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This is a Pre-Order. It will ship in early April 2021.

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

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

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby was a work so filled with ambition, yearning, and inner contradictions that it came to represent the condition of a nation itself. Yet, at its core, the slim novel tells a story about people and, more often than not, their inability to communicate and connect with one another — forever running on parallel tracks until tragedy finally twines them together. The color green (often in the form of the faded sodium lit dock of Daisy Buchanan) comes to represent longing and unrequited love in an era (the Roaring Twenties) of decadence and spiritual vacuousness. Green is Gatsby’s North Star, simultaneously pointing backward and forward through time toward some unattainable, impossibly balanced version of his own life.

Nick Waterhouse, a century later but once again in the ’20s, takes the color blue as his hue of choice on Promenade Blue. In Nick’s musical and lyrical world, blue is a refraction of his life and memories — shadowing a deep, spiritual San Francisco that fostered his musical vocabulary but has now been stamped out irrevocably; evoking the endless tours, marathon recording sessions, and highs and lows of success he’s experienced in his decade-long career; conjuring romances that were doomed, loves that lingered, and hope for future days of parity and partnership; summoning spirits of people who have gone but permeate his mind forever. That’s the world of Promenade Blue — one that is vivid and magnetic, buoyed by both light and density due to Nick’s newfound collaboration with producer Paul Butler (Michael Kiwanuka, Devendra Banhart). It’s not Gatsby’s New York in the 1920s, it’s Waterhouse’s California in the 2020s. Nick makes that crystal clear throughout the record but particularly on “Santa Ana (1986),” where he wryly sings, “Not from New York / And I never was / I’m from California.” With that, he answers all questions about place and setting…but as anyone who’s ever listened to a Waterhouse record knows: time, though clearly pegged to the dawn of this new decade, is a more malleable concept. Where he is is clear. When he is varies.

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 tune is a pocket symphony, à la Spector and Wilson, with winding piano lines locking puzzle-like into a whining, weeping string arrangement courtesy of musical blood brother J.B. Flatt. A small cadre of women backing vocalists shout “Never!” and Nick replies “I never cry on cold days / I never mind a trip on the freeway / Because it’s what I know / Never really set for the big change / Learn to let things go / And say blow wind, blow.” The freeways between LA and San Francisco; the memory of spending a teenaged evening in the Vesuvio Café, which looms over the entrance of City Lights Books; the wind ripping through you on a foggy Bay Area morning, cutting into your bones; the pride one takes in his hometown; the distinct life that he has made (or that has made him) — it’s all here in “Place Names” and, honestly, if the album were to end with this one song, Waterhouse would’ve done his service to the 2020s in terms of musical creativity and vitality. Thankfully for listeners, it’s just the beginning.

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:  

“You were smiling at me / Hanging languidly / On your car door window / Very blue / Very green / The ocean breeze / And shuffling trees / Pacific seas.”

“And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy's dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter — tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning——

So, we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

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. 

Double Gatefold LP.Gatefold CD Digipack

BADBADNOTGOOD is a young supremely talented trio of musicians made up of Matthew Tavares on keys, Chester Hansen on bass, and Alex Sowinski on drums. Since their inception at Humber College’s Music Performance program in 2011, the three have challenged the rule book on improvised instrumental music and taken jazz tradition into the future. With early champions including acclaimed BBC broadcaster Gilles Peterson and Tyler The Creator who helped fuel their discovery with a series of live jams that instantly went viral and dubbed them the “Odd Trio”, the band released their first EP BBNG in June 2011 to wide praise. The marriage of jazz virtuosity and hip hop source material offered a fresh take on the traditional “standard” applied to hip hop classics by taking on choice cuts from the golden era rap cannon and writing inspired arrangements for them instead of one-dimensional covers. The band hit a landmark by introducing original material into their composi- tions with BBNG2 in 2012. New songs like “Rotten Decay”, “Vices” or “UWM” carried on the proud heritage of musical juxtaposition by bringing together jazz, hip hop, punk, and dance music into vigorous balance. Since then, they’ve won praise from the four corners of the globe and collaborated with Frank Ocean, Earl Sweatshirt, MF Doom, Pharaoh Monch and RZA among many. Their no- torious live performances have brought fans across the whole musical spectrum together, taking the band around the world from Coachella to Glastonbury. Now, the inseparable friends are prepping to release their biggest project to date III on prodigious young label Innovative Leisure, a highly-anticipated project ushering in the group’s newest explorations which are proving to be limitless.

Gatefold Jacket. Custom Printed Inner Sleeve.

Allah-Las met while working at Amoeba Music, a key destination for music lovers in Los Angeles. While this experience helped shape their sensibility, their sound was forged in an underground basement where they came together as a band. They began gigging in Los Angeles in 2008, refining their live performance, and finally released their first 7” single Catamaran / Long Journey in 2011. In 2012, they began their relationship with Innovative Leisure, releasing their first self-titled album, Allah-Las, anchored by their second single Tell Me (What’s On Your Mind) / Sacred Sands. The release was met with critical acclaim and the band toured extensively in the States and abroad before going back into the studio to record their follow-up.

