Recently in RELEASES Category

GALACTIC CORE: DIRECT TRANSMISSIONS FROM THE HUNABKU...its Brian Thackeray from Dark Yoga on some crazy fuzz freak-out guitar shredding, recorded with some homies from back east slamming drums (Matthew Clark) and moog bass swoop (Abel Okugawa) on a series of improv burners! recorded at Monkeyclaus, a studio and production facility located in the blue ridge mountains near charlottesville, virginia. covers were screened by brian and dan of dark yoga.....insert illustrated by Brian..

From the Galactic Core Myspace:

While receiving direct transmissions from the Hunab Ku on Summer Solstice 2007, Brian Thackeray, Matthew Clark, and Abel Okugawa recorded over two and a half hours of raw improvisations in the Monkeyclaus Studio. This took place just after a high noon Sun worship ritual. The session was then mixed a week later, as one 59 minute chron-illogical chunk of the transmission was chosen to be given to the people. The Mayan Factor can be credited with planting seeds, and at times clarifying certain far out notions that encouraged the creation of this particular music. Brian is known for his guitar shredding in West Coast pysche rock bands such as Dark Yoga, and Brave Priest. Matthew is the drummer for Ostinato as well as Grand Banks. Abel is the chief engineer of the Monkeyclaus studio and recorded the session, while laying down some heavy synths. Abel is a fountain of music.

EDITION OF 100 CDs in hand-screened cases.
Most of them were sold on their brief east coast tour in Nov 2007.
A few will be going to select distributers, and we'll end up with a couple to sell direct...BOOM

just a quick note:

1) the White Rainbow CD SKY DRIPS DRIFTS is now available from States Rights Records and they are doing some crazy package deals too...like prism 2xLP plus Sky Drips Drifts for $25 or Sky Drips Drifts plus Paper's awesome "as as" CD for like $16........PLUS all orders of Sky Drips Drifts come with a free mp3 download of the deeply out of print White Rainbow SUN SHIFTS cd that we put out on yarnlazer earlier this year. BOOYEAH (oh yeah you can listen to a track from sky drips drifts here...)

2) RAD SUMMER, the awesome vintage/retro/handmade clothing + cool underground records and tapes STORE that Honey (along with her homies Charolette and Jacob as well as Tom Greenwood and a host of other vibe helpers) has opened up here in Portland is having its GRAND OPENING PARTY TONIGHT!!! pop in and groove with us. i think we will be bumping a bunch of Calvin Johnson mix tapes (25 varieties of rare 45s mixed to perfection ranging in theme from deep 80's dancehall to female soul to regional hip hop to Japanese new wave) drinking wine, having fun, doing cool stuff. i dunno. POP IN!!!!

ten albums here
cool mixtape here
pre-order here
google space here

here's a big ol' batch of new white rainbow and other related records for your listening pleasure! woohoo!!!

first off, i am supremely excited to announce that the double LP gatefold version of PRISM OF ETERNAL NOW, the record i have been working on for a long time is finally available from marriage records the CD will be available October 1st on KRANKY.

secondly, available extremely soon from states rights is SKY DRIPS DRIFTS, sort of the sequel to sun shifts, 70 minutes done in one sitting, this time split up into vague track markers that flow into each other. starts with deep ash-ra vibed echo-guitar guitar tryps and then moves on to a positive spring/summer mantra of chanting voices, guitar strums, tabla grooves, phaser fuzz guitar, deep drones and stuff. The best representation of current White Rainbow live sets.

then there is the long anticipated return of SURFACE OF ECEON
available NOW from music fellowship is the VINYL ONLY release of REVENGE OF DRAGON, the last known recordings of this legendary super group of me, the dudes from landing and the pounding kraut drumming of the one and only Phil Jenkins. These recordings are circa 2000-2002 when Surface was in full swing. Full on 3 guitar crazy fuzz solo love attacks versus deep deep deep ambient dream drones. side 2 is a 20 minute fuzz blanket vibe out unto infinity. put it on repeat!

and finally there is the new awesome double-disc marriage records comp (sorry no image, i guess the new marriage site won't allow hot linking) in an old-school hand screened arigato stumptown case which features an exclusive white rainbow track as well as new music from a whole bunch of homies:
Privacy, Adrian Orange, Valet, Spencer Kingman, Davis Hooker, Andrew Kafffer, Lucky Drgaons, Be Gulls, Jesse Durost, Matt McCormick, Aaron Flint Jamison, Dirty Projectors, Ghosting, Mount Eerie, Arington, The Dead Science, Rob Walmart and the Watery Graves.
as carlos at marriage would say: BOOYOW!

TWO NEW RELEASES NOW AVAILABLE!

