Sargent House
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This the debut is being repressed. Red Fang is the formation of long time friends and collaborators Bryan Giles (Last of the Juanitas, Party Time), Aaron Beam (Dark Forces, Lachrymator), David Sullivan (Party Time, facedowninshit, Shiny Beast) and John Sherman (Party Time, Bad Wizard, Trumans Water, All Night).Visit product page →
Unleashed on New Year's Eve of 2006 in Portland, Oregon, Red Fang stormed out of the gates, introducing a sweaty, seething basement to a new kind of unforgettable fist-pumping, beer-chugging rock music. Since that night, the band has continued with the same intensity, energy, and intimacy to quickly become a touring juggernaut, playing shows all over the US with bands like The Melvins, Big Business, and The Sword, to name just a few.
Residing somewhere between Black Flag and Black Sabbath, Red Fang recall a time when rock was more urgent and horrifying. Synthesizing a variety of heavy music influences into their own distinct musical identity, the band easily shifts from barn-burning punk to mid-tempo, hyper-distorted bass destruction all while maintaining a cohesive sound.
Red Fang create gigantic rock songs that are easy to listen to (not easy listening, mind you) and qualify the simultaneous usage of both the thinking and the banging head, which are usually mutually exclusive. Their instrumentation is fluid and effortless, and the vocals are delivered melodically and forcefully, with enough rasp and effect saturation to fit nicely within the music. Paired with elemental imagery, the lyrics are immense and satisfying without any pretense.
Tracklisting:
1. Prehistoric Dog
2. Reverse Thunder
3. Night Destroyer
4. Humans Remain Human Remains
5. Good To Die
6. Birds On Fire
7. Wings Of Fang
8. Sharks
9. Whales and Leeches
10. Witness -
All LPs in Gatefold w/ 12-page book + DLC. Digipak CD.Visit product page →
Chelsea Wolfe has always been a conduit for a powerful energy, and while she has demonstrated a capacity to channel that somber beauty into a variety of forms, her gift as a songwriter is never more apparent than when she strips her songs down to a few key components. As a result, her solemn majesty and ominous elegance are more potent than ever on Birth of Violence.
There is a core element to Chelsea Wolfe's music'a kind of urgent spin on America's desolation blues'that's existed throughout the entirety of her career. At the center, there has always been Wolfe's woeful longing and beguiling gravity, though the framework for compositions has continuously evolved based on whatever resources were available. Her austere beginnings were gradually bolstered by electronics and filled out with full-band arrangements. The music became increasingly dense and more centered around live performances. Her latest album, Birth of Violence, is a return to the reclusive nature of her earlier recordings
'I've been in a state of constant motion for the past eight years or so; touring, moving, playing new stages, exploring new places and meeting new people'an incredible time of learning and growing as a musician and performer,' Wolfe says of the era leading up to Birth of Violence.
'But after a while, I was beginning to lose a part of myself. I needed to take some time away from the road to get my head straight, to learn to take better care of myself, and to write and record as much as I can while I have Mercury in my hands,'as a wise friend put it.'
Birth of Violence is the result of this step out of the limelight. The songs stem from humble beginnings'little more than Wolfe's voice and her Taylor acoustic guitar. Her longtime musical collaborator Ben Chisholm recorded the songs on a makeshift studio and helped fill them out with his modern production treatments and the occasional auxiliary flourish from ongoing contributors Jess Gowrie (drums) and Ezra Buchla (viola).
The album opens with 'The Mother Road,' a harrowing ode to Route 66 that immediately addresses Wolfe's metaphoric white line fever. It explains the nature of the record'the impact of countless miles and perpetual exhaustion'and the desire to find the road back home, back to one's roots. Songs like 'Deranged for Rock & Roll' and 'Highway' offers parallel examinations on the trials and tribulations of her journeys while the ghostly 'When Anger Turns to Honey' serves as a rebuttal to self-appointed judges.
While the record touches upon tradition, it also exists in the present, addressing modern tragedies such as school shootings in the minor-key lullaby 'Little Grave' and the poisoning of the planet on the dark wind-swept ballad 'Erde.'
But the record is at its most poignant when Wolfe withdraws into her own world of enigmatic and elusive autobiography. Much like Alan Ginsberg's hallucinatory long-form poem Howl, the tracks 'Dirt Universe' and 'Birth of Violence' weave together specific references from her past into an esoteric overview of the state of mankind. Though the lyrical minutiae remain secret, the overall power of the language and delivery is bound to haunt the listener with both its grace and tension.