Allah-Las' second album, Worship The Sun, expands on the sound established by their maiden effort, honing their fusion of West Coast garage rock and roll, Latin percussion and electric folk. As richly textured and timeless as a Southern California beach break, the songs are evocative of Los Angeles’ storied past. Beatniks, artists, surfers, nomads. Remnants of a bygone Sunset Strip. Golden tans and cosmic sunsets. One can feel the warmth of the sun, but the band deftly avoids the kitsch so often indulged by lovers of these things. Hints of Byrds, Love, Felt, and those who follow are threaded into the tapestry.

LA’s seminal Ferus Gallery – the home of Wallace Berman, Ed Kienholz, Ed Ruscha, Billy Al Bengston – is paid homage in an eponymous instrumental, broadening the scope beyond mere sea, surf, and sand. The lyrics reveal a new maturity; reflections of a band that has grown together through experiences on the road and in the studio. Worship The Sun is at once the perfect soundtrack for the greatest surf film never made and for a golden hour drive through Topanga Canyon. Yet, while grounded in the Southern California experience, the appeal of the album is not limited by locale. It is a teenage symphony to the sun, for all those who know its grace.

12" x 12" Full Cover Sticker LP. Digipack with clear tray CD.

It all started over a year ago with the caption “MINDBLOWING PSYCHE- DELIA FROM THAILAND”—the Youtube video that accompanied this head- line on the Dangerous Minds Blog was exactly that. Here was a group of Thai musicians being filmed parading through a remote village hundreds of miles away from Bangkok playing some of the heaviest Psych known to mankind out of a crazy homemade soundsystem. Who were these men and how on earth was this not some unearthed archived footage from the ‘60s or ‘70s?! The Youtube clip quickly made its rounds amongst music enthusiasts leaving many in the Western hemisphere to question who this group of contemporary Thai villagers (loosely named Khun Narin’s Electric Phin Band) was.

Six months after that first encounter with Khun Narin’s Electric Phin Band, a Los Angeles music producer named Josh Marcy used Facebook and some un- likely interpreters at his local Thai restaurant to get in contact with the band and inquire whether they’d be interested in having him travel to their town to record their music for a global audience. At first the band was naturally suspicious, but through subsequent interactions the group’s leader and namesake Khun Narin (also known simply as “Rin”) warmed to the idea of having Marcy come visit. And so began the journey of uncovering who these mysterious men from an obscure blog post actually were.

Khun Narin’s Electric Phin Band’s membership is always in rotation and spans several generations, from high school kids to men well into their 60s. A standard engagement has the band setting up at the hosting household during the morn- ing rituals, playing several low-key sets from the comfort of plastic lawn chairs occasionally working in a cover version of a foreign classic (The Cranberries ‘Zombie’ is a recent favorite) while the beer and whiskey flow freely. After a mid-day banquet, they start up the generator and lead a parade through the com- munity to the local temple, picking up more and more partiers along the way.

The music they play is called phin prayuk. The first word refers to the lead instrument, a 3-stringed lute known as the phin. Beer, the phin player, uses a string of Boss effects pedals, including a phaser, distortion and digital delay to get his sound. He also builds his own instruments, installing Fender pickups into hand-carved hardwood bodies, with elaborate mythical serpents adorning the headstock. The band takes pride in their custom PA system, as well as an imposing tower of 8 loudspeaker horns atop a huge bass cabinet. To capture the essence of the group and their sound, Marcy recorded th em in their natural environment by doing a proper field recording, literally in a field outside the city of Lom Sak, in the valley of mountains that form a rough border between Thai- land’s North and Northeast. The result was 40 minutes of hypnotizing psyche- delia filled with heavy drum breaks that sounds like something RZA would sample for a Quentin Tarantino film.

CD Packaging is a 4-Panel Digipack.

LP Packaging is a Tip-On Jacket w/ Digital Download Card & Poster Insert.

On his 2011 debut Will The Guns Come Out, Hanni El Khatib tried something he’d never tried before—making a bedroom-style recording of his then stripped-to-the-skeleton guitar-and-drums rock ‘n’ roll mostly for the sheer joy of making it. For his ferocious 2013 follow-up Head In The Dirt, he tried something new again, showing up at producer Dan Auerbach’s analog-dreamland Nashville studio with nothing but the clothes on his back and an open mind.

But after Head In The Dirt’s release and almost a year of relentless touring, Hanni knew he needed to go past ‘unpredictable’ all the way to ‘unprecedented.’ He needed isolation, time and the chance to experiment. So after 30 days locked in hand-picked L.A. studio the Lair, the result is the albumMoonlight (Jan 20, 2015 Release Date)—the rarest and most welcome kind of album, made at that perfect point in life where confidence, experience, and technique unite to help an artist do anything they want.

That’s why it starts with a song that sounds like a Mobb Deep beat under a Suicide-style synth drone and ends with an ESG-meets-LCD Soundsystem gone italo-disco song about life and death. That’s why it collides crushing crate-digger drumbeats that’d be right at home on a Can LP or an Eddie Bo 45 with bleeding distorto guitar, bent and broken barroom piano and hallucinatory analog flourishes. (In fact, some smart producer is going to sample the drums from this album and complete the circle of life.) And that’s also why Moonlight feels like the album he’s always wanted to make: “What would it sound like if RZA got in the studio with Iggy Pop and Tom Waits?” he asks. “I don’t know! That was my approach on everything.”

