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Updated 7/18/03 Release dates [among other things] subject to change. Our mailorder pages feature all the titles below-- and more-- sorted by release date at the following links:
7/14/03,
7/21/03,
and
8/4/03.
Our June 2003 new release page can be found here.
If you need to see further into the future, Revolverwise, there's no better starting point than our news page.
Yes, this page displays funny to those of you on Mac systems using the Safari browser. However, as much as we love it, until Safari's a tad further past beta, we won't be altering the page design to accommodate its adorable quirks...  aliaseyes closed EP (anticon abr0033) CD/12" Released the week of July 21st, 2003 order from Midheaven mailorder
The eyes closed EP is five beautifully arranged instrumental songs of filtered polyrhythmic percussion, fat chopped drums, droney synths, pretty string samples and some TV and radio overdubs with anti-imperialist / anti-consumer sentiments. Each of the five tracks stands alone, a four-minute electronic pocket symphony with movements and themes, while smoothly transitioning into the next. A departure from early sample-heavy, loop-based alias productions, tracks laden with washy keyboards and eerie guitar rely more on alias's multi-instrumental talents. Lying somewhere between ambient Brian Eno and Kraftwerk, eyes closed seems akin to Boards of Canada or early Aphex Twin while maintaining some of the boom bap of roots hiphop-- at the same time rainy day contemplative and rhythmically menacing.
A former member of Deep Puddle Dynamics and The Live Poets, alias has collaborated with every member of the anticon roster, Slug of Atmosphere, Sage Francis, DJ Krush, and The Notwist. He has toured the world, performing with such acts as The Roots, Dalek, Freestyle Fellowship, and Kid 606. Composing music from his deepest shades, alias is a jack of all trades wringing out his heart in song.
30-second RealAudio excerpts: Eyes Closed Released the week of July 14th, 2003 order from Midheaven mailorder
One of the first Indian musicians to introduce Hindustani classical music to the west, Ali Akbar Khan is the undisputed master of the sarode, a 25-string fretless string instrument with a sweet, guitar-like sound and overtones of banjo and oud. This is absolutely transcendent music by the master of a revered tradition dating back to the 16th century. Khansahib's numerous releases on AMMP cover 40 years of his finest performances - from 1955 through his esteemed Signature Series in the 1970s to his Grammy-nominated '90s titles.
Ali Akbar Khan was born in 1922 in East Bengal (Bangladesh). His father and teacher, the late Padmavibhushan Dr. Allauddin Khan, was acknowledged as one of the greatest figures of North Indian classical music in the 20th century. He trained his son for over 20 years with a practice schedule of 18 hours a day. In 1967, Khansahib founded the Ali Akbar College of Music (AACM) in San Rafael, California, where he still teaches nine months of the year.
Pandit Swapan Chaudhuri is considered one of India's finest tabla-players as both a soloist and accompanist. Along with accompanying Khansahib in concerts around the world, he regularly performs and records with India's greatest musicians, and has held the position of Master of Percussion at AACM for the past 21 years.
Track listing:
1. The Making of Legacy
Released the week of July 14, 2003 order from Midheaven mailorder This crazy newacidtechnohardcorebreakbeat action from hyperactive manboy Kid606's first single off the upcoming full length album Kill Sound Before Sound Kills You (due in fall 2003 on Ipecac) is a retro hardcore techno anthem for a period which still hasn't occurred yet: sweeping melodies and gnarling basslines combined with classic beats and all the sonic sci-fi twist and turns needed to keep you at the edge of your listening seat. "Ecstasy Motherfucker" is a 9-minute, relentless 4/4 160-BPM epic with more energy in it than most albums - thumping 909s mixed with Baltimore breaks and booty 808s with DSP rush breakdowns all climaxing in a bass-heavy speedcore gabber blowout.
The 12-inch includes an exclusive mix of "The Illness," while the CD comes through with three new Kid606 songs: "Evasion," the haunting, ambient "Circumvent" and "Maybe" featuring Kevin Blechdom on accordion.
Note: each format features different artwork, as the CD digipak case could not accurately recreate the 12-inch cover design.
