Stephen Brodsky Announces New Limited Release Full Length Album, "Here's to the Future," Out March 23rd on Hydra Head!

Announces New Full-Length Album, "Here's to the Future," Out March 23rd on Hydra Head!

Stephen Brodsky's Here's to the Future is the kind of record that, regardless of your general preferences and pretensions, possesses the ability to entirely eclipse your current emotional state... And that can be a very convenient thing... Imagine no longer having to fumble through your weird and outdated CD booklet for something even half-suiting of your current disposition... Look no further, constant contentedness is only a purchase of Stephen Brodsky's Here's to the Future away!

Believe me when I tell you that there's something so perfectly natural about Brodsky's songwriting and structuring... On initial listen it's almost like there is some sort of subconscious attraction, and as the record progresses, it becomes increasingly apparent that Brodsky does indeed have something very unique to offer fans of music in general. If you're unfamiliar with Brodsky's solo work, "Here's to the Future," is the best place to begin discovering it because HTTF is his most developed and interesting work to date. If you are already familiar with the way of Brodsky, this release is a must have because both the cassette and the digital version come with very extensive booklets filled with Brodskyisms and more!

Here's To The Future Tracklist

1.Here's to the Future

2. Human Contagious

3. @ The OSC

4. Mass Appeal

5. Spellng B

6. Halo 4A Hula-Hoop

7. Retail Therapy

8. Here In Spirit

9. MLK

Purchase Stephen Brodsky Stuff Here

And maybe we put up a track from this album on the HH myspace page, so you might wanna navigate there!

Kay Dot: Toby Driver Interview On Noisecreep

Along with all things Kayo Dot, multi-instrumentalist Toby Driver has been especially busy this month. Venue owner John Zorn invited Driver to curate a month's worth of shows at The Stone -- something Driver says has taken him about a year to plan. "I started working on it that long ago just because a lot of the people I wanted to get were international. And I know when you are planning something internationally you have to plan it like six months in advance," Driver told Noisecreep.

Even though most of the musicians Driver initially booked cancelled their shows for various reasons, he is still happy with all the shows. "It's weird because a lot of curators don't show up to their shows. But I just feel like, man, I just want to book stuff that I want to see," Driver said.

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Xasthur "2005 Demo" & Hayaino Daisuki "The Invincible Gate Mind of the Infernal Fire Hell" Out Now!

OK so, Hayaino Daisuki has always been the tightest and the fastest band out there, right? Hayaino's new record, other wise known as The Invincible Gate Mind of the Infernal Fire Hell, or Did You Mean Hawaii Daisuki? maintains the aforementioned titles while gaining them another... After this record hits the shelves, people like you and me are going to have to start referring to Hayaino Daisuki as the fastest, tightest and most melodic metal band ever! And dude, if you're into aggressive music you've come to the right place... listening to this band, and in particular the record in question, is like crossing streams with a fire hose... You know... Obviously you run the risk of injury, but you're stoned and growing up in the suburbs... Buy "Invincible Gate Mind" here!

If you're into Burzum-esque lo-fi black metal, and like... who isn't, then you're already a massive Xasthur fan... And so, you're already overwhelmingly aware of the fact that no outfit or individual in the Black Metal community, absolutely no one, is capable of reflecting and drawing the listener in to such a near tangible presence of distress... TheXasthur record in question, 2005 Demo, is two lost, completed demo tracks that were recorded prior to the time of Subliminal Genocide... and, in a sense, these two previously unavailable recordings come across like a much belated extension of Subliminal Genocide. Buy "2005 Demo" here!

Eugene S. Robinson Announces Live Reading Appearances in Support of Debut Novel, "A Long Slow Screw!"

If you're reading this, than its safe to assume that you're a critical listener of music, meaning you, much like myself, have learned to love music for all the wrong reasons, right? Ok, now that I know we are on the same page, I can address the issue at hand. Once in a blue moon, as the adage goes, a cure for this common ailment comes along... It's associated with music, so it still counts if you're the first to give it the stamp of approval, however it isn't music... it's narrative fiction, so you can't help but approach it in a different fashion... Breathe it in folks!

On top of the most likely irrelevant stream of consciousness you hopefully struggled through before you got to this sentence, Eugene S. Robinson as an author is as riveting as his stage presence with the long standing noise rock outfit Oxbow... All things said, on the dates listed below Eugene will be reading from his recent publication A Long Slow Screw, so any and all onlookers are guaranteed the best of both worlds! sidenote: unless prompted Eugene will be keeping his pants on during these readings, so it's slightly safer to bring your significant other to this little get together when compared to a live Oxbow set. Enjoy!



