Indierock | Alternative Tape Sale 24 Items

Video Age's third album pairs neon-bright 80s pop melodies with a vast range of influences (including Janet Jackson, David Bowie, and Paul McCartney) to create an optimistic sound all their own. The influences vary song to song, but they're all tinted with the same rosy hue, and Singer and multi-instrumentalist Ross Farbe says, "I'm often trying to create a more idealized version of the world I'm in." Video Age's first two albums were about loneliness and discovering oneself, but Pleasure Line takes on a whole new attitude, considering both Ross and songwriting partner Ray Micarelli are getting married this year. "We're feeling the love," Ray says, laughing. But these aren't expressions of one-dimensional puppy love-this is euphoria with depth, ecstasy with complications. Darkness is always lurking somewhere beneath happiness, but in the Video Age, even melancholy sounds like something you can dance to. Ray and Ross share a love for dancefloor hits. Experimentation and play is crucial to their approach, as is collaboration. Joined by band members and multi-instrumentalists Nick Corson and Duncan Troast, Video Age recorded the album together in Ross' New Orleans home studio. Pleasure Line is a salve that protects against cynicism-listening to this album, you can't help but feel the world around you is full of romantic potential.

Originally released in 2019, Tapes Not Dead Vol.2 is getting a UV reissue! Featuring bands that release their music on cassette which include Juliana Hatfield, Antarctigo Vespucci, Culture Shock, Thelma and the Sleaze, Warm Drag, Clown Sounds, The Bobby Lees, The Advertisers, Gymshorts, The Loving Paupers, Dragon inn 3, The Prize Fighters, Jumpstarted Plowhards, Mount Sharp, Shellshag, Adult Magic, Glasses, Worlds Fair, Living Room & Tanya Donelly.

"Smashing Pumpkins Live Riviera Chicago 95" captures a live performance by the alternative rock band The Smashing Pumpkins at the Riviera Theater in Chicago in 1995. Known for their distinctive sound, emotional intensity, and captivating live shows, The Smashing Pumpkins' concerts were an essential part of their musical legacy.The setlist for the album showcases a mix of tracks from different albums, highlighting the band's range and their ability to transition between melodic and intense moments.

The first word of the album says it all: 'Bang!' On their new album Midnight In A Moonless Dream the Buttertones dig deep and discover something dark. Where their previous album Gravedigging played like the soundtrack of a good spaghetti-western heist movie, Midnight moves to the dark cityscapes of '70s New York and tells the story itself - a perfect and intricate crime executed by a crew of professionals under cover of night, a biting sound befitting of CBGB's while staying true to their LA roots. There are echoes of Suicide and Bauhaus, nods to the spirit of sax and violence that powered the Deadbeats. Midnight is music made for dancers but also for doomed romancers that will appeal to fans of The Cramps, The Gun Club, Car Seat Headrest, Black Lips, King Tuff, Thee Oh Sees, Ty Segall, and Parquet Courts.

Tasha's Second Album, Tell Me What You Miss The Most Mingles Pockets Of Introspection With Wide, Expansive, Marveling At What's Yet To Come. Born And Raised In Chicago, Tasha Is A Musician Who Writes Songs That Take Loving And Longing Seriously. Whether Dwelling In The Sad Thrum Of An Impending Break Up Or The Dizzying, Heart Thumping Waltz Of New Infatuation, Here Is An Album That Traces One Artist's Relationship To Herself In Love. Full Of Deep, Invigorating Inhales And Relieved, Joyful Exhales, Tell Me What You Miss The Most Is An Exquisitely Crafted Breath Of Much Needed Air.Tell Me What You Miss The Most Isn't Just A Catalogue Of Tenderness - It's Also A Showcase Of Tasha's Growing And Formidable Musicianship.For Fans Of Julia Jacklin, Molly Burch, Orion Sun, Lucy Dacus.

Stone Temple Pilots live at the Centrum, Worcester, MA on August 22nd 1994. Taken aback by the huge success of their 1992 debut album, Core, and drained by the heavy touring that ensued, this San Diego band almost fell apart before recording its follow-up, Purple. Issued in June 1994, it debuted at #1 in America, cementing their star status. This superb concert was broadcast on syndicated radio two months later, and captures the quartet at the height of their powers, before singer Scott Weilands drug problems derailed them.

