rangers - pan am stories - nnf - 2xlp - 21$
Tape-warped phantom band Rangers finally unleashes the grainy, soaring, expansive prog-pop opus we always knew was floating inside the fretboard (and imagination) of multi-instrumentalist mystery maestro Joe Knight. The north Dallas-raised, San Fran-residing head Ranger grew up taking classical guitar lessons from a dude who claimed to have ‘toured with the Dead,’ and some of that brain-wonked jam agenda obviously seeped into the young Knight, who began recording his own loose, lo-fi jangle sprawls in 2005. But whereas last year’s critically lauded Suburban Tours LP found him condensing his cassette-crushed alien pop into 3 minute radio nuggets, Pan Am Stories uses the reverse strategy, letting each blurry strum pattern coast away and ride the breeze a bit before steering it into a fresh counter-melody or flanged-out guitar comedown. The extra breath and space gives the 13 songs a real sense of freedom and lightness and flight, layered in gentle blankets of fuzz, silky reverb, and audio collage riddles. A total saga, and a summit achievement of next-level invention for Knight as a musician (it’s insane he played/recorded every instrument on this thing!) and artist. Have been soaking in these tracks non-stop since we first heard ‘em this summer and are thrilled to get to share Stories with the world. Black vinyl LPs (mastered by Carl Saff, who worked on Suburban Tours too) in gatefold jackets with micro-detailed collage art by Mr. Rangers himself; interior artwork by Knight and Anthony Yuen. Edition of 850.
sapphire slows - true breath - nnf - 12" - 12$
A fresh voice is hard to find – especially in these days of such dense digital air (‘in the Shadow of the Power of Babble’ internet philosophers say). So it was with nuanced joy that we found ourselves spellbound and seduced by this young Tokyo gem-gleaner’s neon gallery of dynamic Casio nightlife masks, each of which is impeccably crafted and swathed in a fog basket of her effortlessly haunting Cocteau Twins-y shadow vox. There’s a wonderfully hushed vibe to Sapphire Slows’ most translucent tracks, beats materializing out of stray radio waves and metropolis static, electric piano memories washing away into the silent skyline of skyscrapers, synths congealing like synthetic whispers. The perfect soundtrack to urban insomniac wandering and wondering and lingering too long; almost like a Toyko take on Night Bus. True Breath is her stateside debut EP after one previous 7 inch on Big Love, and 2012 should see a full-length plus some global gigging so soak in her subtle night moves now while the breath is still warm. Black vinyl 12 inches in bilingual new wave patterned shadow portrait jackets designed by A & B Brown. Edition of 500.
kwjaz - nnf - lp - 12$
San Franciscan Peter Berend’s mystery mixtape unit, KWJAZ, flashed forth this debut self-titled slab of “post-plastic sublime decomposed luxury grooves” on cassette via his own rarified Brunch Groupe imprint early in 2011 and the 120 listeners lucky enough to grip a copy know who they are. It only took half a listen before we green-lit this tape-degraded gem for vinyl treatment and we are dee-lighted to present it thusly. Comprised of two side-long suites, “Once In Babylon” and the oddly monikered “Frighteous Wane,” KWJAZ nimbly ebbs and flows the proceedings through airy cloud-jazz passages (complete with smoky crystal vibes keys and narcotic hiss-hazed horn sections), bouncy weirdo dub-funk vignettes, stretched-out syrupy synth stews, and smooth faux-Steely D soft-rock abstractions, all without ever sounding schizo or style-hoppy. A major feat, and a real riddle of an LP that deepens and ripens with each spin. Hopefully you were savvy enough to catch him on his recent coast-to-coast summer tour with Swanox and Sudden Oak; if not, tune in to this. Black vinyl LPs (mastered at Dubplates in Berlin) in jackets with cosmic floral artwork by Austin Cho/Casey Grr. Edition of 700.
