Hits Are For Squares
Hits Are for Squares is the first greatest hits album by American rock band Sonic Youth, released on June 10, 2008, by Starbucks Entertainment. The album features 15 songs spanning Sonic Youth's career since the release of their debut studio album in 1983, Confusion Is Sex. It also includes one new song: "Slow Revolution". The band intended to create a compilation album that appealed to the casual consumer. Hits Are for Squares received acclaim from critics, who noted it as a strong introduction…
Evil Does Not Exist
Following their collaboration on 2021’s Oscar winning Drive My Car, Eiko Ishibashi & filmmaker Ryusuke Hamaguchi up the ante with a deeply inspired synergistic exchange: music for images, visuals for sounds. Eiko’s score initiated the project that has become his celebrated new film (Best Picture – BFI London Film Fest, Asian Film Awards, Silver Lion – Venice Film Fest, Best Score – Asia Film Awards). Every nuance mixed & mastered by Jim O’Rourke.
Chewing Hides the Sound
Double CD, expanded edition. Snakefinger surely needs not much of an introduction. Born Philip Charles Lithman in London, he moved to San Francisco in 1971. His roots lie in the British blues scene, but he soon became friends with The Residents who also gave him the name Snakefinger based on a photograph of Lithman performing, in which his finger looks like a snake about to attack his violin. In 1972 Lithman returned to England and formed the pub rock band Chilli Willi and the Red Hot Peppers. A…
Desertshore
CD digipack, 12-page booklet, Includes two bonus tracks. Desertshore was co-produced by John Cale and Joe Boyd. Unlike its predecessor The Marble Index it incorporates elements from Western traditional pop."Janitor of Lunacy" was composed as a tribute to her friend Brian Jones who died the previous year. The back and front covers feature stills from the film The Inner Scar by Philippe Garrel which starred Nico, Garrel and her son Ari Boulogne. A few of the songs from the album were included on t…
The Marble Index
CD digipack, 12-page booklet, Includes two bonus tracks. Nico's second solo album, 1968's 'The Marble Index', has long been out of print. This reissue includes audio mastered from the original tapes and previously unreleased photos of Nico by Guy Webster. Nico's haunting vocals predicted the Gothic movement and co-producer and Velvet Underground's band mate John Cale's startingly modern classical production ensured 'The Marble Index's timeless appeal. The iconic music journalist Lester Bangs wro…
Walls Have Ears
Double LP version. Color vinyl. "Culled from three 1985 gigs in the UK during a transitional and transcendent time in the band's story, Sonic Youth's The Walls Have Ears appeared/disappeared as a 2LP set in 1986, not just a live album but an artful tapestry full of live experimentation with songs, between-song tape segues, darkness, humor and audio verité. It's now issued for the first time officially under the band's auspices.""The '85 shows were the second time the band appeared on UK soil, Br…
The Upcoming Flame
*2024 stock* Stefan Christensen swamps delicate threads of melody in a muted squall of distortion. Waves of agitated noise, tamped down but still fractious, roll over the structures of his songs, so that it’s hard to tell whether the song or the dissonant scree of sound is the main thing. A current member of Headroom and frequent collaborator with members of Mountain Movers, Alexander and Nagual, Christensen layers haunted sung imagery over slow looped constructions of guitar and percussion. Her…
Daydream Nation
2024 repress. "Daydream Nation was Sonic Youth's sixth full-length, their first double-LP, and their last for an indie label before signing with Geffen. Widely considered to be their watershed moment, the album catapulted them into the mainstream and proved that indie bands could enjoy wide commercial success without compromising their artistic vision. More recently, Daydream Nation has been recognized as a classic of its time: Pitchfork ranked it #1 on their '100 Greatest Albums of the 1980s'; …
Live In Brooklyn 2011
The final U.S. show, a triumphant and blistering bookend to the storied career of one of the most influential bands in rock music, featuring a unique and expansive eighty-five minute set list that spans Sonic Youth’s nearly three decade catalog. Received an 8.3 Best New Reissue rating from Pitchfork.
