Category Archives: UPDATE

Troller – ‘Graphic’ (HD035)
Reemerging from a long and self-defining stint in the studio, Austin’s darkwave metal trio Troller returns with their pleasurably harsh second LP, Graphic. Despite the underground success of the critically acclaimed 2012 self-titled debut, Graphic manages to eclipse the broad appeal of the first record’s addictively ominous pop anthems. Troller’s focus on layered composition and biting sound design has resulted in a highly developed work that embodies the band’s unique raw form while raising the benchmark on fidelity and experimentation. Graphic arrives perfectly unhinged and hideously sophisticated, reinterpreting familiar elements from their debut LP, and propelling the trio’s provocative sensibilities explicitly further. Troller formed in 2010 out of Austin’s dense electronic and experimental scene and played a key role in the founding of Holodeck Records. The trio’s synthesizer and drum machine half-time rhythms impeccably complement bassist and vocalist Amber Goers’ heavy riffing and charismatically tortured voice. From the onset, Troller‘s compelling live performances immediately distinguished them as a promising up-and-coming project yet to reach its peak. After touring extensively and selling out of multiple pressings of LPs, CDs and cassettes of the self titled, Troller wholly poured themselves into studio sessions for Graphic, crafting a professional and fully realized final piece. Aspects of Graphic are often alien and cold, most notably epitomized by the atonal chord progressions and walls of impenetrable feedback on the album’s title track and the song “Sundowner.” Although “Storm Maker” soothes the emotional palette with its soft tones and bittersweet melodies, the natural tension of Goers’ captivating vocal delivery is never completely forgiving. This internal duality is a recurring trope throughout all ten of Graphic’s gorgeously dark tracks, unapologetically oscillating between irresistible hooks and unmitigated chaos. Troller’s guttural bass tones, warm synthesizer arpeggios, and booming sub hits are catchy yet gritty, asserting a balanced and individual take on modern synth pop. Haunting and loosely structured interludes are scattered throughout the track list, making this collection of songs a complete work. Graphic’s harmony and clarity are in large part due to the amazing work of Holodeck’s in-house production master and solo artist Dylan Cameron, who spearheaded the recording process at Stassney Studios in Austin with additional assistance from S U R V I V E’s Michael Stein and Silk Rodeo’s Michael McCay. Graphic is a visceral expression of the beauty within destruction. For those who lauded the first album’s cathartic relief and have thirsted for another dose of Troller’s anesthetic euphoria: Graphic is here.

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DBA146D Slowcoach – ‘distance makes the heart grow fondelier’ single-sided 12″ $10
The first release from Slowcoach since 2002! Appearing on one of Deathbomb Arc’s very first compilations, our tribute to No LImit Records, we are honored to provide exclusive distribution for this rare appearance by one of our favorite Californian rock groups – still bringing syruped slow post punk just barely dipped in big melody. Extremely limited pressing of just 30 copies! Single-sided 12″ vinyl. ALL purchases also come with a free copy of Slowcoach’s debut cd ‘new strategies are necessary, this is not solid ground’ AND a 7″ of their side-project ‘The Bitters’!!! [while supplies last]

DBA156 Ed Balloon – ‘No Smoking’ CD $7
“I’m like a balloon. I float over b.s.” …with this statement, Ed Balloon elegantly sums up the power in his approach to song crafting. Through simplicity he finds honesty. Through honesty he creates joy and an undeniable energy for dance. There is no unnecessary sheen here. Nothing said that does not need to be said. Melodies are allowed to pop forth with a rawness that breathes life in a manner very different than the typical club track. Both the lyrics the arrangements only say what need to be said, and nothing more. The sound is light, just like a balloon. It is unafraid to be vulnerable. That is the power of Ed Balloon. American born and of Nigerian descent, Ed Balloon is a long time resident of Boston. His hometown, heritage, and upbringing in music all play important roles in developing the Ed Balloon sound. It is his passion for honesty and dreams of perfection that refine his diverse background into something simple, something celebratory. His music is fun, but without being naive. There is a deep sense of cool infused through the joy. Pro-pressed cd in eco-friendly full color wallet-style packaging.

