Indierock | Alternative Tape 433 Items

"Back to Mystery City" by Hanoi Rocks channels the grit and glamour of the urban underground, intertwining sleazy rock riffs with poetic lyricism. It's a sonic journey through the shadows of city streets, showcasing the band's distinct fusion of punk attitude and rock 'n' roll swagger.

Hanoi Rocks' "Oriental Beat" pulsates with a unique blend of glam rock and punk energy, capturing the band's rebellious spirit against the backdrop of 1980s Helsinki. With catchy hooks and raw intensity, it solidifies their status as pioneers of the Finnish rock scene.

Lutalo's highly visceral folk goes electric on The Academy,the Vermont multi-instrumentalist, songwriter and producer'sdebut LP. Recorded in January 2024 at the storiedSonic Ranch and self-produced along with Jake Aron (SnailMail, Protomartyr, L'Rain), The Academy feels like watchingthe best underground film you've seen in years; establishingLutalo as a singular voice of this generation of indie rock.Lutalo describes The Academy as their "first chapter" - atime capsule of the lessons they've learned in their20-something years of life. "This record is exactly that: a`record' of my early life," they say of their debut album, outvia Winspear. "The experiences, thoughts and feelings I washolding at those times and am currently processing. To me,this is the first big stamp of my existence I'm sharing."While Lutalo's 2022 EP Once Now, Then Again introducedthem as a lo-fi acoustic guitar wunderkind, The Academy isbigger and bolder without compromising Lutalo's invitingsense of emotional intimacy, inspired by alt-rock veteranslike Thom Yorke and Rob Crow as well as electronic greatslike Aphex Twin and Bowery Electric. The Academy'sgrander arrangements are heard in the biting adrenalinerush of "Ocean Swallows Him Whole," or the anti-war jangleof album closer "The Bed." Their lyrics are often deeplyintuitive, flowing as a stream of consciousness, albeit withweighty meanings. With their unique baritone and finessefor lyrical world building, Lutalo cuts to the bone-while onlyjust beginning to reveal the depth of their artistry and vision.

While Duster went into hibernation in theyear 2000, Clay Parton's four-track neverstopped rolling. Recorded alone at homeover several years, Birds In The Groundis an album of 30-something, post-9/11malaise. Under his Eiafuawn (EverythingIs All Fucked Up And What Not) acronym,Parton hides beneath layers of fuzzy andclean guitars, his hesitant, cottony vocaldisappear into noise. This deluxe pressingis packaged in a gorgeous tip on sleeveand includes the complete lyrics for thiscryptic entry of the Dusterverse.

“If rock ’n’ roll’s a dream, please don’t wake me.”

Midwife’s No Depression In Heaven, her fourth studio album, was written primarily in the back of vans while on tour endlessly over the course of the past few years. The record engages with the contemplative spirit of rock ’n’ roll from within a body in motion.

No Depression In Heaven explores themes of sentimentality, the interplay between dreams, memory, and fantasy, and a familiar subject seen throughout all of Midwife’s work: grief. Madeline Johnston takes a look at the tender and transcendent underneath a hard exterior of leather and studs, exposing a different side of the heavy music scene, where Johnston’s project has been living and evolving.

Recording at home in New Mexico between 2021 and 2023, Johnston aimed to create something that was rough around the edges, returning to a free recording process that was less focused on perfection and more attuned to expressing the spirit that lives inside of the songs. The album features collaborations with Chris Adolf and Michael Stein of American Culture, Ben Schurr and Tim Jordan of Nyxy Nyx, Angel Diaz of Vyva Melinkolya, and Allison Lorenzen.

Inspired by ephemeral moments that make up life on tour, the totemization of vehicles, outlaws, and the psyche of America’s underbelly, No Depression In Heaven affirms Johnston’s existential status as a woman of the highway.

DestructionDerby(Remixes and Alternative Mixes) is a collection of the remixes and alternative mixesfrom the era of their debut album - Future Primitive. Reconfigured by the finest minds in underground rock n roll and trashed onto a mixtape cassette, the mixtape brings together remixes of Data Animal along side remixes undertaken by Data Animal of other artists.DestructionDerbyis out on cassette and digitally May 31st , only on Dedstrange.

