Category: artists

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Simon Joyner is a world-renowned American singer-songwriter from Omaha, Nebraska who has released 19 albums on independent labels since the early 1990s. His earliest records were influential signposts of the Lo-Fi and home-taping movement which also produced contemporaries like Smog, Lou Barlow, Will Oldham and the Mountain Goats. He is now widely regarded as one of the great songwriters of our generation. Gillian Welch calls him her favorite poet and Kevin Morby and Conor Oberst both claim him as a major influence with Bright Eyes also recording covers of Joyner’s songs “Burn Rubber” and “Double Joe.” John Peel, the famed British DJ, once played Joyner’s album “The Cowardly Traveller Pays His Toll” in its entirety on his show, a rare event journalists at the time referred to as “The Peel Incident.”

Despite often being described as a songwriter’s songwriter, the stubbornly independent artist has soared under the radar for over thirty years, enjoying cult status without ever needing to make the unholy sacrifices the industry often requires of artists looking to survive or live on their music. His storytelling has been compared to Leonard Cohen, Townes Van Zandt, Lou Reed, and Bob Dylan. Over the course of 19 albums his career is hard to pin down as he’s followed a mercurial path, never content to make the same record twice.

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With our second collaborative installment along side Kids And The Occult Records, we present Xu Shaoyang’s “River, Stream, Ocean” b/w “Boulder, Stone, Sand.” Xu Shaoyang is an artist & composer hailing from Hong Kong. He has spent years living across the globe, but now operates out of London, UK. He is a mysterious figure that has appeared on Tori Kudo’s Maher Shalal Hash Baz albums over the last couple decades and has sparsely shared live recordings and excerpts from a smattering of infrequent shows. This includes a CD-R on Koji Shibuya’s (Yumbo) imprint, Igloo Records, titled “London Has Let Me Down.” It was recorded in one take in Shibyua’s living room after a show with Yumbo in 2005. Most notably he released two unbelievably beautiful and destructive albums digitally through Cafe Oto’s label, Takuroku, of performances that took place under pedestrian underpasses in Beijing and Taipei. With his latest offering, Xu alongside Tori Kudo and Saiko Ryusui (of Brabrabra) is continuing a thread of equally gorgeous and blasphemous music. It’s loose. It’s free. It’s rapturous. It’s hopeful. It’s bleak. It’s alive. Whether his performances are tender or discordant, he delicately weaves his ideas and imagery through a landscape that bends and breaks, but always reincarnates.

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• “River, Stream, Ocean” Is Included In The Wire’s Adventures In Sound And Music

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well hell, here we are again. the ninth lentils “studio” album wherein the studio is just my tiny pink room again and everything is written, recorded, mixed, and mastered by me, luke csehak, an absolute control freak, except for one line i stole from billy mcshane (you kiss god with those lips?). more themes of mortality, redemption, the color green, and other slippery things guaranteed to make your sense of certainty in this world a little more slippery. relax, slippery is good. slippery is how we know we are wet and alive in the unprovable closeness of the moment.

but don’t take it from me. here, just set aside 39 minutes of your life and make a little nest for the slipperiness within you. let’s just see what it has to show you. It’s been waiting, biding its time, like a spider, to make a goon of this world of possible things, to make a tiny thing of the mind’s doubt so that it can just slip away off the wet stone of worldly cares and down the one river so that even the unpeeling knows and doesn’t know what we heard that night. was that a piano coming through the trees as we sat there waiting, on the edge of the forest? or was it a reflection of our waiting that our ears were not yet small enough to make sense of? and the flash of unknowing, i’m glad it never came up. some things you say just to know you said them. some things are like the skill of dew winning on the lips that have been been waiting, poised and still, all night for the right words.

it’s like a UFO the way a good song can hit you. but UFOs, no, I wouldn’t say they are slippery enough even to place the smallness i come from. where UFOs fear to tread, that’s where i build my waiting sound. like a spoiled spider i sit in my tiny pink room, in absolute awe of every note that happens upon my dusty web. it’s the slippery life for me, friends. sure, letting go is no guarantee, but it’s the best we got.