LA vampires goes ital - streetwise - nnf - lp - 11$
Rolling like a stone (thus no moss, man), LA Vampires recontextualizes into a new collab EP, this time with SF-gone-NY lovers rocker Ital. Each song was pieced together from a rainbow of sources – screwed tape loops, multiple drum machines, layers of synth lines and phasings, analog samplers, live vocal remixing, etc – and the results are what you might expect: raw asymmetrical bangers blasting down dim concrete hallways streaked with chemical graffiti and bootleg club lights. Too gritty and blasted for dancing but too bangin’ to sit still, this is a real mutant zone, a white label 12” found in a sewer seething with dry ice and recorded through a wall. Wake up and weird out. Life’s too lame to play it straight. Black vinyl 12 inches in spineless no-hole Euro-style jackets with 90s videodromed art and layout by Spencer Longo. Edition of 600.
cough cool - clausen - nnf - cass - 5$
Back in “the day,” it used to be quite a bit more common for rock/pop-ish ambitions and weirdo experimentalism to sit side-by-side. In our current internet radio suggestion-aggregator modern world it’s a lot simpler to hyper-divide everybody into convenient micro-genres, but fortunately there’s still some ornery sticks in those spokes. Which, in a very free association way, is part of what hits home so nicely about Cough Cool (aka the solo mappings of one Dan Svizeny): aggressive eclecticism. Sleepy daydream sunlight guitar-pop nuggets (“Stolen”) dissolve into shoegazed bedroom drum-loop sound-art sculptures (“Parting Friends”). Ragged three-chord apathy-rock sketches (“Whatever”) riff out then get tossed off for backwards-playing acoustic-string reel-to-reel tape experiments (“Special K”). Clausen unspools in the same softly schizophrenic way of the best early Sebadoh sides, scripted melody and noise research tag-teaming like wild mood swings. Pro-dubbed tapes in cases with full-color suburban Halloween J-cards schemed by Brooklyn designer du jour Bobby Houlihan. Edition of 150.
dylan ettinger - lion of judah - nnf - 7 - 6$
After last year’s New Age Outlaws LP, Bloomington Korg king Dylan Ettinger claimed he was gonna take a break from the robot sleaze/soundtrack-y sprawl style he had been mining for a while and pivot into a new zone. Lion Of Judah is the proof. A cool distillation of old modes and fresh focus, “Lion” slow-rides a deeply low-end syrup throb under a melancholic gauze of melodic synth leads and dubby melodica warblings (courtesy of Drekka), spiked with reverbed echo FX and echo MC vox. A total killer, easy to let roll on repeat. The flip, “Baptism,” stomps with a more brainfried new wave approach, like some rejected Mute Records synth demo from ’81, splatterpainted with outer space oscillations and garbled spoken tongues. Radical alien radio for aliens and radicals. Black vinyl big-hole 45 RPM 7 inches in stark silkscreened recycled sleeves with minimalist faux-Factory design/lettering by Manda Brown, plus a photocopied insert. Edition of 360.
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wet hair - radiant lines - nnf - 7"&book - 16$
Amazing new pair of singles by this ever-evolving Iowa City kraut-pop duo-turned-trio comes in a stunning full-color 22-page pro-printed art book of brand new works by Wet Hair main-men, Shawn Reed and Ryan Garbes. Limited to 500 copies.
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maria minerva - tallinn at dawn - nnf - cass - 5$
Get used to this name. Maria Minerva swept down out of the clouds to our digital doorstep with several albums worth of her breathtaking bedroom fantasia silk-pop and we were smitten. The Estonian-born, London-residing synth-songstress traverses too much terrain to box her into one basic style grid and Tallinn At Dawn, her NNF debut, offers 10 points of proof. There’s lovesick alien dancehall anthems (“Strange Things Are Happening In My Room,” “10 Little Rock Chix Listening to Neu!”), 90s-ized satin-sheets dream ballads (“California Scheming,” “Unchain My Heart”), lo-fi Young Marble Giants-y instrumentals (“Stairs To Nowhere,” “Tallinn At Dawn,”), all tied together with beautiful eroticized waterfalls of Maria’s deeply-delayed vocals. There’s shades of warped Cocteau Twins cassettes, early Nite Jewel, and obscure Tokyo art-pop side projects but Minerva’s vibe is ultimately too homegrown and hermetic for simple aesthetic comparisons and that’s a huge reason (among many) why we love it so. Scope her 100% Silk 12” for another prize piece in the MM puzzle. Pro-dubbed olive tapes in retro-portrait J-cards designed by Manda B Brown. Edition of 150.
