★Drag City
Automaginary
**2020 Repress. Special silk-screened covers, limited edition** The massed drone supergroup scale great heights and depths in their first communion for Drag City. Comprising the guimbri, gong, Arp 2600, Autoharp, drums and guitar of Joshua Abrams' Natural Information Society, plus Bitchin Bajas' organ, bass clarinet, flute and synths, 'Automaginary' is a prime example of when many magick cooks make for an even more magickal broth, coaxing out the kind of potent, viscose drones that vibrate you a…
Rebajas
The ‘Rebajas’ box set is a 7CD, 6 hour and 42 minute journey through the Bitchin Bajas catalogue to date, including all 11 of their solo releases: eight albums and the Bajas sides of three split records. The music on the ‘Rebajas’ box represents the dawn and early period of Bitchin Bajas. In the time of their conception, none of these releases were issued on anything other than vinyl. Maybe a cassette too, for some of them.
"It made sense: analogue synth music recorded on analogue tape - why wan…
Companion Rises
Six Organs of Admittance is back after 3 years with a new record, new techniques in sound generation, and a new attitude. Companion Rises has a driving force only hinted at with previous releases. Manipulating the rhythmic DNA from songs such as the bass-dominated “Taken by Ascent” (on his last record, Burning the Threshold), Ben Chasny has grown a new sound creature in his lab that is as welcoming as it is terrifying and as fun to listen to as it provocative and intriguing.Methodologically, Com…
Solemns
The 'Prince' & the Marquis (Mick Turner of DIRTY THREE) unfurled the scroll together, with Tren Brother Jim White (DIRTY THREE, CAT POWER) rumbling & banging things & playing drums, & the Bonny gang crew of Van Campbell, Emmett Kelly & Angel Olsen added invaluable dimensions to the moments herein.
reaching for indigo
A moment that fell down in the life of Haley Fohr on January 22, 2016 — now in album form! Redefining and realizing the goals that were set to allow Haley become Circuit des Yeux and Circuit des Yeux to become Haley.
Help Your Satori Mind
Side project from the golden era of Masaki Batoh's Ghost! Instead of the spirituality-infused temple-raiding of the mother band, Cosmic Invention sought to play - loud and hard - in the spirit of their youthful inspirations. Enter Michio Kurihara, with his otherworldly Cippolina-channeling leads - and a storming rock band, whose subsequent incarnation as Ghost shocked the US in '97. Bonus jam included on this first-ever vinyl manifestation. On Help Your Satori Mind, the results are as spectacula…
Balaklava
A record that virtually defies categorization, Pearls Before Swine's 1968 epic Balaklava is the near-brilliant follow-up to One Nation Underground — and second masterpiece from Tom Rapp's merry band. This quasi-historical mystery album featuring a lisping songwriter who was recording 78 RPM cylinders and talking about Florence Nightingale existed, if not in the middle, then somewhere over there. It was fitting that the album had a home on ESP Records then—and now it has one on Drag City. A host …
Corrected Slogans
Corrected Slogans was first pressed by Art & Language and The Red Crayola in 1976; it was the first mention of the The Red Crayola's name on LP since 1968. The only review it received at the time was by Glenn O'Brian in Interview magazine; his response was a positive one, though he found the material ironic. By the time the album was made available to the public, it was clear that The Red Crayola would continue with Jesse Chamberlain joining Mayo Thompson. This was the start of five years of st…
Introduction
"The Red Krayola live to see another day. Having communed with their fans around the world in 2005 -- in Europe, Japan and the U.S. -- they were invigorated. Last summer they returned to one of their favorite haunts, the recording studio, for a session to capture the magic all at once. Today the result -- Introduction, 15 songs strong -- is here, and does just that. Introduction is an epic that presents The Red Krayola at their very best. Featuring the contributions of long-time members Stephen …
It's Cosy Inside
"What is Woo? Woo are two - the brothers Mark and Clive Ives, who in the 1980s made a pair of addictively appealing yet largely unknown records. Their second, It's Cosy Inside, released in 1989, qualifies as some of the most electronic organic music ever made. We hearken back to a friendlier time, the 1970s, when Woo first began recording their relaxing and mysterious mood music, using electronically treated acoustic instruments without pretension, creating a sort of pop music for another univer…
When the Past Arrives
Emboldened by the success of the recent reissue of It's Cosy Inside, Mark and Clive had a listen to hundreds of previously unreleased tracks recorded in the 70s and 80s to assemble their first new record in two decades, When The Past Arrives, out in March from Drag City / Yoga Records. With comparisons to Penguin Cafe Orchestra, Animal Collective, Cluster, and Brian Eno, Woo's profile in the world of atemporal music has been growing for years. For the lucky few who know, like Fela, or Neu!, Woo …
Liberation
FatherYod personal book. He wrote it in 1970 in 10 days and has been re-issued with a current update about The Source Family. The Source Family was a spiritual experiment which some call a
cult, from the 1970's. They ran a popular health food restaurant on
Sunset Blvd. in Hollywood and were a part of the West L.A. spiritual
awakening of the time. This book
contains an entire transcription of the original "bible" of the Source
Family written by its leader, Father Yod, entitled "Liberation," …
Prismrose
Prismrose is a nearly wordless collection of six pieces for electric guitar, all given real time to breathe and mutate. It’s an album that documents what an electric guitar sounds like in David Grubbs’s hands — with Eli Keszler dropping by to pummel some drums — now that we’ve stumbled into the year 2016.
