MOAN // Think About Forgotten Days
CD/Digi 12/10/2013 on Lightning Records

Lightning Records is proud to release the first official Moan record Think About Forgotten Days.  Moan is the solo project of Japanese rock legend Shinji Masuko, best known as founding member and guitarist/vocalist of rock gods DMBQ and principal guitarist and integral member of noise art prophets the Boredoms. 

Moan's first official release picks up where Shinji's critically acclaimed record Woven Music released on Brah/Jagjaguwar, one of Spin’s top 20 avant garde albums of 2011, left off. Think About Forgotten Days continues with the brilliantly agile drones and virtuosic guitar work, but launches off immediately into a more massive, rock informed scale. Shinji also adds vocals on this record, exploring a quieter dynamic with vocalist Makiko on No No 1, singing together with the kind of hushed and heartfelt beauty that recalls Yo La Tengo at their most tender. 

The album's 25 minute opener Murmur of the Zodiac Voices begins like the Big Bang, though, as if taking one of DMBQs loudest power chord explosions ever generated, and revealing an entire universe that was living and breathing inside of it. It calls to mind an almost Sunn O)))-like minimalist rock scale, but references do no justice to the originality and sonic clarity of Shinji's guitar shredding. Equally poetic creating a guitar drone or a soaring guitar solo, Shinji is a true modern guitar poet. 

Shinji's creative contributions in the Boredoms extends far beyond the guitar, though, including the design and production of their notorious seven-necked guitars (Sevena I & II), as well as track production and systems design for the Boredoms large scale BOADRUM projects.  Moan originally grew out of this when Kid Millions heard some Boredoms backing tracks on Shinji's iPod while staying at his house during Boadrum rehearsals. 

Shinji tells the story behind the Moan record below:

"Moan was started as my solo work project. Originally the songs were made for my band Boredoms' BOADRUM project, as sound material for the show. EYE uses many drones for Boredoms live show, so I am always making tons of drone music and sound materials for every show. I am a guitarist of that band, but  I also have a more important position in the band as track /sound material maker. 

One day, Kid Millions of Oneida, who was also playing in the Boadrum project, was asking me to make my record. I said OK and it was a very happy thing. After I made the record, I started to do my solo show too, but it was not so fun because I had to play alone. I couldn't expect any musical chemistry. I really like to make sound with other people, not alone. So I asked Water Fai member Makiko. She has a very good sense of melody, harmony and singing, so now I can focus to playing instruments and making sounds. 

The 1st song of this album "Murmur of The Zodiac Voices" was made for our live show originally. I wanted to bring great noise and calm drone at the same time, to draw a big beautiful and mysterious night sky. My inspiration is coming from the night sky always, I guess.  I hope its the same space wave that Joe Meek was listening, haha. We are living in a modern and well-controlled world today, but I feel the night time still contains a lot of good (maybe evil too) power for the human body and mind.



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Moan // Think About Forgotten Days

Cy Dune is the pen name and mytho-rebel persona of Seth Olinsky, guitar virtuoso, vocalist, and songwriter of influential underground noise folk punk freaks Akron/Family. Cy Dune is known live as a celebration of the raw, elemental, transformative power of guitar and drums, where proto punk blast beat and origin blues rock n roll free jazz guitar extend over iconic, layered drum riffs creating a raucaus and transcendent sound, drawing not only on Seth’s work with Akron/Family but also on his work with Swans founder Michael Gira and post minimalist mastermind Rhys Chatham, as well as collaborations with avant garde and free jazz musicians from Hamid Drake and William Parker to Keiji Haino and Tatsuya Nakatani. Like Seth’s dynamic work in Akron/Family, this explosive power can break down the wall between performer and audience to make way for a beautiful gem of a quiet desert love song, played to a breathless room that was just shouting and dancing and moshing around in sweat covered shirts a few minutes before.

