Indierock | Alternative Tape 446 Items

Erica Eso is a Brooklyn and Kingston, NY-based project led by composer / vocalist / producer Weston Minissali. Minissali has participated in New York’s music scene for more than decade as a member of projects like avant-rock post-pop band Cloud Becomes Your Hand and chimeric musique concrète experimentalists VaVatican, while his work at the head of Erica Eso has manifested with varied ensembles on albums including 2019 and 129 Dreamless GMG. Minissali’s music under the Erica Eso banner fuses compositional strategies of the avant garde, including the use of microtonal note voicings and advanced synthesis, with songwriting in the vein of art pop. His lush, tightly structured songs teem with melismatic topline melodies, layered vocal harmonies, and fast-shifting narrative arcs, all built over a sturdy instrumental foundation. 192, the first Erica Eso release with Hausu Mountain, captures the project in the quintet formation that solidified in 2017 and rigorously rehearsed in the years that followed. Their recordings and the live shows from this period, which culminated in their final performance in this configuration in October of 2019, document the music of Erica Eso at a peak of live band complexity and near telepathic collaborative energy, giving life to Minissali’s music with a more solidified ensemble of hands and voices than ever before. In his attempt to balance pop tradition with experimentation, Minissali fills 192 with songs that work as much on the level of instinctive heartstring-tugging grandeur as armchair analysis. Listeners can lose themselves in the mosaic of pulsating synth tones and try to trace the sprawling structural maps that each song lays out, or full-on melt when confronted with those lead melodies and vocal harmonies.

LIFE are anchored by their hometown; the geography, history and community has always been the inspiration behind their creativity and on their third LP, North East Coastal Town, the band pay homage to Hull and its folk. North East Coastal Town is mature; it finds the band at the height of their powers as they carve-up a wide-screen, brooding body of work that is drenched in a sense of belonging and reflection but still impressively maintains their trademark swagger and ear for pop sensibilities and guitar hooks."Hull and the surrounding area runs through our DNA and has shaped us, weathered us, empowered us, embraced us and made us feel accepted. North East Coastal Town is our love letter to the city. The album is an ode to kinship and relationship with its musical and lyrical spine picking out themes of love, desire, beauty, horror, chaos, pride and most importantly the sense of belonging. Upon writing and recording this album it was important to us that this sense of belonging was also reflected in the album's craft and therefore we used locally based studios, equipment, gear, and the community around us to establish what it means to belong in a North East Coastal Town."When the pandemic gripped the world in March 2020, LIFE were in the midst of promoting their acclaimed second album - A Picture Of Good Health (Sept 2019); they had just completed an arena support tour with Kaiser Chiefs in the UK, a triumphant main stage appearance at Rockaway Beach and flown to New York for New Colossus Festival ahead of a packed SXSW and a US tour with IDLES. They scrambled home on the last plane back from New York on 17th March.The album was BBC 6 Music's Album Of The Day, BBC Radio 1's Album Of The Weekend and was one of BBC 6Music's Albums of The Year; all four singles from the album were play-listed at 6Music, and the band were nominated for two AIM Awards 2020 - Best Live Act and Best (Difficult) Second Album and they played major UK festivals including Glastonbury, Latitude, Reading Festiva...

A muffled cry into the technological darkness, Contemporary Movement slid into the world right as the MP3 was seeping out of college dorms. A 39-minute drift into the void, drenched in Cold War-era reverb and then submerged in four track hiss for good measure. Duster constructed a Brutalist masterpiece on the outskirts of a suburban mall, as if to say, "We were here.""Music for dark spaces and closed eyelids, deeply psychedelic but without sprawl, ambient music with a serrated edge of punk."_The Ringer

St. Petersburg pathfinder Vladimir Karpov coaxes hushed auras of keys, metronomes, fog, and feeling to evoke hazed and isolated realms, traced in altered states. His latest collection—and vinyl debut—maps the maze at “the bottom of self,” subterranean consciousness manifested from decaying synthesizer and shadowed pulse: music for fading torchlight. Labyrinth leads through six misty, mystic chambers of dreams, drones, delirium, and phaser’d percussion, spiraling in slow, sacred arcs, in quest of “the inner world.” Tosya CHAIKINA’s ghost vocals on “False Angel Lullaby” and “Shadows Of Forgotten Ancestors” bring a whispered hymnal mood, but otherwise the album is ambient and abandoned, obscure meditations along corridors of candlelit runes, “to find the right path, to find the true answer.”

Access to song stems. Glass-replicated CD in digipak case & 8-page booklet with lyrics and new art by Liz Lehman. Blending 8-bit aesthetics with soul-baring queer bedroom indie, New Jersey-based synthpop project The Scary Jokes is the brainchild of singer-songwriter Liz Lehman. Their signature style of gentle, upbeat psychedelia contrasted with pointed, introspective lyrics earned 2016’s April Fools considerable buzz in the internet underground.

