July 22nd New Releases
July 21, 2008
One Day As A Lion - s/t ep
One Day As A Lion is the creation of musical comrades Zack De La Rocha (RATM) and Jon Theodore (Mars Volta). This is music about space - the space between friends and collaborators where ideas form; the space in a song where the tension builds waiting for the next wave of sound; the space in the corners of the recording studio. Jon played drums while Zack played a beat up Fender Rhodes piano. The melodies change quickly from hard and minimal to soaring and emotional. Then Zack hit the mic and brought the hard heat to the mix.
Black Kids - Partie Traumatic
Their debut album Partie Traumatic was produced by Bernard Butler (legendary guitarist in The London Suede) who just recently won producer of the year at the Music Managers Forum. "Black Kids make catchy, tightly executed songs that put a memorable stamp on pop's classic themes' - Pitchfork.
Cold World - Dedicated to Babies Who Came Feet First
Cold World are a truly unique hardcore band from Wiles Barre, PA. "Dedicated To Babies Who Came Feet First" is the highly anticipated album from Cold World. Over a year in the making, the album was produced and engineered by Biohazard guitarist Billy Graziadei at his Underground Sound Studios. The 15 songs that make up "Dedicated..." tell a chilling real life tale of struggle in the world as we know it today.
Nine Inch Nails - The Slip
While not a radical departure from the fuzzed-out dystopia of YEAR ZERO, this 10-track outing does hark back to Reznor's earlier work (most notably THE DOWNWARD SPIRAL), as on the pounding "Discipline," which is tempered by a chiming keyboard melody, and the spare, piano-driven piece "Light in the Sky," a song that showcases the artist's brooding persona. Pithy and immediate, THE SLIP functions as a refreshing counterpoint to NIN's cumbersome 1999 double-disc outing, THE FRAGILE, and easily ranks as one of Trent Reznor's most satisfying endeavors.
Limited edition CD with bonus DVD. This is ten new tracks performed by Trent Reznor with Josh Freese, Robin Finck, and Alessandro Cortini. The Slip is available in an individually numbered 2 disc, 6 panel digipak and includes a DVD on NIN performing live tracks from The Slip rehearsals, a 24 page booklet and an exclusive sticker pack. Double gatefold vinyl also available.
Broken Social Scene Presents Brendan Canning - Something for All of Us
Brendan Canning's first solo effort- and the second release in the Broken Social Scene Presents series (Kevin Drew's Spirit If, being the first). Canning is a prolific songwriter and founding member of the indie rock collective. He's a veteran performer on the Canadian music scene- formerly a member of such notable bands as By Devine Right and hHead. The new album, aptly titled, Something For All Of Us, is a truly genre-ambiguous, progressive work. Canning finds himself free to experiment with a variety of sounds- from hushed lo-fi acoustics, to blazing rock'n'roll, to psychedelic groove. Recorded and produced in Toronto by Canning along with Ryan Kondrat and John La Magna, the album features an assortment of guest musicians. Naturally, fellow BSS band-mates make up a large portion of the accompaniment, as well, contributions from Kevin Hearn (BNL, Lou Reed), Liz Powell (Land of Talk) and Liam O'Neil (The Stills).
CSS - Donkey
Brazil's CSS release their follow-up to 2006's "Cansei de Ser Sexy" ("I got tired of being sexy"). They've toured worldwide a number of times with the likes of Gwen Stefani, Ladytron, Klaxons, and Diplo, and played festivals from Coachella, Pitchfork, and Virgin to Reading, Benicassim, Roskilde, and beyond. "Donkey" is tough, street-ready, and recreates the frenetic energy of their live shows. Equal parts dance party, urban circus, and out-and-out chaos.
Grave Maker - Bury Me At Sea
lot can be said about a band that plays more than 100 shows in the first six months of their existence. Look for the northwest natives in your town before the end of 2008 supporting their debut, "Bury Me At Sea." The full-length effort was produced by Roger Cameron (The Warriors, No Motiv) and features guests including Andrew Neufeld of Comeback Kid and Rick Jimenez of This Is Hell and Soldiers.
