[engl] We were young enough to put our bodies to the test every night on the 7 x 7 mile patch of the bay. The endless wars seemed less at home. Songs were hanging off the branches heavy, plump and threatening to rot on the vine if they weren’t polished and put to tape. The band was on their 3rd live drummer but the line up in The Fresh & Onlys recording tower was a consistent group of pop soldiers writing, working, and whiling away the hours. A beeramid of cheap cans, endless dope smokery and a pretty strong vibe of dudes who would play together into oblivion. 388 rolling Tape spilling over itself, drum kit covered in mufflers, a chest of shitty percussion toys, lots of ideas, and multiple secret weapons at their disposal: Shayde Sartin: the beast from out east, the thud of a heavy slow bomb…the best bass player in the bay Unaccredited infinite times on records that were made better by his finely crafted skills. I can pick him out on records instantly. Wymond “the count”: you can almost smell his hair on his hooks. If there was a stage monitor in your living room his fence-climber boot would be on it. Wymond always had the riff that made the jets of the song take off. Listen and you’ll see what I mean. Tim Cohen: the man behind the beard. Some would say the leader. In the game as long as Bette Midler. Cohen writes great songs in his sleep I think. Once referred to by a buddy as “like 3 weirdos in one”. Think of these as basement tapes, a companion to the first F+Os castle face release (which itself deserves another listen) I remember watching some of these tunes get banged out live in a sweat pit in Oakland. The sound guy so gacked out that there was no sound guy basically...ah memories…” John Dwyer, Feb 16th 2015 Colored vinyl is Lemon Lollipop Yellow and comes with an exclusive track on a flexi - "Every Saturday Night It Rains" and is only available here and from the band. Limit two per customer.

[engl] Los Angeles’ Grave Flowers Bongo Band’s sophomore LP “Strength of Spring” is an inverted pyramid balanced on the headstock of an acoustic guitar, a rainbow painted in campfire smoke, an endless staircase circling into the clouds. That acoustic guitar, perfectly captured here by Ty Segall’s excellently sere and close mic’d production, plays skeleton to these conjurors woolly grooves, and singer Gabe Flores’ thousand-yard moan keeps us guessing as to exactly where this wildebeest is headed. He pinions these far out tunes, which burst generously with shit-hot guitar leads, Stoogeseque sax squalls, and a gaggle of great eight-armed drum fills, with a flinty wrist-flicking heartbeat as the band turns from whimsy to nimble riffery on a dime, following that pied-piper six string jangling down many lovely rabbit-holes of melody and exploration. It’s obvious these guys play together a lot (the lineup shares two members with acclaimed space rockers Hoover III to boot) and the telepathy on display here is synapse-snappy. Coursing throughout is that note-pad filling, lighter raising, undefinable black magic that feels so rare these days….

[engl] Castle Face favorites from the Berkeley bedroom-pop weirdos of a decade past, The Herms. A little rawer around the edges than their previous releases, this LP captures the best of a band has been overlooked for too long. Colored vinyl is half opaque magenta, half translucent electric blue, and comes with a flexi of the exclusive track Zombie Divine.

[engl] "For folks who dig A Frames, Country Teasers, Wire, Gang of Four, pita chips and dad’s boozy breath. May we present The Intelligence, captured live in a truly subterranean underground show space below SF vintage clothier Vacation. Lars Finberg: a name synonymous with artisanal hand-crafted, locally brewed, and organically-farmed song lasers. Hilarious, fast, tour-tight and ballsy The band has all these perks in pocket. And all that on borrowed gear! I’ve watched this band go through many variations over the years and in their own right all of them have been marvelous. This particular version of the line up is constructed entirely of road-dogs. These guys don’t fuck around (or maybe they only fuck around, who can tell anymore?) They drink, they get bawdy, they shred and when we asked Lars if the band would be into doing a small show in a basement in the Tenderloin in SF for a live LP, he asked “What should we play?” and I replied “nothing but the hits” and they did exactly that. The Intelligence and Lars himself are masters at the penning of hits. Hit after hit after hit. And with a soft shoed tippity-tap of crowd work and banter. You can really smell the basement on this one and feel the cobwebs grazing the top of your head as you go deaf in one ear from the eye level PA pointed directly at your soul hole. If you love this band then this is a great live LP of them scorching the hits and talking trash If you don’t know this band (shame on you) then this is a good place to start” - John Dwyer

