Willie reconciles their differing approaches to blues architecture with mighty slide playing and sheer dint of will. Rumors are currently swirling that Willie's next Cord-Art release will have vocals, so this three pack of instrumental genius may well be the primary documentation of one phase of this maestro's aesthetic trajectory. Hope you've got them all." --Byron Coley, 2019
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FTR 462LP
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"Beautiful new LP (the seventh, I believe), from this wonderfully abstract outfit, who were birthed in the shadow of Smegma (Portland, OR), but have since relocated to Maine. The foundational members of the band are Grant Corum (keyboards, vocals, tin whistle, vocals) and Suzanne Stone (alto sax, khene, vocals). For this album, recorded by Big Blood's Caleb Mulkerin, they are joined by Caleb himself (tape loops and treatments) and Tom Kovacevic (piano and synth), both of whom played together back in Cerberus Shoals. The quartet is hot. Even when it's a trio. The music has a blocked-out and dreamy quality, with jazzoid touches and perhaps less of an ethnographic quality than some of the band's work. But the music also exists in large chunks, which are moved around in a way that almost recalls (strategically, if not sonically) groups like Colorado's Mnemonists/Biota collective. There's a heavy and reflective quality to all the sounds generated and how they are shaped. The album takes its title from the work of the late visionary artist, Paul Laffoley, from whom the band learned many lessons, and for whom the music stands as a sort of threnody. And the sounds here seem to inhabit some of the same psychic space as Laffoley's work -- creating panels of aural architecture with Mandalic balance and flow. Million Brazilians' music has lots of depth and a shifting focus that makes it hard to identify as any particular brand of music. But as Duke Ellington so elegantly put it, 'If it sounds good, it is good.' And Urban Fossickated Octave sounds more than good. Take it from the Duke. And then some." --Byron Coley, 2019 Edition of 250.
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LP
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FTR 502LP
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"We're excited to release the debut solo LP by Matthew J. Rolin, currently a resident of Columbus, Ohio. Rolin cut his teeth with garage and psych outfits in Cleveland, appearing on vinyl by Shoreway and Nowhere before he found himself adrift and wandering in the direction of Chicago at the end of 2016. Matthew had always been a fan of Jim O'Rourke's brilliant Bad Timing LP (Drag City, 1997), and when he caught a set by Ryley Walker soon after arriving in the city, he decided to throw himself into developing his acoustic chops. Without really knowing much about the history or context of the American primitive/concert steel string scene, he managed to create a distinctive sound and approach to the instrument, owing less to the music's arts-blues fundamentals than to the contemporary players who have expanded outward in all directions from those initial impulses. Playing his first solo gig in Cleveland, opening for Daniel Bachman, an audience member mentioned John Fahey to Rolin, but he had no idea who the guy was talking about! The root-thread of Rolin's playing flows more from Glenn Jones onward, through Rose and Bachman and Blackshaw and Walker and Lane. I feel like I detect a 'Vaseline Machine Gun' urge towards Kotte-esque density in certain spots, but maybe that's just me. Regardless, Rolin's talents as a solo player (abetted only by Jen 'Donkey No No' Gelineau's violin on one track) are immediately clear from the first note he plays. Matthew currently works both solo, and in a duo with dulcimer player, Jen Powers. If you get a chance to see him don't pass it up. Nor should you pass up this chance to score his first long player while it's hot off the presses." --Byron Coley, 2019 Edition of 250.
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FTR 472LP
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"This first vinyl offering by a sporadically 20-something years unit, still extant, originally assembled under the name Cinema Soloriens by filmmaker/musician James Harrar in 1993, to play accompaniment to his films. The line-up usually includes legendary Sun Ra alto master (and current Arkestra leader) Marshall Allen with Harrar (who is also known for his work with Arthur Doyle and Daevid Allen), plus whoever else is tapped. For this date, recorded in Nashville back in 2016, the quartet was completed by a pair of under-documented musicians from the Atlanta underground -- jazz percussionist, Kenito Murray, and new music-oriented bassist, Maxwell Boecker. Together, the quartet unspools out two side long gushes of splotchy pan-generic FLOW. The music this stuff most resembles (if you really need a genre peg to hang it on) is probably jazz. The blend of electronics and reeds certainly brings to mind warped passages of many private press early '70s improv LPs, although most of those ended up devolving into funky traffic jams. Anywhere on Aerials and Antennas, the music starts to do something that might be described as 'simmering,' things quickly get weird. A horn takes off for Saturn, a voice starts mumbling as though spare change was just one prayer away, or the electronics emerge from wherever they were hiding to begin alien discussions. Not sure if there was a film shown with this or not, but the effect is cinematic. There's a great and blobby light show going on in my head the whole time it plays, never quite deciding which direction its audacious motion is headed, but always looking for an exit door otherwise hidden by the dull planes of reality. Nice work. Aerial and Antennas makes for a gloriously stoned listen, as mysterious in its motives as that second Charlie Nothing LP. And what the fuck was that one about?" --Byron Coley, 2019 Edition of 500.
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FTR 464LP
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"Here is the first physically graspable music available by this mysterious Western Massachusetts duo, whose sound has been called 'Synthetic ASMR love balladry,' by more than one canny listener. Asking them to describe themselves, we received this missive: 'Plants of the Bible started in a bedroom in Florence with a tape machine and a poem about an unkillable dog android before it quickly spiraled out of control into a real band with a real record. Their first album is a dreamy cast of imagined characters and everyday events built with elaborately layered sounds. Driven by their array of cheap keyboards and a wide range of influences from La Boheme to Fabio Frizzi to Justin Bieber, their music is deceptively inviting and playfully disorienting. They are currently working on an EP of hot songs and researching a more long-term project about the history of lesbian porn.' Not sure what more we can add, except that, according to inter-web sources, there are more than 120 plants mentioned in the Bible, ranging from 'Abraham's Bush' to 'Wormwood.' If you need more information consult a priest of some sort. If you need be confused in a way that involves wonderfully deep hooks, get this album instead. Go ahead, all will be forgiven. By actual plants!" --Byron Coley, 2019 Edition of 250.