jonas reinhardt - music for the tactile dome - nnf - lp - 12$
The hermetic kosmische lexicon of San Fran-based synth synthesist/composer Jesse Reiner (Jonas Reinhardt’s founder and principal architect) has been simmering and swelling at a steady clip the past few years (2010’s Powers Of Audition was def a highlight), but the added talents of drummer Damon Palermo (Mi Ami), bassist Diego Gonzalez (Citay, 3 Leafs), and guitarist Phil Manley (Trans Am, more) has levitated the JR Experience to a whole new head-music hall o’ fame. Recorded in Berlin, mixed in SF, then mastered/cut back in Berlin at Dubplates, Music For The Tactile Dome is easily the most deep-trip micro-focus Jonas odyssey to date, nine technicolor fractals of glittering synthesizer skyways and master-crafted pulsing kraut terrariums. A handful of tracks (“Smokey Jotus,” “Hander Zader,” etc) invoke more of the classic live JR vibe, with propulsive cold-grooved rhythm sectioning, but by and large Dome is designed for heavy headphone communion, an expanding magic eye tapestry of brainwave activity constellations. Those who caught their Euro tour last year with Rene Hell know how expert this crew reigns in the live environment so go see them if/when they pass through your area code; on tour with Cloudland Canyon currently. Black vinyl LPs in jackets with beautiful spectrum-assemblage cover art by Sean Patrick. Edition of 650.
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wet hair - dream - nnf - lp - 14$
When Iowa City freak-out free-rockers Raccoo-oo-oon called it quits last year it left a bummer scar in the Midwest underground scene. But time is a great healer, and so are new bands. So out of the ashes of the RAC pack comes Wet Hair, a synth-punk-trance duo composed of keyboardist/vocalizer Shawn Reed and keyboardist/drummer Ryan Garbes, and Dream is the band’s debut vinyl full-length after a series of increasingly shredding limited-edition cassettes on their own Night People label. Piling together an unlikely trash heap of Suicide-style drum machine beat-bops, zone-droned krautrock keys, and fucked up outsider crooning, the LP’s four tracks careen across a spectrum of moods and mangled melodies. Recorded at Flat Black Studios by Luke Tweedy and mastered by Pete Swanson, Wet Hair’s cult electric annihilation has never gleamed with such razor-edged weirdness; this is their dream made real. Black vinyl LPs in jackets with artwork by Reed and Garbes, plus a pro-printed full-color 11x11 insert. CD edition available on Release The Bats.
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teeth mountain - live on - nnf - lp - 12$
Bodymore, Murderland has a long and still-living history of wacko art/music loons operating out of cheap warehouses (Tarantula Hill, RIP) and cheaper apartments (The Comfort Dome, etc), and something about the place’s civic/social vibe seems to foster an almost schizophrenic degree of diversity amongst its bands. Needless to say, this is a good good thing. But despite the city’s recent-ish rep as a home to neon strobe light teen party heroes like Daniel Deacon and Ponytail and whatnot, there’s obviously a ton more to the story, and the band that seems to us crucial to this neo-wave B-MORE renaissance is Teeth Mountain. A seven-piece jam crew comprised of 2-3 odd drum kits, sax, clarinet, mixer drones, electric guitar, a pile of pedals, various voices, and probably other unknown mystery junk, they straddle a fine, fucked up line between carefully orchestrated rhythmic psychedelia and total drum-circle-damaged freeform freak-sprawl. To us, it’s a holy zone, and one we hope they continue to linger in. TM’s 2008 LP on SHWDPLY (recently reissued, grab one ASAP) was easily one of our top recs of the year, and so we are obviously awesomely jazzed to offer up Live On, their follow-up. Two all-new sides of artfully interwoven live recordings encompassing all the band’s best moods: outsider world scorch, jittery horn ragas, basement attack trance, etc. Raw and real and alive as life. Future Teeth Mountains will be scaled at NNF, learn the terrain now. Black vinyl LPs in jackets with painted-craft-cathedral artwork by the band, plus an 11x11 full-color double sided insert. Edition of 500.