There is an entire sub-genre of poetry devoted to rivers and their persistent, meditative flow. Emily Dickinson's ''My River Runs to Thee'' compares them to the cycle of life, while Alfred Tennyson's ''The Brook'' deems them eternal and Kathleen Raine's ''The River'' muses on the dream-state they evoke. For transcendent folk-pop artist Shannon Lay, the river is all of the above: It's the metaphor driving her latest album, the exquisitely uplifting August, which doubles as an aural baptism renewing her purpose for making music. ''I always picture music as this river. Everyone's throwing things into this river, it's a place you can go to and feed off of that energy,'' she says, ''and feel nourished by the fact that so many people are feeling what you're feeling. It's this beautiful exchange.'' The album's name, August, refers to the month in 2017 when Lay quit her day job and fully gave herself over to music. This was her liberation as an artist, and the album is devoted to paying that forward to her listeners. Lay may be the most chilled-out artist you'll ever meet. Despite fronting her tranquil solo act and being a guitarist/singer in the indie-rock band Feels, she never pressures herself to overachieve. Nonetheless, she regularly does: in a glowing review, Pitchfork anointed her last album, Living Water, ''captivating.'' With her life devoted to music, Lay often spends hours a day simply playing the guitar, challenging herself to become better. ''It just feels so good, doing something that is so much bigger than myself. I think so much of music is that, realizing that it's coming from something beyond and you are just the messenger'' says Lay, who took guitar lessons at age 13, which introduced her to Neil Young and The Beatles. After high school, she moved from Redondo Beach, Calif., to Hollywood and joined an indie-rock band. ''It was an energy I needed to release,'' she says. The exact type of energy may have changed, but her drive hasn't. August was mostly written in three months, during Lay's first solo tour for Living Water. ''For the most part, all of the songs were just guitar and voice,'' she says. In keeping with the humbled, contemplative nature of August, most tracks clock-in at three minutes or less. She saved indulgence for the production. ''Some songs as they were had this room to grow,'' says Lay, who recorded the album with her longtime friend, musician Ty Segall at his home studio on the East Side. ''I believe whoever you record with tends to affect the mood of music and Ty really brought this jovial sense that I hadn't really explored yet,'' she says. Also in the mix is Mikal Cronin, who played saxophone on the album's opener, ''Death Up Close.'' ''A lot of my friends who are really tough have admitted that they shed a tear when they hear my songs, and I think that really speaks to the visceral aspect of folk music,'' Lay says. ''It's this ancient form of expressing yourself.'' Think of August as a warm hug for your psyche. ''I want to create as much music as I can,'' she says, ''and leave this spot by the river where people can go sit and enjoy.''

Experimental And Improvisational Psychedelic Rock, For Fans Of White Heaven, Les Rallizes Denudes, Headroom, Düngen, Heron Oblivion, Comets On Fire, The Renderers, Bardo Pond. Mountain Movers Arguably Are The Perfect Band For All The True "Heads" Out There. The New Haven Quartet Have Been At It For 15 Years, And The "Newest" Lineup (Now At It For Well Over A Decade; Vocalist/Guitarist Dan Greene, Bassist Rick Omonte, Guitarist Kryssi Battalene And Drummer Ross Menze) Have Firmlygrasped What It Takes To Fry Brains; Achingly Beautiful Melodies Buoyed By A Life Raft Of White-Hot Guitar Scree And Mind-Melting Feedback. "World What World" Is The Band's Eighth Album And Third For Trouble In Mind Records. "World What World" Is The Newest Chapter Of The Group's Continued Explorationsand Efforts To Refine Their Sound. The Lyrics Of "World What World"S Songs All Imply A Protagonist On A Quest; The Title Itself Is An Implied Query With No Question Mark; Is It A Question, Or A Statement?. The One-Two Punch Of Opener "I Wanna See The Sun" And "Final Sunset" Lay Out What's In Store; Crazy Horse-Inspired Sandpaper Melodies Sit Comfortably Next To Improvised, Psf-Influenced Six-String Ragers. The Group Performs Together Effortlessly And Telepathically, Subverting The Loud/Quiet/Loud Dynamic That Has Saturated Independent Music Since The Late-Eighties. The Loud Parts And Quiet Parts Are Like Waves; Indistinguishable From Each Other, Creating A Fluid Dynamism And Intensity That Swallows The Listener Up Inits Current, Sweeping It Toward Oblivion. Hyperbole, You Say? Watch Out For Midway Through "Then The Moon" When The Tune's Lilting Waltz Pivots Into A Casually Blistering Solo By Battalene Before Fading Into The Melancholic "Haunted Eyes" -Beckoning You With A Mournful Sidelong Glance. Side Two Opens With "Staggering With A Lantern", An Elegant, Lumbering Instrumental Improvisation Again Showcasing The Synergistic Shredding Of The Group's Guitarists. The Sticky Lyrical Hooks And Sideways Jangle Of "Way Back To The World...