'These songs came to me in a whirlwind and I knew I needed to record them soon, and also really needed a break from the road,' Wolfe says.
'I've spent the past few years looking for the feeling of home; looking for places that felt like home. The result of that humble approach yields Wolfe's most devastating work to date.
Tracklisting:
1. The Mother Road
2. American Darkness
3. Birth of Violence
4. Deranged for Rock & Roll
5. Be All Things
6. Erde
7. When Anger Turns to Honey
8. Dirt Universe
9. Little Grave
10. Preface to a Dream Play
11. Highway
12. The Storm -
Commemorating thirty trips around the sun as one of metal's most monolithic bands, Earth have announced plans to release their ninth studio album, Full Upon Her Burning Lips. A purge of the embellishment and panache from previous releases, Full Upon Her Burning Lips intimates Earth's commitment to the minimalism of their primordial days.Visit product page →
Deconstructing the tried-and-true dynamic consisting of Dylan Carlson on guitar and bass and Adrienne Davies on drums and percussion, Full Upon Her Burning Lips taps into the Platonic ideal of Earth'an incarnation of the long running band bolstered by the authority of purpose, where every note and every strike on the drum kit carries the weight of the world. In addition to scaling back the flourishes of their hulking, drone-driven opuses, Full Upon Her Burning Lips was composed sans narrative, relying instead on their collective subconscious to hone in on the overarching muse as the songs developed.
The record was engineered, mixed, and mastered by long time associate Mell Dettmer at Studio Soli. Showcasing Carlson's sepia-toned Bakersfield Sound guitars and Davies'death knell drums, Full Upon Her Burning Lips mines for the expressive, nuanced, and tonally rich components of Earth's arsenal of sound. And indeed, anyone that's followed Earth on their journey will bask in the unadulterated hums, throbs, and reverberations conjured by Carlson and Davies.
'I feel like this is the fullest expression and purest distillation of what Earth does since I re-started the band,' Carlson says in reflection of Full Upon Her Burning Lips. And indeed, anyone that's followed Earth on their journey will bask in the unadulterated hums, throbs, and reverberations conjured by Carlson and Davies.
Tracklisting:
1. Datura's Crimson Veils
2. Exaltation of Larks
3. Cats on the Briar
4. The Colour of Poison
5. Descending Belladonna
6. She Rides an Air of Malevolence
7. Maidens Catafalque
8. An Unnatural Carousel
9. The Mandrake's Hymn
10. A Wretched Country of Dusk
Release Date: 24/05/2019 -
Debut solo album from Dylan Carlson, drone metal pioneer and founding member of the iconic band Earth.Visit product page →
'The doom-metal innovator' Pitchfork
'Carlson creates the soundtrack to the great American road movie that has yet to be made.' The Guardian
'I guess what ties this all together'all my musical projects and my life in general'is the idea of the quest, that search for new horizons and something unnamable and possibly unreachable,' Dylan Carlson says regarding the theme behind his solo album Conquistador.
Carlson's musical explorations can be traced back to his pioneering work with the minimalist ensemble Earth, from the groundbreaking drone metal of Earth2 to the ominous instrumental twang of Hex; Or Printing in the Infernal Method. Untethered from the collaborative nature of the band, Carlson veered away from American music and motifs and dug into English folklore and song traditions for his solo work under the moniker of drcarlsonalbion.
For his first full-length as the solo artist Dylan Carlson, the guitarist returns west. In many ways, Conquistador harkens back to Hex. Whereas the Earth album set out to score the historical fiction of Cormac McCarthy's examination of white settlers'horrific campaign against Native Americans in Blood Meridian, Conquistador bypasses the intermediary narrative of a novelist.
'This is another imaginary western,' Carlson explains, 'based on the real story of a conquistador and his Moorish servant in what was then the northernmost regions of Mexico, but is now the states of New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, and Texas. They were gone for twenty years and had many adventures before making it back to the Gulf of Mexico and returning to Mexico City and, eventually, Spain.'
Muses aside, there is an analogous timbre, pace, and pentatonic aura between Carlson's latest offering and Hex. But the reductionist principles that have always driven Carlson's work play an even larger role on Conquistador, with his expansive drones and austere guitar work saturating the sonic field while freed from the lock step of a rhythm section.
Carlson has long been heralded as a master of minimalism, and this full-length demonstrates his ability to craft compelling symphonic compositions while exercising extreme musical frugality. Conquistador was recorded at God City Studios with Kurt Ballou during a weeklong break in Carlson's solo tour 2016.
