Ba Da Bing! HHV Records 19 Items

Presenting the first vinyl release of Dreamloops, a collection of long-form tracks that form a stunning two-and-a-half-hour suite over four LPs. The box set has been created, mixed, and designed by Dennis Huddleston, who, as 36 (“three-six”), is among the most celebrated electronic musicians operating today. Praised for his ability to imbue songs with strong, relatable undercurrents, Huddleston achieves a new level of subconscious connection with Dreamloops.

First appearing in 2019 as a series of cassettes, Dreamloops was revisited by Huddleston in 2023 to bring newfound clarity, focus, and cohesion. There are eight pieces, each an 18:00 minute standalone self-contained work. In each song, time slows as an ensemble of sounds builds on themes and develops emotional power. Much like epic works such as The Sinking Of The Titanic by Gavin Bryars, LaMonte Young’s Well-Tuned Piano, Daughters Of Darkness by Natural Snow Buildings and Morton Feldman’s String Quartet II, each fragment of Dreamloops culls developing melodies towards hauntological steps forward. Sound spectrums don’t spread wide but instead focus on a precise musical statement, exploring its absolute potential.

That said, Dreamloops does not exist in its own idealized sphere. Deep listening reveals tape hiss, oversaturation, wow and flutter, and similar imperfections. The fingerprints deepen part of these tracks’ emotional impact. Henryk Gorecki’s humanity meets Max Richter’s sense of grandeur meets Deathprod’s absolute sound mining, as Huddleston deftly maneuvers his songs toward momentous epic impact. “Emotions get tied in our mind with specific sounds,” Huddleston says. “The whole point of creating music is to explore and discover those frequencies.” A simmering nostalgia is ever present.

“epic represents a crossroads for me as an artist. Going from intern to artist at Ba Da Bing, from solo folk singer to playing with a band for the first time and beginning to play shows on tour where people showed up. I am in awe of the artists who wanted to participate in celebrating my anniversary and reissue, from young inspiring musicians, to artists who took me under their wing, who I met on tour, and to artists I’ve looked up to since I was a teenager. Each one of these artists continue to influence my writing and provide a sense of camaraderie during this new era of sharing music.” –Sharon Van Etten Sharon Van Etten’s career since the release of her second album, 2010’s epic, is well-known; critically lauded albums, films, and television shows have continually displayed her expanding artistry. Upon its release, epic laid a romantic melancholy over the gravel and dirt of heartbreak without one honest thought or feeling spared. Her songs covered betrayal, obsession, egotism, and all the other emotions disliked in others and recognize in oneself. Van Etten’s grounded and clenched vocals conveyed a sense of hope—the notion that beauty can arise from the worst of circumstances. To celebrate the 10th anniversary of this special album’s release, and to acknowledge the convergence of Van Etten’s present and past work, she asked fellow artists she admired to participate in an expanded reissue, where each artist would cover one different song from epic in their own style. Some are musicians Van Etten herself admired in her early days (Fiona Apple, Lucinda Williams, and Aaron Dessner and Justin Vernon of Big Red Machine), some are peers (Courtney Barnett, Idles), and others are part of a younger generation of innovators (Shamir, St. Panther). What they all share is embodied by epic—a musician frankly communicating the power of music. The resulting epic Ten is a double album featuring the original plus the new album of epic covers and reimagined artwork.

Still in shrink but opened with hype sticker. Cover has tiny corner wear. Vinyl is close to NM.

Campbell Kneale (Birchville Cat Motel) returns - some percussion rattles throughout, a few instruments are arguably perceptible, & a beautiful harmony of intensity creates a gorgeous tapestry of sounds.

The world of Cycles is supine and aquatic. Sounds echo within sounds, which encircle melodies like small creatures gathering. As both a record and a series of short films, Haroula Rose & Oliver Hill have created a friendly, multi-faceted planéte sauvage.

