Mexican Summer Vinyl, CD & Tape 38 Items

Loverboy was released in the middle of Ariel Pink’s prolific run of albums as Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti. Written and recorded between October 2001 and July 2002 (a creative burst during which House Arrest was also conceived), Loverboy is a wonderfully warped portrait of Ariel’s musical world building. On Loverboy, Ariel Pink conjures some of his most memorable melodies and intricate arrangements under the spell of his trusted 8-track cassette recorder. This definitive version of Loverboy was transferred from the original tapes, expanded with unheard tracks, and remastered as part of Ariel Archives, Mexican Summer’s reissue series which revisits Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti catalogue with new editions of out-of-print releases.

Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti archival series is inaugurated by Underground, an album originally self-released on cassette in 1999 by the 21-year-old undergraduate CalArts student. Underground captures Ariel Pink’s rapidly developing practice, which in short time shifted from crude proto-punk home recordings to a singular aesthetic that explored a wide spectrum of pop music. Now available in remastered and expanded form as part of Mexican Summer’s Ariel Archives reissue series, this version of Underground reveals astounding details missing from Ariel’s earliest recordings and demonstrates the evolution of an obsessive music fan to a startlingly original and mysterious innovator.

It was on a mountainside in Cumbria that the first whispers of Cate Le Bon’s fifth studio album poked their buds above the earth. “There’s a strange romanticism to going a little bit crazy and playing the piano to yourself and singing into the night,” she says, recounting the year living solitarily in the Lake District which gave way to Reward. By day, ever the polymath, Le Bon painstakingly learnt to make solid wood tables, stools and chairs from scratch; by night she looked to a second-hand Meers — the first piano she had ever owned — for company, “windows closed to absolutely everyone”, and accidentally poured her heart out. The result is an album every bit as stylistically varied, surrealistically-inclined and tactile as those in the enduring outsider’s back catalogue, but one that is also intensely introspective and profound; her most personal to date.

This sense of privacy maintained throughout is helped by the various landscapes within which Reward took shape: Stinson Beach, LA, and Brooklyn via Cardiff and The Lakes. Recording at Panoramic House [Stinson Beach, CA], a residential studio on a mountain overlooking the ocean, afforded Le Bon the ability to preserve the remoteness she had captured during the writing of Reward in Staveley, Lake District.

Think of it this way: Paint’s first album isn’t clean, but it’s very very clear. Sometimes the mess is the message.

For the third Marfa Myths release, Mexican Summer is proud to present seven all-new songs written and recorded by Stockholm's psychedelic masters Dungen and adventurous Brooklyn indie-folk pioneers Woods. As the Marfa Myths record series progresses, the spirit of the collaborations between the artists chosen - one a member of the Mexican Summer family, the other for which we share deep admiration - deepens as well.

The sunshine of L’Orange, L’Orange isn’t just about brightness and bliss. It’s also about engrossing your mind – creating an omnipresence not unlike that shiny orange orb whose ubiquity defines our days and whose absence fills our nights. For Gregg Kowalsky, music can have that same kind of overpowering effect. The sounds of L’Orange, L’Orange can calm your nerves, warm your mood, and maybe even enlighten your mind.

Los Angeles’s prodigal songwriting son Ariel Pink shares his eleventh studio album, Dedicated to Bobby Jameson, September 15.

The album’s title makes a direct and heartfelt reference to a real-life L.A. musician, long presumed dead, who resurfaced online in 2007 after 35 reclusive years to pen his autobiography and tragic life story in a series of blogs and YouTube tirades. “His book and life resonated with me to such a degree,” Pink states, “that I felt a need to dedicate my latest record to him.”

Dedicated to Bobby Jameson begins at the end and ends at the beginning. “We follow the protagonist through a battery of tests and milestones, the first of which sees him reborn into life out of death,” Pink explains, referencing the opening track “Time To Meet Your God.” “From there, he seesaws his way between the innocent love and the rock-solid edifice of childhood-worn trauma that together constitute his lifelong initiation into the realm of artifice and theatrical disposability.”

Calico Review' was recorded at the iconic Valentine Recording Studio, which gave the group access to historic recording equipment such as a 1964 Universal Audio 610 soundboard - the same board on which The Beach Boys recorded Pet Sounds. Now you know what to expect.

Following its release on Erol Alkan’s Phantasy label, the New Zealand-born songwriter enjoyed a flurry of critical and artistic praise from the likes of David Byrne, Johnny Marr, Blood Orange’s Dev Hynes and Charlotte Gainsbourg, with whom Connan is an ongoing collaborator. In addition to touring as Gainsbourg’s live band, Connan has also toured in support of Radiohead and Crowded House – both of which have provided a much larger platform for this off-kilter rising star.