The Desert record is the original document of this Cy Dune experience. The initial music came about after experimentation making drum loops on a refurbished Alan Lomax Ampex 601-2, pushing the clash of layered 16th notes and African inspired triplet relationships to create a new, repetitive iconic drum sound. This process foreshadowed the meta sampling of the Cy Dune Summer Rebels project, but on Desert it is in it’s most raw and iconic form, layering energetic performances from free jazz drummer Andrew Barker and improv bassists William Parker (Cecil Taylor, Peter Brotzman) and Shazad Ismaily (Marc Ribot, Sam Amidon). The layered drums are mixed with ecstatic, shredding guitar excursions that capture Seth’s most inspired guitar playing recorded to date - simultaneously immediate and incisive and yet pushing out further than ever before into Seth’s free jazz background, drawing on Coltrane’s frenetic harmonic super-impositions and Ulmer-esque blues squall on the solos from When You Pass Me, Desert and Just Kids, and Sonny Sharrock-esque melodicism meets Ascendence-like group horn improvisation on the end of It is the Is which features Charles Waters (Gold Sparkle Band, William Parker Big Band) and Matt Bauder (Braxton, Bill Dixon, Arcade Fire) on horns, and then inter-mixed with beautiful post-Dylan desert odes and lost generation x pre-existential meanderings. 

This set of songs was penned in the Sonoran Desert, after Seth and Lightning co-founder Ali Beletic moved to the desert in 2010, tested at various adobe house shows around Tucson, dim light, mattresses on the walls, at first with drums just loaded up on a Roland sp-202 (the old black and orange one) running through a bass amp, then sometimes out in open desert arroyos running off of battery power at the sound/noise poetry happenings  that John from A&T organized with other poetry professors from the U of A and their friends from Montana or Oregon traveling through town and reading out of little books, and then eventually at SXSW with 40 drummers, including Dana Janssen from Akron/Family, Joey Westerlund from Megafaun, Ian Chang from Son Lux and Max Jaffe from Jobs. Seth moved to Joshua Tree in 2014 and this batch of desert songs continued to be deconstructed and developed, becoming part of installations cut together with Ampex samples of old blues tunes, merging into post-minimalist compositions performed in the Integratron, and then installed out in the desert with multiple amplifiers running off generators. 

Lightning Records is excited to make the recordings of these songs available for the first time. Desert is the first in a series of Cy Dune archival releases from Lightning Records in 2019 (along with Against Face, and Summer Rebels), leading towards the release of a new Cy Dune full length in 2020.

C Y D U N E // D E S E R T

3. Soda Song

1. Murmur Of The Zodiac Voices

CY DUNE // Shake

LTG 006 // Release Date 09/09/14

Shake is the newest LP from Cy Dune, the pen name and mythological rebel persona of Seth Olinsky, guitar virtuoso, vocalist, and songwriter of legendary underground noise punk freaks Akron/Family, and co founder of Lightning Records. Also known for his work with Swans/Angels of Light /YGR founder Michael Gira and post minimalist mastermind Rhys Chatham, as well as collaborations with everyone from Hamid Drake and William Parker to Oneida, Keiji Haino and Tatsuya Nakatani.

Cy Dune began in 2012 in the Sonoran Desert outside of Tucson, AZ when alongside Lightning co-founder, conceptual artist and musician Ali Beletic, the two removed themselves from the conservative, middle of the road hipster culture of the late 00’s to begin again artistically in the sun and raw ancient Americanism of the desert. There he recorded his critically acclaimed first ep No Recognize and forthcoming Desert LP, and first married the primitivist poetic powers of the American blues mythology with the religious rock power envisioned by Patti Smith and the 70’s NYC art/punk movement. 

Shake is planted firmly in the Lightning mission statement - we believe in the transcendent power of rock n roll.  Inspired directly by artist Dan Graham’s video art piece Rock my Religion where Graham explores the power of physical movement in the Shaker religion and compares it to the shaking rock musics of Jerry Lee Lewis, Patti Smith, and Black Flag, Shake traces the DNA of rock n roll through its musical and poetic building blocks back into the human transcendent experience. 

Stolen lyrical phrases of Willie Dixon and Jerry Lee Lewis collide with musical figures from the Bad Brains, early Beatles, Chuck Berry, Lou Reed, and Suicide, performed with an immediacy and aching commitment to rock n roll as an expression of mythological fertility, self expressionand masculinity, a power symbol, a rebellion, a commitment to the belief that rock n roll contains certain indelible human rights, and through this belief a prayer  to transcend collage - not mere reflection, but projection into a place where to move is to create a movement. To be moved. 