To make Moonlight, he needed the right engineer and the right place to record, the kind of place where they’d understand when he’d ask for ’62 Slingerland drumkit and obsolete fuzz pedals. And he found it in the Lair and engineer Sonny DiPerri, whose pinpoint instincts and unassuming personality camouflaged an all-star resume including stints with Trent Reznor to Avey Tare (Animal Collective) to Giorgio Moroder.

So on April 1st of 2014, Hanni sat down with his live drummer Ron Marinelli and a selection of heavy friends to translate his best ideas to tape. As the album developed, Hanni found himself playing almost everything, switching from guitar to bass to synth to Mellotron—sometimes several times during the course of a song—and even sampling and re-editing Marinelli’s beats.

It’s a personal album in the most primal sense, put together in any way that worked. Iggy Pop and David Bowie did this kind of thing on The Idiot, the Wu-Tang Clan did it on 36 Chambers and The Clash did it three times over on Sandinista. And now it’s Hanni’s turn, across 11 new lightning-struck songs, each written and recorded in its own flash of inspiration. It sounds like an album made by an endless list of collaborators, but really Moonlight was more like the first do-it-almost-all-yourself music Hanni ever made, except after six years recording and touring, he’d learned to do so much more.

“My approach is still the same,” he explains. “Do things you’ve never done before. Challenge yourself. Be free and be creative. The same thing holds true for everything I’ve ever done, whether painting or design or skateboarding or whatever. Do it for the right reasons—exploring yourself. That’s what it’s about.”

Tijuana Panthers come striding proudly out of their hometown of Long Beach, California, with Semi-Sweet, their most fully realized album yet. Semi-Sweet has every Panther contributing a part in the entire album-making process, all the way down to brainstorming new songs on drummer and singer Phil Shaheen’s ukelele. Traditional Tijuana Panthers engineer Victor Orlando Nieto split the sessions for Semi-Sweet with new engineer Matt Vasquez, which worked with the new creative process to give the Panthers’ latest a different feel, says guitarist & vocalist Chad Wachtel —something instantly apparent from first jittery notes of the Swell Maps-meets-Urinals DIY clatter-pop opener “Above Your Means.”
From there, it’s a twist-and-turn-y journey through at least four decades of off-center from-the-heart music. “Tony’s Song” matches the relentless energy of the Wipers with instantly catchy beach-punk harmonies, while “Father Figure” left-turns toward the kind of complicated jangle-pop of New Zealand’s Verlaines. “Push Over” is like some kind of Howard DeVoto demo that suddenly splits into a Mickey Baker guitar line, and “Juvy Jeans” is pure my-daddy-was-a-New-York-Doll teen-punk hilarity. (Or maybe the Dead Milkmen? Phil is a longtime fan.) Of course, the surf guitar they built their band on is still surging along—leading the band through their moody “Baby On Board” and then bouncing into the darker-than-it-seems “Forbid- den Fruit.” And then there’s the pitch-perfect Nerves cover, a reverent redo of “One Way Ticket” by a band that in sound and sentiment both were pretty much the Tijuana Panthers of their day. They’re really just aesthetically simple dudes, says bassist and singer Dan Michicoff—they know their songs are done when they not only sound right but feel right, and when they’ve got that same rare combination of harmony and velocity and honesty that’s pushed bands out from their garage since the invention of the electric guitar.

CD Packaging is 4 Panel Digipack.

LP Packaging is a Custom Printed Inner Sleeve w/ Digital Download Card. Pressed on White Vinyl.

Free Flexi Disc Record w/ purchase featuring an exclusive bonus track "P8." Limited to 300. Flexi only available with orders at innovativeleisure.net.

We seek the new because of the numbness. If you listen to enough music, you’re familiar with the feeling. Sounds get recycled so often that they can seem like geometric configurations organized via Wav files. Trends get time-stamped faster than a triplicate trap hi-hat.

The most rare records emerge outside of any clearly delineated orbit. They’re solitary visions that supply their own rhythm and arsenal. Music that reverberates through heart, brain, and spine. This is Nosaj Thing’s third album, Fated.

“I just tried to escape really, and escape even what’s going on in the music world,” says Nosaj Thing, the LA producer born Jason Chung. “It just felt so suffocating in a way. I just wanted to do my own thing.”

It’s been six years since Nosaj Thing emerged among the vanguard of Low End Theory-affiliated producers. His debut Drift created 31st century tones and chromatic textures so sleek that they inspired innumerable Soundcloud imitators.

None could match its moody iridescence, faded sadness and funky swing. Bach collided with Boards of Canada. Spaceships came equipped with rear view mirrors and a booming system bumping G-Funk and warped soul. Pitchfork called it “gorgeously haunted.” Resident Advisor said it “exists in its own dimension and feeds off its own exhaust: full of alien choirs, conquered computers, and refracting stained-glass light.”

Fated exists in this same alternate dimension, but further out. If comparisons previously existed with other artists within the LA beat scene, Nosaj has rendered them baseless. His second album on Innovative Leisure (after 2013’s Home) seeks celestial escape through streamlining.

