Joseph Campbell describes a shaman as "person, male or female, who…has an overwhelming psychological experience that turns him totally inward.  It's a kind of schizophrenic crack-up. The whole unconscious opens up, and the shaman falls into it."  We'll never know the whole truth about what happened when (Foxyen drummer and former Disney child actor) Shaun Fleming moved from the West Coast suburbs to New York, but whatever it was fractured his psyche, opened it up, and gave birth to Diane Coffee. 

In 2013, after joining the band Foxygen, Shaun Fleming left the green and golden fields of his hometown of Agoura Hills, CA to become the third roommate in a 700 square-foot, pre-war, closet-free Manhattan apartment.  He was welcomed to The Big Apple by a nasty flu virus that drained the last bit of California sunshine out of the skinny, Macaulay Culken-looking 26-year-old's body.  As he recovered, cabin fever supplanted the flu, and his relentless creative drive took over.  Low on funds and bored out of his mind, he spent the next two weeks alone in his bedroom writing and recording what would become the debut Diane Coffee LP My Friend Fish.     

Despite his limited means (using a pseudo drum kit consisting of a snare, one broken cymbal, and a metal pot, recording parts with an iPhone's voice memo app, playing a detuned guitar rather than a real bass, etc) My Friend Fish sounds fully realized and remarkably polished.  From a Donovan-esque song about Sriracha, to experiments with distortion and garage-rock, to songs like "All The Young Girls" in which he gleefully channels Tom Jones with sex-bomb confidence, on My Friend Fish Fleming's spell-casting powers are in full effect, inspiring panty-tossing glee.  After you finish listening, you'll wonder as you stretch out in bed and enjoy a cigarette, "Who is Fish?"

TOUR DATES
Oct 29 – New York, NY • Pianos
Nov 2 – Austin, TX • Red 7 w/ Those Darlins
Nov 5 – Phoenix, AZ • the Rhythm Room w/ Those Darlins
Nov 7 – Los Angeles, CA • the Echo w/ Those Darlins
Nov 8 – Santa Ana, CA • the Constellation Room w/ Those Darlins
Nov 13 – San Francisco, CA • the Chapel w/ Those Darlins
Nov 15 – Seattle, WA • Barboza w/ Those Darlins
Nov 16 – Portland, OR • Bunk Bar w/ Those Darlins
Nov 19 – Denver, CO • Hi-Dive w/ Those Darlins
Nov 21 – Kansas City, MO • the Record Bar w/ Those Darlins
Nov 22 – Carbondale, IL • Hangar 9 w/ Those Darlins
Nov 23 – Louisville, KY • the Zanzabar w/ Those Darlins

DIANE COFFEE "Hymn"

Though texturally inspired by early new age records like Iasos’ Inter-Dimensional Music, and sample-based collage ventures like Colleen’s Everyone Alive Wants Answers, Lava Diviner (Truestory) is reinforced with a robust percussive backbone.

Botany, otherwise known as Spencer Stephenson, never resorts to shallow MPC trickery or contrived mixtape clumsiness. Instead, his proto-new age textures float elegantly atop a primal boom-bap pulse to paint a detailed, rhythmic mural that has the scope of a ‘70s prog rock epic.

“On Lava Diviner, I wanted to conjure that same headspace that artists like Roger Dean, and even Zdzislaw Beksinski project in their iconic paintings,” says Stephenson. “I tried to evoke those grand, colourful, surreal landscapes that are mind-bending yet oddly comforting - sci-fi and epic and holy, all at the same time.”

Following 2010’s quietly applauded Feeling Today EP, Lava Diviner (Truestory) was created at various Texas locations using a jumble of equipment, from aging desktop computers, samplers, guitars, bells, flutes, tape recorders, turntables, violin playing room-mates and much more besides. Guest vocals from Brainfeeder artist RYAT were added to the mix and the final creation was mastered by Matthewdavid (Leaving Records / Stones Throw).

As the product of a lengthy gestation period, Lava Diviner (Truestory) follows Botany on an intensely personal journey as he makes his way home within himself, returning to his celestial centre.

Loosely a concept album documenting a religious sect that prays for a volcano to erupt, Stephenson set out to make a kind of instrumental storybook of an album, using only the emotional tone that his theme might evoke.

However, by the time the record was finished, it became clear that the emotional tone was really coming from own life, rather than any concept or allegory.

“As work on the record progressed, I began to realize that the musical journey was a direct reflection of my most hard-to-quantify life experiences.” he explains. “Lava Diviner is about very real transformations in my being, so it’s a true story in that sense… I always imagined my first album being like a volcano, with years of pent-up emotion and musical ideas bubbling up to a cathartic release. So, I always knew that symbolism would end up being a part of my first full-length.”

The volcanic sense of release is palpable. Lava Diviner (Truestory) easily moves past stale tropes of beat-based music, and brings to life a fully-realized, album-length outpouring of profound human emotion.

BOTANY "Quatic"

From the Moonshine EP, available December 10, 2021 on Western Vinyl
Pre-order https://smarturl.it/wibmmy

Nightlands - "Hymn To Me"

"Coastal" from Abram Shook's forthcoming solo debut Sun Marquee.

