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Baron Zen
At the Mall
Release Date: 03/07/06
Label: Stones Throw
CD: $14.98 Sale $12.98 |
Peanut Butter Wolf, before making his name as a DJ and producer and before founding Stones Throw Records, was programming drums for a one-man punk rock/disco army known as Baron Zen. Known, that is, to almost no one, because Baron Zen did not play shows, did not release records, rejected all forms of publicity, and above all, rejected the boundaries separating hip hop, disco, punk rock and pop. Sweet Steve is the man behind Baron Zen. His recording career as Baron Zen lasted from 1988 to 1992, the best of which is collected on this album -- his first and only. He was ahead of his time in the '80s, but the times have been threatening to catch up with him. Baron Zen today sounds like the missing link between PiL and DFA...or suburban punk rock garage bands of the '80s and the DJ culture of today...or The Dead Milkmen if they had been hip hop B-boys.
Genre/Style: Punk / Dance |
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Isobell Campbell & Mark Lanegan
Ballad of the Broken Seas
Release Date: 03/07/06
Label: V2
CD: $14.98 |
There's a certain "beauty & the beast" quality to the greatest male/female, singer/songwriter duos. Consider Jane Birken hooking up with Serge Gainsburg, or Nancy Sintra and Lee Hazelwood. And so it is with "Ballad of the Broken Seas", an album length collaboration between Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan.There's a similar contrast between Isobel's aching, pristine chill of a voice and Lanegan's wounded, regret-stewed burr.
Genre/Style: Rock / Pop |
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Neko Case
Fox Confessor Brings the Flood
Release Date: 03/07/06
Label: Anti
CD: $14.98
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Neko is a major poet by any standard a songwriter less interested perhaps in traditional narrative form than in distilling a pure moment of time. She claims no genre nor utilizes any classic formula for her songs and singing. More than anything shr thrives in the spaces in between her music. After two years in the making "Fox Confessor Brings The Flood" is in many ways the sum total of her journey.
Genre/Style: Rock |
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Dogme 95
The Reagle Beagle
Release Date: 03/07/06
Label: Empyrean
CD: $13.98 Sale $10.98 |
On his second full length, The Reagle Beagle, Dogme 95 tells the fictional story of himself on the H.M.S. Beagle with Charles Darwin, during Darwin’s discoveries of Evolution, Survival of the Fittest, and Plate-techtonics. Dogme 95’s goals were not only to build the music around historical facts, but most importantly combine narrative, music, and culture. The Reagle Beagle is a modern record that sounds futuristic and primitive all in the same stroke. Listen for handclaps, chants, goat toes, and organic delights… The Reagle Beagle works best in layers.
- Robert Wright
Genre/Style: Rock / Acoustic / Alt Country |
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Goldfrapp
Supernature
Release Date: 03/07/06
Label: Mute
CD: $15.98
Limited Edition w/ DVD $19.98 |
Finally a domestic release! Glam rock hooks, luscious synths & sex kitten vocals. It's required by law to love Goldfrapp.
Genre/Style: Pop |
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Half-Handed Cloud
Halos & Lassos
Release Date: 03/07/06
Label: Asthmatic Kitty
CD: $13.98
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With hints of fitness music and video game soundtracks, "Halos and Lassos" tromps through nineteen songs like a mostly sunny afternoon in Berkeley, CA, home of band leader John Ringofer. With the modal purity of Moondog, symphonic elements of Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" and the ancient art of punning. The album boast pop melodies arranged around the Ambidextrous a vintage 80's kidney shaped electronic autoharp drum machine synthesizer. Biblical allusions, sophisticated theology and lyrical displays of affection are measured by Ringhofer's indelible sense of humor.
