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New Releases for date: 5/19/03
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ALTERNATIVE TENTACLES
Artist: BONDI, VIC + ARTICLES OF FAITH Title: Fortunate Son
Format: CD Catalog
Number:		 VIRUS299CD
Price: $4.00 Label: Alternative Tentacles
Release
Date:		 5/19/03
VIC BONDI started his career as a protest singer. He then went on to form ARTICLES OF FAITH, JONES VERY and ALLOY. On his new EP (his first new material in 8 years), VIC has come full-circle. The threat of war has inspired him to release some protest material : so he wrote and recorded “Hardball” Ð a rockin assault against George W. - at the end of 2002 as well as covering John Fogerty’s “Fortunate Song” - the single best song about class and war ever written. He decided to include two ARTICLES OF FAITH tracks because they are Ð sadly - as relevant today as they were when they were written twenty years ago! 4 songs.

If you have a recent version of iTunes software on your computer, clicking on the link immediately below should open the iTunes application and take you to that album's iTunes page-- where you can listen to samples and buy this album, or individual tracks:

Go to iTunes to browse downloads for Articles Of Faith "Fortunate Son E.P."

If you have a subscription account at emusic.com, you can download tracks for purchase here.

This title is also available for download at AmazonMP3.

For a complete listing of Midheaven exclusive albums available for download from the iTunes Music Service and emusic, please visit the Midheaven Mailorder/Revolver USA Downloadables page.
ANTICON
Artist: ODD NOSDAM Title: No More Wig For Ohio
Format: 2xLP Catalog
Number:		 ABR0028
Price: $13.00 Label: Anticon
Release
Date:		 5/19/03
Artist: ODD NOSDAM Title: No More Wig For Ohio
Format: CD Catalog
Number:		 ABR0028CD
Price: $13.00 Label: Anticon
Release
Date:		 5/19/03
***A young odd nosdam began meddling with machines in the mid-'90s, looping his favorite Nirvana riffs on a Sega Genesis CD player and filling tapes with noise collage. Since then he has compiled at least three solo full lengths, as well as a number of collaborations, including the highly acclaimed cLOUDDEAD. nosdam has developed his own distinct sound, drawing inspiration from a broad palette ranging from Flying Saucer Attack and Hood to the RZA and everything in between and outlying. nosdam allows his many mental ups and downs, quirks and eccentricities to seep deep into his sound creations - a rare quality among modern instrumental artists.

no more wig for ohio is a meticulously deliberate two-part arrangement of instrumental songs and far found sounds collaged into a maniacal music quilt that somehow retains cohesiveness. Part one (tracks 1-11) listens like a razor-sharp piss-take on the world around the artist-- an orgy of church hymns and infomercials. The record's second half (tracks 12-24), in all its sick-drum sweet-tone eeriness, reveals a bit of nosdam's human desperation with some of the hardest beats he has ever unleashed upon a sound wave's trespasser's ears. Perfect for headphones, grind dancing, and formal get-togethers of all kinds.

BIRDMAN
Artist: CUTS, THE Title: 2 Over Ten
Format: CD Catalog
Number:		 BMR045
Price: $12.00 Label: Birdman
Release
Date:		 5/19/03
***The Cuts are four twenty-somethings from Oakland, California, who make some of the best garage pop that you'll find today. The Cuts' wild sonic tantrums and lust-scorched anthems are so soaked in Nuggets history it's hard to believe they weren't conceived in the same fertile musical ground that produced bands like the Sonics and ? and the Mysterians. The band blends old-school, psychedelic garage with '70s NYC proto-punk noise (a couple songs are so Television it's crazy)-- but these guys make the blend seamless. The guitars come off cheap and messy; the vocals are amped, snotty, and slightly distorted; the keyboards whiz around like some woozy Dennis Hopper drug sequence, and the rhythms switch between jangling so loosely they're gonna slip right out of your speakers and getting wound so tight they're gonna snap.

The band released their debut album as a vinyl-only edition on Mark Murman's Rock n' Roll Blitzkrieg Records (watch for Birdman to issue it on CD in 2003) and, though low profile in record stores, it received rave reviews. For their second album The Cuts drove down to Memphis and recorded at Easley Studios with Greg Cartwright (Oblivians, Compulsive Gamblers, Reigning Sound) at the control board. This album promises to be a straight up classic!