“The last record took out so much of me. I just wanted to go back to simplifying and overthinking so much. It was a battle,” Nosaj says. “The soul of a song, the essence of a song—whatever you want to call it—should be simple.”

By stripping away all but what’s really necessary, the sounds harness an unusual directness. Guest appearances are rare, save for vocals from Whoarei on “Don’t Mind Me,” and Chicago rap phenomenon, Chance the Rapper. The latter gravely spits on “Cold Stares,” invoking terminal fevers, empty beds, devil’s whispers, and insomniac fears.

If comparisons crop up, Fated has most in common with records like Burial’s Untrue or Dilla’s Donuts. Requiems that canvass the shadowy hinterlands between life and death, darkness and light, loneliness and love. Eternal themes re-imagined in ingenious fashion.

“The album name came from all these coincidences that just kept on happening to me,” Nosaj says. “Specific interaction with specific people in unexpected places. A perpetual feeling of déjà vu.”

It’s foundation rests on that intangible thing that some call fate or primordial feeling. Numbness receding, old emotions flooding back, un-tampered visions. Fated is what you can’t explain, so it’s best to just listen.

It’s been a little more than a year since John Barrett and his punk band Bass Drum of Death put out their debut album—a year that took this kid from a sleepy Mississippi hometown (where the bars close at midnight) and got him doing encores in front of 5,000 screaming Europe- ans and playing back-up band for Hodgy Beats and Left Brain of Odd Future on live TV. But no matter what, he always had new songs rattling around in his head, and when it was time to get them out, he did what he had to do—like sneak away from tour on an all-night detour to his home studio to start an emergency recording session, and then get back out on the road the very next afternoon. And that’s how he finished off his new self-titled album on Innovative Leisure.
2013’s self-titled Bass Drum of Death album is everything about 2011’s debut GB City amplified, in every sense of the word. With nothing but his inspiration and his instruments, Barrett spent the fall of 2012 in his studio, smashing out punk rock. This time it was just him, lots of cof- fee, a Realistic reverb unit to give everything just a little of that stoned-in-outer-space and for the first time in Bass Drum of Death history, a bass that he used on every new track.

Waterhouse is a successful recording artist, with one well-received LP and several high-profile tours and collaborations to his name. But his latest work still embodies the struggle of his early forays. During “This Is a Game,” Waterhouse sets up a snarly, post-surf guitar solo with a succinct statement of a cynical outlook: “This is a game / Please remember my words / And don’t get upset when you don’t get what you think you deserve.” And on the gothic-soul strut “Let It Come Down,” he meditates on the inevitability of pain. “If there’s gonna be rain tonight,” he sings in a stoic croon. “Let it come down.”
It’s clear from this material that Waterhouse is in the midst of his own becoming. He isn’t the type to let ecstasy take over, like Van Morrison, or to drawl away in a consummately laid-back register, like Mose Allison. In the tension between his wry lyrics and crisp arrangements, you hear the expression of a worldly skeptic who’s also—when it comes to his art—a sanctified believer. Whoever it was that Nick Waterhouse wanted to be matters less now; these days, he just sounds like himself.

Following acclaimed remixes for the likes of Phoenix, Mayer Hawthorne, Major Lazer, Holy Ghost, Gossip & more, L.A. natives and childhood best friends Classixx have been in the studio for the last few years whittling down hundreds of sessions to a svelte 12 songs. At once beming, breezy and wistful, Hanging Gardens features a variety of coastal summer anthems and special guests including Active Child, Nancy Whang (LCD Soundsystem), Sarah Chernoff (Superhumanoids) and Jesse Kivel (Kisses). Their full-length debut features impossibly sunny grooves, blithe melodies bred by the coast, coaxed out by the surf, expertly crafted for road trips, pool parties and dance clubs.

Los Angeles based Hanni El Khatib grew up in San Francisco raised on skateboarding (former creative director at HUF), punk rock, and 1950s and 60s classic Americana. Influenced by pioneers of early rock and R&B, the multi-instrumentalist and producer derives his unique sound from a menagerie of inspirations: blues, soul, garage rock, doo-wop … and the most American thing of all, car wrecks. It's malt shop music for those who drink them spiked with bourbon or in Hanni's own words "these songs were written for anyone who's ever been shot or hit by a train. Knife fight music." No word yet on whether Hanni's tested that knife fight thing at any of his shows.

Will The Guns Come Out is his debut album on the Innovative Leisure label, following two 45s: Dead Wrong & Build Destroy Rebuild.

Live and on record, the Tijuana Panthers are a great band. You could say garage, punk or surf while describing their sound, but they’re harder to pin than that. The truth is that they write classic songs that don’t depend on tropes from any genre. They craft perfect pop and deliver it with energy and immediacy. However, the real magic of this band is in their weirdness.

Behind their picturesque portraits of daily life is an aching despair. This subtle contrast creates an eerie tension between the ideal, the real and the surreal. You suddenly realize they’re not the happy-go- lucky beach boys you tried to pin them as, but more akin to sexually frustrated soda jerks in a David Lynch film. And this all makes sense with the fact that they come from Southern California’s shadier city of Long Beach, not exactly the fun in the sun that California dream- ers might expect.

