Lightning strike Lightning's Creepy Power art edition cassette is now sold out. As such the "any 3 tapes" special has been transformed into a three-tape package of the remaining new releases (Pete Fosco, Planets Around the Sun, Altered Gee) for just $13 + shipping. Order now at the storefront.
Orders have begun shipping; any orders placed prior to September 27th will be shipped out by the end of the week.
Thanks everyone!
13 September 2011
TONY CLIFTON'S RANCH = DUB PALACE OF SIN FOUR NEW LIMITED CASSETTES [pete fosco, planets around the sun, altered gee, lightning strike lightning] + TWO NEW VINYL PRE-ORDERS [cursillistas, brainshadows]
Been awhile, friends... been kept busy on the Herbcraft tip, had a great summer in support of Ashram to the StarsLP, thanks to everyone who helped set up gigs or stump'd for the record...
Breakin' the L'animaux silence here with four brand-new limited-edition tapes, home-dubbed, hand-assembled, etc. These are mostly ready to go except that we're waitin on the inserts to come back from the print shoppe... so we're taking orders now and they should be ready to ship in about a week.
In the longer-run, we've got two new vinyl projects at the pressing plant, which will be released in late-October. They are both extremely limited editions of around 200 copies, so we're starting to take pre-orders now for folks who want to reserve a copy. All pre-orders taken will be for a discounted price up until release day, and for a limited time we're offering a special combo deal: just $17 + shipping for both the upcoming Cursillistas 12" LP and Brainshadows 7" single. Scroll furthur for more info...
And... get your feet wet with the new L'animaux Tryst podcast, "Way Far Out", available for stream and free download. 10 tracks from the past, present, and future...
LTFR 028: PETE FOSCO: VACATIONLANDED FORMAT: CS [c43] // EDITION: 75 // RELEASED: 09.13.11 // $5.00 + shipping While electric guitar mangler / vibe-generator Pete Fosco
may call Kentucky home, he is nonetheless a man smitten with Maine.
After a trip up the coast to Acadia and Belfast last summer (which
included a show with MV & EE and Herbcraft at the now-sadly-defunt
Roots & Tendrils), Fosco was so inspired that when he returned home
he sat down in front of some warm tubes, strapp’d on a six-string, and
let rip on some true Vacationland meditations. What we’ve got here are
four extended improvisations/compositions for solo electric guitar, with
Fosco bending, growling, coaxing, and summoning tones with fingers,
slides, and other mystery implements. The sounds evoke dusty winds
streaking across the Desert of Maine, Northern Lights shimmering from
atop Cadillac Mountain, and vertiginous views from Pemetic. Sometimes
sparse (Fosco is a master at the pregnant pause), sometimes as swirling
and dense as a January blizzard, the soundtrack Fosco creates is a heavy
homage to the dark mystery and latent wonder of exploration in the
Maine wilds.
Black shell cassettes with hand-painted and typed labels,
held in polybox with full-color, pro-printed insert on vellum, enclosed
in a piece of a vintage map of Maine. Limited to 75.
Ditching the domestic life for a stint of wild-abandon nomad
drift, Planets Around the Sun departed from Maine in July to unplug and
roll on down the line… WE O WE is their
parting gift to the musical community that launched them into new
orbits. Drawing from every era of the band’s career and pointing forward
to new phases, it is a carefully crafted full-length mixtape of past
trysts and future haunts. From the opening acousto-electro instrumental
shimmer we move to a stretched-out heavy drone-folk version of the
classic White Light side “Saraswati”, here completely re-figured with
the addition of guest baritone guitar and cello from local duo South
China. The Ian Paige solo excursion “Agnes” follows, with drones and
steel strings lulling raga moves into your atmosphere; once the tablas
and electric guitar hits, you’re halfway between Demolition Derby and Country Stash, truly a vapor to be savored and returned to often. The B-side hits with “We Owe”, a possession-ceremony standard with netherworld vocal chants circling around watery
bass wobbles and wah’ed synth stabs. This flows into “May Day” and its
extended doom-dub treatment “Version”, moving from Velvety melodic
guitar-scorched psych to a half-tempo high-stepping astral-funk groove.
But enough about the past. Planets point to their present/future with
the closing track, a cracked lo-fi country-folk tune that serves as
their on-the-road calling card. Sure to be a counterculture hit in
22nd-Century America.
