Petty Bunco

Robb, Emily

Soundtrack to the Space Between Attack and Decay

Petty Bunco

Emily Robb has cemented her place as one of the underground’s most distinctive guitarists. Her pair of visionary solo albums on Petty Bunco showcase her evocative, feedback-rich guitar style and her gift for finding melody inside the noise. The invitation to compose the score for The Space Between Attack and Decay has led Robb into new and fascinating territory. Her imaginative soundtrack reveals some of her most far-reaching and expressive work to date. "Wake Up" serves as the recurring theme that follows the film’s lead character. Its dark melody trudges beneath breathy layers of trumpet, creating an atmosphere that’s both intimate and uneasy. When it returns as "Frustrated Wake Up," the theme takes on sharper edges, punctuated by Robb’s crunching guitar rhythms and waves of tremolo. Her natural instinct to rock shines through here, giving the cue a playfulness that blends perfectly with the film’s mood. Like a great Morricone motif, it instantly defines the protagonist’s identity. "Shiny Sister" drifts in on lilting Spanish-guitar melodies that gradually give way to ethereal, siren-like vocals. The subtle Mexican influence in instrumentation and phrasing evoke the more romantic side of 1960s and ’70s spaghetti western scores, infused with the sun-bleached mysticism of Jadorowosky's El Topo. This piece expands the film’s emotional space while standing beautifully on its own. "Dance Music" echoes the story’s theme of searching. Drums and bass circle one another in a loose, hesitant rhythm, like two people shyly beginning to dance, gradually gaining confidence with each pass....

Equipment Pointed Ankh

Eggs A Little Late

Petty Bunco

In a time when cleverness is prized over belly-busting fun, in a musical landscape that worships genre over invention, and in a world increasingly begging computers to think on our behalf — Equipment Pointed Ankh’s fifth studio album Eggs A Little Late (out 11/28 via Philly’s indomitable Petty Bunco label) arrives an abundantly refreshing gift, truly funny and smart. Recorded in bandleader Jim Marlowe’s studio End of an Ear (Louisville, KY) off and on over the last three years, the core Ankh crew (Marlowe, Chris Bush, Dan Davis, Ryan Davis, Shutaro Noguchi) gathered when they were able to get serious about play, along with some new and returning guests (Eric Lanham, Jeannine Lonardo, Trevor Nikrant, Jenny Rose, Ryan Swigart, Ben Traughber and Seth Manchester.) How do so many people (having this much fun) make a record so singular and cohesive? I don’t know, exactly, but I’ve heard a few rumors. Dan Davis once told me that Ankh operates with a radically democratic process: no single part stays unless there is unanimous enthusiasm for it. If any one person doesn’t dig any one cowbell hit, it’s cut — and so the bonsai is trimmed. Listening to these miracles of tracks, I can hear that balance of freedom and restraint. Music made in this spirit (jamming, free improv, whatever you want to call it; Roscoe Mitchell called it “composing in real time”) often feels like it can percolate forever, occasionally over boiling. Ankh’s recordings never come close — they glint...

Walnut Brain

Weird Wire

Petty Bunco

***Walnut Brain, the duo of Alina Josan and Steve Heise, mess around with a custom-made diddley bow and an electric guitar to make decidedly earthbound sounds that reach for the clouds or the stars or whatever’s out there. A diddley bow is an instrument whose single string, when struck and bowed by a sensitive player, emits sounds that both scrape and sing. As we all know, an electric guitar is a juiced up instrument capable of producing some of the most exciting sounds imaginable. In the intuitive hands of Walnut Brain, these instruments weave together to oscillating rhythms and fleeting melodies.Recorded entirely on location in only the most inspiring cabins, kitchens, and basements that this tri-state area has to offer, Weird Wire is an experience of pulses and textures swiped from the ether and committed to magnetic tape.