TUNNELS COLOUR SEANCE



TUNNELS is Nicholas Samuel Bindeman (of Eternal Tapestry, Jackie-O Motherfucker, Hustler White, Malibu Flacon, Alarmist etc) in full-on beautiful pastoral dreamy psychedelic drifted drone mode. Colour Seance is four ambient clouds of gentle, blurred color-blasts of sampled/looped/delay-drenched guitars chimes, synths, voice, etc. that evolve in dream-time and slowly fold in on themselves. A key example of the power, breadth and sophistication of the Portland Psychedelic-Drone underground.

EDITION OF 100 IN HAND-SCREENED COVERS

CLICK HERE FOR ORDER INFO

DARK YOGA BREATH OF LIFE: LIVE BROADCAST HEAVY TRUTH (SECOND EDITION)



Crutial re-press and re-design of the Dark Yoga CD that came out in very limited numbers a little while ago.

Dark Yoga is an obscure Northwest American Psychedelic NOW VIBRATIONAL Music Commune founded in early 06 by Adam Forkner, Honey Owens, Brian Thackeray, Matt McDowell, Aria Benner and Dan Barone. Dark Yoga's music is a heavy heavy weird brown fog of loose psychedelic improv in a fuzz-wah style with 70's Miles vibes, distant flutes, bongos, etc etc etc.

LIVE BROADCAST: HEAVY TRUTH is a Radio Transmission from the Spiritual Heart of this Commune at the Apex of their groove recorded in May of 2006. Its an hour-plus of continuos improvisation that wanders from heavy psyche fuzz funk to strange passages of pastoral hippy bongo and flute melt-downs, and everything in between...

EDITION OF 100 in hand-screened covers

CLICK HERE FOR ORDER INFO

Today Valet's Blood is Clean has been officially released. Go to your local cool guy record shop and pick yourself up a copy! or order it now directly from Kranky!!!

Brainwashed.com reviewed it: (so did aquarius records...)

from brainwashed:
Valet, "Blood is Clean"
Written by Lucas Schleicher
Monday, 16 April 2007
I remember hearing a supposed "recording from hell" on Art Bell's Coast to Coast radio program years ago and upon hearing the latest project from Honey Owens (Jackie-O Motherfucker, Nudge), I was immediately reminded of those apparently satanic vibrations. Blood is Clean isn't particularly vicious, tormented, or evil in character, but Owens' ghostly voice and hazy songs on this record are uniquely haunting.

The sixth of April is associated with a number of events throughout history: the earliest recorded solar eclipse in 648 BC is attributed to this day, Petrarch's first vision of Laura in the church of Sainte-Claire d'Avignon also occurred on April the sixth, it was the day that the United States declared war on Germany in 1917, and it happens to be the day that Robert Peary claimed to have reached the North Pole. "April 6" is Valet's introduction to the world and it's probably helpful to think of each of these events as analogues of a sort to this record. Honey Owens is at her best on her Kranky debut, ushering alien and mystical sounds out of her mind and into the air, converting submerged rhythms into occult ritual, and turning out songs bathed in unquiet isolation and immutable violence. The supernatural are at work, conforming Owens' hands to a position reserved for an afterlife blues and shaping her lips into coded messages for the dead and the devils.

"April 6" opens with her spectral voice moaning wordless sounds into the air and is closely followed by ceremonial drums and tumbling winds. The sound of errata blow about in this storm of sound slowly closes the track, leaving an uneasy feeling in my belly and arousing suspicions about what might follow. Owens could've led the record down a predictably bombastic path at this point, rendering "April 6" nothing more than a prolonged tease in anticipation of some outward explosion. Instead, "Blood is Clean" converts all the stock piled tension into an internal hemorrhage, a whirlpool of fuzzed out guitars and rumbling bass. Her lyrics bring to mind no immediate ideas, but rather vague hallucinations of symbols and emotions that seem equally inviting and disconcerting. The guitar solo on "Blood is Clean" is perhaps one of the most phenomenal things I've heard all year. It tumbles out of the mix and practically destroys the rest of the song and pictures of war-torn landscapes or fire-scarred cities slowly evolve out of the music. It's a moment of musical and sonic brilliance, setting the tone for the rest of the record and completely erasing whatever preconceptions I might have had concerning Owens' music.

The whole of the album isn't quite as structured as "Blood is Clean;" songs like "Burmajuana" and "Tame All the Lions" sound less like songs and more like slowly evolving pictures that never quite acquire enough definition to become recognizable. Even when Owens sings, her voice is so removed and cold that it's hard to imagine it as an intentional part of the recording. It mixes well with the music, but instead of providing any order to the songs, it increases their apparitional qualities and further distances them from reality. They're elegant songs that evolve patiently, even if they don't immediately bring to mind traditional song structures. That is, perhaps, the stroke of artistry that sets Blood is Clean apart from the pack. So often artists will pretend to play with the idea of the song, stretching it beyond its classical limits either by destruction or some lesser form of decay. Owens' own approach maintains the artistry of song-craft and simultaneously expands its horizons.

