MUSIC

Joseph Shabason, Matthew Sage, and Nicholas Krgovich form a pretty perfect triangle, musically and geographically. Based out of Toronto, Colorado, and Vancouver respectively, the three convened at Sage’s converted barn studio at the foot of the Rockies to diagram their kindred ability to extract grandeur from the most passable of life’s daily details. On his own, saxophonist Joseph Shabason warps late 80s adult-contemporary and smooth jazz aesthetics into tidepools of fourth-worldly sound design that are infinitely more self-aware and emotionally honest than any of their distant reference points. M. Sage, in a parallel sense, blends his skills as an instrumentalist with synthesis and field recordings to create auditory reflections of the natural world that are as whimsical as they are profound. Sitting cozily between these two heartfelt experimentalists is singer Nicholas Krgovich, whose observational slice-of-life poetics paint a relatable face onto his collaborators’ calm expressionism, both guiding and highlighting its deep sense of affect. The resulting album, prosaically titled Shabason, Krgovich, Sage warmly invites sound artist Matthew Sage into the world of wry and melancholy micro-miracles that Shabason and Krgovich established on 2020’s Philadelphia, and 2022’s At Scaramouche. Album opener “Gloria” is a perfectly balanced representation of the trio’s individual abilities. Sage’s slowed and watery zither bleeds in from the edges of the canvas, laying ground for breathy woodwinds and harmonica that pantomime a distant locomotive. Speaking directly to the sonics at play, Krgovich melodically narrates, “Penny, did you hear that train whistle? Theo, did you hear that owl hoo?”. Even from this first moment, the intimate dynamic is so palpable that the listener falls unwittingly into the backstory of Shabason, Krgovich, Sage. “After connecting with Nick and Jos through DMs since 2020, it felt like a fun experience awaited us as potential collaborators,” Sage recounts. “I had built my barn studio, and I think it looked appealing to them to make an adventure out of coming to the Wild West to make music with me.” After spending the majority of a decade immersed in Chicago’s legacy of jazz and experimental electronic music, Matthew Sage moved back to his home state of Colorado to raise a child in a more casually agrarian atmosphere, and to work in the kind of setting that led to his 2023 album for RVNG, Paradise Crick. It was here at the cusp of the Rocky Mountains that the initial push of Shabason, Sage, Krgovich began, in person. Making sense of the trek, Shabason adds “I have realized that making music with people who live very far away is a real possibility. As long as we can get into one space together for a short amount of time, the collaborative magic that is needed to make a record is totally possible.” The three artists’ fingerprints are equally visible across the album. There is soft textural detritus floating freely in the air, punctuated by glassy electric keys and rubberized basslines. The sparseness in the placement of all the elements leaves them subject to ghostly visitations from a whispery saxophone, and a gentle guitar that peers around the corners of Krgovich’s free-verse musings. The album’s midpoint “Don” passes overhead like pollen on the breeze, constantly drifting out and back across pockets of completely empty space. “Old Man Song” turns a rare B-side by Low into an even gentler end-of-life reflection that is sweetened by Krgovich’s falsetto during the track’s wordless chorus. As nebulous as that may seem on paper, the hidden songcraft slowly surfaces over the course of each piece, exemplified by the closing track “Bridget”. There are plenty of other moments of the album that bear discernible rhythms below the fogline, but it’s here that they rise up into a full-on groove under Krgovich’s lyrical fourth wall breaks in which he details everything from Joseph’s studio habits to seeing “Cats” at the theater with his sister. Despite the song’s relative density and pop sensibility, a careful use of space still reigns supreme. On the eleven-minute “Raul”, Krgovich comes close to unintentionally codifying this approach as he sings “The container shrinks, and shrinks again, with every day, the relief that comes from not wanting more...” Truly, the most abundant virtue on Shabason, Krgovich, Sage is patience. The trio interacts without interrupting one another, contently waiting their turns, all locked onto the same distant point on the horizon yet unconcerned with when they might actually arrive. The groundwork laid by Shabason & Krgovich on their previous joint offerings is omnipresent, but it’s amplified by the joy Sage must have felt shepherding them to his idyllic and intimate new homebase. Prior to meeting up with Sage, the pair’s music often dealt with the beauty of The Great Indoors, but their new host and collaborator has smartly refocused their lenses on the small wonders of wilder localzes. Like magic, Shabason, Sage, and Krgovich have not just musically photographed their surroundings, they’ve managed to reproduce them exactly. The sharp open air, the quiet thrill of an escaped routine, the self-reflective thought-loops during a twilit moment at the edge of a field, all of it’s here on Shabason, Krgovich, Sage. Through the trio’s skillful ease, the listener is there, too.