12-inch track listing:
1. The Illness 12" mix
CD track listing (30-second RealAudio excerpts):
1. The Illness 12" mix Released the week of July 21st, 2003 order from Midheaven mailorder
This strictly limited-edition split release with Ideal Recordings of Gothenburg, Sweden, was created to commemorate Tigerbeat6's Paws Across Scandinavia 2003 tour, features two new exclusive tracks by Kid606 and Dwayne Sodahberk. Both tracks are prime quality indietronics that mix guitars, synths and vocals with forward-thinking electronica.
Track listing:
1. Kid606 Nibble, Nibble Released the week of July 21st, 2003 order from Midheaven mailorder
Whispermoon, the debut solo album from Listener, is a fourteen-song collection of undeniably underground hiphop. Combining rhymes that bounce between spiritual observation and old-school wordplay, with backing tracks based on melodic samples and grit-drum counter rhythms, Listener displays an ear for dark uses of sound and the ability to rely on traditional flow to remain memorable and accessible. Guest emcees include Manchild of Mars Ill and Listener's Deepspace5 and Labklik crew members. Acclaimed Mars Ill producer Dust is the force behind the bulk of the music, with additional production handled by Gruntwork, Fred Bruno, Ill, and Listener himself. Whispermoon is a notable debut and a sign of great things to come.
30-second RealAudio excerpts: The Moon Cries Out Released the week of July 21st, 2003 order from Midheaven mailorder
Dear Bicycle moves away from the lo-fi madness of Nathan Michel's acclaimed Tigerbeat6 debut, Abc Def, into calmer waters of semi-pop pleasure. Momus has described Michel's music as "very lovely, optimistic and playful sounding, always several steps ahead of habituation or boredom," while DIW called his debut "very romantic and utterly creative."
Lush orchestral strings float above vocoder harmonies and disjunct piano loops. Dirty, prepared guitar solos mix with out-of-step, cheap keyboard accompaniment. Scraps of samples from sources like Patsy Cline, Bach, and Spike Jones are woven into acoustic and electronic textures. While Abc Def edits the source material to bits, Dear Bicycle often allows the sound sources to speak for themselves, unedited.
Many of the songs on Dear Bicycle also feature Michel's quiet singing. His lyrics range from the pastoral imagery of "On the Monorail" and "Rings" to the profoundly ambiguous "I delight in what is right, if that is wrong I tell a little lie." The album's mix of the impersonal and formal with the nostalgic and direct is influenced as much by Robert Wyatt, Brian Eno, The Beatles, and Erik Satie as by Nobukazu Takemura, Mouse on Mars, DAT Politics, and Christian Fennesz.
Nathan Michel currently lives in New Jersey where he is a Ph.D. composition fellow at Princeton. Although he has studied with many fantastic teachers over the years, including the Dutch composer Louis Andriessen, he still tries to make music the same way he did when he was just a kid - fumbling around till he finds sounds that he likes.
Forthcoming projects include a track on a new Skipp Records compilation and a release of live laptop performances on the Italian label Mr. Mutt. More live shows are in the works as well.
30-second RealAudio excerpts: Theme Song
Released the week of July 14th, 2003 order from Midheaven mailorder
Beginning with a gloomy text entitled "The Sign" written by guitarist / lyricist Roberto Opalio, My Cat Is An Alien entered The Space Room and recorded this dark and concrete improvisation, a single piece of howling and caustic ruination stretched over two sides of vinyl. Maurizio Opalio comes out of the fog with desolate acoustic guitar scratches, Roberto's electric space guitar scribbles as he spits out his words of urban alienation, and Viggiu Vortex joins the brothers on percussion. Piano toy and toy keyboard were added later to enhance the surreal lyrics inspired by ghosts, a sense of psychic, cultural and social isolation in their hometown Torino, Italy, and the infinite lightness and beauty between the cement and the sky. Il Segno is about the mark of chance, avenues full of dust and fallen leaves, the Torino skyline's abandoned factories and chimneys with the mountains all around, and the dance of swallows at twilight, just before the darkness envelops everything.
My Cat Is An Alien are improvisors, noisicians, and, perhaps most importantly, sound sculptors. Improv for them represents the union of intellectual process and instinctive emotions in real time-- creative free sounds that live in the instant. Noise eludes easy definition, and comes from a willingness to go further and further beyond their experience. But their overriding aesthetic focuses less on notes and technique than on the limitless free expansion in space of sound, a pure ether essence that belongs to the cosmos and the spheres.