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xander harris - urban gothic - nnf - lp - 12$
In much the same way as Umberto excavates the graves of old 70’s Euro gore/occult scores for new nightmare-synth strategies, classically trained Austin, TX keyboard-creep maestro Xander Harris (aka Justin Sweatt) scavenges rat-gnawed 80’s basement horror VHS tapes to sift out the glimmering gothic goldflakes hidden within. Grim process, grimmer results. Each of the unlucky 13 tracks on Urban Gothic, his debut full-length, seethe and shiver and boil with sleek synthesizer city-lights paranoia and cool, cold dread. A few are cribbed from the minimal/throbbing John Carpenter handbook (“First Body,” “Crying In The Dark”) and some go for more of a clawhammering industrial approach (“Hunting,” “When The Hammer Starts To Drop”) while a few marry the video undead vibes to an almost thrill-kill cult-dance beat (“Fucking Eat Your Face,” “Tanned Skin Dress”) that pulses blackly like a strobe-lit corpse. A cool detail is that Sweatt’s a decade-deep drummer so every percussion sound on the record is actually manually played on synthetic drum pads, which gives the songs a looser and less mechanical execution. A bad-ass brainbomb of an LP with enough eerie witch-fog anthems to keep even the darkest darkwaver’s head buried in the speaker cabinet. Expect tapes, tours, and even a 100% Silk 12” from this nightstalker in the near future. Black vinyl LPs in jackets with photographed-TV horror stills by Manda B Brown. Edition of 480.
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psychic reality - vibrant new age - nnf - lp - 12$
Sadly (for us left coasters), in November Ms Leyna Noel aka Psychic Reality decamped from SF to NYC, but before packing up her every worldly possession and road-tripping trans-America she eked out a sliver of precious time to hole up in the studio with Phil Manley (Trans Am, Jonas Reinhardt, etc) and record her long-awaited debut full-length on thick 2 inch tape. Vibrant New Age is the result. The name says it all. But Noel’s New Age is not the 80’s redux fad of healing crystals, pastel fades, dolphin consciousness, etc, but a living, electrified awakening. From the high drama drum machinery of “Fruit” and “Expla” to the naked, airy avant-pop of “Hi High” and “Fanta” through to the stuttery, mechanized power ballad finale, “Soft Script,” this is Noel at her most majestic and fully realized and it’s a wild life-force to behold. Vibe the Vibrant. Black vinyl LPs in jackets with art/design by Ms Reality. Edition of 600.
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no age / infinite body - bored fortress vol IV - nnf - 7"- 5$
West coast light-breather Infinite Body emits a dense harmonic sound cloud that condenses in yr ear before evaporating into the ether. California DIY heroes No Age get minimal on the instrumental “Wintry KK,” burrowing into tom-rolls and the poetry of distortion pedals. Sleeve art by Cody De Franco.
emaciator - coveting - nnf - lp -12$
Misery wears many masks, but Tulare, California fatalist Jon Borges has etched his mark on most of them. For at least half a decade he’s pursued increasingly suicidal tendencies under his Pedestrian Deposit guise (which is currently on hiatus), splicing subdued loops of morbid beauty against savage canyons of harsh noise histrionics. Lately, though, he’s been straying more and more from this aggressive exercise in contrasts in favor of his Emaciator alias, which draws from the same dark wellspring of bitter memories and bipolar rage but, instead of unleashing it in grand frenzies, bottles everything up inside until it seeps out the pores. Early efforts/cassettes retained a strain of buzzing nausea reminiscent of his PD days, but the last 12 months have witnessed a complete abandonment of any ties to the past. Times are still bleak, sure, but the grey prisms of brooding ambience Borges now conjures and slowly collapses convey a depth of mood and subtlety far surpassing simple signifiers like Indifference, Resentment, Remorse. Coveting collects together five exquisite Emaciator compositions (including two particularly riveting songs that were debuted live at Echo Curio last winter) for a harrowing 40 minutes of troubled solace, crisscrossing suicide guitar lines, and entranced self-reflection. Meditation is a myth; desire does not sleep. Black vinyl LPs in shrinkwrapped jackets with layout by Borges, cover photograph by Shannon Kennedy. Mastered by Pete Swanson, edition of 430.