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• Post-Trash Reviews “Where UFOs Fear to Tread” by The Lentils

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Dimitriam is the most recent moniker for Tucson, AZ’s ever prolific home-taper and DIY lifer, Dimitri Manos. He has been an Arizona staple since the early 2000’s, co-founding the legendary Golden Boots, creating tape collage chaos as American Monoxide, recording and playing with countless other bands, and releasing tons of limited run tapes, lathes and CD-Rs. Dimitri also spent the better half of the 2010’s actively touring and recording as a member of Philadelphia’s own Dr. Dog.

The tracks on Dimitriam’s latest creation, “Amphora”, were pulled from last summer’s 4-track recording experiments. He started compiling everything that felt playful, hazy, experimental and low(er) fidelity. This tape spans the stylings of home-taper, power pop, comedian Chris Sievey, Cleaners from Venus’ Martin Newell, and sometimes Sparklehorse. It’s littered with synth and field recording fuckery. An “Amphora” is a container of sorts. This tape became that container for Dimitriam’s masterpiece.

We couldn’t be more excited to present a limited run of “Amphora” on home dubbed and decorated C40 back shell tapes, printed on j-cards made of 160g CANSON XL Sand Grain paper that have been individually painted with watercolor. Each cassette will also come with a killer mini lyric and art zine. 

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Photo Credit: Chais Renea

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A direct theme runs through the veins of Taylor Daukas’ latest EP, “Long Gone”: the experimental, hypnotic sound served up vulnerable and bare. Indulging in Taylor’s delicately harmonious voice with the soft swelling of percussion and horns on False Door, the last song of the EP, one might find an invitation into a world of truth and purpose. There is a deeply compelling element to Taylor’s songs, one which we can only assume is a willingness to let the music be just what it is: beautifully and brutally honest.  

This self-acceptance weaved into Taylor’s album is a newfound treasure. Taylor entered the music scene in a customary way, which in many respects seemed to be serving her well. Possessing all the drive of someone who believed in the music she created and an unknowing, naïve devotion to the melodic range she thought to be the pinnacle of her musical ability—Taylor was ready to give everything she could. But like a serendipitous slap in the face, Taylor was T-boned in a life-threatening car accident on the night of her first single release, resulting in a jaw injury that made it physically excruciating to speak or eat, let alone sing. Life was at a halt, and a music career seemed like a hopeless venture.  

After nearly 2 years of waiting and healing, Taylor began making music again. This time she was able to create something with melodic precision and an honest voice that lends itself to her newfound responsibility to authenticity. “I know for many people when there’s a tragedy, there’s often not just a silver lining, but a purpose you might find from what occurred. This felt like a step beyond that, like I was being shaken awake from the music I was creating—really from the person I was. The injury was so specific in taking away my ability to sing, and in the end I’m thankful it did.”

Taylor’s latest album, “Long Gone”, is a revelation you can feel, even not having known her previous work—a result of meeting friends Micah and Janie Dailey who were able to help her record, produce, and express without limit. A car accident, and many happy accidents later, Taylor made an album in the rawest way one can: in the living room of two people who gave her the ultimate freedom to be herself and create something that was exactly what she wanted to be.

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• Premiere of “False Door” by Taylor Daukas on Foxy Digitalis

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Sam Wenc recorded “Recall The Dream Breath” after a conversation with Caleb Dailey about doing an album for the label and talking through ideas of what it could look like – compared to his previous release, Heart Music (2022, Where to Now? Records), which was written and recorded over 1- 1.5 yrs, Recall the Dream Breath was written and recorded within the span of 2 weeks in March 2021. 

The first two tracks are more thoroughly “composed” pieces and for Sam, highlight new approaches for how he writes music for the pedal steel. The 2nd half of “Lorraine’s” and the final three songs were more or less improvised/written while recording. He heard the album in a sort of reflective way, Side A & B of similar palettes, but with some different intentions behind them. 

The other kicker with this album is the collaborations with fellow Moone artists Kyle Field & John Dieterich. When talking with Caleb, he asked about having Moone artists on the album, and it worked out to have Kyle & John contribute (Kyle writing and speaking the poem “Lorraine’s” and John adding guitar & effects to “Electric Pasture”. 