For Wayne Interest, the Panthers team up with producer Richard Swift. The recordings took place at Swift’s studio in Oregon where the band decidedly took risks in performance and production. The risks paid off. With Swift’s direction and upgrade in fidelity, Wayne Interest sounds just as compelling in headphones as it would at a house party in East LA. It also gives the listener a closer look at the idiosyncrasies of the Tijuana Panthers, only making it clearer that there’s something off about these creeps. Their weirdness, or bold- ness to be whoever they may be, is what makes this band great. It’s a rare quality. The more you listen to the Tijuana Panthers the more you wonder about them.

LP is Tip-On Jacket, Download Card & Printed Insert.

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

Many moons ago Primo Pitino, the DJ of San Francisco’s legendary Oldies Night, passed me a copy of his friend Nick Waterhouse’s “Some Place.” Nick was a local vinyl DJ and the kid working at our Shangri-la, Rooky Ricardo’s Records. Though he didn’t have a band at the time, Waterhouse assembled some local musicians to cut a one-off 45 in the vein of the electrifying mid-century modern rhythm and blues he loved. I threw “Some Place” on the Technics during sound check a few cities down the line and was blown away from the howling falsetto all the way to the end! I gave it a whirl every night from Texas to Tennessee and all the way back home to New York. Not only were the dancers’ feet responding, but they were also asking about the track on a nightly basis. The Nashville Scene was so blown away that they printed a piece on Nick after a single listen. DJs and collectors everywhere wanted it so bad that the little record with the big sound started fetching upwards of $300 on Ebay.

L.A.'s De Lux are a post-disco dance-punk DIY duo that sound like they could have come out of 1979 or 1982 just as easily as 2013. Founders and multi-instrumentalists Sean Guerin and Isaac Franco didn’t meet so much as simply appear to each other, sometime before high school ended and after learning to correctly fall off skateboards began. Even at age 18, however, it was the kind of connection that had been years in the making.
Sean had been writing songs since he was 15 and had spent recent years recording and re-recording his own songs. And Isaac had been on a strict diet of classic and obscure disco and boogie music since he too was 15, figuring out the original source of hip-hop’s greatest samples thanks to an older brother with a DJ sideline and an enviable collection. They both were after the same thing in music—the groove, they say, where the bass and the beat align in a perfect way that makes you want a song to go on forever. They were even in a band together, but it wasn’t De Lux. But you can hear the exact moment De Lux became a band when you listen to “Better At Making Time,” the song they built from Isaac’s out-of-nowhere bassline just before practice for that other band was supposed to start: “Sean was like, ‘You should record that!’” says Isaac, “and I was like, ‘What, really?’”
From lead track “Better At Making Time,” De Lux roars through Psychedelic Furs or Duran Duran-style pop (“Love Is A Phase”), delivers shouts and whispers like James Murphy at his most frantic (“Make Space”), sinks into Eno-esque moments of bliss (“On The Day”) and rockets through the agit-funk David Byrne-style rave-up finale “Sometimes Your Friends Are Not Your Friends.” And this is all from the first-take—they never re-record, says Sean. If they don’t perfectly catch that beat as it happens, they let it go. That’s probably why Voyage sounds as wild and alive as it does. Just like on that surprise recording “Better Making Time,” you’re not hearing a band come together. And just like how they met, you’re hearing a band appear.

ART DIRECTION BY TOFER CHIN

In the summer of 2010, Superhumanoids was birthed under the hazy air and bright blue skies of Los Angeles. A fascination for electronic sounds, instruments, pedals, and more, aesthetically united Max, Sarah, and Cameron. Like a petri dish growing each day, the band spent their time together intertwining and experimenting with their R&B upbringings and love for pop music.

Exhibitionists is the soundtrack to the last moments of dusk in LA. With swooning guitars, glimmering air, soaring melodies, the setting sun, and melting keyboards, something about the whole thing makes your breath stop short. With each synth and guitar sound being completely made from scratch, the record brings a homegrown feel that encapsulates the thumps of the beating heart and lulls of swaying palm fronds from LA. Despite being wrapped in an electronic blanket, the trio unravels each songs core to take the listener on a journey that highlights the living R&B undertones and driving groove that brings to light the soul of the record. What is found in the sticky air of the city of angels is found here in Exhibitionists, to ease between the spaces of your body, make you dance, and bring you home.

LP is Limited-Edition Custom Hardcover Booklet with Three 10" Vinyl LP's & Download Card.

CD is 4 Panel Digipack.

Hanni El Khatib’s first idea for his Savage Times project was to do something he’d never done before. Instead, he ended up doing … well, everything he’d never done before. He’d be playing new instruments, writing in unfamiliar new ways, opening himself up to an unrelenting stream of ideas and dedicating himself totally to pure musical instinct.  And the result? 19 best-of-the-sessions songs, destined for vinyl release as a Limited Edition 10” LP Box Set, as well as the kind of creative revelations that only happen when you quit looking around and start looking ahead.

Originally, he’d hoped to explode the lingering idea that he was simply a blues-rock guitar player, but that’s why Savage Times touches on everything from garage rock to punk to disco, hip-hop and even some unexpected solo-guitar self-portraiture. But on the way, he also exploded his own idea of what he could do—even maybe who he was, or would be.  Savage Times was an experiment as well as an experience, that touched on some of the most personal, social & political elements to date.

