Affection... Available on Bandcamp Now!!!
Remnants and Artifacts...
Still new and necessary...
The recordings of Little Rock's Affection...
2003 - Andrew Morgan, Jeremy Brasher, and Lloyd Benjamin...
(You had to have been there, but...)
Any social person who can play an instrument or has a flair for theatrics is going to find themselves in a band eventually, and if you come out of a small to mid-size town with an active diy contingent, you are bound to end up in dozens possibly upon dozens. You will be in bands that never record, bands that never even play one live show, or bands that may exist only over beers as a sort of shared theoretical idea that you will all get around to one of these days. Very occasionally though, you succeed. Not success in a critical or monetary sense, mind you; that’s a whole other thing. No, you succeed in being in a band that leaves some sort of evidence that you were there at a certain time, doing that thing: an artifact.
When starting a band there’s often an initial idea, or some expectation. Maybe it’s a genre you are going to work within, or you’re collaborating with a familiar songwriter. Sometimes you are just out to rip off some other band as best you can and see what happens. Affection was none of those things. It’s one of the few projects I’ve been involved in where I feel like everything sounded exactly like who we were. Andrew, Lloyd, and I all fell into it together without any real concept or thought of direction and, from music to lyrics, it just was us.
I can remember the era when we wrote these songs. I remember our giant old drafty white house and all the people that drank and danced through it for those few years. Like an old photograph can function as a repository of memories, personally this album is a repository in a sense as well, not so much one of memories but of feelings, my concerns trapped in amber: fears of a looming technological dystopian future, contempt for the distant wealthy that seemingly controlled everything in our lives, feeling trapped by pointless and unrewarding jobs, frustration with my friends, with myself. But somewhere underneath was an optimism that it was all something that could perhaps be sorted out, that the dystopian nightmare could be averted.
I was really in love then: in love with my friends, in love with our town, in love with potential. I thought we could, maybe, just maybe, beat the world, and in a sense perhaps we have. Time passes. Concerns change. Affection endures. This artifact remains.
—Jeremy, February 2021
Affection... Available on Bandcamp Now!!!
Sample below...
]]>Untight is a meditative experience floating outside of time which creates new aural perceptions attune to deeper cosmologies.
The project of artist/musician Sam king, Untight, sprang to life in early 2019, in Fayetteville, AR…
Untight combines the influence non-Western intonation, think Harry Partch or La Monte Young, with do-it-yourself ethics informed by King’s experience in music booking and performance in northwest Arkansas. The guitar harnesses precedents of anti-virtuosic artists like Rhys Chatham or Glenn Branca. Eschewing traditional rock/pop structures, individual motives accrue into orchestral ambience. King’s microtonal tuning introduces both purely intoned harmony and bracing friction, enabling his improvisations to unfold with paradoxically deliberate urgency...
Drawing Room is quite excited to release Reverse Forecast, the debut cassette for Untight... Reverse Forecast is available now on Bandcamp, as both a very limited cassette (50 mail order copies) and an unlimited digital version.
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Helga Fassonaki… Where to start? yek koo, Metal Rouge, Emerald Cocoon, and about a million other amazing projects are just a few to mention. Needless to say, Drawing Room is now a patron for life. After several years of the label attempting to jump into the world of crucial artistic matter beyond recorded music, we cannot tell you how excited we are for this new project, triple partnership between Helga, Sming Sming Books and Drawing Room.
Khal…
After the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini condemned all forms of music, other than classical and traditional Persian music as being corrupted and influenced by Western culture, and therefore, forbidden. During this time, Khomeini forbade women from singing solo in public because of "the seductive quality of the female voice"—a law which is still in effect today.
Helga Fassonaki began the Khal project in 2014 while living in Tabriz, Iran. Because the use of her voice as a woman in public performance was restricted, Fassonaki sent compositions in the form of sculptural scores to sixteen female artists and musicians living in different cities and parts of the world. The scores were interpreted and performed publicly by these artists in lieu of Fassonaki’s ability to do so.
These living scores were then passed on to additional female artists and musicians, creating an open book of socio-spatial exchange. As the series unfolds from one event to another, a cumulative composition of voices and actions will continue to grow until the law inhibiting artistic expression ceases to exist. This ongoing exchange and peaceful protest refers to the derogatory use of the Farsi word “khal,” coined to describe the passage of Iranian pop music in the form of homemade mixtapes. Once pop music was no longer being produced or sold in Iran after the Islamic Revolution, the Los Angeles Persian community sent mixtapes to residents in Iran so they could listen to their own country’s pop stars. Fassonaki remembers partaking in this movement when she was a kid residing in Los Angeles. The steady flow of cassettes soon became state-approved in Iran, an example that gentle poetic actions can push through governing law.
The original recipients of Fassonaki’s scores include: Marcia Bassett (Zaïmph), Christina Carter, Angel Chirnside, Kali. Z. Fasteau, Chiara Giovando, Jenny Gräf, Kelly Jayne Jones, Kathleen Kim, Heather Leigh, Rachael Melanson (Ro Sen), Shana Palmer, Ashley Paul, Purple Pilgrims, Matana Roberts, Rachel Shearer, and Gabie Strong.
Additional participating artists include: Yasi Alipour, Mira Billotte (White Magic), Jo Burzynska (Stanier Black-Five),Zahra Killeen Chance, Ella Chau Yin Chi (French Concession), Nazanin Daneshvar, Suki Dewey, Beth Ducklingmonster, Helen Greenfield (Mela), Hermione Johnson, Sarah Kelleher (Misfit Mod), Jessika Kenney, Pauline Lay and Ang Frances Wilson, Elizabeth Mary Maw, Maryam Bagheri Nesami, Tina Pihema (Piece War), Fariba Safai,Julia Santoli, Laura Sofia, Joan Sullivan, Gemma Syme (Instant Fantasy), twelve anonymous artists in Tabriz, Iran, and more as the series continues.
Iterations of Khal were exhibited at Glasshouse, Los Angeles Contemporary Archive, Disjecta, the Auricle Sonic Arts Gallery, the 2015 Audacious Festival of Sonic Arts, Audio Foundation, Viewfinder, and Nga Taonga Sound & Vision.
This box edition of Khal, limited to 150 copies worldwide, contains two cassette tapes and 110 loose-leaf pages of art, photos, writing and related project documentation.
Khal was supported, in part, by a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant.
More about Helga… Helga Fassonaki is a multi-disciplinary artist and curator of Iranian-Azeri decent, born and currently residing in Los Angeles. Her work crosses fields of nature, sound, video, performance, and installation. She performs solo as yek koo, a project begun in 2006, exploring the body as a vehicle for the movement of sound and duo in Métal Rouge (with Andrew Scott), formed in 2005. In 2017, Fassonaki founded untune, a socio-curatorial project with a series of programming dedicated to the term “Social“. Her work solo and in collaboration, has been presented at MOCA (Los Angeles), LACA (Los Angeles), Whitney Museum of American Art (as part of the Whitney Biennial 2014), LACE galleries (Los Angeles), Human Resources (Los Angeles), Audio Foundation (Auckland), Blue Oyster gallery (Dunedin), Box Gallery (Los Angeles), Disjecta (Portland), Zebulon (Los Angeles), Café Oto (London), Vox Populi (Philadelphia) among many others. Fassonaki is currently working on an ongoing series called 100’ Circles, which attempts to address the changes/transitions/cycles (historic, social, natural, environmental) of specific land masses around the world. So far she has created a 100’ Circlein Vanier Park, Vancouver; Joshua Tree, California; and the Berkshires, Western Massachusetts.