Genre/Style: Pop / Folk |
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I Love You But I Have Chosen Darkness
Fear Is On Our Side
Release Date: 03/07/06
Label: Secretly Canadian
CD: $13.98 Sale $10.98
LP: $13.98
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The full-length debut of this Texas band follows their 2003 self-titled five-song EP; a much poppier affair produced by Spoon's Britt Daniel, with a dose of thunder and lightning, pain and pleasure. Produced this time by Paul Barker (Ministry, Revolting Cocks), the record is more sadness than joy with lonely lyrics and hauntingly echoed guitar persuaded by chorused basslines. The sound is coaxing and familiar, then howling and anguished. Reminiscent of latter-era Talk Talk; with the introspection also comes passion. "Fear Is On Our Side" isn't trivial or banal, trendy or futile. It's a testament to our times, our revolutions, and our meaning. It's timeless, maniacal, and resounding. Darkness and truth.
Genre/Style: Rock / Post Punk |
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Glenn Kotche
Mobile
Release Date: 03/07/06
Label: Nonesuch
CD: $15.98
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Wilco drummer/percussionist Glenn Kotsche's solo label debut, Mobile, comprises eight original compositions, with inspirations ranging from mobile sculpture, coimposer (and label-mate) Steve Reich, the Ramayana, Wilco drumbeats, the Nonesuch Explorer series, and percussionists Tony Allen and Ed Blackwell. The album features a wide range of instruments, including vibraphone, kalimba, mbira and drum kit.
Genre/Style: Rock / Experimental / Jam |
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Milosh
Meme
Release Date: 03/07/06
Label: Plug Research
CD: $14.98 Sale $11.98
LP: $11.98 |
Recorded in the 12 months after his relationship's collapse, Meme explores all facets of the newly-single male experience: heartache, loneliness, lust, guilt, soul searching, and eventually, romantic rebirth. These candid tales would only be half-victories without a worthy backdrop, though, and the music here never fails to impress. Milosh's nuanced production subtly shades the emotional content of his lyrics, adeptly capturing every fluctuation in mood. Gliding on shuffling beats and post-Blade Runner keyboards, Meme fits comfortably alongside Junior Boys and Boards of Canada, using a broad electronic palette to frame experiences charged with raw feeling.
Genre/Style: Pop / Electro |
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Mogwai
Mr. Beast
Release Date: 03/07/06
Label: Matador
CD: $13.98
Limited Edition w/ DVD : $16.98
LP: $17.98 |
Though there are still hints aplenty of the subtle beauty that adomed big chunks of "Rock Action" and "Happy Songs For Happy People" there's an equal portion of head crushers on this one that will leave you gasping for air. An ultramodern rock masterpiece, that lives up to it's name.
Genre/Style: Rock / Post Rock |
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Mudhoney
Under A Billion Suns
Release Date: 03/07/06
Label: Sub Pop
CD: $13.98
LP: $13.98 |
For 18 years, Mudhoney has proved to be one of the most consistently electrifying acts to survive the grunge implosion, whatever that was. The wolfish howls of singer Mark Arm, soulful splatterings of guitarist Steve Turner, and frenzied fills of drummer Dan Peters have produced nine albums to date, most of which are considered neo-garage classics. Original bassist Matt Lukin has been replaced by the inimitable Australian Guy Maddison. "Under A Billion Suns" is performed with the same amplified urgency of their previous work. Mudhoney has never swayed from their vision of making really loud rock, and this album is no exception. Produced by three notable knobsters, Phil Ek, Johnny Sangster, and Tucker Martine, and boasting a blaring horn section, this record exposes a more snidely political-fueled side of our shaggy heroes, but one revealed through the invariables of the Mudhoney recipe: thick, soggy punk riffs and underrated guitar dynamics, psychedelic tangents, and snot-nosed finger pointing. Loud and fierce.