After nearly a year of experimenting with these ideas in one form or another in performance and the studio, Shake was written, captured, and produced in its entirety over a 3 day weekend in the Mojave Desert on an art retreat in Joshua Tree, CA. Meant as a prayer to participate in authentic contemporary masculinity and the 21st century rock and roll religious experience, an open willingness to give over and participate in the unhinged fun of rock n roll, and the deep belief that this is something we all want. 


“Akron/Family have certainly flirted with righteous dosages of heaviness during the last decade. On “MBF”, for instance, they blasted through walls of Bastard-sized noise; on a 2005 split with Angels of Light, they teasingly crept toward stillness, only to catapult into blasts of distortion-and-volume damage. But none of that adequately presages “Where the Wild Things,” the glorious wrecking ball that leads No Recognize, the debut EP from frontman Seth Olinsky as Cy Dune.These three intense minutes suggest Japanese freaks Fushitsusha playing pop-punk with equal-parts precision and madness. This is the most urgent missive to arrive from any member of the Family in years.” – Pitchfork

“No Recognize is stuffed to the brim with primitivistic guitar stompers and gritty road tales perfect for helping you plan a weekend of adventure and debauchery. Or, like, it could probably make going to Home Depot and buying paint seem like the shit. Either way, we think you’ll enjoy this” – Noisey

For new project Cy Dune, Olinksy is louder and prouder, though certainly not “folk,” except in the sense that rock’n’roll was a dominant vernacular form of expression in the 20th century. “Make it loud / They can’t ignore us,” he sneers, demanding more and more, again and again, on new Cy Dune song “Move the Room.” – SPIN

Some music has a certain intensity that brings out something animalistic in people. It’s a primal feeling; they want to dance –or just kind of move around. It’s music that energizes the spirit. Cy Dune‘s new EP, No Recognize is music that energizes the spirit- Surviving the Golden Age

CY DUNE - "Confusion"

CY DUNE // Shake

LTG 006 // Release Date 09/09/14

Shake is the newest LP from Cy Dune, the pen name and mythological rebel persona of Seth Olinsky, guitar virtuoso, vocalist, and songwriter of legendary underground noise punk freaks Akron/Family, and co founder of Lightning Records. Also known for his work with Swans/Angels of Light /YGR founder Michael Gira and post minimalist mastermind Rhys Chatham, as well as collaborations with everyone from Hamid Drake and William Parker to Oneida, Keiji Haino and Tatsuya Nakatani.

Cy Dune began in 2012 in the Sonoran Desert outside of Tucson, AZ when alongside Lightning co-founder, conceptual artist and musician Ali Beletic, the two removed themselves from the conservative, middle of the road hipster culture of the late 00’s to begin again artistically in the sun and raw ancient Americanism of the desert. There he recorded his critically acclaimed first ep No Recognize and forthcoming Desert LP, and first married the primitivist poetic powers of the American blues mythology with the religious rock power envisioned by Patti Smith and the 70’s NYC art/punk movement. 

Shake is planted firmly in the Lightning mission statement - we believe in the transcendent power of rock n roll.  Inspired directly by artist Dan Graham’s video art piece Rock my Religion where Graham explores the power of physical movement in the Shaker religion and compares it to the shaking rock musics of Jerry Lee Lewis, Patti Smith, and Black Flag, Shake traces the DNA of rock n roll through its musical and poetic building blocks back into the human transcendent experience. 

Stolen lyrical phrases of Willie Dixon and Jerry Lee Lewis collide with musical figures from the Bad Brains, early Beatles, Chuck Berry, Lou Reed, and Suicide, performed with an immediacy and aching commitment to rock n roll as an expression of mythological fertility, self expression and masculinity, a power symbol, a rebellion, a commitment to the belief that rock n roll contains certain indelible human rights, and through this belief a prayer  to transcend collage - not mere reflection, but projection into a place where to move is to create a movement. To be moved. 