Joseph Shabason, Matthew Sage, and Nicholas Krgovich form a pretty perfect triangle, musically and geographically. Based out of Toronto, Colorado, and Vancouver respectively, the three convened at Sage’s converted barn studio at the foot of the Rockies to diagram their kindred ability to extract grandeur from the most passable of life’s daily details. On his own, saxophonist Joseph Shabason warps late 80s adult-contemporary and smooth jazz aesthetics into tidepools of fourth-worldly sound design that are infinitely more self-aware and emotionally honest than any of their distant reference points. M. Sage, in a parallel sense, blends his skills as an instrumentalist with synthesis and field recordings to create auditory reflections of the natural world that are as whimsical as they are profound. Sitting cozily between these two heartfelt experimentalists is singer Nicholas Krgovich, whose observational slice-of-life poetics paint a relatable face onto his collaborators’ calm expressionism, both guiding and highlighting its deep sense of affect. The resulting album, prosaically titled Shabason, Krgovich, Sage warmly invites sound artist Matthew Sage into the world of wry and melancholy micro-miracles that Shabason and Krgovich established on 2020’s Philadelphia, and 2022’s At Scaramouche. Album opener “Gloria” is a perfectly balanced representation of the trio’s individual abilities. Sage’s slowed and watery zither bleeds in from the edges of the canvas, laying ground for breathy woodwinds and harmonica that pantomime a distant locomotive. Speaking directly to the sonics at play, Krgovich melodically narrates, “Penny, did you hear that train whistle? Theo, did you hear that owl hoo?”. Even from this first moment, the intimate dynamic is so palpable that the listener falls unwittingly into the backstory of Shabason, Krgovich, Sage. “After connecting with Nick and Jos through DMs since 2020, it felt like a fun experience awaited us as potential collaborators,” Sage recounts. “I had built my barn studio, and I think it looked appealing to them to make an adventure out of coming to the Wild West to make music with me.” After spending the majority of a decade immersed in Chicago’s legacy of jazz and experimental electronic music, Matthew Sage moved back to his home state of Colorado to raise a child in a more casually agrarian atmosphere, and to work in the kind of setting that led to his 2023 album for RVNG, Paradise Crick. It was here at the cusp of the Rocky Mountains that the initial push of Shabason, Sage, Krgovich began, in person. Making sense of the trek, Shabason adds “I have realized that making music with people who live very far away is a real possibility. As long as we can get into one space together for a short amount of time, the collaborative magic that is needed to make a record is totally possible.” The three artists’ fingerprints are equally visible across the album. There is soft textural detritus floating freely in the air, punctuated by glassy electric keys and rubberized basslines. The sparseness in the placement of all the elements leaves them subject to ghostly visitations from a whispery saxophone, and a gentle guitar that peers around the corners of Krgovich’s free-verse musings. The album’s midpoint “Don” passes overhead like pollen on the breeze, constantly drifting out and back across pockets of completely empty space. “Old Man Song” turns a rare B-side by Low into an even gentler end-of-life reflection that is sweetened by Krgovich’s falsetto during the track’s wordless chorus. As nebulous as that may seem on paper, the hidden songcraft slowly surfaces over the course of each piece, exemplified by the closing track “Bridget”. There are plenty of other moments of the album that bear discernible rhythms below the fogline, but it’s here that they rise up into a full-on groove under Krgovich’s lyrical fourth wall breaks in which he details everything from Joseph’s studio habits to seeing “Cats” at the theater with his sister. Despite the song’s relative density and pop sensibility, a careful use of space still reigns supreme. On the eleven-minute “Raul”, Krgovich comes close to unintentionally codifying this approach as he sings “The container shrinks, and shrinks again, with every day, the relief that comes from not wanting more...” Truly, the most abundant virtue on Shabason, Krgovich, Sage is patience. The trio interacts without interrupting one another, contently waiting their turns, all locked onto the same distant point on the horizon yet unconcerned with when they might actually arrive. The groundwork laid by Shabason & Krgovich on their previous joint offerings is omnipresent, but it’s amplified by the joy Sage must have felt shepherding them to his idyllic and intimate new homebase. Prior to meeting up with Sage, the pair’s music often dealt with the beauty of The Great Indoors, but their new host and collaborator has smartly refocused their lenses on the small wonders of wilder localzes. Like magic, Shabason, Sage, and Krgovich have not just musically photographed their surroundings, they’ve managed to reproduce them exactly. The sharp open air, the quiet thrill of an escaped routine, the self-reflective thought-loops during a twilit moment at the edge of a field, all of it’s here on Shabason, Krgovich, Sage. Through the trio’s skillful ease, the listener is there, too.

Recorded in a little bedroom studio out in Durham, North Carolina, Amelia Meath and Nick Sanborn's debut LP as Sylvan Esso arrived in 2014 at the juncture of pop and experimental. Even now, years later, the LP remains an urgent and fitting introduction to a push-and-pull that would go on to inform the duo's sound – a thoughtful headiness that also wants you to get out on the dance floor. A blend of analog and digital, Meath and Sanborn were two unexpected puzzle pieces fitting together with singular ease, producing a ten-track LP that was both minimalist and shimmering, with dark undulations rippling beneath the synthy-surface and crystalline quality of Meath's voice.Before all of the international touring and festival headlining and critical acclaim and Grammy nominations, Sylvan Esso was just a shot-in-the dark of musical chemistry gone right. The original album bio for the self-titled presciently sets the stage for the thesis that has gone on to guide Meath and Sanborn’s writing since then: "a collection of vivid addictions concerning suffering and love, darkness and deliverance" arriving as "a necessary pop balm, an album stuffed with songs that don’t suffer the longstanding complications of that term." And so, even as the band continues to evolve and becomes amorphous, there’s still that argument about what pop can be at its core. This is just the beginning of that conversation captured on tape.In honor of the record's ten year anniversary, North Carolina-based indie label Psychic Hotline will release a deluxe reissue, complete with previously unreleased material. Featuring essential singles "Coffee", "Hey Mami,” and "H.S.K.T.", the expanded edition also includes remixes from J Rocc, Rick Wade, Helado Negro, Dntel, and more. The deluxe 2LP package sports an all-over foil inversion of the original album's iconic foil "SE" logo.