[engl] Ajo Sunshine (say it with me folks, “Ahh-Ho”) is heralded by an alarming horn ensemble, stabbing with the dramatic urgency of a killer’s theme in a midnight movie. It’s a jarring but appropriate entry point for this brilliantly blasted listen, an array of exquisitely sharp edges punctuated by kaleidoscopic respites of throbbing warmth and surprising tenderness. J.R.C.G. (Justin R. Cruz Gallego)’s previous work with Seattle’s excellent Dreamdecay may foreground the broad strokes here, but he’s pushed things way outward in terms of his sonic palette. Abutting field recordings captured from rodeos off Ajo Way, a stretch of highway that leads you westward out of Tucson Arizona directly into the sun, both acoustic instruments and gleaming walls of synthetic noise are framed in dour and dissonant chord shapes, crackling with overdriven drum mics and seasick waves of distortion. It’s homage that plays out like a collage, a dream switching from station to station, a series of dedications broadcast on late night radio. All pin-hole size images from scenes never seen whole, strung together in but one version of complete.

[engl] Announcing Gong Splat What’s this? Today’s holiday gift? One final transmission from the core of the planet! Cresting slabs of concrete and powdered bone rich soil Improvisation freak flag flitters atop a gutted highrise Ryan Sawyer on drums Greg Coates on upright bass Wilder Zoby on synth and mellotron Andres Renteria on conga, bongos & hand percussion and John Dwyer on guitar, synths, pan flute, cuica, hand percussion, space drum and effects. This one is spitting fat and neon night light city drives White in the corner of the pilot’s mouth Furry, fuzzy and frenetic Motorik and full of blood-rich ticks Maggots unite! There’s a show tonight! Welcome back humans. Fantastic collage art by Dan Lean Recorded at Stu-Stu-Studio by John Dwyer in the peak of dope smoke lock down

[engl] "Walk the dog. Exercise. Make art. 'The mind is happy when the body is' Things I can potentially fill my days with if I am stuck at home for months on end… Then, one day, I hear a frenetic, free drummer playing in his garage a few blocks from me. And I think “interesting”. I stand outside his garage staring at the wall, like a fool, for a minute, then decide to leave a note on the car parked there. This is how I ended up meeting and working with Ted Byrnes. He wasn’t creeped out, and he ended up sending me a pile of truly spontaneous drums recordings from the carport to work with. I decided to have every musician come in one at at time and just take a wild pass at their track over the drums. None of these people had ever met or played together. I was the connecting thread. I scratched the surface initially with electric bass, saxophone, guitars, cuica, synthesizers, flute and effects, but soon realized I would need heavy hitters to make this place habitable. Greg Coates, upright bass expressionist extraordinaire, hacked through the dense weeds, vines and frayed cabling. He lays the map out and makes breathing room. Space to swing a cat. Tom Dolas (keys), my often foil, came in and began tip-toeing through the rubble and refuse. Dotting the layout with flecks of light, flights of fancy and potential tangential trajectories. Then the finisher, Brad Caulkins on horns. As always, Brad came in like grace itself, scanned the floor for food, and huffed and puffed and blew the house down. He takes a bruiser situation and lends it some warmth and hospitality, old school. After I spent a bit of time mixing and editing this down to a palatable offering I couldn’t help but think about human consumption. Our limitless need for material possession, for emotional acknowledgment, for as much information to be thrown in our faces in our very short time here on this mortal coil. We are buried in information. We are constantly hungry and perhaps too smart for our own good. We leave behind us a wake of destruction. Of course, there are moments of great beauty, ingenuity and compassion along the way. You just have to know where to look. Thus, “Endless Garbage” seemed a fitting title. A cacophonous and glorious sketch of ourselves. For fans of Albert Ayler, ECM records, Gong, improvisation, sustainability and consumption” John Dwyer

[engl] “Three thick lps of hot jellied kraut-prog heavies coming at you from 1970s swiss-german based Kedama 3 lps of “live” in the studio and actual live recordings unbelievably telekinetic drums, keys and guitar Vision quest soundscapes a total gem lost to the ages here, y’all The first lp was reissued by Geurrson Records a while back the other two lps are unreleased on wax as of yet - rarities and live oddities It’s been a real pleasure to work with these guys as they were as excited as we were and provided us with a plethora of recordings & photos and press clippings to sort through to pull together this nice little set it’s raw, like you like it after a few it’s heavy, so you can nod as you sway along the path it’s beautiful, so you can reminisce it’s winding, so your imagination is blindfolded it’s far flung space jams so you can fry out it’s screwed down genius so you can be inspired this shit is far out and a real-deal old school fuse lighter and its limited to 1000 copies nice, never seen before photos of the gurus so come and get it nerds! for fans of Le Orme, Yes, Birth Control, Camel, Edgar Froese, ELP, King Crimson” - John Dwyer