After nearly a year of experimenting with these ideas in one form or another in performance and the studio, Shake was written, captured, and produced in its entirety over a 3 day weekend in the Mojave Desert on an art retreat in Joshua Tree, CA. Meant as a prayer to participate in authentic contemporary masculinity and the 21st century rock and roll religious experience, an open willingness to give over and participate in the unhinged fun of rock n roll, and the deep belief that this is something we all want. 


“Akron/Family have certainly flirted with righteous dosages of heaviness during the last decade. On “MBF”, for instance, they blasted through walls of Bastard-sized noise; on a 2005 split with Angels of Light, they teasingly crept toward stillness, only to catapult into blasts of distortion-and-volume damage. But none of that adequately presages “Where the Wild Things,” the glorious wrecking ball that leads No Recognize, the debut EP from frontman Seth Olinsky as Cy Dune.

These three intense minutes suggest Japanese freaks Fushitsusha playing pop-punk with equal-parts precision and madness. This is the most urgent missive to arrive from any member of the Family in years.” – Pitchfork

“No Recognize is stuffed to the brim with primitivistic guitar stompers and gritty road tales perfect for helping you plan a weekend of adventure and debauchery. Or, like, it could probably make going to Home Depot and buying paint seem like the shit. Either way, we think you’ll enjoy this” – Noisey

For new project Cy Dune, Olinksy is louder and prouder, though certainly not “folk,” except in the sense that rock’n’roll was a dominant vernacular form of expression in the 20th century. “Make it loud / They can’t ignore us,” he sneers, demanding more and more, again and again, on new Cy Dune song “Move the Room.” – SPIN

Some music has a certain intensity that brings out something animalistic in people. It’s a primal feeling; they want to dance –or just kind of move around. It’s music that energizes the spirit. Cy Dune‘s new EP, No Recognize is music that energizes the spirit- Surviving the Golden Age


Cy Dune - "Rock n Roll"

http://www.lightning-usa.com/cy-dune/

Shake is the newest LP from Cy Dune, the pen name and mythological rebel persona of Seth Olinsky, guitar virtuoso, vocalist, and songwriter of legendary underground noise punk freaks Akron/Family, and co founder of Lightning Records. Also known for his work with Swans/Angels of Light /YGR founder Michael Gira and post minimalist mastermind Rhys Chatham, as well as collaborations with everyone from Hamid Drake and William Parker to Oneida, Keiji Haino and Tatsuya Nakatani.

Cy Dune began in 2012 in the Sonoran Desert outside of Tucson, AZ when alongside Lightning co-founder, conceptual artist and musician Ali Beletic, the two removed themselves from the conservative, middle of the road hipster culture of the late 00’s to begin again artistically in the sun and raw ancient Americanism of the desert. There he recorded his critically acclaimed first ep No Recognize and forthcoming Desert LP, and first married the primitivist poetic powers of the American blues mythology with the religious rock power envisioned by Patti Smith and the 70’s NYC art/punk movement.

Shake is planted firmly in the Lightning mission statement - we believe in the transcendent power of rock n roll. Inspired directly by artist Dan Graham’s video art piece Rock my Religion where Graham explores the power of physical movement in the Shaker religion and compares it to the shaking rock musics of Jerry Lee Lewis, Patti Smith, and Black Flag, Shake traces the DNA of rock n roll through its musical and poetic building blocks back into the human transcendent experience.

Stolen lyrical phrases of Willie Dixon and Jerry Lee Lewis collide with musical figures from the Bad Brains, early Beatles, Chuck Berry, Lou Reed, and Suicide, performed with an immediacy and aching commitment to rock n roll as an expression of mythological fertility, self expressionand masculinity, a power symbol, a rebellion, a commitment to the belief that rock n roll contains certain indelible human rights, and through this belief a prayer to transcend collage - not mere reflection, but projection into a place where to move is to create a movement. To be moved.

