All

LP is Standard Jacket + Download Card.

CD is 4 Panel Digipack.

Maston released his debut album, Shadows, in 2013, and moved from his native Los Angeles to Amsterdam for a several year stint sitting in with Dutch musician Jacco Gardner’s band. It was during this period that Maston wrote and recorded his second album Tulips (2017). Influenced by European film and library music, the largely instrumental Tulips was released to critical acclaim, garnering comparisons to Ennio Morricone, Sven Libaek, & Piero Umiliani. The record was accompanied by several 16mm films directed by Maston, and the LP’s limited private press release on his own Phonoscope label has become highly sought after among crate diggers and collectors alike.

Following Tulips, he began producing and mixing records for other artists, including his collaboration with Pedrum Siadatian (Allah-Las) as PAINT, whose first two LP’s were produced and recorded by Frank. In April 2021 Maston released his third album, Panorama, on the legendary library music label KPM, bringing his soundtrack influences full circle and firmly cementing himself as a contemporary composer.

LP is Standard Jacket w/ Download Card, Printed Inner Sleeve & Foldout Poster.

CD is 4 Panel Digipack.

Consider the power of the vibe. After all, the power of positive vibes transcends simple categorization or a Sopranos meme. A good vibe is a cool breeze and ice cream on a sweltering afternoon. It is the athlete whose sixth sense and unselfishness makes everyone on the court play better. It is those Bob Ross videos where with a gentle voice and a few quick brush strokes, the painter conjures arcadian beauty. Good vibes are something that the modern world desperately needs. Graciously, such benevolent energy can be found on ‘Lionel Boy’, the Innovative Leisure self-titled debut LP from Lionel Boy, the Oahu-bred singer-songwriter.

In the case of Lionel Boy, the native Hawaiian sense of the Mahalo spirit is inextricable from the art. And like the word “Mahalo,” there is a deeper meaning to the music beyond superficial translation. Mahalo literally translates to “thank you,” but it’s an entire approach to life: it encompasses the value of thankfulness, appreciation, and gratitude. While those might easily interpret it as indifference and apathy, it is a product of profound connectivity and three-dimensional perspective. Few things are more difficult than making a work of art appear effortless. The airy, jazz-cracked, electronic pop of Lionel Boy belies a wistful romanticism, a careful observational streak, and a meditative fixation on life and death.

A famous John Keats quote holds that you shouldn’t write poems unless the words come naturally as leaves falling from a tree. In a slightly different sense, you can use this notion to trace the trajectory of Lionel’s career. For most of his life, the apostle of chill born Lionel Deguzman was a skater kid. The pursuit taught him the value of individuality -- in the sense that there are myriad ways to ride a skateboard and you find your own way by figuring out your own natural style -- a singularity that sets you apart from everyone else who can do a backside 180. It’s this attitude with which Lionel approaches music. Even then, this evolution had a streak of serendipity.

In the summer of 2018, Lionel first entered a studio in Long Beach with two close friends (he’d moved to the West Coast port city several years prior). The recording session started by shouting obscenities into the microphone. But inspiration slowly took root and the Lionel Boy vision began to manifest. That same year, Lionel began working with the celebrated producer Jonny Bell on an unrelated project. The strength of the artistic kinship eventually led him to produce the Lionel’s first single, “Are You Happy Yet,” and the Who Is Dovey? EP, released on Innovative Leisure.

Flash forward, a few years later, and the creative union has led to ‘Lionel Boy’, an electric synthesis of Lionel’s sounds -- which FADER previously hailed as “slacker pop” (alternate ascription: “liquor store pop.”). It’s a warm and mellow album built to keep you company on long drives. If Lionel’s artist DNA stems from a classic singer-songwriter tradition, it’s been subtly transposed with the influences of the rappers, beatmakers, and R&B singers that dominate his listening habits. “Kam Highway” sounds like a breathless moonlit torch ballad laced with a touch of inspiration derived from Boi-1da’s kicks on “Mob Ties.” With “Tides,” Lionel Boy updates Jack Johnson and Ben Harper for a generation in dire need of expansive and endearing mood music. “Mango Michelada” reimagines the synth sounds often used by Frank Ocean to create a song that comes off as refreshing and tropically chill as its namesake.

Despite being recorded during the pandemic, Lionel and Bell somehow managed to create an antidote for the anxiety. They’d visit each other several times a week, slowly fleshing out the demos that Lionel recorded at home, aided by a squadron of highly gifted virtuosos (Fred Garbutt, synthesizers; Bell, Nic Gonzales, Andrew Pham and Sam Wilkes, bass; Brett Kramer, drums; Sarah Hinesly, keys, and Andres Renteria on percussion).  ‘Lionel Boy’ is soulful and easy-going, both introspective and laissez faire. Extremely mellow but never soft-headed.

For a moment fraught with stress and chaos, this album is a relaxed exhale of joy. Yet it refuses delusion. These are real-life circumstances that play out with thought and concern. After all, there is a subtlety to the art of the vibe. Lionel Boy isn’t just playing a series of chords to  create a serene mood. It’s at the essence of his being. Something that can’t be forced or faked. A timeless cool apart from momentary trends, eternal as the tides rolling in and out.

LP is 180 Gram Vinyl, Tip-On Jacket, Download Card & 4 Page Insert.