[engl] Silver-tongued songsmith and true American treasure Kelley Stoltz brings us a new collection of instant classics with just a hint more synthery than 2013's "Double Exposure". For those not yet in the fan club, Kelley’s like a Ray Davies/Brian Wilson/Tom Petty power-pop Cerebus from another dimension in which well placed tambourines, handclaps, and wry observations are a universal language. Criminally under-appreciated, Kelley's face should be on Amoeba-bucks for his contributions to the pop canon - I'd recommend the black lipstick smeared stand-out and lead-off track "Cut Me Baby" as his walk on music for the acceptance speech. Each track here leaps off the table with Kelley's carefully considered wit and expertly layered arrangements. His innate way around a sticky hook and no shortage of tasty studio flourishes will bring out your inner record collector nerd, guaranteed.

[engl] Extra fine songwriter and longtime bedroom-pop auteur Kelley Stoltz has a new album Que Aura, and it delivers on the promise so many of his records have slyly hinted at, teased us with - what we have here is the platonic ideal of a Kelley Stoltz record, which is a very exciting thing indeed. Mr. Stoltz continues to embrace his best synth-pop tendencies, but the glimmer silvers an incredibly self-assured set of tender tunes, embracing in his own hangdog fashion both a disco-lit abandon as well as the attendant post-party sighs of dread and remorse. Great songs come out of Kelley at an alarming rate on any given day but this particular collection is some of his most effortlessly catchy stuff yet. Ennui under the disco lights suits him very well - there’s a hearty sip of Pulp-ian white Brit shimmy with a wink…a dash of Fleetwood Mac’s cynically professional late 70’s sheen, and even a spritz or two of Echo and The Bunnymen, which should surprise no one who’s noticed Kelley’s been playing guitar with McCulloch and Co for the past year or so. This record should cement Kelley into the power-pop pantheon where he belongs, right between Dwight Twilley and Martin Newell…let the Hall of Fame know we’re expecting their call.

[engl] When L.A. Takedown hovers over your ear hairs the first time, so much is communicated without a word - there are patient, capable hands at the wheel as we phantom through a neon Los Angeles of the mind, a Los Angeles that only three harmonized electric guitars can conjure, with a sunset so infinitely variegated in color that only synthetic washes of synth could serve as your fainting couch. Studio magic dust seems to drip off these android dreams projected against the wall - in person it defies logic that such a sound is coming from humans, but as you watch their hands it’s unmistakable - these are calm warriors sallying forth these sweeping, swooning epics, crowned with triumphant tripartite thunderbolts of wail. For a few fleeting moments, things seem right with the world; our hero has prevailed, the race was won by a hair, the unmanned drones levitate & strafe the coast, rending the coral sky with a psychic boom, shaking loose a few palm fronds and setting off some car alarms but otherwise leaving the sprawl unchanged and teeming. While produced and performed by Aaron M. Olson, Our Feeling of Natural High was engineered and mixed to glossy perfection by Jason Quever and (we hear) it benefits greatly from the seamless contributions of John Herndon, Jason Quever, Marcus Savino, Miles Wintner, Mose Wintner, Nicholas Krgovich and The Musical Tracing Ensemble. We’re even treated to a city-hum lullaby to humanity as a nightcap, with Nedelle Torrisi and Yellow Magic Orchestra’s Yukihiro Takahashi on vocals, truly a mint on the pillow of this fantastic soundscape. For fans of Michael Rother, Top Gun, later Tangerine Dream, convertibles and long walks on the beach.