Written & recorded in one torrentially rainy week at home in Los Angeles, the music explores the acoustics of the tactile world - sounds coarse and smooth, heavy and light, the smell of wet terrain after a long drought, a long deep breath coming up from dark water to the surface. Cycles presents earthy, bubbling spaces which are womblike and nourishing - not surprisingly, Cycles was conceived and completed in tandem with the birth of their first child.

Instruments were splayed on the rug and a set of creative constraints were put into place: no words, no drums, no guitars, yes dynamics, yes field recordings around the house, yes fades and slowly overlapping layers. And of course, bells. The result is a series of mercurial and cinematic scene changes - stepping through doors, popping out windows, crossing into and out of interior and exterior settings.

Haroula & Oliver bring together dovetailing artistic histories across media - as a filmmaker, Haroula’s feature directorial debut Once Upon a River went to over 40 festivals internationally taking home 19 awards, and her sophomore feature All Happy Families, starring Josh Radnor and executive produced by Michael Shannon, saw a theatrical release in AMCs last fall. Oliver wrote the score and original songs - that soundtrack will be released later this year.

Oliver has written string arrangements for artists such as Magdalena Bay, Dirty Projectors, Helado Negro, and Broken Bells, and has released critically acclaimed records with his bands Pavo Pavo (“quietly poetic … exploring the stuff of life, love, and loss with a clear head,” Pitchfork) and Coco ("bold, striking pop that seems to be filtered in from another dimension," CLASH.)

Haroula & Oliver’s accompanying films move through a variety of animation techniques, from the maternal figure that floats through the air in Swarm, to the morphing psychedelia of Humanist and the abstracted sonograms of Elemental - what wraps all these elements together is a sense of birth and regeneration.

The charcoal artwork and vinyl packaging was made by Haroula & Oliver the same week as recording. Please enjoy the record in headphones or however will most immerse you in its three-dimensionality.

Cross Record's new album, Crush Me, is steeped in the pressures and wonders of existence—a profound statement, especially coming from artist and death doula Emily Cross. A two-and-a-half-year gestation period offered challenges, disappointments, and joys reflected in the cramped space of the album, which explores how we handle the weights we carry. Emily Cross had held hundreds of Living Funerals and was as many episodes deep into her podcast, What I’m Looking At. She was five years into serving clients as a death doula and fresh off a tour with Loma, her band with Jonathan Meiburg (Shearwater) and Dan Duszynski, when she began work on her fourth album. After moving from Austin, TX to Dorset, UK, she established the Steady Waves Center for Contemplation (named after a track from her second record, Wabi-Sabi ), where she hosted Living Funerals, met clients, scheduled mindful tea sessions, and showcased experimental music nights. All the while, she was scribbling down song ideas. Cross’s Tascam four-track demos finally reached readiness, and she sent them to an interested major independent label. She was encouraged to push her imagination to the limits of what a record could be. So, unlike her usual process of recording as inexpensively as possible, she prepared a two-week recording session in Germany with a group of skilled musicians from around the world. True to her previous work, Cross left plenty of room in her demos for experimentation, collaboration, chance, improvisation, and complete obliteration, then resurrection when necessary. Comfort and traditional structure were eschewed in favor of unaccountable magic, prayers whispered into The Void. Cross is comfortable with the chaotic and unpredictable, a perspective demanded by her work and writing style. The Berlin Airbnb was packed with people, instruments and luggage. During a ride down in a tiny elevator to the studio, Cross realized how central the sense of being crushed was to the album. “I thought of it later and it dawned on me that ‘Crush Me’ perfectly embodied the record,” says Cross. Yes, the weight of a body laying limply atop yours, or the tight squeeze of a hug, can be pleasant. Go too far, and you’re in the hands of a cruel, adolescent god. Upon leaving Germany, the record was unfinished, and without a roadmap. As passages were recorded as isolated parts, Cross and musician Marcin Sulewski collaborated, facing a haphazard brick pile, waiting to be assembled. Work dipped in and out of view like a buoy bobbing in a violent sea over many months. During that time, the aforementioned interested label went radio silent, suddenly not seeming so sure of a thing. Collaborators disappeared, continuing the themes of abandonment, surrender, and disarray that followed the project. Cross physically felt her entire body go numb: In a twist of fate, the record was rescued by long-time friend and supporter Ben Goldberg at Ba Da Bing Records who was eager to help realize the project. Cross worked for months on the album, all the while nursing a pregnancy and continuing her full-time funeral work. The last minute participation of Seth Manchester of Machines with Magnets, who mixed and mastered, was an essential liferaft. He gave true final form to the abstracted songs. Crush Me has the effect of a spell being cast, with songs balancing heaviness and levity. Vocals, guitars, and keyboards float above, as drums and upright bass (often bowed) lurch beneath. On “Rolling Backwards” percussion wanders about while feedback squeals and persists in the distance. “Dorset Area Of Natural Beauty” starts with a thick, unhinged church organ progression punctuated by the disquieting sounds of laughter reaching the point of hysteria. “God Fax” is a slow-moving panic attack, with shallow breaths in and out framing a guttural cacophony like a wooden freighter encountering increasingly turbulent waters and vocals struck emotionless by autotune. The album ends with “Twisted Up Fence,” a reflection on life from outside the wall--wistful, warm, and comforting. Cross, likely with a smile on her face, sings: “You say it’s an endless abyss” “And I say the abyss is the best”