CD is Tip-On, "Mini"-LP Jacket w/ Insert.

We can try as hard as we can to make sense of Promenade Blue, but in reality, context isn’t really needed because the music on the album is so damn magnificent. In no uncertain terms, it represents Waterhouse’s finest hour as a writer and bandleader — leveraging the musical partnerships he has built over many years to put something forth that is so fully realized and felt that it sparkles beatifically, reverberating with energy, heart, creativity, and vibe from start to finish. Nowhere is this more evident than on the album’s opening track, “Place Names,” perhaps the most remarkable song in the Waterhouse catalogue.

The album twists and turns from the opening to the close — from swinging, sashaying jazz and blues (“Spanish Look”) to jittering, crystalline doo wop (“Very Blue”) and pure, loose, languid mood music with just a hint of Mulatu Astatke’s Ethiopian modal magic (“Promène Blue”). Most striking, perhaps, is the use of men’s voices as a backing texture, bringing an unexpected thematic unity to many of the songs. Lower-than-low gospel chants and refrains lend both energy and emotional weight to these pieces, conjuring a whole new mythic world for Nick’s compositions. This is a statement album, one to get lost in and rediscover over and over again.  

In the Waterhouse catalogue, “Promenade Blue” represents rebirth and reinvigoration as well as a clarity of purpose that elevates it and may one day set it apart as something resembling a magnum opus. It’s his ‘Gatsby’ and it’s also his way of reintroducing himself to a fanbase that has grown by leaps and bounds over the last couple of years. On this record, he paints a mythic picture of his own life — lost in confusion, grating against time, overheated by false memories, being baptized by nostalgia and a vision of the future that is paradoxically both dark and apocalyptic and sparkling with promise. Sounds a lot like America in the 20s to me. Which 20s though? Which color — green or blue? Which author? Try to figure it out for yourself:  

For European Orders :https://www.basinrock.co.uk/records/alex-maas-luca/

Everything changed for Alex Maas in 2018. That was the year his first child was born—a happy and healthy baby boy—sending The Black Angels’ vocalist and multi-instrumentalist into a flurry of emotions he hadn’t felt before. There was the joy, of course, and the sheer awe that comes with creating new life. But to a lesser degree, there was also the fear: What world is his son going to grow up into, exactly? And how can Maas protect him from the dangers within it? “The world is definitely messed up,” says Maas, a Texas native who’s lived in Austin for decades. “But there’s a lot of good in it too, and that’s why the whole world isn’t on fire—parts of it are. I do believe that there’s more good than evil.”

Maas and his wife named their son Luca, which means “bringer of light,” and when it came time for Maas to title his debut solo album, he knew there was only one choice. A swirl of meditative thoughts about the cosmic interplay of the universe, Luca is an album informally dedicated to its creator’s son, and directly inspired by the humbling reveries that were brought out by him.

It’s also just a powerful work of gentle psychedelia, and a notable sonic departure from the heavy, pulse-raising sound that Maas has become renowned for. For more than 15 years, The Black Angels have served as one of rock’s preeminent purveyors of blissful walls of fuzz and intensity. They’ve also served as ringleaders of a larger psych-rock scene, particularly through their Levitation music festival, which inspires a pilgrimage of kindred spirits from around the world to the Austin area year after year.

But Luca scratches a new itch for Maas. “It’s a whole different part of my brain,” Maas says of the album, which finds him putting aside his Jesus and Mary Chain LPs and instead looking for inspiration in acts varying from The Everly Brothers to Portishead. Opener “Slip Into” delivers extraterrestrial themes over a funky beat and an eerie synth line, while “American Conquest” is a trance-inducing journey that focuses on issues much closer to home, like the horrific shootings ravaging the country in recent years. “The City” is a woozy campfire song reckoning with the larger cycle of human violence, and “Been Struggling” is a dreamy waltz that takes a winking look at memory and fate. Songs like “Special” and “500 Dreams” are lullabies for Luca inspired by thoughts about all of this and more. “I wanted to go someplace musically that I’ve never gone before,” Maas considers. “Wu-Tang meets Leonard Cohen.”

The project was a long time coming: Some of the songs date back almost a decade, when the idea of a solo album was still just a star in the sky—before the time was right. But once Maas realized that this was something he needed to do, he started putting it together piece by piece over the course of a couple years, enlisting an all-star list of collaborators to record at Spaceflight Studios in Austin: Luca was co-produced with Maas by Jack White’s front of house engineer Brett Orrison, and features contributions from Widespread Panic drummer Duane Trucks, The Sword bassist Bryan Ritchie (on mellotron and bass), Jack White keys player Quincy McCrary (on strings and piano), vocalist Jazz Mills, Eels drummer Derek Brown, Golden Dawn Arkestra drummer Robb Kidd, and The Black Angels’ own Christian Bland and Jake Garcia. Former Black Angels member Nate Ryan also plays on the album.

The music quickly became even more than just the sum of its parts: “Once I started playing with other people,” Maas says, “I realized that these songs were much bigger than I had anticipated.”

Being released into a world that only seems to be getting scarier, Luca is a balm for the weary, partially because it doesn’t shy away from confronting tough subjects. But like Maas says, it’s not all bad. Not even close. And there will be a way forward, one way or another. “We’re all navigating weird waters right now,” Maas says. “I’m trying to just go wherever the flow of the water is going.”

