News – Page 85 – 7th Level Music

Partner open up their “Big Gay Hands” with new single.

Partner have shared the video for one of their most anticipated songs and a natural queer anthem “Big Gay Hands.” A live favourite from the past 3 years, Big Gay Hands is the third single, from Partner’s Never Give Up (November 20th on You’ve Changed Records) the follow up to their break-out debut album, In Search of Lost Time.

BIG GAY HANDS

“This song is about a wild night on the town filled with queer desire. It is an important song to us because it expresses a feeling we know is shared by many. There are a lot of songs out there about women’s bodies but this is the only song we know about big gay hands. This song is dedicated to the hotties and to those who love them.”
– Partner

Never Give Up is Partner’s second full-length album, following 2017’s In Search of Lost Time. In the years since their first release, the band has developed their “post classic rock” sound, leaving behind 90s rock comparisons. The new album retains elements that will be familiar to Partner fans, such as guitar solos and humorous subject matter, but with more structurally adventurous songs and abstract lyrics. They have spent the last several years on tour with drummer Simone TB, and this is evident in the looser and more confident performances captured on the album. Never Give Up was recorded by Steve Chaley at Palace Sound in the summer of 2019.

The band described the process of making the album. “In October of 2018 we found ourselves in a dark and quiet rehearsal space. We were practicing for a two person show, the first one we had played in many years. We were at a crossroads as a band, and we had no idea what the future held. All we knew was that we were going to be making music together. We weren’t sure what this music would sound like or who would be playing it with us. And then the songs started to arrive. Some of them fully formed, like the first songs we wrote. It was as much a surprise to us as anyone else when we realized we had the beginnings of our second album.”

Not all the songs came so easily. Some took over a year to complete. Some taunted the band with their elusivity. Some forced Partner to rip them apart and build them back together more than once. Never Give Up was written in rehearsal spaces, in the band’s bedrooms, in a condo, in friends’ and strangers’ houses, Air BnBs, in a cafe and on Josee’s couch and in the studio, and in the booth. “We talked. We were honest with each other and honest with ourselves. Sometimes it was a lot. And when it got to be almost too much we would repeat to each other, first as a joke and then not as a joke at all, ‘never give up’.”

Partner Links
Big Gay Hands – https://smarturl.it/p8u9de
Website: http://www.partnerband.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/partner.music.band/
Bandcamp: https://partnerband.bandcamp.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/partner_band/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/partner_band
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/partnerband

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[Thanks to Mar at Mar on Music.]

Adulkt Life releases two more fiery singles from upcoming record.

Adulkt Life, made of Huggy Bear’s Chris Rowley, Male Bonding’s John Arthur Webb and Kevin Hendrick, and drummer Sonny Barrett, announce their debut album, Book Of Curses, out November 6th on What’s Your Rupture? Today, they offer two new singles, “Stevie K” and “Taking Hits,” which follows the previously-released song “County Pride.”

Huggy Bear led the UK’s answer to riot grrrl, inspired by the “seismic shock” of witnessing a Nation of Ulysses performance together and galvanized by Bikini Kill drummer Tobi Vail’s germinal riot grrrl zine “Jigsaw.” In the 25 years since Chris Rowley played with iconic Huggy Bear, starting a new band hasn’t felt right. But after John Arthur Webb (Male Bonding), who Rowley met while picking up records at a Rough Trade shop, asked if he wanted to play music together it “suddenly it felt super exciting.” Within a year, Webb and Rowley befriended drummer Sonny Barrett, who worked at a different Rough Trade location and later offered to drum in Adulkt life. The Adulkt Life lineup was finalized when Webb enlisted his best friend and longtime collaborator, Kevin Hendrick (Middex) on bass.

For Rowley, Adulkt Life “felt like it could carry the weight of all the things I would want to culturally load into a band without having to compromise any of it.” That meant these songs—ecstatic buzzsaw guitars, blown-out poetry, the improvisatory energy of torrential art-punk drumming that reveals Sonny’s free-jazz interest—should reflect the conditions of his life as an older person. In 2020, Rowley is a 55-year-old father and longtime employee of a children’s charity. “You have to create a question and interrogate yourself,” he says, and so he poses inexhaustible ones: What is it to parent in a crumbling world? What does it mean to stay political as Earth burns, to keep loving music? How best to communicate the excitement and charge of possibility from “a whole different set of paradigms?” Adulkt Life inquires but offers no easy answers, instead instigating punk’s eternal invitation to see: “Wow, I should do something—make something, start a political party, just do something rather than not do something.”

