We love you. Visit us here to buy/stream our records and support our artists:
https://paradiseofbachelors.com
https://spoti.fi/2Prbz1W

Pls. buy our records!

Paradisiacal Playlist

Mike Cooper
Milan Live Acoustic
2018
PoB-071
CD (packaged with Life and Death in Paradise) / Digital
July 14, 2023

Mike Cooper wrote his final songwriter record, a suite of gloaming glam-rock anthems performed with a spiritual jazz trio, while living on the Costa Tropical of Granada, Spain, an era when he was considering retiring from music altogether. A chance encounter and a last-ditch record deal convinced him to make one last album, which he recorded in 1974 at Pathway Studios in London, with “The Greatest Rock and Roll Band in the World,” featuring the inventive South African jazz rhythm section of Louis Moholo and Harry Miller with UK saxophonist Mike Osborne. 
 
This first-ever reissue includes a bonus CD of Milan Live Acoustic 2018, a previously unreleased solo set that represents Cooper’s return, after forty-four years pursuing free improvisation and electronics, to a new, deconstructed approach to singing, steel guitar, and songcraft. The deluxe LP+CD edition also features a six-panel insert with additional artwork and an essay by the artist about both records. 
 
The deluxe 2xCD gatefold edition also features an eight-panel insert with additional artwork and an essay by the artist about both records. 
 
“Beautiful, f*cked-up mid-70s rock that’s really not like anything else. A mélange of mersh/avant/blues/folk/rock/jazz shiteroo, Life and Death in Paradise is a most splendid anomaly with hints of everyone from Gram Parsons to Michael Hurley to the Welfare State … Allow it into your head, and it will blossom like the strange mushroom it is.” – Byron Coley

https://paradiseofbachelors.com/shop/pob-070-071/
https://lnk.to/PoB71

Milan Live Acoustic 2018

LP/CD/digital

Mike Cooper: Peach Trees

Mike Cooper
Life and Death in Paradise
1974
PoB-070
LP+CD/2xCD/digital
July 14, 2023

Mike Cooper wrote his final songwriter record, a suite of gloaming glam-rock anthems performed with a spiritual jazz trio, while living on the Costa Tropical of Granada, Spain, an era when he was considering retiring from music altogether. A chance encounter and a last-ditch record deal convinced him to make one last album, which he recorded in 1974 at Pathway Studios in London, with “The Greatest Rock and Roll Band in the World,” featuring the inventive South African jazz rhythm section of Louis Moholo and Harry Miller with UK saxophonist Mike Osborne. 
 
This first-ever reissue includes a bonus CD of Milan Live Acoustic 2018, a previously unreleased solo set that represents Cooper’s return, after forty-four years pursuing free improvisation and electronics, to a new, deconstructed approach to singing, steel guitar, and songcraft. The deluxe LP+CD edition also features a six-panel insert with additional artwork and an essay by the artist about both records. 
 
The deluxe 2xCD gatefold edition also features an eight-panel insert with additional artwork and an essay by the artist about both records. 
 
“Beautiful, f*cked-up mid-70s rock that’s really not like anything else. A mélange of mersh/avant/blues/folk/rock/jazz shiteroo, Life and Death in Paradise is a most splendid anomaly with hints of everyone from Gram Parsons to Michael Hurley to the Welfare State … Allow it into your head, and it will blossom like the strange mushroom it is.” – Byron Coley

https://paradiseofbachelors.com/shop/pob-070-071/
https://lnk.to/PoB70

Life and Death in Paradise

Mike Cooper: Critical Incidents

Mike Cooper: O.M.M. Coda

Itasca
Imitation of War
PoB-073
LP/CD/digital
February 9, 2024

On Imitation of War, songwriter and guitarist Kayla Cohen advances Itasca into rockier terrain, with a suite of smoky nocturnes and uneasy idylls surveying, with refreshing urgency, mythologies and psychologies both classical and personal. Co-produced by Robbie Cody (Wand, Behavior), these ten sturdy set-pieces represent the loosest, leanest, and most smolderingly electric guitar-forward recordings of Cohen’s deepening catalog.