A decade ago, journalists, fans, critics, and audiophiles alike were wont to compare Nick Waterhouse to his predecessors. And it was a convenient way to categorize an artist that has since proved uncategorizable—he had a voice that balanced somewhere between Van Morrison and Ray Charles, an aesthetic that caught the attention of style reporters at GQ, an ambitious production vision that stood out among the lo-fi rock and alternative bands of the zeitgeist. And he was disarmingly earnest in his own influences—citing artists like Mose Allison and Them as early inspiration. But now, coming off of his searching, intimate, self-titled album of 2019 and bringing us “Nick Waterhouse Live at Pappy & Harriet’s; In Person from the High Desert” in 2020, it’s clear that comparisons, of any kind, no longer suffice.

LP is Standard Jacket, Printed Inner Sleeve, & Download Card.

CD is 4 Panel Digipack.

Cassette is Standard J Card.

Meet Jonah Yano, the Toronto based singer, songwriter, whose journey into music began with recording music using his cellphone in 2016.  Having played piano and guitar as a child, it wasn’t until Yano moved from Vancouver to Toronto in 2016 that he began putting his songs online, catching the eyes of Toronto’s thriving local music scene. Spending the next couple of years obsessively songwriting and practicing vocals, and learning technical skills, he collaborated with Toronto duo MONEYPHONE on the 2018 song “On Lock” which became an underground success. Shortly after, Yano released his first solo single “Rolex, the Ocean'' with producer Joseph L'etranger. Once he began writing his full EP, he was introduced to frequent collaborators BADBADNOTGOOD, who are featured on the EP’s title track, “nervous.” Yano’s work has garnered praise in major music publications like The Fader, Billboard, Complex, and Exclaim and the attention of Virgil Abloh and Gilles Peterson along with millions of streams on Spotify and Apple Music. Most recently, Yano released a highly praised cover of the Majestic’s “Key to Love (Is Understanding)” also with BADBADNOTGOOD, finding himself in the natural position of writing the feature length album, 2020’s souvenir.

Following a highly acclaimed 2019 which included the release of an EP nervous, collaborations with BADBADNOTGOOD, MONEYPHONE, and Nono; industry praise from The Fader, Billboard, High Snobiety, NME, KCRW and Exclaim — it’s not a stretch to say Jonah Yano’s highly anticipated debut feature album souvenir took a lifetime to make.

Yano’s souvenir, mixes his soulful, genre blurring vocals with searing, personal lyrics. With collaborations from talents like BADBADNOTGOOD, Monsune and Jacques Greene, souvenir touches on themes of family separation, healing, and reconciling with the past.

With each track delving into Yano’s personal history, the album tells the story of his parents separation and absence of his father from his life through the perspective of each of his family members. Following the separation of his parents in 1998 in Hiroshima and subsequent move to Vancouver, Yano spent years with very little connection to his father beyond occasional calls and birthday presents.

Having not seen each other in 15 years, Yano visited his father in Nagato in the fall of 2019 with the goal of making sense of their complicated relationship through music. Both being avid musicians, Yano then incorporated some of his father’s earlier recordings into his own, while making peace with their past. The result — the album’s final track, “shoes,” featuring his father Tatsuya Muraoka and written by him about a pair of shoes he purchased for Yano as a child. Most of the track was recorded live at some point in the 1990’s in Hiroshima, with Yano’s own vocals filling gaps between his father’s vocals.

Recording the album in Tokyo’s Red Bull studios, a log cabin in Nagato, Toronto’s Studio 69, and his own home — the intensely personal album incorporates Yano’s unique sound with a deeply relatable concept, making it the natural follow-up to an already impressive catalogue.

LP is Standard Jacket, Printed Inner Sleeve, & Download Card.

CD is 4 Panel Digipack.

In the life of any interesting artist, there is the perpetual war between the simplicity of public perception and the complexities of reality. Consider Hanni El Khatib, a definitive purveyor of visceral, blues-wracked, punk-spiked, soul-warped, knife fight rock n’ roll over the last decade. You may be familiar with him through any one of his four acclaimed solo albums on Innovative Leisure, his work with Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys, or as one of the rare polymaths able to artfully blend serrated guitars and hardcore rap on collaborations with GZA and Freddie Gibbs. And while these are all real things that could accurately yield a sketch of the multi-dimensional Los Angeles-based artist, they amount to little more than a black and white pencil sketch. 

More compelling is the Hanni El Khatib of terrestrial existence, who is less susceptible to being pigeonholed by shrewd branding or capsule biography. There is the Hanni El Khatib who existed before he was a professional musician. This was the rap and punk-revering San Francisco skate rat, who grew up digging in the crates for samples to flip on his bedroom MPC -- who would eventually become the creative director for the venerable streetwear label HUF. There is the second chapter in which El Khatib moved to LA to pursue music full-time and almost immediately found himself embraced by KCRW and on tour with Florence and the Machine. Music supervisors synced his music in Audi commercials that  played at the Super Bowl. The LA Times said that El Khatib's voice is like “woodsmoke or bourbon, acrid yet sweet, as timeless as jeans and a T-shirt… versatile enough to make a classic sound fresh again.”  While across the pond, The Guardian claimed that El Khatib was like “if Joe Strummer came back as an angry young Filipino-Palestinian American.”

