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Updated 12/11/01 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:
10/8/01,
10/22/01,
10/29/01 and
11/5/01.
Our November-December new release page can be found here.
 DE FACTOHow Do You Dub? You Fight For Dub. You Plug Dub In (RESTART RES03) CD/LP Released the week of October 8th, 2001 order from Midheaven mailorder De Facto hails from Long Beach, California, by way of El Paso, Texas. Originally called De Facto Carde Dub, the group features Cedric Bixler and Omar Rodriguez of the internationally reknowned At the Drive In, along with Isaiah "Ikey" Owens and Jeremy Ward. De Facto has been Bixler and Rodriguez's alter ego since their El Paso days, the genesis of their eclectic and constantly evolving sound composite hinged on instrumental dub reggae. Inspired by dub pioneers such as Augustus Pablo and Roots Radics, De Facto also feel the magic of electronica, salsa and jazz and succeed at creating distinct, transcendent music. Their mastery of a true roots vibe and the genre's inherent hardware anomaly - the melodica - earn De Facto respect from purists as well as your average world music numbskulls. De Facto's writing process is based on a lot of improv and what the band defines as "the spine" - the drums and the bass. Very fluid, no rigidity, no lazy patterns. Lotta remix possibilities. With no formal training other than spare time and diligence, they all learned how to play melodica, percussion and keyboard; access to the record collections of various parents brought numerous artists such as Prince Far I and Fela to their attention. At The Drive-In singer Cedric Bixler and guitarist Omar Rodriguez Lopez were joined by Jeremy Ward (vocals, melodica and effects) and Isaiah "Ikey" Owens (keyboards and melodica) for a seven-song, low-key set of dub reggae. An uncharaceristically restrained Bixler swapped his usual vocals and leaping around for drumkit rolls, and Lopez played reverberating bass. De Facto's set included tracks from their debut EP, the obliquely-titled 456132015. Their songs owe more to the classic dub of Augustus Pablo and King Tubby than to At The Drive-In's more experimental bent. The set was largely instrumental, with Ward contributing a few echoey mutters, and rhythm section Bixler and Rodriguez Lopez very much taking a back seat to Ward and Owens' keyboard and melodica duels.-nme.com
 NUSRAT ALI KHANThe Final Moment (BIRDMAN BMR33) CD Released the week of October 22nd, 2001 order from Midheaven mailorder Qawwali's devotional themes of love come from Allah and are sung by men who belong to a Sufi tradition and trace their music back over seven hundred years to the spiritual Samah songs of Persia. There is a long tradion of Qawwali singers in the Ali Khan family, including the man who brought Qawwali to the West-- Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Like his father, uncles and grandfathers before him, Nusrat sang with a fervor and style that reverberated within the being of all his listeners. During his lifetime, Nusrat saw his audience grow from Pakistani devotionalists to a larger, more international group comprised of many races and religions from around the world. In the 1990s, he collaborated with the likes of Eddie Vedder and Tim Robbins (Dead Man Walking soundtrack), Michael Brook, Massive Attack, and Peter Gabriel (Last Temptation of Christ). Through these collaborations, Westerners discovered the voice of Qawwali and flocked to his concerts. When Nusrat passed away in 1997, he was at his peak in popularity. He had just completed his biggest American tour to date and was signed to a major recording company. His voice was clear, powerful and inspirational. The Final Moment documents one of the last concerts of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. His group also featured Rahat Fateh Ali Khan, who continues the Ali Kahn legacy. Longtime collaborator Baba Varma recorded this 1996 concert of ecstatic Sufi compositions, a celebration for all who attended, now a vital and loving document of the Voice of the Century.
 REFRIGERATORComedy Minus One (SHRIMPER SHR128) CD Released the week of October 8th, 2001
order from Midheaven mailorder A stripped-down acoustic record with strings and bows wrapped around mistreated pianos and dobros, Comedy Minus One continues in the direction of Refrigerator's previous record from 1999 Glitter Jazz. Recorded by Steve Folta at the Callaci compound over the course of two years, the band was able to lay the shit down and cut the floor up without removing any stitches, leaving well over 30 songs on the recording studio room floor. Freshness assured! The band will tour the North and Southwest in late fall 2001, and follow that with East Coast dates in 2002. No other California band captures the poignant raw emotion and pure spirit of indie pop better than Refrigerator, who have the unique ability of supplanting upbeat homemade melodies with deeply emotional and sometimes deeply disturbing lyrics - which could stand on their own as fragmented poems of personal tragedy and repair. With their music they become indelible masterpieces of redefined elegance to pop indie quintessence.