Bullion is Nathan Jenkins, an enduring cult figure of electronic music. A producer and songwriter quietly to be found connecting artists, genre and UK subculture. His credits range from Carly Rae Jepsen, Ben Howard, Nilüfer Yanya and Avalon Emerson's breakout album & The Charm to records for Westerman and Joviale.Bullion's celebrated solo releases, meanwhile, have run parallel on Young, The Trilogy Tapes, Jagjaguwar and his own DEEK Recordings. It's a creative red-thread Bullion ties together on his surprise new album, Affection - a warm, occasionally off-kilter and beautifully realised pop record that’s bold enough to step from behind-the-scenes and show affection in public. Affection started life upon Nathan's move back to London from Lisbon, where he relocated in 2018. Back then, the comfort of the crowd suited him: self-confessedly passive and faltering by nature, the opportunity to exist somewhere without any personal history proved liberating. Returning home, Nathan increasingly found himself reflecting on his place in the world, seeking affection in place of cynicism. Bullion's music has always been difficult to pin down, but entirely distinctive - and on Affection, its rich pleasures are in hearing how this uncompromising approach is strengthened, in part, by softening. The album wonders-aloud about the meaning of intimacy, in relationship to others and the self. Masculinity and other contemporary concerns are punctuated by old-world charms, found in the ‘hat stands and watches' of World_train. Influences stretch from morning swims to adolescent fears and a book of poems his Dad wrote as a young man, in songs that are tender if not always true of Nathan himself. Affection ultimately asks how we understand people, but in being more vulnerable at least attempts to care a little less about what they think, too. Taking your own advice is integral to Bullion's latest album, where Nathan applies what he’s encouraged fellow artists to do in the studio for years: be open to adventure. Affection steps into a more emotionally-present, often playful space, with collaborators Carly Rae Jepsen and Charlotte Adigéry gracing songs that prioritise feeling over fixed meaning. Rare, for instance, emerged during sessions for Jepsen’s recent album in Toronto: high energy turning coy to express something 'deep in the heart'. World_train, meanwhile, is an eccentric and brilliantly odd angle on Bullion's love of pop, its locomotive power summoning a lost past amidst the uncertainties of the everyday. 'I can hardly understand what it takes to be a real man', Bullion sings. '... and nobody can', Adigéry confirms. Still, connections - missed, imagined, or still possible - cocoon much of Affection, with Panda Bear collaboration A City’s Never emerging after Noah and Nathan lived in Lisbon at the same time but never actually met. For Bullion, the willingness to allow others into his songwriting process is as much about opening up the world of the album as it is about bettering the work and the person. In blurring the observational with the introspective, Affection's avant-pop touch abandons categorisation. The albums lyrics are as unguarded and devotional as they are inquisitive of alternative ways of being, signing off with 'being still is hard to do'. Nathan has mastered his sound, but life - in its expectations, contradictions, impulses and desires - remains impossible to control. Affection is an unassumingly powerful pursuit of a more compassionate form of confidence, in which Bullion cements his place in the present-day by entirely surrendering to the future.

In the chaos of our every day, it can be difficult to find time for pause. Knee-jerk reactions have become the norm, while the instantaneous fog clouding our culture urges us to move along, to step away from the present moment. Mexico City-based songwriter and instrumentalist Estrella del Sol wanted to craft a space where there is finally room to breathe, and time to arrange the patchwork of our reality. On new album Figura de Cristal, she encourages fragility, and celebrates the delicacy of our ever-evolving selves. Estrella del Sol is known for her work in shoegaze band Mint Field, hailed for their tender exploration of sentimentality and grief. While Mint Field propel their themes with oozing, amplified guitars and commanding vocals, del Sol’s solo work blossoms in a quieter, more electronic space. “I wanted to experiment more with my vocals and mainly synth sounds, always trying to find a different sound,” she explains. The result is a patient and nurturing collection of songs that remind us of the importance in taking our time. Her first solo album, Un espacio de lo imaginario, released in 2020 and recorded in the first two months of the pandemic, introduced del Sol’s ethereal side. Expansive vocal dynamics dance carefully through gentle melodic structures, showcasing the intimacy of del Sol’s solo arrangements. Figura de Cristal builds upon this intimacy, adding a blanket of subdued yet glittering drones, haunting electric guitars and celestial vocal textures. It was written, recorded and produced entirely by Estrella del Sol at her home in Mexico City, with cello contributions by experimental composer and personal friend Mabe Fratti and mixed by Mint Field bassist Sebastian Neyra. The album includes field recordings of Estrella del Sol’s surroundings, namely her neighborhood in Mexico City. By including these miniature portraits of her reality, Figura de Cristal acts as a kaleidoscopic interrogation into what it means to be alive, and how others figure into the images we create for ourselves. By using the recordings, del Sol says “the album could feel familiar to my reality at that particular moment.” Enmeshing them into the album’s ambient arrangements, Figura de Cristal threads together the familiar and the fantastical. It’s a reminder of the coexistence of multiple realities. When making the LP, Estrella del Sol wanted to create a soundtrack that could replicate the calming notion of a sunset-stroked evening, or the pink tones of a quiet morning. The title track, “Figura de Cristal,” replicates the grace of these moments, teaching us to lend ourselves that same grace and gentleness, even during the most difficult days. “This album became a reminder to me that I have to take care of myself and that If I don't, I can break like a crystal figure,” she explains. “I have to learn to empathize with myself and the people surrounding me. That everyone's perspective of reality is different and there's no true answer.” Figura de Cristal is an album about curiosity, and the merit in embracing our vulnerabilities. There is not one single reality, or experience, but instead an infinite range of truths. Through improvisational techniques and dynamically droney sonic textures, Estrella del Sol asserts the joy in following your instincts, rather than following the rules. Figura de Cristal rids itself of rigid structure or certain form, bending to a liminal space that declares joy in the unknown, and an exhale in the unfamiliar.。

インディ・ロック・シーンに多大なる影響を及ぼしてきたカリフォルニア・ベイエリア・サンノゼ出身のスロウコア・バンド、Duster。1999年に自宅で録音されたEP作品『1975』がアナログ・リイシュー。『Stratosphere』でのスラッカー・ポジティブなドリーム・スケープを発展させたもので、クリーンなギターとファジーなギターが幾重にも重なり、鼻歌のようなオルガン、そしてあっと驚くドラムマシンが満載されたグレートな内容の一枚となっています。

Sometimes you have to move backwards to move forwards. Just ask punk cultural commentators BODEGA, whose new album sees them carve a new future from fuzz-soaked, consumerism-skewering shards of their past.Our Brand Could Be YR Life is BODEGA's first album release through Chrysalis Records. "It's something we've been wanting to do for years," guitarist and vocalist Ben Hozie explains of Our Brand Could Be Yr Life – a collection of catchy indie-rock ruminations on the slow-creep of corporate-think into youth culture, first written eight years ago.Our Brand Could Be YR Life's 15 tracks explore indie-rock subgenres, self-critique and everything in between. "I think it's our best- sounding record to date," says Hozie, "It's got dance-punk. There's some shoegaze on there. There's slacker rock on there. There's psychedelic rock on there. R.E.M, too. We wanted to be another band in a long stream of missionaries, proselytising a certain type of rock subculture."

