Record Grouch

Grouch-In: Great day of retail when one gets to meet one of our favorite artists, Michigander @fredthomas Fred’s 2024 Ecoatm LP was an EOY Team Pick!! Exceptional #art #jungle #sounds from the #greatlakestate Fred is playing tonight/now 5.16.26 w/ Tyvek down the south #brooklyn way @mamatriedbk Tyvek is also great, but no drumnbass happening live at Mama Tried this ‘eve. Do hit it if in those parts. Cc: @tyvek_official

New-In: Big restock of early releases from the unconquerable @nyegenyege @nyegenyegefest catalog! Cc: @deschuurman.mp3 @dj_travella_mr_mixondo @krakmaxter @djznobia

Used-In: Retail at late middle-age typically disorients b/w And on rare days affirms This week we’ve had some great intergenerational case studies in through lines, brief encounters that may qualify as “intersectional,” though we don’t want to overstep. While spinning what we consider as theeee critical pivot in the Black Dice catalog, so many #millennials #genz #alphas inquired, & almost immediately: “What is this? I love it.” Affirmation and connection feels good, after all these years. Some folks like the early #hardcore echo. Others lean in on mature sounds. We are all about pivots here in the shop. Cc: @bd_echobro @bjorn_copeland @esl__books

Grouch-In: Been friends with this fella for close to 15 years. Gonna miss his OG beauty and hope that the broken limbs don’t take him out entirely. Seen more of him than my family over the last decades. Healthy fella. Assuming an #18wheeler is the culprit, but can’t confirm. Heard it but didn’t see it. Lost another friend on this side of #manhattanave in the last year or so. Still feeling its absence every night at closing. #greenpoint 5.11.26

New-In: In terms of pure EU swagger, France’s Unglee Izi doesn’t namecheck fashionable folks like Coil or the #nursewithwound list. Unglee Izi goes straight for the Olivier Messiaen juggler as the primary musical reference point for these latest works, so take that sleeve tattoo teasippers. First became aware of Unglee Izi’s work through Joachim Montessuis’s Erratum. Erratum issued _A & R_ in 2019, a release whose LP version boiled down a 4-hour piece to 40 minutes. And even at 40 minutes, the sounds disturb, upset, and reveal. Apprentissage & Remplacement, indeed. @nashazphone issues their third Unglee Izi release with _Le Temps des Figures du Soleil Noir_, a 4 CD set housed in a gorgeous cardboard slipcase that includes a booklet of cryptic and alluring photography. Not to be hemmed in by genre or media, _The Wall of the Altar Star: Musique du Solitaire_ CD includes a booklet of poems and text-based musings. Innovative and mildly transgressive work, framed by beauty, noise, silence and exacting precision. Would love to hear this live, though the artist recommends top-shelf headphones for best appreciation. Cc: @erratum_musical @joachimmontessuis @unglee_izi

New-In: We don’t do @bandcamp , though if we did, we’d limit ourselves to Kevin Drumm. Obviously this suggests a paradox, as KD is hyper-prolific on BC, but quality keeps pace with the quantity. Though we remain content with our 20th century distro model, we obviously miss a lot. Psyched for the #repress #restock of 2018’s incredible _Inexplicable Hours_ 2LP, often cited as a companion to Drumm’s six [!!!] CD boxset _Elapsed Time_, both released by the French Sonoris imprint. Even by #digital standards, six Cds feels like a lot to digest, so grateful again for this distillation. The material on the first LP of _Inexplicable Hours_ chronicles an oft cited pivot in Drumm’s work, some of his last electroacoustic experiments with audio generators, field recordings, and assorted electronic devices. One Lp includes some favorite representational sounds: what we see/hear as a dry cleaner, lawnmower, laundromat, assorted light industry, and bird sounds chopped (not literally) by an HVAC, among other possibilties. And, obv, we could be wrong. The material on the second LP purportedly reinvestigates the sensibility and palette from the longform boxset, but cleans things up for us “album” folk. If the digital world is too much to take in, six Cds approximates that endlessness for us fans of the album. This recording offers a short window into #elapsedtime 🙏🙏 We need to gather the Sonoris catalog here in the shop, as it features favorites like Francisco Lopez, Jim O’Rourke, Mark Vernon, Yannick Dauby, and closer to home, Daniel Menche and Mike Shiflet! Cc: @mark.vernon.sounds @danielmenche @mikeshiflet

New-In: Whenever label folk lean in on and/or retort “this is a slow burner,” we tend to exit stage left. But when our position as fans and business owners cross paths, feel especially cautious and wait it out. Our sleepy approach to this Lp offers a case in #retail #point to pause and pay attention. _Trespass_ offers @ciadebutante w/ what might be their understated #masterpiece. Lyrically alone, and tbh, this LP really is Nathan Roche’s affair, so much to #dialect consider. We know rhyme and meter, or at least #earlymodern pre-20th century stylings, but confident no one is going to top CIA Debutante’s doublings of Hieronymus Bosch / Macintosh … and if we mishear anything, please don’t @ us, folks!! Other lines, just single Mark E Smith stuff, no meter or line break necessary, but amazing: makeyourselfathome Aerial and underground scenes We came across a potter Club 51 isn’t what it used to be The smoke rolls out the chimney another work in progress for those without working papers Not to say the music and palette isn’t inventive. To be honest, there’d be no voice to be had, so, so much depends on Paul Bonnet. Cc: @simongarfunkle @flesh_microchip_repair

Used-In:Nigerian first pressings from Fela Kuti & Afrika 70 and Sandra As is common, jackets are well loved and mark their age. All three have been play graded, solid listening copies for fans and priced accordingly. The Sandra LP was created after Afrika 70 members complained about their wages and Fela offered to record and play on their records for some backpay. That led to a slew of killer non-Fela records (including the first Tony Allen led LPs). #afrodisia #jofabro #felakuti #afrika70 #africa70

Used-In: Call us conservative late middle-agers, but love this #straight transitional #sunra recording from 1961. Sun Ra Arkestra _Bad & Beautiful_ Also prefer this Impulse! cover to the rare #Saturn cover art. Sorry white glovers. Sun Ra does Broadway #showtunes on this one, so embrace the wholesome graphpaper b/w dada vibes

Used-In: Calling all jazz punishers, those punishers who excel at punishment.   What appears to be a still sealed Mono first pressing _Percussion Ensemble_ (ESP-Disk’, 1965) Milford Graves with Sunny Morgan #sonnymorgan #philadelphia #milfordgraves #jamaica #queens

New-In: And via @dragcityrecords compounding our #duchamp theme this ‘eve b/w absolutely no equivalencies here, though one fella in this teen project knows some stuff. Squirrel Bait back in the bins, folks. Pictures suggest a band so young one can hear their bones in #formation Amazing #juvenalia … may be the best early work on record, at least in our demographic. Cc: @blackfaurest @therealpetersearcy @commissar69 @dragcityrecords

Reads-In: Up in our web-store now, folks. We live (and die, presumably) by 20th century distro models, so don’t do #bandcamp #friday or ever. We do do Duchamp, however, even out of context/or misplaced in this staging. So psyched for this book and the Duchamp show up at @themuseumofmodernart And please don’t @ us w/ your critiques. When we ever gonna have so many #fabricated multiples gathered together? Definitely not in Philly, Arensberg or naught. And the readymade don’t equal the found object. Sorry, folks. Don’t conflate b/w Hat Rack it