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]
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 Stars LP, 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...
L'animaux Tryst's 33rd Congressional Report vol.2: "Way Far Out" by L'animaux TrystBreakin' 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...
With love,
MLJNEW RELEASES:
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.
LTFR 031: PLANETS AROUND THE SUN: WE O WEFORMAT: CS [c43] // EDITION: 75 // RELEASED: 09.13.11 // SOLD OUT
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 GEESFORMAT: 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.
Check out the preview on their Bandcamp page.
LTFR 033: LIGHTNING STRIKE LIGHTNING: CREEPY POWERFORMAT: 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 Chimes CD-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.
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 Chimes CD-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.
