For starters, we have a solid foundation for the stomach: cheese puffs made with aged Comté. Den have mastered this opening bite, an amusing and gentle snack. Yes, you’ve heard: Den moved out of the darkness and the chilly cold and have moved inside The Restaurant. They’ve commandeered the kitchen and present a greater depth of flavour and culinary nuance. You might remember them first as a food track in a Marrickville back alley where they served a damaged blend of salty post punk and psychedelic hardcore, salt in the hair and salt on the skin, and then a delivery service of ultra minute, dense bites on their Deep Cell LP. Years of experimenting and balancing flavours have encouraged them to embrace a restraint and subtlety with Post Pink, a truly new sound and direction for the band that honours their culinary legacy. Post Pink infers a certain kind of comfort that you might not anticipate in the wake of their previous output. By this I mean, the ears do not bleed! There is a similar density to the new album, but in place of the sharpened rapier poking deep in your head and puncturing your eardrum, Post Pink has an ethereal quality much like you’d love about Wire’s 154. The weight and solemnity of Deep Cell has lifted, the weightless lyrics will hit you with a brilliant mash of imagery in a way that you love about Brian Eno’s lyricism, some silly moments with words like “happenstance”, copulating jellyfish,...
LP $22.00
11/14/2025
"Lucky Numbers & True Weight, the fourth full-length by the New York City artist Cube, continues to push to the surface what has been hiding in plain sight all along: the artist’s ability to write memorable songs that synthesize elements from a variety of left-field genres into its own sonic world. The grit of noise; the ammo splay of digital hardcore; the experimentation of footwork; the rigor of industrial and techno; all of this exists here on more or less equal footing. These musical languages are deployed by the artist—real name: Adam Keith—as a means of sustaining an atmosphere, both uneasy and ecstatic, that plays out through the duration of the project. "There is a sense of contemporary hard-boiled grit here, like this music was meant to accompany a grubby pawed swipe on a gambling app or the action at a smoke-logged off-track betting operation. 'Reverse Cowboy' is borderline-anthemic beat punk done up in an atemporal style, somewhere between The Normal and The Prodigy. The interlude 'Middle Man' lurches like a drunk noise kid at a warehouse show. 'New Stare' is goth DJ Nate. It’s music for both latent rockers and latent ravers, for a new era of cross-pollination. "If this record conjures contemporary technology, it is through a soiled patina. In the bowels of the city and far away from any techno-utopian ideals, Lucky Numbers & True Weight plays. It’s the soundtrack to smudged screens and fried Bluetooth speakers; to shadowy discotheques and corrupt sports bars. It’s a strobe...
LP $22.00
06/13/2025
"Portland, OR musician and visual artist Lila Jarzombek has been in a groove over the past year. In 2024 she contributed searing guitar leads to The Spatulas' first couple of releases, including their exceptional LP Beehive Mind (Post Present Medium), and she also cooked up the first Nowhere Flower release of her potent solo recordings, Ruts the Place (Radical Documents). On HEAT DOME, her urgent new LP for Digital Regress, she embarks on a further excursion into her third ear across 14 transporting tracks. Throughout HEAT DOME, Lila leads us around a world of her own design, coaxing out rhythmic grooves and sweet melodies along the way. She employs a diverse patchwork of sounds while leaving space for an airy lightness. Bright and crisp guitar chords and fuzzy leads, swirling phased out synthesizer, fiddle, drum machines, keyboards, and melodica weave in between and around her unearthly and spellbinding vocals. She channels these sounds through slow-burning rockers like HEAT DOME and WHAT THE CREEK SAID and melancholic psych-folk ballads TORCHING IT ALL and GROUND CLOUD. HARMONICA is a cosmic bridge to side B, a windy portal that transports you to another realm. This album would be great company to 90s/00s “new weird” New England groups like Tower Recordings or Magik Markers with their wide-ranging interpretations of psych. And it embodies the spirit of punk like Japanese underground artists Onna or Michio Kadotani, or Columbus home-recording geniuses Jim Shepard or Tommy Jay. But like those singular artists, this music is authentic and...