Big Crown Records is proud to present Brainstory’s sophomore full-length album Sounds Good. Based in L.A. but hailing from the Inland Empire's own Rialto, California, two-thirds of Brainstory, Kevin and Tony Martin are brothers by blood, while Eric Hagstrom is a brother through their music and long term friendship. Since they started the band they have constantly faced situations that forced them to rise to the occasion. They got signed to Big Crown Records, they stepped up their game. COVID happened, they learned to record themselves. They started touring a ton sharing the stage with the likes of Lady Wray and they got their live show super tight. All of this time spent grinding and growing has certainly paid off. The path to take their art to the next level is clearer than ever, and once again, they are here for it. If there is one thing that is abundantly clear on Sounds Good, it’s that Brainstory has leveled up. Part of this evolution is undoubtedly attributed to having access to and working constantly in their own studio in Long Beach. Another major factor is that their brotherhood has expanded. "I've been playing music with my brother all my life and now with Eric for a long time," Tony tells us. "Leon, though, is like another brother I've just met." Leon Michels, Big Crown's co-owner, produced this record and applied his unmistakable golden touch in crucial ways. The other member of the extended Brainstory brotherhood whose contributions were essential to the album, is studio engineer legend Jens Jungkurth who controls the tones and textures of the music. "That's what you're hearing, our connection, the fun moments, the little details," Kevin describes. "This record isn't half what it is without them—and it made us want to match that effort," and match that effort they did. Album opener "Nobody But You" is an uplifting, dance floor burner, that shows off a new side of Brainstory's range. Drummer Eric Hagstrom’s crushing back beat lays the foundation for an inspirational feel good banger that manages to take the uncomfortable truth that “nobody will save you but you” and turn it into pure blissful motivation. "Peach Optimo" is a laid back half time tune that blends the bounce of Down South Hip-Hop with California G funk and Jazz. They once again show off their B said ballad talents with "Gift Of Life" but this time taking the genre to a new place with lyrics about existentialism and a track that is drop dead gorgeous, haunting, and profound all at once. "NyNy" is an homage to Kev and Tony's recently deceased grandfather while "Too Yung" is a show stopping, deeply personal, stripped down number about being introduced to alcohol at a young age. They put another hit on the boards with "Hanging On," a Latin / Psychedelic Soul inspired banger featuring Claire Cottrill on background vocals while "XFaded” addresses the all too common vicious cycle of smoking and drinking too much over a trippy shuffle. "It's been four years since our last full length record, and with everything that's happened since, it's like we've been catching up to ourselves." That's one way to describe change: catching up to oneself. Each member of Brainstory has gone through shifts, both personally and musically, and all of that threads through Sounds Good. It's easy to say that the music industry can be short on lasting, genuine relationships. However, for Brainstory, from day one it's been about standing by each other, for each other. Their friendship started the group, and now, this expanded brotherhood is supporting them to push it further. The stars have aligned for them to take a big and well deserved step with this new album and it couldn't have happened to a better group of guys. Ups and downs of course, but they are acutely aware of how good the big picture has been for them and you can hear it in their music—music that just Sounds Good.

The 13-track project marks the seventh studio album from Bear under the Toro y Moi moniker. To celebrate the announcement, Toro y Moi shares two singles from the forthcoming record "Postman" b/w "Magazine." Each of the new singles arrives with accompanying visuals. "Postman," directed by Kid. Studio, sees Toro and friends riding around the colorful San Francisco landscape in his Filipino jeepney, seen on the cover of MAHAL. "Magazine," directed by Arlington Lowell, sees Toro and Salami Rose Joe Louis, who supplies vocals on the track, dressed vibrantly in a photo studio spliced with various colorful graphics and playful edits. MAHAL's announcement and singles arrive on the heels of Toro's highly celebrated 2019 album Outer Peace, which Pitchfork described as "one of his best albums in years" along with his Grammy-nominated 2020 collaboration with Flume, "The Difference," which was also featured in a global campaign for Apple's Airpods. Today's releases mark the first from Toro y Moi since signing to Secretly Group label Dead Oceans. Dead Oceans is an independent record label established in 2007 featuring luminaries like Japanese Breakfast, Khruangbin, Phoebe Bridgers, Bright Eyes, Mitski, Slowdive and more. Toro y Moi is the 12+ year project of South Carolina-reared, Bay Area-based Chaz Bear. In the wake 2008’s global economic collapse, Toro y Moi emerged as a figurehead of the beloved sub-genre widely known as chillwave, the sparkling fumes of which still heavily influence musicians all over today. Over the subsequent decade, his music and graphic design has far, far surpassed that particular designation. Across 9 albums (6 studio as Toro y Moi along with a live album, compilation and mixtape) with the great Carpark label, he has explored psych-rock, deep house, UK hip-hop; R&B and well-beyond without losing that rather iconic, bright and shimmering Toro y Moi fingerprint. As a graphic designer, Bear has collaborated with brands like Nike, Dublab and Van’s. And as a songwriter and producer, he’s collaborated with other artists like Tyler, The Creator, Flume, Travis Scott, HAIM, and Caroline Polachek.

On 2002's Some Boots, Boston indie rock trio Karate further plumb the depths of their omnidirectional musical explorations. Every chord and beat works to deepen the pensiveness of Geoff Farina's impressionistic lyrics, that explore the emotional complexities of nostalgia. The eight-song LP is housed in a tip-on jacket, and includes a replica lyric sheet for the original kids and spies alike.

Ethereal dream gloom from a voice so unique they had to create an entirely new genre to contain all four octaves. Mixing classical music with synthesizer and acoustic guitar, Happy Rhodes' "ecto pop" never quite broke outside upstate New York, but that didn't stop gothic-americana queen Marissa Nadler from reinterpreting "Where Do I Go" in 2018. Both the original and cover have been paired here, housed in an elegant black and silver sleeve, with embossed braille lettering for the visually impaired.