Abram Shook - "Coastal"

For the past eight years the duo of Rob Lowe and Michael Muller have nurtured and refined their creative partnership as the core members of the band Balmorhea.  Though their first album on Western Vinyl Rivers Arms (2008) garnered some remarkable press, their self-titled debut, recorded in 2006 and released in 2007 best captures the duo's unique magic as it first blossomed.  With no label, distributor, manager, publicist, or booking agent the duo quietly self-released their first recordings and started playing live shows. 

For these two Texans the release of their self-titled album was the beginning of a new trajectory in their lives.  They were young enough that their prefrontal cortexes were still developing, but old enough to tap into the ancient stories that coursed through their veins.  Though crudely recorded at home, those early songs display all of the key characteristics and emotional scope that continue to define the duo's sound.  Now, seven years later Western Vinyl is honored to have the opportunity reissue the band's self-titled album, and make it available on vinyl for the first time ever.

In honor of this special reissue, the audio has been lovingly remastered, drawing out even more of the nuances…magnifying the sounds of Muller and Lowe's fingers on the instruments, and teasing out the textures that set these recordings apart from the rest of their catalog.  Simple and sincere, these songs and ambient sounds the duo captured in these recordings are strangely inviting.  Throughout the album the distant sounds of Texas grackles, the warm summer rain, the steady rhythm of crickets chirping, and creaking wooden stools, all seeping in to cradle the notes in a restrained din of primordial wonder. 

Attesa (Nils Frahm Rework)

From the album Saisons, available December 6, 2024 on Western Vinyl
Pre-Order / Listen https://lnk.to/alicehebborn

Saisons

Alice Hebborn - "Saisons - Mouvement 2"

From the album Way Through, available February 21, 2025 on Western Vinyl
Pre-order / stream: https://lnk.to/waythrough
Follow Cici Arthur:
https://www.instagram.com/josephshabason/
https://www.instagram.com/isthisthomas/
https://www.instagram.com/markerstarling/

Footage 
Gary Whitefield Coward

Restored & Digitised by 
John Romein, Lifetime Heritage Films
Darragh Amelia 

Courtesy of 
Mara Coward 

Video edited and directed by Nicholas Krgovich 

Song written by Chris A. Cummings
Produced by Joseph Shabason, Thom Gill and Chris A. Cummings
Recorded and mixed by Joseph Shabason at Studio Aytche
Vocal arrangement by Chris A. Cummings
String arrangement by Owen Pallett. Strings performed by Fames Skopje Orchestra, conducted by Sasho Tatarchevski

Chris A. Cummings: Vocals, Keys
Bram Gielen: Upright Bass
Thom Gill: Piano, Synth
Phil Melanson: Drums, Percussion
Dorothea Paas: Vocals

Cici Arthur - "All So Incredible"

Cactus Lee - "Roll Maggie"

Cici Arthur - "Cartwheels For Coins"

Elskavon - "How Cold"

Walt McClements - "Cloud Prints"

Rindert Lammers - "Thank You Kirin Kiki"

Texada

Elori Saxl - "It Will Be Gone"

From the album Layers of Afternoon, Available June 13, 2025 on Western Vinyl
Pre-order / Listen https://lnk.to/layersofafternoon

Goldmund - "Darnley"

Michael A. Muller - "This Is The Water And This Is The Well"

From the album Glider on Western Vinyl
iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/glider/id985322600
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Glider-Heather-Woods-Broderick/dp/B00W4Y7EB8
WV: http://westernvinyl.com/shop/wv135.php

Tracked live at Type Foundry recording studio in Portland, OR with Peter Broderick on drums and Dave Depper on bass

Heather Woods Broderick excels at distilling her experiences into a soulful melancholy that's enduring both for it's intimate relatable moments and its persistent sense of mystery. Her uncanny ear for evocative production and gorgeous vocal harmonies serves her well on her new album Glider. Throughout the album, the rich dreamlike atmospheres she creates hint at a darkness looming on the horizon, while the singularity of her ethereal voice always seems to linger long after the music has stopped.

Heather Woods Broderick:
Artist Page http://westernvinyl.com/artists/heather-woods-broderick.php
Website http://heatherwoodsbroderick.com/
Twitter https://twitter.com/_H_W_B_
Instagram https://instagram.com/woodsbroderick/

LIVE DATES:
5/26/15 - Holocene - Portland, OR
5/27/15 - The Tractor Tavern - Seattle, WA
5/30/15 - Turf Club - St Paul, MN
5/31/15 - Schubas - Chicago, IL
6/1/15 - The Drake - Toronto, Canada
6/2/15 - Le Divan Orange - Montreal, Canada

Heather Woods Broderick - Wyoming

Bandcamp

WV283 - Goldmund - Before I Sleep

Diane Coffee, 'Everybody's a Good Dog' out September 4th on Western Vinyl

Pre-order the album now:
iTunes: hyperurl.co/khcay4
Amazon: amzn.com/B00YW5R4M6
WV: http://westernvinyl.com/shop/wv132.php

Diane Coffee
Artist Page http://westernvinyl.com/artists/diane-coffee.php
Website http://www.dianecoffee.com/
Facebook http://www.facebook.com/dianecoffeeband
Twitter http://twitter.com/dianecoffee1
Instagram http://instagram.com/shaunfleming/

