News

Veteran noisemakers (and good pals!) Dean Spunt (No Age) & John Wiese (Sissy Spacek) debut as collaborators on The Echoing Shell, a fantastic conception in contemporary musique concrète. John Wiese’s stunning reassemblage of Dean Spunt’s drumming noise, is abstraction, sure - but only implied abstraction; drawing from the rumble and crash of the traps, finding dimensions of hiss and crunch beyond the sounds of a traditional drumkit.

Utilizing a variety of techniques, Wiese's commitment to working through the process of editing and tape-manipulation... (read more)

Nah. Nah! How can it be two years since Jackie Lynn's Jacqueline album? If so, let's celebrate the wild ebb and flow of the our timestream, while we simultaneously raise a glass to the anniversary of Jackie's very real milestone in musical evolution!
And what then's a celebration without gifts? A song for each year!

April 2020: Jacqueline plunges into the glittering American darkness headfirst, driving and dancing through new identities, dreams and realities. Jackie Lynn, electric in their natural state – electrique, even -... (read more)

We are commemorating the 20th year anniversary of the passing of John Henry Timmis IV aka J.T. IV (b. Sept 21, 1961, d. April 1 2002). John was a street-smart rock rebel whose whole design was to shock, woo, and fabricate. Living amid the public health crises, economic problems, and wars of the 1980s—much like we are experiencing today—John’s self-reflection, vulnerability, and primal scream converged in a short yet highly ambitious glimmer of time. His music and films were unflinchingly political, and as... (read more)

With their collaborative duo debut, Dean Spunt and John Wiese invite you to experience the frenzy of percussive space and discreet sound found inside The Echoing Shell.

This is the first official collaboration between the two veteran music-makers, though their connection goes back to 1999. As John recalls, “[Dean] was in a high school arts program at CalArts. A friend and I were recording the first Sissy Spacek demo in the design studios there, and taking a tape to my car over and over... (read more)

40-plus years since its original release, the pop-punk-new wave inventions of Anthony Moore’s Flying Doesn’t Help are freshly remastered, blasting the sparkling, angular sounds into today with perfect vitality.

After spending the early years of the 1970s making experimental music first as a solo artist, then with Slapp Happy and Henry Cow, Anthony Moore's 1976’s OUT sessions had reinvigorated his youthful love of pop radio's naïve melodies, the undeniable rush of a song. England was roiled as violently as it had been in counter-cultural days a... (read more)

The music of Oren Ambarchi, Johan Berthling and Andreas Werliin'sGhosted, put forth with a steady flow of small details on bass, guitar and drums, is a remarkable display of minimalist, rhythmic flexibility. Those three go deep as it is, but the latest single from Ghosted, "I", also features the legendary Swedish reed player Christer Bothén on donso n'goni, the sound of which syncs like a 4th dimensional cog in the revolving spectral watch Oren, Johan and Andreas have created. Bothén's knowledge of the guimbri and... (read more)

You have been heard! You heard that we posted Jim O'Rourke's Bad Timing on Apple Music so you went there and heard it and you wondered why you hadn't heard all the other Jim O'Rourke Drag City records on your streaming service of choice (if you chose Apple Music). We halfway-heard you! And according to the bags of cards and letters sitting in the DC mailroom (not an actual room, more of a mis-labeled file folder on a PC we don't have the password for... (read more)

Since 2015, Kamikaze Palm Tree have been a musical mystery for those of us in our tree. Now, in times no less mysterious, Drag City welcomes them to our island resort, where the energy of their single "Flamingo", and its odd strain of 21st century rock, is in hard repeat on our poolside jukebox.

With "Flamingo", the duo of drummer/vocalist Dylan Hadley and guitarist Cole Berliner come enigmatically through the out door to burst the modern pop balloon with playful stereophonic charm, splitting hemispheres cleanly apart... (read more)

It was early in 2019 — no, November 2018! — that Oren Ambarchi, Johan Berthling and Andreas Werliin met at Studio Rymden, in a quiet suburban district of Stockholm, to make the music that became Ghosted.

Rooting in the rich tonality and repeating figures of Johan’s acoustic (and sometimes electric) bass, the four tracks that make up Ghosted unspool themselves with the terse flow of krautrock jams — percussive riffs and repetitions that build continuously, with subtle shifts rippling across the stereo spectrum, captured in... (read more)

Oozin' and bloozin' from their very core, Dead Rider's experimental turns measure on a 1:1 ratio with rock solid energies of metalloid funk, various punks and roots, all boiled down into a single-dose transmission. And that's just in a lab prototype (aka studio recorded jam)! In live environs, Dead Rider critically redial their formula, setting controls for available local performance levels and pinning the meters as they spew forth with skronky guitar sludge, synthetic squelches and drum clinics in riddim pulsations: calculated to scorch and... (read more)