From 2010 until 2017, there was the usual cycle that consumes most working 21st musicians: make an album, and tour it for the next 18 months. Return home, rinse and repeat. And with it came the predictable pitfalls that ensnare too many artists whose professional obligations require high-octane performances before 1,000 or more strangers every night. It is a dream until that one night when it isn’t any longer, and despite his gratitude for his fans and station in life, El Khatib found himself wracked by depression and anxiety. What had once been joyous creative outlet felt like a job. In the wake of the release of 2017’s Savage Times, it became readily apparent that if El Khatib didn’t make drastic changes to his lifestyle, there might not be a life to speak of. So he quit drinking, stopped touring, and took an indefinite hiatus from the studio. 

With music temporarily out of the picture, El Khatib returned to one of his first loves: design. Partnering with his longtime friend and former employer Keith Hufnagel of HUF, El Khatib founded Metropolitan, a popular skateboard brand that recently did a collaborative run with Adidas.  But eventually, the desire to create songs slowly returned. It helped that El Khatib purposely downsized his living arrangements, moving out of a spacious house with a well-appointed studio in Beachwood Canyon into a smaller dwelling with a bedroom lab that mirrored the cramped confines of how El Khatib first began making music as a teenager. 

What would eventually become El Khatib’s fifth studio album, the virtuosic but characteristically raw Flightbegan as spontaneous experimentation. Over the last several years, El Khatib had become close friends with Leon Michels, best known as the mastermind of the soul controllers, the El Michels Affair, but who has also quietly racked up producer credits for the likes of pop juggernauts like Lana Del Rey, Travis Scott, A$AP Rocky, and Eminem -- as well as frequently working in sessions with Grammy-winning super-producer Mark Ronson. 

At first, their jams were intended as riffs and breaks for other producers to sample, but quickly, El Khatib decided to say fuck the middleman. Why create samples, when they could create the entire beat themselves? The process unfolded casually and organically. El Khatib took a few trips to Michels’ studio in upstate New York, and when Michels would come to LA to produce the new Chicano Batman record or to work with Ronson, he’d steal away an afternoon to help create Flight. 

The finished result is a rollicking sampledelic opus that recalls the beautiful chaos that the Dust Brothers created on Paul’s Boutique and Odelay. Or maybe the euphoric bricolage of the Avalanches’ Since I Left You crossed with the aggrieved darkness of the early Prodigy. Of course, it’s all filtered through the singular style that El Khatib has developed over the previous ten years. Take a song like “Room,” the first finished song on the album. Built off a scuzzy drum break and hypnotic pianos, the pair of  El Khatib and Michels recorded it live to tape, then sampled it through outboard gear into the computer a la Portishead. Then they put it in Ableton, chopped the hell out of it, re-edited it and stitched back together into a collage. It’s the type of thing that Dilla and Madlib would’ve created if they had come up on The Cramps. 

The creative process was governed by whatever helped them move through the compositions quickly. If they got stuck, they’d delete it. Because El Khatib wasn’t concerned with the need to perform the songs live, it unlocked a new level. So rather than blistering guitar attacks, you might hear two drum samples, a live flute, and a weird fucked up tape loop that could never be played live. It’s creativity for its own sake, the only type that’s really important. A song like “Dumb” plays out like post-modern minimalist doo-wop written for a Spaghetti Western reboot that needed a new Morricone score. “Alive” is a levitative groove with a narcotic jazz piano riff built atop a bruised but euphoric vocal that asks, slightly dumbfounded, “I can’t believe I survived.” And yes, “Stressy” has a ghostride the whip reference because you can take the artist out of the Bay but…

The irony, of course, is that for a record that sounds like little else El Khatib has ever done, it’s the most complete embodiment of who he is as an artist. It’s a record both dense and intricate yet direct and spontaneous. It is garage rock, it is hip-hop, it is soul, it is blues, it is psychedelic, but more than anything, it’s a brilliant Hanni El Khatib record -- one that taps into the adolescent spirit of creation that first stirred him to make songs in the first place. Here he is on his fifth album, back for the first time. 

The Buttertones new album Jazzhound.

LP is Foldout Poster Insert + Download Card.

Before settling in to make Jazzhound, their most extravagant, ambitious, and fully realized album to date, the Buttertones had to face the hounds of real life. Prior to a headlining summer tour in support of 2018’s Midnight in a Moonless Dream, a fiery blast of an album capturing the band at their purest distillation, drummer/multi-instrumentalist Modesto ‘Cobi’ Cobiån had a sudden and serious medical scare involving his eye, requiring emergency surgery. He lost half his vision (it will hopefully return with a future operation), and the tour had to be cancelled. Music took a backseat for the time being. 

“It gave us some perspective on our health,” says bassist Sean Redman, “and the fact that we have to look after ourselves and one another first, or else the music just can’t happen.” Cobiån, Redman, and vocalist/guitarist Richard Araiza have been playing together for seven years now, having first come together for a self-titled debut in 2013; along with London Guzman on sax and keys, they’ve come to establish themselves as one of L.A.’s tightest groups, conquering stages from Coachella to Tropicalia. When one of their own had a scare, they rallied around him—and used the experience to come together stronger than ever for the record they were getting ready to make. 