Finally! A Doc Hopper release on Dead Broke! 90's pop-punk underdogs from the greater New England area & some of the best to do it. This is a collection of demos, leftovers + non-LP cover songs. First collected in 2000 intended for a disbanded Go-Kart Records release. Only self-released by band on CDRs for “final” year of shows back then. Art by Ray Ahn (the Hard-ons) Color by Tom Lowell. 100 Puke Green Tapes pressed.

Los Campesinos! have become one of the most important and influential cult acts in the UK since they formed in the mid-2000s. Starting out in the Cardiff indie scene and soundtracking Budweiser adverts, the seven-piece’s musical evolution since then has been slow, steady and remarkable. From the frenzied chaos of debut album Hold On Now, Youngster… (2008) through 2010 breakthrough Romance is Boring and the self-mythologising of latter day highlights NO Blues (2013) and Sick Scenes (2017), their discography is an interconnected web of niche references, big swings and unflinching honesty.

Making self-professed sleeper hits for weeping dipshits, they’re as influenced by The Beautiful South as they are US emo, with emotional intensity and connection always at the core. Their lyrics are a treasure trove of football references, tales of romantic woe and painfully frank exorcisms, which have been tattooed across hundreds of fans’ bodies and served as comfort and insight during that break-up you had (there’s a reason the band’s tagline is “your ex-girlfriend’s favourite band”).

Now with the release of All Hell, Los Camp! approach their third decade as a band more brilliant, more potent and more vital than ever.

You could call Wishy's story a lucky one. After prior monikers anditerations, Wishy was born as a kaleidoscope of alternativemusic's semi-recent history, with traces of shoegaze, grunge andpower-pop swirling together. On Triple Seven, Indiana songwritersKevin Krauter and Nina Pitchkites' musical synergy provesitself to be a rare one-the kind that sounds like someone strikinggold. Part sly wink and part warm gratitude, it's only fitting theirmuch anticipated full length debut is titled Triple Seven, whereWishy's penchant for indelible hooks is couched equally inpillowy atmospherics and scathing distortion.By day Krauter works as a music teacher, giving drum and guitarlessons to students, while Pitchkites is a seamstress by tradeand often makes embroidered merch for the band. Coming up ina scene defined by hardcore and emo, Krauter and Pitchkitesinstead found themselves writing melodies in their heads whiledriving to work, pulling music from the air and arriving at a blearier,more ethereal interpretation of Midwest expanse. Initially, theirmusic oscillated between hazy dream-pop and heavier alt-rock.The subject of their songs create a loose web of vignettes andsnapshots, capturing Krauter and Pitchkites in a whirlwindcouple of years _ exiting the pandemic, embarking on an embryonicproject, making sense of their musical pasts while forging amusical future alongside one another, each of them on a journeyof self-acceptance and self-understanding. Sometimesgorgeous, sometimes festering, and always cathartic, TripleSeven is a vibrant and exhilarating document of self-discoverywith the scope and heft of the bygone big-budget rock albumsthat inspired it.

Sliding between the bodies in the street, cutting across the contrails that bisect our sky, Wand find melody and the anxiety beats as they hum the soundtrack for a new gravitational center. Seeking connections against the plan of niche interest and anonymity, Vertigo is the sound of slippage, rocks of contradiction (in soft focus); feet lost, regained, lost again, a multi-chromatic swaying, more automatic, associative, directed, in time.Determining to work backwards (or at least insideout) this time, Wand recorded everything in their own studio; pieces cut from improvisations and reshaped, writing from within the performance, without the woodshed. Unconsciously, in the shadow of themselves, and turning round and round (and round), they kept finding that empty space and playing what it implied. Everybody took on a new position in addition to the old one. It was intuitive, strangely ego-less . . . going somewhere they"d never been and not knowing what they were doing, but committing and recommitting, unafraid to eject in a constant positive forward momentum.

