Tag: vinyl

汤姆克鲁斯和凯蒂霍尔姆斯 Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes – 你不爱我 – 7th August 2014

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Cat #: 160TZM

Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes. What happened with those two? Why name your band after them? Are they a totem of the 21st-century relationship? The infuriating alienation and slow-burning pain of failed love? Nah. Maybe. “You Don’t Love Me (你不爱我)” rails against the inevitable for about four minutes before yielding to the feral chaos underlying human nature, love, celebrity, the sounds of the words themselves. After the heart’s fires burn out there’s just swirling ash, granules too small to be individually seen but jagged enough to sting your eyes long after the light and warmth are gone.

The flip side is an extended remix of another Tom & Katie tearjerker,
“After Leaving (离开后),” by Huashun Unit. H.U. is one of many aliases for one-man Shanghai doom drone crusader Nahash, née Laura Ingalls (not his real name), and his partner in crime, Clement Pony. In this studio trip, he basically takes one open guitar chord and a few disembodied vocal fragments from Tom and Kate respectively and transmutes them into a lush gestalt that sounds like it was written and performed by Enya’s evil twin for some kind of nefarious ritual. If you’ve never been to Shanghai, let me tell you: this track sounds exactly like how it feels to walk into a bomb shelter dance club choked with cut-rate cigarette smoke and the stink of unmoored pheromones at 5 in the morning. Love blinds.

Recorded and mixed by The Horses at Studio Poney, Shanghai China.
Mastered by Garrett Haines at Treelady Studios

汤姆克鲁斯和凯蒂霍尔姆斯 are:
Cee Q – vocals, keyboards
小中 – guitar, keyboards
tomlovedkatie@gmail.com
tcakh.bandcamp.com
huashanrecords.bandcamp.com

Licensed from Genjing Records for release in Australia.

The Fallacy – Painkiller – 5th August 2014

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Cat #: 162TZM

Take everything you know about the burgeoning “underground” Chinese punk scene, put it in an ornate, hand crafted box, lock that box and throw it into the deepest pool of the 68o Yangfu Mountain Hot Spring! This is the beer soaked sound of the Henan suburbs circa 2014: three young men from Xinxiang relaying their day-to-day experiences via the medium of tightly wound hooks, post-punk exhibitionism and the drive time ferocity of ’77 punk, all filtered through the lens of (producer/PK 14 frontman) Yang Haisong’s Psychic Kong studio. Handsomely packaged, featuring cover art by up and coming visual artist extraordinaire Xu Jiacun, the Painkiller 7″ is a third tier city curio you’re definitely going to want in your ever expanding collection of China-centric wax platters.

THE FALLACY are:

Wang Xubo – Vocals / Guitar
Zhang Nan – Bass
Da Li – Drums

Recorded by Yang Haisong at Psychic Kong, Beijing 2013
Mastered by Garrett Haines at Treelady Studios, USA
Paintings by Xu Jiacun
Designed by Ksama of Dooo Design Studio

Licensed from Genjing Records for release in Australia

Carsick Cars – 3 LP – 20th April 2014

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Cat #: 159TZM

NOTE: CD has alternate language versions to the vinyl and different bonus tracks in the download!

After five restless years, Carsick Cars, China’s most influential and dynamic indie-rock band, return with their most mature and exciting release to date.

Available in April 2014, ‘3’ is the aptly titled third album for the Beijing based trio. ‘3’ sees vocalist, guitarist and founding member Zhang Shouwang return with his signature sound, seamlessly combining drone with shimmering pop melodies. The result is assured to please established fans and new listeners alike.

Carsick Cars/Flavor Crystals – 19th April 2014

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Cat #: 150TZM

On the flip side, Minneapolis psych-rock vets, Flavor Crystals, offer up Mirror in My Mind, a drone smeared, carefully considered, morotik ripper that mines the depths of exploratory shoegaze with aplomb, not unlike an auditory visage of one of Frederik van Eeden’s exercises in lucid dreaming. The band’s most recent full length release, a triple LP psych monster, coincidentally titled Three [Mpls. Ltd.], may well be one of the more criminally overlooked wax platters of the past couple years – self-engineered and produced by the band following a lengthy US tour in support of like-minded sonic sojourners, The Brian Jonestown Massacre, Three captures Flavor Crystals in a vulnerable, metacognitive state and the results are nothing short of staggering! 

