New vinyl pressing available from Winspear! “It really was super natural”, laughs Duncan Troast, explaining how he and Nick Corson came to form The Convenience, and though he means it was as organic as breathing, the music these two conjure is from an alternate reality. Pulling from a pastiche of 80’s sounds and their own rolodex of future pop flourishes, their new album Accelerator sounds like a late-night disco party on a distant outpost, a sea of dancing bodies illuminated by an alien moon.

The two met at New Orleans’ Loyola University, where they eventually joined the rising pop group Video Age, and before long, were spending the downtime between tours exploring what their own music could sound like. Their early efforts showed promise, but when held next to the iridescent glow of their new material, it’s clear there was a fundamental shift. 

“There was a disconnect from the music that we were making, and the breadth of the music that we loved”, explains Corson, “I was relearning how to write songs.” The two went back to the music that made them truly feel alive, pouring over records by Stevie Wonder, Prince, NSYNC, “trying to figure out why it felt so good”.

The result of those efforts is a singular album packed with visceral, immediate pleasure; body music for a plastic pop future. “I had a hard time learning how to do things the right way, and just wanted to make a mess”, says Corson, thinking back on his earliest experiments with songwriting and production. You can hear that spirit in the brief snippets of noise that dot the record, but the immaculate pop songs here make it clear – whatever they’re doing is working.

At its core, Accelerator is a celebration of friendship, and the transportative power of music. It’s an ode to the joy of dancing, of loving just to have loved, and becoming who you are.

New VInyl Pressing by Alex Smalley – Vanaprastha (The Man Who Went Into The Woods To Find Himself). Alex states, ‘This is my first solo album, the music serves as a release from an old way of life where for many years I was lost and found in the woods of rural Hampshire, England.’

The music on Vanaprastha is deeply layered and mediative. Written, recorded and mixed throughout the summer of 2020, you will hear Guitars, flutes, voice, organ and Marimbas that were set against field recordings from the river Ilm, Weimar.

Alex’s music is a collage of therapeutic dream-states aimed to promote mindful interactions with nature and the cosmos. 

Available now from PITP.

New Vinyl Pressing by Kashena Sampson!

The Nashville-based singer-songwriter had already finished her forthcoming album — an 11-song journey through her struggles with co-dependency and finding herself, illuminated by a voice that harkens back to a time when Linda Rondstadt and Fleetwood Mac reigned supreme — and then her path shifted, as did that of so many other musicians over the past year. A singular part of her story, though, is that Kashena also funds her music through a bartending job at The Basement East, which was destroyed by the March 2020 tornado that hit Nashville just a few weeks before the pandemic did. 

“I had the record ready to go, and then the tornado took away the funding for it,” she says, in a matter-of-fact manner that speaks a lot about who Kashena is: she’s easygoing by nature, but also quietly assured in her ability to consistently figure things out. “Here in times of stillness, I know I’ll be okay / If I listen to it closely, I always find my way,” she sings on the album’s title track. 

“It’s about your past, where you came from, what made you who you are today,” she says of the song. “Nobody really knows what they are doing. We are all just trying to figure out this life thing, and the answers can always be found within.” 

When having a conversation with Kashena, there’s a sneaking suspicion she’s always been just as introspective as she is now. She offers the kind of comments and observations that make it clear she’s always had a knack for tapping into what’s happening around her and identifying the universal feelings that both trouble and fuel us all.  

“Time Machine tells the story of my struggles with codependency, personal growth and self worth,” she says. “My internal struggle with relationships, the music business, and trying to find joy in the little things in life. In the past, I’ve always looked for things outside myself to fix me and I’ve always come up short. It’s the journey of me discovering that happiness and contentment is an inside job and nothing outside of myself is going to fix that.”

Vinyl Pressing available now on Bandamp! Three long years have passed since The Evanstones last release. Three years of toil and sweat and horrible smells. Now, by popular demand, and as was predicted in the scrolls, The Evanstones bring you more of what you, the discerning listener, didn’t even know you were craving so desperately. But you were. Oh yes, you were. And we here at Evanstones world HQ heard your silent pleas, even before you plead them and responded with great haste combined with glacial deliberation to bring you what many are predicted to call the Surf Album of the Decade! Or at least some of you. 