The cut-and-paste word collages Rowley once shouted in Huggy Bear are as cool and thrilling as ever on Book Of Curses—with chiseled noise hooks expertly mixed by Webb and mastered by Total Control’s Mikey Young, fitting the “cold war bubblegum” aesthetic called out in the lyrics—but charged by the high-stakes of adulthood. “Taking Hits” is a rallying cry for those unable to cry. The explosive “Stevie K” is a “mythic hero/ine song” inspired by Nation of Ulysses guitarist Steve Kroner. In the 1990s, after Rowley and the other members of Huggy Bear saw Nation of Ulysses, “You couldn’t be a band and want to be anything less than the impact that had on us […] We wanted to shake everybody up.” Adulkt Life honors these impulses. Rowley expands on “Taking Hits” and “Stevie K”:

“‘Taking Hits’…I wanted to forge a battle hymn that would corral our beat down and
punch drunk living situations into something transcendent, stronger of knees and
able to stare out the haters.

It’s a synesthesia yarn synthesizing smelling salts, rubbing oils, cheerleading disgust, sugar and vitriol, like if the grifters got up early and went track training in the rain/confused east coast hard-core with all the floodlights on/jaws clamped like Dan Fante.

‘Stevie K’ was recorded in starvation conditions / prison yard style under the working title ‘Nation of Ulysses ruined my life’ as in ‘where do you take that logic to a limit?’ It’s a mod / art ballad for a catcher in the rye / no friends shake up steve k mythically emerging from field recordings, in love with the ruts staring at the rude boys a scream for hope / deliverance.”

LISTEN TO “STEVIE K” AND “TAKING HITS”
Other songs, ablaze, explore lawlessness, authenticity, love, redemption, like fables of radicals across time and space: us versus them, defeat and resurrection, sax squall, noise blasts, visceral empathy for the vulnerable and disenfranchised. Rowley’s apocalyptic visions just happen to appear alongside bedtime stories. On Book Of Curses, punk means never surrendering your creativity or your curiosity.
LISTEN TO “COUNTY PRIDE”

PRE-ORDER BOOK OF CURSES

BOOK OF CURSES TRACKLIST
1.County Pride
2. JNR Showtime
3. Whistle Country
4. Taking Hits
5. Flipper
6. Stevie K
7. Room Context
8. Move
9. Clean (But Itchy)
10. New Curfew

Keep your mind open.

[Thanks to Jacob at Pitch Perfect PR.]

SUUNS’ release first single,”Pray,” from upcoming EP.

Montreal-based band SUUNS, comprised of Ben Shemie, Joe Yarmush, and Liam O’Neill, announce their new FICTION EP out October 30th via Joyful Noise Recordings, and share the lead single. “PRAY” was recorded during a hot Dallas summer in 2015 with John Congleton, originally for the band’s 2016 album Hold/Still. “It didn’t make the cut, probably because we loved it so much and thought we had an even better version of it in us,” says O’Neill. “We subsequently tried to record multiple versions of this song, none of which captured the unhinged energy of this live-off-the-floor performance. Discovering this lost jam and its power felt like a reminder to keep in the moment and to trust ourselves – you just have to keep moving forward.”

SUUNS are future-oriented. New sounds, new techniques, new ways of thinking; above all, new environments are the lifeblood of the band. And true to form, here on the FICTION EP, SUUNS are exploring fresh processes as a result of their current surroundings and global circumstances.

On the FICTION EP, new sounds and sonic directions are fashioned out of old. A year-long period of limited resources and contact inspired the band to reflect on the various environments in which they’ve created music over the years: to comb through their previous sounds and creative approaches, and fuse them together with new ideas, ultimately producing a sort of future/past alchemy. The FICTION EP is as much a project of curation as it is one of creation: sifting, re-imagining, and re-framing, sometimes completely disassembling and then building from the ground up. Each song is a live-off-the-floor recording that was then taken into isolation and re-worked.

