Drag City Rock & Indie 120 Items

Moments of eternity: the first plucks at the strings, a bass note cementing the drift into place a little more than a minute in. The organ drones, iterating unrelivable ancient history, a chiming note of the church. Guitars strings, climbing that stairway to heaven. Gossamer-light when viewed from a distance; up close, the gears grind with a visceral physicality. With Bcmc, Cooper Crain and Bill MacKay unite to create Foreign Smokes: provocalogues, equal parts avant-garde noir and fire-and-icy jams to recall bright shades and warm stretches of infinity drawn through the buzzy overdrive of this side of life"s strange and sunny days. Cooper"s organ and synths and Bill"s guitar draw songs from spontaneous statements and elegiac scraps, floating closer, then farther, and closer again to the sounds of the other. Starting with a melody, as set of progressions or even as little as a scale or just a key, gives room for either one of "em to take the lead, depending on where they are or are going at any given time. The reigning motif most often seems to be, to melt and wind around each other"s sound, part of a singular undulation, handed back and forth, a slowly emerging trip up into and through an ideal of exuberance.

It's almost four years since their last opus - two years since the most-recent run of live shows! Now, Bitchin Bajas return from whatever kind of rare ether they occupy when they're at home, bearing the riches of the whole cosmos in their hands. And strictly OG as well - on cassette only! Switched On Ra is the outcome of a typical Bajas exercise: pouring some out for the pioneers that came before (as they've done with Bitchitronics and their participation in the annual Chicago performance of "In C" over the years). It's a nice way to get a flow - they play a little of themselves, then some for the pioneers, then a little more for the band. Before long, they're playing with the inspirations twined, as they can only come from within. For Switched On Ra, this meant a deep delve into the song-book of one of their soul-predecessors, Sun Ra, whose music is literally written in the Bajas DNA. Digging into this music sounded wild on paper: the drone synth group taking on the Arkestra harmonies and Ra's loose grooves? The trick was to get that sense of rhythm to translate across the spectrum from Ra to Bajas, in a way that worked for them both. Their rearrangements of the tunes went good - up and down the EQ band, they were finding the round sounds and jagged edges that brought Ra's music into their own thing. Then at the last minute, there was another twist - why not pay tribute to the Queen herself, and think of the arrangements with a Wendy Carlos vibe? A little side homage? After all, Switched on Bach was visionary, bringing analog synths from the outside all the way into the mainstream in the late 60s - and this take on Ra is meant to take him to new ears everywhere. Sun Ra of course was his own kind of original keyboard visionary, using electric keyboards in the late 40s and 50s to fill a role in jazz that had traditionally been played on acoustic piano only. Once he'd done so, he took his writing in directions inspired by the electricity, places no one had thought to go before then. Doing what he did on the keys was a stand for individuality that became the background radiation of his journey through the cosmos; the search for a place beyond earthly dominance, for all the people who desperately wanted the fuck OUT. Bitchin Bajas have been content to dominate in a microtonal world, usually without a single chord to be found anywhere. But here, they step up righteously, their vibe triangulated as they bring Ra's music forward with some Wendy C style, making an unexpected space for all to thrive. There's a real feeling of joy as these collected signals bounce off the tape and through the speakers into your space. To get this unique colloid exactly right, Bitchin Bajas used nineteen different keyboards. They abstained from deploying their arsenal of reed and woodwind instruments: everything had to be on the keys. This meant Yamahas, Rolands, Korgs, Casios, a MicroMoog and of course their trusty Ace Tone organ. They even broke out the Crumar Ds-2, to have some of Ra's chosen tone in the mix. Then Jayve Montgomery added an EWI as a solo voice on a few tunes, just to get some air-blown signal (and a natural shout out to EWI master Marshall Allen) in there, after all. It felt like somewhere in the universe, Ra was decreeing it. Switched On Ra is an effervescent celebration of music throughout time and space.

