★Drag City
Cylene II
Tip! The second round of Cylene, Bonnet & O’Malley’s collaboration initiated in 2018 and continued without interruption since then in a slow stream of concerts, installations and recordings. A presentation of tones and resonances where harmonic intersections elevate from the deep and scale up to the far firmament in careful motion, drawing emotions viscerally from the chest, giving rise to the suggestibility of the soul.
Guitar Improvisations
For the 36th installment of our Catalytic Artist Albums series, we are excited to present an exclusive collection of improvisations on nylon string guitar by the exceptional, Tashi Dorji. Recorded over the month of August, this record showcases Dorji's most recent work and explorations on the guitar. We hope you enjoy it as much as we do!
Tashi Dorji
Tip! Early acoustic guitar improv performances from the Bhutanese expat, who’d come to Asheville, NC to study in 2000 and discovered worlds of anarcho-punk and avant garde such as he’d only dreamed. Having made recordings of his newly-located improvisational conception, he intuited a desire to go deeper in his explorations of the recorded sound of the guitar, melding and colliding traditional music with his feeling for the range of textures within.
Timeline
2023 marks the twenty-eighth year of Suarasama; it is also the first year for this reissue of their 2013 masterpiece, Timeline. Irwansyah Harahap and Rithaony Hutajulu, Ethnomusicology lecturers at University of Sumatera Utara, founded Suarasama in 1995 after graduating from the University of Washington Ethnomusicology program. Their music, as expressed on both Timeline and Fajar Di Atas Awan (first issued in 1998, reissued by Drag City in 2008) is hypnotic and joyful; progressing ancient North …
Resolve
Following several releases over the past decade of archival Arnold Dreyblatt & The Orchestra of Excited Strings material and collaborations with other ensembles, on labels including Black Truffle, Choice Records, Megafaun and Superior Viaduct, Drag City is excited as well to be able to introduce Resolve, the first release of new Excited Strings music from Arnold Dreyblatt since 2002. Resolve acts in dialogue with the minimalist inspirations of the first Arnold Dreyblatt & The Orchestra of Excite…
Gebel Barkal / Version
Reissue of the 2008 Sub Pop single, the first OM recording featuring Emil Amos on drums. Limited pressing.
The Forest In Me
More in tune now with the rhythm of the sun and moon, Xylouris White speak to each other across great distances with the intuition and fellowship that can only be found over years in each other’s company. With fewer distractions, appreciative of the freedom to play with new sounds and spaces, they carve The Forest In Me from unbelievably thin air.
Hawksworth
Several decades young on the trap kit, Matt Espy makes his solo bow with an album of solo drums, in dialogic flight with birdsong. Restaging a seminal moment from his seismic early days in music (and inner life), Matt references places he’s been between then and now with hallucinatory evocation. Hawksworth is a new organic space where percussive meditations on a life in music create NEW life in music, a comment on the nurture of nature itself.
Hands That Bind (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack for Hands That Bind, by Jim O'Rourke
Spiders In The Rain
With 2020 hindsight (and magic mics), we spy Wand in their late Plum/Laughing Matter quintet style, rolling up the west coast and rolling out the magic carpet. These nights spent communing with the crowds and jamming toward infinity (fittingly) promise that we’ll meet again, on nights like these further down the Möbius strip. But you knew this!!!
Switched On Ra
*2022 stock.* To pour some out for one of their heroes, the cosmos’ own Sun Ra, Bitchin Bajas simply cut a slice of their own DNA and amplify it! Or something like that: they clearly vibe with Ra in hypno-symbiosis, setting the controls of their analog synths for the heart of Sun. Bonus mixtribute: a heartfelt doff to Queen Wendy C, sythnaut and another mother!
Chicago three-piece Bitchin Bajas dust of their synthesizer collection to reinterpret some of Sun Ra's most memorable tunes, from 'Spac…
Through A Room
Using the looped-and-screwed methodology of Both, Nace takes a seismic step, building the process into a larger compositional process, employing guitar plus tapes, hurdy gurdy, doughnut pipe, quelle est belle and the nu Nace ax of choice, taishōgoto. Phrases talk to and obliterate each other, expanding and emerging into brave new unheard vistas.
Stone
Tip! *2022 stock.* Maine’s finest lonesome folkie back in the days of Woodstock was Bill Stone, who released one album on his own back in 1969. This classic ballad structure sounds like the voice of Tom Rapp and the quiet desolation of Leonard Cohen with more elevated psych guitar moves oscillating in and out of the mix.
"The psychedelically inclined folksinger Bill Stone recorded his lone album, “Stone,” in 1969, singing through a walrus mustache inside a Maine pottery studio. It may seem as if…
New Lands
Phase two. The beat is the new thing. Previously only hinted at, this pulse booms forth in a bigger way, although still obscured by clouds, past pop music and into the direction of rhythmic loopery.
"This was the first Flying Saucer Attack album I heard, which was more or less around when it was released. And since then, I can honestly say I have listened to this record at least once a week, usually more. Aside from being easily one of my favorite all time records, I find that it also has many v…
Shebang
Tip! Extended guitar hero Oren Ambarchi returns with Shebang, the latest in the series of intricately detailed long-form rhythmic workouts that includes Quixotism (2014) and Hubris (2016). Like those records, Shebang features an international all-star cast of musical luminaries, their contributions recorded individually in locations from Sweden to Japan yet threaded together so convincingly (by Ambarchi in collaboration with Konrad Sprenger) that it’s hard to believe they weren’t breathing the s…
Flying Doesn't Help
Anthony Moore’s contribution to the post-punk pre-wave sound of London in 1979 – light with pop, fronted with meta-punk attitude and draped in strings of keyboard theory. As someone else said at the time, The perfect release! A lovely collision of art, pop and punk from the megacenter of all things in the rock and roll era.
Bajas Fresh
Over seven tracks that span 80 minutes, the expansive, looping, shifting synths and rhythms of Bajas Fresh mark the trio’s most diverse and ambitious record.
The Old Fabled River
Norwegian folk collective Völvur team up with Scotland's very own Alasdair Roberts for an album combining traditional and modern songs in both groups' native languages – to powerful effect.
Epic Jammers And Fortunate Little Ditties
Epic Jammers and Fortunate Little Ditties is a jam session—an improvisational democracy where everyone has equal footing—between Bonnie "Prince" Billy and Bitchin Bajas.
Out
Slapp Happy's Anthony Moore, fresh off a year of collaboration with Henry Cow and the simultaneous dissolution of his own group, bounded up from the art-rock/20th century composition underground with this chart-challenging pop set for Virgin. Dropped before its planned release in ‘76, Out is an essential grab from the Britprog cutting room floor!
Kicking it off with a tricky asymmetrical keyboard riff reminiscent of Brian Eno’s Tiger Mountain, before rolling into a narrative that unites the mach…