GALAXIA
Artist: A GRAPE DOPE Title: Missing Dragons
Format: 12" Catalog
Number:		 GLX17
Price: $8.25 Label: Galaxia
Release
Date:		 5/19/03
Artist: A GRAPE DOPE Title: Missing Dragons
Format: CD Catalog
Number:		 GLX17CD
Price: $9.50 Label: Galaxia
Release
Date:		 5/19/03
***A Grape Dope (known forthwith as AGD) is the offshoot, beat-oriented, slow jam, and otherwise selector (after some stumbling), brain-damaged child of John Herndon. Mr. Herndon spends the majority of his time spinning yarns for the groups Tortoise, Isotope 217, and AGD finds joy in the sounds between the cracks. Inspired by the breath of a two-headed garbage dog and their fearless mistress, AGD found beats where there were none and sorrow in our collective happiness, and vice versa. Guests include DoseOne (anticon) on "Red Hat Attack," on "When You Crash and Burn." Star through, up in the middle and back. Boys rock your Girls; last night a square dance caller saved my life.

[A Grape Dope's] bass-heavy, dub-influenced ... music ... just flows. Its sound is incredible, so full-bodied and so low it shakes your insides.... Clicks, words, keyboards, noise, beats, electric guitar are only there as accents.... [It] may sound like dub, but it is also obviously influenced by jazz: the bass melody does not concentrate on carrying the groove but rather finding it and keeping it continuously evolving; the squiggles dance around the bass playing off of it, not just there for decoration. --Jim Steed, fakejazz.com

MISTER E
Artist: FLYING LIZARDS Title: Secret Dub Life Of...
Format: CD Catalog
Number:		 MRE02
Price: $12.00 Label: Mister E
Release
Date:		 5/19/03
***The source tapes for this CD were recorded in Jamaica by Jah Lloyd (aka Patrick Francis) as part of a series he made for Virgin Records' Front Line label. The original players of this music remain unidentified. Jah Lloyd used various combinations of musicians but did not include who played on which tracks. In the late '70s the original tapes were not released and were offered to The Flying Lizards' David Cunningham with the suggestion that he remix the music. Cunningham accepted the project, expecting lots of time in one of Virgin's studios to play with the music and the equipment, only to be presented with a mono master tape, which forced him to invent (or perhaps re-invent) techniques of editing, looping, filtering and subtraction to deal with unremixable mono material (these were the days before samplers). The techniques used here expanded his vocabulary of musical electronic (as opposed to electronic music) treatments and appear in a very different form on records made at that time (notably "Forth Wall," his collaboration with Patti Palladin, and production work on Michael Nyman's records).

This very quirky, ambient dub record will remind listeners of some of Lee "Scratch" Perry's earlier albums (reggae / dub beats with samples and sounds buried deep in the mix), mixed with the low-tech tape butchery of Perry and Kingsley's early proto-sampling work. Fans simply expecting the early 'Lizards' sound minus vocals are probably going to be a bit disappointed, but only a bit. These instrumental songs have plenty to be amazed by buried in them: creaking hinges, bouncing ping pong balls, popping champagne corks, wounded trombones, shuffling papers and other odd sounds all unfolding themselves through the layers. It's difficult not to admire Cunningham's make-shift, use-the-tools-he-has attempts at sampling, and how successfully he has created a mellow, whimsical sound. Cunningham definitely has a style to his sampling, and the roots of that style are revealed here.

