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Fire Records
Surf City 'Kudos'
£5.99
Fire Records
Surf City 'Kudos'
£5.99
New Zealand's Surf City released the jaw-dropping kiwi guitar buzz masterpiece Kudos through Fire Records back in 2010. The band joined the long line of Fire masters from Spacemen 3 to Teenage Fanclub and still remain the perfect pack of young chord slashers to take their place on our wall of guitar mavens.
Updating the psych haze of the Spacemen with the circular drone of Animal Collective and the off kilter melodies of The Clean with the drive of Interpol, Surf City is the perfect mix of everything you loved about the early 80's New Zealand jangle and the 60's blur of Velvets and Zombies with the shapeshifting songwriting of today.
Formed by Davin Stoddard and Josh Kennedy, they quickly stared banging out catchy nuggets with the aid of Josh's brother Jamie on bass and Logan Collins pounding the drums, and the foursome were off and running. Eventually settling on the Jesus and Mary Chain inspired name, they arrived with their Steve Keene (hunted down for his previous work for Pavement and Silver Jews) adorned self-titled debut EP.
The group played some manic shows at both home and showcase gigs abroad, Stereogum praised their impressively assured sound and perfect 2-minute pop storm. All Music was taken with the sheer energy and ragged happy sound and gushed the whole is just a delight Pitchfork noted that their punky psychedelic pop is impressive and admitted Surf City's pleasure for pleasure's sake approach already has me pining for more.
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Sold outLimited edition colour vinyl LP is pressed on split colour blue and black vinyl.Visit product page →
One of Entertainment Weeklies 100 Best Soundtracks Of All Time.
A precursor to Lynch's Twin Peaks and Mulholland Drive, Blue Velvet sets a template for ethereal noir soundtracks in a modern, quite disturbed age. 'The shock of the new fades by definition, but it has hardly done so in the case of Blue Velvet.' Dennis Lim, Salon, 2016
"The haunting soundtrack accompanies the title credits, then weaves through the narrative, accentuating the noir mood of the film." - John Alexander, The British Film Resource
You know that feeling you get when you're shook awake in mid-dream? You were teetering on the ledge of a building, or maybe trying to free a butterfly from a spider web while wearing cricket gloves? Perhaps you're running late for a train and your short cut takes you through a bad part of town, you're being followed but the ever changing reflection in the shop window is a younger you, a healthier person - with a better hairstyle. It's an anxiety thing, an off-kilter almost world, best summed up on the soundtrack for Blue Velvet, David Lynch's 1986 film that nods somnambulantly to the shadowy netherworld of film noir.
Oedipal fantasies, finding a severed ear on your way home, voyeurism, crime and retribution, violence; they're all there in abundance in the movie, a rotten sleazy commercialism set off against a set of strange situations that the edge of the seat is never far away from. And what soundtrack would suit such an experience? Of course a mix of orchestral pieces from composer and conductor Angelo Badalamenti inspired by Shoshtakovich's 15th Symphony (which rumour has it Lynch played onset to create the mood') mixed up with trashy Hammond-led boogie and overblown baroque pop from Roy Orbison and Ketty Lester, suitable for any dive's jukebox.
That awkward mix plays itself out in Isabella Rossellini as Dorothy's rendition of the song Blue Velvet'that melds beautifully and indeed hauntingly into Blue Star', a broken piece of vintage pop. Similarly, the track Going Down To Lincoln'with its narrative audio shtick takes all of the previously-mused elements to create a perfectly disjointed travelogue. The soundtrack album starts with Bernard Hermann-styled Hitchcock-esque strings and violin slashes, which dally before deconstructing the themes and motifs into a disturbing procession that climaxes with Julee Cruise's funereal Mysteries Of Love', a fittingly titled epilogue to an epic that concludes with the hero's true love's reality of a simplistic birdsong dream from earlier in the film.
It's a cyclical trip that feeds directly back to the beginning and, yes, there's that severed ear again, now ant infested laying on the ground, proving that dreams become real, or is it reality that becomes a dream?