Flavor Crystals are:
Josh Richardson
Nat Stensland
Vince Caro
Jon Menke

Special guests on this recording:
Ricky Maymi: drums, blender guitar
Stephen Lawrie: percussion, oscillations

Produced by Ricky Maymi
Recorded by Nat Stensland
Nov-Dec 2013 in Minneapolis
Mixed with Neil Weir at Old Blackberry Way
Mastered by Bruce Templeton

Copyright 2014 Flavor Crystals
ASCAP/Sterling Songs

Special thanks to Christian Fritz/mpls ltd, Nevin Domer/Genjing, Ricky and Stephen

——————–

Carsick Cars are:
Shouwang Zhang
Fan He
Heting Sun

Produced by Sonic Boom (Pete Kember) & Hamish Kilgour
Recorded by Matt Boynton
April 2013 in Vacation Island Recording Studio, NYC
Mixed by Ping Li at Busy Bee, Beijing
Mastered by Joe LaPorta at Sterling Sound

Special thanks to Nevin Domer and Ricky Maymi

Seahorse Divorce – 13th September 2013

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Cat #: 142TZM

All life on Earth began innocently in the primordial, prenatal waters of creation, and so too it was that love drew its first delicate and vulnerable breath. If you have known love you will be aware of the terrible pounding and crushing pressure pushing all oxygen from your chest, leaving you gasping for air and looking to take up the nearest sharp object and carve gills into your neck. This is the spirit of the ocean calling to your most ancient protozoan ancestral memory, speaking its most primal intuition and evoking a near implacable yearning to drown yourself in the nearest body of water.

Consider this, then, the conceptual crux of the debut LP from regenerate Brisbane dandies Seahorse Divorce; 11 tracks of unfettered, unapologetic and organic affection prevailing in the face of the invariable estrangement and painful separation of life. Lacking ulterior motive or any concept of predestination, the songs are offered in homage to the other, the oft-ignored remainder after opposing and dominating forces of creative or emotional obviousness wear themselves thin.

Left, then, to wander through an ever-shifting landscape of light and darkness in search of hearth and hospice, as street urchins Seahorse Divorce simultaneously abandon and are abandoned by the bygone progenitors that first gave them life, and yet are clearly distinguished and inescapably marked by their genetic and cultural heritage.

Recorded live, Sun Distorted, punk in intent but never in form, it is unlikely that Seahorse Divorce is the proselytizing litany of a new age but have stranger things not happened? 

Dear Eloise – The Winter That Disappeared – 17th May 2013

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Cat #: 136TZM

Since their inception in 2008, Beijing alchemists Dear Eloise have issued a steady stream of releases from their home studio that have been well-received by fans and critics alike despite shying away from performing live (they do not) and courting the media (they do not do that, either), instead quietly giving flight to their indelible fuzz-soaked concoctions and letting them speak for themselves.

“The Winter That Disappeared,” the duo’s fourth 7” on tenzenmen (and seventh release overall), is a departure from the playful shoegaze-influenced pop purity of their earlier work, tacking down a darker path with two self-produced cuts pressed on emerald-green vinyl.

“Vanishing Winter,” the A-side, forcefully announces itself with multi-instrumentalist Yang Haisong’s rhythmic ice-brittle guitar anchored by a trotting bass. In the background, a second unleashed guitar taps out bright arpeggios and Sun Xia’s disembodied ethereal voice rises and falls—nowhere and everywhere. And that ever-present fuzz glows like banked coals.

Behind the omniscient crackling and hissing like crossed wires from a supernatural radio transmission, the simple chord progressions and ghostlike vocals of the B-side, “The Place in White Light,” attempt to penetrate the dissonant wall like green springtime shoots. But they don’t—the static thickens and grows increasingly anxious before the rhythm section, a dirgelike bassline and percussive fills, are abruptly swallowed and extinguished like a candle snuffed by an unworldly presence.