[engl] Unearthed gold from Providence RI circa 2000...repetitive heavy grooves featuring fried out bass and drum echo-delicacies...never before released

[engl] “The following story might be bullshit (drug use and memory enhancements) Years ago I was sitting at home staring into the middle distance and the phone on the wall rang (that should denote how long ago this was). On the other end was the booker from The Bottom of the Hill in San Francisco, who had never called me before. She was excited about the show they had that night and was calling people to invite them. Apparently the night before a band called Laddio Bolocko had played and were so mesmerizing, so strong that they had offered them the next night, which was open. I was intrigued as no band had ever warranted this invite previously to my knowledge. This was new and exciting territory. I had my ass & ears handed to me that evening. Scorching, pummeling, deep waters ran over me as I stood, beer in hand, mouth open. My memory may be embellishing but I remember a sax as big as me, drums that were physically hanging on by a thread, and twin electric strings that reeled sinister sprites over my head in outwardly circular patterns. Aggressive, far out fractals burned in my brain. I had never seen anything like this band, and never have again. That’s why it’s so shocking to wait around all these years for someone to pick up the thread and re-release these 3 perfect recordings on LP for the first time…and still be waiting. So, I’m happy to announce, Castle Face is here with a 3xLP remedy. We’ve been working with all the original members of Laddio Bolocko and sifting through to put together this concise LP box set of what is arguably their strongest home studio recorded material. Included here (for the first time on wax) are “Strange Warmings of Laddio Bolocko”, “In Real Time” and “As If By Remote” Includes former members of Dazzling Killmen, Panicsville, the Psychic Paramount, and Mars Volta. For fans of Can, This Heat, The Residents, improvisation (really they are hard to compare, they are so singular in sound)” - John Dwyer

[engl] Influenced by a life split between Lima, London, and Twentynine Palms, Peru-born Caye Castagnetto's "Leap Second" is an intriguingly personal and hard to classify debut album. The album is thick collage of samples Caye recorded with different artists and musicians, including Beatrice Dillon and the late Aileen Bryant, that spans 5 years in the making. There is something in Leap Second that tracks the speed of bodies, how they approach and retreat. The 10 tracks are speedy and languid, thick ruffles, and dirges. In parts it feels like you've stumbled upon a forgotten incredible 70's folk record but that feeling gets broken quickly by clever sleights of hand. Caye's balladry is angular, time is elastic. Each song is a fresh cape. How dandies really mean it, so masc that it's fay, how the only moment is this one and it's just passed, etcetera. "While it doesn’t really sound like anything else, there are moments that feel like a Latin flavored Nico, that’s edging its way towards some of the outings of the Sun City Girls. In my opinion it checks all the boxes, by checking none of them.” - Bjorn Copeland, Black Dice "A truly interesting conglomeration of loose inspirations and conjurings. A hard to decipher sound all together which makes it worth every moment, A sprinkling of Catherine Ribeiro, Dr. John, Terje Rypdal & Nico. Far out sun-soaked odysseys & moon dappled woodland night creepers.." - John Dwyer

[engl] “Blow-out enthusiasts, make ready to scarf this down without chewing How many licks does it take to get to the spider egg in the center of this sugar bomb? You got the jitters, and dude, there’s blood on your shirt. I like gore with my goth. “hey, you got your pop sensibilities on my explosion!” Strong vocals a la Modern English, back-beat complete and foamy bass bleached onto 1/2” tape specially for Castle-Face. 7 head strong tunes to clatter your phonograph needle. I’ve always loved Matt Jones’ vocal stylings (ex-blasted canyons), rich with tenor muscle flexes. Over the top in its endeavors and reaching, always reaching. Primal gas-guzzler drumming center speaker from Adam sets the ear up for a beating And hell, its got the old (and I mean old) bass player, Mark, from the Mayyors…solid state aggression at its mid-low knuckle-dragging finest. A slap in the brain done up nicely here on wax. Enjoy” - John Dwyer All vinyl comes with a download card.

[engl] Weirdo-punk supergroup Male Gaze is back with nine new chunks of octave-pedal abuse and sultry croons with King Leer, their first proper long-player. This time around, the trio of Matt Jones (ex-Blasted Canyons), Mark Kaiser (ex-Mayyors), and Adam Cimino (ex-The Mall) have added resident Castle Face engineer Chris Woodhouse behind the boards to ramp up the skuzz-pop of last year’s Gale Maze into brutal wall-of-sound territory. On King Leer, the boys toy with their poppier side, dosing the songs with syrupy melodies and some newfound heartfelt introspection, but they’re by no means going soft on us—these tracks, buried beneath mountains of fuzz and pounded out with Adderall-fueled fury, pack enough sonic punch to rattle your brain loose. - Luca Cimarusti, Chicago Reader

[engl] "Matt, Mark and Adam, aka Male Gaze, return quickly from the brainy roar of their previous album King Leer with their six heels hanging even further over the edge of the abyss. Good bands often pull punches but the great ones don’t and these charismatically scarred veterans of romance, gear singed from all too real firefights in the dark world of adulthood, lodge ten new slugs into your vest. Your life was spared but you’ll feel every second of the thirty five plus minutes, grateful that all you got was a bruising. Imagine what it did to them! Have you ever flung yourself out there to such a degree that you risked total humiliation if it all went south, to where the next step would be self deportation to some distant island of annihilation in your mind? How did that work out for you? Don’t worry, Male Gaze knows and they wrote some songs about it. Look out your window, down at the glittering metropolis below and listen to this album." - Henry Rollins

[engl] 2nd and final album from The Mallard

[engl] We're mighty proud of the Mallard and their home-cooked debut LP, brimming with raw edges, left turns, and ramshackle brilliance.