ELECTRIC EELSthe eyeball of hell (SCAT SCAT62) CD/2xLP Released the week of October 22nd, 2001
order from Midheaven mailorder While BTO and Grand Funk ruled the airwaves, the Electric Eels confronted the cities of Cleveland and Columbus with clothing held together with rat traps and safety pins, Marshalls covered in Fiberglas, a lawnmower, and songs like "You're Full of Shit." The Eels' music was unabashedly confrontational, angry, absurd, desperate, self-destructive and very ahead of its time. They played abrasive three-chord rock songs of utter despair, as well as free improvisations. They were beaten by police, each other and themselves. This release tells their story accurately and in detail. The double-LP version (pictured above right) contains six tracks different from or missing from CD (above left). Sixteen of the LP's 27 tracks have never been on vinyl before, ever. It is 100 percent analog and assembled from the original tapes - at no point did any of this music enter the digital domain. The gatefold jacket features a different cover than the CD, twice as much written material, and is pressed on 150-gram vinyl.
LP-only tracks
Bunnies (original) | Cards and Fleurs (8/28/75)* | It's Artastic (8/14/75)* | Flash Coats* | Jazz Is (part1) | Giganto (Cyclotron)
*denotes previously unreleased song or performance
Free MP3s:
To download:
Agitated (original)
To stream (high bandwidth connections only):
Agitated (original) 30-second RealAudio excerpts: Agitated (orig) Released the week of October 22nd, 2001
order from Midheaven mailorder For more than 10 years Jon Wahl fronted the Los Angeles skronk-punk-jazz-metal band Clawhammer, whose sound earned them a hardcore following across the country and record deals with Sympathy, Epitaph and Interscope. Jon's saxophone, harmonica and guitar abilities have landed him guest appearances on recordings by Mudhoney and several In The Red recording artists, including the Bassholes and the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. On Sour Suite, his debut post-Clawhammer effort, he has taken a subtler yet equally twisted musical path. Using acoustic and electronic instruments, Sour Suite weaves a very dark and haunting musical fabric. Equal parts Eno-era Roxy Music, Tom Waits and Spike Jones, this album sounds like nothing else.
30-second RealAudio excerpts: 2001 Blues Released the week of October 8th, 2001
order from Midheaven mailorder Punk rock without guitars? Yep, a few kids who wore out their Huggy Bear and Nation of Ulysses records wanted to do something different and traded their guitars for keyboards, adopted pseudo-British accents, and began their US invasion in Austin, TX, during the winter of 1995. The Prima Donnas deliver dark, keyboard-driven Eurotrash with the raw punk energy of The Stooges, more pompous rock attitude than the Rolling Stones, and a conspicuous fashion sense that can't be blamed on anyone. This is no boring '80s nostalgia revival-- just catchy tunes, danceable beats and witty lyrics about sex, drugs, suicide and depravity that want people to sit back, open their minds and spread their legs for a special kind of British Invasion. It's no coincidence they decided they were from Sussex.
Originally part of a manifesto calling for the creation of a new musical movement called "Nance," The Prima Donnas were only one of three bands Otto, Julius, Nikki and Nigel (RIP) had planned to further this cause. While The Prima Donnas were techno, they also had plans for a garage band (The Pilsner Kings) and a mod/punk outfit (Angels With Dirty Faces). The Prima Donnas toured the USA with The PeeChees in March 1998, and they played a few West Coast shows with Bratmobile in 1999, including the YoYo Pop Festival in Olympia. They also released a seven-inch as part of the Kill Rock Stars singles club last year.
30-second RealAudio excerpts: Nance Music Manifesto Released the week of October 8th, 2001
order from Midheaven mailorder When not hanging out in food courts, drinking spiked Icees or huffing spray paint behind the laundromat, Black Lipstick finds the time to make some of the most serious, heartfelt and contemplative par-tay rock in recent memory. These guys are the geeky white answer to Nellie, except with Charlie Watts drums and huge, VU-inspired guitargasms all over the place. Few have said "We rule, so lets get fucked up and party" with greater eloquence and sensitivity. -Pinchelada Fanzine
Black Lipstick - the greenhorns who, at least on this critic's notepad, stood out most impressively at this spring's SXSW music conference - have refined taste buds that indicate a strict diet of the Velvet Underground, Modern Lovers, Television and early Talking Heads. The Austin, Texas-based outfit traces the work of its forerunners with aplomb. Listeners feeling nostalgic for VU should find this prime feastin' material. -Time Out New York
Austin quartet The Black Lipstick - all clad in black button-downs and trousers - were strumming carefully through a set of cool-headed retro-pop. I'm certain these guys (and girl) have a few Television and Velvet Underground albums at home. They even closed with a tidy version of "Sister Ray."
-Athens Flagpole
Black Lipstick, a new four-piece featuring former Kiss Offs Phillip and Travis, couldn't make [the weather] any warmer, but musically they brought a steaming batch of happy-go-lucky garage sunshine. They set the tone with a ramshackle version of the Stones' "Let it Bleed," and followed with nearly an hour of melodic, upbeat basement noise loosely knitted together by Travis' guitar. A lot of it smacked of the Velvet Underground, but that could have been the skeletal drum kit and the trenchcoat-and-shades-clad young woman behind it. The audience was visibly disappointed when Phillip announced time constraints prevented the group from unfurling its 15-minute version of "Casey Jones."
