John Calvin Abney will be touring with the Damn Quails starting January 2, and promoting his new LP – Better Luck (available January 25). You can catch the first single from the LP now. Better Luck was recorded in 9 days at Tiny Telephone, San Francisco, California, from April 28 – May 6, 2014. Watch as additional tour dates are announed at johncalvinabney.com.
As a response to the deluxe presentation of Ritual and because Form Volume II wasn’t supposed to exist, Surachai decided to keep the theme of non-existence with the vinyl and artwork by calling it the Void Presentation. Firstly: there is no artwork. The vinyl is clear and with no center sticker making it an entirely transparent vinyl record. The transparent information card was manufactured by Offbeat Press and the reference I gave them was the winning ticket to Fhloston Paradise from The Fifth Element. The clear jacket is also clear and originally intended for picture discs. If you’re not looking for this album, you’re not going to find it – basically its a marketing nightmare. Limited to 250 units.
William Elliot Whitmore’s The Early Years box set includes “Hymns for the Hopeless”, “Ashes to Dust”, and “Song of the Blackbird” each on 180 gram vinyl, re-recorded and re-mastered as faithfully as possible for your listening pleasure. The set includes download codes for all 3 albums and a signed post card. You can purchase it from William Elliot Whitmore’s website now!
Beat Hollow Records was born in 2014, and so it seems fitting that they reissued Fognode’s 2011 album Beat Hollow. The record is available as a 100-copy limited hand-numbered pressing now, so be sure to act fast if you want it!
VDSQ Records is proud to release the second album by Matthew Mullane — Hut Variations. Among the more revelatory contemporary guitarists, Mullane’s new album is a further progression in terms of technique, composition and performance. Limited edition of 500 copies in heavy stock, spot-gloss jackets. Order now from Vin Du Select Qualitite.
Playing For Change is a multimedia movement created to inspire, connect, and bring peace to the world through music.
The album features performances from Keith Richards, Sara Bareilles, Andres Calamaro, Toots Hibbert from Toots & The Maytals, Cesar Rosas and David Hidalgo of Los Lobos, Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Keb Mo, and Taj Mahal in addition to a song produced by Jackson Browne. The very limited edition vinyl version includes vinyl-only bonus tracks “Clandestino” featuring Manu Chao and “United”. Don’t wait too long to order, because it is very limited.
Sungod approach their work with a purposeful disregard for chronological and geographic borders alike, devoid of any fixed time or point of origin. Touching on the modern and the classic, Sungod‘s five expansive tracks offer a series of portals into the past while maintaining a contemporary progressive sound. With a new line-up of auxiliary musicians contributing to the exploration of a full-spectrum of sonic planes, Sungod covers enough ground to hold a mirror up to infinity and find the inner frontiers of the self in its reflection. The Austin duo’s eponymous LP perpetuates the timeless elements of many experimental musics while further refining a craft that is wholly their own.
The core of Sungod is made up of Michael Sharp and Braden Balentine, who record out of their shared home studio with a rotating cast of like minded musicians from Austin’s fertile underground music scene. While incorporating an ever-broadening inventory of influences, the band’s methodical arrangements and layers of meditative repetition hearken back to 70’s Krautrock, which serves as a solid foundation for further ventures into both burgeoning and antiquated realms. Polyrhythmic drums and arpeggiated synthesizers propel much of Sungod‘s procession forward, sitting in total harmony with acoustically-oriented pieces that concisely imbue a compensatory calm to the album’s potent, high velocity moments. Initially composed around an awe-inspiring single-take drum performance by Michael Sharp, Shiftless en Nkawkaw is supported with additional vocals by a pair of Sharp’s coworkers who jumped onto an impromptu recording session after a shift together, chorusing between psychoactivated guitar solos and fully engrossing flute melodies. Ample contributions from flutist Kristine Reaume as well as bassist Alex Hughes help to make Sungod’s latest LP an exponent in this era of the band’s cosmology. However, the epic closing track L’âme de toute étoile strips back down to Sharp and Balentine, proficiently exhibiting their command of drums, guitar, and synth in one of their most elemental works to date.
If you are out and about this weekend (Black Friday / Small Business Saturday), be sure to hit up your local indie record store to grab some of these titles pressed at GGR for RSD/Black Friday this year! Happy Thanksgiving!
Velvet Underground — Live MCMXCIII
Afghan Whigs — Gentlemen At 21
Jade — Faces of Jade
Prawn – Settled 7 inch
Faces of Jade is a tough-to-find Cincinnati-area nugget from 1971. It is one of the most highly sought-after “Beatles-Impact” records among psych, power-pop and Beatles collectors. After a bit of sleuthing we tracked down the members and are proud to give a proper and awesome-sounding vinyl reissue of their sole pop-psych / Revolver-esque classic. The initial press of 500 will be pressed on “Jade Green” wax. The LP will be available from Shake-It Records starting Black Friday Nov. 28th, and we will start shipping the following week.
.jpg)
Brian Laidlaw is a poet and songwriter from San Francisco. He studied Creative Writing as an undergraduate at Stanford, at which point he began setting his own poems to music; after graduating in 2005 he toured and rambled throughout the country for several years as a solo folksinger.
In 2008, Brian moved to Minneapolis to earn an M.F.A. in poetry at the University of Minnesota. In the last year he has received awards and honors from the Loft Literary Center, the Weisman Art Museum, and the Jerome Foundation. His lyrics have been featured in American Songwriter Magazine and his poems have appeared or are forthcoming in New American Writing, FIELD, VOLT, Quarter After Eight, The Iowa Review, and elsewhere.
His new LP, Amoratorium, shipped out to Hymies Vintage Records, and will be available for sale at his 318 Club performance in Excelsior, MN on 11/23/14.