***Julian Elorduy has been making music since he was fifteen, moving from the noise-soaked chaos of Mayyors to the jangling indie-pop of Fine Steps and, later, the more solitary reflections of Pious Fiction as Julian Never. His new album, Everyday is Purgation awakens on the other side of a Dark Night of the Soul drawing on the writings of mystic, St. John of the Cross—stripping away comforting narratives in order to see what remains with a clearer, more ascetic eye. It’s Julian at his most exposed, shaped equally by the underground that raised him and the melodic pop that continues to haunt him."Julian Never’s jangle, all-chiming balladry power pop poetry is one of our favourite revelations in the past few months. [...]Full of heart and heat, Julian Never’s vocal is equipped with a turn of phrase reminding us a little of Jack Tatum of Wild Nothing but not afraid to bear his heart, allowing the vocal range to arch upwards into a delightful upper register."—Monorail Music
LP $20.15
02/06/2026
***It’s been four years since L.A. indie-pop mainstays Massage last released new music. Now they return with Coaster, a masterful 10-track album that finds the band facing the upheaval and uncertainty of adulthood the only way they know how: together, five longtime friends, turning out one Perfect Pop Song after another.The wait was worth it. Massage have always seen themselves as music fans rather than proper “musicians,” and Coaster—their third LP after 2018’s Oh Boy and 2021’s Still Life—still conjures memories of other eras: the braided rumble of The Cure’s “Pictures of You”; the radiant clang of Big Star’s “September Gurls”; the strobe-light sheen of Echo and the Bunnymen’s “Bring on the Dancing Horses”; the hazy strum of David Kilgour’s “Shivering”; even the post-Madchester swagger of prime Oasis, if you squint hard enough.Yet while facets of Coaster might feel familiar, here they add up to something greater, and rarer—a band that finally sounds more like itself than its influences.
LP $20.15
10/10/2025
***System Exclusive are Ari B and Matt Jones—a Pasadena, CA originated duo, balancing the hard-edged electronic pulse of old school synthwerks against hot-under-the-collar live drums and slashing post-punk guitar. Ari’s melismatic alto completes the triangle, crowning the cyborg-rock compositions with a torn and vulnerable human edge. Faced with the near-impossible task of making a living in California while working as touring musicians, they put their life in storage, put a bed in the van, and have been living wherever the shows take them. On a mission to make strangers misty in the disco throughout the US, UK, and Europe…and wherever else fine records are sold.
LP $20.25
05/31/2024
***“Are you happy like this?” Purveyors of raw power pop and punk, The Wind-Ups may or may not be curious to know. Since the release of their 2021 debut, Try Not To Think, the Northern California bedroom-project-turned-touring outfit has gained the reputation of a lights-out live band, emulating the same breakneck pace of the record. And you are damn sure to find that same frenetic combustion on their second LP, Happy Like This. Produced in identical fashion to the first album, Happy Like This finds frontman Jake Sprecher once again in his comfort zone–writing, performing, recording and mixing the entire record himself from the backyard confines of his home in the college town of Chico. Still slamming ¼” tape into the red, you’ll hear many-a blistering hook in the form of tracks like “Oh I Know” and “Tell Me Again (How Pretty I Am)” and odd-measure pushers like “Nothing But Time” and “Starting To Lose Ya.”
LP $19.85
10/27/2023
***Seablite is a four-piece pop band from San Francisco inspired by 80s/90s indie and shoegaze. Seablite was formed in 2016 when Lauren Matsui (vocals / guitar) and Galine Tumasyan (vocals / bass) bonded over a mutual appreciation of early 90s Britpop and UK underground music. The pair began writing songs and soon after Jen Mundy (ex-Wax Idols) joined on second guitar and Andy Pastalaniec (Chime School) would eventually join on drums. They have released an LP (2019’s Grass Stains and Novocaine) and 7" single (“Breadcrumbs” c/w “Ink Bleeds”) via Emotional Response Records and a 10" EP (High-Rise Mannequins —recorded and produced by Alicia Vanden Heuvel of the Aislers Set) in conjunction with Spain’s Meritorio Records. The band is among San Francisco’s current indie pop renaissance and have opened for the likes of Brian Jonestown Massacre, The Charlatans and Ladytron upon their recent Bay Area visits. Seablite has finished their sophomore album, Lemon Lights. Recorded over the summer of 2022, Lemon Lights contains 12 dreamy pop tracks showcasing the group’s continued growth and maturity and marks a strong progression from their debut album. After recording basic bed tracks with Robby Joseph, the band finished overdubs in their practice space and Lauren's apartment. The freedom of home recording allowed them to experiment, resulting in an organic and intuitive manifestation of the band's emotions and creativity - a sonic inkblot of unfiltered pop appreciation. One may hear Manchester undertones on "Hit the Wall" and “Melancholy Molly”, or the feminine noise-pop of Lush on...