]]>If nature brings us closer to the Higher Powers (or vice-versa), as Cellophane Garden, Kevin Blagg nearly solves this spiritual equation for true connection. As a now permanent resident of the high-aura responsive Ozark Mountains of Arkansas, Blagg’s skill for elegantly creating ambient excursions from the apex orders is unprecedented. Needless to say, it’s astonishingly beautiful and an utmost required listen. We have been fans for ages (some of them known).
On his newest invention, a double album entitled "Relation To The Infinite”, Blagg continues his aural exploration of expansive yet precise sonic craftsmanship. This album solidifies Cellophane Garden as a consistent representative of the modern age cosmic cannon. The puzzle pieces are all in place with grand movements of Kosmiche pleasantries, ethereal-enlightened astral-projection-age suites, and minimalist composition aesthetics all aligned as one. As heavenly possible as this may be, Blagg maintains solid ground by focusing on ephemeral shapes and temporal resonance through guitar precision, low frequency soft synths and ephemeral ambient beds for a quiet evening of aural transportation.
Drawing Room is most pleased to finally announce the newest release from Kevin Blagg and Cellophane Garden. Destiny has kept this a slow-burning secret for way too long, and it’s now time for this to belong to the entire universe. Mastered by Josh Bonati and pressed on 180-gram vinyl, the limited 2xLP comes in a gorgeous full-color sleeve accompanied by a full-color inner-sleeve and 22x22 fold out poster. Get one for you and another for a loved one.
As an extra bonus treat, John Kelley created a most gorgeous video for the track 'Starfire'. You can watch it below now!!!
]]>On United Waters and "Coma To Coma" by Ben Chasny
With “Coma To Coma”, United Waters continues even further down the road of the perfect melted song. Chords drip and flow into each other at a pace equal to honey at 35 degrees Fahrenheit. It’s this viscosity that sets United Waters apart from any other band that engages in the song-form. Achievement obtained not by the newest pedals or computer effects, but by playing slightly out of this dimension. It’s as if the band discovered one of those theoretical multiverses, perhaps one named ‘All Things Are Sticky’, and slip back and forth between there and here in order to write their music. It’s a sound completely unique yet a sound you knew existed without ever having heard it before.
Years ago, guitarist Brian Sullivan was most well-known for his ability to turn sound waves into great, leveling forces of sonic annihilation with his band Mouthus. Yet even there, we heard this nascent sound of the melted song hiding inside crushing volume. With United Waters, Brian brings the song forward and allows it to reveal itself to be the true driving force of his music. Where as in Mouthus the song-form hid underneath intimidating levels of volume, in United Waters the song-form transfigures into a new body that reveals new energies with subtle lines of force. “Coma To Coma” takes that new body and refines it even further than their previous records. Imagine the painter Francis Bacon sonically slicing and transmogrifying the songs on Lindsey Buckingham’s Law And Order and you will begin to orient yourself to the sound of “Coma to Coma.”
I’ve been trying to think of a word or phrase that best describes “Coma To Coma” and as far as I can tell it doesn’t exist. It would have to be something that meant melancholic but without any hint of sadness and simultaneously shot through with bliss. It would imply a sense of time that flows and rejects segmentation. It would signify a feeling of completeness. In lieu of such a word or phrase, I predict the title of this record soon becomes a used phrase to convey such a feeling among its listeners. One can imagine sitting alone in the grass at sunset and getting a text from a friend inquiring, “how you doin?” and replying, “Coma To Coma.”
In the cabinet in my mind where I store files on things I don’t understand, there’s a hefty one on United Waters. How do they compose music that sounds so flowing yet all play in time together? How does one write melodies that sound so classic yet manage to evoke new emotions? Why does Brian sound so cool when he sings? How does the percussion sound both electronic yet totally organic? These are some of the notes I’ve scribbled in my United Waters file. “Coma To Coma” does nothing to answer any of my questions and in fact might even raise a few more, the biggest one being: Why are United Waters not the popular band in the world right now?
- Ben Chasny (Six Organs Of Admittance), McKinleyville, CA 2019
"Coma To Coma" Info…
"Coma to Coma" is the fourth album from United Waters.
Mastered by Josh Bonati and pressed on 180-gram vinyl, the limited LP comes in a gorgeous full-color sleeve accompanied by a full-color inner-sleeve and 22x22 fold out poster. An unlimited digital version is also available.
In addition, for mail-order only, we are including another collection of music from United Waters. It's a cassette EP of more new material. Both are a must have!
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Medicine and Brad Laner…
As many previous PR announcements proclaim, “Brad Laner is an American musician and record producer best known for his work with the shoegaze band Medicine, which he founded and leads. Laner is also an active solo artist, recording under the moniker Electric Company as well as releasing albums under his own name. Brian Eno sampled his work, and the list of Laner’s various collaborations, ranging from Lindsay Buckingham to members of Failure and Tool, to a zillion others, reads like a “who’s who” of pop and experimental royalty.”
Laner is a master of multiple music worlds from leftfield experimentation to the popular. Yes, it’s no small feat. Yet, Laner is and will always be a “wall-of-sound” success. In spiritual speak, his structures allow the listener to move through the realms of song craft with a harmonious sense of enlightenment. His sounds pleasure the cerebral realms that euphorically resonate the whole self. (Seek your own preferred guru guide for further translation and/or insight.)
“Scarred for Life”…
Before streaming playlists dictated the prevalent sounds of the current music landscape, and even well before “That’s What I Call Music” was an easy go to for the La-Z-Boy music fan, there was the K-Tel compilation. With titles such as “Full Tilt”, “High Voltage” and “Chart Explosion”, these samplers provided an economic way to experience the wonders of the AM/FM radio dials. Though some of collections focused on a particular style or demographic, many were as varied as the Top 40 charts could get in their heyday, and they had the potential to provide much pleasure to those who perused these titles. (They also had major inclination for giggles and jeers depending on your perspective.)
With “Scarred for Life”, Laner and his Medicine cohorts attempt to relive the glory (and none of the fiascos) of the K-Tel architects. It is a covers album of all “killer no filler” and includes tracks from Neil Young, Judee Sill, Miles Davis, The Monkees, and um Bob Welch. It’s an outstandingly eclectic selection of tracks that always “hits”.
Per Laner himself “Come listen and hell even purchase this album of covers. Above all else, this album was really just some folks attempt to keep sane in the wake of acertain nameless fascist assuming power back in the dark days of 2016. Mind you, we love it, but the song choices have no cohesive theme and although it’s a bit noisy, we’re not trying to be all anything, or whatever.”
In addition to core Medicine members Brad Laner and Jim Goodall, there are a couple of new-not-new folks aboard this adventure that share a long history of connection with the principals. Singer Annette Zilinskas originally formed the band with Laner back in the early 90s. She is best known as a founding member of The Bangles and Blood on the Saddle. After co-writing the songs ‘Aruca’ and ‘Miss Drugstore’, Zilinskas left the band to be with The Ringling Sisters, her other band, as they signed with A&M, making her unable to sign with Medicine to Def American. Guitarist Matt Devine played with Medicine on their last US tour in 1995 as well as joining the re-formed band in 2014 at their appearance at the Austin Psych Fest. He has also played with Possum Dixon, Permanent Green Light and Ventilator.
Tickled with nostalgia, Drawing Room is all smiles to release “Scarred for Life” from Brad Laner and Company. This album of all covers is completely beyond simple reinterpretation. Laner and cohorts give each track a Medicine sized dosage of their “wall of sound” to bless and heal us all.
For those into the vinyl format, we offer a strictly limited vinyl version. Only 100 copies are available for sale worldwide. Mastered by Adam Gonsalves, each LP is pressed on 180 gram vinyl and housed in a full color gloss jacket and includes a 22x22” foldout poster. It is exclusively for purchase on Drawing Room’s Bandcamp site. An unlimited digital version is also available.