Tucson, Arizona interdisciplinary artist Karima Walker walks a line between two worlds. Aside from her long resume of collaborative work with artists in the diverse fields of dance, sculpture, film, photography and creative non-fiction, Walker has long nurtured a duality within her work as a musician, developing her own sonic language as a sound designer in tandem with her craft as a singer/songwriter. The polarity within Walker’s music has never been so articulately explored, or graced with as much intention, as on her new album, Waking the Dreaming Body.

Waking the Dreaming Body was written, performed and engineered entirely by Walker, with the exception of some subtle upright bass from C.J. Boyd on the song “Window I.” Producing the album on her own wasn’t Walker’s original intention, though; after flying to New York in November 2019 to develop some home-recorded tracks with The Blow’s Melissa Dyne, a sudden illness forced Walker to cancel the sessions and return home to Tucson to recover, and soon after, the COVID-19 pandemic ruled out the possibility of a return trip to New York. Instead, Walker decided to finish the album herself in her makeshift home studio. She spent the following months recording, processing and arranging her self-described “messy Ableton sessions” into densely harmonic arrangements of synthesizer, guitar, piano, percussion, field recordings, tape loops and her own dulcet singing voice, allowing trial, error and intuition to guide her way. The final result is a 40-minute dream-narrative of her conscious and subconscious minds that oscillates between the rich textures of her ambient compositions (as in the instrumentals “Horizon, Harbor Resonance” and “For Heddi”) and the melody and poetry of her melancholic, Americana-tinged songwriting (as in the lyrics-focused tracks “Reconstellated” and “Waking the Dreaming Body”), their ebb and flow recalling liminal states of half-sleep where images and emotions are recalled and forecasted from the previous night's dreams. Night falls in regular intervals throughout the album, forming a natural dialogue between waking and dreaming.

Michael Nau is set to release his fifth full length record under Karma Chief Records on 12/8/2023. Since the mid 2000’s, he’s crafted a catalog of thoughtful, reflective songs as the frontman of indie-rock mainstays Cotton Jones, Page France, and Michael Nau & The Mighty Thread. All 11 tracks come together to paint a beautiful picture. The lyrics invoke the listener’s imagination throughout. They’re introspective, but vague and open-ended. The indie rock backdrop shows signs of psych-soul influence with dry and punchy drums, lush synth lines, and tastefully verb-soaked vocal production. Sweeping string arrangements and French horn runs add cinematic motion to the waltz-y “Shiftshaping” (track 4). Slide guitar and a shuffling snare drum add some get-up-and-go to “Painting a Wall” (track 2). Nau’s vocal delivery falls somewhere between crooning to a crowd, telling stories to a loved one, and musing to himself. The singer-songwriter’s relaxed attitude toward making records is discernible in the sound. A while back, veteran producer and engineer Adrien Olsen (The Killers, Lucy Dacus, Fruit Bats), approached him about recording in his Richmond, Virginia-based studio. For the first time in a while, Michael had some sessions on the calendar. He called a few old friends and put together a band. “I didn’t have much of a plan before Adrien reached out, so I wrote some songs specifically for the session,” Michael explained. “I was thinking about what would be fun to play with this specific group of guys." The band consisted of several long-time collaborators and musicians who had participated in Nau’s various recording and touring efforts over the years. “It had been a while since I’d made music in a room with other people,” Michael shared. “We just sort of started playing and didn’t really talk about what was happening.” The combo’s newfound chemistry was a primary source of inspiration and, with the help of Olsen, ultimately led to an album’s-worth of music. Nau and the band spent five days at Montrose Recording and left with a plan to return and finish up a few months later. “After the first session, I took a copy of the recordings with me to overdub a few things at my spot,” Michael shared. While he was working through it, he found a bunch of beautiful moments of jamming in between the takes. “I grabbed a bunch of the pieces and tried to work them in. Then, I dumped the whole thing onto a cassette as one long stream of songs.” With the record mostly complete, the final session at Montrose would consist of some simple overdubs and finishing touches. But somehow, in the months between, he lost the overdubs. “Going into the second session, all I had was the cassette,” Michael explained. The band got back together and performed another batch of songs. At the end of their second session, they had enough music to pick and choose from for the new full-length. “The songs, as they appear on the album, are basically how they were recorded as a live band.” Grab a copy of Accompany on 12/08/2023 and keep an eye out for tour dates in the coming months.

A four-piece band based in Tokyo.
Initially playing reggae/dub music, the band gradually developed into an innovative fusion of diverse musical influences, such as jazz, soul, psyche pop, new age, and exotica.
The sound is based on groove and euphoria, with nostalgic melodies.
They have performed at iconic events in Japan such as Fuji Rock Festival, and also have been looking overseas since they performed in Canada(Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver) in 2019.
The new EP "Ramble In The Rainbow"(2024) is their first international release on the US label Peoples Potential Unlimited.
The work shows their musical maturity, drawing inspiration from Sun Ra, Lee "Scratch" Perry, and Yasuaki Shimizu.

In 1968, three sisters from Fremont, New Hampshire strapped on their instruments and declared themselves The Shaggs. At that moment begun a peculiar tale that would last far beyond the group’s five-year run. Dot, Betty and Helen (and occasionally Rachel, the fourth sister) played in the group on the insistence of their father, Austin Wiggin Jr., who was convinced they were going to be big. Years earlier, Austin’s mother gave him a palm reading, predicting that her son would marry a strawberry blonde woman, that he would have two sons after his mother died, and that his daughters would form a popular music outfit. The first two became reality, so Austin was certain the third would follow suit.

With pure confidence and his mother’s bold prediction, Austin decided that his daughters would forgo attending the local high school in favor of home schooling interspersed with a strict regiment of instrumental and vocal practice, along with jumping jacks and sit-ups. Soon after The Shaggs would enter Fleetwood Recording studios in Revere, Massachusetts to record their sole album, Philosophy Of The World, a collection of garage rock tunes that balanced charm and discordance in equal measure. Austin would spend most of his savings not only on the session but also on the manufacturing costs to press up 1,000 copies of the album (900 of which mysteriously vanished upon completion).