TOUR DATES:
Sep 04	Turf Club	St Paul, MN
Sep 15	Baby's All Right	New York, NY
Sep 16	Spirit	Pittsburgh, PA
Sep 17	Happy Dog	Cleveland, OH
Sep 18	Rumba Cafe	Columbus, OH
Sep 19	Dayton Music Fest	Dayton, OH
Sep 23	Billiken Club	Saint Louis, MO
Sep 26	The Bishop	Bloomington, IA
Sep 27	Pygmalion Festival	Champaign, IL
Oct 03	Terminal West	Atlanta, GA
Oct 05	Trocadero Theatre	Philadelphia, PA
Oct 06	9:30 Club	Washington, DC
Oct 07	Bowery Ballroom	New York, NY
Oct 08	Bowery Ballroom	New York, NY
Oct 10	Paradise	Boston, MA
Oct 11	3S Artspace	Portsmouth, NH
Oct 13	Danforth Hall	Toronto, Canada
Oct 15	St. Andrew's Hall	Detroit, MI
Oct 16	House of Blues	Chicago, IL
Oct 21	Mercy Lounge	Nashville, TN
Oct 22	Deluxe, Old National Centre	Indianapolis, IN
Oct 23	Bell's Eccentric Cafe	Kalamazoo, MI
Oct 24	Wooly's	Des Moines, IA
Oct 25	Majestic Theater	Madison, WI
Oct 26	The Waiting Room Lounge	Omaha, NE
Oct 27	The Record Bar	Kansas City, MO
Oct 28	Bluebird Theater	Denver, CO
Oct 29	The Pub Station	Billings, MT
Oct 30	Stage 112	Missoula, MT
Oct 31	Neptune Theatre	Seattle, WA
Nov 01	Wonder Ballroom	Portland, OR
Nov 02	Great American Music Hall	San Francisco, CA
Nov 03	The Catalyst	Santa Cruz, CA
Nov 04	The Regent Theater	Los Angeles, CA
Nov 05	Irenic	San Diego, CA
Nov 06	The Crescent Ballroom	Phoenix, AZ
Nov 07	Night of the Living Fest	Tucson, AZ
Nov 08	Tricky Falls	El Paso, TX
Nov 09	Paper Tiger	San Antonio, TX
Nov 10	Mohawk	Austin, TX
Nov 11	Howlin' Wolf	New Orleans, LA
Nov 13	529	Atlanta, GA
Nov 14	Pinhook	Durham, NC

Diane Coffee - "Soon To Be, Won't To Be"

From the album Sometimes out November 13, 2015 on Western Vinyl.  Vinyl LP format will be out in 2016.

CD/LP http://westernvinyl.com/shop/wv138
iTunes hyperurl.co/d3h29c
Amazon hyperurl.co/56ffvu

Golmund:
Label page http://westernvinyl.com/artists/goldmund
Twitter https://twitter.com/Goldmund
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/keith.kenniff
Instagram https://instagram.com/kenniffs/
Artist site http://www.unseen-music.com/

Raised in the rural town of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Keith Kenniff aka Goldmund started playing piano at age 20, while studying percussion at Boston’s Berklee College of Music.  Though he may not be a household name, Kenniff's evocative, distinctly American music has become quietly ubiquitous in the past few years, often appearing on NPR, in films, on TV, and in ads for Apple, Facebook, and Google among others.  As an artist who spends a great deal of his time producing music for others, it might be surprising to find out that when he has the opportunity to relax and re-center himself, he often chooses to produce music for himself.  Recorded over the course of three years, the material on his new album Sometimes functions as a journal, documenting brief moments in Kenniff's day when he could turn to the piano as a source of solace and unending creative possibilities.  Kenniff wrote and recorded everything on the album with the exception of the track "A Word I Give", which is a collaboration with preeminent Japanese pianist Ryuichi Sakamoto, who once described Goldmund's music as “…so, so, so beautiful…”.  

Kenniff's pseudonym is taken from the Herman Hesse novel Narcissus and Goldmund in which the Goldmund character leaves the cloister where he was living and studying in search of meaning for his life.  The story resonated with Kenniff when he was searching for a moniker to represent his solo piano work, "I think the way I approached the piano was in the same way: impulsive—searching and feeling things out in the dark."  On Sometimes he continues his explorations in the dark; each of the album's 17 pieces were improvised, and recorded in one or two takes, often late at night, after work-for-hire was finished, and the kids were in bed.  In an interview with NPR's Weekend Edition Keith Kenniff discussed his appreciation of Civil War era music, and it's ability to covey "…so much story in so few notes."  Similarly, these improvisations manage to be richly evocative despite their technical and compositional simplicity, using subtle details and dynamics to express what might otherwise be inexpressible.  

Throughout Sometimes, Kenniff fully employs the wabi-sabi aesthetic that has always defined Goldmund recordings.  "I like mistakes, I like when things don't go perfectly. I do have a tendency to want for things to be perfect and precise, but I have to also realize that a lot of things I like about music and art are very rough and impulsive, the slight imperfections that give something or someone a unique voice," says Kenniff.  He goes on to explain that these pieces served as a way for him to "step outside of whatever I was doing and return back to a place of discovery very much like when I first started playing."  As we follow him on his path of discovery, we get a glimpse into the world of a young man expressing his myriad feelings and experiences with honesty, and inherently imperfect gestures, which is part of what makes them so relatable and powerful — the local, for a few moments, resonating with the universal. 

