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Updated 5/22/03 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:
Our April 2003 new release page can be found here.
 A GRAPE DOPEMissing Dragons (GALAXIA GLX17) CD/12" Released the week of May 19th, 2003 order from Midheaven mailorder 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
[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
30-second RealAudio excerpts: Action: Showered Us Released the week of April 19th, 2003 order from Midheaven mailorder
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
30-second RealAudio excerpts: Bluebird Released the week of May 5th, 2003 order from Midheaven mailorder
Steve Fisk (Pell Mell, Pigeonhed) and Bob Beerman (Pell Mell) approached Interlude With Fun Machine in a similar manner to their work in Pell Mell: set up a pattern, offset it with a contrasting pattern, layer on a counter-pattern, and so on. But where Pell Mell's renown derives from a signature guitar-based sound, Cut-Out relies on textures, patterns, found sounds, presets, rhythm boxes, inversion of background and foreground elements, and a very deadpan sense of humor.
Fisk and Beerman were first introduced to The Fun Machine's charms when Pell Mell were recording the Star City album with Tchad Blake. Almost all of the tracks on Interlude With Fun Machine started with this arresting home organ's built-in rhythm box and chord accompaniment presets. Anyone who gets buzzed from the warm glow of keyboards such as the Optigan and the Mellotron will find plenty to intoxicate here. Music performed by Fisk and Beerman in their other configurations has found temporary residence in diverse upscale audio trailer parks such as a Microsoft commercial, Kids in the Hall's Brain Candy film, the short film Green Monster (shown on PBS's P.O.V.), MTV's Road Rules, Sex and The City, Six Feet Under, lots of NPR between-feature snippets, the film Joy Ride, ER, and others. Interlude With Fun Machine is similarly soundtrack ready.
The all-instrumental album was recorded in one week, and benefits from noticeable inspiration from Hematic Sunsets' (aka Asmus Tietchens) odd combination of kitschy lounge and soundtrack-ish music and "modern" electronic sounds; the casual, DIY, homespun aesthetic of French Paddleboat; classics such Dieter Moebius's Tonspuren and, of course, Eno's Another Green World; The Young Marble Giants' unadorned rhythm boxes and Wurlitzer frailty; and minimal electronic music by Thomas Leer and Robert Rental, Cabaret Voltaire, Pyrolator, Cluster, Harmonia, et al.).
Free MP3s:
To download: Apple users-- hold down the Control key (CNTL) and click the mp3 link. Choose "open with iTunes" to stream the song, or "download link to disk" if you want to save the track on your hard drive. If you have a PC compatible computer, right-click the mp3 link and choose the appropriate selection.
To stream (high bandwidth connections only): 30-second RealAudio excerpts: At it Again
back to the top Released the week of May 19th, 2003 order from Midheaven mailorder
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!
Free MP3s:
To download: Apple users-- hold down the Control key (CNTL) and click the mp3 link. Choose "open with iTunes" to stream the song, or "download link to disk" if you want to save the track on your hard drive. If you have a PC compatible computer, right-click the mp3 link and choose the appropriate selection.
To stream (high bandwidth connections only): 30-second RealAudio excerpts: How Can I Get Through
Released the week of May 19th, 2003 order from Midheaven mailorder
Not content with recycling the same old beats and rhymes, Curse ov Dialect reach for the next level by reinterpreting sounds from all eras and arenas into unique sonic collages with a hyper edge and extreme bounce. Hailing from Melbourne, Australia, the group's political raps, razor-sharp writing, unique flows, and standout production accurately represent the multi-cultural climate of their homeland and is authentically Australian. Lost in the Real Sky is an 18-track introduction to their sound. From the playful opening snaps of "Baby How?" through the old-world groove of "Multicultural Markets" to the darkness of "Water Thicker Than Blood," Lost in the Real Sky is an impressive debut from a unique and challenging new group.
30-second RealAudio excerpts: Baby How? Released the week of May 5th, 2003 order from Midheaven mailorder
Originally released as a vinyl-only LP on DAT Politics' Skipp label in 1998, subsequently reissued by Tigerbeat6 on CD with new art and two bonus tracks-- both versions have been out of print for quite a while-- this specially priced jewelbox reissues the second album made by the Lille, France, electronics / computer quartet who create charmingly fucked-up, glitchy electronic beats, tones and melodies.
After many releases and collaborative work with innovative and respectable labels such as A-Musik, Mille Plateaux, Skipp, Boytropp Boy and Berlin-based electro-trash label Chicks on Speed Records, DAT Politics have established themselves as an ever evolving and always enjoyable staple of the electronic music community. They've been hailed by many as "the future electronic pop" and by The Wire as "a total revelation ... bristling with possibilities.... Structures are pushed and pulled, and explode excitedly, as thought and play become audible and contagious. Their music falls somewhere between the off-center textures of Oval or Pita, and the splintered computer funk of Team Doyobi, Kid606, or even Mouse On Mars."
30-second RealAudio excerpts: [track 1] Released the week of May 19th, 2003 order from Midheaven mailorder
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.