Sample and order below:
]]>S/T LP is out September 20! Pre-order now and sample now on our Bandcamp site!!!
somesurprises is the moniker of Seattle singer/songwriter Natasha El-Sergany. What once was a solo project focusing on spectral balladry and late night exploration, somesurprises has since formed into a dynamic live band. Motorik beats, reverb-drenched vocals, washes of fingerpicked guitars, and hazy synths expand El-Sergany's delicate and blissful songwriting.
Starting with a solo tape release of cell phone recordings on 2016’s Voice Memos, El-Sergany then collaborated with guitarist Josh Medina (Debacle Records) for duo debut ambient album, Serious Dreams, released on Eiderdown Records in 2017. Serious Dreams was described by The Quietus as "a thoroughly cosmic outing. Everything is lush and smooth enough to describe as ambient music as much as folk, almost seeming too dreamy to have ever been real." The release also received kind reviews from Bandcamp, The Stranger, Seattle Weekly, and Tiny Mixtapes.
Next, somesurprises took to recording as a full band with drummer Nico Sophiea (MX-80 Sound) and bassist Emma Danner (Red Ribbon), releasing Alt, on LA’s Doom Trip Records in 2018. Aquarium Drunkard compared the three-song “krautpop” EP to an imaginary collaboration between Grouper and Spiritualized. In early 2019, somesurprises put out a collaborative split tape with Seattle’s Supercandy (some candy, released by Crash Symbols), with guest musicians Brenan Chambers, Lori Goldston, Monika Khot, and Ambrosia Bardos weaving layers of soaring guitar effects, cello, vocals, and trumpet into the mix.
Over the years, somesurprises has built a strong presence in the Seattle music scene, and toured the west coast. In Seattle, they have opened for touring artists such as Circuit Des Yeux, Carla dal Forno, A Place to Bury Strangers, and the Cave Singers. This year finds somesurprises set to release their self-titled, full-length LP on Drawing Room Records, an exciting milestone for this aptly named, shapeshifting project.
Every so often, there comes an album with such foreign, yet familiar, beauty, it holds a plethora of surprises. The self-titled debut album from somesurprises is as close to spiritual bliss as a tangible pinnacle can be. Taking cues from the shoegaze canon, with guided hands of experimental and pop music masters, Natasha El-Sergany and her collective-minded company in somesurprises invoke a holy ghost to bring forth an otherworldly experience.
With its 36th release, Drawing Room brings in a new wonder with somesurprises’ self-titled debut LP, a treasure among pop treasures. The album explores a range of styles, from gradually intensifying meditative drones, to songs where the same moment never quite happens twice. As in previous cassette releases with fewer members, El-Sergany uses her ethereal voice as an instrument, no more or less central to the music than a guitar hook or a drumbeat. But the vocals and lyrics are more in focus than ever before. ‘Cherry Sunshine’ layers fingerpicked arpeggios with soaring organ melodies, steady motorik rhythm, and an invitation to reflect on “a wide open world” until words become no longer necessary. From shimmering cascades of reverbed guitar chords, to driving bass and percussion guiding guitar and synth freak-out outros, as a full band, somesurprises finds its fullest expression yet. The songwriting here, laden with effects and orchestral arrangements, reaches for more than navel-gazing, or (even shoegazing) and seeks, perhaps, through knowledge of the self, to guide the way out of one’s own mind.
The album bears repeating for repeated plays (at maximum volume for peak pleasantries). Mastered by Amy Dragon for Telegraph Mastering and pressed on 180-gram vinyl, the limited LP comes in a gorgeous full-color sleeve accompanied by a full-color inner-sleeve and 22x22 fold out poster. An unlimited digital version is also available.
In addition, for mail-order only, we are including another collection of music from somesurprises. It's a cassette EP of album demos. These are both a must.
Early praise of somesurprises upcoming S/T LP and the track 'High Rise' from Dave Segal at "The Stranger".
'High Rise' is one of many standouts among somesurprises' eight tracks. El-Sergany describes it as "a song about waking up in the middle of a freefall from a tall, glass building, forgetting how to look at new things for the first time, and the subtle difference between serene daydream and truly grounding yourself." It begins with the dewy tremulousness of Broadcast at their most tender, El-Sergany and Josh Medina's radiant guitar chime and Emma Danner's cyclical bass line lulling you into a beatific swoon. Then at 2:30, 'High Rise' abruptly accelerates into an elegant chug courtesy of drummer Nico Sophiea, building a cool head of steam similar to that of the Velvet Underground's "Foggy Notion," but irradiated by lysergic, Savage Republic-like guitar. It's the album's most explosive and euphoric moment, all the more potent for rising out of the prevailing gorgeous languor."
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Andrew Morgan’s journey as COUNTRY FLORIST began with a trilogy of tapes gathering tracks, some dating back almost two decades, featuring under-polished gems of dark guitar-based home-recorded pop that are lyrically reflective and personal.
The love of the groove was always present and became even more apparent as COUNTRY FLORIST moved into the full-length vinyl territory with “Waveland”, full of loose-limbed, jazz inflected house for floors and headphones.
“OUTLASTR”, the newest excursion, finds Country Florist laying the beats bare and punching up the pace. It’s moody, defiant, playful, and anger tempered with the will to party. “OUTLASTR” is four-four amours for the dance floors. It’s hot… WAY HOT…
“OUTLASTR” is available on both very limited cassette (50 mail-order copies only) and unlimited digital formats. The EP is available for purchase on our Bandcamp site.
Check out the video for "Stake Lake" (track 2 of EP) below.
]]>Dora Bleu…
Through the echoes of an acoustic guitar and vocal expressions, Dora Bleu explores intimacy as the place where the capitalist war state replenishes itself. Her work is neither fully compositional nor improvisational. The songs follow an inner sense of narrative time, and are simultaneously tonal and atonal. The guitar is sparse, tense, atmospheric, suggestive of without enacting melodies, sometimes droning or dissonant. The vocals contribute to contrasting compositions filled with stark silences and bent notes. The songs intend to violate the concept of genre, to erupt trauma within storytelling, and to evoke vulnerable and dreamlike states.
Dora has two sets of recordings with Istanbul/Crete resident electric oud player Periklis Tsoukalas (BaBa ZuLa); the first, Cloned From Ash, appeared on Vienna's Feathered Coyote label in autumn of 2018. Dora and Periklis are also currently working on a second set of recordings together. Other past releases include a full length with Tom Carter (Charalambides) and Sam Shalabi (Shalabi Effect, Land of Kush) via Tequila Sunrise and Fire Museum and another on the Nostress Netlabel with Olga Nosova and Alexei Borisov (Notchnoy Prospekt).
Dora’s collaborators for tours, live performances and/or recordings include Alexandre St-Onge, Simon Wickham-Smith, Helena Espvall, Sharron Kraus, Eric Arn, Margaret Unknown, Brooke Crouser, Anton Nikkila, Kiwa Noid, Salvatore Borrelli, and Lisa Gamble. Prior released works featured on labels VHF, Camera Obscura, Fire Museum, Ikuisuus and others. Dora has toured many times in Eastern and Western Europe and on the North American East coast.
Fascism’s Intimacy on Drawing Room Records is Dora’s most recent release and is supported and infused by the work of American guitarist Marc Ribot.
Fascism’s Intimacy:
Speaking in tongues is spiritual communication that is both celestial and infernal. Its power is neither wholly human nor otherworldly, and its beautifully positive or damningly negative results lay somewhere in between with the earthly side never having full access. It is not for the faint of heart nor for the unbelieving, but used appropriately, its captured potency is a most effective form of communication.
