★Feeding Tube Records
Wake In Fright
2025 stock "Finely thuggish debut LP by a trio led by guitarist Micah Blue Smaldone, a well-known figure in the same South Portland Maine scene that gave us Big Blood and other treats. Indeed, Micah's fourth solo album was a split with Big Blood, but the fingerpicking sound of his solo recordings is a far cry from Wake in Fright. WIF are a trio. Micah plays guitar, Greg Bazinet plays bass, Jonas Eule plays drums, and all of them add vocals. It was Greg who sort of got things going when he convin…
What Strange Flowers Grow In The Shade
2025 stock Tennessee-based string bender, Joseph Allred likes to change things up from album to album. But usually, he does this one element or instrument at a time. On What Strange Flowers Grow in the Shade, Joseph adds a whole heck of a lot of elements. And he does so without ever really disguising the identity of his music. The six tracks here were all recorded with different line-ups. 'The Valley' features Chris Davis (Cherry Blossoms) and the Magic Tuber Stringband. 'The Ruins' is a Basho-e…
Convalescence
2025 stock Another splendid album of avant hi-jinx and shreddery from keyboard whiz, Liz Durette. Primordial Soup is her fourth album (first was a cassette), and the second for Feeding Tube. It is the follow-up to 2020's most excellent Delight (FTR 504LP) and heads into somewhat different stylistic turf, whilst maintaining Durette's high levels of keyboard invention. If Delight was created while Liz was thinking about Romantic-era waltzes, then Primordial Soup owes some of its strategic approach…
Primordial Soup
2025 stock Another splendid album of avant hi-jinx and shreddery from keyboard whiz, Liz Durette. Primordial Soup is her fourth album (first was a cassette), and the second for Feeding Tube. It is the follow-up to 2020's most excellent Delight (FTR 504LP) and heads into somewhat different stylistic turf, whilst maintaining Durette's high levels of keyboard invention. If Delight was created while Liz was thinking about Romantic-era waltzes, then Primordial Soup owes some of its strategic approach…
Well Up
2025 stock Liz Durette returns with a gorgeous fourth LP (her third for Feeding Tube) and not a moment too soon! With Well Up, Liz delivers a bright and sparkling sonic gem to illuminate our days and nights. Liz is an artist, keyboardist, improviser, and deep thinker based in Massachusetts, after many years in Baltimore. She has created an uncanny body of musical work of keyboard improvisations. Her style strikes me as utterly unique, and this latest album offers an entirely new example of her v…
It’s In Your Ribs
2025 stock We have Asheville NC's Tashi Dorji to thank for this one. It was his enthusiastic recommendation that led us to this insane LP. Both DUNUMS and Casual Planes are duos originally formed in Durham NC. The former in 2010, the latter in 2017. They are both currently comprised of Sijal Nasralla (also of Durham punk trio, The Muslims) and Alston Palmer (who does solo electronics as Hoverist). Sijal is the leader of DUNUMS, and Alston (who relocated to Los Angeles a few years back) is the br…
Soul Chateau
2025 stock No shortage of dune buggy up the canyon honey slide action here. The first tinges of sonic solvent action provide a loosened effect, but just as the tongue gets lazy, the swagger is spat gently from the tip as clarity bursts into the room with the urgency a hungry baby. Delicate without feeling soft. Brash without feeling harsh and at times Dimples swing fucking hard, like JJ and Leon without forcing it one bit. But if you don't like 'new music' this might not be your cuppa. Soul Chat…
3
2025 stock "This is the third LP by the duo comprised of Greg Dalton (aka Gary War) and Rob 'Sunburned' Thomas, formerly known as Dalthom, but actually named whatever the pair feel like calling it. Recorded shortly before the disastrous election of 2016, it is partially filled with the darkness, paranoia and creeping dread that filled that time period. But there is also a hefty amount of the druggy, electronic ecstasis for which the duo is known (no matter their handle.) Gary and Rob met when th…
Slog Quest Crosstime
2025 stock "For the last two decades or so, The Human Adult Band, led by T. Penn, has been at the vanguard of New Jersey's sub underground scene. Sometimes there are a lot of them, sometimes there are only a few, but the size of the scumball their music generates is always quite gigantic regardless of their number. Slog Quest Crosstime is a monstrously pleasant example of what the band does. Their LOUD free rock dynamism is a classic example of how to move things from point A to point B without …
Life Is Spiritual
2025 stock "It's fair to say that what the world needs now is love. And not just a drop here or there. Enter the Hurricane. This latest offering is a high point in a career that is all about being high and impossible to put a point on. Life is Spiritual -- it's an evocation, a flowering of a singular vision. There is nothing static in Hurricane's world, even if he is drawing on more recognizable forms than in the past. He's mastered the elusive art of being in the moment. His car is a character,…