“You do what you’ve got to do / To see the picture” Bill’s got a full band sound going on this one, with him and Matt Kinsey on guitars, Emmett Kelly on bass and backing vocals, Sarah Ann Phillips on B3, piano and backing vocals and Jim White on drums. Jim and Matt sing on one song, too, and some other singers come in, too. Bill plays some synth here and there, and Carl Smith drifts in and out of the picture with his contra alto clarinet, as do Mike St. Clair and Derek Phelps on brass. Somehow in between them all, you might think you hear the distant sound of a steel guitar. And you might — but you might not, too.

For their Drag City debut, the enigmatic duo expand into eight-armed wonder; all the better to reach ever-deeper into their bag o' tricks. Slinky and sliding elegantly, the kids forge tunes with a harmony of ambiguity and nostalgia, effortless yet precise, and rounded with thick bottom - a dancing clash of cognition and dissonance!Since 2015, Kamikaze Palm Tree have been a relative mystery. Now, in times no less mysterious, Drag City welcomes them, celebrating the energy of their second LP, where KPT play their offbeat strain of 21st century rock.Making MINT CHIP, Dylan Hadley and Cole Berliner reach deeper into their bag of tricks than ever before, dialoguing with an absurd shared intent they haven't yet paused to question. The off-center pieces gathered together for Good Boy have given way to pulsing aquatic compositions on MINT CHIP. Cole's guitar tones, wire thin, bell-like, bluesily downtuned, slinky and sliding elegantly, arc purposeful around their peripherals. Dylan's kit work, effortless yet precise, grounded with heavy bottom, drives and interacts organically with all the emerging structure, nailing down finely detailed frames and canvases to backdrop her singing and the unremitting landing of melodies and songs. With the addition of Josh Puklavetz, things that didn't make sense before - like bass - are now on the beach, fully lotioned, essence to essence. Violin and clarinet (Laena Myers Ionita and Brad Caulkins, respectively) round out the tonal spectrum. All strung together in the foothills of Altadena's Wiggle World Studios with Hartling back in the engineer's seat and Tim Presley producing the proceedings!

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.

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...

Ty Segall follows 2022"s acoustic introspection opus "Hello, Hi" with a deeper, wilder journey to the center of the self. With Three Bells, he"s created a set of his most ambitious, elastic songs, using his musical vocabulary with ever-increasing sophistication. It"s an obsessive quest for an expression that answers back to the riptide always pulling him subconsciously into the depths. Questions we all ask in our own private mirrors are faced down here - and regardless of what the mysterious "Three Bells" mean in the context of the album"s libretto, you can be assured that Ty"s ringing them for himself, and for the rest of us in turn.

Limited pressing reissue of the 2008 Sub Pop single, the first OM recording featuring Emil Amos on drums. B-side features the band’s first dub version.

First Taste is, as the title implies, a visceral shot of new flavor from Ty Segall. The followup to last January's extroverted Freedom's Goblin, First Taste cross-fertilizes Ty's antisocial side (think: Emotional Mugger) with the wide-ranging humanism of Manipulator and the pop zazz of the aforementioned Goblin. This means an immaculate sequence of sides with Ty playing multiple parts with and without contributions from the Freedom Band. Ty's songwriting confidence is at an apex, and he moves from style to style, evoking directions in rock, lite pop, experimental, alternative and even afrobeat! Ty at 12 (albums) = his best yet?

“You do what you’ve got to do / To see the picture” Bill’s got a full band sound going on this one, with him and Matt Kinsey on guitars, Emmett Kelly on bass and backing vocals, Sarah Ann Phillips on B3, piano and backing vocals and Jim White on drums. Jim and Matt sing on one song, too, and some other singers come in, too. Bill plays some synth here and there, and Carl Smith drifts in and out of the picture with his contra alto clarinet, as do Mike St. Clair and Derek Phelps on brass. Somehow in between them all, you might think you hear the distant sound of a steel guitar. And you might — but you might not, too.