LP $24.00
04/18/2025
"Oakland-based post-punks Marbled Eye have been blowing minds and smashing worlds with their astute riffing, masterfully tight rhythm section, and memorable hooks since they released their first two EPs in 2016 and 2017. Since then, the band has gone on to release two stellar full-length records and tour the US and the EU extensively. For the first time since their original releases, these artifacts are being re-released together on one 12”. EP I and EP II contain some of the most memorable Marbled Eye hooks and progressions, forming songs like “Primrose,” “Oddity,” “Former,” “Feast,” and “Objects”—though every song is a singular hit. Marbled Eye’s dueling guitarists and vocalists, Chris Natividad and Michael Lucero, expertly craft intricate guitar tangles as they trade deadpan vocal hooks. Bass player Andrew Oswald pummels through the songs with precise and heavy downstrokes, while drummer Alex Shen muscles through tight grooves, adding tasteful syncopation. Together, these elements put Marbled Eye at the top of their class, producing some of the genre’s most interesting music. Informed by bands like Joy Division, Television, and Total Control, Marbled Eye understand the necessity of big hooks and deliver them song after song. This release will be coveted by those who already own the first 2 LPs, or the perfect start for the new Marbled Eye record collector—Don’t sleep." -- Sims Harden
LP $24.00
09/16/2024
"I wish I could turn or turn back" "Sometimes it’s hard to resist the feeling that there was a crucial turn in life out of which everything else flowed. Maybe in our more reasonable frames of mind we can dismiss that thought and take our plans and intentions very seriously. But, there’s often a lurking conviction that, like the oak from the acorn or the movie from its opening scene, it is already all there. In the first moment of Relics of Our Life, anything could happen, anything could come next. But as the suspense is broken with the first notes, the world of the record springs up as both an internal experience and a landscape of which we will learn something, but definitely not everything. The songs induce a swimming sense of cycling repetition and variation where shifting details tilt the ground under us. The round and round doesn’t make us dizzy; like breathing the right way, it makes us both heavier and higher. "Pawliczek’s songs can be located in the company of the greats of Flying Nun Records – maybe the delicacy of The Great Unwashed with the heavy heart of The Verlaines and smartness of The Chills. But, ultimately, his interests are elsewhere – a heart-break song over an earthly lover feels like only the tipping point for longing and devotion that outstrips the personal. In this sense, Popul Vuh for their hymnal geometry and switched-on Palestrina, and Terry Riley for cosmic elation come to mind....
LP $22.00
05/03/2024
"The wash of flangers & shimmery reverb have been the foundation in Cali psych ever since the Byrds went electric. And while that sound might've dropped off occasionally, it never dropped out. The Velvets minimalist stylings were infused into the mix by The Dream Syndicate in the early 80's & thus a game changer was born. Clay Allison, Opal, Green On Red all took their charge from that current. Then the Shoegaze scene of the 90's looked at those bands as vectors, things got a little more drenched, so yet more seeds were sown into the fertile terroir. Cut to current climes & the bay area is teeming with the latest iterations: Children Maybe Later, Now, & Cindy easily come to mind. But curiously the band most steeped in the mohair constitution is April Magazine, who (thus far) have been content in the shadows. Up till now they've seemed like characters plucked out of a Kazuo Ishiguo novel-mysterious & ethereal-but perhaps this pressing of last year's cassette only release will flush them out. 'Wesley's Convertible Tape For The South' shows the band defly balancing all those that have come before them while also incorporating flourishes of Les Rallizes DeNudes, Hallelujahs & Nagisa Ni Te into the pageantry . So in a way, April Magazine is transforming the landscape yet again; denser, fuzzier, lush & wistfully challenging. 'Wesley's Convertible Tape For The South' is the band's 1st vinyl release stateside (an LP of older tracks was released last year via a UK only...
LP $24.00
04/19/2024
"Learn To Die is a bold new step for a group of musicians, artists, and writers that has at least nominally been considered a punk band. A stylistic overhaul. For those who have been following along, it’ll carry some surprises. Slender began over a decade ago as a semi-improvisational cassette recording project, a casual collaboration between a few friends that was initially documented by two self-titled cassette-only releases released in 2014 and 2015 respectively, now both unavailable and out of print. Most fans, however, will know Slender for their two most recent releases, Walled Garden (2017) and Time On Earth (2019), both released on the tastemaking London art-punk label La Vida Es Un Mus. "Their prior work has earned them comparisons to anarcho-punks Crass and The Snipers, lo-fi flagbearers Swell Maps and Pink Reason, and artrockers Cromagnon and Amon Düül. Here, however, such comparisons feel largely unfounded and the band feels somewhat peerless. Moments of artpunk brutalism, lo-fi experimentalism, and kosmiche detours grace the fabric of Learn To Die, but the album reaches for more than pastiche. Teasing the rarified worlds of chamber music and musique concrete, Slender manages something intangible and strange. A vocoded voice intones multi-lingual poems alongside tinny guitars and sampled strings and flutes. Three chord janglepunk anthems arise suddenly out of a cosmic mist crafted by analogue synths reciting the poetry of machines. The album moves in ways reminiscent of works by artists as varied and singular as Nobukazu Takemura, Chuquimamani-Condori, Coil, and Robert Wyatt,...