Genre/Style: Rock |
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Pink Mountaintops
Axis of Evol
Release Date: 03/07/06
Label: Jagjaguwar
CD: $14.98 Sale $11.98
LP: $11.98 |
With Axis of Evol, Pink Mountaintops' second full-length record, Mcbean has once again created something much greater than the sum of his influences. Axis of Evol begins with a foreboding spiritual. It then almost immediately ramps up into a thumping, buzzing, blissful haze, at various parts sounding like the Velvet Underground or Spacemen 3 or the Jesus and Mary Chain circa Psycho Candy, and then ends with a hypnotic, Smog-like meditation. Throughout the record, Mcbean sings about love and war, the love of war, and the war of love-on the body, on the mind and on the soul. Home-recorded and largely self-produced, Axis of Evol is a further testament to the vital prolificacy of Stephen Mcbean.
Genre/Style: Rock |
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Rogers Sisters
The Invisible Deck
Release Date: 03/07/06
Label: Too Pure
CD: $13.98
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Produced by Tim Barnes, this record is a sonic leap forward for the group; combining a more adventurous sense of songwriting with a larger, wider production value. Drawing on a range of sounds that includes new wave, no wave, punk, post-punk, and garage rock, sisters Jennifer and Laura, plus honorary Rogers Miyuki Furtado, forge a completely original sound. A record full of twitchy guitar lines, call-and-response vocals, and swaggering beats reminiscent of bands like ESG, The Bush Tetras, The B-52s, and The Slits.
Genre/Style: Rock / Now Wave |
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Stereolab
Fab Four Suture
Release Date: 03/07/06
Label: Too Pure
CD: $10.98
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Spin Magazine hailed Stereolab as one of pop's 50 most influential ensembles. Over fifteen prolific years, the band has produced qualitatively consistent and unique music that has been instantly recognized by media. In addition to over a dozen glittering LPs, their back catalog is littered with fan-pleasing gems: limited editions, one-off collaborations, split singles, etc. This CD/double 10-compilation also includes songs from the previous 7-inch series released in September 2005. "England's lounge-pop heroes" - Blender. "Stereolab's unmistakable cosmonaut pop...was a trademarked stamp of the '90s. No one else managed to duplicate their retro-futurist harmony or even come close to naming their albums with the same pre-Fridge Magnet Poetry serendipitous absurdity" - Fader.
Genre/Style: Pop |
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Terrestrial Tones
Dead Drunk
Release Date: 03/07/06
Label: Paw Tracks
CD: $13.98 Sale $10.98
LP: $11.98 |
Brooklyn's Terrestrial Tones is the roommate duo of Eric Copeland (Black Dice) and Dave Portner (The Animal Collective). Over the years the two have been quietly making music in between Animal Collective and Black Dice commitments. Recorded in their apartment while living in Paris last summer, Terrestrial Tones' third record Dead Drunk sounds like the duo spent a bit too much time in the Parisian flea markets. African food stands, forgotten European pop records, discarded American analog pedals and junk, old Soviet electronics, they all come together into something highly disconcerting, curiously pleasurable, and beyond new.
Genre/Style: Experimental |
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Various Artists
Big Apple Rappin'
Release Date: 03/07/06
Label: Soul Jazz
CD: $24.98 Sale $19.98 |
Subtitle: 'The Early Days of Hip-Hop Culture in New York City 1979-1982.' "Big Apple Rappin' tells the story of the birth of rap/hip-hop culture in New York City, featuring an amazing collection of the first rap records along with original flyer art, exclusive photos, interviews and more. Starting in the Bronx in the late 1970s rap grew out of a combination of disco and funk breaks alongside the Soundsystem culture of Jamaica (Dancehalls, DJs, soundclashes) first brought to the New York block party jams of the first hip-hop DJ, Kool Herc. This album brings together for the first time all the key ingredients that gave birth to hip-hop culture -- independent record labels, flyer art, the first photos. The first record producers were both American and Jamaican-emigrees. Featuring interviews with artists, producers, one of the first-ever photographers to document the scene, Joe Conzo, flyer-designer Buddy Esquire -- Big Apple Rappin' is an incredible overview of the birth of hip-hop culture. The music on this album features both classic and unbelievably rare tracks from the first days of rap most of which have never been re-issued and unheard outside of New York in the last 25 years! This is a double CD with slipcase and 64-page booklet. The vinyl comes in two super-loud double-vinyl albums (vol 1 and 2) for all DJs.