Throughout _Philosophy_… simple truths are revealed through the pen of sister Dot, the songwriter of the band. The rich people want what the poor people got, just as the poor people want what the rich people got. Your parents love you. There is happiness in nearness and sadness in the farness.

The album failed to fulfill Austin’s expectations of rock stardom, though the group remained together until their father’s death, performing frequently at the Fremont town hall and a local nursing home, no further albums were released. That might have been the end of it, until rock band NRBQ discovered a copy at a Massachusetts radio station and re-released it in 1980. Rolling Stone’s reviewer at the time described it as “the most stunningly awful wonderful record I’ve heard in ages”.

Nearly 50 years later, the album ranks among the most polarizing LPs of all time. Some said it was the worst thing ever made. Others felt it was one of the great long players of the 20th century. Frank Zappa famously dubbed the band “better than The Beatles”, while Kurt Cobain placed the album at #5 on his list of Top 50 favorite albums. Original copies of the album fetch for $10,000.

Decades later and one could argue that maybe Austin was right all along. We’re all here, still enthralled by the purity of The Shaggs.

In 1968, three sisters from Fremont, New Hampshire strapped on their instruments and declared themselves The Shaggs. At that moment begun a peculiar tale that would last far beyond the group’s five-year run. Dot, Betty and Helen (and occasionally Rachel, the fourth sister) played in the group on the insistence of their father, Austin Wiggin Jr., who was convinced they were going to be big. Years earlier, Austin’s mother gave him a palm reading, predicting that her son would marry a strawberry blonde woman, that he would have two sons after his mother died, and that his daughters would form a popular music outfit. The first two became reality, so Austin was certain the third would follow suit.

With pure confidence and his mother’s bold prediction, Austin decided that his daughters would forgo attending the local high school in favor of home schooling interspersed with a strict regiment of instrumental and vocal practice, along with jumping jacks and sit-ups. Soon after The Shaggs would enter Fleetwood Recording studios in Revere, Massachusetts to record their sole album, Philosophy Of The World, a collection of garage rock tunes that balanced charm and discordance in equal measure. Austin would spend most of his savings not only on the session but also on the manufacturing costs to press up 1,000 copies of the album (900 of which mysteriously vanished upon completion).

Throughout the album’s simple truths are revealed through the pen of sister Dot, the songwriter of the band. The rich people want what the poor people got, just as the poor people want what the rich people got. Your parents love you. There is happiness in nearness and sadness in the farness.

The album failed to fulfill Austin’s expectations of rock stardom, though the group remained together until their father’s death, performing frequently at the Fremont town hall and a local nursing home, no further albums were released. That might have been the end of it, until rock band NRBQ discovered a copy at a Massachusetts radio station and re-released it in 1980. Rolling Stone’s reviewer at the time described it as “the most stunningly awful wonderful record I’ve heard in ages”.

Nearly 50 years later, the album ranks among the most polarizing LPs of all time. Some said it was the worst thing ever made. Others felt it was one of the great long players of the 20th century. Frank Zappa famously dubbed the band “better than The Beatles”, while Kurt Cobain placed the album at #5 on his list of Top 50 favorite albums. Original copies of the album fetch for $10,000.

Decades later and one could argue that maybe Austin was right all along. We’re all here, still enthralled by the purity of The Shaggs.

Los Angeles duo crushed announce their signing to Ghostly International and the first vinyl pressing of their 2023 debut EP, extra life. A love letter to ‘90s radio, the first collaboration from musicians Bre Morell and Shaun Durkan finds them tuning a shared taste for maximalist dream pop. Open-hearted hooks and melodic riffs move through a haze of breakbeats, spliced sound design, and distortion. Faithful yet fluid in its channeling of golden age alt-rock, Britpop, trip-hop, and electronica, there’s a refreshing freedom to the sound, which quickly resonated with fans and critics upon initial release. Pitchfork called it “effortless, widescreen dream pop that’s serene without being sentimental,” and NPR cited its “deep sense of place and time.” The music also struck Ghostly, and the first measure for crushed and their new label home is to give extra life a wider physical release paired with remixes from band favorites Real Lies and DJ Python. The story of crushed is written across midnight transmissions. In the early 2010s, Morell, who fronts the band Temple of Angels (Run For Cover Records), hosted a graveyard shift college radio show and used to play music from Durkan’s former band Weekend (Slumberland Records). In 2020, Durkan, having focused on production work (Tamaryn, Young Prisms) following Weekend’s run as a formidable shoegaze act, hosted a late-night program on a community radio station in San Francisco. Driving one day, he heard Temple of Angels by chance and was immediately drawn to Morell’s voice. He added a song that night to his on-air tracklist. Morell saw it and reached out to thank him and point to that connection made a decade earlier. The exchange sparked a long-distance project. First, they filled an audible moodboard with ‘90s classics from the likes of Natalie Imbruglia, Sneaker Pimps, and The Sundays. Songs that transported them back to places of comfort and discovery; Morell’s memories of a metallic, lavender boombox that dispatched past sounds from a world beyond her Houston suburbia, and Durkan, in his mom’s car on the way to band practice. These touchpoints provided a palette for crushed to experiment without expectations, purely for the fun of it. A creative intimacy emerged; stepping outside the reverb walls of her full band, Morell embraced more clarity and a range of emotions in her vocals, while Durkan looked inward as a producer, collaging fragments from their everyday lives: voice memos, piano recordings, even the panting of Morell's late dog on “milksugar.” The wistful ballad embodies extra life’s feeling as a whole. “I am home again,” sings Morell; her refrain cycles above a drum machine beat as Durkan colors their universe with star-lit strums, synth swells, and the crackle of fireworks in the distance. Elsewhere, the duo’s uptempo mode is equally effective, like the super-charged duet “coil” or the propulsive opener “waterlily,” which sets a cinematic tone for the set. Bold, bright, and replayable, extra life presents crushed as a project of immense promise, two artists unlocking something special within themselves, a space to hold both melancholy and bliss. Durkan adds, “To me, [extra life] is true and pure - in a way I haven't felt about music in a really really long time.”