The brothers Opalio have been involved in painting, glass-art, sculpture, photography, art-installations and audiovisual art, often in combination. They have released numerous art-edition CDRs through their own Opax label in painted and etched wood packages, as well as an LP-and-a-half on Thurston Moore's Ecstatic Peace label.
My Cat Is An Alien ... hits its own stride ... mining the seething coalescence of trance acoustics and ambient feedback.... [They] imbue rhythm in fractured chaos, like prompting a celestial monolith to sway in 4/4 time ... a rare and beautiful ability, and one seldom wielded with deliberate sentimentality.... Blue-collared psych-noise ... volcanic, both in sound quality and seeping magnitude ... indebted largely to the parameters of acoustic melody and floating, impressionistic noise. -Tom Roberts, Dusted
Released the week of July 14th, 2003 order from Midheaven mailorder
After a year of hibernation, DJ /Rupture's Soot Records is up and running. Fast. The label's debut CD release is a 32-minute EP by Ove-Naxx, a young rising star within Japan's highly evolved noise and electronica scene who is about to bend heads worldwide.
Bullets From Habikino City HxCx, Ove-Naxx's first release outside of Japan, showcases a delirious take on raggamuffin drum & bass and post-modern Nipponese pop. Catchy synth melodies buzz inside fast-moving thickets of percussion. Reggae and video-game music are an obvious influence, as are Japanese harmonic systems. The overall sound can be compared to artists such as Venetian Snares, DJ /Rupture, Knifehandchop or Squarepusher, but Ove-Naxx's superb production has a voice all its own. Meticulous sampling, nonstandard IDM flourishes, and psychedelic digital noise swell around uptempo reggae-flavored beats as funky as they are fractured. Ove-Naxx makes intricate pop songs and is unafraid to use distortion, speed, and mayhem as compositional tools.
Despite its hypercomplex drum programming, this is unabashedly soulful music - flowing earnestly from Ove-Naxx's cyborg heart. Remember the "punky reggae party" Bob Marley sang about? This is what it will sound like in 2017, at your local roller-skating rink.
30-second RealAudio excerpts: Wabisabi Violence
Released the week of July 21st, 2003 order from Midheaven mailorder
PFFR is a Brooklyn-based electro-rock-crazed combo made up of a small group of highly motivated young people (early teens and older) who started a band in order to cause a riot in the local public library. Inspired by The Boredoms, early Ween, and Add N To X, the group has created an underground following in New York City. Their fans visit PFFR's one-of-a-kind shows for the comedy, cynicism, rage and euphoria, but they stick around for the unique blend of synthesizers, guitars and noise. After several seven-inch records released by obscure French labels (all sold out), United We Doth is their first compact disc. Every instrument is used, every yowl rings of freedom. Frequently fantastic, incorrect, loose-limbed and choking on horsehair, PFFR is the final knife fight between theory and vehement concrete specimen. United We Doth answers the eternal question "Would I?" with a resounding "Hair-lip."
PFFR shows are known to be colorful, bizarre events (light show, costumes, interactions with audience body parts, flying objects) that shock the customarily unflappable DJs and seen-it-all dancers around them. Tours of both coasts are imminent.
This enhanced CD features videos for "Our Concern," "Japoney Appoe," and "Superfine" (reminiscent of Smegma's backwoods DIY Brain Follies videos).
30-second RealAudio excerpts: Unjackable (w/Snoop Dogg) Released the week of July 21st, 2003 order from Midheaven mailorder
A chronicle of a year of travel, restlessness and uncertainty for Aubrey Anderson and Skating Club (three trips around the U.S., a move to Athens, GA, another back to Boston, an extended stay in San Francisco for Anderson and a changing lineup both in the studio and on the road), Bugs and Flowers advances and elaborates on the intimate pop sound they established with their 2001 critically acclaimed debut. New members Matt Smith (piano, Hammond, Chamberlain) and Kenneth Bernard (drums) add fresh sonic layers and a solid pop flavor. Though it sheds some of the naive romanticism of the last Skating Club effort, Bugs and Flowers is still at its core a record about hidden hopes, renewal, possibility and reinvention.