Goldmund - "Sometimes"

From the album EARS released April 1st 2016 on Western Vinyl

iTunes: http://hyperurl.co/gz5pqt
Bandcamp: http://hyperurl.co/vo3n6n
Amazon: http://hyperurl.co/qypau1
WV: http://westernvinyl.com/shop/wv145

Artist Page http://westernvinyl.com/artists/kaitlyn-aurelia-smith
Website http://kaitlynaureliasmith.com/
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/kaitlynaurelia/
Twitter https://twitter.com/kaitlynaurelia
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/kaitlynaurelia/

TOUR DATES
April 	28 - Fayetteville, AR - George’s Majestic Lounge w/ Animal Collective
April 	29 - Austin, TX - Levitation
May 	01 - Tulsa, OK - Cains Ballroom w/ Animal Collective
May 	03 - St. Louis, MO - Pageant - St Louis, MO w/ Animal Collective
May 	04 - Royal Oak, MI - Royal Oak Music Theatre w/ Animal Collective
May 	06 - Nashville, TN - Marathon Music Works w/ Animal Collective
May 	07 - Atlanta, GA - Buckhead Theatre w/ Animal Collective
May 	08 - Asheville, NC - Orange Peel w/ Animal Collective
May 	10 - Washington, DC - 9:30 Club w/ Animal Collective
May 	13 - Wilmington, DE - World Café Live at The Queen w/ Animal Collective
May 	14 - Sayreville, NJ - Starland Ballroom - w/ Animal Collective

Listeners familiar with Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith's previous album Euclid (an album that prompted Dazed to call her "…one of the most pioneering musicians in the world.") will no doubt notice her heavier use of vocals on her new album EARS.  On all but one song, her gently ecstatic swells of vocals emerge to soar over a dense jungle of synths and woodwinds.

After initially composing on a Buchla analog synth, she wrote arrangements for a woodwind quintet, added vocals, and further refined the pieces with granular synthesis techniques she developed in her sound design work (she contributed sound design to Panda Bear's "Boys Latin" video, and handled sound design and original compositions for Brasilia co-written by and starring Reggie Watts).   

Kinetic arpeggios of synths pulse, often buoying her graceful vocal mantras, while woodwinds breathe and flutter, emulating the wildlife Smith observed while growing up on the West Coast (she even studied recordings of slowed down bird calls prior to composing these pieces).   Though some of her gestures echo the musical tropes used by early minimalist composers, the world she creates on EARS is uniquely hypnotic and full of life, not unlike Miyzaki's film Nausicaä, which she cites as an inspiration.

Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith - "Existence In The Unfurling"

Title track from Joseph Shabason's debut Aytche available August 25th from Western Vinyl

Pre-Order Aytche:
Bandcamp https://josephshabason.bandcamp.com
iTunes https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/aytche/id1245245891?ls=1&app=itunes
WV http://westernvinyl.com/shop/wv165

Joseph Shabason
Twitter https://twitter.com/JosephShabason
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/josephshabason/

Saxophonist and composer Joseph Shabason’s debut Aytche builds a bridge off of the precipice his forbears established, skirting jazz, ambient, and even new age with the same deliberate genre-ambiguity that made their work so interesting.

Aytche is a document of exploration both inward and outward. Every step taken in sound-design mirrors a stride in emotionality, as Shabason employs a variety of effect pedals to coax rich moody textures from his instrument.  He explains, "I feel like robbing the sax of the ability to shred by effecting it and turning it into a dense chordal instrument really helps the instrument become something that it's not usually known for."  Aytche deals with themes of degenerative illness and assisted suicide with eloquence that instrumental music rarely achieves regarding any subject, much less such difficult ones.

Album highlight “Westmeath” approaches Aytche’s subject of inspiration head-on. Here, the album’s only verbalization appears in the form of an interview with a man discussing his father’s trauma and eventual suicide after surviving the holocaust.  Though we only hear a few obscured words and phrases from the interview, the impact is powerful.  For Shabason, whose grandparents survived the holocaust, this selection is anything but frivolous.

Aytche

Joseph Shabason - "Aytche"

Outtake from the album Blast Off Through the Wicker available July 14, 2017 on Western Vinyl

Pre-Order
Bandcamp https://artfeynman.bandcamp.com/album/blast-off-through-the-wicker
iTunes http://hyperurl.co/a49jo3
WV http://westernvinyl.com/shop/wv162

ART FEYNMAN
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/artfeynman/
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/artfeynman/

Blast Off Through the Wicker documents Art Feynman looking for life in the lifeless, questioning what it means to be living.  There is a calm, disciplined pocket to be felt in everything Feynman does; krautrock slink, staccato bounce, and pentatonic bursts of Nigerian Highlife fuzz pour on the temporal canvas with unquestionable ease, never falling in the wrong place. Even more admirable is, that his “canvas” is a four-track tape recorder, and that Blast Off features no loops or drum machines despite its aesthetically faithful motorik and afrobeat underpinnings.  Nowhere is this fact more surprising than on album standout “Slow Down” which pulses along infectiously with a crunchy backbeat, and deftly arpeggiating bass lines that are so locked-in that it would be hard to fault an unknowing ear for assuming the whole thing is tediously programmed.

