***"46 years after I first heard Stare Kits on a cassette, they finally have an LP. About time! This NYC quartet's name often comes up in discussions of the No Wave era, which make sense. The members—Angela Jaeger, Amy Rigby, Michael McMahon, and Bob Gurevics—were all fans of the scene, and involved with various aspects of TR3, one of No Wave's pre-eminent showcases. UT played their first gig opening for Stare Kits. Rick Brown (Blinding Headache, Information, etc.) played guest sax with them. Julia Gorton used Amy as a photo model almost as often as she used Lydia Lunch, and so on. But despite such connections they were not a No Wave band. Stare Kits's music certainly use instrumental elements in line with No Wave's ethos, but these're part of a much larger mix. The band's basic approach is much rockier and punkier. Bob's guitar parts are more in the tradition of Quine and Reed than they are Lydian, the McMahon/Rigby's rhythm section is more primitive than martial, and Angela's vocals are goddamn melodic. Closer musical comparisons might be made to a various aspects of UK bands from Penetration to Wire to Deaf School to X-Ray Spex. There's a soupçon of a '79 UK DIY rattle to some of the tunes as well. But there is an ineffable something lurking in their collective soul that keeps Stare Kits's instrumental sound grounded in the NYC art-punk/street-rock continuum. Angela's vocals may resemble Penelope Houston's at moments but there's not much overt political...
LP $35.50
12/12/2025
***"Nice to hear the first solo LP in a good while by this most excellent guitarist who also runs the superb Scissor Tail label. Dylan writes, 'I made the title track a couple years ago at the beginning of summer. I was thinking about how as you get older you have fewer new experiences. That feeling of excitement for summer fades, after it used to be such a big deal as a kid. Those experiences can only be new and vibrant once. The rest of your life can be spent in nostalgia for them. It's a sad thought and maybe not true for everyone, but I suspect it is for most. The album is a sort of ode to that Stand by Me vibe of childhood. Which's a big part of why Cody M Lane 's photograph of the kid skateboarding in cowboy boots hit me so hard. That's a thing I've seen multiple times here in Oklahoma over the years and it cracks me up, but is also just a perfect photo in my opinion. All of his photography really captures my latchkey childhood -- wandering around the streets all day with friends, not a care in the world. The recording process was spaced out over 12 years. I compiled these songs around a theme although they weren't recorded with a theme in mind. My songs are usually extracted from longer recorded improvisations, then expanded. Some tunes like 'Good Directions' and 'No New Summers' were just made in one...
LP $32.95
03/21/2025
MP3 $7.99
03/07/2025
FLAC $8.99
03/07/2025
***"One of the great joys of the ever-evolving catalog of DAN MELCHIOR is hearing where in the spectrum of styles that he has mastered each record falls. From studio recordings to lo-fidelity home experiments, full band rockers or plaintive solo excursions, fans never know what they are going to get until the needle drops. Those of us who have followed Dan on his prolific pathways are ready for anything but always assured that the spirit of the artist himself, one unique enough to be its own in any form, will deliver and somehow deal with the ramifications of an increasingly maddening world. Dan's first full length of 2021, CB Odyssey, (co-released by the Feeding Tube/Sophomore Lounge) continues in his fine tradition of excellence, this time finding the middle ground of his stylistic extremes. A master of modern song-craft, Melchior returns with CB Odyssey to deliver a further treatise on the agonizing futility of contemporary life. Neither pandering to sentimentality nor cultural trends, Melchior embraces the crass absurdity of modern existence, delivering a multi-faceted view of the everyday. These scenes offer illuminations into the hilarious, the macabre, the pointlessly hip, and most elegantly, the details of the normalcy that few writers of our time seem to be able to capture. The cast of characters on CB Odyssey range from middle-aged self-satisfied artists who have never courted popularity to woke millennials trying to teach mosquitos that it's not nice to bite. The listener is taken to vistas never before traveled such as...
LP $26.75
05/13/2022
***BACK IN STOCK!!! "Pleased as punch are we to be reissuing Michael Hurley's long-lost 1984 album, Blue Navigator. Admittedly, Secret Seven and Mississippi collaborated on a dandy 8-track version a decade ago, but the record has mostly been available as an obscure import CD—if at all—for many a year. The reason for this is that the Rooster Records HQ burned down in 1987, taking master tapes, extra covers and whatever else there was with it. This was a general bummer, but especially so for us Hurley fans, since his final LP with Rounder was Snockgrass in 1980, and he didn't hook up with Fundamental to do Watertower until 1987. The disappearance of Blue Navigator from this earth left a sizable hole. Which we'd now like to think has been plugged. Recorded with a cast of Northern Vermont hepcats including guitarist Jon Weber (of Dan Hicks' original Hot Licks), head Rooster William Wright on guitar and mandolin, Nancy Beavan on vocals, Gordon Stone on pedal steel and various other goners, all playing some sweet rural swing displaying exactly how Hurley became the toast of the snowmobile club circuit during his days in the North Country. A mix of old favorites—'Werewolf,' 'Open Up (Eternal Lips)'—new favorites—'Code of the Mountains,' 'Ghost Woman Blues'—and even a re-write—'Blue Navigator'—it's a great, very casual sounding session, revealing more layers the more you listen. The instrumentation varies a lot between tunes, but the music always flows with Snocky grace and assurance. For this reissue, Michael has written...