LP $24.00
04/19/2024
"A new EP from Troth, following up their brilliant third album Forget The Curse released earlier this year. An EP of sorts, as these six wonderful tracks clocks in at over 31 minutes! A double one-disc EP? No matter what, Idle Easel sees the band in a transitional period, as the duo of Amelia Besseny and Cooper Bowman left Newcastle for Hobart, Tasmania during the recording sessions. The record has this heavy feeling of leaving something behind for something new, a feeling that is kind of boosted by the rather melancholic, autumnal presence that runs throughout Idle Easel. Blasting these songs in a currently very rainy Gothenburg in full, blown-out autumn mode certainly adds, but there's more to it than that. "'Wolkenträume' blends prominent Tassie location recordings with sparse keyboard melodies and angel-like singing—which after slowly coming down from an intense Ron Nagorcka period feels like the perfect bridge back to the grim, cold, northern reality. 'Autumnal Hymn' is one of those rather minimal, lovely piano songs courtesy of Amelia, with harmonies that could only be Troth. Placed halfway through the EP, the peculiar 'Kind Of Cure' almost comes like a palette cleanser from the uniform. Exquisite thickness, while not exactly jolly, a sort-of eccentric and lush take on folk music. 'Angel Not So Easy' has that hazy club-feel, coming from the same place as the title track on Forget The Curse and the IDDB 7" A-side, always maintaining that glorious DIY-edge. 'Sunflower' further explores the mixture of beats...
12" $27.00
11/10/2023
"In early 2000s New Zealand, Little Skull started as a small project. Smallness was perhaps the defining characteristic. Lathe cut 7-inches in vanishingly small editions, the intricate, fiddly covers hand- crafted with what one would have to assume were very small hands. Or just with the aid of tweezers perhaps. The labels of these records provided no information beyond an illustration of a small—little even—skull. The music was also mysterious and miniaturized but always had a contradictory sense of warmth and expansiveness, hinting at narrative worlds beyond the confines of those few minutes of recorded sound. "Now onto his sixth vinyl LP, Dean Brown’s packaging maintains the same intricate, handmade qualities, albeit in punishingly larger quantities (300 copies of this one, each pencil rubbing done by hand). The music, meanwhile, has really expanded outwards since those early 7-inches, embracing that hinted-at push / pull between small and large. The first side of this carefully mastered, factory-produced LP even toys with craggy lathe cut-like audio artifacts and tape hiss coming and going in the mix, as if to remind us of the project’s beginnings. Before long we are into decidedly majestic, widescreen territory, suggesting Alastair Galbraith after a Herzog / Fricke bender. The second side-long suite covers even greater territory, conjuring both wild and woolly weather systems and feelings going unexpressed in dimly-lit 19th Century drawing rooms. Writers may need to dust off the term 'geological drone' from their old Surface Of The Earth reviews but should also be prepared to...
LP $24.00
09/01/2023
"People Skills could probably kill an hour or two watching you scrape the goo off your mukluks after escorting repeated tromps through the brack-befouled trench between music and non-music. You put on a show for him, he’ll put on a show for you. Everyone shows a little leg, we all go home winners. "On his first new LP since the 2014 (Siltbreeze) and 2017 (Blackest Ever Black) touchstones, he blends 'song-related' material with off-kilter signal garble to emit fidelity impaired pop-surrender by the wheeze-load. Haunted visions in the spirit of Kye, M-Squared, and Petri Supply stud the lonesome strum with equipment malfunctions and other miscellaneous environmental gack. Hum Of The Non-Engine sheds some more light on bona fide PS singles that trickled out on compilations over the last two years and maps a beautiful merging of derisive collage and the world-weary song-smithery of our friends at the top and bottom ends of the globe." -Seymour Glass (Glands of External Secretion, Bananafish)
LP $24.00
07/07/2023
Proud to present this debut solo outing from R.J.F. a textural patchwork of minimal melodic-inflections with room to wade in and out of. R.J.F., better known as Ross Farrar – obvious bona-fides intact – (Ceremony, Crisis Man, Spice) takes a step back from pummeling, driving front-man duties to weave ardent pieces driven by hooking lines and textures woven artfully together. Meditations on adapting lifestyles, daily-life, moving forward, stray cats looking for homes, and finding how to make sense of it all in a world always changing. Recorded with a mostly budget set-up, (bass, keyboards, drums, sparse guitars) leaving a lot of open air in the record, and amplifying the earnestness of the whole endeavor.