As much as the FICTION EP is a project born of introspection and reflection, it’s equally one for which SUUNS sought inspiration from outside. Longtime friend of the band Radwan Ghazi Moumneh (Jerusalem In My Heart), bringing relentless claps and buzuks, leads SUUNS through “BREATHE,” while Amber Webber (Lightning Dust) sings a mournful siren song on the penultimate track, “DEATH.” Finally, the ghost of Frank Zappa lends the band his fervent societal diagnosis, as relevant today as it ever was, on “TROUBLE EVERY DAY.”

Zappa’s darkly prophetic message, repurposed from 1966 to meet our moment, is an apt referent. These dualities, confluences of past and future, of introspection and influence, are what defines the FICTION EP. Produced from old remnants, it is entirely new; done in relative isolation, and is also something of a live record. The songs have been meticulously reworked, and yet the entire collection feels deployed with hardly any reflection, done in one breath. It’s the sound of SUUNS regrouping, and then poised, and then driving towards the future.

The FICTION EP is the first preview of more new music to come in 2021.
Stream “PRAY”:
https://youtu.be/pY56vaNYCVE

Pre-order FICTION EP:
http://joyfulnoi.se/FICTION

FICTION EP Tracklist:
1. LOOK
2. BREATHE (feat. Jerusalem In My Heart)
3. PRAY
4. FICTION
5. DEATH (feat. Amber Webber)
6. TROUBLE EVERY DAY

Keep your mind open.

[Thanks to Patrick at Pitch Perfect PR.]

Aaron Frazer’s debut single for Dead Oceans is a soulful stunner.

Aaron Frazer, the co-lead vocalist and drummer of Durand Jones & The Indications, debuts a new single/video, “Bad News,” via Dead Oceans / Easy Eye Sound. The Brooklyn-based, Baltimore-raised songwriter – who previously released music as The Flying Stars of Brooklyn, NY – possesses a unique voice that’s both contemporary and timeless, which conveys a wide emotional palate and progressive worldview in the tradition of musical masterminds like Curtis Mayfield.

Produced by Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys, “Bad News,” is a song with a message in the key of Gil Scott-Heron. Recorded in Nashville with a crew of legendary session players — including members of the Memphis Boys (who played on Dusty Springfield’s “Son of A Preacher Man” and Aretha Franklin’s “You Make Me Feel Like A Natural Woman”), symphony percussionist Sam Bacco, and several members of the Daptone/Big Crown Records universe, Frazer shows maturation and range with his new single, melding 70s soul with Auerbach’s particular sensibilities. “Aaron is just so incredibly gifted; to be so good at drums and sing like that at the same time. It just hit so hard,” says Auerbach, who reached out to Aaron immediately after hearing The Indications’ standout, “Is It Any Wonder.” “I love falsetto singing – there’s something so vulnerable about it,” Auerbach recalls.

A soul-jazz rumination on the tumultuous state of the earth, “Bad News” reflects on the ways we choose to tune out in the face of crises like homelessness and climate change. “I wrote ‘Bad News’ last November, originally as a song about climate change – a threat that feels so big, so existential, that sometimes it’s easier for us to just look away,” says Frazer. “But today, I think it’s taken on a new meaning. It’s become a song that gives voice to the things everybody is experiencing right now: isolation, and figuring out how to get through our daily life in the face of relentless bad news.”

The accompanying video for “Bad News”, directed by Julia Barrett-Mitchell, features Frazer and dancer Nicole Javanna Johnson, who physically interprets the song’s sound, her movements compelling and unyielding as she dances throughout Red Hook, Brooklyn.

“I had this concept for the Bad News video in my head for a while,” explains Frazer. “Dance has long been a way for people to express feelings that go unheard elsewhere. When I brought on my friend, director Julia Barrett Mitchell, she immediately understood the vibe and connected me to her longtime friend and former classmate, racial justice activist Nicole Johnson. I wanted to give Nicole, who is also a musician and educator, as much space as possible to interpret the song how she felt it. Nicole’s movements rise in intensity over the course of the video to express the rising urgency of the moment.”

Watch Video for Aaron Frazer’s “Bad News”

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[Thanks to Sam at Pitch Perfect PR.]

Rhye wants to write a million love songs. “Helpless” is one of them.