It's been three years since the release of Nosaj Thing's highly acclaimed debut album, Drift, which topped countless best of year lists, but 2013 will mark a new chapter for the 27-year-old producer, musician and DJ from Los Angeles. With a new album, label and imprint for Innovative Leisure, Home marks the first time Nosaj has incorporated guest vocalists. Having remixed and worked with the likes of The XX, Flying Lotus, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Beck & Kendrick Lamar, it was time to incorporate of his own with Toro Y Moi and Kazu Makino (Blonde Redhead) providing ethereal vocals for two of the tracks on home. The rest of the album is rounded with Nosaj's signature cinematic soundscapes that explore the space from where Drift left off.

CD Packaging is a 4 Panel Digipack.

LP Packaging is a Printed Inner Sleeve w/ Digital Download Card.

The Tijuana Panthers are from Long Beach, a great band, staring at the sea, staring at the sand... POSTER is their latest album.

POSTER? As in Post Punk? Post Surf? Post Cowpunk? How about post any wave that has come and gone and will come back and go again? Post all that. How about putting the ‘post’ back in posterity? POSTER is another great record by the Tijuana Panthers! Not just for posterity's sake - for RIGHT NOW!

Earlier Tijuana Panthers albums were urgent - as if cranking out the hits was objective number one. They cranked out the hits and they did it true. From point A to point B. But POSTER is the Tijuana Panthers now, at their most confident and present minded. They have arrived. They’ve stepped out of the past or future and into the now. Go back if you must to revisit the hits, but POSTER is now, I say! There is no longer a race against time.

On this album the hit feeling is all around you. They are exploring the time and space of that feeling. Sounds come and go, maybe to return, maybe not. This is the Tijuana Panthers freed from the tried and true structure. They have freed themselves only to be trapped again and again, in this moment, making noise, stretching out, letting odds and ends fall where they may. After all, this album was recorded in just two days! No time for fallacy! No time for façade! POSTER is but a moment to be lived and continually re-lived! What else do we have? Truth itself?! All I know - and can ever know - is this moment now, POSTER, apartment windows opening and closing, lyrics passing like ads on buses, tones swelling and crashing through breezeways.

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.

Beyond the real deal is the unreal deal, and therein lies Feeding People, a band of teenagers making some of the heaviest psychedelic around decadesafter the 13th Floor Elevators declared their hallucinatory sense of purpose. Feeding People was founded and is headed by nineteen-year-old JessieJones who channels the raw power of Jefferson Airplane’s Grace Slick and Janis Joplin at her most primal as she leads with strong, almost viciousvocals, bellowing blasphemies as if possessed by spirits with a masked sweetness reminiscent of Billie Holiday. Her siren call reeled in Chris Alfaro ofFree the Robots who produced some of the band’s earliest recordings, all of which were written acoustic and recorded electric in a single take in a’ 6’x10’ walk-in closet with a 4-track recorder and mic stands made of broom handles taped to fire extinguishers.After playing only a couple shows, Feeding People became the second band ever invited to play storied electronic music club Low End Theory, wherethey shared the stage with Radiohead’s Thom Yorke. This is the full length LP recorded andproduced by Jonny Bell of The Crystal Antlers and Hanni El Khatib.

Double LP is Gatefold Jacket w/ a Download Card. CD is 6 panel digipack.

Even though the Mexican border-town of Tijuana has a stigmatized history it has managed to produce many vibrant and unique artists. None are quite like Mint Field.

Comprised of 21-year-olds Estrella Sanchez (vocals & guitar) and Amor Amezcua (drums & synths), Mint Field’s sound is organic, spacious, and inhabited by specters that lurk behind rhythms, where Estrella’s angelic voice evokes a supernatural world of beauty and melancholy.

Their new record, Pasar De Las Luces, first for LA-based Innovative Leisure Records, is “a compilation of our lives from two years ago to now” says the band. Since recording an initial EP in 2015 in their hometown of Tijuana, Mint Field have played Coachella, SXSW and have extensively toured the US and Mexico. In the summer of 2017 the band traveled to Detroit to record with producer Christopher Koltay. “We had a much clearer idea of what we wanted
and we had the tools to make it. When we recorded [our debut EP] Primeras Salidas, it was a homemade album and we didn’t know what we were doing.” This time, they managed to channel their inspirations and influences to transmit sentiments of profound sorrow, nostalgia and immaculate beauty…revisiting sounds from the past to make them contemporary.

Mint Field’s vision comes alive on Pasar De Las Luces ‘s 13 immaculate tracks that nod to everything from dream pop to fuzz-saturated shoegaze. Album opener “El Parque Parecía No Tener Fin,” is a melodic number with haunting melodic lines where we can appreciate their post-punk tendencies. “Ciudad Satélite” has woven harmonies and crescendos that detonate into a flurry of feelings anchored by a dramatic bassline. “Quiero Otoño De Nuevo” goes full krautrock and is like an introverted, reflective and delicate Neu!. ”Combos Del Pasar” borrows the distorted and imperfect guitar sounds of ‘90s indie bands like Yo Lat Tengo. “Nada Es Estático y Evoluciona” develops from minimalism into a silent scream and “Club De Chicas” is probably the peppiest song of the bunch.