LP $24.00
07/07/2023
"Over the course of the last decade, Messrs. Russell Walker and Daniel Melchior have collaborated under the guise of THE LLOYD PACK. While much ink has been spilled about their work apart from each other [DAS MENACE, THE PHEROMOANS, countless solo dispatches], their conjoined effort has a bit of a cloaked rep. Perhaps it’s their insistence on bucking genre constraints that thickens the shroud, as their lone commitment lies in coaxing each other’s instincts into wondrous tracks. I Can’t Remember, the latest assemblage of said tracks, imparts bright buzz with a decidedly late-night air. An odd bit of cynical groove runs throughout, all the way to sunrise. "The finest moments of The Lloyd Pack essentially equate Russ and Dan completing each other’s sentences, relating and reacting on equal terms. I Can’t Remember is replete with such moments. Many of the entries begin with simple rhythm programming as bedrock, expanding through all manner of pile- on riffing. The waltzing, madcap “Pagsy” shoves several recognizable tenants of classic UK-DIY pop into the circus tent. The romantic escapism that feeds “The Firs Hotel” eventually concludes as mere routine. “Crossroads Mason Simulator” acts as centerpiece, undeniable with its gorgeous lights-off sound, recalling a lost entry from After The Heat. Every tune offers surprise and something to cling to. "Digital Regress is pleased to present I Can’t Remember, the fifth LP from The Lloyd Pack." - Mitch Cardwell RIYL: Bobby Would, The Rebel, The Shadow Ring, Nathan Roche, Itchy Bugger
LP $22.00
06/23/2023
"Bobby's back with a brand new swing. Styx is, conceptually speaking, his boatman's call, two thirteen minute sides of Greek mythology-referencing purgatorial guitar murk, one half on terrafirma, the other floating down the river of the damned... If you remember those first two records on Low Company, or even the pair of records he made under the Itchy Bugger moniker, then you'll already be well acquainted with the openly sardonic, narco chimes of Styx. The fidelity remains of the characteristically 'submerged' variety, which at this point is as much of an instrument as anything actually played. It's a bit post-39 Clocks in that sense, kinda like the Cocoon or Exit Out, the hazy gloom a lot of the appeal. 'You're definitely doing the hype thing,' he sings on 'Hype On.' Are you talking to me, Bobby? 'Cos I've done a number on you here." –World Of Echo Music
LP $24.00
03/31/2023
Los Debutantes are back with their latest prophesying of our collective future, present, past, on the mightiest format, seven inch disk. Two fresh tracks of high order indulging Burroughs-esque ramblings streaming consciousness, doom-saying over staggered drums, lines of electronic pulsing, feedback buzz. All picking up right where their last LP Dust on Siltbreeze Records left off, and pushing the message to the front of the queue. If you know, you know.
7" $9.75
12/23/2022
Like clockwork, the latest affirmations from Mosquitoes. Following up last year's Reverse Drift / Reverse Change, this record continues the deconstruction of assumptions around the idea of a music group or "band" to descend further into rough shards of notes and ideas. Outlines opens with a loop of a distant subway car approximating time, layered with bass lines and fragments of voice, percussion, and guitar. Hushed words—invented or otherwise—scattered throughout. Infinity Fault carries itself through a spiraling loop with instruments lending themselves to the sensation: descending, descending, descending. Broken concepts blending into each other to create something else entirely that can loosely be described as music for adventurous listeners. Tri-fold double-sided sleeve, edition of 300.
7" $9.75
12/23/2022
"I'm considering, I'm considering, a move to Gothenburg... Alongside being in possession of the last great previously untaken band name, Treasury of Puppies arrive with a debut album that adds increasing cogency to the argument that Sweden is producing the most interesting new music in the world right now, with Gothenburg its spiritual point of convergence. The association with Förlag För Fri Musik provides ideal context (possibly even the inspiration, given how central the label is to modern Swedish music?) for the music of Charlott Malmenholt and Joakim Karlsson, which finds a midpoint between the late 80s/early 90s scorched earth underground of Siltbreeze & Xpressway and a more European tradition of avant / neo folk volksmusik, speaking as much to the haunted music box melodies of Brannten Schnurre as it does Current 93s horror of the countryside. Is this Sweden's hidden reverse? Or maybe this is just Sweden? You could resurrect a church inside this sound, devotional music that draws you in siren-like, the alternating sing-speak vocal deliveries both lullaby and gothic harbinger of... SOMETHING UNKNOWN. Can you levitate all the way to Gothenburg?" - World Of Echo
LP $22.00
05/20/2022
We haven't gone soft quite yet, happy to present a long-awaited (and long pressing plant delayed) debut LP from Crisis Man. Featuring members of Smirk, Ceremony, and Acrylics, the new record continues the knuckle-dragging right where the last 7" left it. Recorded back in 2020 but still prescient given our countries current war-hawking and manufacturing of consent. Asleep In America's tightly-sprung cadence constantly driving and hammering mirrors the sensations of a steady decline in autonomy and quality of life. A thoroughly American experience. Edition of 500.