Free MP3s:
To download: Apple users-- hold down the Control key (CNTL) and click the mp3 link. Choose "open with iTunes" to stream the song, or "download link to disk" if you want to save the track on your hard drive. If you have a PC compatible computer, right-click the mp3 link and choose the appropriate selection.
To stream (high bandwidth connections only): 30-second RealAudio excerpts: Preface
Released the week of May 19th, 2003 order from Midheaven mailorder
Jel's follow-up to his critically acclaimed 10 Seconds is this twenty-minute hiphop instrumental EP. Targeted to hiphop and electronic DJs as well as underground listeners, the anticon beatmaker's trademark SP-1200 drum chopping skills are in full effect, as he blends funk and rock samples with electronics and found sounds Americana from television commercials, newscasts, and radio. Staring at the American dream with a questioning eye, family values, soccer moms, the cattle industry, and oil conglomerates are all left bruised and battered as Jel adds another success to a series of impressive releases.
Released the week of May 19th, 2003
(Sorry! This item is sold out and no longer available)
The hour-long performance on this disc was captured live on October 5, 2002, when Wobbly, People Like Us and Matmos circled their wagons in the lecture hall of the San Francisco Art Institute. Having mutually agreed upon a country-and-western theme, Vicki Bennett (PLU), Jon Leidecker (Wobbly), and Drew Daniel and M. C. Schmidt (Matmos) pored over their archives of honky tonk classics, chopping and dicing Nashville's finest almost beyond recognition, and collectively re-stitched the mangled shreds in crazed digital quilting bee.
Several tense rehearsals and strong pots of tea later, the foursome shuffled on stage and delivered the goods: from panoramic twangfests to off-kilter waltzes to barn-burning stompers. Flickering and tranquil one moment, and wildly slapstick the next, Wide Open Spaces hits the sweet spot between song forms and improvisation, and showcases the qualities that all three collaborating artists share: absurdist humor, baroque sample manipulation, and stuttering rhythmic frameworks that lurch and sway. While the presence of five samplers, four laptops, three CD players and a pedal steel guitar on one stage could have led to a tedious, ego-driven jam or outright cacophony, the results feel lushly detailed but not cluttered, and swing naturally between structure and freedom. It's an international media magpie summit where country's chick-a-boom meets tech house's boom-tschak, and tear-jerking sentiment and patriotic hokum are subjected to a dense shower of coughs, sputters and rude noises. Listening back to the recorded results, all three musical units agreed that this concert was mighty fine, and worth sharing.
30-second RealAudio excerpts: Morning Released the week of May 19th, 2003 order from Midheaven mailorder
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.
30-second RealAudio excerpts: [track 1] Released the week of May 19th, 2003 order from Midheaven mailorder
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. As a special bonus, former Homestead honcho and current Matador king Gerard Cosloy contributes liner notes.
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
30-second RealAudio excerpts: Mascara Snakes Released the week of May 5th, 2003 order from Midheaven mailorder
In 1998 Ben Chasny self-released an LP of his "acoustic based project[ions]" under the name Six Organs of Admittance. The resulting five-song LP is a masterpiece of diverse elements using acoustic and electric guitars, a detuned violin, organ, electronics and koto. The material covers a lot of ground: there's an acid folk duet, an epic, three-part space suite, and two short concrète-like pieces that entice hidden memories of having bees in your mouth. The final sting is the magnificent chaos of "Race from Visnu"-- a nine-minute raga in which the strings of the acoustic guitar are battled by Chasny who ruthlessly punishes them for their ability to make sound.
In addition, Chasny has also included two bonus tracks from an elusive 8-inch lathe-cut that was sold to cover the cost of a plane ticket. Holy Mountain is proud to be able to make this music available once again.
30-second RealAudio excerpts: Maria Released the week of May 19th, 2003 order from Midheaven mailorder
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.
30-second RealAudio excerpts: New Mind Released the week of May 19th, 2003 order from Midheaven mailorder
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
30-second RealAudio excerpts: Feel Happiness
Click the titles below for details on specific new
releases.
A GRAPE DOPE
DEVENDRA BANHART
CUT-OUT
THE CUTS
CURSE OV DIALECT
DAT POLITICS
FLYING LIZARDS
JEL
MATMOS / PEOPLE LIKE US / WOBBLY
ODD NOSDAM
PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH
SIX ORGANS OF ADMITTANCE
SWANS
SWANS
April 2003 new releases
Coming "soon":
dates subject to change
CUT-OUT
DAEDELUS
JAMES WILLIAM HINDLE
MYKA NYNE
THE RIP OFF ARTIST
DENGUE FEVER
NUDGE
SWELL
JOSH WHITE
why?
VARIOUS ARTISTS
HOSPITALS
MELT BANANA
VARIOUS ARTISTS
The releases above and on the left (as well as over 17,000 other
independent-label and import titles) can be purchased online at Midheaven Mailorder.
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Bananafish 16
| |
DEVENDRA BANHART
CUT-OUT
THE CUTS
CURSE OV DIALECT
DAT POLITICS
FLYING LIZARDS
JEL
MATMOS / PEOPLE LIKE US / WOBBLY
odd nosdam
PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH
SIX ORGANS OF ADMITTANCE
SWANS
SWANS
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