LP $17.75
09/29/2023
***Our Fault, the sophomore album from Los Angeles’ RUBBER BLANKET, thoroughly trounces the laziness cabal. Its 10 tunes beckon listeners to embark on a preternatural sojourn under the collective Blanket of BRAD EBERHARD, LARS FINBERG and JUN OHNUKI (survivors all of WOUNDED LION), three artists and composers, working together forever and then some. Before today, Rubber Blanket had never visited the racetrack in Santa Anita. They agreed to meet there for one specific reason: betting it all on a horse named Pepsi. They’re in queue at the ticket window wearing matching Wall Of Voodoo shirts, which even they think is absurd. It’s a $35 bet to show. They lose but vow to return. Unless there’s literal goo-goo-gah-gah, the notion that Rockish Musics with discernable peculiarities must possess childlike predilections is shite nouveau, serving only to signal that the experimental market is not blonde enough to churn hype butter. This kind of trash-think ignores the existence of real wonderment, as if the constant ingestion of multiverse stimuli couldn’t / wouldn’t / shouldn’t impact the capacity for marvel within the living human sponge. Our Fault is bright enough to recognize and even reproduce this strange ever-growing awe. Rubber Blanket eat Del Taco late-nite while cruising in a convertible yellow Miata, chit-chatting loudly over a skipping Shadow Ring compact disc playing out of the dash console. There’s lettuce everywhere, which is refreshing if you really think about it. They hit a red light, let it turn green, then yellow, then back to red...
LP $18.50
07/07/2023
***It started in a cafe in Chico, California, with a flier, covered in glitter, wires, feathers, and assorted melted items, with a three-word advertisement: “Noise person wanted.” It wasn’t a sign. It was a sample. A tiny piece lifted from the visionary environment that the band XDS would continue building over the next couple of decades, hoarding an eclectic stockpile of collage materials/influences/approaches for assembling psychedelic dance-punk jams played with homemade instruments, blown-out samples, off-kilter drumming and dub baselines. Shoko Horikawa had come from Japan to (the small, music-crazy college town) Chico for school, and responded to Jesse Hall’s mysterious flier and a pitch to collaborate on making interesting sounds. The partnership would end up featuring her syncopated polyrhythmic drums alongside his vocals (through a duct tape-and-PVC-pipe mic) and custom-built Guitar-o-bass, plus synths/samplers and various noise-making devices. The two-piece Experimental Dental School eventually morphed into XDS as the duo moved the operation from Chico to Oakland to Portland and back to Chico, touring the world (playing alongside the likes of Deerhoof and other innovators) and releasing 11 recordings (on Cochon Records, German label TCWGA, etc.) as they went. On the new XDS album, Bicycle Ripper, the band’s genre-bending roots are as deep as ever, but the goal now is to be less “noise” people and more “fun” people. The songs are weird yet cohesive, with jittery grooves and inventive hooks. Throw a dart at the album and hit “Hot Panther, Cold Moon” for one random sample: an unrelenting fuzzed-out bass...
