VINYL

Growing up in Bulgaria in the late 1990s, brothers Stef and Yavor Lilov were shaped in a myriad of unseen ways by the centuries-old folk music that filtered through their daily lives. It helped mold their creative spirit and inspired them to begin making noise together at a young age, and that unique and intuitive creative alchemy has been a foundation of guitarist/keyboardist Stef and drummer Yavor’s band L’Eclair since they formed it in their adopted home of Switzerland a decade ago.

After spending the past two years meticulously crafting Cloud Drifter, their fourth album and debut for revered U.S. label Innovative Leisure, L’Eclair is for the first time now led by the Lilov siblings. The result is an album seamlessly melding modernity with nostalgia and played with a robotic tightness that remains deeply human. Indeed, Cloud Drifter will move the body as much as it does the brain.

“We really wanted to finally be able to capture in the studio the feeling that people had listening to us live,” says Yavor. “Part of that involved really taking the time to polish the music between recording and mixing. Can we make this more impactful? How can we make it more attention-grabbing? Putting in that work and really dissecting the production helped us achieve the sonic result we were looking for.”

L’Eclair has built an international fanbase thanks to its impressive command of rhythm, dynamics and electro/acoustic alchemy, which has nodded equally to vocal-free titans such as Can and Tortoise, expansive, spacey and blissed-out jams ((2021’s Confusions) and more stripped-down, feel-good and genre-jumping destinations (the 2018 debut Polymood). Two live sessions for KEXP have accumulated nearly 900,000 views combined, beaming L’Eclair onto the playlists of adventurous listeners around the world.

And although Cloud Drifter reverberates with heavy, party-starting grooves (“Vertigo”), electrifying future club anthems (“MEMPHIS”) and even trap-inspired beats (“Nova Umbra”), its true revelations come from L’Eclair’s first-ever use of vocals, which are performed in a dizzying variety of styles by such guests as Pink Siifu, Gelli Haha, Phoebe Coco, Girl Named GOLDEN, A Ghost Column and Forest Law. The title track is also the maiden appearance of new L’Eclair member and singer/keyboardist Inès Mouzoune, whose group Roshâni is signed to Stone Pixels, the The Orchard-distributed label co-founded by the Lilovs.

“That was a special song in the process, with the three of us in the studio, finding the melody together,” Yavor recalls. “It wasn’t like, we send the instrumental, you bring the melody and then we’ll see. It was collective work towards choosing the right ingredients.”

Elsewhere, former tourmate Girl Named GOLDEN sidesteps her familiar lo-fi indie pop sound to brings forth a captivating vocal atop the hypnotic groove of the aptly named “The Glitch,” while Phoebe Coco’s wordless intonations greatly heighten the ethereal ballad “Ocean Mind.” Forest Law’s sweet, heartfelt singing conjures the wistful vibe of a beach-adjacent drive with the top down on “Nostalgia,” while Gelli Hanna’s confident utterances (“something’s up with you” / “heaven can wait, should you be late”) help propel “Run,” the demo of which started in Afro-electronic/Nyege Nyege Tapes territory before morphing into something much more upbeat and crunchy.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, Pink Siifu’s dexterous flow on “Replica M001” unlocks a brave new sonic world previously unvisited in L’Eclair’s prior work.

“It was very important that the first hip-hop song L’Eclair releases didn’t contain a loop,” Stef says in reference to Siifu’s performance, which is almost on a jazz level in terms of its complexity. “It was more about using what Siifu does best, which is rapping on a drumless beat with timeless instruments. What you hear is a freestyle. He used his voice as an instrument and you see the full spectrum of his abilities. That's what we wanted of every guest — to push them where they're not used to.”

The Lilovs also pushed themselves to deepen the material by recording a string quartet, a choir and a harpist at London contemporary jazz hub Total Refreshment Centre, whose like-minded artists-in-residence provided an extra, intangible burst of inspiration (acclaimed saxophonist/composer Alabaster DePlume happened to be tracking his own session there at the same time and hung out with L’Eclair while listening to the playback).

“We were really, really proud of actually seeing our music written out as a score and executed with a string quartet,” says Stef, who enlisted longtime friend Arthur Sajas (HAHA Sound Collective) to write the arrangement. “I know some of us cried.” The final touches came from Electric Lady Studio mix engineer Matt Scatchell (Adele, James Blake), of whose work Yavor says, “it was a completely new experience for me as a producer and musician to hear something we did as equal to artists or songs that I’ve admired for a lot of years.”