“He says it adds charm to his character,” jokes Araiza, who led the Buttertones back into writing mode, taking the reset moment to really focus on the approach and style of the record. The material he was working on took the band forward into a heavier sound—and it also brought them back to the spark of their first album. “It allowed us to go back to the roots and the spirit we had when we started,” Redman considers. “We are kind of a new band, in a lot of ways, is what it feels like.” 

Continuing their partnership with producer Jonny Bell of Crystal Antlers, who produced Moonless Dream as well as 2017’s Gravedigging, the Buttertones waited until they were good and ready before hitting thelegendary Electro-Vox Studios in Hollywood, where they arrived knowing exactly what they wanted to lay to tape. Armed with an arsenal of the most propulsive music they’ve written yet, the band recorded the album mostly live—an ideal method for capturing their cult-status live show, which carries on the torch of acts like the Walkmen and the Fleshtones. “We’d do a few takes,” says Araiza, “and then it was, ‘Alright, we got all the main instruments done, now let’s record on the vibraphone that was used on Pet Sounds,’ you know?”

But Jazzhound is completely new territory for the group, too, with Araiza, who calls this album “probably thedarkest one” he’s written lyrically, pushing his Ian Curtis-via-Bobby Darin baritone to new depths, particularly on scorchers like “Phantom Eyes” and “Bebop.” It’s also the first album with Cobiån acting—and thriving—in his new role as a full-time guitarist (the drum parts were written by him and played by session musician Paul Doyle), and the first since the departure of guitarist Dakota Boettcher as well.

“We really worked our asses off on this one,” says Araiza, proudly, already talking about how he can’t wait to do it all again and make another record soon—after they tour the world, that is, making up for the lost dates last summer, and then some. “It feels like we’re still climbing.”

Limited Edition 45.

Nick Waterhouse grew up in a coastal town near Long Beach, CA. It was a serene setting: the ocean stretching out for miles to the North and South, manicured lawns, two-story homes, long swathes of concrete highway, fast food chains and mega malls. He was there for two decades. Then, he left.

He found a home in his early 20s in San Francisco, working at record stores
alongside a collective of likeminded young crate-diggers and 45 collectors.
And then he started making his own records: “Time’s All Gone” in 2012,
“Holly” in 2014, and “Never Twice” in 2016. These were evocative albums,
steeped in a perfectionism and clarity of vision that informed every choice,
from the studios to the players, the arrangements to the album art.
Everything, deliberately designed and purposeful, bubbling over with power
and feeling.

And as those records rolled out into the world, Waterhouse found a dedicated
audience of his own as well as a bevy of influential champions and collabora-
tors, including garage-rock mystic Ty Segall, retro-futurist R&B bandleader
Leon Bridges and the LA-based quartet Allah-Las, whose first two albums he
meticulously produced and played on. There is a “Waterhouse Sound” and it
comes from both the man and the method — recording everything on magnet-
ic tape, through analog equipment, and playing live (!), eyeball to eyeball,
whenever possible.

Now, he’s finished his fourth album. He’s calling it “Nick Waterhouse.” And
whether intentional or not, it is perhaps his most reflective — and reflexive —
album, employing all of the mature production techniques learned through-
out his professional career while retaining a viscous edge that allows it to land
with colossal impact — more raw, heavy and overtly confrontational than
anything he’s made before.

“Nick Waterhouse” was recorded at the finest working studio in Los Angeles,
Electro Vox Recorders, and co-produced by Paul Butler (The Bees, Michael
Kiwanuka, Devendra Banhart), the master of all things warm, rich and wooly.
Nick’s songs here are personal, but personal in the way that “Please Mr.
Postman,” “What’s Going On” and “Cathy’s Clown” are — intimate, direct, yet
still malleable enough for listeners to suffuse their own life stories into the
mix. The album is thick with talented players, including Andres Rentaria, Paula

Henderson and the staggering, howling saxophone of Mando Dorame.

All of the new Waterhouse songs sound big. Brawny and muscular. The lyrics
are suspicious, outraged and, at times, very vulnerable (muscle is just flesh,
after all). Waterhouse uses an economy of words to deliver complex, coded
messages. He offers up equal parts criticism of the time we live in and innate
human flaws. He paints relationships under the cover of darkness, slashing
through neo-noir fantasies that are romantic, blood-spattered and bracingly
aware of the powerlessness felt among people, amid the rapid onslaught of
commercialism and technological progress. And, as has become his
signature, he throws in a tune written by a close friend. On this record, he
covers “I Feel an Urge Coming On” in tribute to the song’s author, Nick’s own
mentor and collaborator Joshie Jo Armstead, who wrote music with Ray
Charles and sang as both an Ikette and Raelette in the ’60s and ’70s.

He’s four albums in, but it makes sense that this specific record is the one that
takes his name. You can really here Nick on this one. Not just the band. Not
just the songs. Not just the sound. HIM. You can hear his mind at work. His
passion. His focus. More importantly, you can feel it.

LP is Gatefold Jacket + Download Card.

CD is 4 Panel Digipack.