In 2023, downt showed further expansion of their activities by collaborating with many overseas artists such as Gestalt Girl (Taiwan), Grrrl Gang (Indonesia), Pswingset (us), and deathcrash (uk), and releasing the epic single "Undecember", which showed a new direction as a band. The long-awaited full-length album will finally be released in March 2024 from P-vine! The new album also features re-recorded versions of their iconic songs such as '111511', 'mizu ni naru' and 'AM4:50', which were included in previous eps and beloved by fans.

Temir Alcy (producer Enir Da - Dali Muru & The Polyphonic Swarm and multi-instrumentalist Charles Lmx) is at the junction of spherical textures of acoustic clouds and shapeshifting forms of immersive electronic percussive patterns. By intertwining etherionic atmospheres and organic moods to magnetic and hypnotic rhythms, Temir Alcy explores the mysteries of the future and the unknown through a journey of sensory trance, where whispers and melodies of voices strike a vivid contrast between emotions’ fragility and sound’s solidity enhanced by a downtempo, leftfield and erratic kraut’s feel.

LAKE's 2009 album Let's Build A Roof [KLP213], produced by Northwest legend Karl Blau, is sweet, funky and nostalgic - a paragon of psychedelic pop. Originally, this landmark album had overlooked sonic anomalies now corrected by REMASTERING. Five bonus songs have been added to the DIGITAL ALBUM, creating a whole new Let's Build a Roof.Let's Build A Roof is LAKE's most popular album with many fan favorites, though every track is unique. After extensive touring in 2009, LAKE entered Dub Narcotic Studio (Olympia, Wash.) to record fresh with their live energy. In the studio they were able to fill out their jingly pop aesthetic, enhanced with the vintage sounds of instruments available at Dub Narcotic and the local community. Blazing synth solos, timpani, flutes, saxophones, cello, and marimba, are just some of the featured sounds on Let's Build a Roof.Some of the album's most requested songs: "Madagascar," a dubby, slow-groove track; "Christmas Island" a surfy Phil Spector-sounding song used as theme music for the television in show Adventure Time; and "Don't Give Up", an upbeat motivating dance song with Blau performing the hook on harmonized saxophones; "Gravel" is the first single and has that a driving intensity that we can all deeply relate to - trying to keep up.

Introducing Jahnah Camille (pronounced Hannah), a young artistemerging from the DIY scene of Birmingham, Alabama. Camille'ssongs capture the rollercoaster of teenage angst, heartbreak andintrospection over a well-made bed of driving guitars and catchy,compact melodies. A five-track EP infused with anxiety and grit, i triedto freeze light, but only remember a girl, is a shining introductoryproject smoothed over by Camille's sugar-sweet voice and cuttinglyricism.Much of the EP's songs were written and recorded while Camille wasstill in high school, taking trips back and forth from Atlanta to record.In the time following, Camille dug into the local DIY scene, steadilygaining an impressive resume of opening slots as she cut her teethsupporting acts like Clairo, Soccer Mommy, Cryogeyser andWednesday as they came through town. Now 19 years old, Camilledelivers an excellent snapshot of those uncertain and wildly hopefullate teen years. i tried to freeze light captures Camille approachingheartbreak and self-perception from a variety of angles-each trackplaying slightly with genre and cadence and infused with influencefrom her musical heroes, like Liz Phair and Fiona Apple.The EP pulls at a range of alternative rock and pop threads, there'sthe 90s alternative rock opener "flesh" and the country-gaze-tinged"roadkill." Camille then softens on the swooning synth-layered ode tolove lost, "elliot," before relaxing into a folksy, acoustic "paper doll."Iwanna talk and not spill out carnival sounds" Camille confides oncloser "carnival sounds"--a track that illuminates the singer's art-popinfluences and knack for revealing tender and at times searing admissionsthrough her lyricism. While misunderstandings color theemotional sentiment of the EP, Camille's artistry and expressioncome through clear as day on i tried to freeze light, presenting her asa promising young voice with real talent and a hunger for musicalexperimentation.

A sprawling patchwork of the artist’s dreams and fears, Parannoul’s third album After the Magic explores the enigmatic solo artist’s life in the wake of his second album’s overnight success.