Almost Like You Could ignites its art punk fire with Lucy Alexander proclaiming, “Everyone wants something to talk about / But not a minute to spare, so be brief.” Not surprising from a song that’s 1:54 (‘Higher’), but the raw honesty in her lyrics ring far after the music ends. Alexander, along with bandmate Luke Cartledge, place the propulsive power of their beliefs at the core of their debut full-length album, and their guiding motivation towards social justice is as fierce as it is welcoming.

“Living as part of the queer community, and being queer myself, leads me towards supporting every person’s truth,” Alexander says. Scrounge’s songs skip to a fast beat, electrifying the entire album with a sense of empowerment. Their approach is OG punk: they make music for their peers and themselves. Only now, with a world of connections possible, they’re able to open arms wide for a far-reaching embrace. Alexander’s rich vocals give their sound its central force, anchoring the songs with confessional lines (“If this is the pinnacle, then I need a miracle/ Cause everyone’s laughing at me,” “There’s not much left/ this corpse I have to keep/ Above board.”). They sing about economic inequality, political corruption, environmental destruction, and collective change. “We’re inspired by those around us, and we write about what we care about. Art has always existed for us as a means of catharsis, a way of expressing something we might not be able to otherwise, and we hope our music can be that for other people too,” says Alexander.

Fables of the future fuel the present. Lisel (Eliza Bagg) draws from this tradition on The Vanishing Point, a daring musical odyssey of altered singing, experimental pop, broken melodies, and striking electronics. A culmination of her continual dissemblance of genre, Lisel’s new album is an epic composed of allegorical tales, forming a dystopian storybook of life in the shadow of impending catastrophe. It’s a high-concept work of contemporary pop sounds, hyperpop motifs and tropes. Every song reflects the shared psycho-emotional experience of moving towards unsettling futures and looking beyond these outcomes, to the point where the horizons vanish.

Evolving the sonic toolkit she employed on Patterns For Auto-tuned Voices And Delay (2023), Lisel transforms pop into a canvas for operatic storytelling. Along with making her own work, Bagg is a classical singer working in baroque and contemporary experimental opera, and with her project Lisel, she seeks to develop new, expressive qualities out of ancient vocal techniques from the Baroque and Renaissance periods. Her opera experience has infused her with a desire for a big, cinematic sound and holistic world-building, creating a “total artwork,” and she fits that medium into the form of a solo project. From haunting whispers to soaring melodies, she reaches back towards ancient musical traditions while incorporating futuristic sounds in order to imagine how a possible future might look back at contemporary existence.

Dystopic stories melt into pop songs, hammered to ruin. Both through sonics and lyrics, the album recounts urgent narratives as ancient mythological fables, chronicling in operatic density the deepening awareness of the world’s looming, inevitable vanishing point.