LP $22.00
05/20/2022
Fans of the Swedish underground should be familiar with Elin Engström from her time playing in Monokultur, Skiftande Enheter, and excellent solo recording project Loopsel. Her debut album The Spiral manifests fragmented pieces of shimmering guitar, organ, and electronics creating a drifting ambiance that evokes a feeling of distance and mystique. An essential entry of the Gothenburg experimental music scene that never seems to run dry. The Spiral was originally released in 2019 as part of a multimedia spatial installation in Copenhagen, and subsequently reissued on Forlag For Fri Musik and Mammas Mysteriska Jukebox. Digital Regress is thrilled to make this record widely available again.
LP $22.00
03/18/2022
“Penumbra, from the Latin paene (almost) and umbra (shadow), refers to the partially luminescent fringe of an opaque object, like the streetlight outlining the sole of a shoe hurtling towards your eye. Hypnagogic, from the Greek hupnos (sleep) and agōgos (leading), refers to the drowsy state before sleep. Crazy Doberman here comprises seventeen players from the greater Europe of the Midwest. Basement glyphs. Who’s on the lease? And what’s under the rug. The owner pays them to keep away the beast of busco. They do spontaneity, welcoming simultaneity, montaged in post. Further spool’t month to month, basking in the stroboscope.” —Sam Lefebvre
LP $19.00
08/21/2020
“Slugfuckers’ sole full-length Transformational Salt, originally released on Tom Ellard’s (Severed Heads) Dogfood Production System in 1981, is an absorbing slab of Australian DIY, dense with thought and fury. The album brings together reprobate dub poetics and thug-drubbing spite in a mangled collage of post-punk disjunct and proto-industrial churn. Art and subcultural adherents are roundly slagged throughout. The group emerged from a college milieu in Sydney, and they’ve been categorized alongside contemporaries Bleeding Arseholes, Rhythmyx Chymx and N-Lets as anti-music ensembles prizing untutored spontaneity. More useful comparisons include Desperate Bicycles and the Pop Group. Also credited for a sound that seems to collapse, but could also be described as openness or constant fluctuation, is the then-newly translated Anti-Oedipus by Deleuze and Guatarri. Terry Blake (guitar), John Laidler (guitar) and Graham Forsyth (bass) formed Slugfuckers in the late 1970s, with Austin Laverty (drums), Craig Wilcox (keyboards, percussion) and Gordon Renouf (saxophone, bass, guitar) joining later. Transformational Salt followed two 1979 singles, ‘Three Feet Behind Glass / Live At Budokan’ and ‘Instant Classic’.” —Sam Lefebvre
LP $22.00
06/26/2020
***BACK IN STOCK!!! “I wrote about the debut cassette from Melbourne’s The Shifters in the very first column that I did for MRR three years ago, which gives me all sorts of complicated and confusing feelings about the passage of time. And as evidence that sometimes it takes awhile for historical wrongs to be righted, that criminally limited tape is now finally available in its entirety as an LP [...], following the two songs that resurfaced on the ‘Creggan Shops’ 7-inch courtesy of It Takes Two back in 2016. The Shifters’ stark, repetitive minimalism and shambolic charms always owed more than a little bit to The Fall in their early years, and revisiting the material from the cassette now after Mark E. Smith’s passing only reinforces the psychic connection between the lackadaisical post-punk twang in ‘Captain Hindsight’ and the cracked melodies of something like The Fall’s ‘Your Heart Out’ from the Dragnet era. ‘Creggan Shops’ is as close to a contemporary successor to those brilliant first two Mekons singles as I’ve come across, from the tense interplay between the melodica and a creaky violin, to the scritch-scratch guitar, to the nonchalantly harmonized dual vocals, all sounding like they’re perpetually on the verge of coming undone. There’s way more at play here than blatant UK DIY worship, though—it’s not a huge jump from the homespun, pastoral pop of ’80s Australian DIY legends like The Particles and The Cannanes to the Shifters’ raggedly melodic ‘Colour Me In’, and ‘The American...