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FTR 503LP
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"Arrington de Dionyso first made his name with the crazed Olympia-based art rock unit, Old Time Relijun. And I guess they still technically exist, but he has lately been more involved with Indonesian musical investigations, and lots of overtly free jazz horn aktion. Shouting Over Deep Water Blues was recorded by Henrik Lofgren in July 2012, in a small boat floating off the coast of Sweden. It features five improvisations on the Bromiophone with occasional liquid accompaniment provided by nature. Asked to describe the Bromiophone, Arrington writes, 'After many years of intense focus on the resonances and multi-phonic potentials of the bass clarinet, I decided to experiment with an extended range PVC pipe instrument called the Bromiophone (after Bromios, the thunder-roaring aspect of Dionysos in Greek mythology). As a modular instrument using a bass clarinet neck and mouthpiece, the various tubes can be lengthened and shortened according to improvisatory whim and wonder. The palms of the hands cover two open air holes which can be modulated both with movement of the hands and variations in lung pressure and mouthpiece embouchure to control the production of pitch, volume, and most importantly variations in tone color.' We've heard lots of players from Chris Corsano to Borbetomagus to Hen Bennink and onward use strange tubes to blow through, but Arrington manages to play a wonderfully full recital here, combining the reed's intonations with vocals recalling some of Arthur Doyle's Voice-o-phone experiments, and small randomized percussion events. Some of the tone inventions initially have a feel one often associates with members of the Netherland's Instant Composers Pool, but Arrington has a stick-to-it-iveness that ultimately make the music seems as American as it is freaked. If this is the Now Sound, I'll take it." --Byron Coley, 2019 Edition of 300.
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FTR 474LP
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Co-release with Shagrat Records. "Fifty years after her elegantly enchanting debut LP, Ask Me No Questions, was issued by John Peel's Dandelion label, Bridget St. John releases her first live vinyl. About time! In the intervening decades, Ms. St. John issued four gorgeous LPs during the 1970s, then had a quiet spell after moving to the U.S. In the '90s a sequence of crucial archival recordings on John Tobler's Road Goes on Forever label, as well as Nigel Cross's peerless Shagrat imprint started appearing. She began playing live again as well, appearing at Phil McMullen's Boston Terrastock among other places. With the release of Live at the Betsey Trotwood, Bridget demonstrates to all and sundry that her musical powers are undiminished. Beautifully recorded at the Betsey in London, the set mixes newer originals ('Castaway', 'The Hole in Your Heart', etc.) with classics from her repertoire ('Fly High', 'Ask Me No Questions') and some lovely covers. These range from Joni Mitchell's 'The Fiddle and the Drum' segueing into a Trump-informed version of 'America the Beautiful', to a sweet take on Michael Chapman's 'Rabbit Hills' (from Fully Qualified Survivor). Listening to this set, I am actually reminded of Chapman (with whom Bridget has been touring recently). Both of them seem to be ever advancing, their voices growing richer and stronger as they accrue experience, the beauty and power of their guitar playing diminishing not one whit. We are extremely honored to present a new LP by Bridget St. John, and truly believe it will slay you as fully as it did us." --Byron Coley, 2019 Edition of 500.
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FTR 478LP
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"Four decades after his last solo LP, Teenage Sex Therapist (FTR 153-2LP), Owen Maercks is back with a new one. Crazily, much of the same gang is on hand for Kinds of Blue. Guitarist Henry Kaiser was even the instigator of this project (as he so often is), suggesting it was time for Owen to cut the blues album they'd always talked about. Saxophonists Larry Ochs (ROVA) and John Oswald (Plunderphonics) are also back to blow gorgeous squalls. There's a new rhythm section in town -- Doug Sovern on bass and Scott Amendola on drums -- and they sound great, laying down whatever sounds are required as a base for the most-cracked blues wailing of Owen's guitar and vocals. The choice of cover tunes should be read as some sort of key. Lonesome Sundown's "Love Me Now" replaces some of its original swamp vibe with an approach one might liken to Bobby "Blue" Bland's sophisto-hunch. "Blue Monk" is a wonderfully fractured spin on a par with Chadbourne's visits to the Thelonious songbook. And Robert Pete Williams' "Wrong" hews to its original acoustic and violent intent, although it also manifests a few lateral spasms that might have given its author gout. The originals are similarly eclectic. "Wild Time" is a full-on blast of guitar-based zonkery. "Burnin'" is Hooker shuffle that will have your foot stomping involuntarily. "Beautiful to Me" is alternate universe songsterism in the vein of Sex Therapist. "Iceland Boogie" is the first known blues song to tackle the topic of Reykjavik's archaic gambling laws, using a somewhat Beefheartian framework to do so. And "Prayin' on Me" finishes the album with an extended display of different ways to sing and play about blowjobs, which should provide a template for any young band interested in the bj genre. Is there a coda? You tell me. How many kinds of blue can one man have? The varieties are endless, dear friends. And some of the best answers ever posited to that question are now available on this handy platter." --Byron Coley, 2019. Edition of 500.
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