★Drag City
A Wonder Working Stone
Alasdair Roberts continues to do his bit for Scottish folk heritage on a fyne suite of augmented standards and new songs accompanied by his pals. Alasdair brings his undoubted charm, skill and imagination to ten songs ranging from celebratory elegies ('The Merry Wake') to doom-laden laments ('The Laverock in the Blackthorn'), distilling the passion, pain and yearning of hundreds of years of tradition with a timeless voice, perfectly summed up by fellow countryman and poet Robin Robertson: …
Camoufleur
Along with fellow Chicagoans Tortoise, Gastr Del Sol has managed to create an indie-rock audience for progressive music. On this release, the last with multi-instrumentalist and producer Jim O'Rourke, the group's music is more melodic and concise than in the past. But at the same time, the group retains its dedication to experimenting with song forms and production techniques. Augmented by friends and hired hands who play a variety of instruments, Gastr aims for the grand pop of Van Dyke …
Parsons' Blues
Six Organs goes stomping wordlessly into the next phase with heavy gravity boots on. This is full-bore, petals-to-the-metals Six Organs, featuring Ben Chasny backed with his erstwhile bandmates known as Comets on Fire
Ascent
Six Organs mainstay Ben Chasny has become one of the high shamen of the US psychedelic underground, disseminating his hairy vision between at least three bands and a couple of genres over the past decade. His umpteenth album begins with a sonic white-out called Waswasa – a thrilling myocardial infarction of guitar more in keeping with another of his bands, Comets on Fire, who are, in fact, on board here. How Chasny tells his sprawling, incandescent guitar solos apart, we may never know; this is …
Live 1976
Well further gifts abound, as this 1976 concert on Galactic Zoo Disk/Drag City will attest. Clearly, the explorations of Sandy Bull were not lost on the far-out audiences of the Bay Area, and though the heady days of the '60s have gone, the Berkeley heads are still in full force, hanging on Sandy's every note with a clearly expressed delight as they wait for headliner Leo Kottke to take the stage. Even though there were no further albums after 1972's Demolition Derby (a candidate for unhi…
Valley Tangents
Don't lose control — dig Blues Control! Following a circular path in order to access the unknown, Russ and Lea nab chaos in a plastic cup and crush rock into diamonds, or something that looks like them anyway. Valley ho! This new record is like drugs for your ears.
The Thought Adjusters
"Man, our minds were blown by that God and Hair box. When we were given a chance to work with some of the folks from The Source back in 2008, we just said yeah, let's hear more of that craaazy music. First came the never-before-heard tape from Children of the Sixth Root Race, Songs From the Source. Then, Magnificence in the Memory, a vault-diving expedition by NNCK's Dave Nuss credited to Father Yod and the Source Family. Now in the year 2012, rare energies are at play, and the times are c…
Corky's Debt To His Father
LP version with bonus 7"; one of the great Drag City releases (and one of the great American music solo albums) finally on vinyl again. "In 1970, Mayo Thompson (once-and-future leader of The Red Krayola) recorded an album entitled Corky's Debt To His Father. Walt Andrus' Texas Revolution label released the record -- but just barely, selling a few hundred LPs with no promotion to speak of. The copies that made it into shops became the treasured objects of taste-makers around the globe -- which ma…
Toward The Low Sun
Vinyl version. The untidy trio trip lightly & jazzily from etude to still life to exploding the air into flames around us with just a violin, electric guitar & trap kit. Don't shade your eyes! Look "Toward the Low Sun" & you will know once again the burn of the Dirty Three.