Access, The Second Album By Major Murphy, Is An Album Born Out Of Being At A Crossroads. It's Also, Without Question, An Album To Blast At An Unruly Volume To Soundtrack An Experience Onemight Have Standing At That Crossroads. It's Remarkably Cohesive - A Striking Relic In An Age Where Ardent And True"Album-Making" Is A Fading Art Form - Full Of Heavy Rock'n'roll Sounds And Textured Atmospheres Fused Withpro-Idea, Hyper-Creative Jittery Warmth. In Nine Songs, It Somehow Takes A Listener Backwards And Forwards Atonce, Reckoning With Intrinsic Anxieties While Conceptualizing A Fantastical And Vibrant Happening, Soothing In Itsfamilia Familiar, Occasionally Childlike Tone.Behind The Sturdy And Poetic Architecture Lies A Story Of New Parents, Navigating Uncertainty And Seeking A Senseof Agency In The New Unknown. Throughout Access, Songwriter Jacob Bullard Recounts Memories Of Teaching Hisyoung Son To Breathe Through His Nose And Laments Missing His Son And His Partner And Bandmate Jacki Warren.On "In The Meantime", Bullard Expresses The Timeless Anxiety Of Recent Parenthood, Written In The Wake Of Theterrifying Experience Of Their Son Suffering From Lead Poisoning. While The Title Track "Access" Is As Much Apersonal Plea For Patience And Humility...

Waking the Dreaming Body is the follow-up to Tucson artist Karima Walker's 2017 standout album Hands In Our Names, which garnered praise from Pitchfork, Mojo, and Bandcamp. The album includes dense harmonic arrangements of synthesizer, guitar, piano, percussion, field recordings, tape loops and Karima's dulcet singing voice. The final result is a 40-minute dream-narrative of her conscious and subconscious minds that oscillates between the rich textures of her ambient work and the melody and poetry of her melancholic, Americana-tinged songwriting, their ebb and flow recalling liminal states of half-sleep where images and emotions are recalled and forecasted from the previous night's dreams. Night falls in regular intervals throughout the album, forming a natural dialogue between waking and dreaming.

Psyched out guitar experiments from Iris. Dedicated to the fight against double standards, ignorance and corruption of our Western world.

All songs written and recorded in 2021, revisited in 2023.

Tax Free Records™ 2023.

La La Land doubles down on the intricate proggy-pop displayed on Guided By Voices’s last album Tremblers And Goggles By Rank. On a hot streak of critical acclaim, Robert Pollard continues expanding his songwriting towards extremes of prettiness, heaviness and poeticism. As always, unforgettable hooks are everywhere. But with thsi latest, it seems Pollard is playing with the extremes of his abilities as a songwriter, emboldened by the power of this lineup now on their fourteenth album together since 2017. The prettiest stuff is prettier than ever (“Queen Of Spaces”) and odder, more complex songs like “Slowly On The Wheel” combine minimalism, whimsy, and cinematic inclinations. There are the exquisite power pop bangers that fans come to expect like “Ballroom Etiquette” and “Pockets.” Tracks like “Instinct Dwelling” and “Caution Song” effortlessly display a cranked-up weight and complexity most bands could never muster. Celebrating forty years in 2023 with their thirty-eighth album, GBV has lately been garnering rave reviews from Rolling Stone, Stereogum, Brooklyn Vegan, Uncut, Mojo, Shindig, Paste, Popmatters, The Quietus and many more.

Song In The Air is Elliott’s third fulllength album. But for all of its beauty, energy, and human spirit, Song In The Air is not Elliott’s moment of finding “the answer.” What we have is a record that shows us the value of the moment of asking the question...of looking at a thing and figuring on it. Elliott’s songs glow, spiral around, get messed up, come back home, get really sad, get worked up, fight against melancholy, are pissed off... they are “alive.” Song In The Air is the first record that Elliott made with the addition of Benny Clark on guitar and Jason Skaggs on bass.

Colleen Green Has Always Been Cool, But On 2015's I Want To Grow Up, She Didn't Necessarily Feel It. Too Young To Be Free Of Insecurities But Old Enough To Be Sick Of Them Running Her Life, Green Was Experiencing An Existential Crisis. Five Years And A New Album Later, We Find Her Parsing Out What It Means To Be Grown-Up-And Realizing That It's Actually Pretty Cool. Opener "Someone Else" Is A Paean To Power In Which Green Lets A Lover Know That Double Standards Can Go Both Ways. A Groovy Bass Loop And Zig-Zagging Guitar Lines Underscore Her Realization That Happiness Is In Her Own Hands, And The Vibe Is Set. Next Up Is The Witty, Catchy "I Wanna Be A Dog," Where Green Celebrates The Simplicity Of A Canine Life And Questions Why She's Still Overcomplicating Her Own. Dark And Slinky "Highway" Uses Ruthless Driving As A Metaphor For A Lifestyle That No Longer Interests Her. Burnt Out On Bad Feelings And Ready To Have Fun With Melodies And Beats, Green Enlisted Producer Gordon Raphael (The Strokes) To Take Her Songs To Higher Ground While Keeping Her Lo-Fi Aesthetic Intact. Raphael Was Already A Fan, Having Caught A Show In L.A. And Finding Himself "Struck By How Confident And Powerful She Looked, Even Though She Was The Only One Onstage." He Agreed To Take The Gig, And Together With Drummer Brendan Eder And Hip Hop Producer Aqua Over A Few Weeks In Los Angeles, Cool Was Created. The Album's Themes Come Together On The Anthemic "It's Nice To Be Nice," Green's Reminder To Herself That You Get What You Give, So It's Important To Try And Be The Best Person You Can-A Hard-Won But Essential Lesson In The Emotional Maturity That Defines Cool.