Crystallizing Cloud Drifter’s musical voyage is Melissa Santamaria’s artwork, which depicts an alien world enriched by a living, flower-like structure that may or may not also serve as an interdimensional portal. Says Yavor, “This album is a trip to unknown territories, but it all goes back to what is close to us: what is human, and what brings us back to reality?”

“When Stef and I began playing music, we did it with our ears and without writing. It always started with the emotion. We are always in search of the tools to make those emotions stronger. L’Eclair wants to make you dance and cry, and this album is a great example of that,” he continues. “For me, that’s what L’Eclair is about.”

Gelli Haha exists somewhere between Studio 54 and Area 51, where dancefloors become playgrounds and cheeky aesthetics ignite imagination. A shapeshifter, a sonic acrobat, a performer with one foot in the cosmos and the other in a slapstick routine, Gelli Haha is a space for pure creative chaos.

For her opening trick, Gelli Haha presents Switcheroo, the debut album via Innovative Leisure, to be released in June 2025. With a shared taste for off-kilter pop and vintage gear, producer Sean Guerin (of De Lux) joined Gelli in turning freshly-formed demos into a high-voltage experiment, abandoning meticulous structure for something freer and more electrifying. Every song on Switcheroo makes use of a myriad of recording toys; wacky analog effects, such as the Eventide Harmonizer, MXR Pitch Transposer, and various Electrix units, fashion an intentionally flawed and strictly silly texture throughout the album.

Gelli Haha’s music thrives on duality: playful but profound, tongue-in-cheek but sincere. “Bounce House” is the child-like innocence; “Spit” is the S-words-only underground-club grit. “Piss Artist” revels in tequila-fueled storytelling about an infamous party moment (involving a jar — don’t ask, just dance), while “Normalize” feels like you’re stuck in Play-Doh.

It’s a practice in play - recording vocals mid-jump, translating drum fills into mouth sounds, granting your best friend’s wish for a song about them. A bear attack crashes through the happy-go-lucky “Dynamite”, “Funny Music” ends with a sudden “BONK!”— because why not?
The emotional rainbow stretches beyond the positive — Gelli pouts and wails on "Tiramisu", demanding to know and feel everything, while "Pluto is not a planet it’s a restaurant" closes the album in a darker, heart-throbbing track with the repeated cry: "I’m afraid."

Switcheroo is the soundtrack to the Gelliverse, a sensory adventure sphere created by Gelli. This live revue is an invitation into a world of dolphin balloons, flutes, mini trampolines, and a stage bathed in the project’s primary color, red - bold and full of mischief.

Gelli Haha isn’t foolproof. It’s by design. Switcheroo is an exercise in letting go, an inside joke turned theatrical spectacle. Participation is encouraged. Surrender is required. 

For his second full-length LP and most realized release as Serebii yet, Callum Mower had one thing he had to overcome first: he was “terrified” of himself.

After establishing the Serebii project with several albums’ worth of trancing neo-soul and shape-shifting ballads, much of it done in collaboration with fellow New Zealander Arjuna Oakes, Mower had no lack of confidence in his musical abilities. But much of Mower’s focus in the past was on instruments and production—swirling, cinematic instrumentals under his own name or funky art-pop jams with others on vocals. On Dime, however, Mower knew he wanted to push forward with his own singing placed center stage. “It’s exposing,” Mower says of releasing music so heavy on his singing. “It feels like you’re walking into a public space naked.”

Mower, it turns out, has nothing to be afraid of. He has a gentle croon deceptive in its power—on a song like “Feet for Pegs,” for example, he lures you in with a Tropicalia guitar progression, but carries the song on vocal subtleties that pass like wisps of smoke. And using that voice, he’s created an album unlike anything he’s done before, rolling seamlessly from track to track—not just a collection of songs but a singular project conceived to work together as a unified statement. “That was the approach with Dime,” Mower says. “To really focus on putting something together that sounded like it was done in one sitting. One chapter.”

For a few months, Mower did little besides eat, sleep, and make music. Outside of a deep love for the music of Aldous Harding, which he takes as inspiration, Mower didn’t listen to much outside of his own work. Instead, he focused on developing a routine: yoga, walks, free writing in the morning to get everything out instead of letting it bottle in. “Just trying to feel, trying to release, and then going in and conjuring that while you’re hovering over a chord progression,” he explains. “Just focus on expression.”