Eugene S. Robinson reads from "A Long Slow Screw"

Eugene S. Robinson Live!
02/20/2010 Los Angeles, CA @ Sherwood Magazines (reading will begin at 4:30 PM)
02/20/2010 Los Angeles, CA @ Relax Bar
02/26/2010 New York, NY @ The Stone (8pm) Eugene Robinson and members of Psychic TV present readings from A long Slow Screw
02/26/2010 New York, NY @ The Stone (10pm) Oxbow Acoustic!
03/11/2010 Oakland, CA @ Ghost Town Gallery

Purchase a copy from the HH webstore here!

Kayo Dot: Download Whisper Ineffable @ The Village Voice!

Download "Whisper Ineffable" by Kayo Dot, and read The Village Voice's interview w/ frontman Toby Driver, here!

Coyote is a 40-minute narrative composition that swirls with cooing violins, whining trumpets, jangling xylophones, and haunting blasts of cosmic debris--easily their most cohesive, heavy-hitting and best album yet. Influenced by early '80s goth and Herbie Hancock's more psychedelic excursions, Coyote is a mini-suite that's at once punishing, sad and gloriously free. - The Village Voice



Tracklist for Coyote
I. Calonyction Girl
II. Whisper Ineffable
III. Abyss Hinge 1: Sleeping Birds Sighing In Roscolux
IV. Abyss Hinge 2: The Shrinking Armature
V. Cartogram Out Of Phase

Kayo Dot Live!

2/21 @ The Stone
Toby Driver (Kayo Dot) and Charlie Looker (Extra Life) Improvised Electric Guitar Duos

3/12 @ Issue Project Room
Tartar Lamb II (featuring all members of Kayo Dot)

3/19 @ McCarren Hall
Tartar Lamb II (featuring all members of Kayo Dot)

4/10 @ Blot Spot, Binghamton NY
Kayo Dot plays Coyote

4/11 @ Union Pool, Brooklyn
Kayo Dot plays Coyote

4/12 @ Whitson Greeting Hall, SUNY Puchase
Kayo Dot plays Coyote

Torche: Announce US Tour w/ Coheed and Cambria and Circa Survive!

Kicking off this April and following their highly anticipated split release with Boris, Miami's TORCHE have just announced a month-long US tour supporting Coheed and Cambria. The tour will span both coasts, travel throughout the Midwest, and also head to select cities in the Great White North.

w/ Coheed and Cambria and Circa Survive

04/22/10 Charlotte , NC. @ The Fillmore Charlotte

04/23/10 Atlanta , GA. @ Tabernacle

04/24/10 Lake Buena Vista , FL. @ House of Blues (Orlando)

04/25/10 Lauderdale , FL. @ Revolution

04/27/10 Houston , TX. @ Warehouse Live

04/28/10 Austin , TX. @ Stubb's BBQ

04/29/10 Dallas , TX. @ Palladium Ballroom

04/30/10 Tulsa , OK. @ Cain's Ballroom

05/01/10 Oklahoma City, OK @ Diamond Ballroom

05/03/10 Tempe , AZ. @ Marquee Theatre

05/04/10 Pomona , CA. @ The Fox Theatre

05/05/10 San Francisco , CA. @ The Warfield

05/07/10 Portland , OR. @ Roseland Theater

05/08/10 Seattle , WA. @ Showbox SoDo

05/10/10 Murray , UT. @ Murray Theater

05/11/10 Denver , CO. @ Ogden Theatre

05/13/10 Minneapolis , MN. @ First Avenue

05/14/10 Chicago , IL. @ Congress Theatre

05/15/10 Royal Oak , MI. @ Royal Oak Music Theatre

05/17/10 Boston , MA. @ House of Blues

05/18/10 @ Montreal , QC. Metropolis

05/19/10 Toronto , ON. @ The Sound Academy

05/22/10 Philadelphia , PA. @ The Electric Factory

05/26/10 New York , NY. @ Rumsey Playfield

05/27/10 Washington , DC. @ 9:30 Club

05/28/10 Washington , DC. @ 9:30 Club

07/31/10 Chicago , IL. @ Subterranean

Xasthur: Streaming Track From Upcoming Demo 2005 @ Chronic Youth

Remember how on February 23rd 2010 Hydra Head is releasing some previously unreleased Xasthur hits on CD (and soon enough, we promise, on 12")?... Well Chronic Youth, a most excellent music site, was kind enough to offer individuals in desperate need of a little Xasthur fix a bit of a preview...

