★Drag City
Cooked
On Cooked, Oren Ambarchi folds his all‑star studio jam aesthetic into something gloriously unhinged. Two side‑long epics twist piano ripples, synthetic “voices,” mutant trumpet tones, electric Miles haze and digital pyrotechnics into a foot‑tapping, brain‑scrambling, joyously cuckoo ride that still feels meticulously shaped.
God Is Good
It's been years now. OM have done their time in the desert, and ever-changing, are returned. Today, they say, God is Good. Are you surprised? Perhaps you've haven't understood what OM was saying to you. But perhaps you felt something... It's true that the one way pursued by OM leads in many different directions. It is a mystic path. Songs come from innumerable sources, filtering through the external and the internal. OM albums are rituals, personal convictions transcripted into verse. Playing th…
Advaitic Songs
More than a decade after its initial release, Om's Advaitic Songs continues to stand as a towering achievement in heavy music's ongoing evolution - a record that demolished preconceptions about what drone-doom could become while establishing new possibilities for consciousness-expanding composition. Where God Is Good represented the first step in a more ornate and sophisticated direction for Om, Advaitic Songs achieved a level of composition that would have been impossible to foresee from the du…
Halfway to a Threeway
It seems like it was only a few months ago that Jim O’Rourke changed everything with the release of the incredible Eureka. And if you actually think that, then by George, you’re the Rip van Winkle of 90s rock! It hasn’t even been a few months since Jim’s twin comebacks The Visitor and Simple Songs, his most recent albums in the mold of his classic “pop music” trilogy of Bad Timing, Eureka, and Insignificance. Those two are thirteen and seven years behind us already! O’Rourke freak or not, if you…
The Transit Rider
Arriving right on time for its 20th anniversary, Faun Fables’ musical theatre work The Transit Rider returns in a lovely 2xLP vinyl edition that dimensionally burnishes the bristling performances and elevated chamber/cabaret folk sounds of the original CD-only release. At once a work of theatre, allegory and autobiography, The Transit Rider amplifies Faun Fables’ distinctive electroacoustic wash of Anglo-European folk sounds, shimmering allusively from traditional to Kurt Weill to folk-rock and …
Big Rigs on the BQE
Prison’s third big one, Big Rigs on the BQE, finds our jammers of legend far away—miles from Downstate (2025) and Upstate (2023): driving further down the road, Prison’s guitar, bass and drums compel them to dream loud. An improvised rock and roll tapestry, multiple impulses, intersections and lifelines rended with gas ‘n guitar pedal on down to the metal. Reflecting real lives lived today, sprawled and recalled in undulating electroacoustic performance. On March 7th 2024, Prison vets Sarim Al-R…
The Final Painting
Time stands stunningly still on The Final Painting, the dreamy, elegiac final album from legendary underground singer-songwriter/poet/painter Ed Askew.
Automaginary + Totality
On Automaginary + Totality, Natural Information Society & Bitchin Bajas meet across two studio sessions separated by a decade, weaving rhythm, gravity and invisible force into organic convergences now united on CD for the first time - separate arcs made whole.
Hillbilly Erotica
Sir Richard Bishop returns for a new spontaneous six-string meshing of people’s music, recollections and psychic intentions. Are y’all ready for some Hillbilly Erotica?
Stash
On Stash, the absolutely energy-drenched 2nd album from BCMC, the guitar and keys duo soars through waves of pleasant rhythmic turbulence on the way to show us just what they got: Needle down: increased activity dubs and baubles the sonic surface of BCMC’s Stash planet. Waves from Arabian, Indian, Flamenco and Soul groove in alliance under the expanse of an all-world flag, representing a borderless pursuit of cosmic music moments in the hand, of/by/for all the people of folk, rock and jazz, psyc…
Music For Pulse Meridian Foliation
On Music for Pulse Meridian Foliation, Joshua Abrams translates Lisa Alvarado’s immersive installation into gently spiralling sound: two violas, harmonium and electronics tracing slow, minimal arcs that feel like geology moving through the body, memory folding and unfolding in real time.