The material had been gestating for months, and Carlson viewed the session as an opportunity to create music between Earth albums as well as a chance to collaborate with Emma Ruth Rundle, who contributed baritone & slide guitar, and his wife Holly Carlson, who contributed percussion & whose picture graces the cover of the album.
'I view every studio experience as unique, as everything is always different, from gear to people to time and place,' Carlson says of the recording process. 'I have to say I got some of my favorite guitar 'tones'on this album, especially on 'Reaching the Gulf.'' And indeed, anyone that's basked in the discographies of Earth and drcarlsonalbion will undoubtedly be enamored with the lush sepia-toned vistas of Conquistador.
Tracklisting:
1. Conquistador
2. When the Horses Were Shorn of Their Hooves
3. And then the Crows Descended
4. Scorpions in their Mouths
5. Reaching the Gulf
Release Date: 27/04/2018 -
'2LP with custom etching on side D + DL. CD Digi.Visit product page →
'When musicians have this intensity in them, they often get to it sooner and stay put. Ms. Wolfe sounds like she's using it by choice, not disposition; she can use different kinds of darkness as colour or tincture." - NY Times
'The reigning dark priestess of goth-scarred art rock.' Rolling Stone
Hiss Spun is Chelsea Wolfe's sixth album. Following her acclaimed 2015 album Abyss, Hiss Spun is at once dynamic, heavy, and raw. NPR shared the song '16 Psyche,' saying, 'Wolfe has always possessed a talent for dynamic song writing, particularly concerning the theatre of the soul. But the masterful "16 Psyche" is a full-on ride, and one that finds her at her most commanding and climactic yet."
Recorded by Kurt Ballou (Converge), the album was conceived as an emotional purge, a means of coming to terms with the tumult of the outside world by exploring the complexities of one's inner unrest. 'I'm at odds with myself,' she explains. 'I got tired of trying to disappear. The record became very personal in that way. I wanted to open up more, but also create my own reality.' Hiss Spun features prominent guitar contributions by Troy Van Leeuwen (Queens of the Stone Age, Failure) and a guest spot from Aaron Turner (Old Man Gloom, SUMAC).
Digging beneath the mess of the world to find the beauty underneath is perhaps the most consistent theme in Chelsea Wolfe's expansive discography. 'I wanted to write some sort of escapist music; songs that were just about being in your body, and getting free.' 'You're just bombarded with constant bad news, people getting fucked over and killed for shitty reasonsl, and it seems like the world has been in tears for months, and then you remember it's been fucked for a long time, it's been fucked since the beginning. It's overwhelming and I have to write about it.' Hiss Spun was recorded by Kurt Ballou. While past albums operated on the intimacy of stripped-down folk music or the throbbing pulse of supplemental electronics, Wolfe's latest offering wrings its exquisiteness out of a palette of groaning bass, pounding drums, and crunching distortion. It's an album that inadvertently drew part of its aura from New England winter, though the flesh-and-bone of the material was culled from upheavals in Wolfe's personal life. Aside from adding low-end heft with gratuitous slabs of fuzz bass, long-time collaborator Ben Chisholm contributed harrowing swaths of sound collages.
The album opens with the sickening bang of 'Spun', where a lurching bottom-heavy riff provided by Chisholm and Troy Van Leeuwen serves as a foundation to a sultry mantra of fever-dream longing and desire.
The first third of Hiss Spun'whether it's the ominous twang and cataclysmic dynamics of '16 Psyche', the icy keyboard lines, restless pulse and harrowing bellows of Aaron Turner on 'Vex', or the patient repetition and devastating choruses of 'The Culling'all carry the weight of desperation, lost love, and withdrawal. Wolfe's introspection and existential dread turns outwards to the crumbling world around us with 'Particle Flux', an examination of the casualties of war.
The electronic thump of 'Offering' serves as an ode to the Salton Sea and the encroaching calamities stemming from climate change. The obsession with white noise and global destruction carries over into 'Static Hum', where the merciless percussive battery of Wolfe's current drummer Jess Gowrie helps deliver the dire weight of a sonnet dedicated to a 'burning planet.'
By the time the album closes with 'Scrape', Wolfe has come full circle and turned her examinations back inward, reflecting over her own mortality with arguably the most commanding vocal performance in her entire oeuvre.
Every Chelsea Wolfe album is cathartic, but never before has both the artist and her audience so desperately needed this kind of emotional purging.