After nearly a year of experimenting with these ideas in one form or another in performance and the studio, Shake was written, captured, and produced in its entirety over a 3 day weekend in the Mojave Desert on an art retreat in Joshua Tree, CA. Meant as a prayer to participate in authentic contemporary masculinity and the 21st century rock and roll religious experience, an open willingness to give over and participate in the unhinged fun of rock n roll, and the deep belief that this is something we all want.

“Akron/Family have certainly flirted with righteous dosages of heaviness during the last decade. On “MBF”, for instance, they blasted through walls of Bastard-sized noise; on a 2005 split with Angels of Light, they teasingly crept toward stillness, only to catapult into blasts of distortion-and-volume damage. But none of that adequately presages “Where the Wild Things,” the glorious wrecking ball that leads No Recognize, the debut EP from frontman Seth Olinsky as Cy Dune.These three intense minutes suggest Japanese freaks Fushitsusha playing pop-punk with equal-parts precision and madness. This is the most urgent missive to arrive from any member of the Family in years.” – Pitchfork

“No Recognize is stuffed to the brim with primitivistic guitar stompers and gritty road tales perfect for helping you plan a weekend of adventure and debauchery. Or, like, it could probably make going to Home Depot and buying paint seem like the shit. Either way, we think you’ll enjoy this” – Noisey




Wild Mann

"Self described, *Music for Introverts*.  We call them *Introverted Punks*. 

Anthemic and noisy. Pop racket. American Culture is the music that we all grew up with as American wasteland kids. Music that got into our blood during those fragile and formative years. The soundtracks to when we first tried drugs, cut class, had sex, became who we are. When ever that may have been. "

 - Chris Adolf (Excerpts from the American Culture Manifesto)
  
American Culture is a phenomenon of music genius rooted deeply in the psyche of legendary Denver songwriter Chris Adolf.   Chris has toured the underground house circuits and punk basements of the US many years over and now with American Culture he has turned his songrwriting and recording genius towards channeling all the sounds of a 90's American childhood. 

Part John Waters, part Jim Carroll, Chris and American culture ride the line that America has always closely drawn between outsider and pure pop culture. 

He lives out in the desert near four corners.  There are no other bands there. No other references.  American Culture can be seen live in various warehouses and punk spaces through out the desert west. 

04 Addicted To Gak

03 Blood Sugar

01 Princess Music

Ali Beletic // Legends of These Lands Left to Live

LTG 012 // Release Date: April, 2016

Pre-order: https://midheaven.com/item/legends-of-these-lands-left-to-live-by-beletic-ali#.VsyTEJMrIUF

"I spent several years in the desert crafting this record. It's a very emotional, raw and inspired record. It took a lot to get there."

Ali Beletic is best known for her work as an installation artist, creating beautiful symbolic art stunts as far flung as hiking in and installing three 7 foot mahogany and glass Judd-like sculptural pools filled with rainwater into remote desert, throwing parties with drummers hidden throughout backcountry, lighting up an entire boulder field you can hike through or riding vintage motorcycles backcountry to create beautiful lines of fire.

Legends of These Lands Left to Live is her long anticipated debut record, written and recorded during her time spent in the raw American landscape of the Sonoran Desert, after having left the art/punk scene and saturation of Brooklyn to explore concepts of transformation, personal rebellion, an iconic feminine take on rock n roll, and that which exists out on the boundaries of our humanity. Filled with mysterious and emotional songs, Legends is the anthem of that journey - tracing rock n roll's ancient history off road through personal incantations of vanguardism, and telling her vogue rebel stories from the artist streets of New York and the vast Southwest American deserts.

Recorded and produced alongside Lightning co-founder Seth Olinsky (Cy Dune, Akron/Family, Angels of Light) in their art/music studio they set up in the Sonoran Desert, they finished the record in several different studios in Los Angeles and New York with drummers Danny Frankel (Lou Reed, Fiona Apple) and Mike Horick, and are now releasing the record on Lightning Records, the label the two founded alongside Lightning Magazine to bring the badass, rock n roll spirit of fun havery back into the world.