Rotterdam’s Iguana Death Cult hasn’t exactly been shy about causing havoc on whatever stage they set foot. That’s likely been the one constant since establishing their giddy brand of protopunk and garage rock on debut LP The First Stirrings Of Insect Life. Iguana’s pending follow-up Nude Casino marks a swift and sobering departure from the miasma of psychedelics they purvey so fervently. But no less intense: this band has been sharpening their tools, reemerging from their concrete cavern with a ragged and convulsive post-punk attack akin to Devo, The Gun Club, and Richard Hell.

Nude Casino sporadically evokes Iguana Death Cult’s more hedonistic tendencies, but the album’s crisper, more unvarnished sonic makeup illustrates a seething skepticism as a counterbalance. Frontman Jeroen Reek finds himself teetering in demented neurosis between vivid dream states and stark reality. The album’s beating heart is ‘Tuesday’s Lament’, an arresting five-chapter monologue that wrestles with the strains of mortality and belief. As Reek narrates the invasion of existing evils into his phantasmagorical, aquatic dream world, somehow, Iguana Death Cult manage to jam it all into a belter of a melodic hook: “Swimming upstream for the sake of paradise, it’s up there still.” A bashful resolution, albeit one that balances on the edge of fatalism.

Adding a touch of sobriety, both sonically and lyrically, hasn’t stifled Iguana Death Cult daredevil ways the slightest. The mighty triptych of ‘Nude Casino’, ‘Bright Lights’ and ‘Lorraine’ was pretty much written simultaneously, a testament to the off-the-chain chemistry the Dutch quintet has developed over the years. Axe-wielder Tobias Opschoor once again brandishes his resourcefulness for licks that penetrate the skull with charm and impertinence. He is the brains behind Nude Casino’s manic, climax-building pinnacle ‘Nature Calls’, a juggernaut of a track that ironically captures a yearning to drift away from the civilized world. Though more grounded in reality, sonically speaking, ‘Nature Calls’ might be the closest kin to the more surrealist pronouncements of First Stirrings.

Playing an abundance of shows – at small clubs, squats and festivals such as The Great Escape, Lowlands, c/o pop, Plissken and Reeperbahn – has whipped Iguana into even more ferocious live band, and that experience carries over in the recordings. The tandem of Justin Boer (bass) and Arjen van Opstal (drums) is still the engine that drives the group’s helter-skelter horsepower. Jimmy de Kok adds a new melodic dynamic, assaulting the neurons with feverish organs and synths. With yet another erratic element in the fold, Nude Casino invokes something more claustrophobic and barren, tackling themes like sleep paralysis (‘Half Frisian’) and lost innocence (‘Castle In The Sky’).

Indeed, Iguana Death Cult isn’t gleefully surfing that mighty tidal wave anymore, but giving in to destructive currents that enwrap everything in chaos. Nude Casino is an intrusive, spastic affair, streamlined into a propellant, hook-heavy yomps, never more obvious than the cadaverous disco pulse of ‘Carnal Beat Machine’. Like The Clash and Minutemen before them, Iguana Death Cult have embraced the art of rocking the fuck out with all senses and impulses up to eleven. Rapturously sinking in their claws, and never letting go.

LP is Standard Jacket w/ a download card.

CD is 4 panel digipack.

The Tijuana Panthers are back and this time they’re all grown up
(kind of). Combining their signature surf rock with new experimentations
in sound, Carpet Denim is the culmination of nearly three years
of work and the band’s subconscious evolution into deeper, more
personal places.

Taking concepts that have long been percolating, this album is the
musical version of a beachside, drop-top cruise -- punctuated by
deeply human lyrics. Carpet Denim hits deep notes of introspective
darkness with songs like “You Died,” a ballad-y jam that delves into
the complex emotional wreckage of a father’s passing, and the
album’s single, “Path of Totality,” about a close friend of the band’s
who lost the fight against alcoholism.

These soulful forays are offset by Tijuana Panthers singular, upbeat
sound, with the playful jam “Little Pampelmousse” that celebrates
fatherhood and refers to Phil’s nickname for his new, beloved baby.
Then there’s “710,” a spirited coast down memory lane that embodies
the band’s signature sunniness - all while reminiscing about growing
up in Long Beach.

The culmination of the band’s many years on the road and making
noise, Carpet Denim falls deeper into their weird and wild tendencies
(there’s even a synthesizer that makes an appearance). It’s inspired
by everything, from politics to the guys’ personal lives, Haruki
Murakami and Twin Peaks. There’s the perfectly dissonant “TV
People,” a creepy little number that combines simple guitar with a
roving bass to create an abstract jam that’s hard to forget.

This album is the same garage-y Tijuana Panthers you love, but this
time, they channel their unbridled energy into a moody maturation
of their music. The band returned to their hometown of Long Beach,
CA to record Carpet Denim at Jazzcats studio. Unlike earlier albums
such as Poster and Wayne Interest - which were recorded in a
flash-bang, marathon sitting, the band’s latest album was methodically
assembled by Jonny Bell over multiple days. Pouring over
production, Carpet Denim is a collective deep breath that weaves
together years of songwriting -- all jam-packed with summertime
vibes, peaks of punk rock and Tijuana Panthers’ signature oddball
adventures.

LP is Standard Jacket, Custom Inner Sleeve + Download Card.