Brain Pulse Music
Years of research into the bio-electric output of the human brain have now been harnessed with the creation of a device that allows man to monitor and interface with another's brain using a box that appears to be no more complicated than a guitar effects pedal! Batoh's experiements with this machine are only part of the album; the other tracks utilize traditional Japanese ritual melodies and instrumentation to form a prayer/requiem for the victims of the Great East Japan Earthquake. A dee…
Captain Wedderburn's Courtship / The Dowie Dens O Yarrow
A split single to be listened and heard (and more importantly, bought) with the compilation Whar the Pig Gaed on the Spree. Tradition-minded singers Alasdair Roberts, Karine Polwart, and Drew Wright do the honors. A-side: "Captain Wedderburn's Courtship" performed by Alasdair Roberts and Karine Polwart B-side: "The Dowie Dens o Yarrow" performed by Drew Wright
A Dream A While Back
Come pre-Hashing with Gary! The in-between years, echoing from far out, seeking love and peace and happiness but disturbed by what all's around the treasure. It seems that '70–'71 wasn't all smiles and sunshine — paranoia struck deep, and it hit a chord: a pretty, eerie acoustic one. With archival material like this, it is always tempting to examine the songs for hints of foreshadowing, and it's easy to have a little shiver when Higgins sings such fatalistic lines as "Ragged edges will cut your …
Imperfiction
Another addition to Drag City’s curious collection of ‘outsider’ folk records (sitting neatly alongside Gary Higgins in your collection), Ed Askew is an artist I haven’t come across before. After his debut for ESP in 1968, his second album ‘Little Eyes’ was recorded in 1970, but somehow never got past test pressing stage, and as so many records of this era did, was lost for decades. After the 70s Askew seemed to sink into obscurity, but in the early 80s he got his hands on a harpsichord, a tiple…
Asleep On The Floodplain
Ben Chasny has spent many years at this point perfecting his very personal vision of the American landscape. With his early LPs he managed to grab a groundswell of support for his distinctly lo-fi recordings, and since hitting the Drag City label with the breathtaking 'School of Flower' he has managed to extend his vision to countless others. 'Asleep on the Floodplain' continues his exploration, and while it doesn't change up the formula too much (apart from the odd analogue synth blurt here and…
Tomorrow, Tomorrow and Tomorrow
35 years have passed since Bill’s last new slab of vinyl was released. We bring you this set of gems from ‘78–’81. It’s bursting with a couple new tracks (with a few traded out from the ‘05 CD), a new sequence, new art, and expanded liner notes by the man himself.
Spiritual/Mental/Physical
‘Spiritual-Mental-Physical’ is a collection of wild early Death demos, presenting the three young Hackney brothers consolidating their powers as they embark on a trip into pure rock and roll music. The album comes with liner notes from Bobby Hackney Sr. explaining the genesis and meaning of the songs included.
False Flag
"When witch-gods collide, it might sound something like this. Six Organs of Admittance...Richard Bishop...Chris Corsano. Riders of the apocalypse, it's them vs. us. After absorbing their über-holy dynamo, you'll be prepared to join up with these wraiths, making it all of us against...well, whomever's fool enough to stand in our way. To evil! Rangda's been building up behind the scenes for some time now. As label mates and members of an exclusive mutual admiration society, Sir Rick …
Collected Works 1995-96
This excellent collection of Masaki Batoh's (founding member of Ghost) "A Ghost From The Darkened Sea" and "Kikaokubeshi" brings together two albums recorded and released in 1995 and 1996, during the final period of conceptualization for Ghost's "Lama Rabi Rabi" album. These two solo records allowed Batoh to explore musics and textures in an entirely free space from the already quite free (and rapidly morphing) Ghost. This is a solo record in a very complete sense: aco…
Too Long In This Condition
Young Scotsman Alasdair Roberts is an old hand at songcraft -- and not just his own, but the songs of the ancients, the near-ancients and their friends. Over the past decade that he's been singing music in his own name (after graduating from the Appendix Out youth brigade), he's made a habit out of recording songs of his own and traditional songs with an equal amount of investment and urgency. After all, it's all music, always deserving of everything we have to give. Following 2009's de…
Five American Portraits
“Ridges and creases / high on the middle forehead / The right temple near the eyebrow / A small ridge under the right eye / The right side of the tip of the nose / The opening of the right nostril / The middle lower lip / The inner ear of the right ear.” Can you tell who it is yet? It’s George W. Bush, of course, or at least part of his head, as seen (or rather heard) in the second of five “American portraits” in words and music by legendary experimental rock outfit the Red Krayola, in collabora…