King Blood

Eye I Aye Ivy

Petty Bunco

***The return of your favorite unknown guitarist’s favorite unknown guitarist! If previous platters ran on filthy diesel and sputtering engines, Eye I Aye Ivy is powered by jet fuel and has sights set way beyond the horizon. It's a cosmic headbanger that vamps on nearly recognizable rock riffs to build one excruciating crescendo after another. It’s the soundtrack for the first ravioli western to be filmed on the moon in the gutter. Conceived and recorded entirely by Ry himself, this thing is stuffed with twelve tracks that show influences ranging from the patient throb of King Tubby, the confident triumph of Iron Maiden, the otherworldly din of Blues Control, the budget sci-fi fantasy of Chrome, and the easy come down of Spacemen 3, often within the same damn tune. It’s the type of record that’ll have ya knee deep in murk, humming along, and flipping it over and over and over again, desperately waiting for the next time Ry turns up from parts unknown to give us another King Blood offering.

Mordecai

Seeds From The Furthest Vine

Petty Bunco

"Seeds from the Furthest Vine is the 6th (!!!!) proper LP from our gang & any astute listener will hear the guys taking their glorious din into new territories of clattering freedom. Organ and flute appear sporadically to offer new textures and it only gets wilder the further into the record you get, from a song that sounds like the gnarliest Messthetics-era troglodyte throb to long form clanging noisy storytelling 'down in the alley'. And like the previous five albums, the staunchly DIY post-Lou midwestern rock of Mike Rep and Jim Shepard permeates throughout this new one in all its casual glory." "Containing two brothers and a friend, Mordecai formed in the big sky land of Montana a number of years ago. These days however they're a more jet setting proposition, with members spread between Oregon, Massachusetts, and Taiwan. Their music contains languid vocals, guitars that alternate lazy strumming and berserker scrabblings, a constantly sturdy bass keeping things in check, and percussion that eschews loud bashing for an assortment of minimal thwackings and shakings. Their songs sometimes end abruptly and rarely have clear choruses or more than one part yet seem complete in their self-sufficiency." "If Mordecai: The Rock Band was a recipe for Mordecai: The Pie the shopping list would seem fairly regular. Vocals, guitar, bass, drums, all easily obtainable and non-threatening to use. They play discernable rock songs so no unfamiliar techniques to master. No matter the precise filling you've eaten some variation many, many times,...

Robb, Emily

If I Am Misery Then Give Me Affection

Petty Bunco

The fantastic new album from tireless seeker Emily Robb. It’s a no-frills, high-minded celebration of guitar and sound and tone and string and amp and adventure committed to tape at Emily’s own Suddenly Studio in Philadelphia in fits and spurts stretching over 2022/23. These are economical tunes of utter trance and tightrope pulsations, with a fearless spirit and a devotion to energy and personality that digs into previously untapped mines. With zero fuss and pomp, If I Am Misery Then Give Me Affection builds a wholly new palette of expression, and Emily follows her Les Paul like it’s a divining rod. It’s anyone’s guess where it points next, but we’re all fortunate enough to be invited along for the ride.

Nance, David

Pulverized & Slightly Peaced

Petty Bunco

A collection of raw, ragged, home-recorded originals from the down-home prolific mind of Omaha’s top talent David Nance. Originally slated for a 2017 release on Richie Records, the tunes were shelved in favor of some comparatively slicker recordings with Nance’s fleshed out band for what would become the Peaced & Slightly Pulverized on the Trouble in Mind label. Only a fool would find fault with that album. Nevertheless, this one (with a confusingly similar title to that other release) is a ripping, screaming, blown-out affair that comes out the gates salty and hungry for blood on “Ham Sandwich” and it never seems to lose its appetite. Conceived and recorded within a single work week, with our blue-collar Nance setting up all the microphones, playing all the instruments, and riding all the faders, Pulverized & Slightly Peaced contains all the elements that we at Petty Bunco admire in music: the tried and true Rn’R instruments lovingly misused to create a vital ragged sound dripping with personality and verve. And along with it all: Nance’s unmistakable soulful howl. To wit: the sidelong “Amethyst”, should go down as this era’s Broken Arrow, a tune with twists and turns and a cathartic climax that’ll inspire air-guitar heroics and repeated needle drops over and over and over again.