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‘Heavy on th’ GUNK Vol. 1′ CS $10
Lo-fi gunk and crud covered gems from Florida up to New England. East Coast garbage (rock) is beautiful. 9 track pro-printed & packaged cassette compilation encased in a cassingle o-card sleeve. Features: Transit Mother, Ripchord Johnson, Russian Magnets, Suicide Magnets, Fat Youth, Haves & Thirds, Local Teen, Kang Bucket and Human Adult Band. Only 60 copies made.

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Hanging Tree Algorithm – ‘Lunar’ CS
Lunar is the second album from young electronic musician Hanging Tree Algorithm. The album is full of fuzzy lo-fi hip hop instrumentals, from the dusty boom bap opener to the climactic trap influenced closer. Available for free download now, cassettes coming soon.

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THE COSMIC DEAD – ‘Rainbowhead’ LP
The Cosmic Dead return with their first full length album since 2014’s Easterfaust. For the uninitiated The Cosmic Dead are a quartet from Glasgow, Scotland, making some of the best raging freak out psych right now. ‘Rainbowhead’ is a brand new LP, featuring four tracks of spaced out, heavy psych formed from insane chugging bass, trippy synth blasts, krautrock infused metallic guitar riffin’ and furious cascading drum cycles. The band’s constant positive vibes have led to them touring all over the UK and Europe, playing the prestigious Liverpool Psych Fest and the band are due to play Psycho Festival in Las Vegas in August alongside Sleep, Candlemass, Yob, Mudhoney, Death and more. ‘Rainbowhead’ follows records on Cardinal Fuzz, Evil Hoodoo, Who Do You Trust?, Sound of Cobra and some of the best underground labels around. The band said: “A few days before appearing at Cry Parrot’s ‘Music Is The Music Language’ Festival in Glasgow, The Cosmic Dead journeyed north to a remote cottage near Kyle of Lochalsh in the Highlands of Scotland. Isolated from technology and with the help of focaccia aficionado & sound engineer Luigi Pasquini, we recorded sounds wrought from the textures and folds of the surrounding landscape clasping its craggy links to the Inner Sea. A place we call Rainbowhead.” Pressing info: 200 copies on green / cream swirl vinyl available exclusively from Blackest Rainbow brand new retail shop in Sheffeld / website, Bear Tree Records. 900 copies on coke bottle clear vinyl available worldwide.

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ALIZTER JAMES – ‘Old Sounds, New Day’
Alizter James releases a new EP of beats and soundadelica for all to ingest, hooray! AJ perfected danceable thumps and not your “everyday” samples (Grateful Dead, Mr. Mom, Tommy Wiseau, etc.) this past Dec./Jan. to communicate a snapshot of the times as he’s living them. Stream & Download free.

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People with Bodies $5
People with Bodies’ self titled EP is the Reno band’s first release and focuses heavily on the theme of “home” vs. “away”. The first pressing is on light blue cassette with an interchangeable color J-card and includes an interview with noted environmental writer, Mike Branch, plus soundbites and natural sounds from a trip the duo took to South America. Before the final song, New Border, a clip can be heard of the Peruvian president giving a speech about a border dispute with Chile – a source of inspiration for the song, citing a shift in border between reality and romanticism.

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STEVEN R SMITH + DIRK SERRIES – ‘Hymnal’ C40
Multi-instrumentalist Steven R. Smith and veteran experimentalist Dirk Serries teamed up for a collaborative album that is as familiar as it is different from their individual sonic endeavors. Made with electric guitars, fender rhodes, organs and all various types of bowed instruments, this album is about organic evolution. Each ‘mantra’ constructed from the directness of each instrument, meticulously layered against each other, creating the drone. Four long-form pieces; four harmonic themes that excel in their own beautiful organic progress over time.

ADAM BASANTA – ‘A Room Listening To Itself’ C50
Adam Basanta is a Montreal-based sound artist and experimental music composer. His sound installations investigate intersections between sound reproduction, consumer technologies and the activity of listening.

In A Room Listening to Itself, the artist produced sound exclusively through amplification techniques which make audible the physical relationships between microphones and reclaimed speaker cones within a gallery’s surrounding acoustic environment.
 In this work, eight iconic SM58 microphones and eight reclaimed speaker cones are dispersed throughout the gallery space, arranged in a manner which produces complex computer-controlled feedback and recursive amplification networks. Using these acoustic phenomena, the gallery space is turned into a giant resonator that amplifies acoustic space as a product of spatial relationships. Custom-built software algorithms constantly re-calibrate the room to ever-changing acoustic situations, aiming for a sonic equilibrium that remains out of reach.
The result is an ever-changing spatial composition encompassing ambient passages, resonant chords, and rhythmic activities – created solely using feedback – through which gallery visitors can navigate.