There are gentler sides to Blast Off that conjure the spacey tenderness of Arthur Russell inventively and respectfully, without adopting their muse’s palette wholesale. In this regard Blast Off is an endearing collection of songs that capture the ear with warm-yet-clear cassette aesthetics and spot-on musicianship, both of which form an angle that points lovingly to Feynman’s deep and varied influences. Make no mistake-- this one truly is alive.

Blast Off Outtakes

Art Feynman - "The Shape You're In"

From the album Clear Language available September 22, 2017 from Western Vinyl

Pre-Order Clear Language:
Bandcamp https://balmorhea.bandcamp.com/album/clear-language
iTunes https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/clear-language/id1252681306?ls=1&app=itunes
WV http://westernvinyl.com/shop/wv150

Balmorhea
https://balmorheamusic.com/
https://www.facebook.com/balmorhea/
https://twitter.com/balmorheamusic
https://www.instagram.com/balmorheamusic/

A decade-plus on the road, near-constant musical output, and shifting creative priorities caused the revered Austin duo, comprised of multi-instrumentalists Rob Lowe and Michael Muller, to soberly assess the band’s future. What, in the form of Balmorhea, was there left to say? And did they have the energy to say it? 
 
Stranger, the group’s maximalist, genre-leaping full-length from 2012, had already seemed to trace the group’s farthest bounds. And, over the years, they’d worked with a roving cast of accomplished string and rhythm players to craft a glassy-eyed, sage-brushed, instrumental Americana that, while celebrated in The New Yorker, Pitchfork and The Atlantic, among myriad other press, and attracting the film, ad, and television worlds risked pigeonholing them for good. 

As they had in the beginning, in 2006, Muller and Lowe worked simply and with restraint, letting intuition guide them as they molded the 10 elegant, spacious gestures that comprise Clear Language.  A relaxed, clear-eyed sense of reflection flows gracefully through the album as these two old friends transmit unfettered meaning through simple sonic gestures that resonate with the cosmos as much as they echo the pulse of a human heart.

Clear Language

Balmorhea - "Clear Language"

From the album Blast Off Through the Wicker available July 14, 2017 on Western Vinyl

Bandcamp https://artfeynman.bandcamp.com/album/blast-off-through-the-wicker
iTunes http://hyperurl.co/a49jo3
WV http://westernvinyl.com/shop/wv162

ART FEYNMAN
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/artfeynman/
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/artfeynman/

Blast Off Through the Wicker documents Art Feynman looking for life in the lifeless, questioning what it means to be living.  There is a calm, disciplined pocket to be felt in everything Feynman does; krautrock slink, staccato bounce, and pentatonic bursts of Nigerian Highlife fuzz pour on the temporal canvas with unquestionable ease, never falling in the wrong place. Even more admirable is, that his “canvas” is a four-track tape recorder, and that Blast Off features no loops or drum machines despite its aesthetically faithful motorik and afrobeat underpinnings.  Nowhere is this fact more surprising than on album standout “Slow Down” which pulses along infectiously with a crunchy backbeat, and deftly arpeggiating bass lines that are so locked-in that it would be hard to fault an unknowing ear for assuming the whole thing is tediously programmed.

There are gentler sides to Blast Off that conjure the spacey tenderness of Arthur Russell inventively and respectfully, without adopting their muse’s palette wholesale. In this regard Blast Off is an endearing collection of songs that capture the ear with warm-yet-clear cassette aesthetics and spot-on musicianship, both of which form an angle that points lovingly to Feynman’s deep and varied influences. Make no mistake-- this one truly is alive.

Art Feynman - "Can't Stand It"

From the self-titled debut by Lean Year.  Available October 20, 2017 on Western Vinyl

Pre-Order the album:
Bandcamp https://leanyear.bandcamp.com/album/lean-year
iTunes http://hyperurl.co/q612za
WV http://westernvinyl.com/shop/wv152

Lean Year is the debut, self-titled record by Richmond, Virginia based singer Emilie Rex and filmmaker/musician Rick Alverson. What for Rex was a departure from the structured life of academia toward the uncertain contours of a creative field, for Alverson was a return to form. Having released 5 albums with his previous band Spokane, Alverson took a 10-year hiatus from music to write and direct feature films. These departures and approaches bring a transience and listlessness to the album, like a walk interrupted by both curiosity and caution. 

Equally informed by the minimalist folk music of Elizabeth Cotton, Karen Dalton, and Fred Neil; the tenuous, ambient, and orchestral works of Harold Budd, Brian Eno, and John Cale; the quietly pointed but tender songs of Nina Simone and Bessie Smith; and the baroque pop subversions of Love and The Left Banke—the inspirations for Lean Year are as varied as Rex and Alverson’s biographies. Their childhoods—framed respectively by New-Age ideology and antiquated Catholic Catechism; anarchist Montessori and cold, cloistered ice arenas; the chaotic, upheaval of divorce and the strange, obligatory qualities of life-long marriage—provide footing on uneven ground for the record’s dream-like, oblique observations. In the wake of these dynamic histories, the two leaned on music as a kind of secular spirituality. 