Cohen’s got a voice that glows like the sun at dusk, and plays guitar with a nimble yet intricate touch. – NPR

Simultaneously haunting and heavenly … shimmers with an eternal mystery. – MOJO

Cohen’s most salient talent is evocation—trapping place, weather, and physical presence like a butterfly pinned beneath glass. – Pitchfork

PoB Links
PoB Artist Page: paradiseofbachelors.com/itasca
PoB Album Page: paradiseofbachelors.com/shop/pob-073
Album smart link: lnk.to/PoB73

Itasca Links
Website: www.itascalosangeles.com/
Instagram: www.instagram.com/kayla_itasca/
YouTube: www.youtube.com/@itascamusic
Facebook: www.facebook.com/Itasca/
Twitter: twitter.com/kayla_itasca
Bandcamp: itasca.bandcamp.com/
Spotify: sptfy.com/Itasca

Imitation of War

Itasca: Milk

Itasca
Imitation of War
PoB-073
LP/CD/digital
February 9, 2024

On Imitation of War, songwriter and guitarist Kayla Cohen advances Itasca into rockier terrain, with a suite of smoky nocturnes and uneasy idylls surveying, with refreshing urgency, mythologies and psychologies both classical and personal. Co-produced by Robbie Cody (Wand, Behavior), these ten sturdy set-pieces represent the loosest, leanest, and most smolderingly electric guitar-forward recordings of Cohen’s deepening catalog.

Cohen’s got a voice that glows like the sun at dusk, and plays guitar with a nimble yet intricate touch. – NPR

Simultaneously haunting and heavenly … shimmers with an eternal mystery. – MOJO

Cohen’s most salient talent is evocation—trapping place, weather, and physical presence like a butterfly pinned beneath glass. – Pitchfork

PoB Links
PoB Artist Page: https://paradiseofbachelors.com/itasca
PoB Album Page: https://paradiseofbachelors.com/shop/pob-073
Album smart link: https://lnk.to/PoB73
 
Itasca Links
Website: http://www.itascalosangeles.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kayla_itasca/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@itascamusic
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Itasca/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/kayla_itasca
Bandcamp: https://itasca.bandcamp.com/
Spotify: https://sptfy.com/Itasca

Itasca: Imitation of War

Setting
Shone a Rainbow Light On
PoB-072
LP/CD/digital
September 29, 2023 

The debut recording by Setting, a trio comprising Nathan Bowles (solo, Pelt, Black Twig Pickers) on strings, keys and percussion; Jaime Fennelly (Mind Over Mirrors, Peeesseye) on harmoniums, synthesizers and piano zither; and Joe Westerlund (solo, Califone, Sylvan Esso, Jake Xerxes Fussell) on drums, percussion and metallophones, Shone a Rainbow Light On traverses textural, phosphorescent topography with a certified organic folk-engine. Fueled by a vibratory hybrid of acoustic and electronic instrumentation, these four stately longform pieces sound like a UFO slowly sinking into a peat bog. 

RIYL Popol Vuh, Eno’s Ambient 4, Harmonia, The Necks

paradiseofbachelors.com/shop/pob-072/
lnk.to/PoB72

Shone a Rainbow Light On

Setting: Zoetropics

James Elkington and Nathan Salsburg
All Gist
PoB-075
LP/CD/digital
April 12, 2024

The duo’s third album of instrumental guitar recordings pushes their sinuous compositions into labyrinthine new shapes, interlocking and interlocutory, supported by a cast of stellar collaborators. Interwoven among the dazzling original pieces is a fascinating array of covers, ranging from traditional Breton dance tunes to a deconstruction of Neneh Cherry’s “Buffalo Stance.”