The music of Dora Bleu is an apex of the creative form of this practice. It is hauntingly intense and complexly grounded for definite, but its gorgeous enraptured vibrancy transfers the aural senses to gloriously new and unseen colors. It is a heavy and shimmering trip most worthy of taking again and again. Mortal forms of communications have yet to create words to best illustrate this awesome flight.
With Fascism’s Intimacy, Dora brings this artistic ceremony to the new world to hear and experience. It’s a gorgeous blend of both new and old coupled with songwriting and experimentation. Canonical artists such as Ruth Ann Friedman, Linda Perhacs, and Christina Carter will immediately come to mind alongside many other guitar greats with a list too long to publish here. In addition, the talented American guitarist Marc Ribot provides backing and potion to the album. It’s definitely most required listening.
For its 35th release, Drawing Room Records pleasingly presents Fascism’s Intimacy from Dora Bleu. The album is a darkly gorgeous experimental expression of guitar and voice imprinted with talented Marc Ribot.
Mastered by Amy Dragon for Telegraph Mastering and pressed on 180-gram vinyl, the LP comes in a gorgeous full-color sleeve accompanied by a full-color inner-sleeve and 11x22 fold out poster.
All of the artwork is collaboration between E Genevieve Williams and Dora, and it is mesmerizingly unforgettable.
A digital release is also available.
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It's for the track "Ephemeral and the Material"… Watch and watch often!!!
Video for "Ephemeral And The Material" by Zaïmph (Marcia Bassett)...
Filmed by Bridget Hayden, Autumn 2018…
Final edits made in 2019, Todmordern, West Yorkshire…
"Ephemeral and the Material" is the first track on Zaïmph's "Rhizomatic Gaze" 2xLP on Drawing Room Records…
It can be purchased here… https://zaimph.bandcamp.com/album/rhi...
]]>Written alongside and as a follow-up to Disambiguation, Cruel Diagonals’ debut, Pulse of Indignation is a mighty next leap in Megan Mitchell’s musical trajectory. Whereas, for Mitchell, Disambiguation was about sense-making and uncovering some of the traumas surrounding Mitchell’s early musical career as an adolescent and young adult, Pulse of Indignation is about recognizing the exploitation, grooming, and pain that she was subjected to as a young woman under the watchful eye of men with power in the music industry. It's about harnessing the righteous anger, repulsion, and indeed, indignation, at the proliferation of these experiences for young women and non-men. If Disambiguation was about mourning the loss of Mitchell’s self-volition through uncovering layers of previously obscured suffering, Pulse of Indignation is about moving through to the next stage and owning the narrative she projects into the world.
Detail EP Information…
As part of the initial Disambiguation release, Mitchell and Drawing Room simultaneously issued a cassette-only EP of material recorded during or right after Disambiguation. Entitled Pulse of Indignation, the cassette EP is a glorious release in and of itself. Drawing Room now honorably releases a digital version of this wonderful portfolio of music to the world. Included in this expanded digital edition are a revised track order and an all-new track entitled ‘Itinerant Solitude’.
Sample And Purchase Below...
]]>As Zaïmph's most spectacular album, Rhizomatic Gaze, is officially available everywhere in the universe. We now have a truly gorgeous new video to share with the realms. It's for the song 'Coiled Fall' which is the tenth track on Rhizomatic Gaze.
'Coiled Fall' was filmed on Super 8 by the extremely talented and Berlin-based Sergei Vutuc. Sergei Vutuc is also responsible for all of the beautiful artwork showcased on Rhizomatic Gaze.
Watch, watch again, and repeat...
Additional Info:
'Coiled Fall' - Written And Performed By Marcia Bassett (Zaïmph)
Video Credits - Super 8 by Sergei Vutuc; Super 8 digitization by Johnathon Peters; and Color Correction by Lita Bosch, November 2018...
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Zaïmph, Marcia Bassett, and Rhizomatic Gaze...
Zaïmph:
It’s difficult to have a serious discussion of underground music produced in the United States over the last 20 years without including Marcia Bassett, a musician and multi-media artist who’s wielded an assortment of instruments in unconventional ways in unconventional contexts. Prepared guitar, voice, electronic effects, computer treatments, analog strategies – she fluctuates seamlessly between solo and collaborative work. Equal parts trance and critique, her work threads the needle between the conceptual and the sensual, between ritual invocation and cold semiotic gaze. You need to lose yourself to find yourself, and Marcia Bassett’s music is a potent facilitator. Bassett deftly wields philosophical systems to produce heady, experiential clouds; pushing through drones into provocative soundscapes – the intangible narratives of dreams. What seems clear one second can become perplexing the next.
After her time in the notorious group Un (with Grant Acker and Fursaxa’s Tara Burke), she co-founded Double Leopards, one of the more blissfully confounding projects of its time; one that pushed the 90’s lo-fi, subversive stylings to abstract even further into psychedelic unpredictability as that century rolled into this one.
Following Double Leopards’ dissolution, Bassett has performed and recorded incantatory solo music under the Zaïmph moniker, in addition to a host of other activities. The projects are many, – Hototogisu (with Skullflower’s Matthew Bower), GHQ (with Steve Gunn and Pete Nolan of Magik Markers), Zaika (with Tom Carter of Charalambides), plus collaborations with Samara Lubelski, Bridget Hayden, Barry Weisblat, Helga Fassonaki, Margarida Garcia and Manuel Mota.
Bassett is also a participant in ensembles that explore improvised sound and graphic scores. She’s a member of Andrew Lafkas’ large ensemble Alternate Models; the group presented “Two Paths with Active Shadows Under Three Moons and Surveillance,” at Experimental Intermedia and Eyebeam, NYC; she also contributed to Generations Unlimited’s “Gen Ken’s Supergroup” performing at PS1 Solid Gold and Experimental Intermedia.
Rhizomatic Gaze:
Deleuze and Guattari define a rhizome like a map: “The map is open and connectable in all its dimensions; it is detachable, reversible, susceptible to constant modification. It can be torn, reversed, adapted to any kind of mounting, reworked by an individual, group, or social formation. It can be drawn on the wall, conceived of as a work of art, constructed as a political action or as a meditation.” Music too can be many things – refuge, escape, a tool for engagement, a challenge, a pleasure, something to help us zone out, something that grabs us and won’t let go. By some strange alchemy, Marcia Bassett’s work manages to be all of these things at one time or another, often in wild combination.
Rhizomatic Gaze revels in this transcendence of simple constructions, with Bassett acting as a guide – a detective unifying disarranged territories. And so this double LP makes full use of its vastness while retaining such focus that time passes before we’ve had a chance to notice.
Within the expanse of the suite, the tracks still present distinct personalities. “Removing Bits of History” offers a chorus of distended voices clamoring for attention, showcasing Bassett’s remarkable capacity for cocooning cynicism into something fascinating and visceral. “Two in One” is a slowly evolving drone, delicious in its sheer density. When’s the last time you really heard a shape spread like the surface of a body of water? “Shadow of NYC” brings voices and percussive elements into dialogue with a level of natural unease and all the shuttering, stuttering rhythms of a New York subway. “Curtains” swings sonic pendulums atop a confounding and melancholy bed, as fleeting as it is impactful. And that’s not even the half of it.
