$14.98
DFA2433 / 2014
DFA debut. Vocals by Andrew Butler of Hercules & Love Affair
A. Talking To You (Feat. Andrew Butler of Hercules & Love Affair)) [Club Mix}
B1. Can't Remember (Jacques Renault & Mark Verbos Remix)
B2. Can't Remember (Secret Circuit Remix)
$14.98
OG 12" from 2003 by The Juan Maclean
Two hot tracks of electro goodness from JUAN MACLEAN (SIX FINGER SATELLITE). The title track features female vocals from NANCY WHANG, while the B-side gets you an electro lullaby in the "sad robot" genre. Both tracks produced and mixed by JAMES MURPHY & TIM GOLDSWORTHY
A - You Can't Have It Both Ways (Live)
B - My Time Is Running Out
$12.98
$12.98
The debut single from the kick-ass Japanese duo of K.U.D.O. (MAJOR FORCE WEST, SKYLAB, UNKLE) and KAN TAKAGI (Major Force). Joined by YOSHIMI P-WE (BOREDOMS, OOIOO), the group delivers some of the most off-beat, drum-heavy pop heard in some time on the track "Sunplus." Backed with a classic DFA version.
Tracklist:
1. Sunplus
2. Sunplus (DFA Version)
$14.98
Limited vinyl edition of two previously digital-only singles by Berlin singer, songwriter, and producer. Dan Bodan, hailed by Pitchfork as "an expression of the storied NYC dance label's more oddball tastes." First up is "Anonymous", a poignant portrait of yearning for the post-Facebook generation. The A side is rounded out with a remix by DJ Richard (1/2 White Material with Young Male) that manages to drag the track to even deeper depths of anxiety.
The flip features 2013 single "Hunger Games", a widescreen epic of a track that will be stripped down to the bare minimum on Dan's forthcoming LP. It features production by left-field dance geniuses Physical Therapy and Ville Haimala of Renaissance Man. Also featured is the acclaimed Stadium Remix. Comes in a custom spineless picture sleeve featuring an illustration by Julien Ceccaldi.
Tracklisting:
$14.98
Black Meteoric Star is the latest project by longtime DFA alumni Gavin Russom. The project is inspired equal parts Euro-disco, wonky early electronic body music from America's Midwest and an always present fascination with the outer reaches of global psychedelic rock. Gavin Russom began the recordings for Black Meteoric Star sometime in 2006. It was at this time that Carl Craig remixed Delia Gonzalez & Gavin Russom's single "Relevee", making it one of the years biggest dance club anthems. Three vinyl 12" singles by Black Meteoric Star will be released on DFA Records with extended original versions in 2009 along with a full self-titled CD that edits and compiles all six singles. There will be an edition of 100 of each 12" hand stamped and accompanied by a series of posters also designed by Russom. These releases will follow a narrative line and the six pieces of music tell a story of clubbing and the long journey through the night and into the next day. In this project, Russom carries his ability to create rich sonic landscapes to the dance floor using minimal but intense arrangements and high-energy repetition.
The second single "Dominatron / Anthem" takes place after midnight. The animal energy encountered in "World Eater" is released and splits itself into female and male parts. This 12" is the story of their struggle for power over one another. "Dominatron" is the feminine side and "Anthem" is the masculine side. As in a possession ritual, each side appears and does its dance. Rhode Island native Gavin Russom now lives and works in Berlin. He has produced many remixes recently, including a new single by Croatian techno artist Petar Dundov, New York's avant garde duo Palms and a remix featured on the upcoming soundtrack for the remake of the movie Tron.
Tracklist
A - Dominatron
B - Anthem
$14.98
Black Meteoric Star is the latest project by longtime DFA alumni Gavin Russom. The project is inspired equal parts Euro-disco, wonky early electronic body music from America's Midwest and an always present fascination with the outer reaches of global psychedelic rock. Gavin Russom began the recordings for Black Meteoric Star sometime in 2006. It was at this time that Carl Craig remixed Delia Gonzalez & Gavin Russom's single "Relevee", making it one of the years biggest dance club anthems. Three vinyl 12" singles by Black Meteoric Star will be released on DFA Records with extended original versions in 2009 along with a full self-titled CD that edits and compiles all six singles. There will be an edition of 100 of each 12" hand stamped and accompanied by a series of posters also designed by Russom. These releases will follow a narrative line and the six pieces of music tell a story of clubbing and the long journey through the night and into the next day. In this project, Russom carries his ability to create rich sonic landscapes to the dance floor using minimal but intense arrangements and high-energy repetition.
$9.98
Black Meteoric Star is the latest project by longtime DFA alumni Gavin Russom. The project is inspired equal parts Euro-disco, wonky early electronic body music from America's Midwest and an always present fascination with the outer reaches of global psychedelic rock. Gavin Russom began the recordings for Black Meteoric Star sometime in 2006. It was at this time that Carl Craig remixed Delia Gonzalez & Gavin Russom's single "Relevee", making it one of the years biggest dance club anthems. Three vinyl 12" singles by Black Meteoric Star will be released on DFA Records with extended original versions in 2009 along with a full self-titled CD that edits and compiles all six singles. There will be an edition of 100 of each 12" hand stamped and accompanied by a series of posters also designed by Russom. These releases will follow a narrative line and the six pieces of music tell a story of clubbing and the long journey through the night and into the next day.
In this project, Russom carries his ability to create rich sonic landscapes to the dance floor using minimal but intense arrangements and high-energy repetition. The third and final chapter is "Dream Catcher / Dawn". In "Dream Catcher" it becomes clear that neither the masculine nor the feminine side can win. They have to coexist, and can, when each side acknowledges its own strengths and resolves to use them toward a mutual end. In terms of the club land metaphor this is the point in the night where people hook up. As the longest of the six tracks its story is about total surrender. For me it evokes both lovers surrendering to each other and the devotee surrendering to his God. At this moment we acknowledge that there is no way out but through. "Dawn" comes. The bass line echoes the melody of "Death Tunnel", signaling return. Although we are beginning again everything looks, sounds and feels different. We are much stronger now. As the sun comes up and edges begin to become clear again, we drive slowly through the still sleeping city. Rhode Island native Gavin Russom now lives and works in Berlin. He has produced many remixes recently, including a new single by Croatian techno artist Petar Dundov, New York's avant garde duo Palms and a remix featured on the upcoming soundtrack for the remake of the movie Tron.
Tracklist
A - Dreamcatcher
B - Dawn
$32.98
'In A Dream' is the third album from The Juan Maclean. If anything, this new LP is further evidence of the "undeniable creative chemistry between house music wizard Juan Maclean & vocalist / former LCD Soundsystem member Nancy Whang". (Pitchfork) The album takes its musical cues from Moroder's Munich to the Funky Nassau sounds of Compass Point and to anytime in downtown NYC.
An album of high anticipated, brand new material on the heels of The Juan Maclean's acclaimed club bangers from the last couple of years. Features singles "A Place Called Space" and "A Simple Design". Everyone that has heard the record loves the hell out of it, and I promise you will too.
$12.98
Larry Gus releases another single from his DFA debut LP “Years Not Living”. This time it is the album’s lead-off track, entitled “With All Your Eyes Look”.
There are 3 remixes as well as a gorgeous If approaching the song from it’s literary roots and inspiration (Georges Perec’s “Life: A User’s Manual”) is all too much, the post modern take on straight up driving urgent & dramatic psychedelic rock music should be just sufficient. The song is a perfect summation of all the talents that make Larry Gus such a unique talent. The mathematical layering of musical elements both grandiose and minuscule combine to make one of the most engaging singles of the summer.
The single has been remixed by three quite diverse artists and producers: Cut Hands (William Bennett of White House fame), Black Deer (aka Willie Burns) & Tuff Sherm (aka Dro Carey). All tracks lean on the percussive and manic syncopations of the original track but spin it out into very unique and surprising directions.