Rex and Alverson co-wrote the album over the course of a year at their home in Richmond, VA and recorded it in three sessions at the home studio of Chicago musician/engineer Erik Hall (In Tall Buildings, NOMO), who also performs on the record. Alverson and Hall co-produced the album’s ten tracks, drawing on both Hall's and Elliot Bergman’s (NOMO) arsenal of instruments. For Hall and Rex, this project was a reunion of sorts, the two having met as undergraduates in Ann Arbor at the University of Michigan over a decade before. Hall’s extensive vocabulary—ranging from jazz and pop to rock and afrobeat—informs his contributions to the record.

Alverson’s films [Entertainment (2015) and the cult-drama The Comedy (2012)] have premiered at Sundance, Locarno, Rotterdam and the Film Society of Lincoln Center among others venues and festivals worldwide. Rex left academia and her position as Indiana University's Assistant Director of Sustainability in 2014 to focus on music and pursue resilience writing and analysis as a consultant. This is her first record.

Lean Year - "Come and See"

Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith - "I Will Make Room For You (Four Tet Remix)"

From the Near Negative EP available December 15th, 2017 from Western Vinyl

"Monday Give Me Monday" showcases Art Feynman's signature grooves, krautrock slink, and staccato bounce, all captured on his trusty four-track cassette recorder.

Earlier this summer, Art Feynman released his debut full-length album Blast Off Through the Wicker and toured the US with Stereolab's Laetitia Sadier. Pitchfork describes him as "a cool purveyor of coked-out dub-kraut." Consequence of Sound calls his debut a "funky, psychedelic slice of afro-pop" and Tiny Mix Tapes regards it as an "analog masterpiece."

In 2018 Art Feynman will return with his sophomore LP that takes us even further into his motorik and afrobeat inspired world of sound.

Near Negative

Art Feynman - "Shelter"

From the album Warrior, available April 6, 2018 from Western Vinyl

Bandcamp: https://airwaves.bandcamp.com/album/warrior
iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/warrior/1337353378?ls=1&app=itunes
WV: http://westernvinyl.com/shop/wv167

The album cover for Warrior, the third full-length by Brooklyn-based band Air Waves, features a ominous, androgynous figure standing with a bicycle, wearing a gas mask adorned with a daisy.  The remarkable image was taken on April 22nd, 1970 at the inaugural Earth Day celebration in New York City by Nicole Schneit’s dad, Martin Schneit.  Forty-seven years later, artist Em Rooney hand-painted Schneit’s original black & white photo, resulting in an image that radiates with Warrior’s indefatigable spirit, strength, and love.

Like many queer women, Nicole Schneit is a warrior by necessity, fighting for basic rights, dignity, and acceptance.  Such determination in the face of hardship and injustice runs in Schneit’s family; her new album was inspired in part by her mom who was diagnosed with fallopian cancer last year.  As she explains, “The doctor told her she had a fifteen to twenty percent chance, and her response was ‘I’m going to get this mother fucker.’ So the title ‘Warrior’ and the song are about her. After chemotherapy,  surgery, and then more chemotherapy, all the cancer in her body has left and she's currently in remission. I feel like most of the people in my life, including myself, are warriors and have overcome obstacles that seemed impossible to defeat.”

The dignified fighter archetype referenced in the album’s title is explored on each of Warrior’s eleven pieces of bittersweet, empowering indie pop.  According to Schneit the song “Gay Bets”, written after the 2016 election is “about being gay and being proud and open. I was thinking about hate crimes spiking and the current state of the world. My friend Jennifer Moore, who sings on the track, was my partner a long time ago, so I felt like I was writing a fuck you to Trump, for trying to take away queer rights, women's rights, people's rights.”  The song “Tangerine” was inspired by the film of the same name in which two trans women try to make ends meet as prostitutes. This movie, a dark docu-comedy shot in the contrastingly sunny setting of L.A., reflects Schneit’s battle between identity and society via Brooklyn pop rock that swings between the pastel-tinged and the downright melancholic.

On the album’s gorgeous closer “Blue Fire,” (inspired by the Adrienne Rich poem "The Will to Change") Schneit equates her post-presidential-election anxiety to a flame that grows and recedes, as she pleads for herself and listeners to remain calm. Like its namesake, the track burns slowly and brightly into one of the most glowing points on the record, leaving the listener smiling with thoughtful hope.  Warrior’s highlights, and all of the unmissable, satisfying pieces that tie them together show Schneit’s perseverance and resilience through crumbling relationships, personal adversity, and the current political climate, all leading to her most powerful collection of songs to date. Understated, subtly sophisticated, and equally empowering and comforting, Warrior launches Air Waves above the apolitical complacency of too many of the group's contemporaries.  Schneit proudly declares her mission statement: “I want these songs to be heard by people in my queer community, but also by anyone that wants to feels strong, powerful, and included.”

