NEW RELEASES WEEK #16 APRIL 21, 2015

APRIL 21, 2015 (WEEK # 16)

1.    ALABAMA SHAKES-“SOUND & COLOR” (4/21) 

2.    APHEX TWIN-“MARCHROMT30A EDIT 2B 96” [EP] (4/21) 

3.    APOCALYPTICA-“SHADOWMAKER” (4/21) 

4.    NICKI BLUHM AND THE GRAMBLERS-“LOVED WILD LOST” (4/21)

5.    BODEANS-“I CAN’T STOP” (4/21)

6.    BUILT TO SPILL-“UNTETHERED MOON” (4/21) 

7.    KATHRYN CALDER-“KATHRYN CALDER” (4/21) 

8.    CHATEAU MARMONT-“SOUND OF SHAMBALA” (4/21) 

9.    CITIZENS!-“EUROPEAN SOUL” (4/21) 

10. DELERIUM-“RARITIES & B-SIDES” (4/21)

11. DAVID GRAY-“GREATEST HITS” (4/21)

12. GREAT LAKE SWIMMERS-“A FOREST OF ARMS” (4/21) 

13. JOAN JETT & THE BLACKHEARTS-“I LOVE ROCK N ROLL 33 1/3 ANNIVERSARY EDITION” (4/21) (This 2CD/2LP set includes the I Love Rock 'N Roll album plus a second disc of previously unreleased live recordings from New York from 1981. Illustration courtesy of Shepard Fairey /ObeyGiant.com On April 18, 2015 Joan Jett & the Blackhearts will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, exactly 33 1/3 years after I Love Rock 'N' Roll was originally released on November 18, 1981. Joan Jett & The Blackhearts will be opening for The Who on their 50th Anniversary tour 4/15-11/4 LP-Standard weight vinyl, gatefold packaging will include a download card as well as a random 'golden ticket' for 1 out of 100 Shepard Fairey posters.)

14. JOYWAVE-“HOW DO YOU FEEL NOW?” (4/21)

15. DUSTIN KENSRUE-“CARRY THE FIRE” (4/21)

16. DREW LUSTMAN (AKA FALTY DL)-“CRYSTAL COWBOY” (4/21)

17. METALLICA-“NO LIFE TIL LEATHER” (4/21) (New release of metallica's 1982 demo release for record store day 2015! Chrome tape)

18. PASSION PIT-“KINDRED” (4/21)

19. SAN FERMIN-“JACKRABBIT” (4/21)

20. SAY LOU LOU-“LUCID DREAMING” (4/21) 

21. SPEEDY ORTIZ-“FOIL DEAR” (4/21)

22. SQUAREPUSHER-“DAMOGEN FURIES” (4/21) 

23. STORNOWAY-“BONXIE” (4/21) 

24. WIRE-“WIRE” (4/21) 

25. VARIOUS ARTISTS-“TEASE TORMENT TANTALIZE: A 3OTH ANNIVERSARY TRIBUTE TO THE SMITHS’ DEBUT ALBUM” (3/23) 

NEW RELEASES WEEK #15 APRIL 14, 2015

APRIL 14, 2015 (WEEK # 15)

1.    AKKORD-“Hth035” (4/14) (Following the monumental success of HTH030 (HTH 030EP), on which The Haxan Cloak (co-producer on Björk's 2015 album Vulnicura) and Hospital Productions' Vatican Shadow reworked tracks from Manchester duo Akkord's HTH020 EP (HTH 020EP), Akkord (Synkro and Indigo) return with another handpicked curation, bringing together two more producers at the top of their game in their respected genres. Fis (Tri Angle, Loopy) conveys the experimental drones of sound design and left of center D&B abstraction in his reworking of "Gravure" and "Continuum," while techno originator Regis (Downwards, Sandwell District) reassembles the same two tracks, looping sludgy dub techno atmospherics and placing emphasis on the space in between. HTH035 also includes Akkord's originals of these tracks, the originals of the tracks remixed on HTH030, and the remixes from HTH030. This CD brings together some of the most exciting producers in experimental electronic music on one release. Mastered by Matt Colton at Alchemy and presented in Houndstooth's distinctive spot-varnished PVC outer sleeves.)