THERE ARE LEGENDS OUT HERE THAT THIS CULTURE DOES NOT PARTAKE IN: LEGENDS PASSED DOWN FROM GENERATION TO GENERATION, TOLD BY GREAT ARTISTS, LEGENDS OF WILDNESS, ARCHETYPES OF OUR OWN HUMANITY, EXPERIENCES, JOURNEYS, SENSIBILITIES, PASSIONS, LIVING LEFT UNDONE AND UNEXPLORED.

“Beletic's debut album, Legends of These Lands Left to Live, takes its emotionally raw energy from the wells of transformation and mystery. At times, the record recalls Patti Smith's ragged and desperate punk, the Flat Duo Jets' animalistic rockabilly played super slow, or Cat Power's cigarette-chewing soul — yet, even with such high-profile reference points, Beletic holds her own. ” - Lars Gotrich / NPR

“Ali Beletic is a true nature's child.” - Yasmine Ganly Anyonegirl, New Zealand

LIGHTNING BIO PAGE: www.lightning-usa.com/ali-beletic

Ali Beletic | Stone Fox

Ali Beletic // Legends of These Lands Left to Live

LTG 012 // Release Date: April, 2016

Pre-order: midheaven.com/item/legends-of-th…c-ali#.VsyTEJMrIUF

"I spent several years in the desert crafting this record. It's a very emotional, raw and inspired record. It took a lot to get there."

Ali Beletic is best known for her work as an installation artist, creating beautiful symbolic art stunts as far flung as hiking in and installing three 7 foot mahogany and glass Judd-like sculptural pools filled with rainwater into remote desert, throwing parties with drummers hidden throughout backcountry, lighting up an entire boulder field you can hike through or riding vintage motorcycles backcountry to create beautiful lines of fire.

Legends of These Lands Left to Live is her long anticipated debut record, written and recorded during her time spent in the raw American landscape of the Sonoran Desert, after having left the art/punk scene and saturation of Brooklyn to explore concepts of transformation, personal rebellion, an iconic feminine take on rock n roll, and that which exists out on the boundaries of our humanity. Filled with mysterious and emotional songs, Legends is the anthem of that journey - tracing rock n roll's ancient history off road through personal incantations of vanguardism, and telling her vogue rebel stories from the artist streets of New York and the vast Southwest American deserts.

Recorded and produced alongside Lightning co-founder Seth Olinsky (Cy Dune, Akron/Family, Angels of Light) in their art/music studio they set up in the Sonoran Desert, they finished the record in several different studios in Los Angeles and New York with drummers Danny Frankel (Lou Reed, Fiona Apple) and Mike Horick, and are now releasing the record on Lightning Records, the label the two founded alongside Lightning Magazine to bring the badass, rock n roll spirit of fun havery back into the world.

THERE ARE LEGENDS OUT HERE THAT THIS CULTURE DOES NOT PARTAKE IN: LEGENDS PASSED DOWN FROM GENERATION TO GENERATION, TOLD BY GREAT ARTISTS, LEGENDS OF WILDNESS, ARCHETYPES OF OUR OWN HUMANITY, EXPERIENCES, JOURNEYS, SENSIBILITIES, PASSIONS, LIVING LEFT UNDONE AND UNEXPLORED.

“Beletic's debut album, Legends of These Lands Left to Live, takes its emotionally raw energy from the wells of transformation and mystery. At times, the record recalls Patti Smith's ragged and desperate punk, the Flat Duo Jets' animalistic rockabilly played super slow, or Cat Power's cigarette-chewing soul — yet, even with such high-profile reference points, Beletic holds her own. ” - Lars Gotrich / NPR

“Ali Beletic is a true nature's child.” - Yasmine Ganly Anyonegirl, New Zealand

LIGHTNING BIO PAGE: www.lightning-usa.com/ali-beletic

Band Of Outsiders

LTG 012 //   Release Date: June 17, 2016  Ali Beletic // Legends of These Lands Left to Live

https://midheaven.com/item/legends-of-these-lands-left-to-live-by-beletic-ali#.V1iAzpMrIUE

"Beletic's debut album, Legends of These Lands Left to Live, takes its emotionally raw energy from the wells of transformation and mystery. At times, the record recalls Patti Smith's ragged and desperate punk, the Flat Duo Jets' animalistic rockabilly played super slow, or Cat Power's cigarette-chewing soul — yet, even with such high-profile reference points, Beletic holds her own…Ali Beletic’s debut album is one of the most refreshing rock albums I’ve heard in a while.” - NPR

"I spent several years in the desert crafting this record.  It's a very emotional, raw and inspired record.  It took a lot to get there."