The newest longplayer from Tio'tiá:ke/Montreal staple Cedric Noel lands with a stunning sense of surety and self. Hang Time stands as a high water mark for a songwriter who's spent the past decade quietly expanding the borders of his music. Longtime fans will recognize the fluid elements of the album's open-ended rock formations: reflective strumming, soaring choruses, searing guitar lines, subtle bass grooves; all occasionally dissolving into pools of pure ambience. New listeners will find surprises throughout: threads of folk pop, ambient and sound collage fasten the foundations of this expressive whole. However, what's most striking on Hang Time is Noel's newfound sense of voice, both literal and metaphorical. Written primarily in 2017-18 during an intense period of self-reflection, this collection of songs finds Noel wrestling profoundly with his sense of identity, self and place. Born in Niger, adopted by Canadian and Mozambican/Belgian parents, he spent his youth moving around the globe with his adoptive, multi-racial family, eventually landing in Fredericton, Canada for university. While studying, Noel embedded himself in a predominantly white indie rock community that left him feeling, as a Black man, both seen and unseen in complicated ways; both welcome and not. This tension would follow Noel through a move to Montreal in 2016 wherein he found himself again moving within predominantly white music communities. This (dis)placement would encourage Noel to find respite in Ottawa, holed up temporarily in a family home, studying the pieces of himself and putting them to place in music. Listening to Hang Time, one can feel the tensions of this process being held and released, as if being allowed to breathe for the first time: forms open and close, surfaces are seen through, feelings go supernova. The album's material was captured faithfully at The Pines, a beloved downtown Montreal studio whose doors shuttered shortly after amidst the strain of the pandemic. Noel worked closely and patiently with friend and engineer Steve Newton, ensuring the songs had the time and space needed to come fully to fruition. Hang Time features subtle rhythm work from drummer Liam O'Neill (suuns) and guest spots from Brigitte Naggar (Common Holly), Ella Williams (Squirrel Flower) and Tim Crabtree (Paper Beat Scissors) among others.

Cashier is a band from Lafayette, LA that plays a washed out, fuzzy blend of shoegaze & indie rock. This two song cassette captures a unique ebb and flow between sonic intensity and harrowing urgency with melancholic flare and a DIY attitude.

Sorrow Wave duo BRING HER return with their second LP and first album since 2019, Comfort In The Shame. Based out of Pittsburgh, BRING HER play a distinctive brand of somber darkwave, defined by haunting and magnetic vocals over pounding and obsessive drum machines, penetrating guitar chords, and eerie and harrowing synths. Using DIY recording methods coupled with sound shaping, heavy layering, and meticulous editing the new album sees the two-piece at a new height, adding to the urgency and crushing weight of their already brooding sound. Elements almost industrial in nature shine through these 10 new tracks, yet the duo stays as gloomy and dismal as the self-described Sorrow Wave moniker implies.

The tenth studio album by Bjork on cassette tape.

each album always starts with a feeling
that i try to shape into sound
the feeling was landing
( after my last album utopia which was all island in the clouds element air and no bass )
on the earth and digging my feet into the ground
it was also woven into how i experienced the "now"
this time around 7 billion of us did it together
nesting in our homes quarantining
being long enough in one place that we shot down roots
my new album "fossora" is about that
it is a word i made up
it is the feminine of fossore ( digger, delver, ditcher )
so in short it means "she who digs" ( into the ground )
so sonically it is about bass , heavy bottom-end ,
we have 6 bass clarinets and punchy sub
i would like to especially thank bergur þórisson and heba kadry
and side project , el guincho , hamrahlíð choir , soraya nayyar , clarinet sextet murmuri , siggi string quartet ensemble , emilie nicolas , serpentwithfeet
viibra and last but not least : sindri and dóa .
visuals were made by viðar logi , james merry , m/m , nick knight , andy huang , edda , isshehungry , tomi , sayaka , sunna , sara and heimir
and my ever so loyal and magnificent team : derek , rosamary , catherine , chiara , hilma and móa