Tracklisting:
1. Spun
2. 16 Psyche
3. Vex
4. Strain
5. The Culling
6. Particle Flux
7. Twin Fawn
8. Offering
9. Static Hum
10. Welt
11. Two Spirit
12. Scrape
Release Date: 22/09/2017 -
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'Guidance features a more bad-ass Russian Circles, a group that seems less elegiac, and more ready to plant their feet solidly on the ground, fighting back bloodied and bruised against each body blow.' - Pitchfork
"...the album - the group's sixth - is moody, dense and dynamic, the gripping soundtrack to an un-filmed drama." - Rolling Stone
With their sixth album Guidance, Russian Circles carry on in their quest to conjure multi-dimensional dramatic instrumental narratives and to scout out new textures from their respective instruments. Songs aren't constructed out of highbrow concepts; they're forged out of gut instinct and base emotional response. Nor was the band'as is often the case with artists later in their career'interested in testing their fans'patience or securing a new broader audience with a radical reinvention. Instead, Russian Circles use Guidance to continue examining the polarity of quiet and loud, complexity and simplicity, ugliness and beauty.
Every Russian Circles album has had its share of new sonic vistas, and Guidance finds the band still searching out new sounds while continuing to play to the collective strengths of guitarist Mike Sullivan, drummer Dave Turncrantz, and bassist Brian Cook. Starting with the meditative restraint of album opener 'Asa', Guidance sets off on a path of metallic savagery ('Vorel', 'Calla'), arpeggio tectonics ('Mota'), mercurial anthems ('Afrika'), somber segues ('Overboard'), and seismic Americana noir ('Lisboa').
With the help of engineer/co-producer Kurt Ballou and his God City Studio, Russian Circles were able to capture this broad tonal palette and wide array of emotional motifs into a cohesive journey through the tumultuous corners of human existence. We often expect artists to fall into patterns and formulas, but for Russian Circles the creative method is still a mystery.
Songs develop at their own pace. Inspiration comes from strange sources. If anything, the process of writing is every bit the enigma it was back when the band crafted their first song in 2004. Life itself is a struggle with the unknown and a search for meaning, and the creative process for Russian Circles has mirrored that pursuit.
The radical dynamic shifts and straightforward production of Enter, the lockstep metallic attack and pensive comedowns of Station, the symphonic grandeur of Geneva, the grit and grime of Empros, and the oscillation between melancholy and wrath on Memorial were all incremental steps towards an ideal, and Guidance brings the band that much closer to that realization. In the interim between albums, a veteran handed off an envelope of war photos to the spouse of a band member.
The photos depicted a man being led to his execution. There was no context for the traumatic scenes, no history, no background. Yet the dignity this anonymous figure exuded in his fatalistic march resonated with the band. Here was someone that knew his fate and marched boldly towards his destiny.
The band used these photos for the Guidance album art, knowing that we all march towards our own conclusions, and we can only hope that we face our futures with the same honor and nobility. If the band's fourth album Empros (Greek translation: Onward) was a statement of perseverance, Guidance became a statement of striding into the future undeterred by what lies ahead.
Tracklisting:
1. Asa
2. Vorel
3. Mota
4. Afrika
5. Overboard
6. Calla
7. Lisboa -
TTNG were formerly 'This Town Needs Guns'.Visit product page →
CD Digipak. Single LP + download card.
Oxford, England's TTNG return with their third full-length. Though this is their first record since becoming a trio, you'd never guess it from their sound, which has become more refined and realized than ever before.
TTNG have managed to subtly embrace more conventional pop ideals without sacrificing the intensity and musicianship they're admired for. Comprised of Tim Collis on guitar and his brother Chris Collis on drums, TTNG's line-up is completed by vocalist Henry Tremain, who also assumed bass duties after the recording of their last album, 2013's 13.0.0.0.0. In the years since then, the band has toured the US and Europe multiple times, including a North American run with TWIABP & Foxing in late 2015, support for American Football's sold-out UK shows in spring 2015, and, most recently, a sold out UK/EU co-headlining tour with Foxing in April 2016. Turning their attention to the studio in late 2015, TTNG decamped to the American Midwest, ground zero for the kind of articulated alternative rock they themselves have been mastering for a decade.
Recorded live to tape over 10 days at Chicago's legendary Electrical Audio studios by Greg Norman (Mclusky, Russian Circles, Pelican, etc.), and mastered by Shellac's Bob Weston, Disappointment Island proves that the band's success comes from their ability to write songs whose appeal endures well after the sheer awe of their technical prowess subsides. It's easy to understand how people can focus on the band's complex time signatures and elaborate fretwork, but as their fans will tell you, there's much more to TTNG.