CD is Jewel Case.

Pinky Pinky have good gut instincts. During an era of limitless distractions, societal pressures and sonic trends, the three best friends are focused on being happy and blissfully on the outside of all that noise. The trio grew up together in Los Angeles and there's a shared understanding of what makes them all tick. Together with her punk cohorts Anastasia Sanchez (vocalist/ drummer, 20) guitarist Isabelle Fields (19), and bassist Eva Chambers (19) have a clear understanding that Pinky Pinky's modus operandi is in not overthinking their decisions. You can hear that on their debtt album, 'Turkey Dinner' due on Innovative Leisure. It follows their two prior EPs, most recently 2018's 'Hot Tears'. Their first full-length, however, is even freer than their previous efforts. It's a patchwork quilt of garage rock and oddball indie. It's rooted in classic bass, drums, guitar, but it's bolstered by the perspectives of
a trio of LA youths writing about their everyday observations, anxieties and passions.

For instance, “My Friend Sean” is a young fantasy about the dreamiest boy in class, “Mystery Sedan” is an LA story about a car being the only thing there in times of distress, “Lady Dancer” is about a stripper at a bikini bar in Los Feliz. When lead lyricist Sanchez met Chambers in the girls' locker room in High School they knew that they'd be in a band together (Chambers an Fields had already met in Middle School). All three of them had always dabbled in bands. Originally born in New York but moving to LA during childhood, Chambers began life in a band with her three older sisters, playing keys. She picked up a bass at the age of 13 after their endeavors had died a death. Fields, on the other hand, trained as a violinist but rebelled and taught herself guitar from the age of 12, while rearing herself on the Sex Pistols and riot grrrl bands.

Sanchez's father put sticks in her hands as a little girl. She was a prodigy in classical violin but also wanted to get back to the sheer pleasure of playing and so canned the anxiety-ridden music studies for her DIY drumming. She became a singer by necessity for Pinky Pinky, referring back to her love of Fiona Apple and even Heart for vocal chops. Pinky Pinky itself had a few iterations before settling on its three core members. “We were really trying to be punk at first then psychedelic then blues,” recalls Fields. “Finally we got to a point where we knew we didn't need to focus on just one thing. Growing up you think you only should listen to one type of music but we got to a certain age and realized we don't need to do that.”

During their High School years they flew beneath the radar. “Nobody cared I was in a band,” says Field. Their first gig was at the MOCA museum in Downtown. To date it's the most nervous they've ever been. “I'd still be scared to do that,” laughs Sanchez, admitting to almost having a full-on panic attack due to the swathes of cool teenagers that turned up to watch them. Only recently have they hired a booking agent after already building a solid reputation on the LA scene hustling by themselves. When they played Dave Grohl's inaugural CalJam festival in 2017 they didn't even have a manager. “I got a call from someone who works with Dave Grohl: 'Dave really likes your band',” recalls Sanchez. “And I was laughing like, 'Weird? But cool?! It was a little surreal'.”

In company, the trio exhibit an airtight ease together. In the studio too, their process is super collaborative. They tend to jam out a song idea first then pick out lyrical themes. Whereas their first EPs were overcomplicated and limited by a prior standard of musicianship, their LP has been created with more confidence alongside producers Jonny Bell and Hanni El Khatib in Long Beach. “It took a long time for our EPs to come out,” explains Chambers. “An by the time they did we'd grown a lot.” Indeed, by the time this album arrives it'll be the most accurate representation of where Pinky Pinky is currently at live onstage and off it. They aimed to make a live-sounding record that didn't feel too shiny in its production. As a result, 'Turkey Dinner' is unpretentious, raw and unpredictably zany.

LP is 180 Gram Vinyl w/ Tip-On Jacket, Download Card, & 4 Page Insert.

CD is Tip-On, "Mini-LP" Jacket w/ Insert.

Nick Waterhouse grew up in a coastal town near Long Beach, CA. It was a serene setting: the ocean stretching out for miles to the North and South, manicured lawns, two-story homes, long swathes of concrete highway, fast food chains and mega malls. He was there for two decades. Then, he left.

He found a home in his early 20s in San Francisco, working at record stores alongside a collective of likeminded young crate-diggers and 45 collectors. And then he started making his own records: “Time’s All Gone” in 2012, “Holly” in 2014, and “Never Twice” in 2016. These were evocative albums, steeped in a perfectionism and clarity of vision that informed every choice, from the studios to the players, the arrangements to the album art. Everything, deliberately designed and purposeful, bubbling over with power and feeling.

And as those records rolled out into the world, Waterhouse found a dedicated audience of his own as well as a bevy of influential champions and collaborators, including garage-rock mystic Ty Segall, retro-futurist R&B bandleader Leon Bridges and the LA-based quartet Allah-Las, whose first two albums he meticulously produced and played on. There is a “Waterhouse Sound” and it comes from both the man and the method — recording everything on magnetic tape, through analog equipment, and playing live (!), eyeball to eyeball, whenever possible.

Now, he’s finished his fourth album. He’s calling it “Nick Waterhouse.” And whether intentional or not, it is perhaps his most reflective — and reflexive — album, employing all of the mature production techniques learned throughout his professional career while retaining a viscous edge that allows it to land with colossal impact — more raw, heavy and overtly confrontational than anything he’s made before.