Stream Untitled 5/05 @ Chronic Youth Here!

Also the pre-order is still running at the HH webstore here! And, word on the street is, Xasthur is preparing a collaboration with one Marissa Nadler... Read more about that here and here...

Hayaino Daisuki: Leak Track From "The Invincible Gate Mind of The Infernal Fire Hell, or Did You Mean Hawaii Daisuki?"

Our pals over at Brooklyn Vegan were nice enough to host an exclusive Hayaino Daisuki mp3 download today... Please navigate to the Hayaino Daisuki feature on their site and try it on for size.

If you like what you hear, the pre-order is still going o'er at the Hydra Head's Webstore... make it happen.

Xasthur: 2005 Demo CD Pre-Order Up On The HH Webstore!

Two lost Xasthur tracks from the Subliminal Genocide Era for $6.00... If your a Xasthur fan I can't see any reason why you wouldn't wanna pick this thing up.. zero risk involved..

Also, involved in this little pre-order deal is a smooth new Xasthur t-shirt... Designed by our very own Faith Coloccia.

Pre-Order Here!

About a month ago, we started to feel like we were holding out on all of you... I mean... we have been sitting on this phenomenal full-length for a while now... And needing desperately to have our prediction supported by a unanimous love for this record upon its release, we thought we would give you all a taste of what's to come... Download Daughters' digital single "The First Supper," (off the forthcoming full-length Self-Titled) on Itunes or Amazon now!

Hayaino Daisuki: Invincible Gate Mind of the Infernal Fire Hell or did you mean Hawaii Daisuki? PRE-ORDER!!!

The fastest, most melodic, most thrashiest record out there!.. and the CD booklet involves an original comic illustrated by Stan Sakai! Which I'm told will not come with the rapidshare download.. Enjoy!

Pre-Order it here!

Harvey Milk On Revolver TV

The members of Georgia sludge-metal crew discuss how they formed, what it's like being a heavy band from the South, and offer a glimpse of what people should expect at Scion Rock Fest 2010 in the video below.

Watch Video Here!

Daughters "s/t" Pre-Order Is Up And Running!

"Let's just get this out of the way right now: 'Daughters' is a ferocious album. The guitars on this bastard sound insane ... kind of like if the sound a car engine makes when it won't start raped a dentist drill. Or a dentist drill raping a megaphone. The disc isn't overwhelming like the band's previous releases, and has strange, eerily psychedelic moments of psychosis. It's rife with riffs and breaks like heroin. There are even ethereal moments. It would remind you of Dillinger Escape Plan crossed with the Mars Volta. Sounds strange, but this is one of the best albums you'll hear in 2010." Noisecreep

Exclusive to the pre-order are 5 new Daughters t-shirts based on the s/t album artwork... and we've made them more than affordable on our webstore! Only $10.00 each... So, why would you pass that up?

Pre-Order Daughters Self-Titled CD and Exclusive Merch Here!!!

Pyramids: Feature In New Rock A Rolla!

Dudes,

Issue 24 of Rock-A-Rolla, a publication we think very highly of over here, features a feature on Hydra Head's elusive bringers of the ethereal jams, Pyramids!

Purchase Issue 24 Here

Subscribe to Rock-A-Rolla Here

Also, if your anticipating the limited Pyramids With Nadja Remix 12" (including a remix by Lustmord and a remix by Ulver)... Lets just say the day of its availability is very very near! Stay tuned!

Rick Smith's (Torche) Top Ten of 2009

Torche Drummer, & Owner of RCP Tapes, Rick Smith's Top Ten of 2009:

1. Tour with Harvey Milk
2. Indian food all over the world
3. Double drumming with Mogwai @ Furiasound
4. St. Dad "Keep it in your Pants" demo tape
5. Fusion Fest in Larz, Germany
6. 1980 Puch moped
7. Melt Banana live + shrooms
8. Monotonix live, always
9. Being flown out to play festivals on weekends
10. Asshole Parade + American Cheeseburger + Religious As Fuck @ Market Street Pub

Purchase Torche Merch

Purchase RCP tapes

Daughters: "s/t" CD/LP Trailer

Hello all,

I promise we will offer you a more telling preview of the record in the near future, but for the time being try this trailer (edited/remixed by Dave Fischer) on for size!