Ali Beletic is best known for her work as an installation artist, creating beautiful symbolic art stunts as far flung as hiking in and installing mahogany and glass Judd-like sculptural pools into remote desert, throwing parties with drummers hidden throughout backcountry, lighting up an entire boulder field you can hike through or riding vintage motorcycles backcountry to create beautiful lines of fire.  

Legends of These Lands Left to Live is her long anticipated debut record, written and recorded during her time spent in the raw American landscape of the Sonoran Desert, after having left the art/punk scene and saturation of Brooklyn to explore concepts of transformation, personal rebellion, and that which exists out on the boundaries of our humanity. Filled with mysterious and emotional songs, Legends is the anthem of that journey, tracing rock n roll's ancient history off road through personal incantations of vanguardism, and telling her vogue rebel stories from the artist streets of New York and the vast Southwest.

Legends was recorded and produced alongside Lightning co-founder Seth Olinsky (Cy Dune, Akron/Family, Angels of Light) in the art/music studio they set up in the Sonoran Desert.  They finished the record in several different studios in Los Angeles and New York with drummers Danny Frankel (Lou Reed, Fiona Apple) and Mike Horick, and are releasing the record on Lightning Records, the label the two founded alongside Lightning Magazine to bring the badass, rock n roll spirit of fun havery back into the world. 

THERE ARE LEGENDS OUT HERE THAT THIS CULTURE DOES NOT PARTAKE IN: LEGENDS PASSED DOWN FROM GENERATION TO GENERATION, TOLD BY GREAT ARTISTS, LEGENDS OF WILDNESS, ARCHETYPES OF OUR OWN HUMANITY, EXPERIENCES, JOURNEYS, SENSIBILITIES, PASSIONS, LIVING LEFT UNDONE AND UNEXPLORED.

Ali Beletic | Ends Of The Earth

The Cy Dune story starts with a songbook. This particular book had a 100 songs written in 20th century american visionary long hand over 5 years after leaving home and traveling the world in what some might call the contemporary music scene of the early 21st century, recording and performing with his band Akron/Family and collaborating with Rhys Chatham, Michael Gira, William Parker, Hamid Drake, Keiji Haino and Tatsuya Nakatani. The songs were demoed all that same time with new and old friends in big city and small town apartments, parent’s garages, horse barns, Maine basements, New Jersey Synagogues , old Pennsylvania factories, molding midcentury moderns, Brooklyn basement studios and across the bridge at the midtown manhattan Sear studio with the old Abbey Road tape machine and the bass player from the Henry Rollins band. 

In 2010 the 100 songs were finished, written and demoed. In 2011, he moved to the Sonoran desert to record a primitivist american blues story old/new weird American anthology of these songs with only an old acoustic guitar and the very same rebuilt ¼" tube Ampex reel to reel that Alan Lomax used to record field hollers out of his trunk. Months were spent fine tuning 100 songs, researching tube and tape saturation, Fahey’s discovery of Skip James and his mystical open D tuning, early Dylan cryptology, the notes between the notes of Leadbelly recordings, Michael Hurley’s Folkways First Songs and re-tuning all guitars to that self same slightly flat key. 

But the 100 songs wouldn’t record. 

2011 ended and the spark of change finally came as a Christmas gift given by his mother. Patti Smith’s Just Kids. Re-awed by the transformative powers of Rock n Roll, frustrated, fed up, he plugged in his guitar and the songs alived and ripped themselves into being, bursting out as sheets of guitar shredding sound like explosions written on the wall. Patti Smith’s book begins the year Coltrane died. Cy Dune’s story begins again with the simple act of plugging in his guitar, mimicking the thrust of the 20th century. 