Feeling like the first shot of sunshine after a long winter, Cousin Kula sound instantly recognisable yet gloriously renewed on their second album ‘Vitamin D’. If their debut album ‘Double Dinners’ was the soundtrack to your heartbreak then this is the sound of falling back in love again. Even the titles of the tracklist - 'Clothes Off', 'Staying With You’, 'Good Feeling' - boldly set the coordinates for this new body of work. From the opening wash of searing synth chords, bouncing bass, wailing guitar lines and flutters of flute, it's abundantly clear this is a feel good album. Label boss Bradley Zero exclaims “I think it’s fair to say that the band have shaken off the collective cobwebs and are ready for a summer of love!”. Singer Elliot Ellison explains “We really wanted this album to be playful and fun, not taking itself too seriously. Be representative of us as a group and the energy we have when just goofing around, for that to be something you feel in the music too. Lyrically it covers many themes but especially steps into “Happy Love Songs”, which feels like a new venture for us”. ‘Vitamin D’ is for the lovers, but also for the dancers. Cousin Kula have expanded their vocabulary but also learnt when to just sit back in the groove. Funk and disco has permeated their psychedelic indie-soul sound and it’s all the better for it. A quintet of virtuosic musicians, flexing when necessary but more often than not stripping it right back and reveling in the pocket. It’s a rare case of perfect thematic and musical synergy. Elliot continues "We explored more instrumentation on this album and stretched previously underused corners of our ability. Will and Elliot play trombone and trumpet on a few tunes, Doug plays flute on the whole album (and strangely, no saxophone!), and there's a whole lot more percussion. It's been fun experimenting with the vocals on this album too, we wanted to really lean into the ‘weird’. Likewise with the vocal harmonies, we wanted to make that feature of our sound even more of a thing on this album, like going a bit more sexy BeeGees on it". Living together, nestled in the sun-drenched hills on the outskirts of Bristol, Cousin Kula released their first full length 'Double Dinners' on Rhythm Section Intl. in 2021. The album received praise from BBC 6 Music, Boiler Room, Clash, Crack, and The Guardian, to name a few, and saw the band tour the UK with Mildlife on top of their own non-stop live escapades. credits

Itasca’s Kayla Cohen wrote the anticipated follow-up to her acclaimed 2016 album Open to Chance in a century-old adobe house in rural New Mexico. Inspired by the landscape and history of the Four Corners region, the sublime Spring—its title summoning both season and scarce local water sources—dowses a devotional path to high desert headwaters. Featuring contributions from Chris Cohen, Cooper Crain (Bitchin’ Bajas), James Elkington, and members of Gun Outfit and Sun Araw, Spring contains Cohen’s most quietly dazzling and self-assured set of songs to date. With color inner sleeve, lyrics, and high-res DL code. * In the fall of 2017, a year after the release of her acclaimed 2016 album Open to Chance, Kayla Cohen, the songwriter and guitarist who records and performs as Itasca, left her home in Los Angeles to live and write for two seasons in a century-old adobe house in rural New Mexico (pictured on the album cover). More urgent escape than fanciful escapade, the move from one Southwestern desert to another resulted from a set of dire circumstances, both personal and societal, not least of which was the sense, shared by many, that a sinister cabal of impaired lunatics had irredeemably poisoned the already sour well of our American discourse. She decided to drop out and dive deeper—hiking into the mountains, through fragrant juniper and piñon forests, past groves of golden cottonwoods, to the source of what she calls in the song “Cornsilk”—with a nod to poet Clayton Eshleman—“the canyoned river.” Inspired by the landscape and history of the Four Corners region, the resulting album, the sublime Spring—its title summoning both season and scarce local water sources—dowses a devotional path to high desert headwaters. Cohen followed some heavy footprints across the Sandia and Sangre de Cristo ranges. In the long American tradition of lighting out for the territories, many artists, particularly visual artists—including Terry Allen, Georgia O’Keefe, Agnes Martin, Walter de Maria, Bruce Nauman, and Susan Rothenberg—have famously sought refuge and inspiration in the Land of Enchantment. Captivating landscapes and the astonishing biodiversity aside (outside), foot-thick adobe walls provide a security and shelter—insulation and isolation—that can be hard to find in LA. With her studies of New Mexico’s long history and seismic geological and cultural changes, Cohen sought something different, more ancient—a hearth, a retreat from the noisy and noisome city, yes, but also a deeper historical understanding of urbanity and community, landscape and loss. (Chaco Canyon’s massive architectural complexes ranked as the largest buildings in North America until the late 19th century.) Her investigations bore bright fruit in the form of an interpretive travelogue: Spring, suffused with mystery and a keenly evoked sense of place, contains Cohen’s most quietly dazzling, coherent, and self-assured set of songs to date. Having withdrawn from and returned to the city, she sounds more like herself than ever before. In the context of the album’s bolder arrangements, her gorgeous, lambent voice and helical fingerstyle guitar plumb new depths of expressivity, confidence, and wonder. Inflected with flourishes recalling the ’70s orchestrated concept albums from which it draws influence, Spring resembles an archeological excavation of Cohen’s own encanyoned style. She recorded unhurriedly, in piecemeal fashion, with various collaborators: first to two-inch tape at Minbal studio in Chicago, with Cooper Crain (Bitchin’ Bajas) engineering; then to quarter-inch tape at home, with a Tascam 388; and finally overdubbing at Tropico in Los Angeles, with Greg Hartunian. Daniel Swire (drums), Kayla’s bandmate in Gun Outfit, and Marc Riordan (piano) of Sun Araw provided the exquisitely delicate rhythm section; Dave McPeters once again contributed lightning-field flashes of pedal steel; and James Elkington arranged the subtly cinematic strings (played by Jean Cook.) Chris Cohen mixed, imparting some of his signature classic pop dynamics, which press beyond the sonic realm of the solitary singer-songwriter. If Open to Chance felt moonlit, spectral and spooky, Spring sounds positively auroral, luminous, a brisk early morning walk through lucid daylit dreams, a series of vivid visions in thrall to the dusty New Mexican terrain. By opening themselves to multivalent interpretations, these generous, sun-dappled songs hide nothing. An intentional narrative of discovery connects the sequence, from the beckoning highway apparition in “Lily,” through the immersion in the “Blue Spring” dug deep into the recesses of a cliffside cave, to the resigned farewell of “A’s Lament” (which ends, poignantly, with a blessing to a departed friend: “I just want you to be free”). Elsewhere the links to Cohen’s research are oblique, more atmospheric and impressionistic than explicit. She carefully claims no authority or answers, but instead offers a traveler’s tranquil observation and wide-eyed reflection, weaving together her questions about the relationships between the land and the Ancestral Puebloan culture that shaped it with her questions about her own cultural and ecological bearings. Lead single “Bess’s Dance” provides a metaphorical key to the record’s concept, with a glimpse of the Basketmaker culture’s woven artifacts, functional art objects that so fascinated Cohen that she found herself dreaming their patterns: Change was rushed by the refrain Kept on dreaming of a basket, overflowing with grain A worn red cloth woven over the cobs single figure of the wild plain The song ends with a tidy summation of the project, a suggestion of how, through the lens of history and nature, Spring collapses ancient and contemporary contexts to push, languorously and gently, against the constraints of time: We create great stages where we act out the borders of desire