Tracklisting:
from $5
$5.00
Slim Twig is the name of a man, not of a band - though he has performed in many a group, some under his own moniker. Boasting a catalogue several underthe- radar releases deep, the Toronto native lays claim to a tremendously original work with his orchestrallyinflected, art rock album, A Hound At The Hem. Self-produced in the fall, 2010, Hound is a suite of narrative songs thematically inspired by Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita. DFA is privileged to reissue this album in advance of the release of Twig’s newest works.
Upon completing AHATH in 2010, Twig struggled to find wide release for it due to its uncompromising textural onslaught and disregard for genre. This course of events set the stage for the composition and release of Sof’ Sike, a somewhat more conventional set of pop songs released on Paper Bag Records, in 2012. The title of that work refers to Twig’s own conception of Hound as the hard-psych flipside to his work of that period.
Recorded on Toronto Island in collaboration with fellow Torontonian, Louis Percival, the album features string arrangements by Owen Pallett, and other collaborators including Meg Remy (U.S. Girls), Carl Didur (Zacht Automaat), and the St. Kitts Quartet.
As a conceptalbum exploring the troubling and the taboo and themes like the transformative power of lust, AHATH can be interpreted as an echolike response to Serge Gainsbourg and JeanClaude Vannier’s Histoire De Melody Nelson. Most of all, AHATH poses the question; where next for Slim Twig, this promising and original auteur?
$12.98
12" Vinyl EP in a picture sleeve featuring collaged artwork by Eric Copeland himself.
Ms Pretzel is a 4 track, 20-minute EP of brand new material by Eric Copeland (Black Dice, Terrestrial Tones). This is Eric’s return to DFA after the release of an acclaimed single on Ron Morelli’s underground dance juggernaut L.I.E.S., which followed his beloved 2013 album “Joke In The Hole”, his solo debut for DFA.
The music on Ms Pretzel most certainly continues to break new sonic ground, a process which has gradually unfolded over the last few years via many prior works on seminal underground labels such as Underwater Peoples, Escho, Post Present Medium, and Catsup Plate, among many others. Ms Pretzel takes Eric’s outsider fascination with 4/4 dance music and twists it yet again. It is the sound of Eric Copeland throwing a wobbly dance party in a junkyard. DFA could not be more excited to host this gritty event.
“If Copeland is interested in the conventions of clubland, it’s at the point where someone’s puking on their shoes outside the venue, a distant throb of bass beating into their brain through the brickwork.” - Pitchfork
“The rhythms might be recognisably house or hip-hop, but Copeland pulls and squeezes their structures like accordions.” - Resident Advisor
“Though constantly teetering on a knife’s edge - to be expected in such mental, syncopated mashups - this is wildly colourful and knowingly absurd music.” - The Quietus
Tracklisting:
$14.98
A music obsessive all his life, Londoner Marcus Marr’s first encounters with dance music were acid house records which augmented his vinyl collection of rock and soul, and attending all night parties under Brixton’s St Matthews church. Traveling to the south of England to watch DJ Harvey play a lengthy set, he saw the kind of power a DJ can wield over a willing crowd.
“The Music”, was featured prominently in the 2012 film “Pusher”, starring Richard Coyle and Agyness Dean. The single’s B-Side “Pleasure Moon” was used to open the 2014 Versace show in Milan. Additionally, it was placed at #3 in Spin Magazine’s “The 40 Best Dance Tracks of 2013”, bested only by Daft Punk and Todd Terje.
Marcus has the following to say about these two new tracks:
Brown Sauce: “Depending on the vibe of the night, if you come and see me DJ it’s likely you’re going to hear some futuristic music, as well as some disco, house and so on. I want people to be warned about that so I made “Brown Sauce”. I’ve been playing it all over the place for a good while now and it never lets me down.”
Peacemakers : “This one has features me on my bass guitar. I'ts a Fender Jazz and its usually there somewhere on most of my tunes. I bought it off a clueless Brummie punk years ago. He wanted only £90 for it - i was sure there was a catch but no, it was the genuine article.”
These two tracks are a taste of what we can expect in the future from Marcus Marr, who will be releasing his debut album on DFA in 2015.
Track List:
$14.98
Ninos Du Brasil are Nicolò Fortuni and Nico Vascellari, an Italian percussion duo with a background in visual art. Through their aptitude with drumming, they are masters at fusing the seemingly disparate influences of punk, tribal techno, and batacuda, emerging with a sound that is truly singular. The project takes its rhythmic backbone from Brazilian carnival music, and the duo injects each track with the frothy attitude of punk and the shuffling dancefloor domination of techno.
Nico Vascellari had the following to say of these two tracks: “These two songs are meant to be poisonous and malignant, As if somebody had the idea of inviting us to a party between the bushes of Queimada Grande (Snake Island, Brazil.)”
“... it’s unclear who’s doing what. Some of the elements belong together, according to tradition, and some of them don’t; there’s a little thrill in the friction.” - New York Times
“It bears no baggage, no symbolism, no risky appropriation or titles, just a refined, focused dimension and a riveting set of textures that showcase the group’s intricate techniques, all of it imbued with their own menacing panache.” - Tiny Mix Tapes
“...humid, vibrant and intoxicating on one hand, dark, nightmarish and unforgiving on the other.” - Juno Download
Track List:
from $5
$5.00
Initial pressing is on pink vinyl! Move quick!
Delia Gonzalez is a name immediately familiar to DFA fanatics. As the story goes, Delia transplanted from Miami to New York City in the mid-1990s, working in various dance and guerrilla theatre troupes. It was around this time that she met synth wizard Gavin Russom, beginning a series of multi-disciplinary collaborations. Their first release for the label, 2003’s El Monte, was an early demonstration of the fledgling label’s ability to bridge the gap between the avant-garde and the rapidly exploding indie rock world.
In Remembrance is the next landmark in Delia’s artistic pursuits. The project originated as a 2010 solo show of the same name at Galleria Fonti in Naples, Italy, and was further realized in 2012, with additional work, as part of the exhibition I Must Not Stop To Rest Here in Cologne, Germany. The project was further exhibited in Zurich. Both exhibitions were built around four 16mm ballet dance films, accompanied by the music composed by Gonzalez. In her words, “The film is meant to re-create the fleeting sensation of inspiration - that sacred feeling when suddenly your mind clears and you know exactly what you’re meant to create and become.”
The films were exhibited in their third incarnation at the Clocktower Gallery in New York City in 2013. Delia enlisted New York underground musicians Bryce Hackford and Alice Cohen to perform a live, electronic adaption of the original piano score. Bryce later contributed four remixes, which are included on this album. Delia explains; “When I lived in Berlin I became good friends with the artist and musician Viktor Timofeev, who kept telling me about his best friend Bryce, who he played music with. In 2012 we were all in Vienna participating in a show entitled You Are Free. There I met Bryce and I instantly loved him. In 2013 I moved to NYC temporarily and ran into him at the New Museum and he said, “we should get together and play”. I took him up on it.”
The original piano score was initially inspired by a text by Henry Miller as well as a theory by spiritual teacher George Gurdjieff, which states that “to play scales is to become more in tune with your inner self.” This coincided conceptually with the music that Delia had been making at the time.
Musically, In Remembrance finds Delia Gonzalez again straddling the lines drawn between the fine art and pop worlds. This time, instead of the cosmic, arpeggiated synths of The Days of Mars , we are presented with something even more immediately beautiful. The music is immediately soothing and hypnotic, yet it also maintains a sinister undertone. Suspense and tension are expressed in a deceptively simple fashion, providing a soundtrack both mesmerizing and melancholy for the dancers in the film. Delicate layers of piano wind around each other, reflected in the mirrored motions of the dancers, filmed in leering close-ups. The four compositions combine to create a 30 minute avant-classical suite, bringing to mind Satie, or something plucked from Italy’s iconic Cramps Records in the seventies (John Cage’s Cheap Imitation is an reasonable comparison), or perhaps an alternate score to the arthouse horror film Don’t Look Back by Nicolas Roeg.
