Bump Head Go Home
(Sophomore Lounge - SL073) LP $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
The camcorder-shorts-turned-classic-stoner-pop visions of Chicago’s long-running rhythm-and-boozers evolve restlessly with each passing project, pig-roast after pig-roast, year after year. Here they trade the lakehouse electronic tricks of 2013’s See You In The Funny Pages for raw and honesty — full-on rock modes, jazzed up and peaking-out pawn shop amps, peripheral nods toward posters of Thin Lizzy, Magic Sam, Joe Walsh, and Wilco.
Equipment Pointed Ankh
(Sophomore Lounge - SL079) Cassette $6.25 (Out-of-stock)
Ecstatic, flaming Riviera sunrise electric guitar and prison-spirited tapestries by Kentucky drone magician Jim Marlowe (Tropical Trash, Teal Grapefruit), aided and abetted by known associates and persons of interest. Edition of 100. c32
Listen to “Green Folding Room” here: http://sophomoreloungerecords.com/equitmentpointedankh.html
Must Be Nice
(Sophomore Lounge - SL065) LP $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
Dark and dreamy surf-pop with influences (Death, Devo, and Destiny’s Child) that crash, bend, and blend in a melodic swarm. Moodier jams like “Comes in Loudly” are, as SPIN puts it, “their most expansive works yet,” heavy with drums, psychedelic guitars, and the hushed harmonizing of bassist Mariam Saleh and guitarist Gracie Jackson. Ten revved-up tracks. Includes free download card.
Kicked Back Into The Crypt
(Sophomore Lounge) split LP $14.00 (Out-of-stock)
The Guerilla Toss’s obliteratively perfect side is a less high-pitched, bizarrely shifting clot of sideways-moving aural-mung. This Boston quintet crafts and destroys riffs, rhythms and melodies faster than most bands can turn on their amps, much the same the way that early Boredoms jiggered popular logic with personal calculus and great power. Sediment Club’s wild syncretic power combines the rough stubbing of classic No Wave aktion with the warm mud of Lower Manhattan garage-blues -- everything Lydia Lunch attempted to do with the Devil Dogs. Evil sound beauty from NYC trio (with roots on late’70s Lower East Side), somewhere between Mars, Rat At Rat R and the Chrome Cranks.
Pull Me Back b/w Evil Windows
(Sophomore Lounge - SL057) 7-inch $8.25 (Out-of-stock)
On an old, beat-up parlor guitar that can barely hold a tune, Evan Patterson (Bad Secrets, Young Widows) chews into the fruits of loner-psych and stripped-down drunken desert blues. Cloudy synthetic atmospheres, minimal percussion and improvised electronics courtesy of members of Sapat, Black Cross. Edition of 300.
Life Is Murder
(Sophomore Lounge - SL058) LP $13.00 (Out-of-stock)
With help from Mike Geacone on bass and Biss Mess’s Nick Egersheim on drums, Bostonian Carl Shane’s alter ego Kal Marks evolved from a variety of outsider / freak pop familiar to fans of Daniel Johnston, Devendra Banhart, Espers, into downright crushing, well-crafted, on-fire indie rock. Life is Murder is the culmination of all things good in contemporary pop songwriting — the darkness, wit, and cosmic charm of a 20-something on the verge of erupting.
Mazozma’s Fatufairfe
(Sophomore Lounge - SL082) 12-inch $20.00 (Out-of-stock)
Ma Turner (Teal Grapefruit, CROSS, Warmer Milks, Salad Influence) and John Phillip Farmer (Salad Influence, Arcane Rifles, Birddog) performing full-group versions of their songs with John Ferguson (Apples In Stereo, R. Stevie Moore, Big Fresh), David Farris (Bernie Worrell, Tatsuya Nakatani, Jack McDuff, R. Stevie Moore, Tallboys, Club Dub) and Travis McGirr (Blood Pheasant). Four songs of Kentucky art-folk, rural noise, and underground “classic” rock recorded at barn-house jams and now-legendary live performances. Packaged in an envelope with artwork by Jim Marlowe of Tropical Trash. Numbered edition of 100.
Preach Under Cooked
(Sophomore Lounge - SL055) 7-inch $7.25 (Out-of-stock)
Justin Frye and his collective of art-diseased obsessives summon a somewhat lazier Bad Moon Rising-era industrial mushroom grunge, but can also relate to earlier Smog stuff (recorded in a haunted meat locker), to say nothing of the ease with which they lace free-form, sax-soured mutant folk with moans of Americana nightmare language and occasional flashes of Ayler-like enlightenment. The A-side wanders Fahey-ward with an Orcutt-damaged compass, while the flip is classic PC slacker punk. Hand-screened jackets. Edition of 300
Former January Ending Through 52 Weeks
(Sophomore Lounge) LP $19.00 (Out-of-stock)
The inner logic in People Skills, beyond a cloud of ambiguity, is a remarkable balance between the shattered plaster electronics and Jesse Dewlow’s melodious chording. The blunted-ass casio beats and the haunted lonerman vox riding tremble alongside make it perfect. The encased-in-dust-for-a-few-winters production value is just gravy. Includes DL card
Raven Town Witch
(Sophomore Lounge - SL059) LP $14.25 (Out-of-stock)
A slinky and sinister Southern gothic brew evoking early glam, Brainticket-ish psychedelia, Roxy Music’s “In Every Dream Home a Heartache.” The perfect record, according to no less an authority than HRH Lydia Lunch, for the party after the after-party or a raucous late-night ritual in celebration of your inner witch.