Their melody-first sensibilities are perfectly suited to each other …  playfully complex guitar work that sounds as if it was tossed off in an afternoon of whiskey and laughs. – NPR

An intoxicating, intricate web … Wherever Salsburg and Elkington go, it’s always a pleasure. – Aquarium Drunkard

Sounds like winter has always been approaching, like Indian summer never quite fades, like fall isn’t built around loss. – Stereogum

paradiseofbachelors.com/shop/pob-075/
lnk.to/PoB75

All Gist

James Elkington and Nathan Salsburg: Death Wishes to Kill

James Elkington and Nathan Salsburg: Buffalo Stance

Terry Allen
Gonna California
PoB-076
45rpm 7" vinyl / digital
March 15, 2024

In conjunction with the publication, by Hachette Books, of Truckload of Art: The Life and Work of Terry Allen, an authorized biography by Brendan Greaves of Paradise of Bachelors, Gonna California imagines an alternate reality where Allen’s long-lost first studio recordings, captured with a full band in LA in 1968, saw a proper release. (Instead nearly the entire pressing was destroyed by a fire set by the so-called “Hollywood Arsonist,” and remaining copies were repurposed in artworks.) This first-ever (re)issue edition, limited to 500 copies, features recently rediscovered and remastered early (and superior) mixes of both songs; the original liner notes by Allen; an excerpt from the book; a lyrics insert; and Allen’s contemporaneous visual art in an arresting gatefold jacket.

No veteran country songwriter sounds more attuned to the national mood. His songs still feel like little guidebooks for staring down a harsh universe.
– The Washington Post

paradiseofbachelors.com/terry-allen

Gonna California

7"/digital

Terry Allen: Gonna California

paradiseofbachelors.com/nap-eyes
paradiseofbachelors.com/shop/pob-077dig2
lnk.to/24naps

Following their first new music in three years ("remarkable lyric writing" – FADER; "quietly devastating" – Exclaim), Nap Eyes presents a languorous adaptation of a phantasmagorical poem by Russian Romantic Alexander Pushkin (1799–1837). “Demons" depicts a perilous nocturnal journey by carriage, beset by eerie apparitions of uncanny but uncertain spectral nature. The band unravels the knotty verse into a fluid melody, gliding adeptly through the snow, observing the eldritch scene.

Demons

Download/stream

Nap Eyes: Demons

"The Neon Gate" is out October 18, 2024 on Paradise of Bachelors (worldwide) and Paper Bag Records (Canada).
BUY/LISTEN: https://lnk.to/24naps
DETAILS: https://paradiseofbachelors.com/shop/pob-077

Nap Eyes’ metamorphic fifth long-player collects a cache of nine fascinating songs recorded over the four years since Snapshot of a Beginner. The Neon Gate reveals classic touchstones (the uneasy interplay of physics and philosophy, perambulatory meditations, self-interrogating soliloquies, apertures of surreality, video games), but also evidence of divergent impulses toward nonlinear abstraction and longform improvisational composition (resulting in their most discursive, deconstructed, and deliquescent songs to date) and narrative and lyric formality (including adaptations of thorny poems by Alexander Pushkin and W. B. Yeats), imparting the sense that Nap Eyes have transmuted, as has their understanding of what a song is, what it can do, where it might go.

The Neon Gate

Nap Eyes: Dark Mystery Enigma Bird

https://paradiseofbachelors.com/nap-eyes
https://paradiseofbachelors.com/shop/pob-077dig1
https://lnk.to/24naps

The first Nap Eyes song in exactly three years, the astonishing “Feline Wave Race,” which transports the listener from “outer space” to a “13th-century castle” and into the 1996 Nintendo game Wave Race 64, piloted by synths and drum programming, is more discursive and deconstructed, more abstract and nonlinear than anything they’ve attempted to date. “Ice Grass Underpass,” which singer, principal songwriter, and guitarist Nigel Chapman wrote in 2009, predates the band’s existence entirely but prefigures the sonic signature of Nap Eyes’s foundational first two albums.