Misery Signals - Controller
Over the past five years Misery Signals has made huge strides within their own creative bubble, which encompasses raging metallic crunch and real life narratives seamlessly blended with beautiful instrumental and melodic post-rock sections. On the new album, the band enlisted the poster boy for abstract and creative heavy music, Devin Townsend (Strapping Young Lad, The Devin Townsend Band) for the producer's chair. "Controller" is the band's third full-length album and sets a new watermark in the band's career.
Bodies of Water - A Certain Feeling (CD and LP)
One year after the self-release of the acclaimed "Ears Will Pop & Eyes Will Blink," BODIES OF WATER have created another full-length offering. "A Certain Feeling," their first record for SECRETLY CANADIAN, was written, arranged and recorded in David & Meredith Metcalf's house in the Northeast L.A. neighborhood of Highland Park. The strains that one can hear running through all of Bodies of Water's music are fully exhibited here; instantly familiar melodies, rich harmonic color, expansively deft arrangements, and compositions that ebb, flow, and double back on themselves in cathartic synchronicity. Though no two songs sound entirely similar, it's a cohesive that comes out feeling like the anthemic prog/gospel/psychedelic/kraut-tribal movie score that Ennio Morricone and Phil Spector never got around to collaborating on. The choral hugeness that typified "Ears Will Pop" still rears its emphatic head, only here it is more often held in reserve while we marinate in each movement before being pulled along into the next passage of the narrative. "A Certain Feeling" is the sound of a group carving out an ever-evolving, but distinct aesthetic niche for themselves The singing, playing, compositions, lyrical themes (obsessive meta-physicality/spiritual surrender/human frailty) are unmistakably theirs. "A Certain Feeling" is a step forward, but assuredly filled with the same beautiful urgency that we have come to expect from them.
Thee Oh Sees - Sucks Blood
Prior to entering The Master's Bedroom earlier this year, San Francisco's THEE OH SEES originally self-released the more subdued "Sucks Blood" in early 2007 to fund the latter's recording. Steeped in the natural hues of analog and reverb, "Sucks Blood" is a subtle gem of irresistible pop and basement psychedelia. Immediate classics include the ghostly saw-tinged title track and the charming lumber of the harmonious "Ship". "Sucks Blood" is quite simply yet another testament to the total genius of JOHN DWYER for those who have yet to heed.
Julie Doiron - Lonliest in the Morning
Originally released in 1997 by SUB POP, "Loneliest In The Morning" was Doiron's second solo release and her first release as JULIE DOIRON (having dropped the moniker Broken Girl). This re-issue comes complete with three bonus tracks: "Second Time" from split 7" with Snailhouse and the tracks "Who Will Be The One" and "Too Much" from the 7" release Doiron recorded with the Wooden Stars. "Loneliest In The Morning" - an album Pitchfork described as "catchy enough to knock Liz Phair upside the head" - is a critical piece to the Doiron catalog and given the wonderful relationship Doiron and JAGJAGUWAR have forged over the last decade, this re-issue is particularly significant.
Dredd Foole - Kissing the Contemporary Bliss
For over 30 years troubadour wailer Dan Ireton, aka DREDD FOOLE, has called upon the spirit of 78 shellac blues n' psychedelic Stooges n' Velvets to fuel his guttural, pure soul ethos of the song. Whether solo or leading mass, Foole hints at the classic forms of Dylan's "Blood On The Tracks", Buckley's "Starsailor" and the celestial fug of Sun Ra's third-eye vision to create an approach untraveled yet increasingly influential (see: Six Organs of Admittance, Sunburned Hand of the Man). Produced in multi-dimensional spectrasound by Matt "MV" Valentine (Bummer Road, Tower Recordings), "Kissing The Contemporary Bliss" spans 50 miles of elbow room (it's a double CD) and kicks up the most outward bound and staggering approaches to Gus Cannon's "Walk Right In" and Robert Johnson's "Stones In My Passway" while offering ear-popping originals colored by Erika Elder's jug blowin' and Coot Moon's ecstatic, reverb dosed banjo. You'll hear nothing like this in 2008 or beyond. Packaged in a mini-LP-styled gatefold book with full color photos of The Foole in action.