LP $19.00
06/26/2020
***Digital Regress's foray into the fabled NZ underground hops over to the North Island for two exquisite pieces of acoustic DIY and shadowy, cracked pastoralia. After a few years spleen venting at the front of Wellington art brutes SHOES THIS HIGH, BRENT HAYWARD struck out on his own, self-releasing a few EPs as SMELLY FEETt before forming THE KIWI ANIMAL with JULIE COOPER in 1982. The duo released their first album, Music Media, on Massage Records (their own imprint) in 1984. With the addition of PATRICK WALLER on cello and sundry other instruments, 1985's Mercy finds an augmented Kiwi Animal trying on what at first glance is a more refined, melancholic sound. But the group's experimental bent, largely restrained on Music Media, soon shows its hand. Pinprick ur-folk guitar themes, blinking on and off, buffeted by radio interference and toy piano; woozy bedsit slow-burns; the arresting croak of Hayward's penpal, William S. Burroughs; even a foray into dosed synth-pop: MERCY presents a unique yield of fraying, autumnal DIY songcraft. The music of The Kiwi Animal, moody and intelligent and often abruptly gentle, works subcutaneously, propelled by guitars that churn and weave – no jangle here – and a his 'n' hers vocal delivery for the ages. Digital Regress is happy to make these essentially perfect records available again. Housed in deluxe-gloss jackets. Edition of 400 copies on black vinyl.
LP $19.95
11/01/2019
***Digital Regress's foray into the fabled NZ underground hops over to the North Island for two exquisite pieces of acoustic DIY and shadowy, cracked pastoralia. After a few years spleen venting at the front of Wellington art brutes SHOES THIS HIGH, BRENT HAYWARD struck out on his own, self-releasing a few EPs as SMELLY FEETt before forming THE KIWI ANIMAL with JULIE COOPER in 1982. The duo released their first album, Music Media, on Massage Records (their own imprint) in 1984. Billing itself "New Acoustic Music," the Kiwi Animal's debut is a set of introverted and austere yet lambent folk songs. Textural, gently hypnotic guitar chords anchor minimal arrangements, as Hayward and Cooper's entwined vocals—think Pip Proud meets The Vaselines—project paranoia and forlorn, diffident cool. Wry, imagistic lyrics somewhere between the stoned political economy of D. Boon and the head-fuck soliloquies of Robert Ashley complete The Kiwi Animal effect. The music of The Kiwi Animal, moody and intelligent and often abruptly gentle, works subcutaneously, propelled by guitars that churn and weave—no jangle here—and a his 'n' hers vocal delivery for the ages. Digital Regress is happy to make these essentially perfect records available again. Housed in deluxe-gloss jackets. Edition of 400 copies on black vinyl.
LP $19.95
11/01/2019
***From Melbourne Australia, EXEK are proud to unveil their third album, Some Beautiful Species Left. Like their previous releases, Some Beautiful Species Left is the cultivation of numerous edits and overdubs, where once again EXEK subscribe to Brian Eno’s philosophy of the studio as an instrument. This MO allows the songwriting process to develop simultaneously alongside the recording process whilst privileging greater sonic control. The result is a record difficult to pigeonhole but post punk is perhaps the easiest way to categories EXEK’s music—post modern and containing the defiance inherent within punk whilst incorporating elements of dub production, classical arrangements, hip hop and krautrock rhythms and the use of kitchen appliances as instruments.
LP $17.75
09/06/2019
***There is something both listless and challenging about Paul’s McCartney, something of our time, and something that, in that respect, demands to be taken seriously, and made sense of. The music which follows is capricious but interesting, its themes transitory, and its coherence provided primarily by the percussion. In only the first few minutes of the recording I hear: a siren, a jammed printer, church bells, the beeping of an heart rate monitor (a profoundly sad sound, if one is in possession of the right experiences), and finally what sounds to me like an homage to the tension producing minor key synth sounds that constituted a certain staple of horror film scores in the 1980s. Excepting the last as nominally musical, there is a tendency here to aestheticize the non musical. This is not unique to the present case, of course. For some genres, e.g. industrial, it is the very reason for being. However, in that case the transfiguration of non-musical elements into musical ones is obvious; in this case, the process is less complete, and so, it seems to me, the final product more obscure. Recorded in Oakland and San Francisco last year, SPF is Adam Keith (Cube, Mansion) Will Isengole, and Dave Easlick (Jackie O Motherfucker).