The Blind Date Party hosted by Bill Callahan and Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy and featuring Azita, Matt Sweeney, Alasdair Roberts, Matt Kinsey, Sean O’Hagan, Bill MacKay, George Xylouris, Dead Rider, David Pajo, Mick Turner, Meg Baird, Ty Segall, Emmett Kelly, Cory Hanson, Six Organs of Admittance, David Grubbs, Cassie Berman, Cooper Crain and Sir Richard Bishop happened online in the fall and winter of ’20–’21 — but the party planning dated back to the spring of 2020. Stuck at home, with no gigs in the foreseeable future, Bill, Bonnie and Drag City needed an outreach program to keep themselves busy, not to mention sane. In the absence of any company or anything on the calendar, playing songs they loved was an idea; playing with people they loved, the desire. And making it fun — so pairing someone with someone else having no say in the matter, the essence of the blind date, was the plan. Favorite songs were chose; players from around the Drag City galaxy were messaged. Pretty soon, songs were flying back and forth — music in the air! And thus, they were entertained throughout the summer of 2020, when so much else in the world seemed so completely wrong. By the fall, the songs started to appear online: Bill and Bonnie singing a song by someone they loved and admired; each song cut by another another artist they loved and admired, then sent to Bill and Bonny to provide the finishing touches. The spotlight pointed in every direction each week: toward the singers and writers who’d originally played the songs (Yusuf Islam, Hank Williams Jr., Dave Rich, The Other Years, Billie Eilish, Steely Dan, Lou Reed, Bill Callahan, Jerry Jeff Walker, Robert Wyatt, Lowell George, Johnnie Frierson, Air Supply, Will Oldham, Leonard Cohen, David Berman, Iggy Pop and John Prine), toward their featured collaborators, the artists whose artwork adorned each digital single and videos made by still more collaborators. And you, the listener. Like the best parties, it turned out to be everything and more than they’d even hoped for. So many more people were involved in the process that we can get on the page here. Suffice to say, making records over the years has required a broad sense of community and an always-surprising mix of independence and unity, inspiration and utility. Some of our best memories are those where as many of our folks as possible were together in one place at one time. In those moments, it was just a great thing just to be there. And with others looking in . . . this was a joy one could only be infinitely lucky to feel and to take for granted, as well. The Blind Date Party was one of these, maybe the most improbable one yet. It’s for everyone who’s here and it’s in the name of everyone who’s gone but will never go and will always live with us here. This album will too. And thus, we are entertained.

It seems like it was only a few months ago that Jim O'Rourke changed everything with the release of the incredibleEureka. And if you actually think that, then by George, you're the Rip van Winkle of 90s rock! It hasn't even been a few months since Jim's big comeback record The Visitor, his first record in the mold of classic "pop music" O'Rourke albums like Bad Timing, Eureka and Insignificance. The Visitor was Jim's first solo e"ort in that arena in eight freakin' years too! Even if you're not an O'Rourke freak, if you're losing that much time in your life, you'd better have your head examined. Well, never mind-as long as people love it, here's another few sides of long-ago and far-away O'Rourke back on vinyl for the first time since way back in the mid-aughties. It's the "Halfway to a Threeway" 12"ep back to set turntables a-spinnin'! Fans of Eureka and Insignificance (not to mention Jim's tomfoolery as part of the Loose Fur band) will appreciate the analog pressing of these four slices of the pop music party-pooper combination of folk, classic rock, smooth jazz and a bit of the old avant-garde to help communicate the twisted ways of the misanthrope that made Jim such a perennial in the fickle world of record sales. A quick listen to the title track will hip you to our meaning: "Halfway to a Threeway" exposes our sweet soul-crusher as a lustful man-beast on the make. The song is a straight folk number-straight, that is, until you listen through the haze of those 6-string overtones and chirpy harmony vocals to hear the true perversity of O'Rourke's fantasies. The decadence of stardom seems to have turned Jim into not only a sex freak, but also a man who loves women of all persuasionsparticular the crippled and brain-dead kind! Don't listen to this song alone-at least, not with the drapes open. The whole record's a blast, and it hasn't really aged that much in the-what'th! elevenish years since it first spread like the strangely appealing odor that it is was and is. And now that it's back, the whole O'Rourke "There and Back Again" pop saga is available on LP once again, which brings us up to date-but not for long. Later this year, we're going to be bringing new O'Rourke tunes your way-possibly the greatest thing since he first sliced white bread way back on Eureka. You remember that? Ah, nevermind...