I Am Somebody
(Sophomore Lounge - SL080) 7-inch $8.25 (Out-of-stock)
Fucked up, vaped-out, borderline demonic cassette confessionals by Detroit’s greatest oddball, basement-dwelling, idiot-prog outfit (Chris Durham of All Gone, Roachclip, The Bibs), coming off like a cross between Robert Wyatt’s Matching Mole and Man Who Sold The World-era Bowie bent by early Trux slop and slackerisms. Edition of 250
A Posthuman Guide to the Advent Calendar Origins of the Peep Show
(Sophomore Lounge - SL066) LP $15.75 (Out-of-stock)
Large-group ensemble made up of a cast of Kentucky characters comes in from the hermetic rain field of electric pabulum and renders extraordinary renditions into a maximalist tapestry, laced with concentrated forms of seared-synapse acoustic-retrieval alchemy. Sapat’s immediate stimulation reveals myriad fires during repeated listens. This is an album chock full of ideas and sound worlds that obliterate thought — a genre-melting bastard-child of deep psych, art-punk, stoner shred, mass jass, Buddhist operatic, narrative noise, and psychic coaction. It’d be criminal to expect anything less of a 14-year-old-and-counting, shape-shifting collective sharing members of Valley of Ashes, Kark, Softcheque, Tropical Trash, Black Velvet Fuckere, Son of Earth, The Belgian Waffles!, Phantom Family Halo, and about a billion other Louisvillian enclaves.
Cute Mutant
(Sophomore Lounge - SL045) LP $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
Boston-baked blend of heavy, slime-soaked tones and relentless, pounding rhythms torn up and spit back in your face by a lunatic with a microphone. It’s like Black Sabbath in reverse, a mouth full of bubble gum and broken teeth, or, as Larry Dolman puts it “low-end wind-tunnel electro-punk.” Part of what makes this demented trio’s sound unique is the absence of stringed instruments. Their microphones-and-electronics assault holds its own against heavy, guitar-driven rock.
Soft Gang
(Sophomore Lounge - SL077) LP $15.50 (Out-of-stock)
This perfect first glance into Soft Gang’s cauldron conjures whiffs of early-1990s indie art-pop, stirred with witchy long-form free-rock / psychedelia, playful post-punk, and an herbal dash of Plastic Ono’s experimental entrada. Kaori Nakamura croons, howls, and rhetorically ponders with the grace and ease of an evening’s reflection, stretching out over the rhythm section (Dahm Cipolla of Phantom Family Halo and Sapat on drums, Charlie Hines of Dichroics and Sabers on bass guitar), which tugs from routine to expressive chaos, while Dichroics’ Darin Mickey’s guitar transmissions decorate the stage. Simple, subtly alienating, yet all the while infectious.
Fantasy Error
(Sophomore Lounge - SL072) LP $14.50 (Out-of-stock)
The one-time bedroom recording project masterminded by Kentucky native Ryan Davis has evolved over the course of fifteen years, two LPs, homespun side-releases, and countless miles of touring over the past five years into a full-blown rock band that summons guidance from Rust Never Sleeps-era Neil, Dead Moon, The Silver Jews and beyond. The band’s live set is a charmingly broken blend of garage folk, sun-warped honky-tonk toons, Southern art rock, soul, and noisy, unhinged slop.
Think Back Kick A Beer
(Sophomore Lounge) 7-inch $7.25 (Out-of-stock)
The follow-up to Fear of Suffering (Sophomore Lounge 2012) breaks bread on the breastplate and lets the loins girt around about the truth, substituting hot air balloons for lungs and cajones for brains, magnetizing the crotch-to-ego spinal disc-chordal dipole while stoning the erogenous zones and breathing life and id back into the exhumed corpse of classic rock, a G. Ginn and Sonic speedball kegel-clubbing affront to the American Mall Obese. Features dudes with the diplomatic immunity of Sapat membership and Louisville’s Astro Black ambassadors of telepathic communications.
Fear of Suffering
(Sophomore Lounge - SLO40) 7-inch $7.25 (Out-of-stock)
Residing in their own neck of the deep-country indie woods, Louisville's Tropical Trash deliver a smoky shard of rippin’ rawk, undergo a transition or two, then drop out -- the Bluegrass State's rejoinder to the MX-80 / Messthetic sound. Some of these skinny young men also dig glorious ditches in the hermit-kingdom labor camps overseen by Siltbreeze recording artists Sapat. Silkscreened jacket. White vinyl. Edition of 200
Zoz
(Sophomore Lounge - SL060) LP $16.50 (Out-of-stock)
Thirteen stripped-down experimental folk songs with an emphasis on banjo and electronics by the guitarist of Cross, Salad Influence and Warmer Milks, using remixed, reconfigured, and collaged sounds created for and found within the Zoz Collection (Brave Captain / Sophomore Lounge, 2014), a box set consisting of eighty-three compositions recorded piecemeal as a prayer-and-mediation-themed audio diary between January 2013 and February 2014 in Lexington at Turner’s home. Edition of 200.