Hand-written (in white paint) cassettes
held in a case with full-color pro-printed art, featuring a reproduction
of a totally psychedelic needlepoint by Paige’s grandmother. Limited to
75. LTFR 032: ALTERED GEE: EUROPEAN GEES FORMAT: CS [c69] // EDITION: 75 // RELEASED: 09.13.11 // SOLD OUT It may be counter-intuitive to think of “G-funk instrumentals”
as a possible product of an icy and blizzed-out Maine winter, but holed
up at the House of Hits (aka Hit Factory) in Winter 2011 with an array
of analog synths (SEIL OR 400 for the highs, Moog Taurus II for the
lows) and hip-hop golden-age drum machines (E-mu SP-1200, Drumulator,
and Korg DDD-1), Key Jr. Dee Jay and Slouch formed Altered Gee
amid a thick cloud of purple smoke and didn’t stop making hits til the
tape ran out. Recorded entirely on 8-track cassette(!), the deep-grooved
trunk-rattlers on European Gees ride that line between suave
Euro electro-futurism and dank, dirty, post-Zapp R&B boogie and
G-funk, all stretched out, heavy-lidded and dazed. Weightless,
pitch-shifting, portamentoed synth lines arc over and around each other,
anchored by heavy-bounce syrupy-thick bass and Slouch’s ace
reverbed-out kick’n’clap beats. This is dance music with runtimes long
enough (in the case of “Magnum Opus”, 15+minutes of synth-funk ecstasy)
to get lost in the transcendence of the groove. The song titles say it
all: “Dowsed”, “Funky Airs”, “I Wanna Lay You Down And Feel You Up”…
this is some sexy, fonky shit, ideal for sittin low in your Coupe de
Ville and gettin scandalous in some sweaty bedsheets.
69-minute white
cassettes with individually-chrome-painted and typewriter-engraved
labels, held in a case with full-color pro-printed j-card designed by
the band. Limited to 75.
LTFR 033: LIGHTNING STRIKE LIGHTNING: CREEPY POWER FORMAT: CS [c40] // ART EDITION: 33 // RELEASED: 09.13.11 // SOLD OUT Way back in 2008, The Wire magazine named Lightning strike
Lightning’s “The Moon” 7” single as one of the top 10 of the year, while
Foxy Digitalis’ Brad Rose remarked that they were “quickly becoming one
of my favorite bands” while naming it the Best 7” of the Year. So
what’s been going on since then? Public silence; private Creepy Power.
After four long years of hermetic writing, recording, re-recording,
editing, mixing, re-mixing, and so on, LsL finally emerges once again
with their second full-length, the follow up to their 2007 disc Turn Myself Into The Ocean.
Many of the original ingredients remain (worldless female haunt-vox,
busted mini-amp guitar growls, tom-violating rhythm tracks, banjo ruffs) but are in service to arrangements that are both
tighter and more expansive. Moments of breathless spectral visitation
bloom alongside forest-folk recitations, bell loops drawn out to
time-bending drone, heavy dirge remembrance, and general free-form
folkery. While the murk of of the previous recordings has been dialed
back a bit on Creepy Power, the gossamer echo chamber that
remains—combined with the slightly-higher-fidelity—makes for a smoother
ride and headier drift; this is one to get lost in.
SPECIAL
ONE-TIME-ONLY ART EDITION: Clear cassettes with in-house screen-printed
labels, held in a case with double-sided reversible pro-printed j-card,
each with a one-of-a-kind Land camera photograph taken by band member
S.Turley with tracklisting handwritten on back, held in a sewn fabric
sleeve. Limited to 33.
PRE-ORDER SPECIAL: $14 Long-delayed "lost" Cursillistas album, begun recording in January 2007 (post-Les Biches; pre-Wasp Stings) and originally conceived of as the proper follow-up to the more song-based Thrush ChimesCD-R from 2006. After two-and-a-half years of writing and recording, the album was abandoned, only to be completely remixed, remastered, and re-sequenced from heaps of cassettes and zip disks in 2010-11. Many songs were previously only available on tour-only CD-Rs & tapes in demo form - this is the only proper release of the mostly-unheard "studio versions" of this material, which made up much of Cursillistas' live set between 2007 and 2009. Pressed onto deluxe 150-gram black vinyl and housed in a heavy cotton stock art paper sleeve, with five-layer silkscreen print and two-sided insert. Limited to 225 copies.
LTFR 714: BRAINSHADOWS "WILD CHERRY b/w RIPE" 7" Debut single from this new "hard pop" duo of D. Aquarius and M. Lajoie, which smothers Spector-era space-echo pop in the psychedelic technicolor grit and grime of a Bakshi / Corman urban sewer. Wah'ed synths and fuzz guitars lift up heavy basslines and off-kit percussion, with nice & ruff soft-focus vocals appearing like phantoms, all produced in engulfing heavy MONO. A-side "Wild Cherry" brings home some tuff teenage motorcycle love-in vibrations; an intravenous alternate soundtrack to a Beyond the Valley of the Dolls party scene. On the flip, "Ripe" is genuine lovers rock dub-pop, with plenty of wah and hazed & hushed come-ons: an abstracted ode to the magick of early Keith Hudson and Horace Andy sides. Recycled black vinyl 45rpm 7" held in a pro-printed full-color sleeve. Limited to 200 copies.