June McDoom's eponymous debut EP is a collection of songs that collage virtually everything important to her. Growing up in South Florida in a Jamaican household, McDoom was raised around reggae music, which echoed throughout every room of her childhood home. Later, she discovered and nourished her own deep love for folk music and songwriting of the 1960's and 70's. While studying in NYC for a degree in Jazz Performance, her musical palette expanded to include the more intricate influences of jazz and early soul. Realizing that her favorite vintage folk music lacked artists with similar identities as her own, it became increasingly important for McDoom to carve a unique musical space – to push folk music towards a new and different audience.Following the release of her debut single, "The City" – mixed by Gabe Wax (Soccer Mommy, Spoon) – June McDoom was eager to take the reins on the production of her debut EP. Recorded and mixed entirely from home with collaborator Evan Wright, McDoom found herself enthralled with the analog recording process, which began a textural exploration that defines this record. Experimenting with a mixture of vintage analog and modern digital recording, McDoom learned profound new ways to marry the seemingly contrasting genres and style that had individually shaped her.June McDoom's debut EP is steeped in self-discovery, and self-acceptance. Its magic lies in its ability to weave the influences of such seemingly disparate icons as Joan Baez, The Delfonics and Alton Ellis into a new, seamlessly crafted tapestry.

After a 19-year hiatus, Duster came back with their S/T chef-d'oeuvre in 2019. Recorded in band member Clay Parton’s garage (aka Low Earth Orbit), the record bears all the hallmarks of the band’s early work: gaunt basslines, spindly guitars, and melancholy lyrics that lurk in the background.

This is the story of two sisters who nurtured a dream for half a century and never let it die. Vicki and Ronni Gossett launched their musical career as teenagers in Whittier, California in 1966. They called themselves the Female Species. Members came and went; their base of operations moved to Las Vegas, back to LA, and over to Nashville. Along the way their sound transformed from garage rock to lounge to country-pop, the only constant being an innate mastery of hooks and harmony. These ladies had it. Along the way, they crossed paths with The Carpenters, Paul Revere & The Raiders, The Judds, and seemingly half of the industry's power players, rebuffing all untoward advances, focused always on their craft. In the 1980s they became staff songwriters for music publishing companies in the hit-making business. Relentless pushing landed them a once in a lifetime audition before the court of RCA’s top executives — the kind of new talent showcase that almost never happens after 30. Vicki and Ronni were by then in their 40s. Tale of My Lost Love is the whole story from beginning to end of two sisters who gave everything to their dream, yet never made a single record... until now. Sometimes great music just isn’t enough to break through — until it is. Numero Group is thrilled and proud, at long last, to introduce Female Species.

〈Captured Tracks〉The biggest seller! Along with masterpieces such as "Salad Days", this is definitely an introductory board for this person! Mac Demarco is a current indie pop cult icon from Canada, known for his activities in Makeout Videotape, sampling Sekito Oshigeo's "The Word II", and the popular split single "Honey Moon" with Mr. Hosono. The 10th anniversary edition of the masterpiece "Rock And Roll Night Club" released in 2012 has been released as an analogue. A masterpiece of psychedelic and addictive indie pop that makes you feel like you're listening to Deerhunter's "Microcastle" cassette demo!

Bristol’s four-piece outfit Quade announce their debut album, ‘Nacre’, out 17th November via AD93. ‘Nacre’ is the culmination of three years of work from the band, the blueprints of their songwriting and sound firmly established in the sprawling, haunting and yet hopeful record. Traipsing between gothic expansiveness and cosmic psychedelia, the record cannot be pinned down into one recognisable place. By the album’s close, the listener may be left wondering whether it was all a memory or a dream. The recording and production of the record was collaborative, with the band drawing upon the services of Jack Ogbourne and Larry ‘Bruce’ McCarthy - two divergent pillars of Bristol’s music community - for engineering and mixing respectively.

Avalon Emerson & The Charm is an evolution. Created during an extended break from the hectic blur of her life as a touring DJ, the album is a personal statement of intent from an artist who’s long looked beyond the club for inspiration. It’s also the first time that Emerson has put herself, her emotions and, most notably, her voice fully into the spotlight. Having spent her entire career working more or less alone, Emerson purposely sought out a small cast of like-minded artists to help bring the album to life. Chief among them was UK avant-pop savant Bullion, who executive produced the record and, most importantly, shares both Emerson’s predilection for shimmering pop melodies and her boundaryless approach to music-making. Working together, they cracked open her head and heart alike, creating a space where she could intimately reflect on the people and places she’s loved and left behind. Set for release on Another Dove—a new label that Emerson has launched alongside AD 93 founder Nic Tasker—Avalon Emerson & The Charm places lyrics and emotion at the forefront of its identity.