'Everyone assumes we write in odd meters to be awkward and weird,' muses Henry Tremain. 'Actually, we're just writing the music we want to write, and it happens to come out like that.' In this case, TTNG have created an album filled with solemn subject matter where, much like the disparity between the name and setting of Disappointment Island (a real and beautifully unspoiled locale in the Pacific Ocean), the lyrical themes stand in stark contrast to the exciting, propellant music the trio creates together.
TTNG have existed in several incarnations and have found success in each, but their current evolution pushes what has always made the band great into new and exciting territories. Disappointment Island is TTNG's most poignant, deliberate accomplishment, successfully arriving at a place that is simultaneously authentic and reverential.
Tracklisting:
1. Coconut Crab
2. A Chase of Sorts
3. Consoling Ghosts
4. In Praise of Idleness
5. Whatever, Whenever
6. Destroy the Tabernacle!
7. Bliss Quest
8. There's no 'I' in Time
9. Sponkulus Nodge
10. Empty Palms -
CD Digipak, Single LP + download card.Visit product page →
Landscapes both seen and felt, real and imagined, lie at the heart of In All That Drifts From Summit Down, the vast debut full-length release from nomadic duo A Dead Forest Index.
Comprised of brothers Adam Sherry (vocals/guitar) and Sam Sherry (drums/piano), the group crafts ethereal and intensely intimate compositions that defy trends and labeling, instead shaping an aural experience as organic as it is unpredictable. Forsaking instrumental complexity in favor of richly dense vocals and an otherwise minimal palette, the band evokes heaviness with the atmosphere they create rather than through blunt force. Teaming-up with Sargent House on the heels of a recent European tour supporting labelmate Chelsea Wolfe, A Dead Forest Index are poised to introduce their sound to a global audience in 2016.
A Dead Forest Index was initially the solo project of Adam Sherry, begun in 2008. By 2010, it had evolved into a collaboration, with Sam Sherry supplying percussive depth to his brother's distinctively hymnal approach to vocals, itself characterized by cyclical harmonies and experiments with drone. Untethered by place (or, for that matter, era), they've spent the past few years developing their sound, touring extensively between 2012-2014, and issuing the EPs 'Antique' and 'Cast of Lines' in the process.
The latter was released by Jehnny Beth of Savages'Pop Noire label, a precursor to the collaborative Savages/A Dead Forest Index composition and performance titled 'In What I'm Seeing; the Sun' for the Barbican's Station to Station Festival in 2015.
Their debut album, is a testimony to the sublime divinity of nature and the cold reality of time's passage. Unfolding over 13 tracks, the album imagines natural phenomena as poetic metaphor for the human condition, the lyrics evoking stone, cold air, unyielding emptiness and erosion, while the enveloping warmth of Adam Sherry's layered, choral vocals makes for an intriguing contrast.
Tracklisting:
1. Tide Walk
2. No Paths
3. Summit Down
4. Cast of Lines
5.Ringing Sidereal
6. Swims Out
7. In Greyness the Water
8. Silver Thread of Sun
9. Myth Retraced
10. Myriad
11. Sand Verse
12. Upon Dark Hills
13. Homage Old -
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Available on limited light Blue Double Vinyl and CD.
'Her darkest, heaviest and most personal album yet . . . a haunting, doomy exercise in loud-quiet dynamics.' Rolling Stone
Sleep paralysis plagues singer/songwriter Chelsea Wolfe, and that strange intersection of the conscious and the unconscious has inadvertently manifested itself within her work.
Across the span of her first four albums, there is an underlying tension, a distorted and nebulous territory where dark shadows hover along the edges of the sublime and the graceful.
But until now, Wolfe's trials and tribulations with the boundaries between dreams and reality have only been a subconscious influence on her work. With her fifth album, Abyss, she deliberately confronts those boundaries and crafts a score to that realm she describes as the 'hazy afterlife - ¦ an inverted thunderstorm - ¦ the dark backward - ¦ the abyss of time.'
Chelsea Wolfe's material has always felt intensely private, from the almost voyeuristic bedroom-production aesthetic of her debut album The Grime and the Glow to the stark themes and atmospheres of 2013's Pain Is Beauty. 'Abyss is meant to have the feeling of when you're dreaming, and you briefly wake up, but then fall back asleep into the same dream, diving quickly into your own subconscious,' says Wolfe.
To conjure this in-between world, Wolfe continued her ongoing collaboration with multi-instrumentalist and co-writer Ben Chisholm and drummer Dylan Fujioka, with Ezra Buchla brought on board to play viola and Mike Sullivan (Russian Circles) enlisted to contribute guitar. The ensemble traveled to Dallas, TX to record with producer John Congleton (Swans, St. Vincent).