The second disc features remixes by previously mentioned live collabator Bryce Hackford. Bryce takes Delia’s exquisite piano score and loops, stretches, and consolidates it. There’s a range of treatments at play here - some pieces are layered with gauzy left-field electronic pulses while Track IV get a 4/4 dancefloor makeover, recommended to fans of both classic Detroit techno and newer left-field stars such as Actress. Asked to briefly discuss his mission statement in creating these remixes, Bryce simply stated that he wished that his remixes “maintain the hypnotic and simple beauty of the originals while opening them up to new spaces.”.
In Remembrance will be released by DFA Records and [PIAS] Cooperative on April 28, 2015.
Tracklist
A1 - Delia Gonzalez (I)
$14.98
Shit Robot and DFA are psyched to release “Where It’s At” another in a long-running series of collaborations with the singer/comedian/television star Reggie Watts. Reggie Watts’ vocal performance runs the gamut of Chicago dance music history - from the gloom and melodrama of iconic label Wax Trax, to the jubilant choruses of Frankie Knuckles’ house anthems. But let’s not de-emphasize the solid instrumentation provided by Mr. Marcus ‘Shit Robot’ Lambkin – we’ve got that classic DFA bassline, claps, and bleeps and bloops aplenty – mixed and manipulated by none other than our own James Murphy. The flip features a remix by London producer Johnny Aux, who turns the track into a staticy, stripped down, raw Deep House banger, with hissing glimmers of icy cymbals peeking through the smog.
Tracklist
1. Where It's At
2. Where It's At (Johnny Aux Remix)
$14.98
A great record for a romantic evening! Fortunately we have a few of these left in our closet, and would love to send them to a happy home. single LP hand-stamped white labels on black vinyl, numbered out of 100.
$5.00
“When our first album came out,” Tobin Prinz (guitar, voice) remembers, “we were awkward, miserable...” “Nervous, uncooperative” chips in Suzi Horn (bass, voice, drums), pausing just long enough for Tobin to supply the punchline - “and now look at us!”
Prinzhorn Dance School are still recognisably the same spiky Brighton-based duo whose ultra-rigorous debut cut through the excess of 2008 like a scimitar through bacon fat. But with their trademark stripped-down intensity now winningly off-set by moments of unabashed tenderness, their third album Home Economics continues and even accelerates the move away from austerity and into human warmth begun by its acclaimed 2011 predecessor Clay Class.
The starting point for the new record was the band’s “amazing” first US shows - two of their own and a triumphant showing at DFA’s 12th anniversary - in May 2013. Inspired by their American adventure, Prinzhorn Dance School brought the recording process into the heart of their everyday lives. Played and recorded on the move between different flats in Brighton and Hove, then wheeled around town on a hard-drive wrapped in a sleeping bag in a specially-adapted suitcase, Home Economics gave them an escape route from “that frustration you feel when you spend days trying to recapture the intimacy of a particular moment”, Tobin remembers. “This time we could just use the original take, so sometimes these songs are almost like field recordings”.
All the best six-track albums - The Fall’s Slates, Orange Juice’s Texas Fever - know exactly what they want to say and how they intend to say it. Home Economics shares that infectious sense of urgency. There’s not an inch of spare meat on it - from Reign’s snatched moment of optimism, through Battlefield’s restorative meeting of minds with an urban fox on a drunken walk home in the early hours, to Let Me Go’s concluding tribute to “a love that won’t rewind and will not be deleted”. Spindly yet sensuous, together and alone, exquisitely sad but somehow full of hope, Prinzhorn Dance School knit together disparate and even opposite fragments into an utterly satisfying whole.
$13.00
$14.98
Prinzhorn Dance School’s spartan sonics have often lead to some hand-wringing when trying to play out their records ‘in the club’. In the first 7 years of their existance, there was a sole club-friendly remix in their entire catalog. It is for these reasons that we’re really stoked to announce that we now have a second.
DFA veteran Shit Robot takes the track “Reign” from their imminently released third album “Home Economics” and turns it into a deep, dark floor-filler. The band’s pleading vocals dive in and out of a throbbing bassline, with new robotic percussion seamlessly blending with the band’s original bangs and clangs.
The flip features that previously alluded to Optimo (Espaco) mix of You Are The Space Invader - previously only available commercially in digital form, this is the
first (slightly) wider vinyl release of this classic remix. An edition of 500 hand-stamped and numbered white label copies, not to be pressed again for another 7 years or so. Probably.
Tracklist:
A - Reign (Shit Robot Remix)
$19.98
Limited editon of 1000 hand-stamped and numbered copies, assembled at DFA in NYC.
DFA is proud to release a long-gestating 12” single of wild interprations of Eric Copeland’s 2013 album “Joke In The Hole”. The Black Dice member received universal acclaim for the record, “Fringe though Copeland may be, this album is a serious coup for DFA—he walks the line between complete nuttiness and outright accessibility, and ends up with one of his best records to date.” (XLR8R) Starting us off is Panda Bear, who adds his trademark falsetto vocals and shuffling percussion, sweetening Eric’s black coffee beats. DFA’s own sonic collagist Larry Gus blends Eric’s mumbled vocals with bright percussion and a vocoded male choir, among many other audio dalliances. Meanwhile, Hyperdub’s Fhloston Paradigm (AKA King Britt) takes aim with his laser cannons, firing volleys at unrelenting waves of marching alien armies, before being swallowed up in a solar flare. Finally, Anthony Naples (Text Records, Trilogy Tapes) brings it back to the club with snaps, claps, and hi-hats, but it sounds like you left ‘em out in the rear window of your car on a sunny day. You know what we mean.
Tracklisting:
$32.98
$32.98
LCD Soundsystem - 45:33 - 2xLP
Originally released in 2006.
This album was commissioned by Nike to listen to on an iPod while exercising.
Original Pitchfork Review, 2006
Tracklist
A - 45:33
B - 45:33
C - 45:33
D - 45:33
$5.00
Thank You For Stickin’ With Twig is the latest long-playing album from the artist known to the world (or at least to his mother) as Slim Twig. Coming out August 7, 2015 on DFA, you may be surprised to know that it represents the fifth album by the Toronto based songwriter / producer. Twig has released these previous records among a swath of EP’s, singles and one-offs, displaying in the process a complete disregard for genre or consistency. The evolution from Contempt!, his sample-stained 2009 debut, through to A Hound At The Hem, his symphonic tribute album to Nabokov’s Lolita (reissued by DFA in 2014), is not entirely linear, although intriguing all the same. Like so many surf-smoothed stones lining the beach shore, briefly unburied only to be discarded once deemed un-skippable, so Twig has gone about seeking the proper rock to cast at just the right angle. One can see why he extends a gratuity to those listeners who've stuck around.
In what form then, do we now find the twenty-six-year old, self-proclaimed ‘wah wah master’? His record reissued last year was completed in 2011. So one might reasonably ask, what has Twig done since? After producing two albums for U.S. Girls (U.S. Girls on Kraak in 2011, Gem in 2012), and scoring two films (Sight Unseen & We Come As Friends (winner of a Special Jury Award at Sundance, among numerous other accolades), Twig found himself in 2013 at a creative impasse re: his own songwriting. He had been through full band incarnations live and on record. They featured a cast of Toronto heavies (members of Zacht Automaat, etc...). He briefly performed Slim Twig sets as a duo, featuring multimedia artist and musician, Meg Remy (U.S. Girls). They performed sets that combined versions of Twig’s released songs with freely structured improvisations, samples, and brightly melodic, synth textures. Something in this combination of the pop-minded and the cerebrally-produced has rubbed off on the recordings found on Twig’s latest.