On “Verrans Corner,” the Serebii sound crests over a tall wave as Mower sings of “sailing like furniture on estuaries,” his voice recalling the jazzy falsetto of Thom Yorke. “Dime,” the title track, started as a finger-plucked guitar melody in a strange tuning that led to Mower putting the whole song together in a day. It’s a reflection on the feeling of having been cast into the world with little more than some loose change and ending up back where you started, wondering what it was all about: “Thought I’d never look back,” he sings, “Running a lie to keep on track.” But it’s also the word that came into Mower’s head when he wrote it—a dime, as in a perfect ten: “I just remember being like, that’s a dime. I got my dime.” (The album, notably, deliberately, features ten songs.)

Mower finished about 80 percent of Dime on his own before he realized that what was actually still missing wasn’t something he needed to do himself. “I got to a certain point where I just really missed working with people,” he says, laughing. “That is one of my favorite things to do: be in a room with someone and try to catch all those intricacies and bounce off each other.” Mower called up a few friends—Carla Camilleri, Leith Sye Towers, Skud Gambosi, Tessa Dillon—to add touches and write different parts. And then there was one last collaboration like no other.

For “The Randan,” Mower asked his grandfather, Allan Watkins, to read some of his writing he’d done about adolescence. As Mower recorded his grandfather’s live reading of words about growth and social confusion, he improvised a backing synth track. The result is a song that feels experimental and otherworldly, but surprisingly warm at the same time. Three generations of New Zealanders bridged over a love of music and art—and a grandfather and grandson both pushing aside apprehensions about their own voices to make something beautiful and meaningful. (Watkins’ voice was affected by a recent stroke.)

Watkins, a musician himself, was the one who got Mower into music as a kid; in more than one sense, there is no Serebii without him. “It felt appropriate to get my grandpa involved,” Mower says, “as an ode to him for encouraging me in the first place.” 

“This music is more for the creatures than for the humans” - Songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist Sam Blasucci.

Having spent the last 10 years tinkering with his songwriting through his extensive catalog with folk/rock group Mapache, as well as his debut solo album ‘Off My Stars’, Sam works alongside co-producer Johnny Payne for his follow up sophomore solo album ‘Real Life Thing’ via Calico Discos. Sam & Johnny take a leap from everything they have done in the past into brand new territory for this collection of songs. Sam connects new dots and bends genres with unheard style and instrumentation on songs like ‘Death’, with words adding to the conversation of gender and sexuality. The occult-dancer lead single ‘Witching Hour’ pulses with feeling through a high energy chorus built around a beautiful and bold middle section of just percussion and vocals. In addition to new pathways, homage is also paid to Sam’s first loves of music through the notable Motown feel of the existential soul tune ‘Flower’, as well as the vintage pop gleam of ‘No Magic’. These songs are two examples of the recurring lyrical themes of life and death on this record. “Something clicked before I wrote these songs that put me in a place of wonder and confusion and bliss that I had never experienced before.” Some of the lyrics found on this record have been previously released in Sam’s debut book of poetry ‘Guidelines For Dying’, which quickly sold out of its first print.

While remaining quite elusive to genre or category, a few of Blasucci’s deepest influences can still be spotted throughout the musical and lyrical shape of his new album. New literary and musical discoveries seem to be constant for Sam, but shades of Leonard Cohen, Prince, and Bjork peak out behind this batch of songs as well as the writings of Ariana Reines, John O’Donohue, and Edgar Allen Poe. Sam notes that the many influences around him became heavier and more vibrant after falling extremely ill for two years between 2020 and 2022. “Gaining back my ability to be active, to travel, to live - it was all very much a rebirth in so many ways. Things emerged sharper and clearer from that period of my life”. Sam is healthy and moving forward at a seemingly fast pace with this new album and the accompanying conceptual concert film of the same name.

The film - directed by Sam and produced/shot by Bryce Makela - brings these influences and songs into a literal Real Life Thing through their collaborative visions and physical representations of the album. Filmed at the same studio where the album was recorded - Carbonite Sound in Ojai, CA - the film runs like a type of musical play. The album is performed live with stage hands and different set changes to accentuate each mood throughout the record - certainly Sam’s most ambitious project to date.

Sam was born in Los Angeles in November 1994 and currently lives in Ojai, CA. Having had residence in Los Angeles, CA / Coahuila, MX / Orem, UT & New Orleans, LA - it’s safe to assume Sam will be on the move again soon and with more fresh energy to give of himself through his art. Determined to live by creation, Sam is the type of artist that is always creating something, maintaining a sort of inexhaustible hunger to make his music. Expressing himself through sound has now gone beyond joy and into being second nature and Sam’s real first language. 

