2015

Bhajan (from 'JÜ Meets Møster')

Bossa Nova Civic Club will release their second compilation on limited 12” vinyl and digital download Feb, 2015 exclusively at bushwickismelting.com.

Volume 2, the sophmore collaborative release with Sisterjam is a three track compilation including original unreleased material by Brooklyn-based producers Black Meteoric Star (AKA Gavin Russom, DFA), Lorna Dune (Dazzleships, Lo Bit Landscapes), and J Slusher (Lost Soul).

Lorna Dune – Reflux

Single off of his upcoming album "Tangier Sessions"

Pre- Order Now:
http://www.dragcity.com/products/tangier-sessions

Sir Richard Bishop- "Frontier"

Second mp3 single from Chastity Belt's 2015 album Time To Go Home, out 3/23/15 on Hardly Art records.

Purchase Time To Go Home:
Hardly Art: www.hardlyart.com/shop/chastitybelt.html
iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/time-to-go-home/id951967954
Amazon: amzn.com/B00R8P1036

hardlyart.com/chastitybelt.html

Follow Chastity Belt on Twitter: twitter.com/CHAST1TYBELT
Like Chastity Belt on Facebook: www.facebook.com/chastitybeltmusic
Follow Chastity Belt on Instagram: instagram.com/chazzybelt

Follow Hardly Art on Twitter: twitter.com/hardlyart
Like Hardly Art on Facebook: facebook.com/hardlyarttrecords      
Follow Hardly Art on Instagram: instagram.com/hardlyartrecords


Time to Go Home

Joke

Chastity Belt - "Joke"

The Sleeper Awakes 

Ben Chatwin - Mirroring

"Find Yourself" appears on Jacco Gardner's upcoming full length album, Hypnophobia (out 5/5/15), as well as the "Find Yourself b/w Mixed Feelings" 7". 

Pre-order Hypnophobia - http://polyvinylrecords.com/hypnophobia

Jacco Gardner - Find Yourself

Pre-order available now: 
http://importantrecords.com/

Pitchfork: 
" About 90 seconds into "Confetti", the stunning second song on James Blackshaw’s Summoning Suns, the guitarist hesitates as he begins to negotiate a particularly tricky—and, for him, rather unprecedented—passage. The first two verses have ended, a small string section has pushed the tune onto a carousel that might have suited Van Dyke Parks in his prime, and an ascendant third verse has thrust Blackshaw into a place he’s never been: a vocal hook that he has to sing himself. "The needless noise you air," he offers gently, the instrumentalist’s voice so soft and uncertain at the start of each word that he almost drops "the." "Echoes everywhere," he ends, pushing the last syllable with such force it seems he’s using his last bit of breath. It’s guileless, charming, and the anchor of a masterful few minutes of acoustic pop so good they make you ask an unlikely question: Why hasn’t James Blackshaw been singing all along?"

James Blackshaw Failure's Flame from Summoning Suns CD/LP -  Pre-Order Available Now

Colleen, aka Cécile Schott, is really one of those artists where if you know, you know. Her run of albums from 2003-2007, mostly on The Leaf Label presented an exquisite set of dream-worlds, where you could easily drift away on her loops of cellos, bells, flutes and musical boxes. But then a six-year hiatus from the music world made it almost seem like it HAD been a dream. However, she returned with The Weighing of the Heart in 2013, easily up there with her very best work - and now, teamed up with Thrill Jockey, she's showing that she's stronger than ever. This is the first track from her Captain of None album coming on April 7th, and damn, it's beautiful. 

Colleen "Captain of None" - Boiler Room Debuts

Ashtray Navigations - A Shimmering Replica (vhf#138 LP + CD)

Ashtray Navigations - Cold Lemon Door & Side Table

from their album "The Island" - out OCT 16th, 2015 on Trouble In Mind Records (www.troubleinmindrecs.com)

Chris Forsyth & Koen Holtkamp "Long Beach Idyll"

Blood Warrior makes music that exposes the intricacies of melancholy, unravelling its individual strands of sadness, redemption, and contemplation. The New England based duo turns heartbreak into something much more elusive and dream-like, enriching it with elements of otherworldly fantasy while retaining its raw emotional impact. Their idiosyncratic folk songs reflect this rawness, and they use guitars (at times purposefully detuned), harmonium, keyboards and sparse percussion to create music that is deceptively minimal. Letter Ghost, their second album, is an intimate and individualistic collection of personal elegies that unfolds slowly and carefully. The album unfolds like a long, sleepless night would, progressing from light into the deep darkness, finally transitioning into something new and inviting.

Blood Warrior is Greg Jamie and Joey Weiss, musicians who have been playing music together since high school, and whose musical bond was solidified in those formative years. The songs on Letter Ghost are deceptively simple, and use meditative repetition and circular guitar lines as an anchor for its other more expansive elements. All of Jamie’s vocals on the album are first-takes, and feel at once fragile and forceful. Weiss describes the album as being influenced by the natural environments that surrounded the various locations it was recorded, from the frozen ocean off the coast of Maine to the slowly lapping waves during a summer session on Long Island. There is a distinctly primitive vibe that permeates the album as well, and a wide array of traditional styles, including Peruvian mountain music and Native American tribal drumming in addition to American folk music, are incorporated into these songs.

