CHESTER ENDERSBY GWAZDA'S 'SHROUD'

27 April 2013

Our next release is available for pre-order right now.

It's the 'Shroud' LP from Baltimore resident and in-demand producer, Chester Endersby Gwazda. Chester began quietly writing and recording an ever-growing personal catalogue of pop-centric gems amidst his busy schedule realising the visions of others.

These songs have grown into his debut album 'Shroud', which is full of vocal harmonies, meticulous arrangements and precise timbres that bespeak his sensitive ear and fascination with pop music.

You can listen to 'Skewed' below to see what we mean - a track Pitchfork quite rightly describes as "trembling with vitality".

Skewed

DOPE BODY are a brutally primal hardcore beast from Baltimore. Born in 2008 out of the dance-friendly confines of the city's Wham City scene, this unclassifiable, heavy group ventured out into the night to find more like-minds, and came back boasting a spasm of styles and directions. Evolving from blasting three-piece to blistering four-piece, Dope Body enjoy writing their own songs, touring endlessly and pummeling basement parties with a gleeful, wide-eyed fanaticism that the more reasonable among us might mistake for insanity (it ain't entirely so). Dope Body writhe under their own experiments, swinging from gutterish sludge-punk to snake charmer-on-fire within the confines of a single tune. Rather than comparing their ferocity to other contender, just know that Dope Body is punk spelled upsidedown and standing on its hands. Debut LP 'Nupping' was released on Hit Dat/Hoss a year or so back, whilst stunning new album 'Natural History' came out on Drag City last year and refuses to leave our turntable! Dope Body's new 7" also through Drag City is called 'Saturday' and is available now, it's really, very, very good!

TONSTARTSSBANDHT, pronounced "TAHN-starts-bandit", are a band of brothers; Andy White and Edwin M. White, with a passion for psychedelic pop and something special they like to call "boogie rock". Hailing from Orlando via Montreal and NYC, they are currently to be seen wandering the streets in a hazy stupor. Using samples like a slowed down Big Country the duo first put together a self-released debut LP in 2009 of melodic wonder called 'An When'. Since then, Tonstartssbandht have released a further seven records, they're latest being released through Arbutus Records, who also work with Grimes and Sean Nicholas Savage. Part country, part unhinged psych soup, part Of Montreal synth-pop group, Tonstartssbandht have been busy gathering a loyal following indebted to their heavy drummed soundscapes, freaked swamps of effects and ecstatic vocal float, which they're now bringing to the UK for the first time. Last month saw Tonstartssbandht touring Russia and the Ukraine alongside Dirty Beaches, their split tour cassette from said event is essential, check out the link below to hear it!

LAB COAST have that sort of breezy layered subtle guitar pop sound that's easy to like. Invoking a bit of unpretentious retro sound reminiscent in the catalogs of labels like Slumberland and Sarah. Lab Coast keep it really catchy in that loose but tight way good bands of this variety hit on just right. The flip finds them getting a bit more psyched out and showing some of their more experimental impulses that are subtly at play in all of their songs. Look out for their recent cassette album on Night People and 7" release through Faux Discx.

BLEACHED are two sisters from LA creating rough-hewed, high-collared, melodic Rock & Roll. Formerly part of Mika Miko, Jessica and Jennifer Clavin were best known for their freewheeling '77 punk and riot girl lawlessness. In Bleached, they share the same slant towards the hard-edged, but instead veer towards a more vintage ensemble of Ramones bubble-gum, Merle Haggard country, and 60's psychedelic rock. Raised up deep in the San Fernando Valley, their suburban isolation nurtured the girls' creativity, as they started making their own music at a young age. Sneaking into punk shows over the hill in Hollywood, they grew up to become teenaged underground staples at the all-ages Downtown DIY venue, The Smell. Signed to Kill Rock Stars and Post Present Medium, their all-girl punk band Mika Miko drew international acclaim and won them slots on tours with No Age, Black Lips, and The Gossip. After the breakup of Mika Miko the Clavin sisters vowed to continue working together on music and formed Bleached. Bleached's playful harmonizing masks the dark topics they sing about: the struggles experienced upon failed relationships and all the sad themes that Stevie Nicks once eloquently expressed. That's the goal, the sugary and sour re-purposed by two aggressively harmonic musicians and songwriters. Bleached have 7" singles available now through Ooga Booga, Suicide Squeeze and Art Fag Recordings now, whilst last month saw the band's bombastic debut album 'Ride Your Heart' released worldwide via Dead Oceans.

ROYAL LIMP is a project that's still fresh from the womb, so to speak. A bold "I'm here", posted on Facebook just under a year ago, announced the return of the familiar face of Andy Auld -- co-founder of the Sex Is Disgusting label and member of now-defunct Teen Sheikhs, amongst other artistic dabblings -- to the musical ether. Since then it's been something of a quiet year: a few tentative uploads to Soundcloud, a handful of shows, and some glimpsed promises, allowing Royal Limp to spend time fleshing out his "gloomy as fuck tape loops and keyboard jams" with a full band, the future is arriving every second, and we're very excited to see what it has in store for Royal Limp.

MOUNT EERIE is Phil Elverum. The 34 year-old multi-instrumentalist has played in other bands, and worked as a producer, but remains best known for this solo project, which began under the name The Microphones in 1997. In 2003, he renamed the project Mount Eerie (and added an "e" to his last name, Elvrum) after returning from a trip to Norway, where he lived alone in a remote cabin for a winter. "Mount Eerie" specifically refers to the mountain on Fidalgo Island, an island an hour and change north of Seattle where you'll also find Elverum's lifelong Anacortes, Washington hometown. To date, his most critically acclaimed (and popular) album is the Microphones' 2001 epic The Glow Pt. 2. The first official Mount Eerie album -- following the Microphones' final 2003 full-length, also called Mount Eerie -- is 2005's No Flashlight. It was followed by 2007's Mount Eerie pts. 6 & 7, a 132-page, hardcover book of his photography, packaged with a 10" picture disk. In early 2009, the journals he kept and drawings he scribbled in Norway were released as a 144-page hardcover book called Dawn. It came with 16 color photo cards and a CD of songs he wrote while living there. Regardless of the moniker, the various collections include interlocking themes, references to earlier works, and are marked by Elverum's distinctive naturalist self-recorded lo-fi analog sound that mixes a whispered, gentle voice, which can also yell and bellow, with various strains of sound: His work can be delicately spare or booming and ambitiously layered and noisy, often in the same song. Lyrically, he focuses on memory, first-person storytelling, myth, naturalism, the everyday as sacred, and a sense of place (in and out of Washington State), among other related things. In addition to his extravagantly packaged albums, Elverum has released self-published books (which he illustrates or fills with his photographs) via his own label, P.W. Elverum & Sun, Ltd. Last year saw Phil release a stunning pair of sister albums called 'Clear Moon' and 'Ocean Roar' dealing with fogs of noise, observational visions and his impeccable sense of song, for this show he's backed up by a pair of bassists, keyboardist and percussion, not to mention arranging his music for multiple vocals, it's definitely going to be special!

SLUSHY GUTS is a deliberate stripping back to basics, a concerted effort to write a song one could whistle and an exercise in embracing fear. At once melodic and dissonant, poetic and honest, intimate and claustrophobic, Slushy Guts is awkward pop music, naked and uncomfortable, a bundle of subtle unease and a maze of contradictions, a too long sentence, a load of heartfelt non-sense. It tried to just be happy but got confused and came out kinda sad. The recent 'The Bloop, Julia, Train, Slowdown, Whistle, Upsweep and All The While The Hum' album is available now through the website above.