Feline Wave Race

Listen/download

Nap Eyes: Feline Wave Race

Listen/download/watch

Nap Eyes: Ice Grass Underpass

Buy/listen/watch

Nap Eyes: Passageway

Jennifer Castle
Camelot
PoB-078
LP/CD/Digital
November 1, 2024

Camelot, Jennifer Castle’s extraordinary, moving chronicle of the artist in early middle age, charts a realer place than the legendary Camelot of the British Early Middle Ages, but it too is a space more psychic than physical. In Castle’s Camelot, the fantastic interpenetrates the mundane, and the Grail, if there is one, distills everyday experience into art and art into faith, subliming terrestrial concerns into sublime celestial prayers to Mother Nature, and to the unfolding process of perfecting imperfection in one’s own nature: “Back in Camelot / I really learned a lot / circles in the crops and / sky-high geometry …” (Includes poster with lyrics.)

“Castle’s songs are vibrant and bountiful landscapes, and even in their quietest, darkest moments, they thrum and glow. [She] has a stunning capacity for crafting lines rich with nuance, humor and devastating beauty.” – CBC

“Castle channels the lunar radiance of Emmylou Harris and the heartfelt barroom blues of Jimmie Dale Gilmore, quietly gleaming with a rustic beauty and a deep, patient understanding of the mystic.” – Aquarium Drunkard

Camelot

Earthsong

Buy/Listen/Watch

Jennifer Castle: Earthsong

Jennifer Castle's "Blowing Kisses" (as heard on Season 3 of FX's "The Bear") is out June 27, 2024, on Paradise of Bachelors and Solstice Radio.
LISTEN/WATCH: https://lnk.to/PoB78
DETAILS: https://paradiseofbachelors.com/jennifer-castle

On the ravishing country-soul ballad “Blowing Kisses,” her first new song in three and a half years, the celebrated Canadian songwriter Jennifer Castle contemplates time and presence, love and prayer—and how songwriting and poetry both manifest and limit all four dimensions: “No words to fumble with/I’m not a beggar to language any longer.” Featuring a sweeping string arrangement by Owen Pallett, performed by Estonia's FAMES Skopje Studio Orchestra, “Blowing Kisses” can be heard in its entirety during the pivotal scene of the penultimate episode of the third season of FX's The Bear.

LINKS

https://www.jennifercastlemusic.com/ 
https://jennifercastle.bandcamp.com/ 
https://www.instagram.com/jnfrcastle/ 
https://twitter.com/JNFRCASTLE 
https://www.facebook.com/jennifercastlemusic 
https://www.youtube.com/@jennifercastlemusic 
https://open.spotify.com/artist/2RzmnX5DXwcryxwUyREPbK 

CREDITS

Produced by Jennifer Castle and Jeff McMurrich
Recorded by Jeff McMurrich at Palace Sound and Sonology
Mixed by Jeff McMurrich
Mastering by Josh Bonati

© 2024 Jennifer Castle, SOCAN (administered by Domino Publishing, BMI)
℗ & © 2024 Solstice Radio (Canada) // ℗ & © Paradise of Bachelors (everywhere else)

Performed by:
JC // acoustic guitar and lead vocals
Carl Didur // piano, Wurlitzer, electric piano, ace tone organ, roland RS 101 strings, mellotron
Evan Cartwright // drums, conga, glockenspiel, tambourine
Mike Smith // bass
Paul Mortimer // acoustic guitar, electric guitar, 12 string electric guitar
Victoria Cheong // vocal arrangements and BG vox
Isla Craig // vocal arrangements and BG vox

Strings arranged by Owen Pallett
Strings performed by FAMES Skopje Studio Orchestra, Estonia
Conducted by Sasho Tatarchevski