Expanding on the shoegaze-shaded emo that made Parannoul’s To See the Next Part of the Dream so beloved by lo-fi and indie rock fans alike, After the Magic sees the anonymous auteur striving to write a follow-up as worthy of acclaim as the last.

Across the album’s ten songs, Parannoul plunges yet deeper into his diverse pool of influences, coming back to the surface with a record that captures and extends the magic of its predecessor. Unexpected flashes of orchestral ambient and glitched-out electronica meld seamlessly with Parannoul’s signature passages of noisy, distortion-laden shoegaze, offering a real time glimpse into the maturation of one of indie rock’s most exciting artists.

On 'Mirror, Reflect,' Amy O returns to form as she documents her transition into motherhood in the early days of the pandemic. Initially conceived as a lo-fi endeavor to record songs made with friends in those days of uncertainty, 'Mirror, Reflect' is an intimate and exploratory work that weaves collected home and field recordings with shimmering synths and Oelsner's playful lyricism.A stalwart presence in the indie-pop underground since 2012, Oelsner shifted her approach to record making on 'Mirror, Reflect' to emphasize process over product, with the resulting songs born out of a myriad of home sessions, song-a-day projects, songwriting workshops and online collaborations. This kind of patchwork, home-spun approach was familiar to Oelsner, who made her name with her sparkling, homemade pop songs before releasing three studio albums, including her most recent album, 2019's Shell.'Mirror, Reflect' gently shrugs off the sheen of those studio albums, as an early prenatal recording of Oelsner's daughter's heartbeat opens the record in the near-ambient instrumental prelude of "Honey" -- a wonderfully nuanced dispatch from the dog days of summer that's under-bellied by both the precarity and beauty of the early months of infancy and new motherhood. Oelsner's knack for finding magic in the mundane is also deeply apparent on "Dribble Dribble," where the stick-with-you nature of the playful rhyme schemes of the children's books that became a regular part of her literary intake are worked into a lilting reflection on resilience, destruction and loss.Oelsner's initiation into motherhood is inseparable from the poetic heart of 'Mirror, Reflect', but the album is also largely informed by the shifts in Oelsner's relationship to herself. Through playful and emotionally acute observations, Amy O turns the potentially contractive experiences of motherhood, isolation, family and aging into a freewheeling work where ephemerality and humor collide over her deft lyrical phrasing, musicality and her keen observations t...

I Know I'm Funny haha is Webster's most realized manifestationyet of this emotional and musical alchemy. Continuing to bloomfrom her 2019 breakthrough and Secretly Canadian debut AtlantaMillionaires Club, Webster's sound draws as much from the lap-steelsinger-songwriter pop of the 1970s and teardrop country tunes asit does from the audacious personalities of her city's rap and R&Bcommunity.The album began for Webster with the stirring ballad "In a GoodWay," as in "You make me want to cry in a good way"_an instantclassicFaye Webster one-liner. It's beguilingly simple, the kindof melody and arrangement that seem to have existed forever. Asense of relief charges the neo-psychedelic pop of "Cheers,"where Webster experiments with an overdriven guitar tone. She alsocollaborated, on "Overslept," with the Japanese artist Mei Ehara,who she calls the biggest influence on her new music.Webster's music is full of personality. Many of her songs containbits of girl-group-esque talk-singing, which color her atypical storysongs.Webster says she's in a growth mindset, pushing herself to learnmore, to be more vulnerable. "Growth is really important to me," shesays. "I hope people will relate to my songs, and not just be like `thisis a good record' but `this makes me feel something. This is makingme think differently, this is making me question things.' I told myselfa few years ago that I was going to be more honest in my songwriting,that honesty is the best route to take with music. If I have a voice andpeople are listening to me, I'm not going to waste it."