Photographer Carla Rossi further builds Lisel’s world through a series of photographs that similarly draw on Renaissance and Medieval painting, while placing them aesthetically in a digital realm. In these dramatic, hyper-stylized photos, Lisel takes up classical poses and yields iconographic symbols, further exploring the dissonance in her work as these manufactured “paintings” recall storytelling of the past while depicting images from an imagined future.

Asher White’s third album in two years (and fifteenth overall), Home Constellation Study is less a refinement of last year’s sly, quaint New Excellent Woman, and more an explosion of it. Her meticulous chamber pop has given way to resplendent swells of horns and squeals of noise, throbbing bass and queasy orchestral loops. The cover, painted by White, frames a burst of flowers against a dark blue abyss, mimicking the music: over-frenzied sambas, bleary slacker rock, hushed ambient meditations, and surprisingly slick disco, White mines her personal minutiae for tokens of political decay, alienation, and religious rapture.

The past year has found the prolific Providence-based singer-songwriter ascending through her city’s fertile experimental rock scene alongside the breakout synth-punk act babybaby_explores and her labelmates Or Best Offer. Live, White’s band plays riotous, unpredictable noise rock that nods to their city’s storied DIY scene; on Home Constellation Study, mid-album highlights like “Downstate Prairie” and “Hymn” nod to Providence’s bands of yore with their blistering sheets of feedback and pummeling drums, placing White, improbably, within the lineage of local heroes Les Savy Fav or the broken pop dispatches of Black Pus.

At its core, however, Home Constellation Study is the product of studied, monastic auteurism. Like New Excellent Woman, it was arranged, performed, recorded and mixed by White alone in her basement studio in Providence. “Happy Birthday” is an earnest psalm, a paean of devotion and remorse to God a la Beverly Glenn-Copeland that drifts along with Panda Bear haziness. White’s concept of “toxic femininity” undergoes further investigation on “Good Luck!” and “Runes,” both with Elliott Smith-like chord changes and the barbs of cynical romantics like Aimee Mann. Asher White’s vision has never been so expansive and unpredictable.

Only record 2! Record 1 is missing! Orange vinyl 2021 reissue. Vinyl seems unplayed. Tiny wear.

Matt Loveridge is a prolific multi-instrumentalist condemned to Bristol, UK. He has over sixty solo records under various monikers, done before and after his time in Beak>, none of which appear on major streaming platforms, nor get much attention. His work as Mxlx is a miasmatic fog, and he tosses the listener deep into it. Kicking Away At The Decrepit Walls Til The Beautiful Sunshine Blisters Thru The Cracks is his most celebrated release (if one counts hate mail), and it appears here for the first time both on vinyl and somewhere not on his own site.

Songs swerve between ambient, electronic ambient noise, metal, and industrial. Vocal harmonies ride arpeggiated basslines and shimmering synth lines, ascending upwards before plummeting into distorted screams. And yet, Loveridge’s aggression does not overlook introspection. He faces one stripped of all pretense, creaking “I’ve got that dumb skull of yours locked in place,” apologizing, “I’m sorry for all that I’ve done in the name of myself” and laughing in one’s face, “Just kidding, I hope you rot in the ground.” Drawing from an obsession with literature, he’s converted a life stricken with bouts of depression and homelessness into febrile sonic turbulence. He channels the intensity of groups like Pharmakon and The Body, while embracing compositional noise like Colin Stetson. With droning organs, emotionless chanting, and fleeting walls of sound, his results have more to do with cosmic futility than petty score-settling.

Mxlx produces barren liturgies of raw emotion, like a fallen medieval monk given a synthesizer. He pulls the listener from comfort, spits in their eye, and abandons them as roadkill. An explosive catharsis not for faint hearts or distracted minds.