Heavenly Bodies

Universal Resurrection

Petty Bunco

As any casual student of astronomy will tell you, the heavens move at their own pace. A certain slowness and deliberateness marks each tug and shove of any given celestial object. To push too hard is to upset creation’s harmony. Such a folly is at best unsettling; at worst, cataclysmic. Our vast unearthly soup swirls with a patience largely unknown to mere humans who burn out and rot in the blink of a lunar eclipse. Heavenly Bodies, the slow-simmering trio from Philadelphia, seem to follow their namesake’s temporal sense as a goddamn mission statement. With Universal Resurrection (PB011), the inscrutable trio suggests a creeping theme, sets it free in zero-gravity, and dares the listener to outpace the patience of its black hole crawl. Best of luck to those who try, the rest of us await the only universal resurrection we deserve. For fans of grounding issues, psychedelic discomfort, and patient anxiety. Recorded 2020 at Jerry’s on Front by Heavenly Bodies, mastered by John Dawson.

Robb, Emily

How To Moonwalk

Petty Bunco

How To Moonwalk is the brash n’ bold new one from Philadelphia-by-way-of-Maine-&-Montreal’s Emily Robb. With a formidable CV in the underground and sub-underground, Emily sits as the top contender for the East Coast’s most modestly masterful electric guitar abuser and this is the record to prove it. Though she served as top talent in efforts by Astute Palate, Storks, Louie Louie, & Lantern, How To Moonwalk marks Emily’s long-overdue, mucho-anticipated debut unencumbered release. And the album is, as they say, a motherfucker. Splattered across its eight or so tracks, How To Moonwalk shows a loyal respect to the rock n’ roll form while refusing to be held back by a single one of its limitations. No vocals, no artifice, barely even a drum. It’s a totally fried, mutant offering that’ll entice the twisted seekers-- a sustained, distilled meditation on the unabashed revved up freedom of rock. Naturally, the folks here at Petty Bunco couldn’t be prouder to have our humble trademark of quality on it.  Recommended for fans of the reductive threads that run through Link Wray, Poison Ivy Rorschach, Les Ralllizes Denudes, and the Smashchords.   Recorded summer 2020 at Emily’s Suddenly Studio in Philadelphia with help from Bill Nace.

Strapping Fieldhands

Across The Susquehanna

Petty Bunco

Fourteen brand new instant classics from Philadelphia’s original purveyors of fractured psychedelic shanty rock. Pared down to the original duo and every bit as potent they were in the days of The Demiurge, Bob Malloy and Bob Dickie assembled Across The Susquehanna in their private isolations in the year 2020—literally traversing the mighty Susquehanna River via the ether as they crafted the album. What they’ve come up with is yet another in the deep canon of Fieldhands classics, an album of uneasy lullabies rich with Barrett-damaged melodies, spare arrangements as likely to feature a horn section as an overdriven strat, and Malloy’s ever evolving vision of a timeless pastoral psychedelia. To those who have been following the Fieldhands from the beginning, this new one will prove an essential piece of the intricate puzzle. To those searching for an entrance into this hidden world, the way in is Across The Susquehanna.

Astute Palate

S/t

Petty Bunco

***NOW AVAILABLE ON CASSETTE!!! Twelve inches of evidence of a whirlwind Philadelphia weekend. ASTUTE PALATE wrote and recorded the record and played a gig and consumed a dozen burritos and a pile of beer and shipped a fella back to Omaha. The audacious ad-hoc 4-piece ragged combo put in the sleepless 48 hours and this is what we get: 2 raw sides of electric rock action with all the humbucked girth, single-coil screech & low down thud a Tascam 388 can handle. Today’s necessary palate cleanser. Astute Palate is EMILY ROBB (guitar/vox), DAVID NANCE (guitar/vox), DANIEL PROVENZANO (bass) and RICHIE CHARLES (drums). Recorded & mixed by Emily Robb, mastered by MIKEY YOUNG.  “When discussing supergroups, I am sure we can all agree there are some that have exceeded all artistic expectations (Methods Of Mayhem, McBusted) and others that have been crushing disappointments (Winery Dogs, La Coka Nostra). Astute Palate fall squarely between the two (I respect you far too much to engage in hyperbole) but the results of this unique collaboration feel like a fully realized thing as just as much as any of the projects they’ve spearheaded previously (Writhing Squares, Storks, Watery Love, David Nance’s Rock’n’Roll Circus). If you’re anticipating some kind of hastily conceived, vague “jam” exercise in directionless fuckery, well, I take it back. You will be disappointed, bitterly. But if your attention span can handle genuine songcraft, incendiary guitar work and a band that sounds improbably fused together, Astute Plane’s debut will rank very high...