In the back of her mind burned the words of designer Yohji Yamamoto: "Perfection is ugly. Somewhere in the things humans make, I want to see scars, failure, disorder, distortion.' The resulting eleven songs reflect that philosophy as they smoulder with human frailty, intimacy, quiet passion, anxiety, and deep longing. 'Sleep and dream issues have followed me my whole life,' remarks Wolfe as she revisits notes from the writing and recording sessions. In a way, these issues have become a part of Chelsea Wolfe's identity, for whom the notion of sleep as an escape has been subverted.
Abyss captures this dichotomy, this battle between the soothing and the upsetting, and demonstrates why Chelsea Wolfe has become one of the most intriguing songwriters of the decade.
Tracklisting:
1. Carrion Flowers
2. Iron Moon
3. Dragged Out
4. Maw
5. Grey Days
6. After the Fall
7. Crazy Love
8. Simple Death
9. Survive
10. Color of Blood
11. The Abyss -
Re-press of Enter includes gatefold jacket with download card, and first time available to retail via Sargent House.Visit product page →
Russian Circles have sold over 80,000 albums worldwide to date.
Russian Circles was formed in Chicago in 2004 by guitarist Mike Sullivan and drummer Dave Turncrantz.
The trio's 2006 debut, Enter, quickly established the band amongst heavy instrumentalist peers. With the addition of former Botch and These Arms Are Snakes bassist Brian Cook on their second album Station, Russian Circles solidified its lineup.
To date the band has released 5 critically-praised albums and continues to headline tours worldwide. In celebration of the band's 10th anniversary, Sargent House is proud to announce a re-issue of the band's critically acclaimed debut full length, 2006's Enter.
Recorded over the course of five quick days in 2006 with Greg Norman (Guided By Voices, Pelican, Neurosis) at the renowned Electrical Audio Studios in Chicago, Enter contains only six tracks, but they pack a lot into them -- the album clocks in at 44 minutes.
Each song flows into the next as if the record were one single composition in six movements.
Tracklisting:
1. Carpe
2. Micah
3. Death Rides A Horse
4. Enter
5. You Already Did
6. New Macabre -
CD Packaging: Digipak, Vinyl Standard 12 LP + download card.Visit product page →
Sargent House is excited to re-issue both of Chelsea Wolfe's first two albums, The Grime and The Glow and Apokalypsis, on CD and LP for the first time. Chelsea Wolfe's sound is best described with broad strokes: elemental, intense, radiant, ancient yet modern, intimate yet expansive, dark and sparkling. Hues of black metal and deep blues inform her ever-evolving electric folk'?a warm force that wraps itself around the listener, encouraging uplift, seeking triumph.
Her voice similarly haunts and soothes, with words that illuminate life's darker corners in order to reveal the unlikely truth and beauty hidden within. Originally hailing from Northern California, Wolfe's formative years were spent tinkering in her country musician father's home studio, however, she long lacked the confidence to share her work. Then, in 2009, an overseas excursion as part of a nomadic performance troupe ignited her passion for performing and initiated a renewed interest in writing and recording. After performing in cathedrals, basements and old nuclear plants to whoever would listen, she returned home with a new drive.
She began toting around an 8-track and recording as the mood hit, eventually editing her findings into a breathtaking debut album, 2010's The Grime & the Glow. Marrying the gentle intimacy of folk, the atmospheric voodoo of death rock, and the bleak, sullen nihilism of black metal, Wolfe's sound effectively cast a genre all her own: a cavernous rumble, marked by stuttering drums, ethereal synths, and a wash of guitar, all very much in the service of one of the most hypnotic, celestial voices in modern music. Described as both healing and harrowing, enchanting and narcotic, the album established Wolfe as a force on the rise. Inspired, Wolfe then relocated to Los Angeles and recorded her second album, 2011's Apokalypsis, which found her in an actual studio with her live band.
The songs captured therein maintained the strikingly visceral elements of her debut, further showcase Wolfe's unique songwriting ability, while adding a serious heaviness of sound that balanced eloquently with her transcendent voice. Its release was subsequently met with critical adoration, and rightly landed on numerous best of 2011 lists.
Tracklisting:
1. Primal/Carnal2. Mer3. Tracks (Tall Bodies)4. Demons5. Movie Screen6. The Wasteland7. Moses8. Friedrichshain9. Pale On Pale10. To The Forest, Towards The Sea -
Visit product page →CD Packaging: Digipak,
Vinyl Standard 12 LP + download card.