New vinyl pressing: HILL SPIRITS are an energetic folk quintet from the fabled hills of southern Ohio. While at some points boisterously uplifting and at other times stirringly mystical, Hill Spirits have become known for their passionate live energy and wholesale love for lifting their voices in song together. Based in Athens, Ohio, the group has forged deep musical bonds over the course of a decade in a multitude of musical projects ranging in sound from psychedelic rock to acoustic to neo-soul, eventually finding home in the Appalachian folk modes of their forebearers. In the course of their work diving into the revival of both Americana and old-world folk styles, Hill Spirits seem to have found a way to communicate with other realms, creating spaces during performances that summon restless spirits to join in a spirit-dance.

Hill Spirits’ self-titled debut album is a showcase of the kind of original songs that set them apart from the contemporary folk scene. Drawing on the inspiration of characters from fable and American folk history, the album visits a grown-up gun-blazing Red Riding Hood in the bawdy “Red Rider” and an indentured Irish-American Civil War soldier in the heart-wrenching “Giving Hand”. An energized fiddle wails and reigns supreme in sentimental “Cold Frosty Mornin” and thunderous “Elzics Farewell”, and a sultry rhythmic swagger takes the reins in “Out with the Gaslamps”.

Hill Spirits are Kyle Lyons (Knux) on banjo, Eric (the Reverend) Osborne on fiddle, George Joseph van Fossen (Old Dutch) on upright bass, Benjamin Stewart (O’Burteen) on guitar and mandolin, and Brother Hill on lead vocals, guitar, and Irish bodhran.

In addition to the new album, be sure to check out the Hill Spirits Gin available from West End Distillery in Athens, Ohio (if that’s your tipple). Hill Spirits was the first band we have worked with to pick up their own records via a private airplane – kudos!

Cub Scout Bowling Pins hop in the “Magic Taxi”, turn on the AM radio and time travel 40-45 years back in time for Clang Clang Ho! The project is mysteriously presented, but it’s a thinly-veiled alias of the ridiculously prolific and talented Guided By Voices. Minus the usual punk & prog influences, there are strong whiffs of bubble gum, psych and soft rock with sugary doses of ornate baroque pop.

Available from Rockathon Records.

In the fateful year of 2020, Vincent John and Maxwell Perla of Eraserhood Sound were fortunate enough to stumble upon the score to the long lost, never completed 1974 Italian film Riblle Di Mare. It was not long before they realized they had discovered an opus, written by legendary film composer Sandro Galileo in what was to be his final soundtrack. Only it never came to pass. The film was abandoned before it could be completed, and the ashes of Galileo’s final work were swept aside and forgotten. Until today. Eraserhood Sound is proud to present Ribelle Di Mare in all its glory, produced and performed by house band Fantasy 15 in their signature “Synth & Soul” sound. Enjoy the nine stunning tracks that follow, which range in style from dramatic Philly Soul balladry, Spaghetti Western r&b, and Italian library funk.

Available 08.27.2021 from Colemine Records and beyond!

On Mixed Up, Four80East took a selection of classic tracks from our cellar, distilled them to their essence, then infused them with House flavors to create a contemporary mix that’s bold yet smooth. Grab it while this limited edition 180 gram vinyl pressing is still available!

Until Real Gone Music reissued it in early 2021, The Outer Limits had only come out briefly on vinyl in Europe. This album offers the unique blend of atonal riffs, off-time tempo changes, and sci-fi imagery that made this Quebec band such a shining star in the Canadian metal scene. The Outer Limits features a great cover of Pink Floyd’s ‘The Nile Song’ (Voïvod had covered ‘Astronomy Domine’ on their 1989 album Nothingface), but without question the album’s centerpiece is the winding 17-minute song ‘Jack Luminous,’ which is something of a prog-rock masterpiece. This reissue comes with a jacket and inner sleeve boasting lyrics and drummer Michel Langevin’s illustrations.