Both Jamie and Weiss have been integral parts of the New England folk underground for some time. Greg’s venue The Oak & The Ax in Biddeford, Maine was a gathering place for forward-looking musicians in the area, and also served as one of the several places where Letter Ghost was recorded. He is also the frontman of O’Death.  Joey Weiss also plays in Super Monster and Lazy River, and also served as the recording engineer for these sessions, which were done entirely on a broken 8-track machine. Blood Warriorplans to tour throughout 2015, which will be some of their first shows in some time.

Blood Warrior "You Were"

Two decades after its first release, ‘Live At The 12 Bar’ is issued for the first time on vinyl. This exceptional record is the first release in Earth Recordings’ new extensive reissue series of Bert Jansch catalogue.

Bert Jansch - Blackwaterside

From their "s/t" debut, out on July 10th, 2015 on Trouble In Mind Records (www.troubleinmindrecs.com)

Trouble In Mind Records - Negative Scanner "Would You Rather"

A record of slowly evolving beauty that gradually unravels its meditative design. Recorded in Norwegian sculptor and painter Emanuel Vigeland' s (1875 -1948) mausoleum in Oslo in 2013. A recording space that is famous for its acoustics and its long and full-sounding reverb. These three tracks utilize both the delicacy and the power of acoustic instruments and human voice in relation to the unique recording space. This is a record that is otherworldly and eerie but also with a great primal expressive force. Performed by four artists from different backgrounds coming together to create this singular set of music. 

Maja S.K. Ratkje - Jon Wesseltoft - Camille Norment - Per Gisle Galåen - The Green Flood (edit)

HERBCRAFT - Push Thru The Veil

"Our hometown has been buried under an avalanche of condos and pointless businesses catering to the newly rich. Noise complaints shut down our shows and pull the plug on countless DIY venues. The places where we lived are being torn down; the rent keeps climbing up. Born too soon or too late, the recession's effect on our youth was as invisible as it it was profound.
Music today is rendered powerless -- white noise made in the echo chamber, for the great Smooth Face that gazes once and moves on. So here it comes, some noise from the dustbin. The internet is sham: Temporary Monument, we made it for ourselves. Look us in the eyes and tell us you're not getting old."
Woolen Men Portland Ore. 2015 

WOOLEN MEN - After The Flood

Josefin Öhrn & The Liberation – Horse Dance

In an era in which ‘psychedelia’ can often mean merely a grab-bag of influences from which wah-wah pedals and two-note riffs are dispensed as signifiers and signposts into a realm of easy accessibility as opposed to gateways to another dimension, it can be a rarity to come across a band who are genuinely fixated on creating alternate realities for the listener. Yet this is exactly how Stockholm’s Josefin Öhrn + The Liberation view their incandescent art, and it’s this sensibility that’s led to the kaleidoscopic spendour of their debut full-length for Rocket Recordings, ‘Horse Dance’. 

“It’s a continuum that flows beyond here and now, and psychedelic music seems to be a really powerful way to unveil those deeper oceans of being that are our true home.” reflects Josefin, who forms half the core of the band with Fredrik Joelson. The last twelve months have seem a dramatic rise to prominence for The Liberation (who take their band name from the Tibetan Book Of The Dead) with their EP ‘Diamond Waves’ leading to shows in their homeland with Goat and Les Big Byrd, a nomination for a Swedish Grammy as best newcomer, and rapturously received appearances at festivals like Roskilde.

These adventures have set the stage for a spectacular movement into the unknown from their earlier work. ‘Horse Dance’ is a razorsharp collection of ditties that marry dreamlike radiance with hypnotic rhythmic drive, set alight by a prismatic experimental glow. It inhabits a realm in which a propulsive ‘60s-tinged pop song like ‘Sunny Afternoon’ can be elevated skyward with krautrock-tinged repetition, dub echo and analogue curlicues alike, and one in which a Broadcast-style mantra like ‘You Have Arrived’ can tap into a psychic lineage that stretches all the way from The United States Of America to Portishead’s ‘Third’. Yet whilst ghosts of the like of Laika, Cat’s Eyes and The Creatures may lurk in the darker recesses of these songs, this is a band paying no homage to bygone glories. 

The Liberation cite a myriad influences in both their philosophical stance and their aesthetic, from 12th century iconoclasts like Milarepa to 20th century sonic voyagers like Catherine Ribeiro, and from Kandinsky’s abstract expressions of synaesthesia to the avant-jazz of Moondog. Yet at all times their transcendental extrapolations are married to icy and enticing melodic flourishes, making for a revitalising clash between the chic and the transcendental, and a sound as biting as it is beatific.

“I definitely think that the human need for altered states - to see oneself from a bigger perspective - is a deep fundamental need” Josefin elaborates. “We’ve been deprived of access to our full nature by a restrictive system where altered states may be the ultimate taboo.”

With ‘Horse Dance’, Josefin Öhrn + The Liberation step into a world where all such restrictions and taboos are null and void, and this journey is already proving quite the spectacle to behold. 

Josefin Öhrn + The Liberation - SUNNY AFTERNOON

Gnoomes - Roadhouse (Edit)

Hills - Kollektiv

Released on February 5th, 2016.

Digital: smarturl.it/istheisare
Physical: http://www.omnianmusicgroup.com/products/is-the-is-are


2015

Lemon curry?