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dylan ettinger & the heat - smokin' - nnf -7" -5$
We had heard a couple cassette outings by this Bloomington young-bloomer over the last 4-6 months and each one hit us better than the last but nothing had prepped us for Ettinger’s most recent evolution into neon skyline chase scene soundtracker and that’s part of what makes it so amazing. ForSmokin’ he wrangled together a small posse of close comrades (enter The Heat) and tracked a sick session of smoky synth themes, Corvette noir moods, echo dystopia, faded voices, and sleazy Miami sax. The A, “Smokin,’” is the more ballad-y of the pair, sad and smooth, just fired-from-the-force, midnight cruising on the strip, no one to call. The B, “Miami Heat (The Stakeout),” amps the tension, camera zooming in over palm trees and blue-lit swimming pools, a deco mansion on the coast, the place is surrounded, the heat is on, all that. A cool sleaze-psych vision, sickly executed, by a rad fresh energy from the underground. Fingers are crossed there’s more where this came from. Black-vinyl 7 inches, plus a photocopied insert, in full-color sleeves with art by NNF. Edition of 380.
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robedoor - raiders - nnf - lp - 12$
"Following their 2008 East Coast tour with Woods and Pocahaunted the Robedoor agenda has mainly been: hibernating in the City Terrace zone above east LA, adding a drummer/modular synth dealer, and letting the smoke rise. Raiders is the first RBDR LP since 2008’s Endlessly Blazing and is the result of almost six months of slow-burn transformative tape machine meditation helmed by Mr. Ged Gengras. Bummed guitars, loner drone tones, low caverns of reverbed drums and rumble, echo dislocation, and dead voices cascade down into the isolated highways. Song modes are carved out and then left to rot. Features early trio live set staples like “Indo Shadow” and “The Downcast Eye.” You can’t stick your hand in the same black river twice. Change or be changed. LPs in jackets with cover photo by Caitlin C. Mitchell. Edition of 500 (250 on marbled grey, 250 on black). "
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inca ore - silver sea surfer school - nnf - lp - 12$
Eva Saelens’ life quest has taken her from Michigan to Oregon to Oakland back to Portland and back again, with several overseas explorations and inner journey road trips thrown in for good measure. Whatever path she’s on is long and winding and hidden in the shadow of overhanging cherimoya trees. Fortunately she maps her migrations with haunted, exotic breath-and-electricity sphinxes ranging from 2006’s Brute Nature Vs. Wild Magic to last year’s brainwashing Birthday Of Bless You LP. 2009 finds her offering up another psychic harvest unto the world, Silver Sea Surfer School, a new nine-song pipeline ride that floats through a whole new web of voice orbs and tape hiss and keyboard balladry. If anything, Silver Sea is Saelens’ weirdest hour, layered in abstract environments, whispers, distant poetry, free percussion loops, with sudden passages of heart-dissolving ghost-piano beauty (“Shine On From The Heaven Above,” “Adventure In Light”). Heavily impressive, and a brave pearl-dive into even more personal waters for the Inca Ore lifeforce. LPs come in jackets with art by Saelens, plus a full-color insert. Edition of 500 (40 on clear ocean-water vinyl, 180 on marbled blue/white, 280 on black).
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little claw - human taste - nnf - lp - 12$
Portland, OR-by-way-of-Michigan garage gang Little Claw first tripped our radar with their self-released Why Not 7 inch, which was/is raw and physical and swingin’ in all the ways you want a 7” to be. Their LA live shows proved even more ripping and charged; we were sold. So we sprung at the offer to enshrine their latest (and best) album, Human Taste, on vinyl for the world’s turntables to adore. Packed with classic, cracked anthems (“Frozen In The Future,” “Colors You Drown”), basement weirdo stompers (“Modern Vampire,” “Breathing Tape,”) and naked art-punk riddles (“Lay To Waste,” “Summerphile”), the LP’s two sides are slyly sequenced to seduce, blind, and devour, demonstrating a rad range of attacks, escapes, claws, tongues. It’s a great late summer record: between styles, beyond genres, and aggressively alive. Taste the Taste. Black vinyl LPs in jackets with art designed by the band, plus a pro-printed, double-sided 11x17 poster/insert. Edition of 600. CD edition available on Ecstatic Peace.