Matt Loveridge is a prolific multi-instrumentalist condemned to Bristol, UK. He has over sixty solo records under various monikers, done before and after his time in Beak>, none of which appear on major streaming platforms, nor get much attention. His work as Mxlx is a miasmatic fog, and he tosses the listener deep into it. Kicking Away At The Decrepit Walls Til The Beautiful Sunshine Blisters Thru The Cracks is his most celebrated release (if one counts hate mail), and it appears here for the first time both on vinyl and somewhere not on his own site.

Songs swerve between ambient, electronic ambient noise, metal, and industrial. Vocal harmonies ride arpeggiated basslines and shimmering synth lines, ascending upwards before plummeting into distorted screams. And yet, Loveridge’s aggression does not overlook introspection. He faces one stripped of all pretense, creaking “I’ve got that dumb skull of yours locked in place,” apologizing, “I’m sorry for all that I’ve done in the name of myself” and laughing in one’s face, “Just kidding, I hope you rot in the ground.” Drawing from an obsession with literature, he’s converted a life stricken with bouts of depression and homelessness into febrile sonic turbulence. He channels the intensity of groups like Pharmakon and The Body, while embracing compositional noise like Colin Stetson. With droning organs, emotionless chanting, and fleeting walls of sound, his results have more to do with cosmic futility than petty score-settling.

Mxlx produces barren liturgies of raw emotion, like a fallen medieval monk given a synthesizer. He pulls the listener from comfort, spits in their eye, and abandons them as roadkill. An explosive catharsis not for faint hearts or distracted minds.

Ba Da Bing is releasing the soundtrack to 2022’s paeon to cuisine prep, Flux Gourmet. A vibrant, four-coursed, 23-track double album, Flux Gourmet includes contributions by Heather Trost, Jeremy Barnes, Marta Salogni, Cavern of Anti-Matter, and Roj (Broadcast), as well as Strickland’s own compositions as part of The Sonic Catering Band. British Director and sonic pioneer, Peter Strickland, known for The Duke of Burgundy (2014), Berberian Sound Studio (2012) and Björk: Biophilia Live (2014), has always pushed visuals and narrative to absurd heights. In Flux Gourmet, performance artists taking part in a residency dedicated to sonic catering combining cooking, sound and theater. Food is amplified, microphones are jammed against blenders, and the sizzling sound of the frier turns becomes an ominous rattle. The film’s soundtrack is equally as process oriented, experimental, and kaleidoscopic as its protagonists’ practice. Contributors are Cavern of Anti-Matter, Jeremy Barnes, Heather Trost, Roj (formerly of Broadcast), Tim Harrison, Dan Hayhurst and Nurse With Wound.

The Dead C’s trio of albums in the middle of their harsh 90s reality served for many as entry points to the band. Operation Of The Sonne, The White House and Tusk received wider distribution than the band had ever seen before, and this was the first rays of them being considered amongst the most important rock bands of the 20th century. This trio of vinyl reissues capture their intensity and presence in a way that may even blow out the candle of the original pressings. Newly remastered by Lasse Marhaug, and with bonus tracks, these 2023 reissues have been cut carefully and loud, with the sonic wars heard on these now-classic tracks more blaring than ever. How does one follow up one of the most immediately-revered noise rock releases of all time? Definitely not by spending ten times the money and time recording their next release and doing a bloated double album. Tusk (now including bonus track “There Is Something To Be Gained”), The Dead C record, is uncompromising and unrelenting. Here’s a band enjoying more attention than they ever got before, and they launch their new album with a long, ominous percussive rattle. Tusk digs into the thought bubble that formed via Operation Of The Sonne and The White House, sharpens the edges and reveals some of their greatest broken progressions and vicious feedback. The band is at their performative peak, staking their ground with an amp covered in dirt.