Sargent House is excited to re-issue both of Chelsea Wolfe's first two albums, The Grime and The Glow and Apokalypsis, on CD and LP for the first time.
Chelsea Wolfe's sound is best described with broad strokes: elemental, intense, radiant, ancient yet modern, intimate yet expansive, dark and sparkling. Hues of black metal and deep blues inform her ever-evolving electric folk'?a warm force that wraps itself around the listener, encouraging uplift, seeking triumph. Her voice similarly haunts and soothes, with words that illuminate life's darker corners in order to reveal the unlikely truth and beauty hidden within.
Originally hailing from Northern California, Wolfe's formative years were spent tinkering in her country musician father's home studio, however, she long lacked the confidence to share her work. Then, in 2009, an overseas excursion as part of a nomadic performance troupe ignited her passion for performing and initiated a renewed interest in writing and recording. After performing in cathedrals, basements and old nuclear plants to whoever would listen, she returned home with a new drive.
She began toting around an 8-track and recording as the mood hit, eventually editing her findings into a breathtaking debut album, 2010's The Grime & the Glow. Marrying the gentle intimacy of folk, the atmospheric voodoo of death rock, and the bleak, sullen nihilism of black metal, Wolfe's sound effectively cast a genre all her own: a cavernous rumble, marked by stuttering drums, ethereal synths, and a wash of guitar, all very much in the service of one of the most hypnotic, celestial voices in modern music. Described as both healing and harrowing, enchanting and narcotic, the album established Wolfe as a force on the rise.
Track List :
1. Advice & Vices
2. Cousins of the Antichrist
3. Moses
4. Deep Talks
5. Fang
6. Benjamin
7. The Whys
8. Noorus
9. Halfsleeper
10. Bounce House Demons
11. Widow -
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Perhaps the most immediately apparent characteristic of the fifth Russian Circles album, Memorial is its wide range of emotion.
Vacillating from somber-yet-soaring melodies on one track to pummeling metal heft on the next.
Memorial sounds like an album with split personalities. "We've always tried to balance our metal-influenced sounds with more nuanced, pretty, orchestral elements," Cook says. "But this time, it's far more polarized in that the heavy parts are much more blown out and exaggerated while the pretty moments are far more restrained, delicate, and atmospheric." In the two years since Russian Circles released their landmark fourth album Empros, the Chicago trio toured worldwide nearly incessantly, encountering many heavy acts whose music seemed needlessly complicated.
"We set out to make a straightforward, intense, heavy record," Cook explains. "We subconsciously gravitated toward darker and more somber sounds. We wanted to get away from the overtly flashy." In search of such a streamlined sound, the trio focused on each individual song having its own emotional and musical characteristics. As such, Memorial almost feels like stages of grief. That notion might be aided by 1) the album's clever structuring, in which it ends in the same place as it starts, and 2) special guest vocalist Chelsea Wolfe lending her hauntingly somber vocals to the album closing title track.
To a degree, the monolithic, juxtaposed moods on Memorial is the band's reaction to the proliferation of iPod culture affecting how bands write music. Today, most musicians are trying to mash together disparate elements with results sounding as unpalatable as cooking a meal
"I want to hear a band with a broad palette," Cook says. "But it should find that weird balance with breadth and width. We wanted to make a record with more extreme peaks and valleys. I'm hoping that we can get away with making a schizophrenic record."
Tracklisting:
Side A:
1. Memorian
2. Deficit
3. 17774. Cheyenne
Side B:
1. Burial
2. Ethel
3. Lebanon
4. Memorial -
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Chicago post-metal trio Russian Circles return with not only their fourth and heaviest album to date ' but also, with Empros they're poised to take the crown as innovators reinvigorating the staid trappings of genre.
Empros picks up where the anthemic riffs and melodies of 2009's Geneva left off and injects evermore slithering rhythms amid skull-crushing heft with all the visceral intensity of Godflesh, Swans and Neurosis. Put simply, Empros is Russian Circles' Master of Reality: a radical revision of both heavy and melody that is monolithic in its clarity and perfection.
Or, like a lone surviving wooly beast emerging from a brutal winter's frost, Empros is the sound of a band shaking the ages from its shoulders with all the brutal force of a behemoth awakened. Russian Circles -- guitarist Mike Sullivan, drummer Dave Turncrantz and bassist Brian Cook ' recorded Empros at Phantom Manor in Chicago with Brandon Curtis of The Secret Machines & Interpol, who also produced the band's previous album Geneva.
