Cliffsides – ‘Headspace’ 2xC60 $14(USA)/$19(Canada)/$23(World)
Your eyes do not deceive you. This is two full hours of brand new Cliffsides material. After relocating to the Bay Area in 2013, Ryan McGill plunged head first into his solo endeavor and what he came up with is the massive and sprawling achievement that is Headspace. Divided into two distinct sets, “The Fool” features brand new synth work and “The Universe” is made up of material created through sampling various found cassettes and field recordings – a style that began to take shape on last year’s Spirit in the Mountain Temple cassette on Hooker Vision. Thematically, the release contrasts the notions of conscious and unconscious thought, logic and dreams, reason and desire, as well as the symbiotic and mutually destructive interactions between man and universe. Sonically, it’s everything you want from new Cliffsides and then some. Stunning melodic sequences and progressions segue into ultra-deep drones and abstract passages, while angelic voices and strangely familiar orchestrations rise up from magnetic spools. Altogether, this is a thoroughly fascinating and epic double dose you’ll want to take again and again. Pro-dubbed and imprinted chrome cassettes, featuring designs by Caroline Teagle. Comes with a free digital download. Edition of 100.
Sparkling Wide Pressure – ‘Dream of Windows’ C40 $8(USA)/$12(Canada)/$15 (World)
Sparkling Wide Pressure makes a welcome return to the label. In the three years that have passed since we released Sing What You Remind Me Of, creative powerhouse Frank Baugh’s solo project has remained consistently engaging on an almost unbelievable level. Dream of Windows features further excavations into his singular style, which blends the warmth of psychedelic pop with the spaciousness, dissonance, and free-form nature of experimental music. Cascades of acoustic and electric guitar picking meet otherworldly keyboard melodies, confounding cassette playbacks, and low-fi drum machine beats. Baugh’s voice regularly seeps into the mix like a mournful ghost singing arcane poetry as he plays with vocal manipulations and syncopation in even more off-kilter ways than usual. Altogether, it adds up to another brilliant piece of an already astonishing catalog that melds the strange and the beautiful in ways that few others can. Pro-dubbed and imprinted chrome cassettes, featuring designs by Caroline Teagle. Comes with a free digital download. Edition of 100.
Rain Drinkers – ‘Wood Violet’ C40 $8(USA)/$12(Canada)/$15(World)
Since 2010, Rain Drinkers have skillfully melded genres across incredible releases on Brave Mysteries, Earjerk, Reverb Worship, and their own Shifting Sands Congregation. Wood Violet finds the duo of Xax Mane Krass and Joe Taylor in top form, channeling the creative spirit to seamlessly blend elements of folk, classical, electronic, and psychedelic rock across two new studio tracks and a live recording. Both Krass and Taylor are incredibly adept musicians, weaving violins, synths, guitars, piano, drum machines, and various percussive instruments throughout each piece. There’s real drama in each composition as the duo shifts fluidly between moments of pastoral beauty into passages of tense, rousing orchestration and then into smoldering psychedelia. It simply has to be heard to be believed. These two are treading a singular musical path that’s deeply and uniquely inspired by the natural beauty found throughout their homeland of Wisconsin. If you’re not on board already, this is a great place to dive in. If you already are, you don’t need me to tell you that you’re in for one hell of a ride with this one. Pro-dubbed and imprinted chrome cassettes, featuring designs by Caroline Teagle. Comes with a free digital download. Edition of 100.
Hobo Cubes – ‘Memories’ C24 $8(USA)/$12(Canada)/$15(World)
Montreal’s Francesco De Gallo is easily one of the busiest and most prolific musicians throughout the cassette underground. He operates the great Hobo Cult Records and has been a member of many groups including Dozens, Velvet Chrome, and The H, but Hobo Cubes has always been De Gallo’s main game. Memories is one of his most personal works to date. The release fuses muted synth passages with field recordings culled from various experiences and locations over the past four years. Like memories themselves, melodies that are both eerie and comforting drift just below the surface, connecting with us clearly at some instances and obfuscated by time and our ability to comprehend them at others. There’s a distinct pensiveness present throughout each track as De Gallo uses sound to pour over long lost moments that belong to the past but live on powerfully within the mind. Pro-dubbed and imprinted chrome cassettes, featuring designs by Caroline Teagle. Comes with a free digital download. Edition of 100.
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After an spambot assault allowed by laziness and lasseiz-faire, the hyper-elite bullettin board Music Stinks! Рmeeting place for an assorted bunch of harsh noise pariahs banned from other forums Рwent 404 in early 2014, marking the end of a loosely knit and self-hating discussion board community of noise out-outsiders gathering around Soundomaso Records and its web server. This 51-minute slab of booze-fueled distortions, recorded live by two staple members of that BBS, is published by Monstres par Exc̬s as a tribute to (and tombstone of) those great years of noise scene meta-trolling, forum wars and cyberhooliganism. Before wall noise, there was thread noise.
An unlikely objet d’art, C.U.M.T.’s long-awaited 12” contains a barely legal performance of The Gerogerigegege’s æ˜å’Œ (ShÅwa) adapted to the local political context: televised dreamsurfer Giulio Andreotti as Hirohito, an overdriven Inno di Mameli, and an unerotic field recording of exhibitionist Italian sexual failure streamed from a porn website. A dadaist post-industrial tribute to Juntaro Yamanouchi, with our blessings.