Thank You For Stickin’ With Twig is to date the most sonically immersive album in Twig’s discography. Where some records have focused explicitly on sample-based songwriting, while others have been completely live-recorded, the new album arrives at a perfectly produced fusion of fidelities. It hovers, glamorously caught between a cloud of obscurant, half-speed tape hiss, and the most stoned Jeff Lynne production you’ve ever heard. Twig flirts here with a variety of vibes, most often opting for a three dimensional approach whereby a warped tape aura is overlaid with colourful, laser-cut keyboard and guitar melodies. A fetishization of analogue texture is married to a digital approach. All the while, we find Twig irreverently raiding classic rock of its symbolism, sexuality, and social ambition for ulterior subversions. In this respect, TYFSWT's closest cousin may be Royal Trux's Accelerator.
Opening cut, 'Slippin Slidin’, establishes itself as a cock rock analogue to Kanye West’s similarly phallic 'On Sight', the bravura Yeezus introduction. We are welcomed by a blast of synth noise, soon followed by sexually agitated lyrics (supported by Meg Remy, whose vocals are featured prominently on much of the record) atop a deafening beat, distorted and sleazy. The immensity of the production (achieved in collaboration with co-producer Anthony Nemet and mixer Steve Chahley) represents an evolution of Twig’s approach, sustained at a fever pitch throughout the album.
'A Woman’s Touch (It’s No Coincidence)' is a song sympathizing with the perspective of the Beatles’ wives. The song production sounds like a fusion of dub and baroque pop as played by the cartoon band in the Yellow Submarine movie. Many of the songs play referential sonic games like this, discursively incorporating familiar melodies, production styles or ideas (a fuzzy ballad on wage inequality is cheekily titled ‘Textiles On Mainstreet’), only to pair them with incongruous textures or themes. 'Live In, Live On Your Era', a song encouraging an embrace of one’s own cultural circumstance, is consciously styled as the most ‘retro’ sounding cut on the album (Jimmy Page leads and all), seemingly upending the lyrical content. On and on, the jokes and meta-sonic rock commentary continue like so many Zappa-esque indulgences.
The centrepiece of the album is composed of two songs sharing the middle of the running time. 'Roll Red Roll (Song For Steubenville)', titled after the football chant of the eponymous town’s high school team, eulogizes the tragedy of the young girl who was the tabloid subject of group sexual abuse (by said football team). Its opening - the most tranquil, dreamy instrumental passage on the record - is harshly interrupted by a mass of pitch-shifted martial drums and wildly panned, distorted fuzz lines. The disturbed atmosphere composes a sonic poem, detailing a narrative through a combination of sound and oblique lyrics (‘Everyone will love / everyone will love / the way you fold / Roll Red Roll’). Side B opens with 'Fog Of Sex (N.S.I.S)'. A cinematic fusion of plastic soul and flute score-for-horror-film, it comprises TYFSWT’s funkiest recording. With voicings from both Twig and Remy, sung from the perspective of someone unwilling to commit to a single gender identity, the song makes overt the album’s subliminal motive. Instability is addressed from a disenfranchised perspective (perhaps as a metaphor for the music itself, which refuses to stabilize or stay put). Twig himself has referred to his ambition of making “a protest album as obscured by smoke” (and what kind of smoke, we wonder?). In swift combination, these two songs make good on that claim. The lyrical voices here take on an (at times) humorously proletarian tone (‘I work a shift, just up the street / cleaning semen off of seats / it’s a way for ends to meet’) that is alien in the contemporary rock landscape, dominated as it is by reheated garage and psych leftovers.
The album closes with a triumphantly grandiose cover of Serge Gainsbourg’s instrumental ‘Cannabis’ (released as a 7” single on 4/20, and deliberately echoing Twig’s first LP for DFA, which openly shared its Gainsbourgian debt). The aim is somewhat clearer now. Slim Twig’s latest modulation of voice is to re-contextualize an era of ambition in produced rock music, dislodging the hackneyed and clichéd in the process. Sonically and politically, his aim is to be a rock n’ roll subversive in an era where that claim should rightfully be made by luddite cave-people. Context is everything, and Twig’s gift may be in zeroing in on that. He collages his sounds together (here as eclectic as The Love Below, or any Beck album) in a continuum where pop criticism is always recycling through what it chooses to lend cultural currency, if only for an instant. As of now, he’s sized up rock n’ roll, and determined it seems as good as any other vessel to commandeer for his creative impulse. Power to him. Rock may be dumb as a stone, but even so, now and then it’s smart to be dumb.
Tracklist
A1 - Slippin' Slidin'
A2 - A Woman's Touch (It's No Coincidence)
A3 - She Stickin' With Twig
A4 - Textiles On Mainstreet
A5 - Stone Rollin' (Musical Emotion)
A6 - Roll Red Roll (Song For Steubenville)
A7 - You Got Me Goin'
B1 - Fog Of Sex (N.S.I.S)
B2 - Fadeout Killer
B3 - Trip Thru Bells
B4 - ...Out Of My Mind
B5 - Live In, Live On Your Era
B6 - Cannabis
$22.98
$22.98
DFA Records is pleased to announce I Need New Eyes, the new album from Larry Gus. 2013’s Years Not Living was a masterpiece of composition, pushing sampling to its limits within a conceptual framework provided by Life A User’s Manual, George Perec’s postmodern fiction masterpiece.
I Need New Eyes treads familiar sonic ground to Larry Gus’ previous works - but his beatmaker percussion, shill falsetto vocals, and found sounds form a gestalt more concise and clear than ever. The references to literature continue - the title is based on a supposed quote by Proust, “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” This record was completed amidst two life-changing events - the birth of his first child, and his participation in Red Bull Music Academy in Tokyo. (Fellow attendee NV contributes backing vocals on Belong To Love.) He explains, “When you have kids, you realize that all of the infinite branches that you were wishing to explore are starting to being cut violently with a axe (held by the baby), and all infinite choices in your life (and lifestyle) start to shrink and diminish slowly. I decided on the title the moment I got back from Tokyo, upon realising that I could never be able to live there, now that I have a baby”.
His lyrics are brought to the forefront here - covering a wide variety of anxieties, personal and professional. “Don’t forget, the success of everyone else always includes failed attempts / but why can’t I figure it out for myself” he howls over swirling drum fills on NP-Complete, “No more polite comments / at least not from my friends” he croons in A Set Of Replies. This feeds into an alternate meaning for the title - “I need new, less jealous eyes” because envy and jealousy and bitterness are also things that recur a lot in my lyrics, always related to other musicians and things that they achieve.”
In spite of the of the heavy conceptual themes, there is a true jubilance to the sonics of the record. Twinkling synths and orchestral stabs mingle with handclaps and a thundering kick drum on All Graphs Explored, while funk guitars and endless layers of percussion and brass build around Larry’s bilingual vocals, climaxing in a double-timed drum solo. This is a record for fans of Caribou, Can, Panda Bear, and self-reflection.
I Need New Eyes is released by DFA Records and [PIAS] Cooperative on October 2, 2015.
Tracklist
1 - Black Veil Of Fail
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Four premium dub remixes of Sinkane by Peaking Lights, housed in a natural tan sleeve with red/green/yellow heady gradient center label.
Approaching a busy festival season, including a performance at Glastonbury Festival this weekend plus Womad and Meltdown later in the summer, Sinkane has joined forces with Peaking Lights for a 12” EP release entitled Mean Dub, to be released on August 21st via DFA/City Slang.
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Montreal-based electronic duo Essaie pas is comprised of Marie Davidson and Pierre Guerineau. Both are respected musicians in their own right - Marie having released two acclaimed solo records, with Pierre being best known for production work on underground Canadian musicians such as Dirty Beaches and Femminielli. Essaie pas was born on a hot summer night in 2010, releasing some ultra-limited singles which culminated in their debut LP, Nuit de noce (Teenage Menopause Records) in 2013. The mix of drawling guitars, français mumbles, and minimal electronics caught the ear of DFA Records, who booked the pair to open for Factory Floor on their first North American tour.