Warrior

Air Waves - "Warrior" ft. Kevin Morby

LP and CD available from WV here: http://westernvinyl.com/shop/

JBM - "Forest"

JBM - "On Fire On A Tightrope"

From the album Anne.  Available November 16, 2018 from Western Vinyl.

Bandcamp https://josephshabason.bandcamp.com/album/anne
iTunes https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/anne/1427808233?ls=1&app=itunes
Spotify https://open.spotify.com/album/19FD6RN5K3xYFThAHM4fGy?si=0hUO0rFVQAigvSPTvJL_4w
WV http://westernvinyl.com/shop/wv182

Joseph Shabason
Twitter https://twitter.com/JosephShabason
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/josephshabason/
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/josephshabason

Anne, the second album By Toronto saxophonist and composer Joseph Shabason, is a tonal essay on degenerative illness. Delicately and compassionately woven with interviews of Shabason’s mother from whom the album takes its name, Anne finds its creator navigating a labyrinth of subtle and tragic emotions arising from his mother's struggle with Parkinson’s disease. Across the nine vivid postcards of jazz-laden ambience that comprise the album, Shabason unwraps these difficult themes with great care and focus revealing the unseen aspects of degenerative diseases that force us to re-examine common notions of self, identity, and mortality. 

Shabason’s uncanny ability to manoeuvre through such microscopic feelings is mirrored by his capacity to execute a similar tightrope-walk through musical genres. His music occupies a specific space that is as palpable as it is difficult to pin labels to. On Anne’s second track “Deep Dark Divide” rays of effected saxophone shine behind clouds of digital synthesizer that echoes the sound of jazz in the late 80s, but with a Jon Hassell-esque depth of sensibility that consciously subverts the stylistic inoffensiveness of that era. There is detail and idiosyncrasy beneath Shabason’s dawn-of-the-CD-era sheen that elevates the album far beyond a mere aesthetic exercise.

Still, the sounds on Anne are not so experimentally opaque as to stand in the way of the album’s through-line of sincerity and emotionality. When dissonance is employed it is punctual and meaningful, like on album-middler “Fred and Lil” where a six-minute cascade of breathy textures builds suddenly to an agitated growl, only to abruptly give way to Anne Shabason speaking intimately about her relationship to her own parents. Snippets of such conversations see her taking on something like a narrator role across Anne while the sound of her voice itself is sometimes effected to become a musical texture entwined into the fabric of the songs without always being present or audible.  The subsequent piece “Toh Koh” then drifts into playful disorientation as a lone female voice echoes the two syllables of the title, recalling the vocal techniques of composer Joan La Barbara, or even the light-hearted mantras of Lucky Dragons. From here the album veers back onto its aesthetic thoroughfare with “November” where Shabason lays muted brass textures atop a wavepool of electric chords provided by none other than the ambient cult-hero Gigi Masin, one of Anne’s many integral collaborators.

The serene tragedy of the album distils itself gracefully into the ironically titled album closer “Treat it Like a Wine Bar” wherein flutters of piano and mournfully whispered woodwinds seem to evaporate particle by delicate particle, leaving the listener with a faint emotional afterglow like a dream upon waking. There is a corollary to be drawn here with what it must be like to feel one’s own mind and body drift away slowly until nothing remains, while the collection of memories and abilities that we use to denote the “self” softens into eternity. On Anne, it is precisely this fragile exchange of tranquillity and anguish that Joseph Shabason has proven his singular ability to articulate.

Anne

Joseph Shabason - "Forest Run"

From the album With Voices available January 18, 2019 from Western Vinyl.

Bandcamp https://machinefabriek.bandcamp.com/album/with-voices-2
iTunes hyperurl.co/806yif
Spotify http://open.spotify.com/album/3dDRn42zqNUv4vITI2Z3CU
WV http://westernvinyl.com/shop/wv185

With Voices is the newest recording by Dutch composer Rutger Zuydervelt under the moniker Machinefabriek. True to its title, the album’s eight pieces exhibit Zuydervelt’s use of cassette recorders, tone generators, radios, synths, and other hifi curio to construct bewildering aural architecture around vocal contributions from Peter Broderick, Marissa Nadler, Richard Youngs, Chantal Acda, Terence Hannum (of Locrian) and others. These human voices are featured as musical instruments rather than mere vehicles of lyrical content, resulting in a sub-linguistic mosaic of primordially stirring moods.

The initial spark of With Voices was kindled while Zuydervelt was in Taipei creating music for a dance company. In the final days of his trip, a dancer named Wei-Yun Chen caught Zuydervelt’s ear with an instagram video featuring a voice that turned out to be Wei-Yun’s own (she would end up on the album’s seventh movement, a piece that features dissected bits of Taiwanese poetry amid low-pitched murmurs and whispering fogbanks of static). The encounter stirred Zuydervelt to create a single 35 minute soundscape upon which each vocalist on With Voices was encouraged to improvise, be it talking, reading, singing, or wordless, guttural intoning. Such vocal smatterings were then used to determine how the other tonal elements should be arranged, dictating where each musical passage would ultimately lead. “The idea was for everyone to just do what came naturally” he recalls, “the element of unpredictability was important to me.” 