On their 2019 followup, Burn Pygmalion!!! A Better Guide to Romance, Lehman weaves a concept album around insecurity and romantic alienation, telling the story of a journalist ruminating on her relationship as she housesits for her movie-star girlfriend. The album expanded the group’s sound, complimenting Lehman’s electronic production with guitarwork by new band member Juniper Abernathy and a guest performance by Louie Zong. Featuring the song “Community Gardens,” Burn Pygmalion cemented The Scary Jokes as one of the most exciting new artists of the 2010s.

Needlejuice Records is proud to bring Burn Pygmalion to physical formats. In addition to CD and cassette, the album will be available on colored vinyl in two configurations: a green\pink half-and-half and a fiery-red galaxy. The album has been remastered for physical media by Angel Marcloid.

A download code is included. Pink & Green Sandwiched Shells, Dolby B Noise Reduction and 3-panel Jcard. Blending 8-bit aesthetics with soul-baring queer bedroom indie, New Jersey-based synthpop project The Scary Jokes is the brainchild of singer-songwriter Liz Lehman. Their signature style of gentle, upbeat psychedelia contrasted with pointed, introspective lyrics earned 2016’s April Fools considerable buzz in the internet underground.

On their 2019 followup, Burn Pygmalion!!! A Better Guide to Romance, Lehman weaves a concept album around insecurity and romantic alienation, telling the story of a journalist ruminating on her relationship as she housesits for her movie-star girlfriend. The album expanded the group’s sound, complimenting Lehman’s electronic production with guitarwork by new band member Juniper Abernathy and a guest performance by Louie Zong. Featuring the song “Community Gardens,” Burn Pygmalion cemented The Scary Jokes as one of the most exciting new artists of the 2010s.

Needlejuice Records is proud to bring Burn Pygmalion to physical formats. In addition to CD and cassette, the album will be available on colored vinyl in two configurations: a green\pink half-and-half and a fiery-red galaxy. The album has been remastered for physical media by Angel Marcloid.

Dummy ist eine Rockband aus Los Angeles, bestehend aus Alex Ewell, Emma Maatman, Nathan O'Dell und Joe Trainor. Ihr Debütalbum "Mandatory Enjoyment" (Trouble in Mind) erschien Ende 2021 und erntete Lob von Pitchfork, Stereogum und vielen anderen. Die Band tourte zwei Jahre lang, um das Album zu unterstützen, und es ist diese transformative Erfahrung, die durch "Free Energy", den berauschenden Nachfolger von "Mandatory Enjoyment", pulsiert. Die kreativ rastlose Band Dummy (Ewell: Schlagzeug, Synthesizer, Bass; Maatman: Gesang, Synthesizer, Orgel; O'Dell: Gesang, Gitarre, Orgel; Trainor: Gitarre, Bass, Synthesizer) wollte für ihr nächstes Album härter, tanzbarer und psychedelischer werden. Das bedeutete, dass sie die experimentellen Möglichkeiten elektronischer Texturen auf die elementaren Qualitäten des Rocks anwenden wollten, d.h. mehr Gesangsschleifen, Sampling, verrücktere Rhythmen und verspielte Synthesizer - aber sie wollten die Samples von Trainors Gitarre einsetzen, Maatman mutiger singen lassen, mit kalten mechanischen Elementen auf warme und funkelnde Weise experimentieren und sich stärker an traditionelle, aber immer noch großartige Formen von Rockgitarrenexperimenten wie Feedback anlehnen. Das Ergebnis ist ein Album, das die Fähigkeit der Musik feiert, den Körper zu bewegen, sei es durch eine zähneknirschende Wand aus MBV-eskem Lärm, einen klebrigen Pop-Refrain oder eine fröhliche Drum-Machine - oder, wenn man Dummy ist, vielleicht alles im selben Song. Popmusik war schon immer ein wichtiger Bestandteil von Dummys Sound und manifestiert sich auf unterschiedliche Weise in "Free Energy“: Die sprudelnde Synthesizer-Sequenz, die mit einem Korg EM1 gemacht wurde und in "Nullspace" auftaucht, der aufgedrehte Drone-Pop, der von Dunedin Sound Bands der zweiten und dritten Welle wie Look Blue Go Purple und Dadamah inspiriert ist, und der motorische Beat, der "Nine Clean Nails" antreibt. „Nine Clean Nails" ist vielleicht der selbstbewussteste Popsong, den Dummy je aufgenommen hat, und ein Beispiel für das Gleichgewicht zwischen der Intensität der Live-Performance und den elektronischen Ergänzungen auf "Free Energy". Die tänzerischen rhythmischen Elemente wurden aus einem von Ewell aufgenommenen Drumloop erzeugt, während die Bridge mit den Call-and-Response-Gitarren von O'Dell und dem ausdrucksstarken Gesang von Maatman an die Feelies erinnert. "Free Energy" enthält außerdem Gastauftritte des Saxophonisten und elektroakustischen Künstlers Cole Pulice (Moon Glyph) aus Oakland, der Saxophon und Bläsersynthesizer beisteuert, sowie Jen Powers vom Powers / Rolin Duo (Astral Editions, Feeding Tube Records)

“If rock ’n’ roll’s a dream, please don’t wake me.”