2.    TORI AMOS-“LITTLE EARTHQUAKES” [DELUXE EDITION 2-CD] (4/14) + “UNDER THE PINK” [DELUXE EDITION 2-CD] (4/14)

3.    AVA LUNA-“INFINITE HOUSE” (4/14) 

4.    TIM BERNE-“YOU’VE BEEN WATCHING ME” (4/14)

5.    CALEXICO-“EDGE OF THE SUN” [DELUXE EDITION] (4/14)

6.    THE DAMNWELLS-“THE DAMNWELLS” (4/14)

7.    DARKNESS FALLS-“DANCE AND CRY” (4/14)

8.    EELS-“ROYAL ALBERT HALL” (2-CD/1-DVD) (4/14) 

9.    GALLOWS-“DESOLATION SOUNDS” (4/14)

10. THE LILAC TIME-“NO SAD SONGS” (4/14) (A prose poem, which Stephen Duffy composed especially for the release of the ninth album by his band The Lilac Time, contains the lines, "I was a flower child, now I'm a flower man." It took a long time before one became the other. When viewed from space, Duffy's path may well appear labyrinthine, filled with loopholes and trapdoors. Yet a sober perspective reveals the path of a musician and poet who is independent in the very best sense of the word. Nevertheless, a lot has happened since the young boy kept his Praktica camera trained on street scenes in the Birmingham of the Cold War. Back in 1979, an 18-year-old Duffy was a founding member of Duran Duran. Yet he did not board the train to superstardom. The visionary instinct of the young artist had other intentions. He might have had Bob Dylan, Nick Drake, and The Incredible String Band in mind, but he himself was not allergic to success. He quickly understood that a songwriter with an acoustic guitar had little access to the merry-go-round of the charts in the early '80s. Instead, he formed the band Tin Tin, trading his guitar for a synthesizer and making chic, clever, and sparkling pop music. The young man with the melancholy expression even landed two international hits with "Kiss Me" and "Icing On the Cake." But before the record company was able to put their plan into action and turn Duffy into the next Rick Astley, he took flight. He mothballed his pop persona and founded a band with his brother: The Lilac Time. On their debut in 1987, they made what Duffy had long dreamed of: flower music. The 1988 single Return to Yesterday conjured visions of Simon & Garfunkel. In an era of slapping basses and smacking snares, the instrumentation was exceptional: mainly acoustic, with guitars, banjos, fiddles, and accordions, all beautifully arranged by Nick Duffy, who was also responsible for composing the instrumental pieces on the record. Keep in mind that the new acoustic movement, which brought forth bands like Belle and Sebastian and Kings of Convenience, was still more than ten years away. Often in diametrical contrast with this melancholy folk pop were Stephen Duffy's lyrics, with descriptions of suburban tristesse placed seamlessly alongside biting commentary on the issues of the times and courageous reports of the singer's moments of excess and aventures amoureuses.)

11. LOCAL H-“HEY, KILLER” (4/14)

12. PALAXY TRACKS-“WILDERNESS” (4/14)

13. THE REPLACEMENTS-“THE COMPLETE STUDIO ALBUMS 1981-1990” [RHINO 8-CD BOX SET ] (4/14) 

14. RUMER-“B-SIDES & RARITIES” (4/14) 

15. SUPERPOZE-“OPENING” (4/14) 

16. TRICKFINGER-“TRICKFINGER” (4/14) (The latest chapter in the electronic evolution of guitarist John Frusciante features a new project under his Trickfinger guise and has him utilizing the classic hardware that spawned the eternal acid template. Frusciante's desire to cede control to machines has paradoxically allowed him to present a singular take on elemental dance music, a brilliant and unexpected entry into Acid Test's growing canon of modern, 303-focused dance music. Frusciante writes, "I started being serious about following my dream to make electronic music, and to be my own engineer, five years ago. For the ten years prior to that, I had been playing guitar along with a wide range of different types of programmed synthesizer- and sample-based music, emulating as best as I could what I heard. I found that the languages machines forced programmers to think in had caused them to discover a new musical vocabulary. The various forms of electronically generated music, particularly in the last 22 years, have introduced many new principles of rhythm, melody, and harmony... Programmers, particularly ones fluent on machines from the early '80s and/or tracker programs from the '90s, clearly had a theoretical foundation in their employ but it was not the theory I knew from pop/rock, jazz, or classical. The hands' relationship to the instrument accounts for so much of why musicians do what they do, and I had come to feel that in pop/rock my mind was often being overpowered by my hand, which I had a strong desire to correct... In 2007 I started to learn how to program all the instruments we associate with acid house music and some other hardware. For about seven months I didn't record anything. Then I started recording, playing ten or so synced machines through a small mixer into a CD burner. This was all experimental acid house, my skills at making rock music playing no part in it whatsoever. I had lost interest in traditional songwriting and I was... so excited by the method of using numbers much in the same way I'd used my muscles all my life. Skills that had previously been applied by my subconscious were gradually becoming conscious, by virtue of having numerical theoretical means of thinking about rhythm, melody, and sound. In summary, acid served as a good starting point for me, very gradually leading me to be able to combine whatever styles of music I want, as a one-man band.")