More in tune now with the rhythm of the sun and moon, Xylouris White (Dirty Jim White and George Xylouris) 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.Once you set the needle down on the record and hear for yourself, the intimacies and impressionism, abstraction and unfiltered emotion found in The Forest In Me, you may wonder what was the mood of the room in which this music came to be. George, Jim and long-time producer (and secret third member) Guy Picciotto share their thoughts:Guy Picciotto: "In late 2019, we had begun taking steps to working on new material. In a haphazard fashion, Jim and I started tracking drums in my basement, cutting them up into shapes with no set landing in mind. Some of it we sent to Giorgos in Crete - he responded with his lyra and his lute. Without intention we had initiated a process that would soon become more ruthlessly mandated by the world events that separated and isolated us to three corners of the globe in the following year."Giorgos Xylouris: "While we were recording, I noticed that the music had a certain solitude about it, both from the title and from inside. That led us to find more music from within that we had not yet discovered."Jim White: "The idea emerged, naturally nourished and nourishing a record with none of our usual angles and themes, no verbal language, no angst nor sudden dynamics, a more subtle structure. And we found The Forest In Me."The first revelation from The Forest In Me is "Latin White", in which Jim"s jaunty pattern sets the stage for George"s Cretan lyra and lute figurations, giving this short dance piece the feel of a welcome hoedown around the campfire, warding off the encroaching darkness of an emptied world. The repetitions, gathered to induce joy, have a glassy-eyed mechanical drive to them;...

It seems awhile ago, but it wasn"t - not in days and months... whatever time is. But in terms of phases - we"ve been in and out of all kinds of bags since last summer, right? There"s the us before we heard the rest that 2022 had to offer, and then there"s us today. And coming on seven months later, fresh as it still is, "Hello, Hi" is disappearing in the rearview, like everything else that"s going down the road.But July 2022, it was in the headlights, dead ahead. We weren"t there yet, we couldn"t know what it would mean, but we were excited to find out. And in L.A., with the release show at Teragram coming up, Ty and the Freedom Band were working and playing to get it together. There"d be a little acoustic set to open things up, which was something different, so a last minute show was drummed up, for Ty and Emmett to work it out in front of some people. And that kind of became the REAL record release show.Word went out afternoon of the 21st - free show tonight in Highland Park - YEAH! A crowd showed up that evening and crammed in among the vintage clothes to hear some music and share some times. And most of us missed it! But nobody missed it quite like your present scribe did - I went down, stopped in, said hi - my lady-friend bought a hat - and then we split, regretfully, a previous engagement to attend.What suckers we were! This show clearly ruled, just hearing the five songs included here. With the incredible feelings of the crowd and the spontaneous play in the songs we now know from the album almost miraculously captured to tape (by the capturer himself, Mike Kreibel) at FULL WARMTH, none of us can say we missed it at all anymore -- drop the needle and you"re there, at the launching of sounds that added to the evolution of the world we"ve been living in ever since!So that"s the story -- "Hello, Hi", goodbye

It"s 2023, and even the turn of century seems a long time ago now - but oddly, Purling Hiss"s guitar-band ethos feels ever more timeless. The Hiss aren"t just a simple part of the tradition going back 50-odd years Their DNA, pulsing in waves of punk and classic radio rock, grunge and slacker, is ineffably, re-singably music - but their signature crushed guitar harmonics, fused with deep soulfulness, meld into something that cuts us with fresh heartbreak, an eternal recurrence that seems to be happening right now today, as it pours off the turntable and runs down the street. Drag On Girard, the first Purling Hiss album in six years, cruises through these states of mind and places in time. As before, but with new twists, Mike Polizze and his gang let loose with the chaos and noise implied by their name, applying high-end splatter and slow-rolling low end to eight vehicles, running the gamut from gleaming pop gems to head-cleaning epic jams before they"re done. One of the unique qualities of Drag On Girard is a specific lead-rhythm arrangement of the guitars, emitting the expected formidable roar while setting a certain type of rhythmic strut for the band. The two guitars style also trips power-pop impulses in the tunes, with sung-along harmony vocals that evoke classic collective magic and burnish the tunes one by one. Once this vibe"s established, side two turns around and stretches out with the molten flow of Purling Hiss at their very most epic; couched within loose improvisatory structures, the title track and "Shining Gilded Boulevard" play further with the yin/yang of nostalgia and truth as they trade places looking meditatively back to them old days and all their harshness and beauty.

