★Drag City
Burning The Threshold
A salve for folk souls and whoever needs it; Ben Chasny makes acoustic folk-pop great again. “In preparing for the first album of non-Hexadic Six Organs of Admittance music since 2012’s Ascent, Ben Chasny had a think about what he’d be saying in his own tongue for the first time in a half-decade. As ever, a head-full of ideas were driving him to think and speak music as a spirituality superimposed onto a reality, with the ghosts of both whispering at each other. In the end, what sits in our list…
1986-1991
"The Venom P. Stinger retrospective is on. One of the roughest groups of the '80s is back in print on vinyl and for the first time ever on CD, and still nice and hard and rough and wild on either format. File under: punk rock/noise rock/free-of-constraints rock. If you think of Venom P. Stinger simply as the proving ground for 2/3rds of the Dirty Three first, then you're seriously missing it, and fuck you. It was the mid-'80s and everything was going fine. The music underground was its own world…
Meet My Friend Venom
"The Venom P. Stinger retrospective is on. One of the roughest groups of the '80s is back in print on vinyl and for the first time ever on CD, and still nice and hard and rough and wild on either format. File under: punk rock/noise rock/free-of-constraints rock. If you think of Venom P. Stinger simply as the proving ground for 2/3rds of the Dirty Three first, then you're seriously missing it, and fuck you."
Waiting Room
Four song EP from Venom P. Originally released in 1991 by Au Go Go. A mini-dose from the What's Yours is Mine era, restored to it's full fury on 12" vinyl for the first time.
White Glove Test - Louiseville Punk Flyers 1978-1994
Clipped, collaged, and photocopied, meticulously hand-painted and lettered, or designed on a glowing computer screen in the early days of desktop publishing, these flyers were outsider broadcasts stuck to phone poles and storefronts, a makeshift gallery installed with staple guns and wheat paste. As a lavishly detailed document of Louisville’s vibrant and diverse music scene, this book offers an insider’s view of one seminal community’s rise from bold beginnings to eminent, international status.…
Mad Music
Something happened in Boston in the late 70s that nobody can explain. No, we're not talking about The Soiling of Old Glory. It's this Mad Music record, truly beautiful mutant strain of hi-fi/ambient/post-psych minimalism packaged exquisitely and randomly by parties unknown but well endowed with ideas for freaky juxapositions. Over 30 years later, it's still mysterious - but since you missed your first chance, here's your shot at one of the music world's rare records. Get even - get Mad Music!
"L…
Creation
Husband and wife team Johnima and Kalassu Wintergate are Lightstorm: globetrotting musical collaborators retransmitting messages of love from their teacher and Avatar Sathya Sai Baba: authentic 1970’s hippies on a spiritual space-journey. Most of the material gathered here was originally released on a small scale, so it is satisfying to see these oddities compiled and made available by Drag City. Since 1973, the Lightstorm discography has been issued under a variety of aliases (Creation E…
Divers
The dreamer dreams again with her 4th album of otherworldly microcosms, 'Divers', recorded by Steve Albini and featuring contributions by Nico Muhly and The City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra, arriving five years since her last opus for Drag City. Still possessed by a voice that teeters between sublime and ridiculous (I honestly laughed out loud at the first song), Joanna Newsom remains a precious spirit within the indie folk paradigm, blessed with an air of stately patience and poised, imma…
Hexadic II
Several years ago, after tiring of the predictable patterns he sensed himself settling into as a guitar player, Ben Chasny of Six Organs of Admittance decided to design a theoretical framework that would force his hands into different positions. Chasny distributed a deck of poker cards in a circular array of sets of six, corresponding to the notes of the guitar. The relative positions of the cards gave Chasny a "tonal field" in which to operate, as well as a set of notes from which to pick, some…
Andy and His Grandmother
Andy Kaufman changed the worlds of comedy and performance in the 1970s, showing fans and friends alike a determination to follow put-ons into territory no one had ever even considered 'comic' before. His fervor was so intense that when he passed away suddenly in 1984, it seemed as if the ultimate disappearing act had been staged; one that some people believe is still ongoing, with the reveal soon to come. This makes him the quintessential entertainer of our generation, a man ahead of his …
Recurring Dreams