By fluctuating between abstract and concrete music she creates a bizarre tension that's both enjoyable to the mind and entertaining in general. "My Volcano" combines these two approaches almost perfectly, mimicking the sometimes wandering nature of the otherwise well-defined and structured blues and inserting the more free-form nature of modern guitar performance into that style. It's my favorite piece on the album and perhaps the best thing Owens has ever written. "North" closes the album with a blur of washed out sound, a sound that brought to mind blizzards and the harsh landscape of the planet's polar regions. In a way it's a cleansing piece of music, washing away whatever relations to the world the rest of the album established by way of metaphor. In another way it calls to mind the strange and supernatural spirit of gothic America, immersing me, along with the rest of the album, in a frame of mind partially familiar, nightmarish, and wholly intriguing.

from aquarius records:

VALET Blood Is Clean (Kranky) cd 14.98
One of our favorite blasts of murky, moody cd-r bliss finally re-issued as a REAL cd by the fine folks at Kranky. And what a fine fit it is too.
Originally released on her own brilliantly named Yarn Lazer label, Valet is the work of one ex-San Franciscan called Honey Owens, who also does time now and again in Jackie O Motherfucker. We've mentioned it the past a few times, but there definitely seems to be a preponderance of vocal based music surfacing lately, Grouper, Bastard Wing, Pump Kinn, Lichens, and now Valet, who all use the voice as a major component of their sound. For Blood Is Clean, Owens twists and stretches her voice into broad sonic strokes and dreamy drones. But it's not just vocals, she also weaves darkly delicate little sound worlds, of muted tribal percussion, dark cavernous rumbles, lots of buzz and creak, alien transmissions, clattery minimal percussion, crumbling guitar grit, murky swirls of reverb and delay, the perfect sonic backdrop for all manner of processed and unprocessed vocals, ranging from sultry chanteuse like croon, to chopped and delayed Boredomsy "boop boop"s to breathy ambiance. Really beautiful and understated.
Packaged in a simple and striking cardstock sleeve, an expanded version of the original cd-r artwork...

just FYI if anyone reading this is actually interested in these things:
the dark yoga CD posted in the last post is now temp un-available until further notice. dark yoga is working on packaging for a new second edition of this CD. thanks for your hypothetical interest and keep on trippin'

love
adam

ACRE "CANDYFLIPPING":



Acre is our new friend Aaron, who recently moved to Portland from Olympia. Aaron truly knows his synthesis and plays extremely reduced, refined synesthesia-enducing and generally psychedelically affective minimal drone using a minimal amount of equipment (including mixer feedback, sampler/loop, various filters, phase-shifters, tremelos and the like).

CANDY FLIPPING is three tracks of sweet drone-gazed, tunnel visioned, double-dipped DMT cloud-lift. The first track, "Moth" instantly breaks out into the upper chakra registers with thick drones that hit you like LaMonte's Dream-House. Second track "Together We Are Poison" is all glossy-eyed and drooling lower-level chill-out pillow room in the rave of LIFE. Once asleep there, the third track "Drifting" will slowly, slowly slowly bring you back up like some dred head trance DJ opening up the 303 filter ever so slightly until we are again filled with ecstatic psychedelic feel-good sunshine laser light and your head and the whole moving mass of people explode upward together into another level of collective consciousness . GET FLIPPED
For more info on Acre go HERE.

CANDYFLIPPING is three tracks of straight-up DENSE micro-tonal, synesthetic stereo brain-wave sync, hallucinatory DRONESCAPES that will seriously TRIP YOUR BALLS OFF.

edition of 100 copies SILK SCREENED WITH GLOW IN THE DARK INK HAPPY-FACE DEEP RAVE COVERS

CLICK HERE FOR ORDER INFO

Dark Yoga "Live on KBOO":



Dark Yoga is an obscure Northwest American Psychedelic NOW VIBRATIONAL Music Commune founded in early 06 by Adam Forkner, Honey Owens, Brian Thackeray, Matt McDowell, Aria Benner and Dan Barone. Dark Yoga's music is a heavy heavy weird brown fog of loose psychedelic improv in a fuzz-wah style with 70's Miles vibes, distant flutes, bongos, etc etc etc.

LIVE ON KBOO is a Radio Transmission from the Spiritual Heart of this Commune at the Apex of their groove recorded in May of 2006. Its an hour-plus of continuos improvisation that wanders from heavy psyche fuzz funk to strange passages of pastoral hippy bongo and flute melt-downs, and everything in between...

edition of 100 copies BUT WE HAVE A VERY LIMITED NUMBER ON HAND

CLICK HERE FOR ORDER INFO

(Live Dark Yoga Photos from 2007 © Michael J Demeo... more can be found HERE)

also check the criptic (ie not updated that much) Dark Yoga myspace