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odd clouds - deceiving illusion - nnf - lp - 12$
A thousand years ago, in 2006, Michigan moonlighters Odd Clouds drizzled down their LP opus, The Cavernous End. Within the sphere of open-eyed freeform organized psych-jazz sprawl, nothing compared. Years later that album still kills, but not much has followed in its wake (there have been some loose tapes but those roll in a cruder basement fuckaround vein). So we are personally xxtremely pleased to be able to finally offer up the band’s latest album-length affair, Deceiving Illusion. A six-song spelunk into the deranged group brain responsible for noise scene mainstays like Fag Tapes and Tasty Soil Records, Illusion rumbles through a hall of mirrors of zones/styles, from freaky garbage punk to robot throat games to motorik brass meditations to unhinged 70s German commune beardo psych-blazers. The journey is the destination and all that. Abuse yr Illusion. Black vinyl LPs in stunning 4-color pro-silkscreened jackets with artwork by Chris Pottinger and Jamie Easter, plus a double-sided photocopied insert. Edition of 400.
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mythical beast - scales - nnf - lp - 12$
One of our favorite covens comes home to roost; break out the champagne/goat’s blood. We’ve long been fans-turned-fanatics of nomadic power trio Mythical Beast’s burned-out blackened sabbath songs, but even our mountainous expectations for their long-awaited debut were toppled by the reality of Scales’ reptile alchemy. Financed by Greg Weeks of Espers and tracked in a legit East Coast studio on generous banks of sick vintage gear, this 8-song LP is the aesthetic culmination of nearly four years of tours, trials, and twilit travels to the heart of the heart of the country. The results rip. Drone-ballad classics from their haunting 2006 demo like “Cycle/Circle” and “Chaos Spinner” reappear here in freshly realized forms, alongside a hefty handful of brand new tunes, ranging from quaking soul vox torch trancers to ritual string psych-rock skeletons. All pressure points are hit. The M Beast white magic wonder wheel is alive and hell-bound. Easily the high point in a discography already full of highs. Transparent yellow (streaked with black) vinyl LPs housed in glossy jackets with a pro-printed 11x11 insert. Edition of 500. CD edition available on Language Of Stone.
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time life - drumlins - nnf - 7" - 5$
To those not well versed in the studies of esoteric land mass terminology, the word “drumlin” might be pure WTF. But to Heidi Diehl and G. Lucas “Non-Horse” Crane it’s the key to a musty trunk ripe with memories, magic, mystery. In plain terms it describes a specific sort of glacially-carved hillock endemic to upstate NY (and Antarctica and Greece) which in recent years and regions have been utilized as dumping grounds for mining town industrial slag. A childhood spent summering on such junkyard drumlins spawned the strange smoggy swan-songs of Drumlins, Time Life’s vinyl debut. Decaying tape loops rumble beneath somberly sung lyrical riddles and bowed-string tonal arcs. Electric Appalachian regression fantasies. Metal mountain music. All of this and more (more or less). Black vinyl 7 inches with snowflake stickers in hand-cut full-color cardstock fold-over sleeves with drumlin collage by Manda and adorned with 2 pairs of (the hills have) eyes. Edition of 252.
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family underground - riven - nnf – lp – 10$
Denmark's deepest dope-dreamers dig up another pair of prism-splitting slabs of decaying radioactivity. Riven is the FU crew at their most crouched and concentrated, couched in fever, fog, futurism, and fucked densities, channels of brain-wave light fusion overloading with synergistic zero hour tectonics. Uncanny ex-men (and woman) aktivity. More metallic than Axial and far hungrier than Future Bread, Riven resonates like a dead bell in a buried valley, ringing, subterranean, wasted, industrial. Man-made clangs echo in mechanized caverns. Hologram hands sweat black light in the center of the earth. Implosion fantasies bloom. Black LPs (mastered by Pete Swanson of Yellow Swans for supreme sonic symmetry) in fractal cave art jackets by Svend Balslev plus a band-made insert. First 75 direct mail orderers also receive a limited FU pin. Limited to 450.
