We’ve got a lot of ground to cover—no time for intros now!
The Blind Owls – There Goes Your Girl
Proving that you don’t need to be in the late 1960’s to create a perfect track for Nuggets, The Blind Owl’s excellent “There Goes My Girl” is a sweltering freak-beat sonic attack that you might expect from the likes of The Chocolate Watchband or The Seeds.
Armed with catchy hooks, threatening guitars and one of the fiercest sets of pipes that I’ve heard in a very long time, The Blind Owls are no mere revivalist act—they are a primal force of pure energy.
Sounding somewhere between The Sonics and The Count Five with a Roger Daltrey/Roky Erickson hybrid vocal, this track could easily be all you will want to hear for the next four weeks.
This song will see release on a new full-length next year, but you can grab it on a limited 45 through Otis Media Records in the near future. All of the proceeds from this single will be donated to the Zero Prostate Cancer Charity Organization, so please do your part and help out this great cause.
Rchecka – Dwight The Beat Farmer
And now for something completely different: a superb instrumental hip-hop album by our favorite crate digger/record sampler, Rchecka.
While this genre is admittedly not one that I’m too deeply involved with (yet), this album’s infectious grooves and laidback sense of cool are impossible to turn down.
Coming from a background of sound collage and Musique concrète, I have a deep appreciation of Rchecka’s intense sampling skills and all of the long hours he obviously had to put into piecing this mix together. There’s a real artistry to taking and using samples, and this guy’s definitely mastered this craft, much like DJ Shadow and MF Doom before him. It’s also worth noting that the production value here is astounding. I cannot even begin to imagine how much of a nightmare it must have been to get the mix to be this dynamic while retaining the precious texture and character from all of the various source materials.
Featuring sounds and clips from 128 different records and recordings, including everything from killer funk and soul tracks to even a Klingon-to-English dictionary and a McDonalds children’s album (and of course dialogue from The Office), this is an incredibly impressive and a seriously fun CD that’ll make the perfect soundtrack to groove to throughout the summer.
Limited to just 50 CD copies, be sure to grab one of these discs today.
Dangerbyrd – Needless To Say/30 Days
It’s fantastic to find that one of my favorites from my old hometown of Rochester, NY, Dangerbyrd, is still goin’ strong and improving all of the time.
Their Neil Young-influenced debut EP from 2016 was a major highlight of that year for me, but this new single shows a vast amount of artistic growth and a wider horizon to their sound.
The band seems to be leaning further into the country-rock side of their spectrum, which pushes them to be aligned closer to the likes of Hans Chew, One Eleven Heavy and of course classics like The Flying Burrito Brothers and Manassas.
A nicely enriching example of modern stoned Americana rock. Here’s hoping these Roch dudes start making some appearances further east and west soon so we can all enjoy them. Grab their music here.
Hello Benji and the Cobra – Ku Datang Kembali
Hello Benji and The Cobra have returned with one of the most exciting psychedelic singles of the year.
Hailing from Jakarta, Indonesia, this crew of sonic juggernauts combined mind-frying psychedelia with red-hot soul and loose funk into an enticingly addictive, but cruelly short four minutes.
Wah-wah guitars, memorable hooks and blaring horns help make this song one of the most irresistible tracks that I’ve heard recently. I guarantee that when you play this song, you’ll want to hear it again at least three more times before the day is done.
Grab this one over at La Munai Records today and crank it loud!
Minda Lacy – Worms
I recently stumbled upon the work of psychedelically tinted singer-songwriter Minda Lacy, and my world has vastly improved as a result.
Several releases exist on her Bandcamp page and each one has a great deal of beauty, humor and magic to offer. I would certainly say that they’re all worth digging into.
Yet, her most recent release, 2017’s Worms, features acoustic pastoral arrangements that are so warm, they immediately make you think of home.
Lacy’s calming vocals are perhaps at their most varnished and vivid when accompanied by the cello, bass and violin backing that she has here. Sounding somewhere between Rebecca Sugar, Damien Rice and Sibylle Baier, Lacy’s songs feel honest in their subtlety and shrewdly playful with their lyrics.
If you are looking for music that touches you like a cool ocean breeze, Worms may very well be it.
Heinous Crimes – Valley
Heinous Crimes has returned with a brooding smoke-filled track that clouds your mind and sends shivers down your spine for a full seven minutes.
“Valley” meanders in a dreamy state and is as arid and foreboding as the dark landscape featured on the cover. There’s an intense heat that just permeates from this song. You can practically feel yourself begin to perspire by the four-minute mark.
The track’s rising tides of keyboards, lonesome guitars and metronomic drumming will please fans of Krautrock, post-rock and some of the other more reserved ends of the psychedelic spectrum.
Download the track here.
New Aura – Win Place or Show/Life On The Run
Boston’s New Aura just keep getting better and better.
The latest digital single, which is a sampler of what to expect from their oncoming tour-only tape, is a tightly produced acid onslaught that is nothing short of memorable.
“Win Place or Show” completely pummels you with a rabid beat and a cataclysmic wall of echoing guitar and vocals. Spacemen 3 ain’t got nothin’ on this gem.
The frenzied energy of the first track fades into the stoned and serene “Life On The Run,” which glides with ease like a highflying bird during a breezy day. The song begins with a simplistic combination of electric sounds, but it gradually evolves into a whole typhoon of densely layered sounds and effects. By the end of the track, the whole piece starts to tremble with life.
Be sure to catch these dudes this summer, if you can. Based on the strength of these two songs alone, you’re in for a hell of a show.
You can get these songs here.
-KH
Record Crates United 