The origin story of -Demain est une autre nuit- begins when the band returned from their first European tour to find that they had lost both their studio space and apartment. La Brique, their studio, practice space and renowned underground music institution, had fallen victim to the city’s rapid gentrification and closed permanently. Conflicts with their wacky landlord had also left them without an apartment, leading them to return to Montreal’s winter without many prospects. They lucked into a temporary practice space during the off-hours at the offices of Le Filles Electriques, an independent interdisciplinary festival producer. This space soon became Pierre’s new studio, and Marie’s new home. The many corridors of the empty industrial building also provided a way for Marie to work out in the frigid Montreal winter nights, running “everywhere possible, listening to techno, acid, and italo disco, being mutually inspired by the space and the sounds.” About eight months later, Demain est une autre nuit (“tomorrow is another night”) was born. “This environment influenced our music,” says Pierre, “The sounds are more clear and open, the production has more depth, on a full frequency range.” Their living conditions on tour were another major influence, “Staying at different people’s places around the world for a whole year accentuates the feeling of being a stranger wherever you go, even in your own town, but also creates a feeling of being part of an international community, opposed to a scene that exists only in one city.”
Essaie pas’ music can not be tied to a specific genre It is a document of the encounter of two human beings mutually experimenting with music and sounds, and eventually falling in love while doing so. They are constantly pushing the boundaries of their comfort zone with new methods and technique, aiming to communicate that which is unspeakable.Their musical language is vibrant and varied - comparisons range from Film Soundtracks, Electronic Body Music, Disco, and Techno, with sensually-delivered lyrics exploring the themes of fantasies, obsessions, and the feeling of “The Void”. Marie explains, “The title comes from a joke we made when going to bed one morning, talking about our plans for the next evening.” Pierre adds, “Night is a place of freedom, a place where fantasies and obsessions are not tied by moral constraints. It’s also a time where the feeling of loneliness is stronger and when emotions and memories arise, whether you are facing it or running away from it. I think the tension and sense of urgency on the record comes from that dichotomy.”
Facing The Music is an excellent demonstration of this dichotomy - its throbbing electronic percussion and sawmill synths racing towards a seemingly-inevitable climax, only to disintegrate in an instant. Similar in tone, Retox begins with an air-raid siren that explodes into electronic pulses and spiralling handclaps, with Pierre’s solemnly spoken vocals countering Marie’s sensual cadence. Lead single Le port du masque is a frenetic ode to obsession, about a man being obsessed with the ghost of an impossible relationship. Pierre explains - “I already had some of the lyrics and the idea of a woman’s mantra but months later, while I was jamming a motorik beat with a TR-505 through a delay pedal, I found the perfect foundation for it.” The band’s first composition, Carcajou appears here for the third time in an entirely different incarnation - Marie’s vocals alternately yearn and taunt, diving into and out of layers of drum machines and analog synthesizers. Closing track La Chute is the band at their most Angelo Badalamenti, with mournful organ and wheezing gasps giving way to what sounds like gentle applause, but in actuality is the last frames being fed through a film projector.
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Marcus Lambkin aka Shit Robot returns with his third full length album for DFA Records, entitled What Follows. The 11-track album was conceived and recorded at Marcus’ home studio in a small town outside Stuttgart; worked on in various New York studios and then mixed over the course of 11 intense & coffee-fuelled days in DFA label mate Juan Maclean’s New Hampshire studio.
The album follows Lambkin’s previous long-players, From The Cradle To The Rave (2010) and We Got A Love (2014), which drew plaudits from the likes of The Guardian and Pitchfork, and featured Reggie Watts and James Murphy among the array of contributors.
The Dublin-born producer has enlisted the help of a stellar cast of guests for What Follows, with previous collaborators Alexis Taylor (Hot Chip) and DFA stablemates Museum of Love & Nancy Whang returning, alongside new faces Jay Green and leftfield fellow Dubliner New Jackson.
What Follows marks a departure in Lambkin’s process - a simple, but fundamental one: getting away from the computer. He said: “This record is a lot more analog than 'We Got A Love', almost all of it comes from connecting machines together and playing around.” What was your biggest influence? “Drum machines.” What began in Stuttgart was followed up on in New York, before being finished in an 11-day blitz in New Hampshire with Juan Maclean.
Lambkin: “This is the first time that I actually sat down and said, ‘I'm going to make an album now and I'm going to finish it by a specific date and time.’ I wanted to make a record that was more cohesive, that sounded like it all came from the one session. I wanted it to reflect my DJing style a bit more, less pop, less disco, more machines. There's no live bass and barring a few hi-hats, there's no live drums.
“I began in Stuttgart - simply by creating about 12 drum loops. I then synched these up to some gear and created some bass lines so I had some solid grooves to start with. Then I went to NY and spent a couple of days at Holy Ghost's studio playing around with Nick and his modular synth coming up with different sequences and sounds. I then took all this over to Transmitter Park Studios in Greenpoint and spent a few days with the wizard that is Morgan Wiley of Midnight Magic and Tippy Toes. He's one of my favourite keyboard players on the planet. Sometimes I had a specific thing I wanted him to do, but mostly I just played him some things I like and got him to jam out on what I had come up with or play some nice chords or chord progressions.
“I took all this back home and started to fool around with it and knock it into shape before sending it out for vocals. With the song I did with Museum Of Love, 'What Follows', Dennis and Pat were actually in Europe and they came by and stayed with me for a few days, so we made that one in Stuttgart over a few nights once I got the kids to bed. It was particularly fun and easy. I think the wine helped.
“Then I brought it all to Juan's World in New Hampshire where we drank a LOT of coffee and did some additional production and mixed everything. Finishing the record with Juan was a game changer for me. We worked so hard. We finished eleven songs in eleven days, no joke.”
The results are convincing - What Follows is definitely an album dedicated to dance music, but one that retains hallmarks of his previous LPs: good songs. Alexis Taylor turns in two memorable performances on lead single ‘End Of The Trail’ and album opener ‘In Love’; Museum of Love - Pat Mahoney and Dennis McNany - lend the album title track an air of something mined from the two months in between the death of Joy Division and the birth of New Order; and Nancy Whang gave such a strong vocal for ‘Lose Control’ that Lambkin and Maclean threw out the existing track and recorded the backing along with the vocal in one take, which the two producers working the machines live. Lambkin: “I had so much fun with Lose Control - and it inspired me to make so much more music. I've written 12 new tracks since finishing the record.”
Newbies Jay Green and New Jackson hit their marks too - Green - best known for fronting American punk bands Orchid and Panthers - narrates Is There No End as though it were sibling to From The Cradle To The Rave’s single Simple Things. New Jackson makes two appearances, on both Phase Out and OB-8 (Winter Version), adding oddball vocals and spaced-out Krautrock guitar arrangements.
How did the guests come about? Lambkin: “I didn't have a big plan, I just knew that I wanted to work with friends. I knew I wanted to do something with Museum Of Love again. I also knew I would do something with Nancy, I couldn't make a Shit Robot record without Nancy. Then while I was working on End Of The Trail, I could hear Alexis's voice in my head, it just seemed a perfect fit. New Jackson is my younger brother’s old room mate and I've wanted to do something with Jay ever since I made the Green Machine 12”s a few years back.”
What Follows was preceded by two 12” singles - Where Its At (Feat. Reggie Watts), backed with a killer remix from Johnny Aux - and original version of album closer OB-8.
Track List:
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Black Bubblegum is on black vinyl
Black Bubblegum is the newest LP from Eric Copeland, and we are not kidding when we emphasize it sounds like nothing he has done in the past. The title of the record says it all: chewy, sticky pop that doesn’t taste quite like any chewy, sticky pop you’ve had before.