The Red Krayola
The triumphant return of the Red Krayola to record shops. Featuring members of Gastr del Sol, Slovenly, Tortoise. "Now working with such younger musicians as John McEntire (Tortoise), Jim O'Rourke, and David Grubbs, Mayo Thompson comfortably steers the Red Krayola into the mishmash of '90s post-punkdom here. For Thompson, it's not so much a return to the scene (he had always kept recording, after all) as a continuation of his themes of musical eclecticism. It's heavy on the angular guitar lines …
Coconut Hotel
These legendary recordings were shelved in ’67 for being too freaked-out! Today, they are sweet freak-outs to our ears. As strange as the Red Krayola's debut album was, their proposed follow-up, Coconut Hotel, was far stranger. This all-instrumental recording was more appropriately classified as twentieth-century avant-garde music than rock, and was rejected by International Artists for release in 1967, finally seeing the light of day on Drag City in 1995. All power to the Krayola for doing thin…
Singles
The very notion of the Red Krayola putting out "singles" is a little surreal, since singles are by most definitions the most commercial face of the record industry. After all, if anything was consistent about the Red Krayola throughout their career, it was their uncompromising underground uncommerciality. Yet the band actually put out a good number of singles in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, and 21 tracks from those releases -- some of them quite rare, and some them actually previously unissued -…
Red Gold (Ep)
Less an Introduction, more a get-together with old friends. This gold is soaked red with the blood of the Krayola...and maybe a few others. The Red Gold EP, which is really more of a mini-album than an extended-play single per se, is the second Red Krayola release this year — an accomplishment that is no mean feat in and of itself.Throughout the band's 40-year history and ever-changing lineup, the only constant is longstanding singer/songwriter Mayo Thompson, whose gruff, southern-fried vocal de…
Fingerpointing
Oh, the difference an "o" makes. While Fingerpainting spoke of creation, Fingerpointing jabs you in the eye. These are Jim O'Rourke's alternate mixes, made from the same "paint" as the original release, but the colors are a different shade. 2008 release. "Free
form freak out is dead! Long live free form freak out! Sounds are
building blocks, say The Red Krayola, again and, now, again. '60s The
Red Krayola began recording because posterity asked for it. Today, they
proffer their latest sensat…
Five American Portraits
"I had been a fan of Mayo Thompson's prolific output for years, and had the opportunity to assist Mayo & Drag City on a previous project which I'm not at liberty to discuss due to a non-disclosure agreement. What I can say about it is that it involved time travel, another legendary avant-guardian and an agent of "the company" assisting my efforts. Mixing Five American Portraits at my studio Top Cat International was a joy and a breeze. DC mogul Rian Murphy was in the house simultaneously crackin…
Baby and Child Care
1984 unlreleaed befor album! When he wasn't busy with his many musical projects in the '70s and '80s, guitarist and songwriter Mayo Thompson was part of the celebrated British conceptual art collective Art & Language. Given Thompson's creative restlessness, it's not surprising that his partners in Art & Language became part of his musical efforts, most notably his shape-shifting group the Red Krayola, and they've teamed up for several albums since 1976's Corrected Slogans. Arriving in 2016, Baby…