Rhye – the project of Michael Milosh – releases a new slinky, R&B number “Helpless,” with an accompanying video directed by his partner Genevieve Medow-Jenkins. Following the recently released “Beautiful,” which “starts with a throb of strings before cohering around a sharp beat and muscular bass line, distantly echoing solo Bryan Ferry tracks from the early Eighties” (Rolling Stone), “Helpless” focuses on love in its most intimate and romantic form. With his distinct countertenor, Milosh chronicles the desire to “write a million love songs,” not as a grand gesture but an everyday promise. His voice glides over an euphonious blend of percussion, string arrangements, and a flurry of synths and keys.

Shot around their hometown of Los Angeles, the “Helpless” video champions the creative connection between Milosh and Medow-Jenkins. It features actress Conor Leslie, dancer, director and choreographer Fatima Robinson, and Fatima’s son Xuly Williams. “The video for ‘Helpless’ evokes our earliest memories of being young and dreaming up what love and joy could look like,” says Milosh. Medow-Jenkins adds: “Creating art like this video, made with our closest friends, has been the greatest joy of our quarantine. We hope it can inspire you to dream what love and joy can look like for your life now: through friendship, family, or a perfect stranger.”
Watch Rhye’s “Helpless” Video

Recently, Milosh and Diplo collaborated on “XII,” a track off of Diplo’s first ever ambient album, MMXX. Originally only available via the Calm app, the album is out everywhere now. Additionally, Milosh has been performing livestreams as part of the LA based creative community Secular Sabbath, including Corona Sabbath with Diplo, as well as morning ambient performances and a sunrise serenade with Joseph August. Secular Sabbath initially focused on live ambient music events, but has expanded with a range of offerings.

Watch Video for “Beautiful”

Listen to “Beautiful”

Rhye Rescheduled Tour Dates:
Tue. April 6 – Dublin, IE @ Academy
Wed. April 7 – London, UK @ Roundhouse
Fri. April 9 – Zurich, CH @ Kaufleuten
Sat. April 10 – Munich, DE @ Technikum
Mon. April 12 – Warsaw, PL @ Teatr Palladium
Tue. April 13 – Berlin, DE @ Astra
Wed. April 14 – Hamburg, DE @ Mojo
Fri. April 16 – Stockholm, SE @ Berns
Sat. April 17 – Copenhagen, DK @ Vega
Sun. April 18 – Copenhagen, DK @ Vega
Tue. April 20 – Cologne, DE @ Kantine
Wed. April 21 – Rotterdam, NL @ Maassilo
Thu. April 22 – Amsterdam, NL @ Melkweg
Sat. April 24 – Brussels, BE @ Cirque Royale
Sun. April 25 – Paris, FR @ Casino de Paris

Keep your mind open.

[Thanks to Jessica at Pitch Perfect PR.]

Scintii announces “Times New Roman” EP due October 2nd.

Houndstooth’s newest signing, Shanghai-based Taiwanese singer and producer Scintii (aka Stella Chung), shares “Times New Roman,” her debut single for the label. The EP, featuring remixes from Palmistry, Loraine James, Mechatok, and Osheyack, is out October 2nd. “Times New Roman” was co-written and produced by Danny L Harle (PC Music, Charli XCX) and the striking accompanying video, directed by Kynan Puru Watt (known for Arca’s “Mequetrefe” video), invites us into Scintii’s deeply-hued world. “Times New Roman is one of the main languages used in graphic design and this song is about finding that language for myself as an artist,” Scintii explains. After initially coming up with the main melody and then collaborating with Harle on a beat he was making, “‘Times New Roman’ really started to become about me feeling sure of myself as a musician and producer, going in a new direction and really being able to maximize my own voice.”

Watch “Times New Roman” Video

The “Times New Roman” EP is backed by remixes from the cream of current underground club music producers. SVBKVLT label mate Osheyack shakes out its hard lines in classic trance stabs; Mechatok ups its saturation for a bouncing hardcore version; hyped London producer Loraine James takes the track apart by stems and re-plaits them into glitched-out IDM, and Palmistry chases rushing synths before dropping into bubblegum breaks.

