BONNIE 'PRINCE' BILLY Lie Down In The Light LP / CD*** "Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy is letting the sun shine in so you can LIE DOWN IN THE LIGHT. Before you get undressed, we’re talking about a brand-new twelve-song album of excellent new songs and sounds, okay? Get that thong back up your crack and listen! Bristling with guitar strings and laced with harmonies, LIE DOWN IN THE LIGHT is the brightest album to date from the Bonnie ‘Prince.’ Brisk tempos skip among his signature slower numbers and ballads. Bonny’s vocals are among his most expressive: carefully nuanced, singing all up and down his range, showing him at a judiciously dynamic and tuneful apex. Coloring the sound is a subtle backdrop of percussive slaps and shakes (but NARY A DRUMKIT), touches of keys and steel, delicate harmony-vocal arrangements and other sweet surprises that might send some sad-sack fans back to their auto-erotic dungeons, fresh toys in hand."
CLUSTER Berlin 2007 CD*** "Berlin 2007 was marked the first time Roedelius and Moebius had peformed live in Berlin since their 12 hour concert in the Galerie Hammer in the Europacenter in 1969."
COOL KIDS The Bake Sale CD*** "The highly anticipated release from The Cool Kids, featuring 'Black Mags,' '88,' and previously unreleased material."
DEATH SET Worldwide CD*** "Filling twenty-five minutes with eighteen jams, Worldwide boasts the noise of unrefined creation, exploiting consonance and dissonance to the fullest. With breakneck fuzz atop lo-fi electronics, searing vocals over-scored by a lift of positivity, The Death Set redefine the space of the anthem."
DOSH Wolves & Wishes CD*** "Following a tour as a member of Andrew Bird's band, Dosh restocks with a fresh cast of collaborators with all the explorative wonderment of a debut ablum. Never has our man sounded so free."
FLEET FOXES Fleet Foxes CD*** "Baroque harmonic pop drawing influences from the traditions of folk, pop, choral, gospel, sacred harp singing, West Coast music, traditional music from Ireland, Japan, film scores, and their NW peers."
THE FUTUREHEADS This Is Not The World CD*** "Twelve short, sharp, shocks of pure Futurehead joy, not dismissing the killer hooks and choruses that adorn each and every one."
NEIL HAMBURGER Sings Country Winners CD*** "Neil Hamburger sings country and western! As with the classic “celebrity vocal” albums by the likes of William Shatner and Telly Savalas, Neil’s personality shines through even when his vocal chords don’t. Seven originals and three obscure covers in the tradition of the late great Porter Wagoner."
J. SPACEMAN & SUN CITY GIRLS Mister Lonely O.S.T. CD*** "The all-new soundtrack album from HARMONY KORINE’s film Mister Lonely featuring JASON SPACEMAN (SPACEMEN 3 and SPIRITUALIZED) and THE SUN CITY GIRLS. The soundtrack is deceptively minimal--a guitar or piano line that blinks past repetition and blushes into something grander; a motif reappearing under new auspices; link pieces that become spotlight moments, densely worked-out, stars in their own right."
LADYTRON Velocifero CD*** Their 4th album "transcends the confines of electro-pop with a fresh wave of distorted soul."
AIMEE MANN @#%&*! Smilers CD*** The new album form "one of pop music's most distinctive songwriters."
MODEY LEMON Season Of Sweets CD*** "With one foot in the sci-fi darkness of their last record, Curious City, one foot in their past angst-ridden garage wreckage, and one foot in the kautrock brilliance of the German Frontier (what, three feet?), Season of Sweets is a fuzzed-out, driving masterpiece with catchy hooks beaten to death by guitar/synth mayhem."
NURSE WITH WOUND Insect & Individual CD*** "The official release of the infamous 4th Nurse with wound album from 1983. The masters were burned but thanks to some technology and individuals that were able to make it sound as though it were digitally mastered and recorded today. Actual Surrealist Dadaist music."
JIM O'ROURKE Tamper CDJIM O'ROURKE / CHRIS CORSANO / DARIN GRAY Mimidokodesuka CD*** REISSUED! The first two installments in DRAG CITY's reissue series of Jim O'Rourke's experimental works. "Do you like Derek Bailey?"
PACIFIC UV Longplay 2 CD*** "The droning Spacemen 3-esque ambience that once prevailed in their work has countered itself with something more sinister - resulting in an album that balances itself perfectly between noise and melody."
JAMES PANTS Welcome CD*** XLR8R said: "Future Shock-era Herbie Hancock, L.A. electro, New Age-y French disco, and Paradise Garage love-funkists Skyy may inform the tracks on Welcome, but while the record borrows from these and other roller-rink-friendly '80s grooves, it's no jukebox-style revue."
RADIOHEAD The Best Of CDRADIOHEAD The Best Of 2xCD*** 17 vs. 30 classic tracks compiled for the first time.
TERRY RILEY Last Camel In Paris CD*** Recordings done in Europe during the 1970s after Riley's personal technician built a stereo digital delay out of an ancient computer for Riley's specially modified two-manual Yamaha YC-45D portable combo organ. The organ had a Just Intonation setting and allowed him to feed stereo signals to the digital delay through four channels (two live and two delayed).
RUSSIAN CIRCLES Station CD*** "Their music weaves up an intense and cinematic albeit soothing clobbering that cannot be put into words but instead into forms of audible head trips that defies pigeonholing."
YORO SIDIBE Yoro Sodibe CD*** The music of the Bougouni Donsos (hunters) "played before hunts and is meant to both harden the heart and excite it." This is the latest release on DRAG CITY's world music imprint.
SUBTLE Exiting Arm CD*** 3rd album from this ridiculously talented band featured DOSE ONE and JEL of THEMSELVES and ANTICON.
THE TING TINGS We Started Nothing CD*** "Debut from UK duo brimming with pure garage-pop noise. Snappy choruses, angular guitar work, and whip smart drumming."
VETIVER Thing Of The Past CD*** "Andy Cabic's fully realized mix tape to the world -- a new album of old songs from some of his favorite records but presented, sequenced, and in this case performed by Cabic himself, with a little help from his friends far and wide."
WEEZER Red Album CD*** "New album featuring a whole mess of singles (and regular songs)!"
YELLOW SWANS Deterioration CD*** "The latest of the vast soundscape known as YELLOW SWANS. These five tracks take you in their grasp on a journey of desolate beauty."
MI AMI African Rhythms / Feel You b/w Clear Light 12"