LP $18.50
06/16/2023
***“Everyone’s hoping that nobody sees/all our little efforts at dignity” This last line of the title track from Cindy’s fourth LP Why Not Now? works as a slogan for Karina Gill's evolving musical vision. Her music is simple out of necessity and introverted in delivery, but the songs contain vivid worlds and are quietly ambitious. With this latest batch, Gill pulled the process of making Cindy music even more inward. “Some of these songs were first recorded as demos alone in my basement. I think that process set the tone for the record…Maybe it set up a kind of starkness,” she says. Moving on from the fixed quartet that performed the first three albums, Gill worked alongside original keyboardist Aaron Diko to develop the songs and they enlisted players from the ever-blossoming SF pop scene to realise her minimalist vision -- members of Flowertown, Telephone Numbers, April Magazine, Famous Mammals, and Sad Eyed Beatniks to name a few. The collective sounds fill out the record perfectly with John Cale-esque viola on ‘August’, lo-fi fairground organs, and a tasteful full-band sound that crops up throughout. ‘A Trumpet on a Hillside’ is the most triumphant Cindy has ever sounded, all ascending chords and a wedding march melody tumbling out of an old synth. Still, some of the best moments are Gill alone, as on ‘Playboy’, just naked guitar and voice, and when the forlorn whistling solo kicks in, it feels like the loneliest star is imploding in a distant galaxy. ...
LP $17.75
05/19/2023
***"It’s 9:35 pm on a Saturday in Chico and it’s pouring rain. It’s three days into our NW tour and things keep going wrong. We forgot half the merch at home, we had to turn around an hour out of Sacramento after I tried to leave my lucky leather jacket behind, and sadly, the shows have been pretty slow thus far. Thankfully, the room at The Naked Lounge in Chico is filling up, and things are looking pretty good for once. Whilst happily chatting about our upcoming recording session in Portland on Monday, imagine our horror at discovering that in fact the session was booked for Sunday, a mere 15 hours away. Twin panic attacks and some frantic google searches later we hatched a plan to push through the deluge and drive as far as Yreka after the show, crash for a few hours, and make the remaining 6 hours of the drive as early as we can in the morning. 490 miles later we pulled up to Page Street Studios in Portland as shattered shells of humans, but Frankie and Leon greeted us with stellar vibes and poured us into their freshly finished and stunningly beautiful studio space. We gamely blasted through these three songs in four hours before their next session, including our cover of the Rick James and Eddy Murphy’s stone-cold electro-funk classic, 'Party All the Time.' For everything that went wrong preceding (and following) the session, those 4 hours went amazingly right, and this record is...
12" $15.50
04/28/2023
***JULIAN NEVER is the latest vehicle for former MAYYORS drummer JULIAN ELORDUY's jangle pop alter-ego. An evolution of the songwriting that produced the short-lived but much-loved FINE STEPS, Pious Fiction is 15 tracks of bittersweet, sun-warped jangle self-recorded off and on over the last four years in a variety of Sacramento homes and warehouses with the help of former Mayyors band-mate MARK KAISER (also formerly of Castle Face goth punks MALE GAZE), a newly acquired Tascam half-inch reel-to-reel and a borrowed mixer. The album is built upon a solid base of guitar-centric pop richly layered with ethereal synths and piano, intertwined with themes of love, loss and Elorduy’s Catholic upbringing, all delivered with his captivating tenor. Inspired by the Flying Nun catalog, Prefab Sprout and odd underground pop hits by Chris Spedding and Dwight Twilley. Limited edition of 300 copies.
LP $17.75
02/03/2023
***LARS FINBERG, confirmed genius guy and poet laureate of sunken 21st century Rock, acts as manager in perpetuity of THE INTELLIGENCE, primary vehicle for his prolific creative swirl and a project that has taken on new shapes across myriad trials and shifts. The project began in his Seattle bedroom—a lad and his Tascam cassette 8 track—with the classic Boredom & Terror and has now landed in his Los Angeles studio apartment—an urchin and his Tascam digital 12 track—with Lil’ Peril, a new album that finds Finberg 1000% back at the controls. Over the course of 11 albums (!), The Intelligence has established a backbone that boogies through revolutions, allowing each jam-crammed dispatch to feel and sound admirably unique. The angular sharp shocks heard in earlier years have steadily evolved into the ballooning grooves heard on more recent releases (including Finberg’s recent solo work). Lil’ Peril is a dreamy gamble that captures this current bubbling penchant in The Intelligence’s inaugural homemade mode. With inspirational templates as far-flung as Les Paul, The Specials, Lee Perry and Mary Ford, Lil’ Peril pulls off the absurd shift “from ‘No-Wave Santana’ to ‘Screamers recorded by Jon Brion”. Playing shoulder parrot to studio engineers has no doubt informed Finberg’s approach to home recording, specifically in how much further he can go without wincing budget-minded eyes staring him down. This is immediately sensed on the opener “Maudlin Agency,” which begins with canned minimal bleep and closes with a full recreation of the “Brass Monkey” hook. These surprise-attack...