The record is a weighty addition to Bassett’s catalog, and also to a heavier-than-heavy New York experimental lineage. In form, scope, and detail, it spreads its wings and means it. I’m sure your life is busy, with many blinking, twinkling things competing for your attention, but you are better off if your gaze is just a bit more rhizomatic. So look no further. - Matt Krefting, 2018
Detail Album Information:
For its holy thirty-third release, Drawing Room divinely offers Rhizomatic Gaze, the newest solo album from Marcia Bassett and Zaïmph. Rhizomatic Gaze is the ultra-heavy beautiful apex breath of all the wonderful things Bassett is known for: noisy electronic enraptures, forward thinking drone, experimental inventions, percussive plays, and entranced vocal takes. It’s absolutely stunning and essential listening in a level all to itself. Admirers of the dark left field need this release. Mastered by Josh Bonati for Bonati Mastering and pressed on 180-gram vinyl, the deluxe 2xLP comes in a heavy stark sleeve accompanied by an 11x22” double-sided foldout poster. The most beautiful artwork is all by Berlin-based artist Sergei Vutuc. A digital release is also available.
Charalambides:
Charalambides founders Tom and Christina Carter dedicate themselves to a vision of iconoclastic music as transformative force. Touching on the outer limits of acid folk, psych rock, and improvisation, their music remains uniquely personal and consistent through apparently extreme shifts in sound and performance tactics.
The group formed in Houston, Texas in 1991 amid a flock of fearlessly exploratory rock bands, including stoner rock pioneers The Mike Gunn (which Tom co-founded in 1989). Charalambides—initially a trio—played a few shows before reverting to a duo and releasing Our Bed Is Green on cassette in 1992. Our Bed Is Green’s low-fi, avant-bedroom aesthetic attracted the attention of Philadelphia’s Siltbreeze records—famed for their injection of The Dead C, the Shadow Ring, and Harry Pussy into adventurous American skulls—who released Union and Market Square, the first two Charalambides LPs, to a wider freak-rock audience.
Charalambides went on to produce dozens of LPs, CDs, and cassettes on various other labels, including Eclipse, Time-Lag, and Kranky, sometimes as a trio—first with guitarist Jason Bill, and later with pedal steel player and vocalist Heather Leigh—before finally cementing their duo configuration in 2004.
From their 2006 Kranky release A Vintage Burdenthrough 2011’s Exile, Tom and Christina reaffirmed their dedication to song-as-mantra. Yet other recordings (like 2001's Unknown Spin) whisper of interstellar voids filled with silence, while others (like 2004's Joy Shapes) howl with fiery catharsis and gnosis. Charalambides: Tom and Christina Carter, their 2018 2xLP on Drawing Room Records, is their most current offering.
Charalambides: Tom and Christina Carter:
Despite Tom and Christina Carter’s prolific solo careers and numerous other projects, Charalambides has existed in an unbroken trajectory for over two-and-a-half decades, outlasting the genres that critics and other yardstick-makers have tried to cram them into. Their recent performances and recordings retain the directness and delicate menace that mark their early releases, even as they explore an interlocking musical telepathy honed by years of artistic collaboration.
Aptly tilted Charalambides: Tom and Christina Carter, the newest album from Charalambides furthers the duo’s deep psychic understanding of music. Laid down in two sessions with no overdubs, the album entwines their best known approaches into a raw, fragile, wordless and hypnotic whole. It’s definitely the duo at their most exquisite.
Detail Album Information:
For release number thirty-two, Drawing Room brings Charalambides: Tom and Christina Carter to the universe. Recorded in Houston in 2017 in two sessions with no overdubs, the album showcases the duo at the height of everything. It’s a stunning beauty indeed. Mastered by Josh Bonati and pressed on 180-gram vinyl, the deluxe 2xLP comes in a full-colored sleeve accompanied with a full-colored insert. A digital release is also available.
Out of Place Cassette Bonus:
In addition, for mail-order only as supplies last, we are including another collection of new music from Charalambides. It's a five track cassette called Out Of Place. The cassette was also recorded in Houston around the same time as the new 2xLP. It is also completely essential.
Order Charalambides: Tom & Christina Carter Here Now
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Cruel Diagonals And Disambiguation...
Cruel Diagonals…
Megan Mitchell composes unsettling, ethereal music under the alias, Cruel Diagonals. A jazz and classically trained vocalist, Mitchell performs and creates in numerous capacities. Some of her current endeavors include acting as proprietor of the left-of-field music index for women/trans/non-binary composers, Many Many Women, and researching, visiting and documenting places of abandoned industry around the Pacific Northwest and California with her field recorder and camera in tow. A selection of Mitchell’s field recording endeavors was a feature in The Stranger’s“Person of Interest” column. She is additionally an accredited archivist with a Master in Library and Information Sciences from the University of Washington, specializing in audio archiving. She is currently processing the audio archives of music producer, Randall Dunn.
Cruel Diagonals is an outlet for destructive sample processing, vocal exploration, and a palette for inter-media contemplations and applications. Selected performance credits to date include sets at Corridor Festival and Debacle Festival, as well as a live set opener for Pharmakon, High Plains (Kranky), and Pod Blotz. Additionally, her DJ sets include performances with Holly Herndon, Shifted, and Elysia Crampton. Influenced by early experimental filmmakers such as Luis Buñuel and Maya Deren, cinematic terms will describe Cruel Diagonals as evoking moods and montages of an eerie, surrealist timbre. Warped field recordings and layered vocals incite a beckoning to a phantasmagorical, metallic-tinged state of existence.
Disambiguation…
Disambiguation is the first very album from Megan Mitchell and Cruel Diagonals. With this debut, Mitchell delivers a world-without-day of a record that surrounds the listener with rumbling electronic sounds and tones, inventive vocals, and early origin rhythms that penetrate the astral divine in us all. Stunningly high and gorgeously heavy, the album is in complete sync with the lower earth. Listen, listen again, and repeat. It's best that way.
"Like white magic or virtual reality, Disambiguation, the debut album from Megan Mitchell’s solo ambient-electronic project, is eerie but objective, an intense experience that leaves a deep impression and few answers." - Jonathan Zwicke
“When was the last time an album induces goose bumps within its first 10 seconds? Disambiguation's first track, “Innate Abstraction,” does exactly that, creating the illusion of being swathed in dozens of silk scarves while inside a velvet-lined cave. From that point on, Cruel Diagonals (Bay Area musician, Megan Mitchell) generates a multiplicity of elegant chants and laments to help her express the inexpressible.” – Dave Segal
Tiny Mix Tapes On Cruel Diagonals And "Render Arcane":
Writing for Tiny Mix Tapes, Jason C says:
Spring is breaking, my friends. Despite the warmer, sunnier days, I can still get behind some dark, atmospheric experimental electronics. If you’re reading this far, you are likely in the same boat. Oakland, CA’s Cruel Diagonals (aka Megan Mitchell) unleashes a deep, dark brand of said adventurous sounds. You can dig through her archives and hear one-off tracks, live sets, and mixes that highlight her wide range of noise, classical, drone, and electronic influences (see also her Many Many Women project). The track, “Render Arcane,” from her soon to be released debut LP, Disambiguation, is perfect for some deep zoning, with light, ethereal vocals wafting around a dynamic rhythm.
Click Here For Full Details...
For its thirty-first entry, Drawing Room is ecstatic to present Disambiguation, the first album from Megan Mitchell and Cruel Diagonals. Disambiguation is dark pleasure of an album that blends electronics and drones, ingenious vocals, and early earth rhythms. Its heaviness is completely hypnotic and forward moving. Lovers of Klara Lewis, Coil, and Broadcast take note. Mastered by Amy Dragon for Telegraph Mastering and pressed on 180-gram vinyl, the deluxe LP comes in a full-colored sleeve accompanied by insert and a 22x22” foldout poster. A digital release is also available.
In addition, as a Bandcamp only exclusive, we are offering both the LP along with another collection of new music from Cruel Diagonals. It's a cassette EP called Pulse of Indignation. The EP is four amazing tracks or post-Disambiguation bliss. Both of these are necessities. For the LP/cassette package, click -->HERE<-- to purchase over at Bandcamp.