CATERINA BARBIERI – ‘Vertical’ C50
** 2016 Repress ** Vertical is Caterina Barbieri’s debut album and it was composed for vocals and Buchla 200 modular synthesizer. Vertical takes a meditative approach to primary waveforms and the polyrhythm of harmonics, stretching the boundaries between drone, minimalism and techno in multichannel systems. This minimalistic focus arises from the polyrhythmic and stratigraphic potential of voltage-controlled sequencer

LARSEN – ‘Play’ LP
10 year anniversary pressing. We’ve got very limited stock on white and black vinyl. As an excercise preceding the writing of Play, Larsen spent a lot of time as a group improvising around some of their favorite melodies from Autechre albums. This experimental excercise slowly evolved into song writing and suddenly songs were coming out of the air with Autecherian melodies filtered through climactic Larsen arrangements. Play is a collection of Larsen “suites” where hints of Autechre drift as inspiring ghosts rather than constituent matter. According to Larsen, they attempted to create curvilinear, not angular, interpretations of these melodies in an electric way, not an electronic way, with the eclectic instrumentation regular in Larsen’s arrangement. As they planned, they failed perfectly at covering Autechre creating a hauntingly erruptive and droned out Larsen masterpiece in the process.

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Thousand Foot Whale Claw – ‘Cosmic Winds’
Thousand Foot Whale Claw, an Austin 4 piece, have masterfully wrangled their mountain of synths and guitars on stage for a couple of years now. With a lineup including members of Pure X and Troller, TFWC have cut their own path, playing diverse sets of delicate minimalism to krauty trance to full-spectrum drone. They have recently released a cassette, Lost in Those Dunes, on their own Holodeck Records imprint. Upcoming release Cosmic Winds on Constellation Tatsu takes space rock to the next level.

Havenaire – ‘Tremolo’
TREMOLO is the debut release from Havenaire, the Stockholm based musician John Roger Olsson. With his new alias, he is working with slow moving atmospheric melodies and shoegazing sonics.The most vital component to the layered sound of Tremolo is the classic vintage synth Roland Juno-106 which is also the primary source of sound. Mixed with Moog SubPhatty, effect drenched upright piano and white noise. The short beautiful transparent opener ’Monsters’ leads the way to the massive two-part album centerpiece ’Holy Hell’, which swells like waves of sound for almost 12 minutes. Midway ’Drone 1’ crackles slowly forward like rain on power lines. ’Holy Hell (Reprise)’ closes the album with its fiery tremolo, showering the dark mood with a glimpse of hope. The Tremolo sessions took place during 2010-2015 at Olsson’s own Möre Studio and his home studio in the Stockholm suburb Bagarmossen.

Chihei Hatakeyama – ‘You’re still in it’
Chihei Hatakeyama is an electronic music artist from Tokyo, Japan. He released his first full-length album, Minima Moralia on Kranky Records in 2006. Hatakeyama’s music is characteristically very slow, composed by repeatedly processing guitars, pianos, and vibraphones on a laptop. The result is a mix of droning chords and sparse single instruments rising above the mix. His music may be classified as either post-ambient experimental music or new-age music. i have been starting this “You’re still in it” at June 2015. June in japan is rainy season. i hardly like this season. i have done improvisation by electric guitar with my effect system. i have felt presence people who do not meet out side my house in rain. “You’re still in it” was given this album title. – Chihei Hatakeyama

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PTU ‎– ‘Silhouette Tapes #2’ CS €5
White, high-quality cassette with imprinted PTU logos; two-side, two-flap inlay, black box and a soft cover made of x-ray pics (with the current number). PTU is a musical duo featuring Kamil EA and Alina Izolenta whose records were released on the Austrian label Laton and the Moscow-based record label Incompetence Records with a third release now coming up on the German cassette label Silhouette Tapes. PTU’s music could be characterized as a blend of related genres; an abstract joint where bass music meets techno with this mixture being spiced up with break beats, acid lines, pads, futuristic concepts and sounds.

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