LP $17.75
10/07/2022
MP3 $7.99
09/30/2022
FLAC $8.99
09/30/2022
***From a deckhand on a container ship idling in the bay, an excitable beachgoer, or a rubbernecker passing through an intersection: it’s as if you’re floating around the city, people-watching through a soft focus lens. FLOWERTOWN, the San Francisco duo of KARINA GILL (CINDY) and MIKE RAMOS, return with the dreamy, temperate, Half Yesterday. Flowertown’s previous album, Time Trials, focused on the slowing down of time, shutdowns, and a somber look at our day-to-day thoughts. But with over-the-shoulder observations, a ‘slice of life’ from one onlooker to the next, “Half Yesterday” seems to tell the story of the people in a living, thriving, city. Twangy lead guitar, high-neck bass notes, and percussion woven together in the decay of a warm reverb. The album contains the familiar vocal trade-offs between Mike and Karina; oftentimes coming up with two separate melodies for their respective vocals. One stark difference is the beautifully simple production across all of the tracks. Previous Flowertown recordings leaned on the “Portastudio as an instrument” production for many of the songs. On Half Yesterday the tape hiss is there, but it’s not altering the end result. With a fading pink and blue sky, the city’s lights begin to twinkle at sunset. Another onlooker gazes out and wonders if what they’re seeing is right.
12" $16.00
07/15/2022
***San Francisco Bay Area guitar pop stalwart R.E. Seraphin returns with his EP Swingshift, a joint release via Mt. St. Mtn, Tear Jerk (Australia), Dandy Boy Records (US cassette) and Safe Suburban Homes (UK cassette). The seven-track home-recorded EP, featuring both originals and inspired takes on songs by The Wipers and Television Personalities, finds Seraphin joined by colleagues Matt Bullimore (Mantles), Joel Cusumano (Cocktails), Yea-Ming Chen (Dreamdate, Yea-Ming Chen and the Rumours), Jasper Leach (Tony Molina) and guitarist Owen Kelley (Sleepy Sun). With the onset of COVID lockdowns, Seraphin rapidly changed his approach to recording, tracking all basics on his iPhone and working with his collaborators via share networks. Rather than feeling constricted by the process, he found a new freedom. “Now, I could record whatever I wanted in my bedroom and send it to whoever I wanted, free of any intraband politics,” he says. “Recording something as I’m writing it has an immediacy that really works for me.” The resultant EP A Room Forever found wide acclaim in the online blog world, firmly establishing Seraphin as a dynamic, multifaceted new voice in independent music. Seraphin returned to his room and trusty phone last spring to craft his most ambitious work yet in Swingshift. Densely layered, the EP’s sheen brings to mind The Replacements gone psychedelic, Cheap Trick gone to Mars, Cleaners from Venus if they bothered to mix their records. Looking to move on from the muted earth tones dominating much underground music today, he goaded...
12" $14.75
05/27/2022
***REISSUED!!! Originally released in 2018 by Tear Jerk in Australia, features members of PAINS OF BEING PURE AT HEART. "More than anything else, Oh Boy is a celebration of teenage fandom and friendship. Each song is 'about' something else, of course: a betrayal, a breakup, new love, parenthood. The usual stuff. And we’re hardly teenagers. Yet somehow MASSAGE feels like the kind of band you were in back in high school. We were friends first. We all had other lives. We started playing music almost by accident. We made a playlist of songs we loved—hundreds of them—long before we recorded anything: the Feelies, the Go-Betweens, East River Pipe, the Lemonheads, the Breeders, Flying Nun, Sarah Records. ALEX and ANDREW started writing songs the way kids do—to sound like their heroes. No matter how we tried, though, the songs—half Alex's, half Andrew's—came out sounding like 'Massage': scrappy, catchy, minimalist, and sincere, with GABI's harmonies elevating each track. Every Monday after practice, we went to Jay’s Bar for beers and poutine. There was no point to any of this. We were just having fun. Then one day we realized we were a band. Oh Boy is our attempt to capture this easy alchemy on tape—the strange magic of a bunch of amateurs coming together, finding their own wavelength, and making something out of nothing." Pressed on two-color (black and milky clear) vinyl.