Harvey Milk: "s/t" Review @ Aquarius Records!

It's kind of a no brainer around here, a new Harvey Milk is cause for much rejoicing, and often means shoo-in for Record Of The Week. What can we say? We LOVE these guys. Perhaps one of our favorite heavy weirdo sludge bands ever. Andee even released their legendary Courtesy And Goodwill Toward Men on his tUMULt label, before Relapse swooped in and snatched it up. NO ONE sounds like Harvey Milk, NO ONE, and it's ironic that pretty much every band these days wants to, cuz they've sounded the same for years and years and remained patently unpopular almost the whole time.

As if to drive that fact home (not the unpopular fact, the 'always sounded like this' fact), here's the Harvey Milk holy grail, the original debut record, recorded by Bob Weston in the early nineties, after which the band took it home and promptly lost it. And lost it remained, barring a few dubious and crap sounding bootlegs, and more recently some posted downloads of the same crappy recordings. Since folks were gonna listen to it anyway, the band figured what the fuck, they oughta take the best sounding tape they had, and get it all remastered and gussied up and released properly. And voila, the long lost self titled Harvey Milk record, featuring on its cover, perhaps THE tape where it all started.

Fair warning to the uninitiated, lots of these songs were reworked and re-recorded for other albums, this record was lost after all, so a bunch of these, in altered forms, made it onto My Love, Courtesy, the Kelly Sessions, but it's a gas to hear them here, rough and raw, in some cases dramatically different than their later versions, but that probably only matters to HM newbies, the cult of HM (ourselves included) are a dedicated and obsessed bunch, and even though we have most of these songs, we HAD to have it, and odds are a lot of you will feel the same. Plus, we have to say, the rough and raw recording definitely suits these jams. And the sound, so heavy and punishing, it's hard to imagine what folks thought of these guys back in the day, not very much we'd imagine. This crushing difficult heaviness, exactly what made them our immediate favorite band from first listen is precisely what turns off most other folks.

But if you've made it this far, we'll assume you, like us, have a think for Harvey Milk. And thus, you NEED this, everything about HM that you love is already fully formed even nearly 20 years ago, the crushing glacial pummel, the killer drum pound, the impossibly slow and yet ultra complex arrangements, the insanely emotive howled vocals, it's like these guys emerged fully formed from the band womb.

But a quick whip through the tracks should sway any nonbeliever, "Merlin Is Magic" is an epic melodic sludge prog masterpiece, with weirdly melodic vocals, and lurching hypnotic arrangement, "Dating Pressures" is total classic noiserock, laced with downtuned chug, pounding drum damage, but all Milked up with a howling vocal, and some lurching convoluted progginess, "Plastic Eggs" is the quintessential Milk slow motion doomjam, so slow, so anguished, so heavy, "Anthem" is downright jangly, but still a crushing bruiser, fuck it, you should know by now that this is essential, if you already dig the band, you're gonna go nuts for this, if you've never heard HM before, we might recommend Courtesy or My Love first, but at the same time, we can't imagine anyone listening to this, and not losing their shit and becoming immediately obsessed, and if for some reason, a person did hear this and was not utterly blown away, well, then we think the problem must be you!

Cool mini, lp style sleeve, with a simple photo of a (THE?) Harvey Milk cassette on the cover, the inside sleeve with liner notes on one side and a picture of the Milk van on the other, and last but not least, a mini reproduction of what looks like a promotional HM photo, complete with 'For booking call:' info, which is hilarious whether it's a joke or not.

Aquarius Records

Daughters: Announce New "s/t" Album Out March 9th on Hydra Head

Just when you get to the age where sitting in traffic and switching back and forth from the conservative to the liberal talk radio station sounds more appealing then sifting through the bush-league releases of the day, Daughters comes through with an untouchable new record absolutely snuffing out your now-so-surly being. Bumper to bumper, late for work, window down and more and more your thinking that a cigarette and a beer coupled with these stellar jams would end all right now!

Because that is exactly the kind of record Daughters' s/t is, the kind you can't stop turning up... The kind that satisfies every cultural / musical requisite a critical listener possesses while simultaneously reinventing the wheel... The kind that's so immediately gratifying that you don't even bother to compare your instincts with what today's internet has to say... The kind you won't have to remove from your automobile's CD player for months on end...