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heather leigh murray - devil if you can hear me - nnf - lp -12$
Heather Leigh’s set at last year’s Colour Out Of Space festival in Brighton was everything music should be: personal, deranged, profound, loud. Her song mode meshes astral-traveling electric pedal-steel guitar with a wasted sense of Western expanse and a lyrical, drugged vocal mood, and the results are weird and wonderful. Devil If You Can Hear Me, her debut vinyl full-length, spills across three varying arenas of psychedelic privacy, loaded with loaded statements, wild Charalambides-ish tunnel-digging, and an almost Jandek-ian jam-driven wanderlust. An intense, brave step forward/outside 2006’s phenomenal Jailhouse Rock CS on Fag Tapes and her string of solo CDRs on Volcanic Tongue. Black-vinyl LPs in matte jackets with a “Heather-in-sunlight” cover photo plus some of her abstract/confessional drawings on the back. Edition of 500
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topaz rags - capricorn born again - nnf - lp- 12$
Grey clouds stay grey. Low light situations birth low-lit moods. It's all bummer clockwork. West Coast lurk-jazz triad Topaz Rags return to vinyl with their debut long player, Capricorn Born Again, an eight-song comedown recorded/mixed from spring-to-fall of '09 via a complex 4-track/boombox assemblage method. Everything creaks and hisses, there's smoke in the air, players at the end of their ropes, lyrics washing over faded raga ballads, slinky electric piano bar depressions, shadow gauze cavern pop. The bell jar is half empty, obviously. Slow dive and sink in. Black vinyl LPs (mastered by Pete Swanson) in jackets designed by Amanda. Edition of 400.
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heavy winged & inca ore - ring mining - nnf - lp - 12$
Been waiting multiple years for this mind-melting meeting-of-minds to finally manifest itself in physical form, and there’s actually a story behind it. Rewind to 2006: Heavy Winged is an active, Brooklyn-based psych-rock band who’ve yet to dissolve into the bi-coastal logistical tangle they exist as now; meanwhile, Eva/Inca Ore is on tour (for The Birds And The Bees maybe); meanwhile, Nick Bindeman happens to also be in NY hanging out. Since all are friends or friends-of-friends, Heavy Winged ask Nick and Eva to come jam with them at a show at Northsix for the heck of it. They do. The set is a charged, psychotropic cyclone of ragged electric weight and possessed pixie shriek, stomping up and down over several damaged mountains of riff-wreckage. Miraculously, someone thinks to record the performance. Jed Bindeman sends us a copy. Our speakers implode, we high five. Fast forward to Fall 2008: Heavy Winged record a new 20-minute epic (“Into The Fog”), send it to Eva, and she records her own hypno-bliss keyboard mirage over the top. Eureka. So goes the nearly three-year history of Ring Mining, a slow-burn triumph of long-distance collaborative patience and alchemy between two of our favorite creative institutions. Mine on, you crazy diamonds. Black vinyl LPs mastered by James Plotkin and housed in jackets with mountain-collage artwork by Eva Saelens, plus a photocopied insert. Edition of 500.
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la vampires featuring matrix metals - so unreal - nnf - lp - 12$
Episode two in season one of the LA Vampires Collab Chronicles finds her joining forces with elusive alien discotech-head Matrix Metals of the nomadic Outer Limits Recordings cabal. Blurry ornate cassette-loop architectures groove and grind under jazzy Casio canopies while Ms. LA Vamps screws it all down and layers in additional square wave keyboard lines, echo chamber FX, drum machine detailing, low-end throbs, and sings lead on a gold spraypainted microphone. The entire LP’s got that ‘melting-on-the-dashboard’ warped-world tonality of all the best Outer Limits tracks, and the fried radio-rhythm Matrix beats definitely coax out a cool hidden sunbleached LA V faux-pop vocal style not evident on any of her previous vinyl. Elaborately 4-tracked over the summer and microscopically mixed by M. Geddes Gengras, So Unreal is exactly that, and a rad synergistic statement by both parties. Black vinyl LPs in jackets with glamour-style Nagelized portrait/collage artwork by recent LA transplant/BFF Spencer Longo, plus a full-color insert. Edition of 600.
