came back from new york today with a big stack of records in the suitcase, and a smaller one waiting for me at home. people look at me sideways when i say you can still find great records in NYC but i almost always clean up!
only discovered shizuka recently, and it's already a deep fascination. somewhere between galaxie 500, les rallizes denudes, and jandek. i'd feared i'd missed out on two recent reissues, both sold out at the source but ergot records in the east village had the goods. can't wait to hear the arthur russell, the positive buzz is deafening!
first two (salenta + topu's
moon set, moon rise and dawuna's
glass lit dream are also ergot finds—both imports that sold out at the source and which i haven't been able to find a US distributor for. both are perfect for late-night moods, albeit in very different ways. the rhys chatham is a longtime fave, transportive guitar maximalism that is so frustratingly underrated...
the techniques are one of my all-time fave rocksteady vocal groups, truly sublime music. (what were they thinking with that cover though??)
the other two are new-to-me pickups from A-1 records, my favorite shop in NY. i love going in there with time to kill, taking up a giant stack of interesting-looking records to the listening station, and finding things i'd never heard of.
light traps (the artist is "naùx") is funky early-80s downtown stuff with a no-wave edge, a bit like if bill laswell's material or the golden palominos had aged better? white light's
playing in a band is charmingly ramshackle post-velvets guitar pop (no bass!) from belgium, seems like these guys anticipated the c86 sound by three or four years.
pacific is a bootleg, but an astonishingly well-produced one, and typically trades for a lot more than i dropped. i have a beat-up OG of
tell mama but these "original chess masters" pressings from the 80s are the ones to get if you don't want to sink stupid money getting a clean early pressing. don cherry sleeve is a 1st pressing, sleeve is a bit mangy but the disc is actually in really good shape. at $35, another steal at A-1, how do they get away with it??
luster is gorgeous new droney folk stuff (a more gentle third ear band, perhaps?), sold out everywhere but i wrote the label asking if they had any extras and they very graciously obliged. especially proud of the $14 copy of all natural lemon and lime flavors'
turning into small, a great 90s shoegaze album that has recently gone scarce. found at a mount pleasant, MI music shop through some very creative google searching, it took several phone calls and texts to procure but so worth it.
needless to say, i have some really wild listening ahead of me this week!!