Recorded at Copeland’s old practice space in South Williamsburg, Black Bubblegumcontains songs with more conventional sounds and songwriting than any of his previous releases. While there are similarities with Copeland’s earlier work in the drum patterns, major scales and vocals, Black Bubblegum moves away from his trademark psychedelic dub towards strange and fantastical pop. Wanting to take a more “hands-on” approach to these recordings, Copeland exchanged sample-driven tech and hardware for keyboards, guitars and effect pedals, creating a new sound that is oddly easy to digest despite its rejection of melody in favour of discord and dissonance. While there are similarities with Copeland’s earlier work in the drum patterns, major scales and vocals, Black Bubblegum moves away from his trademark psychedelic dub towards strange and fantastical pop; imagine Arthur Russell going into the studio with The Ramones.
For a long time, Copeland considered this collection of songs to be recordings which would never be heard. This invariably influenced certain decisions made during the creation of Black Bubblegum, blessing Copeland with the unique freedom that comes from making music never intended to be heard, let alone released.
When asked to please jot down what influenced this new album and sound, Eric replied”glam holes, glitter dreams, money troubles, apocalypse paranoia, one hit wonders, manifest destiny, my family's westward migration, body troubles (was passing kidney stones almost the entire time), LGBT disco parties, Jonathan Richman, Missing Foundation, Neil Diamond, New Orleans, poverty, getting pushed out of another Brooklyn neighbourhood... No Beach Boys, no Beatles, no Buddha... More Bad News Bears.”
Eric Copeland has been sound clashing at full volume for over twenty years, first carving out a named for himself as one third of the legendary NY-via-Providence band Black Dice. A wildly prolific solo artist, Copeland has played shit houses, party palaces and seemingly everything in between all over the world.
A long time Brooklyn, resident, Eric recently relocated to where the L Train does not run - Palma de Mallorca, Spain. While maintaining a relatively humble and low key presence in a highly competitive musical world, he has releases a prolific amount of music every year through indie labels such as L.I.E.S., Escho (Iceage), PPM (No Age), Paw Tracks (Animal Collective) and DFA.
Tracklist:
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“Echo”, the first album for DFA from acclaimed Norwegian avant garde pop vocalist Nils Bech. It is set for release on October 14th.
A busy stage actor and singer already well known in his native Norway for three albums released on Oslo’s Fysisk Format, “Echo” marks a pivotal turning point for Bech, and something of a radical sonic departure too. The keys to the seachange lie with Bech’s new collaborator, the young underground DJ, producer and beat maker Drippin’, known for his work with American rap artists such as LE1F and Cakes Da Killa. As a result, where his previous work was strange, ethereal and otherworldly – completely and utterly unique - “Echo” throbs with a renewed sense of vigour and urgency, without losing any of the idiosyncratic beauty which marked Bech’s work out before.
The sound created here is strange and immediate. Stuttering sharp bass kicks combine with clanging 5-alarm snare drums made of glass, orchestra stabs and melancholy piano lines jump in and out of the arrangements. These new elements and ideas are married to the already singular voice of Nils Bech, with “Echo” becoming something new, exciting and 100% Norwegian - homegrown and ready for the world. Just listen to new track “Waiting” for evidence of his truly inimitable vision, as martial drums anchor Bech’s floating, weightless vocals, to create something swoonsome, beguiling and defiantly its own creature.
The music comes to full fruition when performed live, as proven at two packed performances at the 2016 By Larm Festival where Nils was joined onstage by both Drippin’ & Øyvind Mathisen, who also produced, arranged and played on the album alongside Bech. Make sure not to miss the completely original and striking sound of Nils Bech.
Tracklist:
black vinyl edition and CD feature a full color art inner sleeve.
$32.98
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“Randy Bewley and Michael Lachowski’s simple lines display untoward rhythm and melody, respectively. Curtis Crowe bangs away so obdurately it’s hard to understand why he didn’t become rich. Vanessa Briscoe Hay barks and brays whatever incantatory phrases seem called for. Timeless. Cool.” Robert Christgau, Dean of American Rock Critics
“[Pylon] stands as shockingly modern and unparalleled these many years later.” Michael Stipe, R.E.M.
1983 was a banner year for Pylon. The Athens quartet released their second album, Chomp, on Atlanta-based DB Records, toured the country extensively, and played several opening slots for then-up-and-comers U2. And then, without a hint of explanation, they quit.
Their final show at the Mad Hatter in Athens, Georgia, was, as was always the case, a frenzy of minimal disco thud, post-punk guitar scree, and deliriously inspired howl. Oh, and dancing — always dancing — both in the crowd and on stage. The gig was recorded (both audio and video) for a failed PBS pilot called Athens Shows, and the tapes were put away and forgotten. That is, until now.
Around three years ago, after Pylon’s DFA reissues hit the street, Chunklet CEO (and card-carrying member of the Pylon Fan Club) Henry Owings emailed the band bemoaning the lack of bonus material on the CDs, which sparked a larger conversation. “My favorite Pylon is live Pylon,” said bassist Michael Lachowski, with which Henry wholeheartedly agreed. Following a cordial sit-down at Michael’s apartment over the New Year’s holiday of 2015, an exhaustive search began for live recordings by Pylon. More specifically, live recordings from Athens in the early ’80s. Oh, and that sounded as good, if not better, than their proper full-length albums.
Numerous dead ends followed, but finally, and somewhat fittingly, the multitrack recordings of Pylon’s final performance at the Mad Hatter in 1983 were unearthed. Once the tapes were transferred and subsequently mixed, the explosive and compelling sounds raised one very significant question: Why in the world did Pylon quit?
For a band whose legacy, in their original incarnation at least, was two full-length albums and a handful of singles, Pylon were first and foremost a live band who weren’t as interested in working in a studio. Pylon’s raison d’être was performing for a crowd, and now there’s conclusive validation.
Pylon Live is a double vinyl album recorded on the band’s home turf at the culmination of their powers, and the results could not be more stellar. An all killer, no filler set with nothing left on the cutting room floor, Pylon Live includes powerful versions of the Pylon canon from their first and second LPs and even the hard-to-find song “Party Zone” (previously available only on a DB Rec comp) and their never-before-released
When compared to the band’s prior body of work, Pylon Live bookends all of it; some might even say it’s a better representation of this Athens quartet, who thrived on bouncing around on stage infinitely more than sitting in a studio.
There’s little arguing that the Athens powerhouse trifecta of R.E.M., the B-52’s, and Pylon is peerless. And while all three bands have achieved great critical acclaim, only the first two had the commercial acclaim they deserved. Pylon Live intends to correct that.
Pylon Live was released on July 25, 2016, the birthday of deceased Pylon guitarist Randy Bewley, with release events scheduled for this summer in Atlanta and Athens.
Tracklist
1 - Working Is No Problem
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The latest LCD album, available in double LP, compact disc, or limited edition cassette.
**
2xLP
Cassette
CD
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Eric Copeland (Black Dice) returns to DFA with a brand-new set of hyper & hectic leftfield club music. Goofballs places its emphasis on playful melodies, ear worm hooks & vocals mixed with trademark machine funk rhythms that hit hard and land off-balance. Any other way would be too obvious for an artist like Eric. Perhaps he even invented a new dance genre: ‘Goofstep’. We’ll see if that one sticks…
Eric explained the creation of this new LP to us via email from his home on an island in lovely Balearic Palma Spain:
“i made it here in Palma at my studio, this is the first full record i’ve made entirely here since moving. some of this material was road tested September 2016 on tour supporting Animal Collective. This album was the result of real isolation here, countless hours, focused only on this. The whole recording & writing was a fast process. I focused most on the bass groove. I had a very minimal gear setup: 90’s drum machine, cheap bass machine and a sampler. But most important was a homemade ‘drum brain’ that Barry’s London custom made for me. Barry was in the Van Pelt Soldiers of Fortune & Oneida. That piece of gear was a big part of this record and informed the direction it took the most.”