LP $17.50
09/06/2019
***For a decade, MAXINE FUNKE has cut an idiosyncratic path as a singer-songwriter, all the while avoiding the parochial retreads of that worn-out label. Funke's music is intimate and deeply intelligent, buoyed by a sense of effortlessness that belies a scrupulous attention to the smallest of details. Felt appeared in 2012 in a vinyl edition of 100 on the Epic Sweep imprint. This album has an altogether more crepuscular feel, making slightly fuller use of the sonic palette—an increase in dissonance, errant drum rumbles, and nigh-ambient instrumental murmurings around which flow Funke's basically perfect songs. The brevity, yet fullness, of the tracks and Funke's unadorned if oblique arrangements lend a sense not of sketches but of fields of color, the sensation of late fall foliage glimpsed through the window of a quickly passing train.
LP $19.25
08/16/2019
***For a decade, MAXINE FUNKE has cut an idiosyncratic path as a singer-songwriter, all the while avoiding the parochial retreads of that worn-out label. Funke's music is intimate and deeply intelligent, buoyed by a sense of effortlessness that belies a scrupulous attention to the smallest of details. Lace was originally released as a CD-R in 2008 on ALASTAIR GALBRAITH's Next Best Way label. Imagine the just-so arrangements of Josephine Foster and the knowing quotidian eye of Sibylle Baier meeting the realism of Funke's compatriots Turiiya or the acoustic textures of the Kiwi Animal and you're nearly there—but in that gap lies the undeniable pull of Funke's music. Short songs for nylon string guitar, violin, piano, incidental snippets of bird song and furniture creaks, brief instrumental interludes in the vein of Funke's regular collaborator Galbraith: this is the realest of deals. The metaphysic of "Second Hand Store" cuts to the uncompromised heart of this record, a rejection of the idea of ownership in favor of communal chance, the ragged comfort of things lived-in and passed on, a searching with no need to find, let alone possess.
LP $19.25
08/16/2019
***CRISIS MAN return with their 2nd effort, The Myth Of Moderation. Featuring ROSS FARRAR from CEREMONY on vocals and BEN WRIGHT from ACRYLICS / RUTon guitar, this 7" packs all the energy of early Ceremony perfectly complemented by Ben's chorused out guitar riffs. An aural display of what living in the bay area feels like, the rent is due, the car doesn't run anymore, a techie just took the last seat on the crowded BART car. The glass was full to the brim with anxious energy already, but now it's been knocked on the floor.
7" $7.50
03/16/2019
***Oakland three-piece PREENING is MAX NORDILE (saxophone, vocals), ALEJANDRA ALCALA (bass), and SAM LEFEBVRE (drums). Gang Laughter, mostly recorded in the summer of 2018 by HL NELLY at Santo in West Oakland, is Preening’s first full-length. The album follows three 7”s on labels Ever/Never, Fine Concepts, and Digital Regress, and at least three self-released cassette tapes since 2017. Jackets screen-printed in Oakland by Fine Concepts. “In an effort to ensure that as few people hear them as possible,” “hot new Oakland trio” Preening’s “misshapen angles,” “spittle,” and “occasionally funky” “guitarless no wave” is “an interesting listen” and a “slyly antagonizing joyful noise” that’s “as irritating as anything else in Preening’s discography,” though “I can’t tell if it’s a gag” and “there’s a charm.” Also, “the vocals have a bewildering quality.”
LP $17.75
03/08/2019
***The market development team at Discontinuous Innovation Inc. have pre-approved the following vinyl disc for market testing across consumer audiences. 13 tracks played at a feverish pace for maximum efficiency. Since adding TOYOTA AVALON on synth, TOYOTA's sound has (d)evolved further to hit all the hot industry selling points, exotica, lounge, pop, devo-worship, accidental Primus nods? A record certain to sell for top collector dollars $$$$$$. Jackets hand stamped for maximum fucking profitability.
LP $17.50
03/08/2019
***Digital Regress is thrilled to be releasing the latest effort from Oakland's very own BAUS. Their first release in a few years, Songs To Snake To pushes the group forward in their trajectory of perfecting off-kilter no-wave / post-punk completely free of pretension. Recommended for fans of Mars, Kleenex, and The Slits. Limited pressing of 300 copies.