The whole record has a unique sound that makes it stand apart from projects by contemporaries. While deceptively young themselves, Sanchez and Amezcua not only show the potential of influencing even younger fans, but of also defining themselves as stand alone voices in emotional music. Although they have a foot in the past, they never let themselves get caught by nostalgia; they reinterpret the best of what the past has to offer in order to better express their feeling in the present. It’s a timeless quality that will surely take them far into the future.

LP comes w/ Download Card & Printed Insert.

CD is Four Panel Digipack.

Singer and songwriter Lucas Fitzsimons came to his calling in an appropriately mythic way, born in a historic city not far from Buenos Aires and raised in L.A.’s South Bay—just outside of Inglewood—where he was immersed in the hip-hop hits on local radio. (Westside Connection!) The summer before he started middle school, a close friend got an electric guitar, and Fitzsimons felt an irresistible inexplicable power. When he was 12, his parents took him back to Argentina, and on the first night, he discovered a long-forgotten almost-broken classical guitar in the basement of his ancestral home: “It sounds made-up, but it’s true,” he says. “I didn't put the guitar down once that whole trip—took it with me everywhere and played and played. When I got back to L.A., I bought my first guitar practically as the plane was landing.” This started a long line of bands and a long experience of learning to perform in public, as Fitzsimons honed intentions and ideas and tried to figure out why that guitar seemed so important. After a trip to India in 2012, he returned renewed and ready to start again, scrapping his band to lead something new and uncompromising. This was the true start of the Molochs.

The first album Forgetter Blues was released with Fitzsimmons’ guitarist/organist and longtime bandmate Ryan Foster in early 2013 on his own label—named after a slightly infamous intersection in their then-home of Long Beach—and was twelve songs of anxious garage-y proto-punk-y folk-y rock, Modern Lovers demos and Velvet Underground arcana as fuel and foundation both. It deserved to go farther than it did, which sadly wasn’t very far. But it sharpened Fitzsimons and his songwriting, and after three pent-up years of creativity, he was ready to burst. So he decided to record a new album in the spirit of the first, and in the spirit of everything that the Molochs made so far.

The result is America’s Velvet Glory, recorded with engineer Jonny Bell at effortless (says Fitzsimons) sessions at Long Beach’s JazzCats studio. (Also incubator for Molochs’ new labelmates Wall of Death and Hanni El Khatib.) It starts with an anxious electric minor-key melody and ends on a last lonesome unresolved organ riff, and in between comes beauty, doubt, loss, hate and even a moments or two of peace. There are flashes of 60s garage rock—like the Sunset Strip ’66 stormer “No More Cryin’” or the “Little Black Egg”-style heartwarmer-slash-breaker “The One I Love”—but like one of Foster’s and Fitzsimons’ favorites the Jacobites, the Molochs are taking the past apart, not trying to recreate it.

CD is a 4 Panel Digipack.

LP comes w/ Poster Insert & Digital Download Card.

Prufrock had the Emperor of Ice Cream in a headlock when the roar of a ’37 Triumph Speed Twin made them both forget what they were fighting about. In walked an Anglo-Cherokee-Japanese skateboarder. “I’m Korey Dane, and you’re both acting like children.”

LP comes with custom inner sleeve & download card.

CD is 4 panel digipack.

After establishing a sound on their debut Voyage and then establishing an identity with the revelatory Generation, L.A. disco-not-disco duo De Lux took a moment to re-center and come back leaner, sharper, clearer and deeper on
their new album More Disco Songs About Love. Now that co-founders Sean Guerin and Isaac Franco know how to play and what to say, they’re ready to just get lost in the music. As the band puts it: “We like to say Voyage was our
baby, Generation was our baby all grown up and More Disco Songs About Love thinks growing up sucks and just wants to party smart.”

They started in 2013 with a happy accident called “Better At Making Time,” the lead track of their 2014 debut Voyage and an unexpected practice-space jam session that crystallized a sound, a philosophy and a future direction all
at once. In that sudden moment DeLux snapped into focus as an outfit matching post-punk sentiment and the-sociopolitical-is-personal perspective to joyfully indulgent analog synthesizer soundscapes and a deliriously transportive musical joy. And the press was ready to take the ride, with the Guardian calling Voyage “intricate, witty, inventive, dazzling in its detail” and Billboard celebrating its “lush, eclectic dance music.”

On their 2015 sophomore album Generation—a title activating every sense of
the word—De Lux added a new almost-documentary aspect to their dance music, delivering clearly personal stories of anxiety and hopeful aspiration from the place where IRL L.A. exhaustion collides with a digital city that never sleeps. (As Guerin sang: “All of these things that they put us through / I’m writing it down / I’m writing it down.”) And they were growing up in other ways, too: 2015 saw their first major festival appearance at Bonnaroo, where
they delivered the first of many stand-out big-show performances. Then in 2016, they made a hotly tipped Coachella debut and shared a bill with Arcade
Fire at New York City’s Panorama fest. And then at the end of that summer, they started the very first experiments that would lead to their new album.