Prehistory
Some 42 years after its initial release, Circle X’s Prehistory returns to the vinyl format. New listeners to this music will discover, in addition to the roiling compulsion in its odd, dance-damaged clockwork and instinctive joining of feral and aestheticized values, a refined understanding of the width andbreadth of “post-punk” music, both in and out of its time. In and out of time, Circle X operated between 1978 and 1995, formed in Louisville, KY, but existing largely as a New York-based colle…
Forever
It's been a long ride to Forever - but now that they've arrived, the vibe's lightning and the blink of an eye. Glyders have been dreaming up this sound for over a decade. Joshua Condon and Eliza Weber founded the band in Chicago back in 2014, building a reputation through countless shows, late nights at the tape machine, and a revolving door of drummers that never quite clicked. They self-released EPs (DIM, Lend a Hand) and in 2023 delivered their debut full-length, the acclaimed Maria's Hunt - …
Low clouds hang, this land is on fire
For his third new album release for Drag City, Tashi Dorji turns to the electric guitar. After the furious acoustic improvisations that drove the previous two—"Stateless" and "we will be wherever the fires are lit" — it’s easy to imagine an album of his electric guitar improvisations as an encompassingly incendiary essay. Especially when titled low clouds hang, this land is on fire. After all, this is a man capable of tearing up the place with the tactile musical violence of Bill Orcutt and Dere…
Can I Get a Pack of Camel Lights?
Refracting beatifically through realities and mirages flickering along his aural parade route, Animal Collective’s Geologist rides the high country on a hurdy gurdy of many colours. Via the mystery science of musical engagement, we take his sonic kaleidoscope of encounters into our own experience as we listen. That’s the beauty of Can I Get a Pack of Camel Lights?, the debut solo transmission of the heart and soul and life and times of Geologist.
On Beacon Hill
On Beacon Hill: at twilight we find Anthony Moore, roots winding backwards to the halcyon days of Slapp Happy and the ‘70s progressive art rock scene, at guitar and piano. With the atmospheres and accompaniments of AKA & Friends, he breathes infernal new life into songs from his six decades of multivarious music making. This new delivery system is unto a séance, a communal incantation, twining Anthony’s avant and pop traditions together in a darkly radiant coil of folky chamber music; a rope to …
Traveling Light
From out of the dark, the crackle of feed back birdsong signals a return to the land of sound environments exclusive to the music of Rafael Toral. A year and a half after his epochal electric guitar album, Spectral Evolution, Traveling Light finds him sharpening his focus, moving boldly from abstract forms to concrete compositions in the form of a set of jazz standards. Based on Toral’s discography, this may seem an unlikely endeavor, but happily, Traveling Light transpires to be one of the majo…
Inner Day
For his second solo album, master drummer Jim White travels further into expressionist landscapes of private meditation; his vehicle, an evocative duet of keyboards and drums alongside his debut as a vocalist. Translating his formidable percussive intuitions through this dialogue has given Jim a fresh compositional voice. Inner Day is like a state of nature, evoking peace and tension, rest and disquiet, all aloft on the wind of new discovery.
In March 2024, Jim White released his first-ever solo…
Inland See
Hurtling through the perpetual into this moment is the now and future Bitchin Bajas. An effulgent mass located somewhere beyond land or water, Bitchin Bajas' Inland See is flowing toward you, through the hi-fi, arriving with precision extractions of electroacoustic synthesis, revolving in a post-ambient craft that lifts the listener up powerfully, like you’re floating – in saltwater, or helium – effervescent, effortless, elemental.
Land Of Plenty
Two of the most exciting visionaries in contemporary guitar music, Bill MacKay and Ryley Walker, announce the reissue of their seminal debut album, "Land Of Plenty." Originally released in August 2015, this instrumental masterpiece will be available again on vinyl on September 26th via Drag City, giving new listeners and longtime fans alike a fresh opportunity to experience a milestone in the modern guitar canon.
Recorded live over a month-long residency at The Whistler in Chicago, "Land Of Plen…