Based in Shanghai, Scintii started to produce her own music after studying music and performance in London. It was equally influenced by the pop she grew up with in her hometown of Taipei and her time soaking up club music in London. She released her debut EP “Mica” (Eternal Dragonz) in 2017 and broke through with her follow up, 2018’s “Aerial/Paperbags” EP (SVBKVLT), leading to a remix for acclaimed English group These New Puritans and performances at London’s Southbank Centre and Sonar Hong Kong. As described by DUMMY, “Scintii’s productions tend to chop up and piece together crystalline sounds to fashion ethereal and futuristic sonics.” With her distinctive gossamer vocals, Scintii has forged a sleek and moody sound that is all her own.

Stream / Purchase “Times New Roman”

“Times New Roman” EP Tracklist:
1. Times New Roman
2. Times New Roman (Osheyack Remix)
3. Times New Roman (Mechatok Remix)
4. Times New Roman (Loraine James Remix)
5. Times New Roman (Palmistry Remix)

Keep your mind open.

[Thanks to Ahmad at Pitch Perfect PR.]

Shame release first new single in two years – “Alphabet.”

Shame have announced their much-anticipated return, via the frenetic, storming new single “Alphabet.” It marks their first new music since the release of their critically acclaimed debut album Songs of Praise in 2018 via Dead Oceans.

Alongside, the band have shared a Tegen Williams-directed video for the single, capturing the unnerving nature of hypnagogic hallucinations and the distressing way the mind can play tricks on us while dreaming.

On the track, produced by James Ford, frontman Charlie Steen explains:

“Alphabet is a direct question, to the audience and the performer, on whether any of this will ever be enough to reach satisfaction. At the time of writing it, I was experiencing a series of surreal dreams where a manic subconscious was bleeding out of me and seeping into the lyrics. All the unsettling and distressing imagery I faced in my sleep have taken on their own form in the video.”

Shame’s return, at under three minutes long, is a burst of energy that blazes bright and fast. It’s a restless and relentless track that feels familiar yet bigger and bolder than anything the band have done before, signalling the arrival of a new era of Shame.
WATCH “ALPHABET” VIDEO

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[Thanks to Jacob at Pitch Perfect PR.]

Teenager offer “Romance for Rent” on new single.

WATCH: Teenanger’s “Romance For Rent” video on YouTube

Toronto’s DIY scene purveyors, Teenanger have today shared their blistering new single, “Trillium Song“, the second to be lifted from the new record, Good Time – out October 2 via Telephone Explosion Records – which has so far earned praise from outlets like Paste, The Line of Best Fit, Exclaim, BBC 6 Music, So Young and more. The new record, which comes mixed by renowned Toronto musician, Sandro Perri, follows previous releases that have found the band share stages across North America and Europe with the likes of METZ, Ty Segall, Death From Above, Dilly Dally, Dish Pit and more.

“Romance For Rent” presents another snappy highlight from the forthcoming record with the quartet pulling on incisive hooks and buoyant melodies that further mine this fresh, pop-punk angle to the group’s sound. There’s a sharpness here, not just in the sonic arrangement but also in the lyrics that give a satiric examination of the world of online dating and the perplexing moves that we sometimes make as individuals when caught in the throes of romance. The video, which was shot at the height of lockdown, looks at this further, examining the role of isolation and how this can manipulate people to do peculiar things with the hope of a quick fix.

“The lyrics were inspired by a friend of mine who had come out of a long-term relationship and was exploring the world of online dating,” says singer, Chris Swimmings. “I’ve been a serial monogamist for the last 12 years so it was a vicarious exploration into his life at the time.”

Blair elaborates on Swimmings’ sentiment to say: “The ‘Romance for Rent’ video takes the idea of loneliness and buying love and puts it in a blender with internet culture. It follows a lonely man who, rather than learning how to connect with others, connects with a meme pillow, and finds some short-lived solace with it; he is trying to solve his loneliness with an internet search, and kinda clings to the first thing he finds – a celebrity pillow. When that fails to get him the attention or connection that he was looking for, he goes back online. Rather than changing anything about himself or what he’s looking for, he just repeats the same cycle.”

Good Time is out on October 2nd on Telephone Explosion. It is available for pre-order here.

Keep your mind open.

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[Thanks to Tom at Hive Mind PR.]

Matthew Cardinal announces first solo album due this October.