LP $16.35
03/11/2022
***Just a few months after releasing their acclaimed second album Still Life, Los Angeles indie-pop band Massage returns with Lane Lines—a six-track EP on Mt. St. Mtn. (Cindy, Flowertown, Blues Lawyer) that finds the quintet expanding on their Sarah-meets-Creation Records sound with new touches of soft psychedelia, Feelies-ish frenzy and Haçienda-era escapism. The band didn’t plan to follow Still Lines so quickly. But after the pandemic further delayed that multi-year project, Alex Naidus (guitar, vocals, former Pains of Being Pure at Heart), Andrew Romano (guitar, vocals), Gabrielle Ferrer (keyboards, percussion, vocals), David Rager (bass) and Natalie de Almeida (drums) leapt at the chance to make music together again in real life and started gathering on random summer evenings in the tiny rehearsal-space studio of producer-composer Andrew Brassell (Susanna Hoffs) with no clear goal in mind. Lane Lines is the surprise product of those informal sessions—a flash of pent-up creative energy that serves as both a companion piece to Still Life and an exploration of textures and influences that didn’t quite fit the full-length but have always been deeply embedded in the band’s DNA, with new echoes of 1980s artists that sought to refract the 1960s through their own skewed prisms: Flying Nun, the Paisley Underground, The Feelies covering The Beatles, “Second Summer of Love” New Order.
12" $13.75
01/28/2022
***"Karina Gill. She became a musician only recently, having sat on the sidelines while ex-partners and friends made their stabs at it. Gill describes a chance encounter with an abandoned Squire Strat left in the basement by a previous tenant, 'mummified in electrical tape with the remnants of a burrito on the head stock', that led her to begin carefully strumming her way through simple chords and making her own songs. After one interesting self-released LP, still finding their footing, the band made the masterful and buzzed-about Free Advice, which went from a limited cassette on local SF label Paisley Shirt to vinyl pressings on Tough Love (UK) and Mt. St.Mtn. (USA). Cindy’s third LP arrives in quick succession, the quietly devastating 1:2. Jesse Jackson on bass, Simon Phillips on drums and Aaron Diko on keyboards weave the perfectly thin web behind Gill’s slow Velvety strums and murmured melodies. The rhythm section brings the crude flow, while the keys add subtle and surreal counterpoint to the withering world Gill depicts in her lyrics. 'Songs tie together seemingly disparate things by the logic of mood,' Gill tries to explain. This isn’t dream-pop sunshine bliss; half-closed black drapes hang on the window where the narrator stares into the middle distance. 'Sometimes you say you’re feeling small/You plan all day for your own funeral', she intones in Party Store. Gill has a way of halting her phrasing that makes it feel like her thoughts are gently tumbling into the abyss. It’s this unsettling...
LP $16.35
11/26/2021
***Massage was supposed to be low-stakes, no big deal—"anti-ambition," as Andrew Romano, guitarist and vocalist, put it. The L.A.-based jangle-pop group's first album, 2018's Oh Boy, was a sweet and simple weekend warrior's affair, or more specifically, an every-other-Monday one, as the band members—Romano, ALEX NAIDUS (ex-PAINS OF BEING PURE AT HEART), GABRIELLE FERRER, MICHAEL FELIX, DAVID RAGER, NATALIE DE ALMEIDA— gathered to bash out songs that offered messy but heartfelt tribute to their chosen heroes: The Feelies, the Go-Betweens, Twerps, Flying Nun. The kind of music Massage makes—sunny, bittersweet, tender—is less a proper genre than a minor zip code nested within guitar pop. Indie pop, jangle pop, power pop—whatever you call it, pushing too hard scares the spirit right out of this sweet, diffident music, and Massage have a touch so light the songs seem to form spontaneously, like wry smiles. Still, on their sophomore effort, Still Life, they manage to take a quantum leap forward in songwriting, production, and depth, all somehow without seeming to try. These 12 deft songs are full of late-summer sunlight and deep shadows, pained grins and shared jokes, shy declarations of love and quietly nursed heartbreak. Still Life resurrects a brief, romantic moment in the late-'80s, right after post-punk and immediately before alt-rock, when it seemed like any scrappy indie band might stumble across a hit. The result is the finest batch of songs they've ever produced—these are gold-standard indie-pop gems from emerging masters of the form.The lyrics are downcast, empathetic, and quiet,...