Empros marks the band's first full-length to be released worldwide exclusively via Sargent House -- the band's longtime management company and record label that had previously released only the vinyl editions of its three previous albums.
Tracklisting:
1. 309
2. Mladek
3. Schipol
4. Atackla
5. Batu
6. Praise Be Man -
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Double Gatefold 2 LP 45RPM 180 Gram Vinyl.
The relationship between the calm before the storm and the storm itself is a crucial element of post-rock. The patience and restraint to allow the music to build slowly and organically is an incredible virtue within the genre, and it's a virtue that Russian Circles have been growing into over the course of their career.
On Geneva, their third full-length outing, we find a band that has matured as songwriters. With a larger, more atmospheric set of tools at their disposal, the band crafts songs that are more about buildup than release. Instead of down the usual "build, build, build, destroy" route that's so common, the songs grow organically, with changes unfolding so naturally that the big finish is more of a logical conclusion than an explosion.
Brian Cook's (of Botch and These Arms Are Snakes) impact on this record is more apparent than it was on Station. His gritty, fuzzed-out bass provides a dynamic contrast to the lighter moments, providing a bit of sonic dirt for the more ethereal guitar parts to play in.
This influence might also have something to do with Russian Circles' further tempering of their metal tendencies. While Geneva has its heavier moments (like "Fathom" and "Geneva"), they're not as out-and-out metal as their past work, more reminiscent of Pelican's later work or the sludgy harmony of Zozobra. If you weren't already on the Russian Circles bandwagon, this is the perfect opportunity to jump on.
Tracklisting:
1. Fathom¨
2. Geneva¨
3. Melee¨
4. Hexed All¨
5. Malko¨
6. When the Mountain Comes to Muhammad¨
7. Philos -
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Northern California native Chelsea Wolfe's sound is best described with broad strokes: elemental, intense, radiant, ancient yet modern, intimate yet expansive, dark and sparkling.
Hues of black metal and deep blues inform her ever-evolving electric folk '? a warm force that wraps itself around the listener, encouraging uplift, seeking triumph. Her voice similarly haunts and soothes, with words that illuminate life's darker corners in order to reveal the unlikely truth and beauty hidden within.
In a way, Wolfe is on a journey to the surface of her own music. 2012 finds releasing her first acoustic emanation on Sargent House, titled Unknown Rooms: A Collection of Acoustic Songs.The experience is a secret shared, a side of our heroine rarely seen or heard, and the making was as intimate as it gets: recorded in the woods of Northern California and at Wolfe's L.A. home, co-produced by her bandmate Ben Chisholm, with players Ezra Buchla of Gowns (viola), Andrea CalderÃ"n of Corima (violin) and Daniel Denton of Gothic Tropic (bass).
Tracklisting:
1. Flatlands
2. The Way We Used To
3. Spinning Centers
4. Appalachia
5. I Died With You
6. Boyfriend
7. Our Work Was Good
8. Hyper Oz
9. Sunstorm -
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CD Digipak with 20 page booklet. Vinyl is 2LP in Gatefold jacket + download card.
Pain is Beauty is the third studio album from the Los Angeles-based artist and is a self-described love letter to nature. Many of the album's 12 tracks veer in a decidedly more electronic direction than previous recordings, while at the same time capitalizing on Wolfe's trademark penchant for the morose and otherworldly.
As Wolfe explains: "[The album] becomes an exploration of ancestry, how the mythology, landscapes and traditions of our ancestors affect our personalities today. Honesty is what initially drew me to music, and I've been more honest and open with myself than ever through these songs.
There is peace in truth. There is clarity in solitude. And there is power within simplicity and focus. Love is not always easy. Tormented love is something I understand more than society's skewed idea of what love should be. Love is indelible, severe, earnest, merciful. To push forward against the odds is to make history".
Chelsea Wolfe makes records that transcend time, avoid pigeonholing, and most importantly, allow a glimpse into the soul of a true visionary. Her work is free of the contrivances of lesser artists, the trivial "concepts" and pandering for attention at any cost. Hers is a dignified way of doing things, proven without any doubt by the sheer quality of her work.
Pain is Beauty presents not so much an auditory experience as it does an encompassing atmosphere with which the listener can surround themselves, a soul-stirring link with infinity.
Tracklisting:
1. Feral Love
2. We Hit A Wall
3. House Of Metal
4. The Warden
5. Destruction Makes The World Burn Brighter
6. Sick
7. Kings
8. Reins
9. Ancestors, The Ancients
10. They Clap When You're Done
11. The Waves Have Come
12. Lone