Genre/Style: Hip Hop / Old School |
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Various Artists
Bongo Flava : Swahili Rap From Tanzania
Release Date: 03/07/06
Label: Out Here Records
CD: $19.98 |
Bongo Flava: Swahili Rap from Tanzania is a 70- minute ride through the streets of Dar es Salaam. It's a look at what youth in present urban East Africa think and dream about. Bongo Flava is the name of a certain type of hip-hop-influenced music which -- unnoticed by the rest of the world -- has become the best selling pop music in East Africa today. It's a music of the post-socialism era channeled by a wave of new private radio stations. The name "bongo flava" comes from the Kiswahili word for brains: ubongo. Bongo is the nickname of Dar es Salaam, and means that you need brains to survive there. Tanzanian youth started rapping in the 1980s fascinated by U.S. hip-hop. They soon developed their own way of doing it and today the music has become a style characterized by the use of local melodies, beats, topics and their own language, Kiswahili. This compilation presents the hits by some of the most important Bongo Flava artists.
Genre/Style: Hip-Hop / Old School |
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Witch
Self-Titled
Release Date: 03/07/06
Label: Tee Pee
CD: $14.98 $11.98
LP: $15.98 |
J Mascis’s stoner-rock band is here, thank God. It’s classic-rock influenced stoner-metal, so they obviously sound like Sabbath, but this somehow doesn’t come off as a ripoff or idolozation. Somewhere between the riffage you realize that these are seasoned veterans from a handful of different backgrounds and genres. All four of these dudes know how to rip, and it shows. Rounding off this beast of a lineup are Kyle Thomes (Exhorder, Floodgate), Dave Sweetapple, and Asa Irons (Feathers). Mascis has made a relatively surprising return to drums on this album, but sounds just as intense as he did on the Deep Wound recordings, and as precise as he did on Dinosaur Jr’s Without a Sound (1994). “Black Saint” and “Changing” have emerged as my two early favorites on the record, but it holds together as well as any doom record (that wasn’t a concept album) I’ve ever heard. The bottom line? I heard this album not knowing who it was or who played on it at first, and I thought it killed. If star-power doesn’t put a hype behind Witch, the songs will do it themselves. - Aircraft
Genre/Style: Rock / Stoner / Metal |
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My Morning Jacket
Z
Release Date: Oct 05
Label: ATO
CD: $12.98 |
I like domestic beer, preferably light domestic beer. Bud Light or High Life will do, but I’ll drink PBR with no complaints. My Morning Jacket is like good domestic beer; there’s nothing pretentious or implied about them, they just get the job done and it goes down easy. Jim James has one of the most intriguing voices in rock today and I’d go so far as to call these guys the southern Radiohead. The champagne of bands. - Jerome Spencer
Genre/Style: Rock |
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Jenny Lewis & Watson Twins
Rabbit Fur Coat
Release Date: Jan 06
Label: Team Love
CD: $14.98 |
It's like having you feet tickled by the grass, while you sway on a tire swing in the Great Plains. Jenny Lewis is the front woman for Rilo Kiley, and is pretty easy on the eyes, or eye if you are a cyclops.
Genre/Style: Pop |
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Little Willies
Self-Titled
Release Date: March 06
Label: Angel
CD: $17.98 |
Kickin' and swingin' side project from Norah Jones and her citybilly pals. This record will be everywhere as they make the world one big hony-tonk.
Genre/Style: Rock / Pop |
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Robinella
Solace for the Lonely
Release Date: Feb 2006
Label: Columbia
CD: $16.98 |
Combining elements of jazz, funk, soul and pop, RobinElla has delivered one of the most unique and genre bending releases of 2006. With her winsome Appalachian accent, jazz vocal phrasing and production help from Doug Lancio Solace For The Lonely represents a rebirth of the artist and showcases her artistic and musical growth from te self titled rootsier and bluegrassy Columbia release.