The Dead C’s trio of albums in the middle of their harsh 90s reality served for many as entry points to the band. Operation Of The Sonne, The White House and Tusk received wider distribution than the band had ever seen before, and this was the first rays of them being considered amongst the most important rock bands of the 20th century. This trio of vinyl reissues capture their intensity and presence in a way that may even blow out the candle of the original pressings. Newly remastered by Lasse Marhaug, and with bonus tracks, these 2023 reissues have been cut carefully and loud, with the sonic wars heard on these now-classic tracks more blaring than ever. The Dead C on The White House, now including bonus track “Breakdown/World”: “Recorded in the winter of 1994, sessions were accompanied by snow, an infrequent but always super-exciting event in downtown Dunedin. Mainly if not entirely recorded direct to Revox B77, just like The Clean’s Oddities. Our version of Led Zepp IV with no ‘Stairway’, as recorded by the Meat Puppets in a K-hole. Originally M&D by Matador, this is as major label as we got. Mere pseud post-grunge sell-out moves-ah.”

The Dead C’s trio of albums in the middle of their harsh 90s reality served for many as entry points to the band. Operation Of The Sonne, The White House and Tusk received wider distribution than the band had ever seen before, and this was the first rays of them being considered amongst the most important rock bands of the 20th century. This trio of vinyl reissues capture their intensity and presence in a way that may even blow out the candle of the original pressings. Newly remastered by Lasse Marhaug, and with bonus tracks, these 2023 reissues have been cut carefully and loud, with the sonic wars heard on these now-classic tracks more blaring than ever. Coming after the monster that was Harsh 70s Reality, and its evil twin, Clyma Est Mort, this album has always confounded even soi-disant Dead C fans. Side one documents the discovery of the analogue synthesizer coupled with field recordings from the basement of Willowbank, Koputai’s “most stately” home. Side two emerged spontaneously to cassette on stage at the “fabled” Empire Tavern—and it still sounds like stripping the breathable atmosphere from an already-depleted biosphere.

A decade on from the release of Ripely Pine, Lady Lamb’s Aly Spaltro has created the definitive 5xLP box set to commemorate and expand upon her landmark debut. With the original songs remastered, Ten Years Of Ripely Pine also includes three LPs of newly recorded studio material, produced and arranged by Spaltro and mixed by original co-producer Nadim Issa. It captures the time, mood, art and ambition of Aly Spaltro in her early twenties, who had already accumulated years of playing and self-recording experience before laying down tracks for this giant of a debut record, and the sage wisdom of a decade’s experience.

Asher White’s music is a complex and heartfelt reaction to the churn of the modern world. With tender intimacy and resounding anxiety, White takes a wide view through the lens of her own queer sexual politics and transgender identity; what does it mean to renew, to progress, to transform? What is lost, gained, or irreversibly altered?

At 22 years old, White has developed a massive self-released discography: over a dozen albums since 2015, each one started the moment the last one was finished. New Excellent Woman is a distillation of these experiments and discoveries, a new achievement in songwriting that stands astride the cracks in the earth and lopsided ground. Songs jump between styles like a pubescent sex drive, all locked together by White’s ability to pull melody out of chaos.

New Excellent Woman wanders a meticulous cut-and-pasted path paved by forebears like The Books and Animal Collective. It sounds like a live band, bursting with kinetic energy, but the album was constructed alone in her Providence, RI studio, where she arranged, performed, recorded, and mixed the record herself. The ingenuity of Dirty Projectors is laced with the catchiness and warmth of The Kinks, and maybe a dash of Elephant 6. It’s like an Adhd party and the listener is the first to arrive.

New Excellent Woman is built from detritus, often quite literally: from the thrift store amplifiers and scavenged keyboards she uses to her penchant for discovering and sampling obscure YouTube videos into her songs. The thick fog of “Bedsong” is made up of little more than a Hammond organ found on craigslist and a few muffled drums piled with rags; opener “Ptolemy” uses a seemingly random video of teenage boredom as its textural and rhythmic backdrop.

The ceaseless march of the modern world can feel both awe-inspiring and abysmal. New highways and condominiums are erected in a matter of weeks as historic burial grounds are demolished. Even short TikToks seem to expire in real time. Asher White won’t change things, but New Excellent Woman gives one a fresh and poignant perspective of the shifting world around through her eyes—and maybe a connection is the best one can hope for.