The No Recognize EP is a soundtrack to this transformation. His electric guitar story-tellings tap in, steeped with all the mystery of pre war weird America holler, African pentatonic shamanism, be bop underground, and Kerouac’s road verse electrified and amplified. The songs blaze like roads north to Chicago and Detroit, like amps falling off cars, the rattling tubes all saturated sound color and broken speaker blues, sounds of a whole century, like Wayne Coyne says, “touched by the religiousness of Rock n Roll”. No Recognize was recorded loud on a few old microphones in Tucson, AZ and in Brooklyn with the help of drummer Andrew Barker (William Parker, Gold Sparkle) and bassist Shazad Ismaily (Sam Amidon, Bonnie “prince” Billy), then doubled back and blasted through a friends broken PA high on a desert mountain. A Rock n Roll Hymnal 100 songs behind and 1000 songs to go.

No Recognize

Yellin'

People of the North is Kid Millions and Fat Bobby (aka Bobby Matador) from Brooklyn's hardest working genius misfit rock outfit Oneida. Often including other members of Oneida, POTN is less a side project, and more another book in the non-linear mythology that is Oneida. 

Judge A Man By His Fruits is an EP showing a chapter in their latest sonic adventures. Recorded in a castle in Italy on a portable reel to reel, the music here is straight sub-conscious, primordial , pre cognitive rock n roll - stripped of repetition and purely organic in the most chemical sense. 

Drums fall down ragged infinite cliffs and climb back one hand at a time while organs slowly breathe into existence and all ends as it should, with a righteous, screaming guitar solo. 





"Brooklyn duo People of the North describe an ecstatic and meditative sound somewhere between Amon Düül, Simply Saucer, Friendsound and Loop playing Eno's 'Third Uncle'. And boy, what with the epic drumming of Oneida's Kid Millions informing the core of this ensemble's sound, don't this just shit all over so many modern so-called Kraut-informed bands...this is a highly driven yet divine cosmic ooze that envelops listeners in its inner hurricane and allows them merely to...Be, Motherfuckers!"- Julian Cope at Head Heritage
credits
released June 10, 2014

Judge A Man By His Fruits

02. Three Hills in a Day

01. Bear Fruit

Wooden Wand is the band and pen name of James Jackson Toth - a virtuoso songwriter of the mythic variety, and easily one of my favorite living songwriters. No accurate account of all Wooden Wand releases has ever been made, but according to various web logs, the count could be anywhere from 26 - 103 - and AZAG - TOTH is the latest, for the brief now, in that epic American mythology. 

Like many of my favorite Wooden Wand records, AZAG-TOTH was recorded at home by James onto his trusty Tascam 8 Track digital recorder without band or producer. Just pure song, story, and syllabic transmission from the man himself. 

In this current world of music there are LPs, EPs, Cassettes and CDs, side projects and digital streams, and let me just tell you that this 8 track, 30 minute album holds up to all of my favorite Wooden Wand records. The songs are beautiful, clear, and immediate. Each character and melody takes on a new subtle layer with each listen as a new clear favorite song emerges with each listen too. James says that album opener the Parrot "is based on Flaubert's Un Coeur Simple" and of the album that he was exploring the musical idea of Metempsychosis. 

Calling James one of the most under rated songwriters as I recall on Facebook someone say someone did just can't be true, as everyone I know thinks he is one of the best. In fact, here is what Michael Gira said of James for his awesome YGR release Death Seat: 


" James Jackson Toth’s got that picaresque quality that Dylan had in his heyday, wherein the shambolic narrator undergoes various travails and epiphanies—harrowing, bleak and darkly comical—in the course of a narrative, then leaves you mystified, both smiling and sad.” - Michael Gira (Swans / YGR ) 


I could give a play by play about how genius each of these songs is, but no need. They are sonically self evident - just listen.

Azag-Toth

08. Amnesia

07. Collateral Damage

06. Nothing Changes

05. Staying Up

04. Tall Dark and Lonesome

03. Old Lily Littlerock

02. Waveland

01. The Parrot

Party on!!! Record label and magazine founded by Seth Olinsky (Cy Dune/Akron Family) and Ali Beletic (Alivenique/Ali Beletic) based in Southern California.

Lightning Records

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