The album is attributed to “Post Moves & the Sound Memory Ensemble”. Though Sam performs most of the instrumentation (aside from Kyle & John’s contributions) – he wanted a listener to perhaps get the feeling that there was a larger group at work. With the album title and name of the ensemble, both have an associated verb/action with them. Both concerning dreams and/or memories, Sam liked the idea of the music scoring these moments where we cue information culled from dreams/memories as a way of situating ourselves in our present state. The placelessness of memories and their role in us finding place in the present. 

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• Foxy Digitalis Premieres “Lorraine’s” by Post Moves & the Sound Memory Ensemble (feat. Kyle Field)

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Photo by Andreas Staebler

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Spirit Fest is an underground avant-pop supergroup (for those of us that feel the weight of each member’s individual power), made up of Saya and Takashi (Tenniscoats), Markus Acher and Cico Beck (Notwist), and Mat Fowler (Jam Money). They have steadily been crafting and solidifying a beautifully surreal world since their inception in 2016. Their independent artistic selves have been stripped back to their rawest forms, and they then have become a centralized being. The building blocks used are made with materials that have already started to decompose. It’s familiar, but also “kind of off”. Their sounds become a part of our collective consciousness. Spirit Fest is more than a band. It’s an idea that we can all participate in. A spirit we can all conjure. The freedom and space they give is a gift. This is an invitation into a freedom we can all experience. But first, you have to follow suit, rid yourself of your preconceived ideas and become your rawest form.

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The Sheavesare five of the proletariat’s finest from the sun scorched SW of these United States. A shared love of punk (and all the pre-fixes in-between) informs the overall sound of the group. Starting as a home recording project, they began to play out in 2019 and have self released two tapes. The following year ushered in a period of pandemic home recording, which this album is the direct byproduct of.  Influences include the usual host of US and UK punk, kraut, garage, etc., plus the more nefarious (or not so nefarious) music throughout the 20th century. With one foot planted firmly in the past, this is truly muzak to live, laugh, love to in the new roaring 20’s.

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• Raven Sings The Blues Premieres “Hit Silly” by The Sheaves
• “Excess Death Cult Times” by The Sheaves Full Album Premiere on Foxy Digitalis
• “Excess Death Cult Times” on Bandcamp’s New & Notable
• “Situationist Maxi” by The Sheaves on Phoenix New times

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New York-based band Mushfoot will release their debut album, Time Before Land, on Moone Records in Fall 2022. This 8-song collection began as a remote collaboration in the early days of quarantine between Greg Albert (TheRainbows, Spite FuXXX, Holy Wisdom, LLC.), Ian Davis (Relatives, Ian Davis: Rock Band) and Katie Vogel (Relatives). Albert and Vogel were staying together in Brooklyn and Davis was across the city in Northern Manhattan, and the three would share songs they were working on for the others to add onto and return. Through this process the songs slowly became layered and took on new forms. Mushfoot embraces messiness, vulnerability, and sounds created from simple means stretched and manipulated beyond recognition. Named after Ian’s pet Mystery Snail, Mushfoot has yet to play a show but were they to… it would be very loud.

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Markus Acher (best known as singer of The Notwist) typically produces his own music under the name Rayon – this time, however, is a different story. Using his real name, he sends a signal re: the circumstances he recorded the music in – at home in his old apartment in Munich, in a private setting, in a time when there was hardly anything else available. Accordingly, and rather fittingly, the four songs represent a bridge to the outside world: Acher tore the doors to his balcony wide open, inviting the outside in, capturing its sound on tape: rain falling, engine noise of passing cars. And at the same time the songs pushed outward, into that sphere that remained off-limits to us for some time (“Like a plane they can go everywhere”).

The four tracks – arranged for harmonium, acoustic guitar, banjo, glockenspiel, percussion, a children’s harp and vocals – were released digitally in 2021 via the Japanese independent platform Minna Kikeru, run by Saya (member of the duo Tenniscoats and Markus Acher’s bandmate in Spirit Fest), among others. For two songs of “Like A Plane”, Saya contributed vocal tracks as well.

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