17. VATICAN SHADOW-“DEATH IS UNITY WITH GOD” (4/14) (***Death Is Unity With God finds DOMINCK FERNOW returning to the kind of feral, burned-out productions that dominated 2012's Ornamented Walls. This double LP includes 12 of the 20 tracks included on the original 2014 limited six-cassette release of Death Is Unity With God, in advance of Modern Love's triple-CD edition compiling all the material. It clocks in at an hour and a half and features some of the most compelling productions from Fernow yet. Nodding to classic Muslimgauze, but also inspired by the parallels between religious fundamentalism at home in the USA and abroad, the oppressive atmospheres and destroyed rhythms isolate the gutted toil and drone in "It's to Come," while "F.B.I. God" reduces the drums to scorched blasts against some harrowing, darkside chords. The quasi-speed torment of "Manufactured Silencers Under Direct Orders" ends the A-side with dread, flowing into the haunting chorales and chiming percussions of "Living On and Off At the Shadows Motel" and the scything techno roil of "Small Explosives and Blasting Caps Inside the Pages of a Phonebook," before a particularly effective chamber-like meditation, "McVeigh Figure," draws aesthetic lines between ambient black metal, Coil, and early Autechre. "Waco Postmortem (Murrah)" ends the set operating nearly out of earshot with those incredible, sashaying synth motifs persisting in their struggle against the patina of hiss and exasperated rhythms blurred around the edges.)

18. VILLAGERS-“DARLING ARITHMETIC” [DELUXE EDITION] (4/14) 

19. KYM WARNER (OF THE GREENCARDS)-“EVERTHING THAT BROUGHT ME HERE” (4/14)

20. WAXAHATCHEE-“IVY TRIPP” (4/14) 

21. THE WOMBATS-“GLITTERBUG” (DELUXE EDITION) (4/14) 

22. DWIGHT YOAKAM-“SECOND HAND HEART” (4/14) 

23. ZERO 7-“EP3” (4/14) 

NEW RELEASES 2015 WEEK #14 APRIL 7, 2015

APRIL 7, 2015 (WEEK # 14)

1.    ALISON WONDERLAND-“RUN” (4/7) 

2.    BAD COMPANY-“BAD CO.” [DELUXE EDITION 2-CD] (1973/2015) (4/7) + “STRAIGHT SHOOTER” [DELUXE 2-CD] 

3.    FRANK BLACK AND THE CATHOLICS-“THE COMPLETE RECORDINGS” [BOX SET] (4/7)

4.    COLLEEN-“CAPTAIN OF NONE” (4/7)

5.    JULIAN COPE-“TRIP ADVIZER – THE VERY BEST OF JULIAN COPE” (4/7)

6.    THOMAS D’ARCY-“FOOLED YOU TWICE” (4/7) 

7.    DOLDRUMS-“THE AIR CONDITIONED NIGHTMARE” (4/7) (The Air Conditioned Nightmare is the new album by Doldrums. The title was spawned by Henry Miller upon his return to the US after ten years as an expatriate. Keen to rediscover the country he left behind, Miller found it a stifling place of big business, pollution, credit, misinformation and prejudice. “Nowhere else in the world,” he wrote in his 1945 collection of essays “is the divorce between man and nature so complete”. The Air Conditioned Nightmare. Seventy years on and the book lends itself to the title of the anticipated second album by Doldrums, the band led by 25 year old musician Airick Woodhead. On the follow-up to his 2013 debut Lesser Evil (which yielded tours with Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Crystal Castles, Grimes and Purity Ring, and remixes for Peaking Lights, Grimes and Portishead), the DJ, producer and performer makes a sizeable leap from being darling of the Montreal warehouse creative explosion that gave the world the likes of Grimes, Majical Cloudz, Blue Hawaii to being a stand-alone artist and composer on the cusp of something quite special. Doldrums apply a punk rock ethos to electronic music, creating songs using samplers and DJ gear in place of guitars. Bold, anxious, dream-like, uplifting, glacial, hypnotic, constricting, expansive, alien - this is an album that is ever-changing. “Conflict is at the heart of this album,” explains Airick. “There’s a lot of paranoid sentiment and dystopian imagery in there. The threat of a mundane reality ties it together, as does an obsession with plasticity. Songs come from specific feelings or images. Anxiety is my default state.” The Air Conditioned Nightmare is an album of texture and taste, an extra-sensory overload. Weaving through the mix are Woodhead’s androgynous, tweaked vocals singing lyrics like voices down broken phone-lines. This is music born of the 21st century. The Air Conditioned Nightmare is an album that is punk rock in its DIY beginnings and militant commitment to originality. Ten snatched seconds is enough to pull you in. Ultimately, The Air Conditioned Nightmare stands alone. Doldrums have created something special. You need to hear it.)