Genre/Style: Jazz / Funk / Soul |
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Soundtribe Sector 9
Artifact
Release Date: Feb 05
Label: System Recordings
CD: $14.98 Sale $10.98 |
They say this CD was recorded between 2001 and 2004 "at home and on tour, in bedrooms, hotels, moving vehicles, parking garages...." But despite its name, this isn't an album of sketches, lost tracks, and other detritus. Instead, Artifact is a haunting document of ambient designs, trippy lounge, and cinematic atmospheres that occupy STS9's first new CD in five years. The "home" recordings are actually verité vignettes providing connecting tissue for songs like "Better Day," a haunting lament with breathy guest vocals from Audio Angel (Rashida Clendening), and the space-age lounge music of "Somesing." A band that plays as much as it programs, STS9's compositions have a natural flow and integrity, as if they were grown as much as computed. "Tokyo" is a hypnotic jam of slide guitar and electronic atmospheres lashed together on a kinetic groove sliced by dream sequence logic. Imagine the Grateful Dead going glitch on Miles Davis's Bitches Brew and you have a good sense of STS9's sound and why they've played events from the alternative festival Coachella to jam-band gatherings like Bonaroo. Artifact doesn't look back, but forward to a horizon still a few moments in the future. -John Diliberto
Genre/Style: Electronic / Pop |
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The Double
Loose In Air
Release Date: Sept 05
Label: Matador
CD: $14.98 Sale $11.98 |
NYC's The Double deliver their Matador debut, a worthy successor to 2004's "Palm Fronds". The massed Ace Tone/Vox/Casio keys and floating vocals have led some staff members to liken the sound to music as diverse as '60s British folk mixed with theatrical synth bands. But the spooky/paranoid vibes and insistent, inventive rhythms of the percussion build up a wall of sound more nervous and intense than the comparison might suggest. Irresistible pop melodies are laid on top. An indescribable and lovely mess.
Genre/Style: Pop / Rock |
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Some Girls
Heaven's Pregnant Teens
Release Date: Jan 2006
Label: Epitaph
CD: $13.98 Sale $9.98 |
Some Girls is a five-person assault out of the sleepy Navy town of San Diego, comprised of the creme de la crass of musicians from that city's famed hardcore/punk underground. Fronted by Give Up The Ghost and American Nightmare's Wes Eisold, the band features a who's who of hardcore players from The Locust, Plot To Blow Up The Eiffel Tower, Unbroken, Over My Dead Body, Swing Kids, and Crimson Curse. This is their first full-length; an unrelenting musical psychosis, adding new dimensions of brutality to Some Girls' now-trademark thrash attack. Includes a snarling cover of Public Image Ltd.'s post-punk classic, "Religion".
Genre/Style: Punk / Metal |
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Morning Theft
The News Says It's Raining in New York
Release Date: Mar 05
Label: self-released
CD: $9.98 Sale $7.98 |
"The News Says It's Raining In New York is a solid album from start to finish, showcasing the bands love of layering strumming guitars with finger picking goodness, as well as their roller coaster ability to take you from quite whisper to distorted scream, while perhaps one of the strongest aspects of the album is the desire it leaves for more, and the promise it shows from a band coming into their own." - Jim Pike, Silent Uproar.com
Genre/Style: Rock |
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Ambulance LTD
New English EP
Sale $8.98 |
Green Arrows
4-Track Recording
Sale $17.98 |
Herbaliser
Fabric Live 26
Sale $17.98 |
I Can Lick Any Sonofabitch
Live at Dante's
Sale $15.98 |
Lanterna
Desert Ocean
Sale $13.98 |
Willie Nelson
You Don't Know Me: Cindy Walker
Sale $14.98 |
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