Indicative of this approach “III” (the tracks are simply titled with Roman numerals) slowly winds like ivy through staccato phrases spoken by Zuydervelt’s peer Peter Broderick, whose micro-incantations skip along mechanically only to telescope into monastic grandeur at the track’s midpoint; the vibrations of vocal cords are often stretched to a seismic hum to form the heavy implements in Zuydervelt’s toolkit. On “V”, tape recordings of Berlin electronic artist Zero Years Kid (aka Joachim Badenhorst) sputter with their own apparent intelligence like a faulty AI attempting to interpret reels of human speech in some ruinous library of the distant future. Finally, a siren-like Marissa Nadler leads the suite to its lullabic endpoint with overlapping wisps of harmony devoid of accompaniment ending the album on an angelic note.  

In these moments, like much of With Voices, warm-blooded arteries seem to have grown around bits of well-designed artifice to form something warmly alien, soberly futuristic, and inherently satisfying. More than simply an album of collaborative features, With Voices is a mutating collage of modern minimalism that challenges as often as it comforts. There is an alchemical, metallurgical quality that arises from Zuydervelt’s unique way of merging humanness with abstraction, harshness with beauty, and unintelligibility with familiarity on what may be the most affecting Machinefabriek release to date.

Machinefabriek - "VIII (with Marissa Nadler)"

From the full-length album Violinvocations available February 15, 2019 on Western Vinyl.

Bandcamp: https://hughmarsh.bandcamp.com/album/violinvocations
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/570vX9XAte8zLNyvZk5njq
iTunes: hyperurl.co/mcjsa3
WV: http://westernvinyl.com/shop/wv178

HUGH MARSH
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/hug_the_mod/
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/Hugh-Marsh-95937533059/
Twitter https://twitter.com/hug_the_mod

Even if you’ve never heard of Hugh Marsh you’ve almost certainly heard the sound of his violin. He’s a featured player on soundtracks by Hans Zimmer and Harry Gregson-Williams, was nominated for a Juno award, recorded with Iggy Pop and The Stooges, Bruce Cockburn, and was in the backing band for Bauhaus’ Peter Murphy, all a tiny fraction of his decades-long list of credits. The latest addition to that list is Marsh’s own Violinvocations, an LP recorded while Marsh lived in L.A. with friend, mentor, and fellow soundbender Jon Hassell.

Despite the album’s title, one would be hard-pressed to say with certainty whether violin was even involved in this album without being told so ahead of time. In one moment a ghost is heard weeping into a dictaphone; a digitized anime character is nervously chattering in the next; and in still another, jagged sheets of distortion avalanche toward the listener beneath auroric swells of harmony. It’s the kind of sound design that requires a dedicated attempt by any Oneohtrixian laptop composer, only it’s all being generated by Marsh’s violin and his curious cabinet of effects pedals often in just one take.

Violinvocations

Hugh Marsh - "She Will"

From the Anne EP, available May 10th on Western Vinyl.

Bandcamp https://josephshabason.bandcamp.com/album/anne-ep-2
iTunes https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/anne-ep/1454522928?ls=1&app=itunes
Apple Music https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/anne-ep/1454522928?ls=1
Spotify http://open.spotify.com/track/6135H26IGiHfqZr6ZiAw2I
Tidal listen.tidal.com/track/104905822

The Anne EP is the afterword to Joseph Shabason’s acclaimed 2018 harmonic suite Anne through which he examined and processed his mother’s struggle with Parkinson’s disease.  Employing a small supporting cast that includes vocalist Dan Bejar (Destroyer) and guitarist Thomas Gill (Owen Pallett), Anne EP spotlights the Toronto saxophonist as he builds empathic tropospheres of woodwinds and synthesizers, deepening the sentiment established by the EP's companion album, which was released in November 2018.  The detail and idiosyncrasy beneath the material's dawn-of-the-CD-era sheen, elevates Shabason's work far beyond mere aesthetic exercise, cementing jazz, ambient sound design, and new age revivalism into a timely new genre all his own.

Anne EP

Joseph Shabason - "1517"

The Anne EP is the afterword to Joseph Shabason’s acclaimed 2018 full-length Anne through which he examined and processed his mother’s struggle with Parkinson’s disease.  Employing a small supporting cast that includes vocalist Dan Bejar (Destroyer) and guitarist Thomas Gill (Owen Pallett), Anne EP spotlights the Toronto saxophonist as he builds empathic tropospheres of woodwinds and synthesizers, deepening the sentiment established by the EP's companion album, which was released in November 2018.  The detail and idiosyncrasy beneath the material's dawn-of-the-CD-era sheen, elevates Shabason's work far beyond mere aesthetic exercise, cementing jazz, ambient sound design, and new age revivalism into a timely new genre all his own.

Tour with Jessica Pratt:
May-09-Minneapolis, MN Cedar Cultural Center
May-10-Chicago, IL Sleeping Village
May-11-Pittsburgh, PA The Warhol
May-12-Toronto, ON The Garrison
May-13-Montreal, QC La Sala Rossa
May-15-Boston, MA Great Scott
May-16-Philadelphia, PA Boot & Saddle
May-17-Washington, DC Miracle Theatre
May-19-Brooklyn, NY Park Church Co-Op

Joseph Shabason - "Broken Hearted Kota"

An independent record label based in Austin, TX.

Western Vinyl

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