Mal Devisa - Palimpsesa

On her third full-length TIDE/TIED, Montreal artist Thanya Iyer expands on the future-folk designs of sophomore album KIND with washes of jazz-inflected pop and ensemble ambience. While Iyer explored a more personal journey of self-love on KIND, she, her band, and cohort of guest musicians embark on a new way of moving on TIDE/TIED, prizing collective care and communal healing as antidotes to the dissonances of living in a colonial, capitalistic world.

Over twelve tracks, Iyer alternates song, synth layer, strings, and loop substance, interfixing with percussionist Daniel Gélinas’s meditative drumming and multi-instrumentalist Pompey’s adventurous arrangements. Through a deeply collaborative process, Gélinas and Pompey — themselves experienced producers — created the powerful and intricate worldscapes of TIDE/TIED, guided by Iyer’s incisive musical vision, all the while maintaining a cohesive, collective approach to the creative process.

TIDE/TIED opens with “I am here now,” a joyful, subdued celebration of reconnecting with your body, unraveling the challenges of staying present when the world is on fire. Iyer’s voice sublimates into passages that call on spiritual jazz, blurring the lines between ambient, folk, and pop with gorgeous stacks of alto sax, looped vocals, synth, and violin.

Future-folk machinations meld with syncopated pop on lead single “Low Tides,” building on previous efforts Pitchfork described as “a lucid daydream that’s constantly melting at its edges.” Although it’s a navigation of our lowest moments, Iyer’s band is brilliant on “Low Tides,” featuring live member Emilie Kahn, whose harp adds celestial revelry to the song’s restrained triumph over an intense trial.

Iyer’s signature post-genre pontifications are in full bloom on “What can we grow that we can’t see from here?” in which Iyer reminds us that the groundwork for new, radical futures can be laid by our own hands. Such prescient lessons are a prominent fixture of Iyer’s work — current and past — this time delivered with a thumping, controlled pop sensibility that says even when things feel stagnant and unclear, there is a way through.

This resilience is the key to TIDE/TIED, the fount from which its entire ethos springs forth. On the album’s cover art, a vivid illustration shows a massive tide approaching an Iyer ablaze, facing the world with her arms raised, ready to accept the crash of transformation.

Thanya Iyer - TIDE/TIED

“It clicked for me one day, that the album was going to be about hornets,” explains Sputnik, the mononymous songwriter behind the noise-pop project Weatherday. “It just made sense to me.”

Hornet Disaster, Weatherday’s follow-up to their 2019 debut Come in, and spiritual successor to 2022’s collab release Weatherglow, is their most expansive work to date. In Weatherday’s initial bout of inspired writing and recording, they produced over 70 songs for the record, but not before they had a complete, overarching narrative that was coherently tied back to Sputnik’s previous work.

Like its predecessor Come in, Weatherday’s Hornet Disaster lurches instantly into a caustic title track. The overture is signature Weatherday — urgent, noisy, erratic, and playful — but also hints at shifts in songwriting and production. Lead single “Angel,” backed with “Heartbeats,” demonstrates this evolution in a snappy, springy emo anthem, while its counterpart calls on longtime influence The Knife in a slinky, downtempo curio that pushes the Weatherday sonic universe in an unexpected direction.

The movement, color, and form of hornets are meticulously threaded throughout the album’s nineteen song tracklist, with hectic melody and unpredictable turns giving way to various forays: a tribute to Swedish winter in Weatherday’s first official song in Swedish (“Pulka”); the use of renaissance flute (“Green Tea Seaweed Sea”); and the folktronica experimentalism of third single “Ripped Apart By Hands.”

It’s a bustling record with disparate songs each vying for space like wasps in a swarm. It can inspire caution and chaos, but there’s wonder, purpose, and a certain familiarity there, too. Weatherday has extended the knotted, thrashing maximalism of Come in by doubling down with the uncompromised, no-stone-unturned nature of Hornet Disaster. Where Come in was the product of an artist searching for their voice, Hornet Disaster represents the joyful abandon that comes from having found it.

Weatherday - Hornet Disaster

Peel Dream Magazine - Taurus

From Nai Harvest's new EP "Hold Open My Head" — available on vinyl, and digitally March 4, 2014 through Topshelf Records.