Eric Copeland is a founding member of Black Dice as well as a prolific solo artist. Besides DFA, he has released albums on L.I.E.S., Post Present Medium & Paw Tracks.
Goofballs was mixed by Rusty Santos (who has mixed everyone from DJ Rashad to Panda Bear to Owen Pallett) and mastered by Joe Lambert. It is Eric’s third solo album for DFA Records.
Tracklist:
1) Boogieman
2) Neckbone
3) Disco Ball
4) Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo
5) Mixer Shredder
6) Close Encounters
7) Smearjob
8) Do Whatcha Wah Wah
COMPACT DISC AVAILABLE ON DFA BANDCAMP
$22.98
Exit Entrance is the DFA debut for Kohei Matsunaga aka NHK yx Koyxen.
Kohei has been making / releasing music since 1997 and has recorded for such iconic labels as Mille Plateaux, Important, Pan & Diagonal. His latest recordings explore intricate drum programming, lush melodies & sparkling arrangements. Touchstones include the legendary Clicks & Cuts compilations from the 1990’s as well as Aphex Twin & Autechre. RA called his music “bombastic techno funk….unpredictable but rarely disappointing.”
Exit Entrance is a collection of new songs that snap and flicker unlike anything Kohei has done in the past. There is a clarity and beauty to these tracks that bursts out of the speakers in a three dimensional way, matching the 3D glasses that the artist wears during all his live performances. The elegant arrangements and crisp drum breaks match the concise song titles – Kohei foregoes the typical impenetrable track names made up of numbers and shorthand, and opts for a more direct emotional sincerity through the sonic themes of the record.
Not all the music here falls into the same exact formula. As the album heads towards a close, after several tracks of harmonious beauty, we get “Outset (for Mika Vainio),” a somber hushed techno tune, dedicated to his late friend and musical collaborator, who unexpectedly passed away earlier this year as the record was being completed. What follows after this track is perhaps the real catharsis, as “Dented” ominously kicks off with acidic stabs and rolls into a tumultuous dirge of gritty techno.
In this regard, Exit Entrance can play out like a life cycle, a mini opera of birth and beauty, of sorrow and mourning. It is one of the most direct and honest records Kohei has ever made, and DFA is beyond proud to present this work from such an esteemed creative force in the electronic avant-garde world of music.
Track Listing:
1) Meeting
2) Finding
3) Intention
4) Dignity
5) Notice
6) Mutually
7) Outset (for Mika Vainio)
8) Dented
COMPACT DISC AVAILABLE ON DFA BANDCAMP
$17.98
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Back in stock, newly recut and repressed!
**
CCFX is a new supergroup out of Olympia, Washington resulting from a merger between two seminal Olympia pop music outfits; CC Dust and Trans FX. On their debut self-titled EP, artists Chris McDonnell, Mirče Popovic, Mary Jane Dunphe and David Jaques offer a record that is at once a showcase and aberration of what is currently coming out of the Pacific Northwest.
Recorded and (re)mixed with local OG Captain Tripps, the EP's sound partially recalls late 90’s/early 00’s indie pop as chiming, melodic guitar parts counter and complement Mary Jane’s brilliant voice. In the same vein of the past few decades' most beloved and coveted hitmakers (both in the clubs as well as on the radio), the music feeds on a sense of nostalgia not necessarily specific to any one time or place – sun-kissed riffs seem to go on forever, supported by a steady breakbeat.
The timbre of the music is warm and just slightly fuzzed out, and the expressive quality of Mary Jane's voice is pushed to the front. The b-side's "Ode," a late CC Dust piece, and "2Tru," written by Popovic, were put together around the time of Trans FX's The Clearing, whereas "The One to Wait" and "Venetian Screens" found Dunphe, Jaques and McDonnell picking up where they left off a year later, swept up in the productive frenzy leading to TFX's latest effort, Gaslit.
CCFX, over the course of this palpable evolution, have struck that rare yet essential balance between heartfelt sincerity and calculated disillusionment, bearing the mark of a project which is as fearless as it is humble, out there living as big as it wants to be. These four tracks grant listeners access to suppressed and superseded feelings from youth, paired with a backwards glint of whatever strange luxury this epoch's future might still hold. FFO St Etienne, Q Lazarus, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, dancing, celebrations, success stories, TFX, CCの, etc.
Tracklist
A1 - The One To Wait
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A1. The Brighter The Light
A2. The Brighter The Light (DJ Tennis Remix)
B1. The Brighter The Light (Len Leise Remix)
B2. The Brighter The Light (Octo Octa Remix)
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Back in our store for the first time in years. Confusing both critics and fans upon initial release, The Juan's first 12" is backed by "The more raucous" 41 Small Stars (aka Ad Rock!) version and rare instrumental TG-3X.
A1: By The Time I Get To Venus
A2: By The Time I Get To Venus (41 Small Stars Version)
B: TG-3X
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Tracklist:
1) Les Aphides
2) Futur Parlé
3) Complet Brouillé
4) Les agents des stups
5) Substance M
6) New Path
Essaie Pas always seek out fresh challenges. Emerging from Montreal’s sprawling electronic scene, the duo - Marie Davidson and Pierre Guerineau – feel completely free to express themselves, to sketch out hitherto unmapped musical regions.
“Essaie Pas has always been about exploring new territories” explains Pierre. “From the very first tapes, to the last one. We don’t want to do the same thing over and over again, – we just need to keep it exciting and to challenge ourselves. Take those experiences, open new boxes and see what happens.”
Forthcoming album ‘New Path’ takes this one step further. The duo’s fifth album to date – and second on powerhouse label DFA Records –is loosely based on Philip K. Dick’s A Scanner Darkly, a classic of dystopian science fiction.
“I read the book a long time ago, maybe 15 years ago, and it had a strong impression on me,” explains Pierre. “In our previous work we always looked to music as inspiration in our lives, but this time we felt the desire to try something different, that’s not based on ourselves but on someone else’s universe. It was going to be more conceptual, more political.”
‘New Path’ touches on personal ground, on addiction, loss, and the lingering strength of identity within late capitalism’s mass media paranoia. It pins down the central character’s destructive addiction, using this as a metaphor to explore the dichotomous rupture between our inner lives and our social environment, one that is often fed and soothed by drug abuse, social media, or any kind of dependence.
“I think it touches us on many levels,” Pierre continues. “We can talk about drug addiction issues, we can talk about the mass surveillance world we live in, but there’s also the experience of loss, of grief. I was surprised by how the book felt so modern and accurate to the time we live in right now. Dick’s visions of surveillance are the reality of social control today.”
It’s a record that continually ties itself in knots, a puzzle that is outwardly beguiling while the solutions remain inherently allusive. As Pierre points out, it’s even present in the title. “I like the fact that it sounds optimistic, but in the book it’s actually an illusion,” he explains. “This new path is actually going nowhere.”
But it’s a challenge met with humour, picking up on the wry elements of Philip K. Dick’s own writing – witness the subtle wit of songs such as ‘Complet Brouillé’, ‘Les Agents Des Stups’ or as in ‘Futur Parlé’s tripped-out lyrics, offsetting intense themes with something a little more playful.
The conceptual nature of ‘New Path’ belies the subtle personal shifts within the band. A husband and wife duo, Essaie Pas thrive on freedom, on parting to focus on outside projects in Montreal and Berlin before returning renewed, flushed with fresh inspiration.
“Both personally and for Essaie Pas it’s good that both of us have separate projects,” he explains. “Marie has been constantly touring solo for the last year. On my side I’ve been producing other people’s music (Bernardino Femminielli, Pelada or Sleazy to name a few). Collaborating in the studio with talented people with unique aesthetics and different creative processes is always refreshing as an artist.”
The complexity of the project mirrors the complexities within Essaie Pas’ career to date – forever unpredictable, their wiry, individual sound offers a tangled vision of tomorrow’s aesthetics. “I think this was the main challenge,” muses Pierre. “To adapt what we’ve been doing live thru the last 2 years, which before was always changing, and corner it, make it cohesive”.