There’s a truly mercurial quality cast over Forever Dolphin Love. Much of this can be attributed to its production, which floats and flows with an organic bedroom sensibility, creating a delicate environment for Connan’s helium-inflected vocals. But the songs themselves are equally captivating – full of wormy vignettes, druggy detours and subtle idiosyncrasies that gradually reveal themselves after repeated listens. Tracks like “It’s Choade My Dear” and “Faking Jazz Together” are perfect slices of light-headed psych pop, constructed around spidery hooks, pitter-patter percussion and slow, sinuous grooves. Opener “Megumi the Milkyway Above” and closer “Please Turn Me Into The Snat” inject some dynamic variation – the former with a jazzy, samba-like shuffle and the latter with shouted, melodramatic vigor. The title track acts as the album’s centerpiece – an ambitious suite that clocks in at over ten minutes; slithering through funk-filled interludes and lush passages into one of the album’s most frantic and memorable hooks.

Completing the experience are Connan’s lyrics; a mixture of absurd storytelling and hypnagogic whimsy that imaginatively tie into the album’s loose concept about an anthropomorphic dolphin. On live favorite “It’s Choade My Dear” he sings: “I’m a China toad, but I’m in filing mode / please take it off / I have four arms to see things through, for fetching food so we can’t stop…”. This might all be a little forced in someone else’s hands, but Forever Dolphin Love exudes a genuine weirdness that is fully realized in all aspects, particularly in its charming videos. Even the album sleeve, which features surrealist paintings by Connan, feels like a perfect reflection of the music inside, and indeed, of its auteur-like creator.

A special one-off album LIVE recording featuring a five-piece ensemble performing music from Arp’s most recent album, ZEBRA, plus four new compositions including “Eos,” “Kalimboid,” “Voices,” and “Autumn Piece (for Jiri Kovanda)".

Los Angeles’s prodigal songwriting son Ariel Pink shares his eleventh studio album, Dedicated to Bobby Jameson, September 15.

The album’s title makes a direct and heartfelt reference to a real-life L.A. musician, long presumed dead, who resurfaced online in 2007 after 35 reclusive years to pen his autobiography and tragic life story in a series of blogs and YouTube tirades. “His book and life resonated with me to such a degree,” Pink states, “that I felt a need to dedicate my latest record to him.”

Dedicated to Bobby Jameson begins at the end and ends at the beginning. “We follow the protagonist through a battery of tests and milestones, the first of which sees him reborn into life out of death,” Pink explains, referencing the opening track “Time To Meet Your God.” “From there, he seesaws his way between the innocent love and the rock-solid edifice of childhood-worn trauma that together constitute his lifelong initiation into the realm of artifice and theatrical disposability.”

Calico Review' was recorded at the iconic Valentine Recording Studio, which gave the group access to historic recording equipment such as a 1964 Universal Audio 610 soundboard - the same board on which The Beach Boys recorded Pet Sounds. Now you know what to expect.

Thru Me Again is the secondrelease from Chilean trio La Hell Gang and their first with Mexican Summer. Hailing from Santiago, which plays host to an ever growing psychedelic scene (Holydrug Couple, Follakzoid, La Banda, etc), the band create a remote and wild brand of rock ‘n' roll. The eight tracks across Thru Me Again weave seamlessly, channeling heat, light and endless desert dunes. Despite the heavy context, there's a real clarity in the production, making the blistering guitar solos and mirage-like vocals all the more potent. Tracks like "Inside My Fall" and "Last Hit" recall bands like The Black Angels and BRMC, but some of the more lucid moments ("Sweet Dear", "So High") feel like a grittier Brightblack Morning Light. The soundtrack for your heat swept summer.

New Zealand via Paris/London pop sprite Connan Mockasin follows up the widely acclaimed oddball-psych of 2010’s Forever Dolphin Love. Caramel boasts a unique brand of mutated, lustrous soul that was almost wholly self-recorded over a month in a Tokyo hotel room. Described by Clash Music as “a true cosmonaut of inner space,” the new album explores different regions of Mockasin’s singular galaxy, guided by his truly adventurous songwriting that favors reconfigured pop structures with a skewed funk sensibility. If Caramel wasn’t enough, Mockasin has also been writing more material for Charlotte Gainsbourg after penning the exquisite “Out Of Touch” for the actress/singer’s 2012 mini-album, Stage Whisper. It’s another sign that Mockasin is going places, but at his own pace – just as Caramel suggests the process of melting and taking on a new shape, a new taste. That is the true sound of Connan Mockasin.