Anagrama
BACK IN PRINT ON VINYL! While 1995's Washing Machine LP moniker was a thinly-veiled jab at the corporate aesthetic ("no, you cannot turn Sonic Youth into a household appliance brand", the band even considered changing its name to Washing Machine but settled on the album title instead), their major label relationship was indeed a curious buzzpoint of talk on the street after their intake to DGC in 1990. It wouldn't be fair to say that this state of existence propelled the band to reinforce its i…
The Henry Cow Box Redux: The Complete Henry Cow
**17 CDs, 1 DVD and 250 pages of histories, chronology, testimony and commentaries by the band, sundry contemporary documents, and rare photographs – in a sturdy box.** This collection brings together in an inexpensive and definitive edition the full contents of all earlier releases, with the addition of a further 60pp booklet of newly unearthed, or commissioned, band commentaries, pictures and other documents prepared specifically for this box - as well as re-mastered versions of all the studio…
Gloriosa
Brighton's Map 71 are a duo comprised of Andy Pyne (percussion, electronics) and Lisa Jayne (words, voice). Together they have been working away at an approach that draws from post-punk, improvisation, electronics, and other such realms of music to create a refreshing environment where reflection, wry observations, the abstract, and immersion can develop. They have existed for a few years now and had several releases out both on their own Foolproof Projects imprint and via a couple of other labe…
20th Anniversary Box Set
Edition of 300. All signed and hand numbered by Angela Seo and Jamie Stewart. Body of the box is cut from sturdy foam created for Swarovski, outer casing is made from core colored Italian paper (680 gsm). Lyrics book is printed on Munken paper (90 and 160 gsm)
This box set includes:
- 16 full length audio cassettes (15 regular Xiu Xiu albums + 1 special compilation of 7” singles, covers and deep cuts from Xiu Xiu's bandcamp). - Pocket size lyric book (186 pages) with lyrics to all 15 Xiu Xiu alb…
Kalt
*70 copies limited edition* Rubies flicker in and out the redounding dark smoke of urban imagery, circles of deep space ignited with fiery psychedelic mists. Ride on shadowy golden manes in fleeting bands upon the winds of Yokujitsu.
9th Avenue
*300 copies limited edition* Nod invites you to Fly, Fly, Fly with their latest release, the brand new offering from the long-running Rochester, New York-based trio Nod. Equal parts jazz, groove, lo-fi, raw psychedelia, and driving VU-inspired rock, Nod’s 8th full-length release adds some rock grit to the previous Band Room Janitors. This set of fresh experiments from Nod’s laboratory create a new casserole from their ad lib cookbook. So dig in to the new Nod.
Tolin Asumer
*2023 stock. 300 copies lmited release* With over 150 releases under their belt, Tolin Asumer is their first proper US release in almost 20 years. Recorded in Buenos Aires in 2018-2019, and then mixed in 2021, the record opens with Coliso Atomro, an echo-drenched Can-esque excursion into the other-world, with Tomasin taking the role of travel-guide. The use of a bouncing stereo echo-effect mesmerized the listener into a chaotic rock head-nod. The 2nd half of side A features the track Etrol Rene …
Closed Circuit
Peter Jefferies, a living legend of New Zealand underground music, from his seminal bands Nocturnal Projections and This Kind of Punishment, to his collaborative efforts in bands such as Plagal Grind and Two Foot Flame, is perhaps best known for his solo work on masterpieces such as “The Last Great Challenge in a Dull World” (1990) and “Electricity” (1994), as well as “Elevator Madness” (1996). All of these albums came out on vinyl but one of the best was the singular “Closed Circuit” (2001) whi…
Alone On Penguin Island
Originally released on Dome (Wire's Bruce Gilbert and Graham Lewis's seminal label), this is an often overlooked milestone in freefrom and artistic post-punk. A siginficant piece of the UK musical puzzle when a lot of artists were shrugging off the previous decade and embracing the DIY attitude of the 1980s.
Damaged Goods
Listen to Location Location Location’s debut, Damaged Goods, and it’s easy to visualize the three musicians sweating it out in the recording studio, locking in on a groove and just jamming. With, it should be noted, occasional breaks to contemplate the basics, then add subtle overdubs: some bit-crunched guitar here, a marimba there, perhaps a harmonized line or a spacey reverb effect. But essentially live, essentially just three guys in a room, giving their all. But that’s not how it went down a…
Sort of
*Limited edition of 500 copies.* In 1972, the left-wing intellectual film critic Uwe Nettelbeck suggested to Anthony Moore that he should write some (relatively speaking) straight songs. He took up the challenge, inviting his old school friend Peter Blegvad over to Hamburg to form the band Slapp Happy. They were joined for a session in Wümme by the young singer Dagmar Krause and Faust as their rhythm section; the recording became the album Sort Of. After getting the band back together for reunio…