None of that, “this band is my fine art project, musicianship is secondary because I am an artist foremost” garbage included... This is what the dudes in Daughters do and that fact has never been more apparent than in this record... Because, this time around, they absolutely nailed it! s/t is a ten.



Daughters s/t Tracklist
1. The Virgin
2. The First Supper
3. The Hit
4. The Theatre Goer
5. Our Queens (One Is Many, Many Are One)
6. The Dead Singer
7. Sweet Georgia Brom
8. The Unattractive, Portable Head

Justin Foley's (The Austerity Program) Top Ten of 2009

Before you read Justin's Top Ten, we just wanted to remind you all that on 05/04 Hydra Head will be releasing a new Austerity Program Cdep/12." The title of the Cdep is: "Backsliders and Apostates Will Burn." Also available for purchase on release date is a data DVD containing all of the recordings that make up the songs on the release... Ready to be remixed, and or the like.

Justin Foley's Top Ten of 2009:

Ten recording improvements we did on the new record compared to the old record

WARNING – GEEKY AS ALL HELL

(If Hell was a place where people get physically excited looking at pictures of analog tape machines)(which is probably what my wife thinks it is)

Delaying room mics by 20 seconds. This made the ambient sound clearer, but not artificially so. Big up to the New Stereo Soundbook.

Using a mid/side configuration for the ambient sound. Provided a dramatically wide stereo image. Especially satisfying on drums (or, in our case, the drum machine).

Running the drum machine through an FMR-RNP preamp. Actually, any quality preamp would be good. That thing didn’t have enough gain to print well to tape and we used our board’s gain. Much better this way.

Recording drums to tape, then doing guitar and bass live while playing the drum machine through the PA. This created some tricky punch-ins, but allowed us to be more flexible on the relative direct/ambient sound.

Bring the room sound way up. While we were mixing it, it sounded like we were pushing it too far. Having listened to it about 60 times since then, it’s the right amount. Live sounding, but not hollow.

Mastering the vinyl to 45 rpm. We haven’t done any 12” vinyl before, but the lacquer refs from Golden sound like (as T Midgett from Silkworm/Bottomless Pit has told me) the ‘archival format’. And black vinyl only because we care what the fucking thing sounds like.

Using the Trongraphic Rusty Box for the bass preamp. More hi/mid aggression than the Ampeg we’d been using before.

Placing two ribbon mics on the guitar cabinet. Actually, three mics as we bi-amp the guitar and had an Earthworks omni on the low cabinet. But most of the signal information happens on the high end and blending the brighter beyer M160 with the kind-of-scary Royer 121 was really a treat to hear. Hope you like it because we’ll be doing the guitar with that until we die.

Comping vocal demos to nail the phrasing. It made me feel like Billy “Bozo the Clown” Corgan to be this clinical, but it definitely helped when it came time to actually sing the songs. Record a line, play back, record it again, play back, etc. until the line was finally right.

Bike commuting through Manhattan on a fixed gear. Ok, this probably had nothing to do with the recording but it’s made such an improvement in my life that it’s gotta play into it somehow. Geez is it fun – I get to be in a human video game twice a day.

Kayo Dot: Toby Driver Interview @ Brooklyn Vegan!

BV: Kayo Dot is very expansive with multiple different directional shifts and styles, and Coyote definitely has moments where I am reminded of Scott Walker and Goblin, along with some avant-jazz stylings. What is your current musical inspiration going into this project?

Toby Driver: On this one, I wanted to use the aesthetic of 80's art-goth electric bass - bridge picking, lots of chorus, and frequent use of the open G string - in the context of modern-composition as opposed to straight-up riffs. The two main bands that influenced my perception of that sound were The Cure and Faith And The Muse. Melodically, I was influenced by the amazing trumpet tone of local composer Tim Byrnes, the soprano sax playing of another of our local composers, Matthew Welch, and then the Mujician and/or Ornette sax/trumpet unison duets of the 60s. The darkScott Walker you hear is definitely intentional, and I think the Goblin is just a result of the gear we used (Korg Poly6 in this case). I'm trying to reclaim goth for those of us who love the aesthetic but want something more sophisticated. We all were reading the Vertigo comic "House of Mystery" while in session, too. ha!?

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