Hydromancy
Here is the third of our LPs documenting the new work of Vienna-based expatriate guitarist, Eric Arn. The first was the solo Orphic Resonance (FTR 281LP), the second, Paranza Corta (FTR 384LP), documenting duo work with Austrian guitarist Margaret Unknown. And now the third features duet recordings with English avant garde cellist Jasmine Pender, who also performs more noisily using the soubriquet, Rotten Bliss. Pender and Arn first met at a 2018 festival in Krems, Austria. They played a duo sho…
Branches & Leaves
Don't hold me to it, but by my count this the sixth LP we have done with the splendid Brighton-based musician named Joseph Allred. Initially known as a master of stringed instruments, Joseph has continuously expanded his musical arsenal. When asked about basics regarding Branches & Leaves, he wrote, 'I played harmonium, piano, guitars, glockenspiel, banjo, tambourine, bass drum, and clarinet on this album and did all the vocals myself. I'm glad I got to collaborate with some friends and would li…
Cosine
2025 stock Shimmering dream pop readymades are the heart of Cosine, the debut release by Ancient Pools (originally a cassette, and now an LP). Ancient Pools are a duo (Anna Jeter and Kevin Christopher), recently relocated from Olympia to Portland, where Kevin was offered a good set-up at a new studio. Anna is from Pensacola, FL, where she was in a folk-tinged pop band called 100 Watt Horse. Kevin remains the bassist for a more rockist Northwest quartet called Oh, Rose. But Ancient Pools, with it…
Folk Guitar
A very nice return to unadorned acoustic guitar playing by one of the form's masters. Allred's last album for FTR, What Strange Flowers Grow in the Shade (FTR 656LP) was more of an imaginary band outing, but Folk Guitar plays it straight. Joseph reports they'd been listening to a lot to pieces by 16th-century composer, John Dowland, and the solo work of Pentangle's John Renbourn while this album was gestating. They also note Hammer Studio horror-film soundtracks as a touchstone for certain tunes…
Bloodroot Spitball
Vinylization of a CD-R released by Josh Burkett's Mystra Records by this great cassette manipulator, who was long a central part of the Boston Whitehaus scene. Bloodroot Spitball is a bit different from Arkm Foam's other Feeding Tube releases, since it incorporates a bunch of 'real' instruments into the mix. This hearkens back to Mr. Foam's first solo LP, The Foam Doesn't Fall Far From The Shore (2013), on Hot Releases. As on that one, there's another player heard here, when Andy Allen (who was …
No New Summers
Nice to hear the first solo LP in a good while by this most excellent guitarist who also runs the superb Scissor Tail label. Dylan writes, 'I made the title track a couple years ago at the beginning of summer. I was thinking about how as you get older you have fewer new experiences. That feeling of excitement for summer fades, after it used to be such a big deal as a kid. Those experiences can only be new and vibrant once. The rest of your life can be spent in nostalgia for them. It's a sad thou…
Dreaming The Sun
2025 stock Newest entry in the Jason Meagher's great Drowned Land series is the long-playing vinyl debut by Lexington, KY's Warren Byrom. Recorded back before the Plague, the idea for Dreaming the Sun emerged when Jason caught a show by Warren and Philly-based pianist Hans Chew, who'd already been involved in lots of bands and recordings with Meagher. The sweet depth of Warren's songs and guitar playing resonated with Jason, and Warren soon found himself in Black Dirt Studios with Nashville bass…
Until My Darkness Goes
The second LP by Mark Cunningham's current Spanish outfit, Blood Quartet, marks a directional shift from their 2016 debut LP, Deep Red (FTR 283LP). On Until My Darkness Goes the quartet abandons pure instrumentalism, including a few vocal takes by drummer Cândid Coll strewn amidst the album's various tangles. There is also a much more aggressively rockist focus shown at times. Rumor has always been that this is a firm part of the band's live trip, but recorded evidence of it has thus far been sc…
Band in Boston
2025 stock As the '80s dawned, Phil Milstein was living in Central Square in Cambridge, setting type and working on the machinations of the Velvet Underground Appreciation Society. He was also beginning to explore his musical alter-ego, Pep Lester, with the first evidence of this appearing on an L.A.F.M.S. comp tape. Phil was also a maniacal tape trader in those days, and one of the people he regularly swapped mixes with was a juvenile delinquent from Athol, Massachusetts named Dana Hatch, whom …
Anti-Matter Alma Mater
2025 stock Vinylization of the superb oddball cassette originally issued by the Potlatch, I Gather tape label in 2008. Ambergris is more or less the solo project of visual artist Matthew Thurber (1-800 MICE, etc.), although he is aided in this instance by Rebecca Bird. The suite of songs presented here is something like a theatrical recreation of one of Thurber's bizarre-world comics. Using voices, Casio, various Garage Band inventions and his own surreal imagination, Thurber takes us to a 10,00…