ORDER AND SAMPLE Disambiguation... HERE...
Writing for Noisey, Alex Robert Ross pens some most insightful words on Megan Mitchell, Cruel Diagonals, and her album, Disambiguation...
Cruel Diagonals 'Disambiguation' Is a Lonely, Decay-Obsessed Wonder...
FYI - Disambiguation is out everywhere, Friday, July 13...
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As a teaser to the upcoming LP (out in early 2019), Drawing Room delights in offering another cassette of blissful goodness from Kevin Blagg and Cellophane Garden.
Cellophane Garden:
Dwelling in the protective nature of the Ozarks of northwest Arkansas, Kevin Blagg is a musician, sound artist, and vinyl record curator. Born in the early years of the Me Decade, Blagg has had a creatively long musical and artistic journey. Not to mention, he has prodigiously deep esoteric knowledge of rare funk and soul and krautrock.
With many past musical projects in his back pocket (mostly of the rock guitar and hard soul dj varieties), Blagg is firmly equipped with a well-tuned ear on the pulse of organic sounds. Since his school days at the Kansas City Art Institute, Blagg has always heard sound as a form of painting. His senior thesis was artist collaborative with whom he constructed unorthodox instruments using found objects and rewiring discarded electronics.
Blagg’s use of blissful instrumental guitar atmospherics is otherworldly, think classic era 4AD mixed with the more cerebral moments of 90s era Kranky filtered through a 21st century modernist lens of pure astralknowledge. Kevin Blagg’s Cellophane Garden locates solid ground by focusing on ephemeral shapes and temporal resonance through guitar precision and low frequency soft synths all made up by ambient beds for a quiet evening of aural transportation.
The acquisition of keyboardist Matt Norwood finds Cellophane Garden shifting from studio to stage in 2018 allowing Blagg to conduct and perform live hypnogogic compositions in multi-point perspective. Blagg’s other current musical projects include playing various guitars for serious audiophile Dante Carfagna on Carfagna’s “Express Rising” albums (on Numero Group).
CG-2:
CG-2 is the second cassette format excursion from Cellophane Garden. Like its predecessors, the CG-1cassette and the IlluminationsLP, Kevin Blagg creates celestial guitar communications that project past the planes. Transporting and connective in his tuning with the heavenly, Blagg’s music is divinely meditative. As usual, one will assuredly discover newly painted sounds upon each listen that will rekindle deep connection.
Buy Here or (for higher digital audiophile quality) Bandcamp.
Sample Below:
]]>As Samara Lubelski's newest and most beautiful album, Flickers at the Station, is finally out and available to the universe. We now have a wonderfully scrumptious new video to share with all the heavens. It's for the song 'Black Dots' which is the first track on Flickers .
'Black Dots' was filmed and edited by the very talented Joshua Stevenson.
"The video was made entirely by filming a 70s Realistic Light Organ with the song triggering it, then manipulating together the various shots."
Enjoy... Enjoy Some More... Then Repeat...
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Flickers At The Station: There are experimental musicians that know how to well craft the best of pop music, and there are pop musicians that know how to experiment at upper echelons of instinct. Samara Lubelski is both of these musicians in one. It may be a bold statement, but yes, it is true, every word. Her breadth of experience in both of the otherworldly sides of these spheres grants her an enlightened gift in song writing. It is elegant and transporting, and it coalesces in that golden new age of purple and orange psychic pop music that ducks its head into the present realm from time to time.
Flickers at the Station is an album that showcases Lubelski at a creative apex. Beautiful and breathtaking, it is a forever keeper of a baroque pop record. It’s late evening music. It’s early morning revelation music. It’s a glorious day unto itself. The pure connection between Lubelski’s outré improv and instrumentation and her pop–psychic songwriting is in complete harmony.
Recorded in 2017 in Germany with Lubelski’s forever time collaborators, Metabolismus, and others, Flickers at the Station is an essential statement of sumptuous glory. It’s a cerebrally sensed listening expedition with all future endings open and most hopeful. Bless yourself with this one.
Samara Lubelski: Songwriter, Singer, Multi-Instrumentalist, Improviser, and Engineer…With a voluminous musical pedigree, the list of artists (individually and collectively) that Lubelski has played/performed/recorded with, reads out like a best-of the who’s who of the art, noise, free, improv, experimental, etc. Hall of Fame, The Tower Recordings, MV and EE, and Thurston Moore are just a few to mention.
Her first solo outing, 1997’s In the Valley, was a major installment in the recorded legacy of experimental string music, a dense exploration of drones and resonance. The Fleeting Skies followed in 2004 with a full-band recording of lush psychedelic folk-rock. Since then, Lubelski has released a wonderfully colorful series of albums: Spectacular Of Passages (2005), Parallel Suns (2007), Future Slip (2009), Wavelength (2012), and The Gilded Raid (2016).
Ms. Lubelski has also studio-engineered records for Double Leopards, Sightings, and Mouthus, amongst many others. Her current projects include an improvisational duo with Marcia Bassett and a long-standing collaboration with German collective Metabolismus. Additionally, Ms. Lubelski has worked with the prolific Thurston Moore on a variety of outings, including playing violin on Mr. Moore’s solo records Trees Outside the Academy and Demolished Thoughts and recording and touring with his band Chelsea Light Moving.
Her most recent collaborative album is with Body/Head’s Bill Nace, which came out on Nace’s Open Mouth imprint earlier this year. Flickers At the Station on Drawing Room represents Lubelski’s most current full-length offering.
- Flickers at the Station is Lubelski’s first solo album of all new material since 2016’s The Gilded Raid.
- Mastered by Josh Bonati, the limited 180-gram LP comes in a high-gloss full colored sleeve along with an inner-sleeve and fold-out poster. A unlimited digital version is also available.
“Lubelski's contributions to modern music have struck left, right and center of all the moments she's occupied.” – Doug Mosurock, NPR, on "The Gilded Raid"
Lubelski is “Well worth the walls burning and the buildings crumbling. Take what you must have, and return it to where it will shine brightest.” – Justin Spicer, Tiny Mix Tapes, on "The Gilded Raid"
Lubelski’s magic “...is the musical equivalent of a hypnotist's swinging timepiece, blissfully entrancing in its steady beauty." - Marc Masters, Pitchfork, on "Parallel Suns"
Sample Below:
]]>Jennifer Kelly, writing for Dusted Magazine, has penned a excellent review for our recent 2xLP reissue of Sandra Bell's "Net"...
Go HERE or see below to read more...
Dusted Magazine Review By Jenifer Kelly:
"Think of Sandra Bell as New Zealand’s Patti Smith, chanting abstract poetry over firestorms of guitar noise, collaborating with the avant garde and turning up the noise and distortion in a way that few female contemporaries felt moved to do. At least that was the trend in 1992’s Dreams of Falling, her first full-length, the one produced by Peter Jeffries (This Kind of Punishment, Nocturnal Projections) and bolstered by contributions from Peter Gutteridge (the Clean, the Chills), Kathy Bull (of Look Blue Go Purple) and Dunedin experimenter Alastair Galbraith. Four years later, with Net, Bell was mixing gritty distortion with more overt nods to folk and blues, substituting a disaffected drawl for chant and bringing a passel of Irish traditional instruments in for certain songs (“Caitlan” especially).