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v/a - my estrogeneration - nnf - lp- 12$
First ever NNF vinyl compilation (more in the future hopefully?) finds the spotlight landing fairly on the fairer sex, and the glare is glorious. 11 diverse femme musical energies corralled across 12 inches of black vinyl, all exclusive contributions, and the breadth of zones and interzones traversed is a beautiful thing to hear. Carry on my wayward non-sons. LPs in jackets with artwork by Pocahaunted bassist/scholar Diva Dompe, plus a full-color double-sided insert. Edition of 500. This year's Estrogeneration includes:
-Zola Jesus
-Tickley Feather
-Pocahaunted (vintage unused track from Gold Miner's Daughters sessions)
-Inca Ore
-Topaz Rags
-HNY
-Talk Normal
-Islaja (featuring Samara Lubelski and Blevin Blectum)
-L.A. Vampires
-U.S. Girls
-Valet
magic lantern - showstopper - nnf - 7" - 5$
Companion banger to the Platoon LP, this 33 RPM single finds the Lanterns firmly in retro motor city rave-up rockist terrain, covering the cult classic “Showstopper” on the A, backed with their own James Brown soul revue funk-rock shaker “Cypress” on the flip. Recorded during the Platoon sessions and mastered by James Plotkin. Black vinyl 7 inches in cosmic boogie collage jackets designed by Cameron Stallones. Edition of 500.
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topaz rags - the crown center - nnf - 7"- 5$
West Coast ghost squad Topaz Rags stalk back into the deadlights with a fresh vinyl single, their first new material since the Capricorn Born Again LP. Recorded in the heart of winter in a room with one blue light bulb, “The Crown Center” is pure nightprowler music: quaking bass, grime-jazz keys, dusty drums, witch choirs floating through the smog and into sleeping homes with the power lines cut. The sound of crime to come. The flip (“You Go On”) slips deeper into the psych-psycho psyche, a bleached-brain riff-rhythm grinding away endlessly while voices and electric piano stabs arc across the stereo field, raining ash. A grimmer twist on the Topaz formula, the dreamer’s dream turned dark. 33 RPM 7 inches of variously colored vinyl in hand-silkscreened cardstock sleeves. Edition of 345.
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heather leigh - jailhouse rock - nnf - lp- 11$
It’s been a while since Scorces sorceress, Jandek collaborator, and Volcanic Tongue branch manager Heather Leigh has ventured out on vinyl under her own name. And it may be a while longer, as Jailhouse Rock is in fact a wax reissue of a long OOP 2006 cassette classic on Michigan crud factory Fag Tapes. It was a fave of ours that year (and every year), so it feels extra celebratory to be able to offer up a freshly remastered (by Pete Swanson) LP edition of the album for global re-appreciation. Sprawling, long-form descents/ascents into mythic electric disorientation, powered by her trademark recipe of FX-soaked pedal steel and voice. Jailhouse feels loosely more aligned with a mid-aughts drone/noise aesthetic than the outsider dirt road Americana of her Devil If You Can Hear Me LP (also on NNF), but the distinction is a slight one. Side A swims in swooping sheets of vox and tempestuous wind tunnel dynamics before slowly dying away to wheezing disembodied harmonica. The B piece begins in a more overtly beautiful mode, a trinity of crystalline notes picked and stretched until they’re transformed into a rapturous sky of textural distortion. Sensual and vertigo-inducing in equal measure. Black vinyl LPs in jackets with brand new paint/collage artwork by Heath Moerland (of Sick Llama, Slither, Odd Clouds, etc). Edition of 400.
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cloudland canyon / mythical beast - split - nnf - 12" - 12$
This fair pairing has been in the wings for a few years now by our count, but tripped things come to those who wait, so better late-as-shit than never. Cloudland Canyon have been spanning geographies (Brooklyn, Germany, Memphis) and genres (krautrock, drone, psych-pop) since at least 2002, but only recently has their technological studio-sorcery began to gather steam and affect the more far-flung populations (powered in no small part by their partnership with Kranky Records). Anyone who's gotten lost in CC's latest, Lie In Light, knows this duo is currently at the pinnacle of their potency, and their offering here ("Harvest Hunt") is a fantastic mechanical motorik ascent into symphonic hypnosis. Comparisons to classic Teutonic psych outfits of yesteryear are warranted but inadequate: this is music of today, for tomorrow. On the flip, beloved Not Not Fun in-laws Mythical Beast return to the vinyl spotlight with two luminous soul meditations conjured during the past winter's grey maze of days. Both ballads burn with Corinne's voice-for-the-voiceless defiance, wind-draped and incensed by Jeremiah and Aaron's subtle electric string energies. Naked music for open spaces, empty skies, endless nights. High-audio 45 RPM LPs (NNF's first!) in matte-jackets with cloud-skull artwork by Blackblack beauty Diva Dompe. Edition of 415.
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