Order the record now: http://tsr-store.com/artists/nai-harvest
http://topshelfrecords.com


Buy 7" or digital 

Nai Harvest - Rush

The debut full length album from Portland, OR's Wild Ones available on CD, vinyl and digitally April 1, 2014 through Topshelf Records.

http://topshelfrecords.com/artists/wild-ones
http://topshelfrecords.com/artists/wild-ones/products

Buy CD, LP, digital

Wild Ones - Paia

"You Blue It" by You Blew It! — out everywhere August 12, 2014 on vinyl and digitally from Topshelf Records.

http://topshelfrecords.com/artists/you-blew-it
http://topshelfrecords.com/artists/you-blew-it/products

You Blew It! - "My Name Is Jonas"

Mal Devisa - "New Eardrums" (prod. Marco)

Mal Devisa - "Icarus/Breakthrough"

Mal Devisa - "Next Stop"

Mal Devisa - "You Are My Sunshine"

Mal Devisa - "Vicious Nonbeliever" (ft. Gods Wisdom)

Thanya Iyer - "Doctor"

Thanya Iyer - "High Tides"

Thanya Iyer - "Low Tides"

Thanya Iyer - "What can we grow that we can't see from here?"

Thanya Iyer - "I am here now"

Weatherday - "Hornet Disaster"

Weatherday - "Meanie"

Weatherday - "Angel"

Weatherday - "Take Care Of Yourself (Paper - Like Nests)"

Weatherday - "Hug"

The new full length album from Sorority Noise — available everywhere June 16, 2015 on CD, vinyl & digitally from Topshelf Records. http://www.topshelfrecords.com/artists/sorority-noise

Sorority Noise - "Art School Wannabe"

Sorority Noise - "Using"

maneka - "pony"

maneka - "the cry that came"

maneka - "sad bot"

From "Heatwave" — the new EP from Portland, OR's Wild Ones — available everywhere on CD, vinyl and digitally August 14, 2015 from Topshelf Records.

http://www.topshelfrecords.com/artists/wild-ones
http://www.topshelfrecords.com/artists/wild-ones/products

Heatwave

Dim the Lights

Wild Ones - "Dim the Lights"

Peel Dream Magazine - Seek and Destroy

Peel Dream Magazine - "Venus In Nadir"

Peel Dream Magazine - The Band From Northampton

Peel Dream Magazine - Letters

Elephant Gym - "Witches (feat. Yu-Tai Cheng) - Live in San Francisco, USA"

Elephant Gym - "Shell (feat. Ryo Konishi) - Live in New Taipei City, Taiwan"

Elephant Gym - "Go through the Night - Live in Kaohsiung, Taiwan"

Elephant Gym - "D (feat. Seiji Kameda) - Live in New Taipei City, Taiwan"

tricot's album "3," which is available on May 17, 2017 from Topshelf Records (US), Big Scary Monsters (UK), Bakurestu (JP).

Info: http://tricot.tv
Order via Topshelf: http://tpshlf.co/tsr168
Order via Big Scary Monsters: http://bsmrocks.com

tricot - 18,19

Info: www.topshelfrecords.com/roster/wild-ones
Purchase: tpshlf.co/tsr178

"Invite Me In" from the album Mirror Touch by Wild Ones — available October 6, 2017 on cassette, vinyl, CD, and digitally from Topshelf Records.

Wild Ones - "Invite Me In"

Reaper

Available in North America for the first time on CD & vinyl via Topshelf Records: http://smarturl.it/tsr_tricot

Tricot - "Noradrenaline"

Tricot - "Break"

Tricot - "Omotenashi"

Tricot - "pool side~POOL"

Tricot - "Tobe"

Tricot - "C&C"

Tricot - "Hatsumimi"

Tricot - "artsick"

Tricot - "99.974"

Tricot - "Oyasumi"

Tricot - "Swimmer"

Tricot - "Tarattaratta"

tricot - "potage"

tricot - "On the boom"

Mid-Air Thief - "Ahhhh, These Chains!"

Mid-Air Thief - "Why?"

Defeater - Cowardice

Full Of Hell- Fox Womb

From The World is a Beautiful Place, Tigers Jaw, Code Orange Kids and Self Defense Family's 4-way split available everywhere on vinyl and digitally April 23, 2013 on Topshelf Records.

http://topshelfrecords.com
http:///tsr-store.com/artist/the-world-is-a-beautiful-place-i-am-no-longer-afraid-to-die

Buy 7" or Digital

Tigers Jaw - Fake Death

http://www.tsr-store.com/artist/the-world-is-a-beautiful-place-i-am-no-longer-afraid-to-die
http://topshelfrecords.com

From the debut LP "Whenever, If Ever" album everywhere June 18th, 2013 on vinyl, CD & digitally.

Buy LP, CD or Digital

TWIABP&IANLATD - Heartbeat In The Brain

An independent record label releasing whatever we like. Started in 2006.

Topshelf Records

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