Although the duo is continually reinventing themselves, exploring new concepts or addressing political issues, emotions stays the essential aspect of their work. This is cold music for cold times, yet beneath this lies a continual search for the humane.
As they conclude “Ultimately we hope we can reach out to people, in a compassionate way, this is what we aim for with this album."
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With his Familiar Five EP, London-based producer Marcus Marr has taken his darkest and most thrillingly outré turn yet. Recorded through the long dark nights in the splendid isolation of his Brixton studio, lead single “Familiar Five” is a tale of bizarre transformation that points up the fragile boundaries between dreams and reality.
“Familiar Five” feels like an outsider anthem. “It’s about being a freak and accepting it – being happy to be a freak,” notes Marr. He narrates the song with his finest deadpan lip-curl, managing to make the lyrics sound suggestive, malevolent and wildly empowering all at once. “It was sounding quite sinister as I was making it, and I thought a voice would sound good on it,” recalls Marr. “I was reading Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Kafka’s Metamorphosis as well,” he remembers. Other diverse influences setting the track’s fabulously unnerving tone include Marr’s readings about “familiar spirits” – the occult animals believed to assist medieval witches in their nefarious deeds.
The other songs featured on the Familiar Five EP include “Love Release,” which taps into the energy and live power of his DJ sets; “High Times,” a track that’s influenced by his love of early 80’s dance music (“I was definitely thinking of Nile Rodgers in 1979, 1980, there... I have a bit of a thing for that period at the beginning of the ‘80s before drum machines took control of dance music.”); and previous single “Rocketship.”
Marr is no stranger to collaboration, working with Australian musician Chet Faker on 2015’s Work EP. Work yielded two hit singles, “Birthday Card” (Annie Mac’s BBC Radio 1 first play, #1 Hype Machine) and “The Trouble with Us” (#1 Hype Machine). The Familiar Five EP, however, shows him in his individual element, an artist and performer who understands just how to make superb music for both man and machine.
A regular at Berlin’s famed nightclub Berghain/Panorama Bar since 2014, Marcus Marr recently toured in North America with The Juan Maclean. He has previously toured with the likes of Hot Chip, Floating Points, Jacques Greene and Optimo, and has performed at the highly-regarded MoMa PS1 Warm Up series, Day For Night Festival, and Art Basel Miami. Marcus has also contributed mixes to Beats in Space and Boiler Room.
Tracklist:
1) Familiar Five
2) Love Release
3) High Times
4) Rocketship
$12.98
$12.98
2x12" EP on heavyweight black vinyl, limited to 300 copies.
Tracklist:
1) Mixer Shredder (LNS Remix)
2) Neckbone (NHK yx Koyxen Remix)
3) Mixer Shredder (Physical Therapy's Tegel Mix)
4) Neckbone (Cooper Saver Remix)
5) Mixer Shredder (Machine Woman Remix)
6) Neckbone (Machine Woman Remix)
7) Mixer Shredder (Physical Therapy's Gatwick Mix)
On the Mixbone EP, two tracks from Eric Copeland’s 2017 record Goofballs get reworked by five of leftfield electronic music’s heaviest hitters. The Goofballs LP finds the Black Dice founding member conducting hectic, dancefloor-oriented experiments; The Vinyl Factory called it a “mangled, spangled journey into the fringes of industrial disco and hallucinatory club tackle.”Mixbone capitalizes on this direction with remixes that recontextualize and reshape the propulsive energy of the original songs into wholly different forms.
New York techno powerhouse and Allergy Season boss Physical Therapy contributes two aptly named takes on “Mixer Shredder” – the “Tegel Mix” churns with industrial EBM low-end, and the breakbeat and wubby bassline make the “Gatwick Mix” unmistakably English. NHK yx Koyxen remixes Eric for the second time, with a jittery and woozy electro interpretation of “Neckbone.”Cooper Saver, best known for his Far Away parties in Los Angeles, turns in one of the most unexpected remixes, keeping it 4/4 and creating what sounds like Shep Pettibone making acid house.
Coming off of her 2017 EP on Technicolour/Ninja Tune, Machine Woman decided to remix both tracks. With “Neckbone,” she adds a barely-discernible robotic narrative vocal, allegedly about Ryan Gosling. “Mixer Shredder,” on the other hand, travels from hissy lo-fi techno into something quite tranquil and beautiful. And with previous releases on 1080p, Freakout Cult, and Wania, Vancouver’s LNS channels the melodic electro tones of classic Bleep-era Warp, like a lost track from LFO or Drexciya.
“Danceable” might not be the first word one thinks of when describing Eric Copeland’s solo releases. But in a manner not dissimilar to the way Black Dice shaped the parameters of experimental music, the remixes here expand the limits of what the club can and should look like.
$14.98
This remix 12" ships June 2018
Tracklist:
A1) Love Release (Ara Koufax Remix)
A2) High Times (Gerd Janson Discotheque Remix)
B1) Familiar Five (Justin Van Der Volgen Remix)
B2) Rocketship (Prosumer's Re-Transmission)
Marcus Marr's 'Familiar Five: Remixed' EP, due digitally on May 18 via DFA Records, features remixes from Justin Van Der Volgen, Prosumer, Gerd Janson and Ara Koufax. In addition to a digital release, the EP will be available via limited edition 12” vinyl.
“It was fun to ask some of my favourite producers to remix these tracks,” notes Marr. “I love Gerd’s remixes and play them loads. Prosumer is a great producer and I’ve been a fan of his for ages. Justin Van Der Volgen I also love - his originals and his remixes are always interesting. And Ara Koufax I’ve been a fan of since their tune ‘Brenda.’”
Marr is no stranger to collaboration, working with Australian musician Chet Faker on 2015’s Work EP. Work yielded two hit singles, “Birthday Card” (Annie Mac’s BBC Radio 1 first play, #1 Hype Machine) and “The Trouble with Us” (#1 Hype Machine). The Familiar Five EP, however, shows him in his individual element, an artist and performer who understands just how to make superb music for both man and machine.
$17.98
$17.98
$14.98
$14.98
Incredible remixes of LCD Soundsystem, from the album American Dream.
This 12" features the song I Used To, remixed by Dixon.
The B Side is a 13 minute tweaked out space disco odyssey, originally appearing as a pre-American Dream bonus track.
a1) i used to (dixon retouch)
b1) pulse (v.1)
$14.98
Incredible remixes of LCD Soundsystem, from the album American Dream.
This 12" features 2 versions of Oh Baby, remixed by Lovefingers.
**THIS IS A VINYL-ONLY RELEASE** Digital files for this 12" are not available from DFA.
a1) oh baby (lovefingers remix)
b1) oh baby (lovefingers dub)
$5.00
Tracklist:
1) Mateo
2) 321 Contact
3) Electric Mud
4) Heads
5) Build-A-Brain
6) Fresco
7) Hugo
In the first part of a two-volume release, Eric Copeland (Black Dice) delivers Trogg Modal Vol. 1. It has been one year since releasing Goofballs and Eric has doubled down on his unique approach to crafting dance music, pushing a sort of 'Freakbeat 4/4' agenda even further than before. Where Goofballs was the first album recorded in its entirety in Eric’s current home of Palma de Mallorca, Spain, and the result of countless hours spent working in the studio, Trogg Modal Vol. 1 is a bit less serious and more carefree, with tracks that are propelled forward by a singular, frenzied energy.
Chunky percussive layers, hard steady kicks, and tweaked loopy vocals create a playful vibe that is best described as a tropical-industrial hybrid. The final product comes together via seven succinct, self-described “rippers,” music created both deliberately and accidentally, and always with a sense of humor that bubbles over and out through the speakers. With Trogg Modal Vol. 2 out in early 2019, this two-part release pulls into focus a vivid and unfamiliar new direction for Eric Copeland.