LP $15.50
01/18/2019
***This trio of rodeo clowns has finally hit the big time with this debut slab of wax. ARBY, TAMY and WRANGLE, having grown up in a traveling rodeo under the supervision of their guardian, Dr. Robert C. Lown, have been perfecting their craft of synth-punk, hoe-down stomping in front of small rural crowds across the states. The boys have since relocated to tinsel town to try to make it big in front of the entertainment elites. Recommended for fans of Nervous Gender, The Screamers, Clowns, and Rodeos. Limited edition pressing on coke bottle clear vinyl.
7" $7.00
01/18/2019
***LANDLINE is a collaboration between SHIRLEY MISTAKEN and TOYOTA AVALON (WONDER BREAD, TOYOTA) playing perfectly executed synth-laden new-wave / punk. Recommended for fans of Pylon, B-52's, and Suburban Lawns. First time pressing strictly limited to 500 copies, includes download card.
LP $17.75
09/18/2018
***DIgital Regress is thrilled to announce the debut LP from Oakland's MARBLED EYE. Following in the same vein as their first two EPs, playing sharply detached staccato post-punk with call-and-response guitar interplay, the band manages to expand upon and refine their sound making Leisure their strongest release to date. This first-time pressing is limited to 1,000 copies on black vinyl. Includes download card.
LP $17.75
09/18/2018
***It should come as no surprise to you that ERIK NERVOUS is a member of the DEVO fan club. This new 7" (his first since Ice Cream on Total Punk) Features Erik ripping through some of his favorite obscure DEVO songs from various bootleg and live records. We are not men, we are NEVO.
7" $7.00
08/03/2018
***Akin to Andy Kaufman's character Tony Clifton who aimed to antagonize and scorn crowds, WONDER BREAD is MATT FERRERA's vessel for spewing vitriol at the punk posturers around him. Sonically similar to Tuxedomoon, With pulsing synths/ guitar interplay layered over drum machines, Wonder Bread aims to clear the room with lyrics like "I love progressive rock, if you don't like Steely Dan, you can fuck off”, and “Your parents were probably listening to Styx, your parents were probably listening to Journey, that explains why your not cool”. Having released 7(!) tapes last year on Bay Area label Discontinuous Innovation Inc., this 7" highlights the best of this output along with the unreleased track "My Dad Was In A Hardcore Band." Pressing of 500 copies.
7" $7.00
07/13/2018
***BACK IN STOCK!!! In 1983, NO TREND booked time at Inner Ear studio to record material for what would become the "Teen Love" 7”. In this session they also recorded 6 additional songs: some were re-recorded and featured on their first album, Too Many Humans; the rest never saw a release until well after the band was finished. After the recording session the band embarked on their first tour across the U.S., a punishing experience which resulted in drummer MICHAEL SALKIND quitting the band. He recounts: “I received 25 copies of the EP as my divorce settlement, and went on to play in a variety of bands in and around the DC area. None of them ever attained the status of No Trend, nor did I ever lose as much money and dignity.” This record, You Deserve Your Life, contains the earliest recorded iteration of No Trend’s material from their first Inner Ear session, and two live songs never recorded otherwise. This is the first time that this material has been available on vinyl.
LP $17.75
05/25/2018
***BACK IN STOCK!!! Ever wonder what it would sound like if Mark E. Smith played in a Flying Nun band? This is probably the closest you'll get to an answer, Four brand new tracks from Melbourne's THE SHIFTERS.
7" $7.00
05/25/2018
***BACK IN STOCK!!! Only a handful of bands have been abhorred more than NO TREND were during their brief tenure on the D.C. hardcore circuit. Founded to bewilder and antagonize the harDCore scene (which the band felt was guilty of the same conformity that punk intended to rebel against), No Trend crafted an abrasive, dirge-industrial sound impossible to “slam dance” to. Their first self-released single “Teen Love” is a prime document of the band at their most cantankerous, with tracks like “Cancer” and “Mass Sterilization Caused By Venereal Disease.” The B-side title track, No Trend’s biggest hit if there ever was one, tells a bizarre pop tale of a budding teenage romance which violently and abruptly ends in a fiery car crash (“he was decapitated in an explosion of flame and glass fragments”). Few bands had a sense of humor as dark as No Trend’s—but they're not laughing with you, they’re laughing at you.
7" $8.05
04/27/2018
***Oakland's ECSTASY (members of TONY MOLINA band, JUMP OFF A BUILDING) display a strong showing on their first release, offering jagged harmonics-laced hardcore which seamlessly transition from one song into the next. These 5 songs clocking in at just under 7 minutes, berate wealthy-bay-area-transplants aiming to gain social capitol on their parents dime. Pressing of 500 housed in fold-over covers risographed by Irrelevant Press in Oakland.
7" $6.75
02/16/2018