Net was Bell’s second album, coming after the breakout Dreams of Falling and U.S. tour with Peter Jefferies and Alastair Galbraith. Produced by Brendan Hoffman, it features a slightly reconfigured band – Kathy Bull again on bass, Shaun Broadly (of Chug) on drums with cameos from David Mitchell (Goblin Mix), Alastair Galbraith, Denise Roughan (Look Blue Go Purple, 3Ds) and Greg Fox. A mini-Celtic band of Barry Corkery, Kate Jenson and Greg Waite puts a desolate lilt under “Caitlan”, and its members turn up separately in a couple of other tracks as well. The reissue also incorporates some contemporaneous singles — the “Angel/Gilt” 7” released on Zabriskie Point in 1995 and a double 7” on the Turbulence label in the same year.
Net’s best songs seesaw between spare and desolate minor key acoustic guitar and the balls-out abandon of overdriven guitar. “Long Time”, the first cut, contemplates loss in mournful tones at first, the haze of strumming pierced by the tick of sticks on cymbals. But as Bell reaches the climax of her narrative, “another tear… carved into my face” the emotion shifts from melancholy to a transporting kind of rage. The fuzzy guitar break is huge and bristling with dissonance, riding blistery long notes that are drawn out to the point of cat-wailing torture. It’s obliterating and beautiful in the manner of certain Dinosaur Jr. songs.
With “Trains”, you get a hint of the folk-derived direction Bell is heading. Corkery plays a plaintive accordion that flits and wheezes through the blare of sawed off guitar sound; it’s like music plowed over by bulldozers. But it’s really the wild-stringed “Caitlan” that hears Bell plunge, piano first, into keening, unhinged folk mode. Corkery plays Bodhran here, Greg Waite picks up the Irish pipe and Kate Jenson coaxes wounded murmurs from a cello, but if you thought all that Irish accoutrement would soften things, you’d be wrong. The song is burnt, blackened, gutted, crazed. “Men shouting, shouting at the sea, swimming or drowning, hey look at me,” wails Bell, unearthly, untethered.
There’s a blues foundation in a lot of these tracks – “Walking”, “They Say” – but Bell and her bandmates are guided, not constrained by it. “Keening”, the cut with Alastair Galbraith, is particularly experimental with its vertiginous zooms of guitar effect and moodily abstract atmospheres.
The singles appended here seem more straightforwardly rock than the main album content. “Angel” in particular has a lo-fi exuberance that reminds me of Ty Segall, a verbal acuity that evokes Sebadoh. Bell’s voice is almost entirely submerged in the guitar murk; the sound as viscous and enveloping as a basement show. “Gilt” runs a bit slower, smoldering with shorted out bass, thumping with eighth notes on the kick drum. “I remember years ago, when they burnt this house down, we screamed and shouted, we couldn’t take no middle ground,” Bell chants, her voice rising to a moan, very reminiscent of Lydia Lunch. The Turbulence singles are very much in the “Subway Nihilism” mode of Bell’s first album, spoken poetry wrapped in a nettle-stung bristle of noise.
Net fits loosely into a landscape of sprawling lo-fi (Sebadoh), of feedback addled freakouts (Dinosaur Jr.), of hazed over, fuzz ridden NZ rock (the Clean), and female empowered contemporaries like PJ Harvey and Lydia Lunch, but loosely is the key word. There’s not really much it sounds like in any direct way, either from the mid-1990s period of its creation or any time between then and now."
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In case you need to research more up on our recent 2xLP reissue from Sleepyhead, AllMusic has made "Future Exhibit Goes Here" an Editor's Choice!
Go HERE or see below to read more...
AllMusic Review By Tim Sendra:
"In the mid-'90s there were lots of bands in America doing what Sleepyhead did, making slacker pop with scrappy hooks, bummer lyrics, and scuffed-up guitars. There weren't many who did it with the charm of the New York trio; not many who had the magic combination of great songs, well-produced sound, and a vocalist, Chris O’Rourke, with distinct personality. Sleepyhead hit their peak in 1994-1995 when they were with Homestead. They released two albums, Starduster and Communist Love Songs, each memorable enough that, over 20 years later, they were reissued as a two-LP set by Drawing Room Records under the name Future Exhibit Goes Here. Originally released in 1994, Starduster is a little rougher around the edges and punky, especially with the romping "Punk Rock City U.S.A." as its centerpiece. Elsewhere, Sleepyhead delve into shoegaze a little, blend in some AOR strut, deliver the jangling indie rock anthem "What's Gonna Set You Free?," and generally put their influences together into a sound that was unique to them. Whether rocking out frantically (like on the title track sung with abandon by drummer Rachael McNally) or slowing to a narcotic crawl on the thought-provoking ballad "Sick of Heaven" (which features some white-hot guitar soloing from O'Rourke), the band sounds assured and powerful. Arriving in 1995, Communist Love Songs is less raucous and features a cleaner, crisper sound. The band adds organ to the mix, strips away some of the guitar noise, and takes one step toward the indie rock mainstream, all of which could have added up to a negative sum if the songs and performances weren't as strong as they are. Sleepyhead's harnessing of their wildness leads to a more power-packed sound; the songs still have whopping big hooks; and McNally takes a larger role vocally. Her interplay with O'Rourke on songs like "The Coronation" and the title track is a welcome development. The record is lacking the big "hits" of Starduster, but it holds together better as a coherent listening experience and is one of the better under-the-radar gems of the slacker era. Drawing Room gives these two excellent albums the deluxe treatment, complete with a booklet of bassist/filmmaker (Half-Cocked) Michael Galinsky's black-and-white tour photos, and fans of classic indie rock should be sure to check them out, whether for nostalgic purposes or for the very first time."
]]>Just an FYI here... Sleepyhead's "Future Exhibit Goes Here" 2xLP is a Bandcamp Essential Release... Go HERE or see below to read more...
From Bandcamp:
"This may come as a surprise to you, but finding out about edgy new music while attending a suburban Bible College is no easy feat. Uncovering great bands who were vaguely associated with “Christian music” (a term I loathe), like The 77’s and L.S.U., was relatively easy; anything outside that took some doing. My lifelines during this time were Alternative Press magazine and the charts in the back of CMJ (RIP). It was the latter that led me to Sleepyhead’s Starduster, which sat firmly at the top of those CMJ charts in the middle of 1994, and then sat firmly in my car’s Discman for the rest of it. Future Exhibit Goes Here finally gives that vastly-underrated band its due, combining all of Starduster with its follow up, Communist Love Songs and showcasing a band with an unerring knack for heart-rending melodies and somersaulting guitar lines. Call it power-pop heartache in punk-rock clothes; “What’s Gonna Set You Free?” hurtles out of the gate, with a buoyant guitar riff that would do Teenage Fanclub proud, Chris O’Rourke’s vocals starting out timid and becoming progressively more defiant by the time he reaches the song’s final proclamation, “I’m gonna be a star!” “Solid Gold” rides a see-sawing guitar part with a bobbing melody to match, and the title track, sung by Rachael McNally, is a head-first rush into a knotty tangle of guitars that, like every song on Future Exhibit, has a chorus that burrows directly into the brain the first time you hear it. The fact that I came to Sleepyhead entirely without context ended up working in its favor. I didn’t know that they weren’t as big as, say, Sebadoh (they weren’t). All I knew was that they had a seemingly effortless ability to write big-hearted rock songs with throat-scraping vocals and acid-eaten guitars that crested, again and again, in big, summery choruses. Future Exhibit is the monument they deserve." – J. Edward Keyes
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Sleepyhead And Future Exhibit Goes Here...
Future Exhibit Goes Here showcases Sleepyhead’s best penchants for noisy and naïve hooky guitar tunes and pure direct power pop. Fans of 90s indie guitar rock take note as this is the real deal from said era. It’s nerd punk for now people. Unavailable since the last decade of the 20th century, with all material initially released as the two albums Starduster and Communist Love Songs, Drawing Room honorably re-presents this re-mastered set to the universe.