LP $16.35
09/03/2021
***Flowertown is Karina Gill and Michael Ramos. The San Francisco duo first wrote a song together because their respective projects (Cindy + Tony Jay) were scheduled to play a show together in March 2020. The show didn't happen, but as shelter-in-place took effect they started trading song ideas and writing collaboratively, sending voice memos back and forth and eventually recording the songs in Karina’s basement on a 4 track. Flowertown released two EPs on cassette with Paisley Shirt Records, and here they are remastered and compiled on vinyl by Mt.St.Mtn.
LP $16.00
07/09/2021
***BACK IN STOCK!!! Tinnitus Tonight is the latest & sneakiest full-measure serving from LARS FINBERG, world-class bon vivant and prolific Panic Rock artiste. Why so sneaky? Here’s the dirt: Finberg developed a nerve rash leading up his 2017 tootle, the TY SEGALL-assisted Moonlight Over Bakersfield. Rather than blindly leap from the comfy zone, he tip-toed in secret to a friendly but far-flung (cough*Sacramento*cough) studio to capture a reserve of slanted tunes with a proven-effective team of buds. Those comrades --- the glorious LAUREN MARIE MIKUS on keys, frequent collaborator & forever-gent KANNAN TUPPER on drums and, at the controls and elsewhere, the indestructible CHRIS WOODHOUSE --- all fostered a supportive framework that first allowed Finberg to “think” beyond THE INTELLIGENCE, gearing him up for a life in the spotlight (or moonlight, as it were). So yes indeed: what appears to be an adventurous follow-up also doubles as a prequel. Keep accurate score or you’re dusted. The core of Tinnitus Tonight centers on an assemblage of Finberg’s most golden riffs –- trash-coustic but driftwood-smooth, naughty and infinite, all of ‘em bangers and/or buggers. Tunes sprout and move matador-like until an inevitable goring. The past-it grunt that kicks off “Burger Queen” prompts a mimed chef’s kiss. “My Prison” and “The Doors” are quintessential, truly distilled Finberg moments, compounding his trademark acerbic, out-for-blood wit with these absurdly cool, whip-crack guitars. The massively impressive “Public Admirer” is unequivocally the loudest, most damaged blurt from this doggie in at least a...
LP $16.00
11/27/2020
MP3 $9.90
11/27/2020
FLAC $11.99
11/27/2020
***Rob I. Miller of Oakland’s Blues Lawyer, formerly of Mall Walk, releases his solo debut Maybe Another Time on Mt.St.Mtn. Every generation has had their moment that felt like the world was coming to an end, but it’d be hard to argue that 2020 hasn’t distilled that feeling into history’s most potent dose of despair. Though the new Christian Singles album was written during the early days of quarantine, it wasn’t the pandemic, the looming election, or impending climate change that caused Rob I. Miller to take stock. News that his father’s cancer had returned dredged up unresolved pain and brought a new sense of urgency to issues that had long lain dormant. Maybe Another Time, the 9-song debut under Miller’s solo moniker, confronts the difficult questions about family and forgiveness, and aging in a desperate world.