Reissue of this 1981 album. Dating back to '81 and the apex of the Brian Eno / Berlin schools' influence over a myriad of American followers, Young created eight EMS/Rhodes pieces solo, subtly weaving in variable speed Revox manipulation of traditional Rock instrumentation with the lightest of touches. "Matthew Young's genre-bending, acclaimed 1986 release Traveler's Advisory reappeared as a reissue on Drag City/Yoga in 2010 and quickly sold out. We now return to Young's first effort, Recurr…
Shade Themes From Kairos
"Shade Themes from Kairos is a new iteration of the dream for all the guitar freaks out there, bringing together a couple of singular players together, just to see what happens. In this case, the players were old friends and collaborators Oren Ambarchi and Stephen O'Malley, playing in a space engineered and co-populated by Randall Dunn. From the top, Shade Themes from Kairos is resonant as a collective inquest in sound, with all the players deeply immersed within the panorama they are creating. …
Savage Sons Of Ya Ho Wa
"Now that the story of The Source Family is out there, as the subject of an acclaimed book and documentary film (as well as an ongoing series of rare, never-before-released recordings), it's time to turn the light back on the records that made this whole thing a story in the first place. In the 1990s, it was a revelation to discover that there was a series of records made by a hippie cult led by a big Santa Claus-looking guy named Father Yod. It was of further interest that these records weren…
Alasdair Roberts
"Alasdair Roberts is the name of the new solo record from the well-known Scottish songwriter, guitarist and singer Alasdair Roberts -- his eighth Drag City Records release under that name... Alasdair Roberts' ten songs are sparse, intimate and concise. The focus throughout is on Alasdair's deft acoustic fingerstyle guitar and his voice. The songs are variously elliptical and gnomic, direct and personal, romantic and tender. There are occasional guest appearances from fellow Glasgow-dwellers Alex…
Tangier Sessions
"The tone of the guitar and Sir Richard's gentle, loving touch with it hold forth from the first moment of Tangier Sessions, sitting clear and true in the home-recorded night air above the city. The album sequence is the precise order of the songs as they were conceived and recorded. Rick's all over the neck in the early going while sorting through the dynamics of the instrument -- in fact, guitarophiles, the first couple of songs feature Sir Richard Bishop playing without a plectrum for the fir…
Hexadic
" The only constant in Ben Chasny's longstanding Six Organs of Admittance project is change. Since 1998 he has engaged in composing, playing, improvising, and recording based on whatever aesthetic or philosophic principles appeal to him regardless of genre. More often than not, his records have existed between rather than within them, though there has always been a thread that marked a unique, if mercurial, signifier woven throughout to connect them. Hexadic is a different animal. Chasny spent s…
Simple Songs
"Yes, Simple Songs is an album of songs sung by Jim O'Rourke all the way through! It has been ten years since Jim's voice rang out from a new album. Ah, when James Michael was just a wee lad, he sang all the time, with a lovely little lilt to his voice, like all the children do. But the songs he sang gave his parents no end of consternation: 'Great Decei-verrr! Cigarettes, ice cream, figurines... of the Vir-gin Mar-eeee!' Aye, if only we'd-a been there -- little Jimmy's career would have started…
Black Snakes
‘Black Snakes’ was issued in 1983 as a co-release by Switzerland’s Rec Rec and Germany’s Pure Freunde label. With a quartet featuring synthist Allen Ravenstine doubling on soprano sax, this was a smaller group than had appeared on either of the Crayola’s two previous releases, ‘Soldier-Talk’ and ‘Kangaroo?’. Mayo Thompson’s guitar in particular shines in the space allowed by this configuration.
Amor and Language
Amor and Language was one of three Red Krayola releases on Drag City in 1995 (two were from the vault: Coconut Hotel and Kangaroo?). After returning to America in 1994 and producing the first Red Krayola record since Malefactor (it was appropriately self-titled), Thompson was producing new Red Krayola material at a prolific rate -- Hazel was released the following year. When Amor and Language was in production, the pressing plant claimed to hear imperfections in the CD master.
Malefactor, Ade
In 1989, ‘Malefactor, Ade’ was issued on the UK’s Glass Records, which had arranged several years earlier for the first actual release of Mayo Thompson’s 1970 solo LP, ‘Corky’s Debt To His Father’. This was the first Red Crayola record release in five years. The fearlessness with which genres are converted can be disarming, but stick to it - you’ll find listening an utter triumph. ‘Malefactor, Ade’ was reissued on CD by Drag City in the year 2000. Now it's on lovely vinyl.