-The Austin Chronicle
30-second RealAudio excerpts: White Jazz Released the week of October 8th, 2001
order from Midheaven mailorder On the third full length Amps for Christ release for Shrimper, Henry Barnes (ex-Man is the Bastard) further explores the marriage of avant skree and folk twee. Steeped in influences ranging from the Incredible String Band to the Minutemen, and sprinkled with the debut recordings of Henry's jug band, The Oak in the Ashes reads like a ripe mix tape by Alan Lomax on muscle relaxants.
The former guitarist and electronic noise maestro for Man is the Bastard, Barnes delves into the traditional Irish canon, reanimating artifacts like "As I Walked Out" and "The Cherry Tree Carol" with the strange beauty of his fluttering low-tech oscillators. His gentle singing complements the more conventional lilting folk rock. While the bulk of the album's 24 tracks are graced by Barnes's exquisite Celtic/Appalachian/Eastern picking (on a variety of home-made stringed things, including guitar, electric sitar and "mandola"), some are more or less pure experimental noise. The Oak in the Ashes finds the rare flower that Barnes cultivated over the band's six previous releases blooming in a richly folk-ish direction.
Amps for Christ offers the most innoative Celtic stylings since the Pogues. If your heart's in the right place and your mind's open, you can't do better than to pick this up. 30-second RealAudio excerpts: She's with Me Released the week of October 22nd, 2001
order from Midheaven mailorder The atmosphere of this somewhat delayed yet unstoppable annual collection from long-in-the-tooth UK vibe maestro Matthew Bower and friends (who include Neil Campbell, Rosalie Bower, and maybe some other people - honestly, who can tell?) is mostly spaced and buzzing instruments and voices hovering and floating in the dense mix, all running together like some sort of alien shortwave broadcast. Disc 1 takes off from where last year's Found Star Sound left us - a mix of fuzzy guitar and organ rhythms jousting with voice, bowed strings, and unidentifiable percussion in a compressed fog. Disc 2 is a headlong rush into newish territory, with analog synth vs. birdsong, child's voice vs. sawing violin, chug vs. fizz, etc. There are many tracks on both discs that have subtle (and overt) melodic and rhythmic undercurrents suggesting a fuzz/hiss-dominated alternate-universe version of say, Harmonia or Richter Band. Probably a coincidence, but very, very appealing.
There is always at least one guitar involved; at least one is droning at all times, but sometimes actual notes are plucked while an atonal echo is buried deep. Matthew Bower overlays hand percussion, sometimes to the point of drowning out whatever the guitar(s) are doing. Structure isn't a question here. It may sound like Gamelan or it may sound like Whitehouse.-www.worshipguitars.org
30-second RealAudio excerpts: Columbine Kisses (i) Released the week of October 22nd, 2001
order from Midheaven mailorder This untitled CD of duets by Kawabata Makoto, the leader of Acid Mothers Temple, and the slightly less available Glasgow librarian Richard Youngs shows the pair in a relaxed yet psychedelic mood where it is immediately apparent that the two are really listening to one another instead of merely adding to their already vast discographies.
Throughout the five untitled tracks, simple modal melodies are performed on acoustic guitar, autoharp, organ, voice and other instruments rubbing against the swirling production and layers of shifting haze. Youngs' identifiable voice, guitar and autoharp greet Kawabata's echo treatments on the first track, while track three reverses the process with Youngs' minor key picking cutting against Kawabata's thick, visceral drones. Tracks two, four and five all use a base of beautiful fingerpicked guitar melodies, layering organ, synth, tape effects and echo until a mellow cosmic vibe is achieved.
In all, some of the most beautiful sounds ever issued by either of these two gentlemen, both known for their edgy experimental work, is on this CD.
30-second RealAudio excerpts: {longish blue bar} |
Click the titles below for details on specific new releases.
October 2001
AMPS FOR CHRIST
BLACK LIPSTICK
DEFACTO
ELECTRIC EELS
NUSRAT ALI KHAN
THE PRIMA DONNAS
REFRIGERATOR
SUNROOF
January 2002 new releases Coming "soon":
(all dates subject to change)
BROTHER JT
CONSUMERS
LARSEN
HERSCHEL GORDON LEWIS
SWANS
ORNETTE COLEMAN
ALICE COLTRANE
BEN KUNIN
NOVEX
DON HOWLAND
INFINITE X's
L. STINKBUG
SIX ORGANS OF ADMITTANCE
VIBRACATHEDRAL ORCHESTRA
SIMON WICKHAM-SMITH
AWOL ONE
ETERNAL ELYSIUM
TONY JOE WHITE
The releases above and on the left (as well as over 15,000 other
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Bananafish 14
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JON WAHL AND THE AMADANS
PRIMA DONNAS
BLACK LIPSTICK
AMPS FOR CHRIST
SUNROOF
MAKOTO KAWABATA and RICHARD YOUNGS
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