Like Voyage, More Disco Songs About Love starts with the song that made
everything clear: “875 Dollars,” a song (in part) about losing the place you’ve always called home. From there it’s a stream-of-consciousness tour through
De Lux’s reality, from the family and friends who helped focus the sound of the album to everyday L.A. experiences, including but not limited to elections, evictions, even porn—although in the context you’d least expect, of course.
New York City dance-punk legend Sal P. of Liquid Liquid—who did a De Lux remix on their first-ever release—takes featured vocals on the relentless “Smarter Harder Darker” and the Pop Group’s maniacal Mark Stewart pushes
“Stratosphere Girl” into interstellar overdrive. (Plus Guerin’s mother Marie helps out with some very French examination of crepe preferences on “Music Snob,” mutant sibling to Generation’s surreal “Oh Man The Future.”)

And even though the title might seem like some kind of clever reference to something, it’s really just as simple and direct as it seems. The disco is the sound—in the most innovative way, of course—and the love is the sentiment:
“‘875’ is love for a house,” they say. “‘These Are Some Of The Things That I Think About’ is love for thought. ‘Keyboards Cause We're Black and White’ is
our love for a friend. ‘Writing Music For Money, To Write More Music’ is love for music—or money. It's all literal to us but we realize that it might not be for others. We like the idea of giving listeners something to question and wonder
about. But there's love in there.”

Double LP is Standard Jacket w/ Printed Inner Sleeve & Download Card.

CD is Four Panel Digipack.

Like a balmy breeze from a world of endless summer, Classixx are back with Faraway Reach, a buoyant follow-up to their 2013 debut - something to cruise to with the top down, from festival fields to the beach, from the dance floor to the shotgun seat. Faraway Reach casts the duo's young-but-nostalgic melodies and sublime chords in a more mature, restrained light, albeit no less lively and bright. Establishing themselves as producers of note on their debut LP (Pitchfork called them “great songwriters, too”), Faraway Reach delivers powerfully smooth and soulful jewels that are still decidedly their own - the Classixx signature is one that can’t be traced. Their love of plaintive voices and disco-inspired grooves is as evident as ever, but this time around everything is a bit bolder, the cast is bigger, the melodies distilled into a higher potency - it’s all just as good, but better. The album traverses locales, vocalists and inspirations. It's a fitting movement for the duo, from Venice beach to the mountains of South Africa and everywhere in between - a Faraway Reach.

CD Packaging is a 4 Panel Digipack.

LP Packaging is a Gatefold Jacket w/ Digital Download Card & White Vinyl.

The new album from Tropics, aka 27 year old Chris Ward, looks outwards, armed with a newfound confidence that foregrounds his vocal performance and songwriting.

It’s a musical progression that mirrors a personal one: the early Tropics
output was all made in the idyllic, if isolated setting of Ward’s
grandmother’s empty house in the seaside town of Southsea, which
he moved into after graduating from university to focus on writing
and recording. He was alone there - “like, really alone. For days, I had
literally no distractions.” Having moved to London in 2013, Ward now splits his time between the city and the road, having played in America, Mexico and across Europe throughout the past year with his live band Keith Vaz and Morgan Hislop.

Tropics’ new full-length Rapture, set for release on the 16th of February, is the culmination of this journey. A multi-instrumentalist from an early age, Ward has always drawn on his musical upbringing when composing, but this time around he’s pushed himself to develop a fuller sound than ever with the help of Vaz, Hislop and specialist jazz drummer Gillan McLaughlin. Taking influence from Beach Boys, Max Roach and Arthur Russell, Ward has crafted an album that fuses his love of avant-garde percussion, 70s and 80s singer-songwriters such as Peter Gabriel known for pop-leaning hooks, and deep production that takes cues from ambient music.
The very first iterance of the record is the crystal clear vocal that kicks off ‘Blame’. Ward explains that performing live so much caused him to step outside of his comfort zone: “I used to be a bit dubious about using my vocal too much, and felt like my strength was in sampling and playing keys. It’s kind of switched now in that I feel a lot more comfortable just holding a microphone and losing myself.” Inspired by the vocal performances of the likes of Little Dragon and Innovative Leisure labelmates Rhye, Ward also found a new lease of life in experimenting with more androgynous vocals.
But even as his sound has greater scope than ever before, Rapture is still a deeply personal endeavour. The majority of the songs started life in Ward’s home, in front of a piano, before being built on in the studio. The first half of the record is a chronicle of a whirlwind relationship: the piano-led title track “Rapture” addresses this theme, striving for the throes of ecstatic happiness but never quite making it there. “It’s got this feeling of hope and joy, even though it is coming from a sad place,” says Ward. “It’s about the struggles in your life to get to where you want to be.” Elsewhere, lyrics such as, “You ran away just like my luck did” hint at Ward’s love for literature and his poetic touch, something he further explores on the album’s second side.
Later, the album grows more ambient and the literary references more apparent. “Gloria” takes its name from the character of a frustrated wife in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Beautiful and Damned. Likewise, “Torrents of Spring” - also named for a work of 20th century American fiction - builds to a sax-led climax over two painstaking minutes, and the penultimate “House of Leaves” is “a really slow-burning ambient instrumental; it’s kind of a nod to the first stuff I made”.
Whether filling dance floors or simply filling up your headspace, Rapture is an intricate and intimate record that presents the many faces of Tropics in a more revealing light than ever before.