There’s rock and roll mythology, and then there’s 90’s indie rock mythology... Unfortunately, stories about then NYC’s Sleepyhead are really neither. Michael Galinsky, Rachael McNally, and Chris O’Rourke, NYU students more into music than books, form a band, practice, release singles and an album on a non-descript independent label, tour, and then again practice, release another album, tour and play Lollapalooza’s second stage, and so on… Yeah, it is neither very glamorous nor salacious. It’s simply three individuals playing, recording, and releasing music, as that’s what lady destiny called them to do.
Born in 1988, Sleepyhead was certainly a band of the era, pre-internet, pre-cell phone, and fully dependent on Xeroxed zine culture and passed around hand-written knowledge on all things music. It was definitely slower times in terms of technology, but one that was still full of young adventurers eager to play music and see the world in a used van on their own terms. With things always rapidly evolving, some things will always stay near the same.
In a certain sense, it is through the driving culture provided with a used van that really allowed Sleepyhead to discover itself and thrive. Tours (on their own, with rad bands like Polvo, or even for lower-tiered Lollapalooza sets) helped hone the band’s vibe and distinctiveness. Many of these travels of Sleepyhead are the impetus for the stories told in Suki Hawley’s 1994 classic film, Half-Cocked, co-written by Hawley and Michael Galinsky. Additionally, by the time of this awesome visual documentation, Sleepyhead was at its initial apex in terms of sound and creativity with the results recorded on the two mid-90’s albums Starduster (1994) and Communist Love Songs (1996).
Presented as a deluxe set, Future Exhibit Goes Here contains completely re-mastered versions of both Starduster and Communist Love Songs, two albums that showcase Sleepyhead’s best penchants for noisy and naïve hooky guitar tunes and pure direct power pop. Additionally, this new set marks the first ever time release of Communist Love Songs on vinyl. Mastered by Josh Bonati and pressed on 180-gram vinyl, the 2xLP of Future Exhibit Goes Here comes in a wide-spine sleeve accompanied by a 14 page 11x11“ booklet full of Michael Galinsky’s black and white photography and notes and ephemera from all members of Sleepyhead.
Buy Here Or (for more digital file choices) Bandcamp Now... Sample Below...
Joseph Neff for The Vinyl District has given Sleepyhead's "Future Exhibit Goes Here" an A- !!! See below (or link)...
Sleepyhead, Future Exhibit Goes Here (Drawing Room):
"Drawing Room’s third recent ’90s indie rock reissue (after Sandra Bell’s Net and a double vinyl edition of Kicking Giant’s debut CD) is a 2LP twinning the second and third full-lengths (Starduster, 1994, and the formerly CD-only Communist Love Songs, ’96) from the NYC trio of bassist Michael Galinsky, drummer-vocalist Rachel McNally, and guitarist-vocalist Chris O’Rourke. Sleepyhead’s thrust can be considered no-frills, essentially alternating betwixt melodic punk and tough power-pop with guitar noise appropriate for the era and scene, so some will likely wonder what’s the big deal. I’ll just say that it went down sweet at the time and gives me a warm feeling now. Comes with a book collecting band reminiscences and Galinsky’s ace photographs." A-
(Joseph Neff, The Vinyl District, 2018)
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Attention! North of The Internet just published a great conversation with the always incredibly amazing Sandra Bell. It's a quiet insightful read for certain.
Read now.
https://northoftheinternet.com/sandra-bell/
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Hey There! Check out New Noise Magazine's album premier and track by track feature for SLEEPYHEAD's "Future Exhibit Goes Here" 2xLP... It's out everywhere Friday, April 13th!!!
https://newnoisemagazine.com/album-premiere-track-track-sleepyhead-future-exhibit-goes-here/
]]>We'll have much more info on our upcoming Cruel Diagonals release in just a few more weeks... All we can say right now is that it is good, very good... Meanwhile, for some early insight, listen to Megan Mitchell's Cruel Diagonals track "Render Arcane" over at Tiny Mix Tapes...
https://www.tinymixtapes.com/chocolate-grinder/listen-cruel-diagonals-render-arcane
]]>After almost two years of planning, Drawing Room excitedly releases Sandra Bell's Net ... See below for all the details...
Sandra Bell is essential listening for any New Zealand underground music fan. As a singer, Bell juggles fervent emotion and characteristic Kiwi reserve; as a guitarist and arranger, she embraces corrosive rock and edgy experimentation. Bell has a true ear for wry, cool vocals, unusual hooks and remarkable imagery, ranging from the personal to the natural world. Initially released in 1995, Net represents Bell at a crossroads between her folk-like experimentation and noisy guitar rock allegiances. Newly re-mastered, Drawing Room Records is most excited to re-present Bell’s great work to the world.
Dunedin isn’t where the South Island-born Sandra Bell is originally from, though if you’d like a fuller story of her life and work across the world, it’s best told by Syd Newman’s overview for the Audio Culture site (http://www.audioculture.co.nz/). Dunedin is where she’s spent many years off and on recording and working and living and much more, though, and sessions from 1993 to 1995 led to the release not only of Net, her second full length solo release, but two stellar singles, Angel and the Chord double 7 inch. All three are collected here for the first time together as Net.
It’s often been said that New Zealand’s independent music scene, and Dunedin’s in particular, is one of a shared community, and many names familiar to listeners near and far can be found in the credits on this collection. It’s testimony to both Bell’s artistic skills and friendship that they were here supporting her vision, wherever it took her -- and it ranged widely.
Recorded over some months in late 1994 and released on the short-lived Dunedin IMD label on CD only the following year, Net starts with a big brawling rocker, “Long Time,” but by the time it reaches “The Trees Can’t Dance,” everything from electric piano to Irish pipes have taken a bow. Beyond the instrumental variety, though, was the demonstration of Bell’s own ear for wry, cool vocals, unusual hooks and remarkable imagery, ranging from the personal to the natural world.
At the time of its own 1995 release on the Colorado-based Zabriskie Point label, Angel was the most recently recorded effort, two songs with a rough, growling edge (don’t call it grunge). Meantime, the Belgian Turbulence label, which had previously introduced Bell to Europe via a rerelease of her earlier Dreams of Falling cassette on Xpressway, put out Chord as its own final release, four engaging songs, electric and acoustic, from 1993.
As Bell’s followed her artistic drive over the years, with more releases, collaborations and journeys to her credit through to the present day, this clutch of efforts slipped into second-hand sales and file-trading. First through Bandcamp and now this physical release, it’s a pleasure to see Bell’s mid-1990s work return to the conversation properly -- as well as to demonstrate a key point: a true artist can never be summed up in any one phrase, or phase. (Ned Raggett)
Drawing Room is very privileged to release the first vinyl issue of Sandra Bell’s, Net, previously a CD only release. Net is a highest treasure for anyone and everyone interested in all things New Zealand (Xpressway, Flying Nun, Peter Jefferies, Alastair Galbraith, etc.) and all things 1990s. In short, Net is Sandra Bell’s “big rock tour de force”. Mastered by Josh Bonati and pressed on 180-gram vinyl, the 2xLP comes in a full-colored wide-spine sleeve accompanied by inserts and a 22x22” foldout poster. A re-mastered digital version is also available.
]]>Take a quick music video break with Sleepyhead's What's Gonna Set You Free.
The video was made by the talented Michael Galinsky, who was in Sleepyhead during the era featured on our upcoming release, Future Exhibit Goes Here.
FEGH will be out everywhere on April 13. Pre-Order on Bandcamp Now.
What's Gonna Set You Free from rumur on Vimeo.
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So... We won't have this LP out until late spring, but you can now officially get a sneak peak of Cruel Diagonals' album "Disambiguation" with the track "Render Arcane."
Stay tuned. It's going to be momentous.
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