Photo by Jimmy Limit

LYRICS

choose to enjoy 
one’s time by the water 
and let one’s future flow 
out on and in her honour 

no words to fumble with 
i’m not a beggar to language any longer 
a state of mind 
only a god could come up with 

and don’t get it twisted 
my heart’s still in it 
my dedication’s a star 
and it shines on our differences 

and there’s love in the meantime
i’m so proud of this moment 
in the stimulation here with you 
i’m so fucking honoured 

can you feel me? 
can you feel what i do? 
i’m at the front of the moment 
and i’m blowing my little kisses to you, baby 
i’m blowing my little kisses 
can you feel what i do? 
i’m at the front of the moment 

so don’t be mad 
if i choose to spend my time down by the water 
and i let my future flow 
out on and in her honour 
there’s no words to fumble with 
i’m not a beggar to language any longer 
it’s a state of mind 
only a god could come up with 
only a god could come up with it 
only a god could come up with it

Blowing Kisses

Stream/download/watch

Jennifer Castle: Blowing Kisses

Jennifer Castle
Camelot
PoB-078
LP/CD/Digital
November 1, 2024

Camelot, Jennifer Castle’s extraordinary, moving chronicle of the artist in early middle age, charts a realer place than the legendary Camelot of the British Early Middle Ages, but it too is a space more psychic than physical. In Castle’s Camelot, the fantastic interpenetrates the mundane, and the Grail, if there is one, distills everyday experience into art and art into faith, subliming terrestrial concerns into sublime celestial prayers to Mother Nature, and to the unfolding process of perfecting imperfection in one’s own nature: “Back in Camelot / I really learned a lot / circles in the crops and / sky-high geometry …” (Includes poster with lyrics.)

“Castle’s songs are vibrant and bountiful landscapes, and even in their quietest, darkest moments, they thrum and glow. [She] has a stunning capacity for crafting lines rich with nuance, humor and devastating beauty.” – CBC

“Castle channels the lunar radiance of Emmylou Harris and the heartfelt barroom blues of Jimmie Dale Gilmore, quietly gleaming with a rustic beauty and a deep, patient understanding of the mystic.” – Aquarium Drunkard

paradiseofbachelors.com/jennifer-castle
lnk.to/PoB78

Jennifer Castle: Lucky #8

ALBUM ABSTRACT

The second solo record by Mike Polizze of Philadelphia psych-squallers Purling Hiss and Birds of Maya, a rainier and more pensive affair than its predecessor—despite its playful humor and plentiful hooks—affirms his status as a consummate (and now not-so-secret) craftsman of instantly memorable bucolic odes of languid beauty, deepening his fingerstyle acoustic guitar magic and finally manifesting the title of the classic Hiss anthem “Run from the City.”

He’s uncovered a rich seam of songwriting, classic-sounding yet modern, unquestionably nostalgic in temperament but undeniably vital ... Even when he’s at his most melancholy and hangdog, the songs themselves gleam like diamonds. – Uncut

The sound of the record approaches bliss: the sonic equivalent of a beer on the beach at sunset. It flows like a well-conceived song cycle and moves gracefully from one thought to the next. – Pitchfork

Exquisitely beautiful … It has the wondrous, enveloping quality of a daydream. – American Songwriter

I love this music so much ... So many of these songs give me chills. – Kurt Vile

paradiseofbachelors.com/mike-polizze

Around Sound

Buy/Listen

Mike Polizze: Is There Anybody Out There?

Mike Polizze: Everybody I Know

Mike Polizze: Around Sound

Paradise of Bachelors is a Record Label, Soundsystem, and Archive located in the North Carolina Piedmont and in the subluminal aether. We are dedicated to documenting, curating, and releasing under-recognized musics of the American vernacular, with an emphasis on the South, broadly defined. 

Paradise of Bachelors is available for licensing, disc-jockeying engagements, music supervision, folklife consultation, research and writing. We cheerily accept recordings, visual media, curatorial proposals, tips, comments, invitations to DJ, artist inquiries, research queries, recipes, and miscellaneous correspondence. 

info@paradiseofbachelors.com

PO Box 1402
Carrboro, NC 27510