LP $17.75
10/09/2020
***BACK IN STOCK!!! Free Advice offers a somber-yet-uplifting take on sobered dream pop. Imagine if Galaxie 500’s On Fire didn’t have a guitar solo or if The Trinity Session was stripped of its folk & blues roots; it’s just pure mood. Like sitting in a half-empty movie theater that’s playing Alphaville or Wild Strawberries and watching patron’s heads briefly illuminated from the screen; Free Advice (and all of the CINDY output) transfers you to these momentary worlds. CINDY is KARINA GILL on guitar/vocals, AARON DIKO on synth/keys, SIMON PHILLIPS drums/percussion, and JESSE JACKSON on bass/keys, plus Simon and Jesse on backing vocals. The songs on Free Advice are these moments in mood: Phillips & Jackson’s rhythms create the foundation, while Diko’s keys rise and fall. Gill’s guitar rattles, vocals brood, and lyrics create these narratives that depict observers, not necessarily wronged rather, cautious and investigative of the world around them. “…Others have mentioned Galaxie 500 in reference to this, but this is bleaker in tone, more quizzical, maybe closer to Low’s harrowing take on slowcore. The vocals are intoned, murmured while the music moves steady and minimal behind it. The occasional loopy synth sound rises up in the mix, but it’s all very restrained.”—Glenn Donaldson, Freeform Freakout
LP $17.75
09/11/2020
***Three years after the release of their self-titled debut LP, SHARK TOYS follow it up with ten more bursts of weirdo punk. Nine originals and cover of the Mekons classic, “Where Were You.” Ever since forming in 2008, the band has developed a reputation for sharp and choppy live sets, developing a loyal following around their home town of Los Angeles and around the US, from playing shows with bands like Ty Segall, Protomartyr, Parquet Courts, Terry Malts, the Urinals and many others. This batch of tunes were taken from the same session as the recent 7” single, a split with Florida’s UV-TV, on Emotional Response, earlier this year, recorded by DAVE FOX of the Traditional Fools (who also recorded Fuzz, Scraper, Vial, and Wand). "A treble fueled look at Los Angeles that certain fans of Tyvek will consume lovingly. Usually the word shambolic would be thrown in for effect when describing bands attempting to transmit a Homosexuals/Tronics/Desperate Bicycles air, but this band does not have a shambling manner to these ears. They seem very propulsive and on target, with shards of errant guitar whipped into shape by the savagery of the rhythm. … [They have] a driving down highways at night nihilism that is hard to conjure … with ear slicing guitar “solos” somewhere between sneaker squeak and door creak. … Super catchy bedroom punk for people that clutch the Astral Glamour box set to their hearts and know all the words to Swell Maps B-sides …"—Maximum Rock...
LP $17.75
04/08/2016
***BURNT ONES picks up where it left off on the LPs Black Teeth & Golden Tongues and You’ll Never Walk Alone. Fuzzed out glam rock of the highest order on a release that fits the aesthetic of psych rock juggernauts Burger Records and Castleface Records. The vocals are more discernible and the instrumentals are tightened on this terrific sophomore effort. 1960s pop themes intertwine with fuzzed out psychedelic rock in an unabashed celebration of all things glam. On earlier releases, the vocals of lead-singer MARK TESTER often got lost in Burnt Ones all-encompassing wall of sound. Such is not the case here. The reverb-heavy vocals ride a propulsive crest of fuzzed out guitars. It’s a much bigger sound than any four-piece has a right to offer. THE MALLARD are an inside-out-echo-laser-garage-psych-rock four-piece from San Francisco. Their home fried songs harness the naked abandon of ‘60s punk (think earliest Syd Barrett era Pink Floyd), but inject the form with a deranged spirit all their own. Close attention to texture and dynamics allow the band to explore unusual terrain—to grant access into unexpected realms of beauty and terror... with dessert. Limited to 500 copies on two-color vinyl packaged in f-color cover jackets with debossed overprint and artwork by JAY HOWELL.
7" $6.30
06/03/2014
***San Diego’s PLATEAUS are back and following up their acclaimed debut LP on Art Fag with a limited one sided 10” coming from Mt.St.Mtn. Plateaus have a laid back minimalist sound doing more with less with a niche for catchy song writing and melody. Hazy guitar tones, pounding drums, fuzzed out bass, and blown out vocals they deliver a sonic sound scape your ears with be thrilled to hear. With a range of influences from The Clean to The Wipers to Guided By Voices to Harry Nilsson to The Country Teasers, their sound is hard to pigeon hole into one specific genre. Cover artwork by JAY HOWELL, design by MARK KAISER. Edition of 500 copies pressed on one-sided 10-inch splatter vinyl mastered at 45 rpm, and packaged in offset printed die cut jackets.
10" $14.50
11/05/2013