The posthumous release from the legendary Richard Swift, The Hex, is a telling artifact that symbolizes Swift’s timeless sound and immortal legacy. Swift will forever be remembered for his recording and production ingenuity, multi-instrumental mastery, and haunting monochromatic visual artwork.
Purchase Richard Swift’s The Hex out now via Secretly Canadian.
Donate to the Richard Swift Memorial Fund.
All photos by Olivia Cummings
Cult Citizen, the Alt Citizen and Cult Records collaboration, took over Elsewhere in Brooklyn for an evening of NYC punk with youthful talent Gnarcissists, Den Mate, and Native Sun.
After releasing short-but-robust EPs that rippled through the occult corners of the internet machine each year since 2016, Leisure arrives as Marbled Eye’s most thorough and well-assembled collection of wiry and irresistible post-punk. The Oakland band’s dense and agile discordant punk hooks take a jigsaw blade to any elements of continuity leaving behind a dust cloud of unquantifiable energy and appeal.
Purchase Marbled Eye’s latest LP Leisure out now via Digital Regress.
The slow-burning split release from Dire Wolves & Headroom enters a cloudy, doom-laden trance anchored by both group’s dramatic and superior heavy psych. Originally released on cassette with a vinyl pressing coming in October, the self-titled split finds both bands in their purest, unrestrained form on a wandering excursion into the depths of smoldering noise and splendor.
Purchase the Dire Wolves/Headroom split via Centripetal Force.
All photos by Kristie Chua
Purchase Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever’s latest record Hope Downs out now via Sub Pop. Purchase Deeper’s latest self-titled record out now via Fire Talk.
Meditative, new age American primitive folk guitar arrangements slither smoothly across a quiet landscape on North American’s latest LP Going Steady. Los Angeles multi-instrumentalist Patrick McDermott and a blue-chip supportive cast (Meg Duffy, Julianna Barwick, Hayden Pedigo, Dylan Baldi) strum and pluck their way into a tranquil hypnosis atop a stratum of droning synthesizers and lap steel mist.
Purchase North American’s latest record Going Steady out now via Driftless Recordings.
In an attempt to crown their distorted pop songwriting with a career-zenith classic album, The Holydrug Couple hit the mark with high honors on Hyper Super Mega, their latest on Sacred Bones. Cutting to the bone, the Chilean duo yank the elements integral in making their amorphous psychedelic sound, incorporating the most potent constituents into an imperial blend that’s distinctly and supremely on brand.
Purchase The Holydrug Couple’s latest record Hyper Super Mega out now via Sacred Bones. The Holydrug Couple will perform at Desert Daze 2018 on Sunday, October 14th and tix are still available.
All photos by Olivia Cummings
Purchase The Babe Rainbow’s latest record Double Rainbow out now via Flightless Records.
Terry Noland- Don't Do Me This Way
Ray Melton- Boppin' Guitar
Charlie Gore- Sock Hop
Couplings- Young Dove's Calling
The Rondels- Satan's Theme
The Marketts- Out of Limits
The Frantics- Straight Flush
The Tarantulas- Tarantula
The Rangoons- Moon Guitar
Jim Burgett- The Living Dead
The Space Between is the third full length LP from Australian progressive and psychedelic heavy rock pilots, ORB. Released on Flightless Records and produced by Lizard Wizard himself, Stu Mackenzie, the band thrusts into deep celestial territory with their thrashing synth hits, globs of wah’d out guitar riffs and sepulchral vocals. The Space Between is a triumphant summoning of the most potent dose of psychedelia native only to the Australian continent.
ORB’s latest record The Space Between is out now via Flightless Records.
All photos by Tyler Loring
Purchase David Byrne’s latest record, American Utopia, out now via Nonesuch Records.
For nearly a decade, Hopscotch Music Festival has successfully culminated a wide swath of musical talent to perform across downtown Raleigh, North Carolina's myriad of amphitheaters, clubs, and bars. This year brought the hallucinatory spectacle of The Flaming Lips, a rebirth of the decade's-dormant rock group MC5, the cavernous and grandiose arrangements of Grizzly Bear, and a founding father of funk, Nile Rodgers to the main stages while indie rock staples, buzzworthy outfits, and a wealth of unsung and homegrown performers drew the masses into the smaller clubs, seated halls, and dive bars.
All photos by Olivia Cummings
Early bird tickets for Hopscotch Music Festival 2019 are on sale now.
Cut from a collection of lost tapes from the Chicago fingerpicking guitarist John Hulburt, Leap Frog is the unexpected appendix to the works of a legend destined to wither into obscurity if not for the cratedigging of fellow Chicago 6-string contemporary compatriot Ryley Walker who discovered Hulburt's privately-pressed Opus III in a record shop. Walker, Bill MacKay, and Tompkins Square reissued Opus III in 2015 and now in 2018, Hulburt's sister has helped add to the anthology of an under-celebrated virtuoso.
Purchase John Hulburt's Leap Frog out now via Tompkins Square.
The spicy boogie of the overlooked outfit Shake defined the disco-soul scene that evolved in Virginia in the 1970s. The band's totally jivin' Music Is The Only Way We Can Communicate translated the disco styles of Philly and New York into a jazzy and tight Commonwealth dancefloor incendiary.
Purchase Shake's Music Is The Only Way We Can Communicate reissued by Everland Music Group.
Minoru "Hoodoo" Fushimi's sample-heavy Japanese electro-funk combined 80s rap with synth and guitar grooves creating a soulful and unique DIY sound. Overdubbing a mountain of synthesizers, samplers, Vocaders, and sequencing softwares on top of early rap tracks, Fushimi utilized his instruments and equipment to inject an idiosyncratic flavor into the modern sounds of the period.
With his label, Cleopatra Records, Tommy Falcone captured a medley of 1960s musical styles from outsider bands and artists that found a home for their overlooked and underappreciated sounds in the label's New Jersey recording studio and production facility. Compiled and reissued by the greats at Numero Group, the twenty-something singles of beachy garage, funky doo-wop, and sun-bleached pop depict the ambitious label's wide ranging repertoire and sponsorship of youthfully unique artists.
Purchase Teen Expo: The Cleopatra Label out now via Numero Group.
Tracks from across the timeline of Sunwatcher's dense and frenzied catalog of free-jazz, Ehtio-jazz, or whatever brand you think fits for the intense, noisy New York outfit are featured on Basement Apes Vol. 1, a new collection of live cuts recorded in Brooklyn and Hamburg. The group's latest full-length LP, II, came out in February via Trouble In Mind.
As always:
SUNWATCHERS STAND IN SOLIDARITY WITH THE DISPOSSESSED, IMPOVERISHED AND EMBATTLED PEOPLE OF THE WORLD
Nashville's Ttotals exist on the serrated edge of heavy blues and psych rock. On Skyview Drive, the band’s latest full length, pummeling drones collide with twangy blues riffs in a dense, core-rattling daydream.
Purchase Ttotals’ new record Skyview Drive out 8/31 via Great Ape Records.
Performed by Akron, Ohio's Andy John Mendosa, Banzai is the 9-part soundtrack to an imaginary Western adventure film of the Sergio Leone variety. Like a home-recorded Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid, Banzai uses surf and folk guitar arrangements with a light synth touch to draw a sonic storyboard that syncs with the gun-slinging, murder ballad tales.