NINJA TUNE
Artist: FOG Title: Ether Teeth
Format: 2xLP Catalog
Number:		 ZEN 77
Price: $17.50 Label: Ninja Tune
Release
Date:		 5/19/03
***NOW AVAILABLE ON VINYL!!! The second FOG album from Minneapolis odd hop groovester ANDREW BRODER. A dark and melancholy-sounding blend of hip hop grooves, rock spills, piano thrills and symphonic turntable experiments, delivered with Broder's thought-provoking, humorous and hopeful lyrics.
OFF
Artist: PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH Title: Beard Of Lightning
Format: CD Catalog
Number:		 OFF995
Price: $13.00 Label: Off
Release
Date:		 5/19/03
***In 2002, Robert Pollard of Guided By Voices wished aloud for a chance to sing for Phantom Tollbooth, one of his favorite bands. He refers to the idea as "the band that would have ruled the world." The next thing anyone knew, the former members of Phantom Tollbooth revisited their 1988 swan song album Power Toy (four stars at AllMusicGuide), erased all the vocals, and presented it to Pollard, who then created new vocal melody lines and lyrics.

Named after a popular children's book, Phantom Tollbooth was a strongly art-rock-influenced variation on the raging yet eclectic post-hardcore of Hüsker Dü and the Minutemen, incorporating quick tempo changes, noise experiments, and bits of jazz. The group was formed in 1984 in New York by guitarist Dave Rick--formerly of Yo La Tengo and a frequent collaborator with Bongwater, B.A.L.L., and King Missile-- along with Gerald Smith and Jon Coats. The band put out three crazed records on Homestead before breaking up-- like all good bands do-- in 1988.

What they said of Phantom Tollbooth

Phantom Tollbooth gives new meaning to the word "crunch." Combining things Burmese with the Meat Puppets and avant-jazz thrash (what the hell: thrazz), the band pummels mercilessly with lurching power chords and droning bass. -CMJ

It's got manic pop-oomph akin to the MC5's "Call Me Animal" powering a scattershot structural sensibility à la Ornette Coleman. -Jersey Beat

Phantom Tollbooth ... speaks to you in ejaculations: blurted out bits of information or flat-out sprints. -Spin

The meanest slice of hyper-rhythmic art punk to wake my neighbors in months. -NY Talk

TIGERBEAT 6
Artist: KID 606 Title: Kid 606 & Friends Vol. 1
Format: CD Catalog
Number:		 MEOW001CD
Price: $6.75 Label: Tigerbeat 6
Release
Date:		 5/19/03
***Finally repressed and back in stock! The first release on KID606's Tigerbeat6 label features Kid606 remixes and collaborations with a variety of the underground's best electronic stars. Eighteen whup-ass tracks featuring a meta-stellar guest musicians and mixers.
YOUNG GOD
Artist: BANHART, DEVENDRA Title: The Black Babies (Uk)
Format: CD Catalog
Number:		 YG23
Price: $8.25 Label: Young God
Release
Date:		 5/19/03
***

With a gratifying amount of interest surrounding Devendra Banhart's debut album Oh Me Oh My The Way The Day Goes By The Sun Is Setting Dogs Are Dreaming Lovesongs Of The Christmas Spirit, Young God has harvested six new tracks from the floating and constantly replenished pool of songs at Banhart's disposal (about 100 from which to choose at any given moment), and complemented them with two favorites from Oh Me Oh My... to make The Black Babies (UK). But let's cut to the chase and survey selected comments plucked from the onslaught of praise for Mr. Banhart:

Using voice, guitar, and four-track, his raw songcraft is terrifyingly effective at communicating the breadth of human emotion.... Belying his uncouth and unwashed countenance, Devendra Banhart's debut is beautiful, damaged, naked and utterly compelling. -Jim Haynes, The Wire

Take one damaged 21-year-old drifter, give him an acoustic guitar and some busted four-track recorders, and the result is a compelling mix of the eccentric and the sublime.... Certainly Devendra Banhart's beautifully raw debut album sounds like nothing else ... more than just spittle in the face of an over-processed music industry. Soulful, troubling and troubled, it's a spiritual manifesto from a one-man species. -Neva Chonin, San Francisco Chronicle

It's the voice that pulls you in, flitting from lilting to hectoring, sweet to sinister.... He could be Barrett-era Syd possessed by the soul of Tiny Tim ... an album that escapes definition, beguilingly sweet, yet ever so, ever so dark. -Andrew Male, Mojo

The quaver in Mr. Banhart's voice is as shaky as his songs' connection to everyday reality. In lo-fi recordings-- usually just his guitar and his multiplied voice-- his songs and fragments ponder animals, apparitions, logical leaps and childlike certainties, all with credible eccentricity. -Jon Pereles, The New York Times