Matthew Cardinal today announces his debut solo album, Asterisms – a dazzling collection of ambient electronic music that crystallizes moments in the amiskwaciy (Edmonton) based musician’s life. Known for his work in nêhiyawak – the moccasingaze trio whose debut album nipiy is currently nominated on the 2020 Polaris Music Prize Shortlist, and was nominated for the JUNO Awards Indigenous Album of the Year – Cardinal’s first solo full-length is an audio journal that explores “captured moments of experimentation and expression” in eleven entries: “asterisms drawing attention to where I was musically, mentally and emotionally at very brief passages of my life,” says Cardinal.

Illuminated by the first single “May 24th” and its accompanying video by multimedia visual artist SCKUSE (Stephanie Kuse) shared today, Asterisms explores emotional-sonic textures with an often gentle, dreamy tint – the glint of synthesizers dancing around atmospheric melodies and rhythmic accents.

WATCH: Matthew Cardinal’s video for “May 24th” on YouTube

Inspired by Cardinal’s ephemeral night-time flash photography, Kuse set out to create “something soft, hypnotic, and pretty to suit the music that also reflected the dreamy and nostalgic nature of his photos,” she recounts. “I spent a few evenings out collecting footage near the South Saskatchewan River until I stumbled on the right material – wildflowers and grass going in and out of focus as the camera trailed behind. The footage was then processed through an old TV to enhance the vibrancy and to add subtle distortion.”

“‘May 24th’ is the result of experimenting with generative synthesis and syncing external equipment, playing around and having multiple sound sources playing the same melody. I slowed everything down significantly and built on top of that,” reveals Cardinal, a consummate sound-shaper both solo and in his role in the nêhiyawak trio. Coupled with its successor track, “May 25th” – a brief retro-futuristic motif – “May 24th” features alternatingly ascendant and cascading celestial strands, buoyed by dramatic swells of synthesizers that emit a spacious sigh at the song’s gentle end.

———-

Created with analogue synthesizers, a small modular system, samplers, electric piano, and processed voice, each sonic entry came out naturally in improvisational waves, recorded often in single days if not single takes. The minimal instrumental framework, usually set up on the floor of Cardinal’s bedroom for maximum communion, created pathways through each machine to the album’s vast cloud of starry narratives. “I’m very influenced by the instruments I play,” says Cardinal. “I love the sound of reverb, the imperfect reflection of sounds and how it decays. The sounds of bells, chimes, electric piano, and cello. I find certain sounds very inspiring.”

Calling to mind the luxurious minimalism of Brian Eno, Erik Satie, Steve Reich, and Glenn Gould, and the swirling influence of Fennesz, Jim O’Rourke, Boards of Canada, and Slowdive, Cardinal creates a glacial, airy sonic universe that is personal yet evocative, subtle yet impressive. The album opening “Dec 31st” glistens with the crystalline climate synonymous with the day, while the album closing “Jul 23rd” ranges into Postal Service territory at the height of summer with a pulsing bpm that punctuates the amorphous map of moods that makes up the record.

Described by Cardinal as “music recorded mostly for myself,” the cathartic value of these instrumental compositions is found in their release. A collection of intimate contemplations becomes interpretive and intentional music, a catalyst and companion to reading, studying, working, walking, dancing, hand-holding, and sleeping. “I would like it if people listened and interpreted the music anyway they want to,” says Cardinal. “I don’t think these songs need a narrative, and I think certain moods come through some of the tracks, while other moods might only be heard by individual listeners.”

Cardinal found the title Asterisms to be the perfect encapsulation of the record he made. In typography, a near-obsolete character used to draw attention to a passage, and in astronomy, a visually obvious pattern of stars, asterisms connects the tangible and the intangible aspects that define this music. On his solo debut, Cardinal creates a document of his inner reflections that flourishes into an offering of sonic refractions for our own contemplation during these thought-provoking times.

Asterisms is out on October 27th via Arts and Crafts. You can pre-order it here.

Keep your mind open.

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[Thanks to Conor at Hive Mind PR.]

Riding Easy Records announces the eleventh Brown Acid trip.

The forthcoming eleventh edition of the popular compilation series featuring long-lost vintage 60s-70s proto-metal and stoner rock singles, Brown Acid: The Eleventh Trip will be available October 31st, 2020. Today, Metal Injection shares the first single, “Diamond Lady” by Larry Lynn HERE. (Direct YouTube and Bandcamp.)
The Brown Acid series is curated by L.A. label RidingEasy Records and retailer/label Permanent Records. Read interviews with the series curators via Paste MagazineHERE and LA Weekly HERE.