It's been a decade since John Carpenter recorded the material that would become Lost Themes, his debut album of non-film music and the opening salvo in one of Hollywood's great second acts. Those vibrant, synth-driven songs, made in collaboration with his son Cody Carpenter and godson Daniel Davies, kickstarted a musical renaissance for the pioneering composer and director. In the years since, Carpenter, Carpenter, and Davies have released close to a dozen musical projects, including a growing library of studio albums and the scores for David Gordon Green's trilogy of Halloween reboots. With Lost Themes IV: Noir, they've struck gold again, this time mining the rich history of the film noir genre for inspiration.Since the first Lost Themes, John has referred to these compositions as "soundtracks for the movies in your mind." On the fourth installment in theseries, those movies are noirs. Like the film genre they were influenced by, what makes these songs "noirish" is sometimes slippery and hard to define, and not merely reducible to a collection of tropes. The scores for the great American noir pictures were largely orchestral, while the Carpenters and Davies work off a sturdy synth-and-guitar backbone. The noir quality, then, is something you understand instinctively when you hear it, as in connected in an emotional way.The trio's free-flowing chemistry means Lost Themes IV: Noir runs like a well-oiled machine_the 1951 Jaguar XK120 Roadster from Kiss Me Deadly, perhaps, or the 1958 Plymouth Fury from John's own Christine. It's a chemistry that's helped power one of the most productive stretches of John's creative life, and Noir proves that it's nowhere near done yielding brilliant results.

This is long overdue. A solo album by Jim. The trap kit - so straightforward, so mysterious. What"s inside those things? Air and light - from which century? Which continent? Which planet? Depending on how and when you hit them it can be a vibration sent through a prehistoric breath, particles of Saturn"s atmosphere, the dead, wet leaves you walked through on the way to the first day of school. These are the memories of the drums on this record. Infinite and personal. Editing each other as they muscle to the front or soft shoe to the shadow. Cymbals can override/cancel everything out - wipe your memory clear or make the memory clearer. Drums are the instrument where you can feel the presence of the player the most - the full body - and sense the thoughts of the player the most. The instrument with the most choices to be made sends out the most brainwaves. A bouquet of brainwaves is on this LP. Jim oversees it all, surveys from the lost place we"re in, the void - the drumless song. We trust. We trust, Jim. His big green eyes search for the right tool (mallet, brush, etc), eyes that search you like you"re a song he wants to join, wants to see if he can add to or understand. Before humans, drums were playing - these drums. Genesis was a solo drum piece. After humans, these drums, this album. Someone - the last man - is out in a spaceship at the edge of space. He plays a single chord on a synth to set time free from its bind and then lets go. This album sets time free, lets it frolic, lets it graze, lets it remember. This is a record of thoughts, memories, surgery. A deft surgical operation you may not even realize is happening as it"s happening but you"re back on your feet when it"s over. Memories refreshed. Did you really even listen to it? -Bill Callahan, November 2023

Bill MacKay and Drag City are delirious with pride to announce the discovery of a new territory: Locust Land, a record which seeks to reflect the nerve-shredding consciousness run amok in our world today - and somehow allay it with sound. Bill"s music is a visceral crackling where it meets the air, and Locust Land can"t help but reflect its era more than any other in his discography.It"s been five years since the release of Fountain Fire - but in the interim, Bill has barely stopped moving, collaborating with artists across the spectrum, including cellist Katinka Kleijn, banjo player Nathan Bowles and keyboardist Cooper Crain. He"s also contributed to recordings by Steve Gunn, Ryley Walker, Bill Callahan & Bonnie Prince Billy (Blind Date Party), and Black Duck (on their self-titled record featuring Douglas McCombs and Charles Rumback). Forget five years - how"d he even get Locust Land squeezed out of his temporal lobes?Bill"s sense of music as art is constantly modulating - lifting off from where it is found and naturally migrating to some other place. Sometimes, that"s elsewhere - others, it"s simply to be found deeper inside the starting point. And so, the action of moving on informs the landscape of Locust Land. This manifests in several different ways.A restless energy and urgency is repeatedly felt - in the driving momentum of "Keeping in Time," "Glow Drift," and "When I Was Here" - while a dogged persistence radiates from the tone colors and percussion of "Oh, Pearl." Mating a dirge-like desolation with sparkling guitars, "Radiator" adds darkness and depth. The sense of searching, displacement and longing in vocal tracks "Keeping in Time," "Half of You," and "When I Was Here" speak literally to the tumult of current vibrations. Within the arrangements, there"s also departure from previous norms - in addition to the brilliant guitar work for which he is known, Bill plays a variety of keyboards, from piano to organ to synth, extending his music with the available voicings, while enri...