“Nick Waterhouse” was recorded at the finest working studio in Los Angeles, Electro Vox Recorders, and co-produced by Paul Butler (The Bees, Michael Kiwanuka, Devendra Banhart), the master of all things warm, rich and wooly. Nick’s songs here are personal, but personal in the way that “Please Mr. Postman,” “What’s Going On” and “Cathy’s Clown” are — intimate, direct, yet still malleable enough for listeners to suffuse their own life stories into the mix. The album is thick with talented players, including Andres Rentaria, Paula Henderson and the staggering, howling saxophone of Mando Dorame.

All of the new Waterhouse songs sound big. Brawny and muscular. The lyrics are suspicious, outraged and, at times, very vulnerable (muscle is just flesh, after all). Waterhouse uses an economy of words to deliver complex, coded messages. He offers up equal parts criticism of the time we live in and innate human flaws. He paints relationships under the cover of darkness, slashing through neo-noir fantasies that are romantic, blood-spattered and bracingly aware of the powerlessness felt among people, amid the rapid onslaught of commercialism and technological progress. And, as has become his signature, he throws in a tune written by a close friend. On this record, he covers “I Feel an Urge Coming On” in tribute to the song’s author, Nick’s own mentor and collaborator Joshie Jo Armstead, who wrote music with Ray Charles and sang as both an Ikette and Raelette in the ’60s and ’70s.

He’s four albums in, but it makes sense that this specific record is the one that takes his name. You can really here Nick on this one. Not just the band. Not just the songs. Not just the sound. HIM. You can hear his mind at work. His passion. His focus. More importantly, you can feel it.

Vinyl is 2LP Standard Jacket + Download Card. CD is 6 panel Digipack.

Sultry r&b solo artist Harriet Brown is back with a new batch of fully-realized future funk, a slow-burning dispatch from a dayglo dance floor. 

The Los Angeles by-way-of-the Bay artist honed his musical chops in church, the birthplace of so many soulful sirens. His first project, New Era EP came out in 2014, setting off a firestorm of critical and fan adulation. Who was this bowl cut rocking, falsetto dropping, shiny suit man? 

He followed up with a bombastic debut album, Contact, an expertly crafted, extraterrestrial soul rumination on the ways we fail to connect, restart, and try again. It was also a transitional album. Made between the Bay and LA, it’s about the electricity of new connections, the distance of old friends. 

Mall of Fortune is his second full-length album, an airtight meditation on anxiety, paranoia and indecisiveness – decision paralysis and the free-flowing guilt that follows. The bowl cut is gone, but the shine is intact. 

It was written and recorded entirely at his home in Los Angeles, and in many ways is about Los Angeles – the instagram sinkhole of jealousy, the warm but filthy air, the constant waiting, waiting waiting. Your thoughts and your ride stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic. 

The album was produced, arranged, composed and performed by Harriet 
Brown. He plays every note of every instrument, sings every come-hither 
falsetto flight – save for two felicitous features from singers Ana Roxanne and Felicia Douglass. Pressing play is stepping into a damn-near singular vision, a world apart. 

And what a world it is. This album is 14 songs of meticulous and introspective soul from LA’s foremost funk documentarian. Where his debut album was more cosmic, more spiritual, this follow-up is grounded and personal, driven by day-to-day experiences and self-imposed solitude. The best albums sound like emotions registered in real time, then rendered for maximum impact. 

Album opener ‘Window Shopping’ lays it out clear – ‘Baby what you want, 
what you spend your life on / when it’s time oh what kind of fortune are you bringing back home?’ The weight of each decision can cause conniptions, but choosing nothing is no choice at all. 

‘Shower Up, Saddle Up’ is a bucket of water in the face, the moment you shake it off and find peace with your dime piece, new cologne and a time piece – you stop worrying what people think and hit the town for some me time. 

As personal as the album is, its also a rumination on the deep murky macro mess we’re all in. ‘Cinnamon Sky’ wonders how LA can be this beautiful and this polluted, a sun-soaked biohazard. 

‘Hardwalkin’ takes on our growing police state, surveillance and the fear we feel around people who are supposed to protect and serve. 

This is a sonically and emotionally eclectic album, a ‘Sign O’ The Times’ for our times. It’s a stew of r&b, soul, funk, and free experimentation, both dense and expansive. Repeated listenings rewarded. 

Harriet Brown’s live show mirrors the themes of each of his releases. At first he was a one-man orchestra, self-contained fury – a solo artist playing 
multiple instruments, cueing machinery and selling it with sweat and aplomb. He was a man apart, making contact through song, behind emotional plexiglass. 

With the release of Mall, his live performances feature a rotating cast of dynamic singers, rhythm players and melodic instruments. The songs breathe and wind, tumbling forward with Harriet at the helm, the mid 90s Bulls with Jordan on the boards. He’s reached out to the world and found himself closer to others, closer to the muse, closer to that 6th ring. 

You’ll walk away from Mall of Fortune craving the smell of the food court, the stickiness of the arcade. But no matter what you’re in the mall for, pull your check out, hit the checkout, we close in five minutes.

LP is Gatefold Jacket + Download Card.

CD is 4 Panel Digipack.