8.    DRENGE-“UNDERTOW” (4/7) 

9.    EAST INDIA YOUTH-“CULTURE OF VOLUME” (4/7) 

10. FUTURE PUNX / PARQUET COURTS-“THIS IS HAPPENING NOW / SPIKE TRAIN” [SINGLE] (4.7) (***The latest offering from Brooklyn's preeminent post wave ensemble. "Dull Tools is the record label run by Andrew Savage, of Parquet Courts, and Chris Pickering, of Future Punx. Next month the label will put out the first Future Punx EP, I'm So Inspired, on 11/11. This follows two 7-inches from the synth-centered 5-piece, one of which was a split with Parquet Courts. Sonically, the two bands draw from different corners of the post-punk spectrum, but their attention to intricate lyrics and sprawled-out deadpan deliveries are points of common ground. Along with the announcement of their new release, Future Punx also have a new video for "Spike Train", a meditation on dreams, perception, and positive thinking. The video is dark and shadowy, with quick-moving bursts of light and color, much like the song itself. Check it out below, along with all upcoming Future Punx dates.")

11. STEVE HACKETT-“WOLFLIGHT” (4/7)

12. HEAVY TRASH-“NOIR!” (4/7)

13. HOTELIER-“HOME, LIKE NOPLACE IS THERE” (4/7) 

14. THE JAYHAWKS-“LIVE AT THE BELLY UP SOLANA BEACH” (4/7) 

15. LAPALUX-“LUSTMORE” (4/7)

16. LORD HURON-“STRANGE TRAILS” (4/7) 

17. MADEON-“ADVENTURE” [DELUXE EDITION] (4/7) 

18. MARINA AND THE DIAMONDS-“FROOTS” (4/7) 

19. MARRIAGES-“SALOME” [DELUXE EDITION] (4/7) 

20. MATT AND KIM-“NEW GLOW” (4/7) 

21. THE MOUNTAIN GOATS-“BEAT THE CHAMP” [DELUXE EDITION] (4/7) 

22. PORTICO-“LIVING FIELDS” (4/7) 

23. JOSH ROUSE-“THE EMBERS OF TIME” (4/7) 

24. TODD RUNDGREN-“GLOBAL” (4/7)

25. SCUBA-“CLAUSTROPHOBIA” (4/7) 

26. SHLOHMO-“DARK RED” (4/7)

27. TORO Y MOI-“WHAT FOR?” (4/7) 

28. UZIQ (MU-ZIQ)-“XTLP” (4/7) 

29. VAN HALEN-“THE COLLECTION” [BOX SET 7-CD] (4/7)

30. VENAL FLESH-“SACRAMENT TO THE SCALPEL” [EP] (4/3)

31. TOM WAITS-“A SMALL AFFAIR IN OHIO” (4/7) (In October of 1977 Tom Waits was a busy man. Tom's remarkable fifth album 'Foreign Affairs' had been released the month before, of which producer Bones Howe commented; It's like a black-and-white movie. The record's cover perpetuated this idea and the live dates Tom was now performing in its wake also, to an extent, used this concept in design and projection. Waits only played a handful of US dates in October '77, four to be exact, one each in Boston and New York, and two in Ohio. On 22nd he'd been at Cincinnati's infamous hole in the wall, 'Bogart's', and on 25th this show, at the well established Agora Ballroom in Cleveland, was performed in front of an enthusiastic crowd. The show was broadcast by WMMS FM across the local area and the whole gig, as can be heard on this CD, must have been quite incredible. Tom is in fine voice and in fine spirits, using his customary dry humour to keep the audience in fits throughout. The one rather curious aspect however, is the minimal amount of material he performs from his just released record. Of the ten numbers, only I Never Talk To Strangers originates on 'Foreign Affairs', the remainder of the cuts coming largely from his previous record, 1976's 'Small Change' along with one track a-piece from the live 'Nighthawks at the Diner' and 1974's 'The Heart of Saturday Night', and a delightful cover of the old Frank Loesser show tune, Standing On The Corner. Those in attendance certainly don't appear to have minded this factor however, and for whatever reason Tom chose to play the tracks he did, the results, as can be heard here, are nothing short of startling.)

32. RYLEY WALKER-“PRIMROSE GREEN” (4/7) 

33. THE WATERBOYS-“MODERN BLUES” (4/7) 

34. WATERS-“WHAT’S REAL” (4/7) 

35. WHITE HILLS-“WALKS FOR MOTORISTS” (4/7) 

36. CASSANDRA WILSON-“COMING FORTH BY DAY” (4/7) 

37. WINTER-“SUPREME BLUE DREAM” (4/7) 

38. THE WOMBATS-“GLITTERBUG” [DELUXE EDITION] (4/7) 

39. VARIOUS ARTISTS-“A STATE OF TRANCE 2015” [2-CD] (4/7)