Since the release of their debut studio album Do Hollywood (on 4AD) in 2016, The Lemon Twigs_the New York City rock band fronted by brothers Brian (27) and Michael D'Addario (25)_have waved the same revivalist torch as Alex Chilton and his Big Star crew, working to prove that archaic music from the `60s and `70s can still be relevant in digital world. Alongside peers like Foxygen and Drugdealer, The Lemon Twigs have explicitly documented a synchronistic blend of contemporary narrative motifs, old-school recording techniques, and flawless, consistent attitudes collaged from various crucial stages of rock 'n' roll. After a whirlwind 2023, the D'Addarios are continuing the momentum of their own evolving vision and voice, distilling a history lesson of baroque and power pop into A Dream Is All We Know (out May 3 on Captured Tracks).Garnering the top-to-bottom critical acclaim the brothers have long deserved, their 2023 LP Everything Harmony was spearheaded by an impressive string of singles, including "Corner Of My Eye" and "Any Time of Day." It was the kind of record that put all of Brian and Michael's talents on display, be it the former's multi-instrumentalist gifts or the latter's boyish, explosive pop-rock charisma and eye for engineering and vocal layering. But A Dream Is All We Know is not the acoustic, nylon string-based project that Everything Harmony was. Instead, it's a return to the form the Lemon Twigs first introduced on Do Hollywood_an electric guitar-centric, anthemic assemblage of, really, everything the band does great. These two companion records are an immediate example of a band capitalizing on their fire-in-the-belly appetite to make tunes that boast ubiquitous chemistry.A Dream Is All We Know is grandiose yet grounded; meticulous, yet wild and glowing. Made with analog precision, the album was finished in the immediate months after the band completed Everything Harmony during a vibrant, prolific period split between three studios on separate coasts. A Dream Is All We Know is a profoundly...

As children we are disturbed from inner grace and mused, bored or threatened into awareness of the outside world in these recordings patterns emerge and are interrupted like a conversation in a garden, logic gates, and my directives mingle in importance. Responsibility or force is avoided. Primitive homemade analog computers were used to make electronic sounds and manipulate acoustic instruments in free running chaotically generative programs that are written by patching logic gate clusters with wires. Theres is no machine "memory" aside from the patches themselves, and the equations the circuits reliable math but audio-rate accidents spilling out of hashed streams of data. The same primal state of polarized data pulses build into the complex horrors of culture, finance, and communication we think we recognize on our devices. Yet electricity itself retains it's mystique, animated not by our will but by still poorly understood natural laws that transcend human concerns.

The music group Klapper from Berlin has recorded new music after their S/T cassette. Now they are releasing their first album on cassette and vinyl! Great! Once again you can hear the instruments synthesizer, guitar, bass, drum machine, drums and some Klapper instruments. Groovy bass lines and melancholic harmonies as well as a noisy lofi sound let you melt away. The album begins with a hip hop beat and a helicopter sound. The lyrics refer to how elbows ahead mankind is etching around in all areas of life! The other songs will not be described further here, except to say that the content continues in a similar way. The album also ends with a gloomy song. Of course!

Music for Pleasure’ by The Damned, released in 1977, showcases a unique evolution in the band's sound. The album, often overshadowed by its predecessor, offers a blend of punk and experimental elements. Tracks like 'Problem Child' and 'Don't Cry Wolf' reveal a dynamic range, highlighting The Damned's willingness to push musical boundaries. 'Music for Pleasure' remains a gem for those exploring the band's diverse discography.

The Damned's debut album, 'Damned Damned Damned,' released in 1977, captured the raw energy of punk. With its frenetic pace and rebellious spirit, this cassette edition allows fans to experience the brilliance of tracks like 'Neat Neat Neat' and 'New Rose' on the go. An iconic punk record, a cherished relic.