Midwife’s No Depression In Heaven, her fourth studio album, was written primarily in the back of vans while on tour endlessly over the course of the past few years. The record engages with the contemplative spirit of rock ’n’ roll from within a body in motion.

No Depression In Heaven explores themes of sentimentality, the interplay between dreams, memory, and fantasy, and a familiar subject seen throughout all of Midwife’s work: grief. Madeline Johnston takes a look at the tender and transcendent underneath a hard exterior of leather and studs, exposing a different side of the heavy music scene, where Johnston’s project has been living and evolving.

Recording at home in New Mexico between 2021 and 2023, Johnston aimed to create something that was rough around the edges, returning to a free recording process that was less focused on perfection and more attuned to expressing the spirit that lives inside of the songs. The album features collaborations with Chris Adolf and Michael Stein of American Culture, Ben Schurr and Tim Jordan of Nyxy Nyx, Angel Diaz of Vyva Melinkolya, and Allison Lorenzen.

Inspired by ephemeral moments that make up life on tour, the totemization of vehicles, outlaws, and the psyche of America’s underbelly, No Depression In Heaven affirms Johnston’s existential status as a woman of the highway.

DestructionDerby(Remixes and Alternative Mixes) is a collection of the remixes and alternative mixesfrom the era of their debut album - Future Primitive. Reconfigured by the finest minds in underground rock n roll and trashed onto a mixtape cassette, the mixtape brings together remixes of Data Animal along side remixes undertaken by Data Animal of other artists.DestructionDerbyis out on cassette and digitally May 31st , only on Dedstrange.

Temir Alcy (producer Enir Da - Dali Muru & The Polyphonic Swarm and multi-instrumentalist Charles Lmx) is at the junction of spherical textures of acoustic clouds and shapeshifting forms of immersive electronic percussive patterns. By intertwining etherionic atmospheres and organic moods to magnetic and hypnotic rhythms, Temir Alcy explores the mysteries of the future and the unknown through a journey of sensory trance, where whispers and melodies of voices strike a vivid contrast between emotions’ fragility and sound’s solidity enhanced by a downtempo, leftfield and erratic kraut’s feel.

A sprawling patchwork of the artist’s dreams and fears, Parannoul’s third album After the Magic explores the enigmatic solo artist’s life in the wake of his second album’s overnight success.

Expanding on the shoegaze-shaded emo that made Parannoul’s To See the Next Part of the Dream so beloved by lo-fi and indie rock fans alike, After the Magic sees the anonymous auteur striving to write a follow-up as worthy of acclaim as the last.

Across the album’s ten songs, Parannoul plunges yet deeper into his diverse pool of influences, coming back to the surface with a record that captures and extends the magic of its predecessor. Unexpected flashes of orchestral ambient and glitched-out electronica meld seamlessly with Parannoul’s signature passages of noisy, distortion-laden shoegaze, offering a real time glimpse into the maturation of one of indie rock’s most exciting artists.

New York musician Luke Wyatt describes his instrumental hypnagogic guitar guise Torn Hawk as “music of a noble fabric whose weave is flawed and frayed.” With a decade of hindsight, the looping beats, smeared synths, and grainy hooks of 2014’s Through Force Of Will have taken on a richer cast, like closing credits anthems to heroic 80’s films long since forgotten.

From widescreen new wave (“I Am Returning”) and baggy psychedelia (“Palace Racket”) to shredded New Romanticism (“Streets On Fire”) and glassy shoegaze (“Blindsided”), the songs fuse victory and vulnerability, soaring solos and tape hiss. Wyatt characterizes the songs’ low fidelities and “distressed edges” as “intentional lace,” smudging outlines and degrading surfaces to carve out “more room to dream.”

This 2024 memorial edition adds 25 minutes of unreleased vintage bonus material, expanding Torn Hawk's vision of “error and compression” across echo-soaked riffs, smoky synth fugues, and blazing technoid rock. Throughout, the music surges, yearns, and burns, unrestrained and undefeated, forever in pursuit of Wyatt’s mission to lift the listener from “the cave of loneliness to the amphitheater of self-love.”