Itty-bitty scraps of thoughts/impressions, poetic prose in simple frames of spidery acoustic guitar and a startling voice that warbles high, fretful and foreboding-- vulnerable, of course, but comforting, too ... loads of actually fantastic guitar picking and several thrillingly unconventional song shapes ... but what in lesser hands would be merely irritating is in Devendra's undeniably authentic and even authoritative. Oh Me Oh My... sets new (its own) standards; by the end of one spin, it's not weird at all, more a darkly angelic kind of beautiful. -John Payne, LA Weekly

Artist: SWANS Title: Children Of God / World Of Skin
Format: 2xCD Catalog
Number:		 YG02
Price: $16.50 Label: Young God
Release
Date:		 5/19/03
***Two crucial breakthrough records from Swans' mid- to late-'80s period back in print. Consistently sought after by an ever-replenishing fanbase seeking out the roots of Gira's Angels of Light work, related projects, Young God Records, and past collaborator Jarboe.

Here's what Alternative Press had to say when the magazine cited this music as one of the 100 best records of the decade:

Pat Robertson's bid for the presidency, the oxymoronic Moral Majority, Baker's fall from grace: These events were met in a head-on collision with Swans' perfect blend of sound and themes, their musical brawn contrasting with Jarboe's soft passionate blasphemy. "We are Special. We are perfect. We are born in the sight of god," she sings ... opting for the best salvation money can buy, the promise of expired suffering, but not before Gira's condemnation of every last one of us, "The sex in your soul will damn you to hell," he bellows on the opener, "New Mind." ... Early records were made of the shock of crunch and grind alone; on Children of God, oboe, piano, flute, harmonica, and cello are incorporated as each song alternates between hellish hopelessness and quiet mourning.... For Swans, love is a drug, work a humiliation, and mortality a cruel joke. What we do to convince ourselves otherwise can't compete with this record, and it's still downright scary, and beautiful, to hear.

Artist: SWANS Title: Swans Are Dead
Format: 2xCD Catalog
Number:		 YG03
Price: $16.50 Label: Young God
Release
Date:		 5/19/03
***In the 15-year existence of the now-finished group, vocalist/guitarist Michael Gira and a revolving door of contributors sought to isolate and exaggerate the limitations of music.... Swans atomize rhythm and melody by taking repetition to an extreme, almost aberrant degree, to a point where the music is transformed into a behemoth machine that simultaneously disrupts and illuminates its own internal structure.... "Blood Promise," the syrupy 1994 ballad, is stripped to a torturous chiming drone of guitars and flaring cymbals. "I Crawled" is reworked from its original crushing plod into a tense narrative with slowly building crescendos..... Compounding several harmonies of instruments that swirl continuously in mantra form, the group creates a sound of constant elevation and rhythmic attrition.... The structure has fractured and musical order is, if only briefly, transcended. Which is exactly the aim of Swans' music-- to give the taste of ecstatic annihilation. And here, a blissful farewell. -SF Weekly, 1998

Gira & Co.'s discography is rich in masterful concert documents, and this pristinely recorded capper is no different. Over the course of a 15-year existence, Swans built up a solid reputation for blinding intensity and brutal honesty. Leader Michael Gira was so unafraid to explore the limits of the crushingly leaden and the mystically ethereal that his compositions and from-the-gut emotional frankness occasionally verged on the ridiculous. More often, his tunnel vision and severity intensified music of a singular power unmatched in its sensuous physicality and visionary depth.... Swans leave behind a legacy as the most radical aesthetic dissenters from the golden age of '80s NYC tumult rock, yet also as the most faithful adherents to that scene's sternness and experimental edge.... [I]t's a rewarding final chronicle of one of the most fascinating forces ever to grace a stage.... [T]he musicianship is uniformly distinctive and flawless... [W]ith the band buried and a Huysmansian conglomeration of home stereo, virtual reality and hypnotism yet to be invented, Swans Are Dead will have to suffice as the ultimate sensory blowout. -TimeOut New York, 1998

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