Skating Club's debut spent months on the CMJ charts, reaching #23 on the core chart. Mission of Burma asked the 'Club to play at their Boston reunion, and U.S. tours throughout 2002 included a live performance on NPR.
Skating Club is all about mood - from the gallons of reverb on Aubrey Anderson's guitars to the miles of echo on the drums-- so a picture of the album's atmosphere is altogether more accurate than a simple breakdown of influences and instrumentation. At its core, Skating Club does fish in the same pool as moody bands like Low and Ida, all slow and gentle melodies with breathy vocals floated on top, but Anderson never gets lost in the melodrama or overly weepy. And while the album does have a cohesive mood, Anderson's tendency to experiment with different timbres-- say, lacing a syrupy guitar with a light digital squall, or casting some roads piano plinks between his phrases - keeps things hypnotizing, rather than snooze-inducing. -Nicole Keiper, CMJ Monthly
Makeout music for the millennium generation. For sweet, slow, and emotional tracks with lyrics you can relate to and a sound that sets a timeless mood, this is the group that's going to get it going [with their] steam-up-the-windows tunes... -Ink19
30-second RealAudio excerpts: Empty New Bedroom Released the week of July 14th, 2003 order from Midheaven mailorder
In the spring of 2002, Mush Records embarked on its first organized tour. After two weeks of rehearsal in Los Angeles, seventeen people climbed aboard a tour bus for 30 North American and nine European shows. Headlined by cLOUDDEAD, the bill also included Reaching Quiet (backed by a full rock band), Boom Bip & Doseone, Radioinactive (with his Pyramidi all-stars band in full costume), and Labtekwon. The final two shows in the US (San Francisco at The Great American Music Hall) and Los Angeles (at The El Rey) were professionally recorded (video and audio) and have been mixed down along with candid footage shot during the rest of the tour for this 90-minute DVD. The track list includes the best tracks from the artist's Mush releases and is a testament to the amazing live show and hard work that made Mush's first tour an overwhelming success.
Released the week of July 21st, 2003 order from Midheaven mailorder
Wham, bam, thank you, man! Tigerbeat6 brings you a full-length super-budget-priced label compilation featuring all vocal tracks. A stunning musical showcase of vocals, instruments and electronics fused in drastically varying ways, this compilation serves as a roadmap to what Tigerbeat6 has been up to recently, and where the label's going in the near future - featuring 80 minutes of music, comprised of 24 previously released, new and upcoming songs by all the best and essential Tigerbeat6 divas and troublemakers. This kickass representation of what the label's about, offered at such a low price, speaks for itself.
30-second RealAudio excerpts: The Rip Off Artist Vibrating Vegetable (edit) |
Click the titles below for details on specific new releases.
alias
ALI AKBAR KHAN
KID 606
KID 606/DWAYNE SODAHBERK
LISTENER
NATHAN MICHEL
MY CAT IS AN ALIEN
OVE-NAXX
PFFR
SKATING CLUB
VARIOUS ARTISTS
VARIOUS ARTISTS
June 2003 releases
Coming "soon":
dates subject to change
BUSDRIVER
HERMAN DÜNE
SENTRIDOH
VILLAIN ACCELERATE
BLACKTOP
COUNTRY TEASERS
MODEY LEMON
PIMMON
PUZZLEWEASEL
STARS AS EYES
DAVE DERBY
dosh
DYNASTY
GUIDED BY VOICES
THE INNOCENCE MISSION
KNIFEHANDCHOP
The releases above and on the left (as well as over 19,000 other
independent-label and import titles) can be purchased online at Midheaven Mailorder.
Revolver USA Distribution's umbrella shelters an extended and charmingly
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Our exclusive label roster appears below in the form of links to our Midheaven mailorder database. We carry many, many other labels on a non-exclusive basis.
REVOLVER USA EXCLUSIVE LABELS and their merchandise can be browsed by clicking the links below: AMMP
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Bananafish 16
|
ALI AKBAR KHAN
KID 606
KID 606 / DWAYNE SODAHBERK
LISTENER
NATHAN MICHEL
MY CAT IS AN ALIEN
OVE-NAXX
PFFR
SKATING CLUB
VARIOUS ARTISTS
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