Summer 2020, and No Age are back out on the street! Effortlessly raw and extravagant in one practiced swoop, they set their live/bedroom internal clock and get out early into a glorious windtunnel of naked beats and sunbaked guitars, forming a wave from which they hang eleven tunes. A perfectly balanced set, ranging from their classic punk and indie to ever-evolving soundscapes, in maybe their most direct statement yet.A guitar/drums duo (Randall and drummer/vocalist Dean Spunt) with a penchant for self-recorded samples, No Age are mostly unconcerned with things like space or pause, and Goons Be Gone is gorgeously thick-- a hazy, delirious expanse that's both comforting and disorienting.Listening to Goons Be Gone, it's hard to comprehend how just two people can manage to make so much noise while still sounding so subdued and mysterious-- it's easier to imagine Randall and Spunt spewing these songs underwater, bursting forth from some colossal California quarry rather than a tiny, stuffy art space a few blocks from L.A.'s skid row. Ultimately, it's part of No Age's allure that Goons Be Gone is so difficult to figure out, that it manages to be so big while coming from a place so small: All you'll know for sure is that you want to listen longer. Maybe forever.

Received a 7.9 rating from Pitchfork.

Back working as a trio Magik Markers return with their first new album since 2009’s Balf Quarry. Surrender To The Fantasy kicks off with that hoary old trope of punk records, the song about the Chesapeake Valley Runoff and the mating cycle of crabs. After that kind of in-your-face Attenborough- core, where could the record go? Nowhere but everywhere, all the creepy outposts of American detritus from other times, when hitchhiking and h-bombs were still hot, viable new ideas, and on beyond zed-bra. “Acts of Desperation” is Shaggs-meets-Stones color commentary on driveway laying, your mom’s Merit Ultra-Light 100’s and the lengths we’ll go to filch a feel of some arcane notion of greatness. Here Pete Nolan has nixed his kit and Straps Field Handily into a galvanic psych lead. No lame attempt to smoke nutmeg for this jam; it scored real weed.

Born in Dayton, Ohio, Matt Espy spent his youth playing every genre of music he could find, starting out in clubs at age 14 and launching his touring career at 18. He moved to Chicago in 1996 and continued his journey drumming and performing rock, avant-garde, jazz, and performance art pieces. Over the past decade, he"s found his home with Dead Rider, also on Drag City.Hawksworth is Matt"s first solo adventure. In the field of solo drumming albums, it"s an avian psychedelic percussion trip all of its own. A dialogue between birds, electronics, and drums, Hawksworth operates along precise degrees in the vastness that exists between the diverse poles of Terry Riley and Martin Denny. It captures one particularly memorable morning walk from long ago, a time immemorial in Matt"s life. In this new musical rendering, that fateful morning is ridden with wormholes throughout the piece, like hyperspace links that travel to motifs from his 30-plus years music career with every step along the way. Like a bolt from the blue, the sonic and the visual design for Hawksworth came whole cloth, completely evident to him in that moment.On Hawksworth, Matt started with the birds, locating a variety of hi-definition free source samples of their song. He chopped and scattered them into a new state of nature, collapsing the hemispheres and the regions within, to allow the birds of all nations the freedom to flock together. Once the editing work was done, drumming to this sound was almost simple compared to that process. He brought forward some licks - perennials - and other things worked up over time that had or hadn"t found a place with the different bands he"d been in - with room allowed for improvisation. And for Matt, drums were the only way to fly.Working at the studio of Dead Rider frontman Todd Rittmann, Matt found - or was it that he refound? - his happy place. Hawksworth comments upon a life in music as a space where the firmament is ever vaulting above our head, and Matt uses the world we too often take for gra...