W. H. Lung - Pearl In The Palm

Aisles

Safety Dance

Written by Nation of Language
Produced and Mixed by Abe Seiferth
Mastered by Heba Kadry

This Fractured Mind

'Oblique Fantasy' by Jane Weaver.
Out digitally on Speedy Wunderground 23rd March 2022.
Out on limited 7" (500 copies) on 17th June 2022.
Produced by Dan Carey.
Listen / order - https://ffm.to/sw040_janeweaver

https://www.speedywunderground.com/
https://janeweavermusic.com/

SW040 // Jane Weaver - Oblique Fantasy

Out digitally now and on limited 7" (500 copies) on 15th April.

https://ffm.to/sw039_lewsberg

SW039 // Lewsberg - Six Hills

From the album The Consistent Brutal Bullshit Gong out April 29, 2022 on Western Vinyl.
Pre-order / Listen: https://lnk.to/XHoJYpp2

On their debut for Western Vinyl, recording engineer and multi-instrumentalist Nate Mendelsohn and his band use lyrical maximalism for the powers of good. Where Market’s previous home recorded releases shifted genre restlessly, on The Consistent Brutal Bullshit Gong Mendelsohn took a core band of longtime collaborators to a house in rural Massachusetts where they carved out space for his words to speak through with humor and intensity. 

Though he comes from a background in experimental music, Mendelsohn’s ear for pop has prevailed. Certain moments on Bullshit Gong reveal his stranger side, as on the thundering bridge of “Scar,” which sounds like a more unhinged Parquet Courts, or the angular  “I Would Do That,” which takes cues from Cate Le Bon. On the whole, though, this band of close friends insists on directness, their arrangements clear despite the intricacies. Guitars and synthesizers tangle fluidly atop the rhythm section’s tight bedrock, evoking the tenderness and backbeat-centric qualities of Elliott Smith or Big Thief. 

After college, where he met most of the members of Market, Mendelsohn became an engineer and producer at the Brooklyn studio Figure 8 Recording. Through that community he’s recorded artists like Frankie Cosmos and Wendy Eisenberg, and played with Yaeji, Vagabon, Katie Von Schleicher (who co-produced Bullshit Gong with him), and Sam Evian, who mixed the album. 

While writing Bullshit Gong, Mendelsohn grappled with long-gestating OCD, watched a formative relationship dissolve, and experienced a mental health crisis that lasted a full year. During this turbulent time, Mendelsohn began to consider the ways he has approached friendship, partnership, and especially family. Those observations and partial conclusions make their way into the songs in an essential capacity, as he mixes the small with the very big on a dogged search for empathy. On “Control” he sings “I heard a kid ask a teacher today / ‘What is a memory?’ / Man, sometimes life is great / At 4:15 I was awake and a mess / My mind’s a broke machine.” 

The words flow in much the same way as Mendelsohn’s thoughts, with observation and memory giving way to moments of profound anxiety. This emotional heft is met in crucial ways by his band. On the tender “Watergate,” a love song set against both the Watergate scandal and James Comey’s senate testimony, the arrangement is simple and trusting, adding depth and intimacy to each word as he compares his life, love, and temperament to that of his parents. 

While recording “Old,” the band sat around an omnidirectional microphone shaking percussion instruments and singing out certain lines. In the background, you can hear Mendelsohn pick up his clarinet and eke out a few notes, a spontaneous act of playfulness that made the final cut. These tonal shifts matter deeply, as the words he sings could be interpreted differently in a darker setting: “Half of these feelings aren’t my feelings anymore / But I guess I could still enjoy the notes and chords / Maybe that’s just the way it goes / We always sing about things that are old.”

Creating intimacy out of manic self-reflection requires a delicate balancing act, one Mendelsohn tackles with abandon. His words never skew too poetic or grandiose, and when he invokes the ugly it’s met with a sonic tonality that sets him right again. In tender moments, his voice is often flanked by bandmates Natasha Thweatt or Von Schleicher, who help skew his words toward the universal. Still, Bullshit Gong is an obsessive look inward, one in which Mendelsohn simply asks himself if he is good to those he loves. It’s an act of trust between the artist and the imagined listener he takes with him.

The Consistent Brutal Bullshit Gong

Market - "Scar"

Set yourself free

Share The Present

Modern Wars

teaser track from third Pikelet album Calluses, due out on Chapter Music 16 August 2013.

download this from http://chaptermusic.bandcamp.com/album/calluses

www.facebook.com/pikeletmusic
www.twitter.com/pikeletmusic
https://itunes.apple.com/au/artist/pikelet/id256150983?uo=4

Pikelet - Pressure Cooker

Written by Nation of Language
Produced and Mixed by Nick Millhiser
Mastered by Heba Kadr

Deliver Me From Wondering Why

Speedy Wunderground – A ten-point plan

1. Speedy Wunderground is a new label which begins on February 25th 2013 with the release of “I Go Out” by Steve Mason & Emiliana Torrini.

2. Speedy Wunderground is the idea of producer Dan Carey. Dan will produce all releases. All records will be recorded at Dan’s South London studio. Dan has previously produced Franz Ferdinand, Bat For Lashes, TOY, Willy Mason, Django Django, Emiliana Torrini, The Kills, Chairlift and Steve Mason.

3. Recording of all records will be done in one day and finish before midnight. The recordings will be a snapshot of the day. Mixing will be done the day following the recording, also in one day only. This will prevent over-cooking and ‘faff’.

4. There will be no lunch break during recording and mixing days.

5. Overdubs will be kept to a minimum allowing the recordings to be free of clutter.

6. The recordings will appear in limited runs of two hundred and fifty 7”s, which will be in the shops as soon as humanly possible following their completion.

7. The core of each song will be a live take recorded in the dark with smoke and lazers and somewhere on each record the Swarmatron – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJyub78p924 - will make an appearance.

8. Speedy Wunderground work quickly. There will be as a little delay as possible between recording and release. Speedy Wunderground records will not sit on the shelf gathering dust waiting to be released.

9. Speedy Wunderground will release each year’s recordings as a compilation at the end of the year.

10. Speedy Wunderground Records will not be slow.

SW040 // Jane Weaver - Oblique Fantasy

speedywunderground

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