Jonah Yano is an artist’s artist. A producer and songwriter who has collaborated on projects by peers like Fousheé, Mustafa and Charlotte Day Wilson, he’s also co-written alongside Helena Deland, Ouri, Clairo and Monsune on his own releases. Yano is always shifting the unstable ground his songs rest on, revising it, making it anew. Often his compositions are warm, soulful, and hazily impressionistic, but he prefers to resist easy genre categorization, flitting, instead, between jazz and folk traditions, R&B and hip-hop, rock and ambient and electronic. On portrait of a dog — the 2023 album he made with frequent collaborators BADBADNOTGOOD, praised in Pitchfork for its “cryptic, diaristic intimacy” — the Japanese-Canadian musician weaved his lilting, wistful voice into a harvest-hued mosaic of heartbreak and family memory, for which he recorded hours of conversations and digitized thousands of old photographs to wrestle with his grandfather’s encroaching dementia. The album featured guest contributions from Slauson Malone and Sea Oleena, with string arrangements by Eliza Niemi, Leland Whitty, and Yano. On Jonah Yano & the Heavy Loop, his forthcoming record out Oct. 4, Yano has once again upended his musical direction, crafting an experimental, chimerical album with the live ensemble-turned-studio band (Christopher Edmonson, Benjamin Maclean, Leighton Harrell, Felix Fox-Pappas, and Raiden Louie) that he’s been painstakingly scouting for the last three years. Yano has conceived of this as a kind of double-record; the anchoring song, The Heavy Loop, is a 30-minute feat of improvisation that sees the band leaning into noise music and free sound, and constitutes the “raw materials” of the album’s freewheeling soundscapes. “Concentrate,” the lead single, smoulders over subdued keys, bright guitar arpeggios, jazzy drums, and clarinet work from Clairo, whom Yano and his band opened for during her 2022 EU/UK tour. “If souvenir is about what I feel, and portrait of a dog is about what I remember or want to remember, then this album is about what I think,” says Yano. “And maybe that’s the difference.”

Though he now resides in Montreal, Yano was born in Hiroshima in 1994, and emigrated to Vancouver when he was four. He grew up listening to blues guitar players and classic rock music, and after learning the piano under his grandmother’s tutelage as a child, picked up the guitar in a “School of Rock-esque” middle school program. He started recording demos on his cellphone in 2016, when he moved to Toronto and joined up with the city’s burgeoning underground music scene. Many of the people he met and jammed with there — Monsune, Jacques Greene, Joseph L’Étranger, BBNG — became his eventual collaborators, and taught him technical skills he would use to record his first real songs. His friendship with the Toronto-based experimental music duo MONEYPHONE culminated with a song they made together called “On Lock,” his first ever feature, and Yano released his first solo single later that year, “Rolex, the Ocean.” “It’s important for me to interface with what’s happening in whichever localized area I’m in,” says Yano. “I always want my music to reflect where I am as much as what I’m trying to say.” 

In his room and the home studios of friends, he began working on a suite of songs that would form his début project, the breezy, six-track Nervous EP (2019), which blended jazz, hip-hop, and R&B influences with subtle electronica. It introduced Yano as a soulful, genre-agnostic talent with an ear for melody and intimate songwriting, and he followed it up later that year with a lush cover of The Majestics’ “Key to Love (Is Understanding),” which the original Memphis funk/soul band praised as “well done with [a] slight personal twist.” Yano’s well-reviewed début album, souvenir, expanded the panoramic sonic landscape of his first EP, seamlessly weaving together drum’n’bass, rock, ambient, soul, jazz, and more. His free association-based songwriting introduced many of the themes that would prove central to his work — memory, family histories, the nuances of interpersonal relationships, identity fractured by diaspora — and the record included a reworked version of a song called “shoes,” which Yano’s then-estranged father, Tatsuya Muraoka, had recorded 25 years before their reconciliation. In Japanese, Muraoka sang about a pair of shoes he bought for his child son, and Yano, now older, filled it in by questioning his father’s absence from his childhood due to his parents’ separation: a duet traversing oceans and decades. He released the album on Father’s Day in 2020.

Since then, Yano’s work has earned praise in major international music publications, including Billboard, The Fader, CLASH, Exclaim, Complex, and Pitchfork. He’s been featured on NTS Radio, CBC Music’s The Intro, NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday, and performed on COLORS twice. He was twice nominated for the SOCAN Songwriting Prize, and has garnered the attention of Gilles Peterson, Benji B, and the late Virgil Abloh. He’s played the Montreal International Jazz Festival, the EFG London Jazz Festival, and toured Japan for ten solo shows in 2023. In 2024, he released the little italy demos, a three-song tape he made with his neighbour in Montreal, Le Ren.

*** releases October 4, 2024 ***

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.

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.”

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.