★Woodsist
Rough Frame
The Art Museums tell sordid tales of artists, lovers & poseurs with cult new wave jangle. Bay Area psych burnouts, Josh Alper & Glenn Donaldson (Skygreen Leopards) converged in San Francisco in the Summer of ‘09 to record Anglophile jams on a Tascam 388 tape machine (state of the art home-recording circa ‘85). Rough Frame is their debut LP for the Woodsist label. They would make a hi-fi studio record if they had the money, but reviewers would probably still say it was lo-fi. The Art Museums ARE …
Root/Void
Matt Valentine and Erika Elder take their homespun hypnotics and cosmic country sounds to new levels on Root / Void. I love this album - it trips hard and hauntingly - a gift for languid golden afternoons or late night moonlight powwows. Anthem-worthy tape edits on some cuts crack open surreal and cinematic vistas. While joined by fellow travelers here and there, this album remains in essence a fecund duet from two entwined souls, updating and re-defining their unique pool of sound. Intrep…
Space Homestead
Apart from the fact that “MV & EE” is slang for zero gravity and that they’ve been doing it consistently “better” with good vibes/jams they still WANT to give you more of the best of them. This is their “space homestead” and for good reason this wall of sound applied thru DIY sensibilities was recorded over the course of a year in 9 different studios, presenting as clearly as circumstances can permit, a living idea right here in the now of what it is all about. These are sonics in motion,…
Family Perfume Vol. 1 & 2
Fuck Nostalgia. Live the truth. Truth is feeling, Truth is sound, Truth is motion. I am believing. I am seeing. I am moving. TRUTH IS FOREVER. Meet The Presley/ White Fence Truth Serum. Imagine if you will, that your uncle frank, aunt jane and cousing ricky all made out with George Harrison at the same time and felt good about it. Thats what the family perfume smells like. Like the real shit. This aint your regular mutton chop rock. This is freak your fucking mom out cause she caught you n…
Money Band
Collection gathers pre-Wooden Wand and the Vanishing Voice material from James Jackson Toth's Golden Calves project. Originally released in 1996; limited to 1000 copies. "It was really all about The Godz, Jandek, The Shadow Ring, Strapping Fieldhands, Swell Maps and Tower Recordings. Beyond these, I had only heard the 'classic' and most available free jazz, krautrock and noise albums. I was a long way from, say, the second Comus album or Charles Gayle. But this music changed my life. It was a re…
What I Became
"If string theory is correct, this is approximately the thirteenth album Matt Valentine has released that definitely shouldnt be filed under a group name (Tower Recordings, Bummer Road, Golden Road, etc.). On the other hand, if string theory is correct, this might also be his 11,000th album. The truth, one suspects, is somewhere in between. Since bedding down in southern Vermont at the dawn of the century, MV has been as cussedly prolific as anyone. The gout of LPs, cassettes, CDRs, singles and …
III: Arcade Dynamics
Ducktails is the one-man psychedelic pop project of Matthew Mondanile, guitarist for New Jersey’s Real Estate and, more importantly, a proud son of the mid-1980s. At 22 years old, he started releasing his own cassette albums. His first 7-inch came out on Breaking World Records and was followed by a string of LPs, cassettes, and CDs on independent labels like Not Not Fun, Olde English Spelling Bee, Release the Bats, Arbor and Goaty Tapes. Now surrounded by a crew of young songwriters, Mondanile s…
Is growing faith
“Those who expect Tim Presley’s White Fence project to be an extension of Darker My Love are in for a lysergic surprise. Sure, listen to Is Growing Faith, and you’ll hear the same ’60s love that’s in Presley’s day-job band. But replace the boogie bass with The Velvet Underground and Nico guitars, ramp up the weirdness—you’ll start to feel all the brown acid in your brain melting into your pineal gland just in time for the bad trip lyrics to kick in. That and the laughter, and the reverb, and the…
Escape
"Last seen on Sacred Bones with their Killing Time EP, Wooden Shjips side project Moon Duo returns with four lengthy motorik jams in the spirit of a psych-rockin' Suicide. Considering (as hinted at in their name) Moon Duo is but a two-piece they manage to create an impressively sturdy wall-of-sound. 'Motorcycle, I Love You' is like their very own 'Ghost Rider', but taking on more of a '60s backroom psychedelia sound as its starting point. The Duo stay locked in a deep goth-abilly groove througho…
Off Duty
As if the music of lysergic, lo-fi drugdub one man band Sun Araw wasn't flipped out and damaged enough, on this latest joint, those already tweaked and twisted sounds get even more far out, the vibe WAY druggier and spacier, a 26 minute blast of crumbling wah-guitar laced psychdub comedown in the form of three skull caving soul freeing innerspace excursions."Last Chants" begins with a dense swirling cloud of white noise and damaged effects, shot through with barely there melodies, and loose detu…
Public Service
“Almost Washed My Hair” erupts from the stereo like some bastard child from a universe where Iggy Pop fronted The Velvet Underground and the only song in their repertoire was “Sister Ray” but they could never remember how to play it. This ear-splitting and cacophonous rock sounds as raw and powerful as anything else in my record collection. The deafening guitars dominate everything; only ghosts of vocals and a hammering beat are perceptible under the overloaded amplifiers. However…
Late
New York's "...premiere improvisatory, vocal-and-electronics cosmic beat-box band..." return to Woodsist with a brilliant side of loopy hypnotics, including an insert code for free digital download of the 2007 cassette-only release for Tank Tapes redeemable directly from the label. All four tracks are previously unreleased, arms-out eyes-shut wanders through darkly tinted terrain. 'Oboh' opens up with what sounds like reversed field recordings made inside a washing machine at a Native Am…
Boat Trip
Boat Trip might be some hidden soundtrack to Donkey Kong warp-whistling straight into Ayahuasca Country. In about twenty minutes Sun Araw manages to navigate a psychedelic jungle cruise through canopy din & spooked drone, then he noses the boat out of the water and lifts into uncharted dub-spheres. The back half of this entranced tour is like being (fortunately) trapped inside an old Upsetters jam played at half-speed with twice the shaman-chant and reverb drenched percussion. Normally w…
Shitgaze Anthems
After a 2-year absence, what has happened since we last peeked in on these "shitgaze" innovators? Well, that famous "distorto-lo-fi-sound" has been popping up in quite open spaces: No Age has become the new Brittany Spears, Wavves crashed in outta nowhere like a mid-90s grunge signing, and Vivian Girls are playing on the speakers in Target stores nationwide. Expect better production, poppier songs with druggier references, and elements as disparate as dub & emo combining to form a revionistic cl…