LP $26.75
02/19/2021
***"Brilliant, inspired and somewhat surprising collaboration between Chicago's premier free-rock trio and the truly legendary percussionist, HAMID DRAKE, who has played with everyone from Don Cherry to Peter Brötzmann to Lee Perry. This collusion was precipitated by Matt Jackowiak, a mutual friend, who thought a merging of their sounds might make for an ecstatic explosion. This feeling became mutual after they played a show together at Constellation. The set mixes MAKO SICA tunes with improvisations that took everyone to places they hadn't expected, and the trip was deemed an utter success. Ronda was done at two sessions, scheduled around Hamid's insanely busy work schedule. The first was at Jamdek with DOUGLAS MALONE at the board, the second was at Electrical Audio with TAYLOR HALES. The Electrical session allowed the players access to a host of additional instruments, so the sonic palette on 'Dance With Waves' and 'Emanation' is wider and somehow more cosmic than usual. But the whole album has an extraordinary depth and width of sound. Even the great songs Mako Sica has had in its set for a while like 'The Old Book,' gain whole new levels of otherness here, and the material based in quartet improvisations, like 'The Wu Wei,' explores wild new territory for the band. Ronda (named after a town in southern Spain with a famous 18th Century bridge crossing a deep gorge) is the first span connecting the disparate musical worlds of Mako Sica and Hamid Drake. Let us hope it is but the...
2XLP $31.95
08/10/2018
MP3 $9.90
07/27/2018
FLAC $11.99
07/27/2018
***"LOUISE BOCK is one of the performing names worn by TARALIE PETERSON of that most excellent duo, SPIRES THAT IN THE SUNSET RISE. And the music on Repetitives in Illocality recalls a few aspects of Spires' recent live shows. It's akin to a dreamily aggressive take on the outer fringes of early ECM-style improvisation. A lovely hover between out-chamber-jazz, new music and the unknown tongue. Using cello, sax and treated lap harp, Louise Bock creates surfaces that are sometimes as chopped as ice sculptures made with a chainsaw, and at other moments as smooth as the soft expanse of Brian Eno's forehead. Those passages where the cello takes the lead are the most serious. Some passages, with their mournful sweep, almost sound like the slower parts of Kodály's 'Solo Cello Sonata.' The treated lap harp has resonance qualities not unlike a jaw harp at times, enabled to produce long tone lines, as well as to wobble like a jaw full of loose teeth. When Taralie's voice comes in, it can almost seem like Martin Rev is playing a solo on an old pushbutton phone while Judy Nylon blows clouds of aether into his wig. But the vocals combine with the sweet saw of cello in an entirely different way. Suggesting snippets of not-yet-discovered operettas about life elsewhere. Meanwhile, lap harp and sax appear to exist in a post-progressive universe where early '70s Gong may have actually had some serious moments. And this is some seriously amazing stuff -- solo, duos,...
LP $21.95
05/04/2018
***"Utterly boo-licious debut slab by this new duo, made up of MATT 'MV' VALENTINE and PAT 'P.G. SIX' GUBLER, who have been in cahoots since the near-forgotten days of MEMPHIS LUXURE. The pair (mostly known for guitar-aktion) create a full band's worth of jams using percussion and keys and all-else. The results make for one of the more mind-melting platters to've hit the Valley in a good while. Like many of the best sides this pair has been associated with, the music on Livin' The Die is an elegant balance of ramble and spear. The songs' formats are as loose as Earl Butz's shoes but each of them is lanced with guitar sounds as tight as his legendary fist. Around these spumes of electric menace you'll find rings of crazy space burble, vocals so deeply layered they sound like something happening in the back of Daevid Allen's brain. But large swathes of the album are rurally expansive, as befits the mountainside on which it was recorded. Pods of guitar-pedal-whomp slowly surface in the middle of whirling sea of harmonica slurps, juice harp bwongs and vocals as dreamy as they are lost. Roll a bone or be one. The choice, as always, is yours."—Byron Coley, 2018 Edition of 500.
LP $25.50
03/30/2018
MP3 $9.90
03/23/2018
FLAC $11.99
03/23/2018
***REISSUED!!! GARY WILSON's monumental 1977 LP reissued with a glamorously shiny foil cover bearing the original cover art (care of Owen Maercks's well-loved copy), delicately laid out by Scott Allison. Which makes it, perhaps, the last copy you'll ever need. You Think You Really Know Me (also the title of Michael Wolk's 2005 documentary about Wilson) was Wilson's second LP, but the first he recorded as a vocalist, hewing to his own bizarre vision—a syncretic collision of romance, new wave cocktail jazz, heartbreak, disco porn-soundtrack music, and experimental tape manipulation. Home-recorded in Endicott, NY, the album found a few fans when released, but subsequently became the exclusive purview of record collectors and the women who tolerate them. Beck namechecked Wilson in 1996, which made a few new people scratch their heads. And the album was reissued in 2002. Rediscovery followed, and records, the documentary, and some odd live shows. Most of Wilson's moves are stamped with his unique aesthetic, and are also documented on other three recommended Feeding Tube LPs—Lisa Wants to Talk to You (FTR 081LP), Forgotten Lovers (FTR 065LP), and Music for Piano (FTR 192LP). But as bodacious as these three albums are, the real root of Wilson's muse is most obvious on You Think You Really Know Me. It is the sound of a 23-year old oddball from upstate New York wrestling with his demons and actually winning. There's nothing quite like it. And it offers a story of hope to every weirdo who hears it. Hallelujah!...
LP $24.85
04/01/2016