About The Eleventh Trip:
This Trip opens with Adam Wind‘s “Something Else,” featuring groovy crooning and a very acid-damaged guitar riff that meanders across key signatures like it ain’t no thing. This 1969 single by the Tacoma, WA band predates grunge by 20 years, but the band’s heavy psych and murky tones are just the stuff Northwest heroes Mudhoney sought so fervently at their peak. Lead singer Leroy Bell‘s excessive vibrato gives the tune its charm, but the heavy breakdown in the middle is the real payoff.

Boston bruisers Grump return to the series with a previously unreleased dose of raw soul layered in greasy horns, plucky harmonized guitar leads and chirping organs on “I’ll Give You Love.” The track packs twice the punch of their cover of Elvis Presley‘s classic “Heartbreak Hotel” heard back on The Eighth Trip, itself a fan favorite.

Stevens Point, WI is the actual origin of Bagshot Row, a little-known band taking its name from a street in The Hobbit. However, they sound much less fantasy obsessed than their name suggests and more akin to Sugarloaf of “Green Eyed Lady” fame. Their swaggering “Turtle Wax Blues” of 1973 will put some extra hair on your feet and send you searching for this lone 45 single like a ring that possesses magical powers to control all of Middle Earth (or at least Middle America.)

Larry Lynn‘s “Diamond Lady” is the B-side to his 1970 single “Back On The Street Again.” Larry Leonard Ostricki adopted his stage name while performing with The Bonnevilles in the mid-1950s in Milwaukee, WI, and later with The Skunks. Larry Lynn’s eponymous band explored bluesy psychedelic rock from 1969 to 1978, only to reunite in 2009 and they still perform to this date.

Renaissance Fair take things in a very weird, very fun and undeniably heavy direction with an insanely distorted organ that sounds like a monstrous vacuum cleaner over dirge rhythms and growling vocals on their – we reiterate – weird 1968 track “In Wyrd.” Think if someone left a copy of The Doors‘ Strange Parade out to warp in the sun on a blown-out toy record player, and then visiting space creatures attempted to imitate what they’d heard.

Chicago, IL’s Zendik bring it all back down to Earth with their politically-charged 1970 firestorm “Mom’s Apple Pie Boy” which echoes the unabashed rage of The MC5 and anthemic sarcasm of CCR‘s “Fortunate Son.” The band’s only publicly released single “Is There No Peace” (previously heard on Brown Acid: The Sixth Trip) boasts the proto-punk refrain “God is dead!” This equally direct polemic was recorded during the same sessions, but unreleased until now.

The opening cowbell of Daybreak‘s kicked back 1977 rocker “Just Can’t Stay” affirms that the boogie is back on this swaggering nugget of FM-ready rock from San Mateo, CA. “Just Can’t Stay” closes the band’s lone 4-song EP, and the band delivered on the promise, vanishing into the ether shortly thereafter.

West Minist’r of Fort Dodge, IA make their desires clear on “I Want You” with an undeniably driving riff and particularly beefy sounding synth leads that would fit in fine on Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. The song, originally released on Magic Records, is the B-side to “Sister Jane” and the band’s last of three singles issued between 1969 and 1975.

Debb Johnson of Saint Louis Park, MN is a BAND, not an individual member of the band. The 7-piece group featured a full horn section and three-part harmonies on their 1969 self-titled album. The backstory on their name is: three of the group’s seven members shared the last name Johnson, so they then took the first letters of the last names of the other four members and combined them into the word “debb.” The politically minded “Dancing In The Ruin” speaks a truth all-too-familiar to this day backed by a brand of wailing acid rock crossed with Buddy Miles‘ Expressway To Your Skull style funk.

Crazy Jerry sends us off on a high note with “Every Girl Gets One,” featuring crunching riffs, rollicking electric piano, stop ‘n’ start rhythms and a curious telephone call sounding like a creepy answer to the Big Bopper’s “Chantilly Lace.” Crazy Jerry is the alter-ego of guitarist Jerry Ciccone, who can also be heard on a few soul/funk and rock records from the 70s, including The Left Banke‘s second album. But here, Jerry is…well, simply crazy.

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[Thanks to Dave as US / THEM Group.]