Lee Ranaldo - Countless Centuries Fled into the Distance Like So Many Storms (LP)
SONIC YOUTH'S LEE RANALDO was part of the original TABLE OF THE ELEMENTS "Guitar Series" in 1993; now he returns with "Countless Centuries Fled into the Distance Like So Many Storms". It's an epic earful, replete with shimmering textures and an inimitable charging clangor. With ecstatic, rocking squalor, he summons some dazzling shronk, reminiscent of early SY, the soaring drone of John Cale, and even the looping orientalia of Dream Syndicate-era La Monte Young. So duck and cover, as Lee fires an impeccably aimed fusillade across the screaming fields of sonic love.
Douglas Armour - The Light of the Golden Day, The Arms of the Night (LP)
And now for something different... Fulfilling the promise of his impeccable entry in our 7-inch series, THE SOCIAL CLUB, THE SOCIAL REGISTRY is proud to announce "The Light Of A Golden Day, The Arms Of The Night" -- the debut LP from Los Angeles located DOUGLAS ARMOUR. This album finds the artist expertly blending tons of our favorite poptones from days past to create a hyper-literate pastiche that's equal parts nostalgia and forward thinking. Echoing its title, the LP has a structure that plays off binary oppositions to create one of the most varied pop albums we've heard in a long time.
Oren Ambarchi - A Final Kiss on Poisoned Cheeks (LP)
There is a vivid breadth to the guitar deconstructions of Australian OREN AMBARCHI. Sometimes his work takes a delicate lilt; it can also dive into dark and deep pools of sound when he joins cowl-core ensembles Sunn O))) (with Stephen O'Malley) and Burial Chamber Trio (with Greg Anderson). Whether with those bands, solo, or in collaboration with luminaries ranging from Mike Patton and John Zorn to Christian Fennesz, he consistently reroutes his instrument into zones of arch, alien abstraction. "A Final Kiss on Poisoned Cheeks" offers a dizzying gaze straight into a chasm of extreme frequencies - paint-peelingly high and bowel-churningly low - all set atop a sub-strata of menace, angst, and contemplative beauty.
Neuraxis - The Thing Line Between
Neuraxis was formed in 1994 in Montreal, Canada and since their inception the band has forged a unique identity combing sheer brutality with a melodic and progressive edge.
Forward, Russia! - Life Processes
The second album by Forward, Russia!, LIFE PROCESSES finds frontman Tom Woodhead still wailing away like Robert Smith gone emo, over a mix of arch indie rock, driving post-punk flavors, dashes of near-prog synthesizer, and even the occasional pop moment. The end result still bears too much edge to break the band through to the pop mainstream, but offers plenty of possible points of entry for the Pitchfork set. Produced by Matt Bayles (Mastodon, Pearl Jam and others) This Leeds based band is set to take over!
Fuck the Facts - Disgorge, Mexico
Canada's Fuck the Facts returns with their hyper charged new full length album. More streamlined and direct than its predecessor it is an incendiary, hard hitting grind affair.
We the Kings - s/t
On their self-titled debut Florida quartet We the Kings deliver a well-polished version of hooky punk-pop. On tunes like "Skyway Avenue" and "Stay Young," We the Kings prove that there's still plenty of mileage left in guitar-driven, radio-ready rock with and emphasis on catchy, anthemic choruses that stick in your head. Elsewhere, "Secret Valentine" and "Check Yes Juliet" show the open-hearted romantic side of the band, without losing the punch of their tuneful rock.
The Classic Crime - The Silver Cord
The second album by the Seattle quintet, THE SILVER CORD, is a darker, heavier album than their debut, at times recalling the angst-ridden grunge rock of earlier Washington acts such as Alice In Chains and Stone Temple Pilots. Highlights include the aggressive first single "Abracadavers."
Daft Punk - Electroma DVD
"Electroma" is an odyssey of two robots who journey across a mythic American landscape of haunting, surreal beauty on a quest to become human. This silent feature-length film made its international debut at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival, and is the product of Daft Punk - dance music heroes who have sold over three million records in the US. DVD is packaged in a state-of-the-art, embossed metal case with a 40-page perfect-bound color booklet.
Newly available on vinyl:
Have Heart - Songs to Scream at the Sun
World Burns to Death - The Graveyard of Utopia
Beck - Modern Guilt
Boris - Smile
Billy Bragg - Songs of Love and Justice
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