Tracklisting:
1. Main Title
2. Night Streets / Sandy And Jeffrey
3. Frank
4. Jeffrey's Dark Side
5. Mysteries Of Love (French Horn solo) (a)
6. Frank Returns
7. Mysteries Of Love (Instrumental) (a)
8. Blue Velvet (b) / Blue Star (a) - Montage
9. Lumberton U.S.A. (a) / Going Down To Lincoln - Sound Effects Suite
10. Akron Meets The Blues
11. Honky Tonk Part I (performed by Bill Doggett)
12. In Dreams (performed by Roy Orbison)
13. Love Letters (e) (performed by Ketty Lester)
14. Mysteries Of Love (a) (Vocal by Julee Cruise) -
Sold outRemastered by Bob Weston and featuring new liner notes by MAGNET magazine editor Eric Miller, physical copies of Vee Vee includes sixteen bonus tracks and new cover art re-imagined by graphic artist Jay Ryan. Reissues of All the Nation's Airports and White Trash Heroes followed later in 2012.Visit product page →
The first full-length produced by Bob Weston, Vee Vee was a slight departure from the previous bombastic noisepop that characterized Archers of Loaf's previous work, and it proved that the band wasn't just a flash in the pan. The album became their best-selling album to date and landed them on the covers of most fanzines and at the top of college radio charts across the country. "Harnessed in Slums" and "Greatest of All Time" became anthems of the underground and led to successful tours with the Flaming Lips and Weezer.
CD 1:
1. Step into the Light
2. Harnessed in Slums
3. Nevermind the Enemy
4. Greatest of All Time
5. Underdogs of Nipomo
6. Floating Friends
7. 1985
8. Fabricoh
9. Nostalgia
10. Let the Loser Melt
11. Death in the Park
12. The Worst Has Yet to Come
13. Underachievers March and Fight Song
CD 2:
1. Harnessed in Slums (Bob Weston Radio Mix, 1995)
2. Telepathic Traffic (Bonus)
3. Don't Believe the Good News (Bonus)
4. Smoking Pot in the Hot City (Bonus)
5. Mutes in the Steeple (Bonus)
6. Mark Price P.I. (Bonus)
7. Bacteria (Bonus)
8. Equinox (Bonus)
9. Big Joe and Phantom 309 (Bonus)
10. 1985 (Bonus)
11. Fabricoh Worksong (Bonus)
12. Nostalgia (Bonus)
13. Let the Loser Melt (Bonus Demo)
14. Underdogs of Nipomo (Bonus Demo)
15. Nevermind the Enemy (Bonus Demo)
16. Don't Believe the Good News (Bonus Demo) -
On saleNew Zealand/New York City legends Bailterspace, offer up their best album to date with their first new recordings in 13 years. The band were once described by Pitchfork as "simultaneously beautiful, jagged, atonal, and supremely melodic" and 'Strobosphere' emerges at a time when the band's trailblazing sound has never been more relevant.Visit product page →
Revered as one of the loudest and most intense live bands of all-time, they haven't lost any of their bite or their love of tone, dissonance, and melody. The first single "No Sense" darts, snaps and swirls with alternating snare cracks, atmospheric surges and dirty buzz, featuring Parker's distinctive vocals. -
Reissue, note new price, release date, catalogue numbers & barcodes. 'One of underground rock's most extraordinary enigmas.' The Quietus.Visit product page →
First time on Double Silver Vinyl.
Critical praise from Pitchfork, Clash, The Wire, Q Magazine and more upon release. New inverted LTD edition artwork.
Fire re-issue Bardo Pond's eponymous eighth studio album from 2010, their debut for Fire from way back when. A lysergic brain wrestler in which the Pennsylvanian drone outfit perfect their modal sound. Teasing the artistry of LaMonte Young and Terry Riley into a guitar shaped cauldron, the album's compulsive reverbed guitar shapes slowly simmer behind Isobel Sollenberger's esoteric vocals 'Like hearing a tannoy at a station in the voice of Jesus.' The Quietus.
A claustrophobic stuttering raga interlocks with their psychedelic leanings best exemplified on Cracker Wrist'which sounds like something that's intentionally always just about to happen/and/or spin back in time.
Featuring lengthy fully nurtured play offs between the quintet Bardo Pond'is a heady statement that's like the most wholesome kind of vegan-friendly mushroom trips.
Pitchfork reckons they're 'playing fuzzed out stoner dreams.' Vice's musical brother Noisey likens them to 'Fugazi On Acid.'
Allmusic intervenes with: 'These are epic, soaring psychedelic ambient power-drone rock noise melodies where partially buried, distant female vocals are laced throughout a roaring, murky/sludge guitar soundscape.'
Tracklisting:
1. Just Once
2. Don't Know About You
3. Sleeping
4. Undone
5. Cracker Wrist
6. The Stars Behind
7. Wayne's Tune
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