[engl] The path is finally revealed by a splash of light, and it is dazzling. You cover your eye bones with a claw and can make out a reflection of the perfect being There is a whiff of you in there. There is a bit of everyone in there. There are cars and bells and birds and fruits and water and night skies and laughter and heavy woe…motioning for you to dive in All things are in this ethos swirling in its core This album is the armored nucleus of sound and vision It carries you along on its lumbering back, it tosses you through space and pulls you down a hole A trip indeed Mikey Young can do no wrong in our eyes and he has held the door open for you again (a gentleman, as always) Listen up, the higher power music hour has cracked their mighty knuckles and laid down some deep trips for you to view the city swaying and swarming like a field of grass flecked with insect transport

[engl] “I’m so tired of making sense” - Mountains & Rainbows “AM 580” Last summer John came back from an Oh Sees tour talking about a fantastic band he’d played with in Detroit called Mountains and Rainbows. What followed him home was a double LP’s worth of shopworn weirdness and a delightfully loose attitude that must have something to do with the ecstasy of a midwestern summer…these are backyard freaks jamming into the twilight, led by a vocal quaver belted to the cheap seats, a groove and a grin and a heaping spoonful of “damn aren’t you glad we came out tonight?” Vibrant and confusing like the insane-o artwork they sent us which appears to be constructed of many layers of fluorescent duct tape. Careening from the mellow chugger vibe on “How You Spend Your Time” to the tightly wound twitch of “Dying To Meet You”…and somewhere between they manage to stretch their legs deep into the strange, with a dark oddness lurking in the corners of tunes like weirdo highlight “With Beefheart”. They go all over the place but somehow I feel like I know these dudes and they’ll look out for me if I get “too far out”. A great addition to a little journey of your own perhaps and just in time for the sunlit afternoons to come.

[engl] Surrender yourself into Naked Lights' dark and intense orbit! From the first few seconds to the end this record here is intensely addictive and welcomely unpredictable stuff. Shades of post-punk, dub, even anarcho-punk vibes are thrillingly reblended into wholly futuristic shapes that defy easy categorization. The cross-talking guitars speak their own thorny language, the atmosphere is wide-focus and carries a subtle tang of danger, the whole sense of timing and space is unique and fresh, and it’s topped off with a feminine yelp that is as in your face as it is intriguing and foreign-seeming. An altogether unique and refreshingly vital listen, we are incredibly excited to share with you this asymmetric jewel “On Nature”.

[engl] Nolan Potter is putting us home recording freaks to shame. We had a year of global pandemic to lay out our grand ideas and the sum total of most artists “quar-riffs” wouldn’t push the constraints of a normal band practice (gosh, remember those?). Nolan Potter, in the meantime, has quietly painted us a beatific masterpiece that veers from the whimsical to the wigged out, deftly weaving an untamed tapestry of sound all the while archly commenting on the present musician’s predicament - and he did it alone. No drum machine clattering in the background amidst tape hiss and 4 track grime here - this is a fully realized, insanely well played, full on rock record that might even one-up his first LP for us, last years excellent Nightmare Forever. The guys’ got more chops than a beauticians’ college across a wide array of instruments - no small feat, and easily overlooked when you leave the lyric sheet and credits on the dining room table. That the songs travel far, wide, up, down, backwards, and gamely spill out over the 5 minute mark with exceptionally loose interludes and diversions is just another marvel in this carnival of aural delights.

[engl] Another killer entry in our Live In San Francisco series - a sweaty and athletic performance from the feral and ferocious Texans known as OBN III's. Their namesake Orville Bateman Neeley III stalks the stage, crowd and now your speakers from start to finish, as Dwyer puts it "a little bit early ZZ Top, a little bit Kiss, and a face fuck of The Stooges". If you couldn't be there this is the next best thing. Limited Ultra Clear vinyl only available here and from the band.