Jim Keller "End of the World"
A cult figure in the music business, Keller’s gigs at New York’s Lakeside Lounge and The Rockwood Music Hall are legendary. If the best players in town weren’t on stage with him, they were in the audience, singing along, playing along, making the sort of noise that would get you locked up in a lesser town.
Produced by long time musical director Adam Minkoff this is a rocking set of 12 Keller originals that confirms Kellers as one of the most exciting and most prolific singer/songwriters of today’s New York music scene.
From the horse’s mouth:
In 2022 I got together with my New York friend Adam Minkoff (a producer, singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who tours with Graham Nash and Amy Helm) to record tracks for an album that we released as Spark and Flame. After that project, I picked up where I left off with my LA buddy Mitchell Froom (a producer of artists such as Los Lobos, Richard Thompson and Suzanne Vega plus musician who is a member of Crowded House) for our second album with Bob Glaub, David Hidalgo and Michael Urbano, called Daylight. Those two projects were in many ways opposites; Adam records tracks, and with Mitchell, everything is totally live. Both were a blast.
Then Adam and I reconvened with our usual jam-session array of Brooklyn, Woodstock and New York City musicians, and a new set of songs emerged. They became this album, End of the World.
Adam produced. We recorded me on guitar and vocals, Lee Falco on drums and Adam on bass, then built the tracks from there. This allowed Adam and I to play with the arrangements and instrumentation in the studio. If there is a downside, it’s that tinkering with songs takes time, but experimentation in the studio is a luxury and process is almost always joyful and engaging. As always, the songs are almost all written by me with Byron Isaacs (singer, songwriter, and bassist for The Lumineers and Ollabelle)) who has been my partner in crime for over 15 years and comes up with all the best lines…
I hope you find something in here to enjoy.
Cheers! Jim Keller
Major Stars "More Colors of Sound"
Out of the roiling miasma of timeless time comes a long-promised delivery from one of the constants of our era: Major Stars, and their new LP, More Colors of Sound. Fueled by overdriven guitars and gut-punching rhythm, these veteran rockers are stalwart in their delivery of trippy, psyched-out extremes. Over 27 years since The Rock Revival (their Twisted Village debut), they can be counted on to come back around every three or four years or so, with something heavy picked up on their journey. This time, it’s been since 2019’s Roots of Confusion Seeds of Joy – but what’s a few years in the larger scheme of things? Because ‘larger’ IS the Major Stars scheme of things, one that’s always cut deeply into the grooves.
YES. It’s been since the late 90s that Major Stars have been transmitting their signal. But even eternity wasn’t built in such an arc of time: Wayne Rogers and Kate Biggar have been crossing necks dating back to the 80s, with Crystallized Movements’ screaming psych-punk hybrids. Tom Leonard, Major Stars’ current third axeman, has been in the mix almost as long: Luxurious Bags’ amorphous low-fi (that’s him!) was released on Twisted Village too, and Kate and Wayne and him all played together in Vermonster. After the demise of Magic Hour -Wayne and Kate’s proto-freak-folk outfit with Damon & Naomi – the three of them formed Major Stars, with Wayne singing and Dave Lynch on drums. Which brings us… not quite to today, but, the More Colors of Sound lineup is as-was for Roots of Confusion Seeds of Joy: Kate, Tom, Wayne, Dave Dougan on bass, Casey Keenan on drums and Noell Dorsey singing lead.
More Colors of Sound had been earmarked as a title for nearly twenty years when they started work on the album that would finally bear its name. For the first ten Major Stars releases, Wayne wrote everything, but due to the way things were in 2020 and 2021, Tom and Noell wrote a bunch of things together, along with Wayne’s stuff. By the time they got around to recording, at Gloucester’s Bang-A Song Studios, there was enough stuff to make a double LP! A double’s a once-in-a-lifetime dream scenario, but once they’d done the overdubs, they skinnied it down to the 44 minutes here – 22 minutes of each songwriting team. Ultimately democratic, not too long… you don’t see that much nowadays!
As ever (and ever), the crush of the three guitars as they riff with the rhythm defines Major Stars’ sound. The work of two writing camps has produced a song-centric focus on More Colors of Sound – one, of course, shot through with distorted tones, fevered neck-wringing solos and several extended jammers – but the production overall has a cleaner sound than its predecessor. That, plus the increased number of writers on deck gives the title a kind of kismet to go along with its historical weight, and that’s alright!
On More Colors of Sound, Major Stars find new hues inside the incendiary approach that’s launched them so ecstatically since early times; another jar of infinity captured with a quality all its own – and it’s all in the grooves!
Megatronic "There’s Truth in Gospel"
For her sophomore outing on Razor-N-Tape, Megatronic drops There’s Truth in Gospel, an extended concept EP built around the idea of a modern-day gospel congregation, reimagined through the lens of soulful, high-energy club sounds.
Its six soulful house tracks explore vibrant layers of live instrumentation, from trumpets, flutes, and diverse percussion styles that breathe warmth into the sonic palette of the record. Featuring the voices of Fawziyya Heart, Aku, and Chiqo Casidi, and gorgeous artwork that perfectly captures the rich concept of the music, There’s Truth in Gospel is an ode to unity, joy, and collective celebration.
Rumah Sakit "Ruman Sakit 25"
Rumah Sakit were a four-piece rock band based in San Francisco, CA. Formed in 1998 by guitarists John Baez and Mitch Cheney, bassist Kenseth Thibideau and drummer, Jeff Shannon, the band settled on the name Rumah Sakit – a literal Indonesian translation of “sick room” (aka hospital) – and a sound that fused the frenetic energy of Red-era King Crimson with a meditative melodicism that starkly contrasted the vast majority of “math-rock” bands of the era. Rumah Sakit 25 collects Rumah Sakit’s debut album and their long out-of-print Travels In Constants EP into one extraordinary package. Reuniting the band with Bob Weston to meticulously remaster from the original master tapes, Rumah Sakit 25 features new cover art from old friends and collaborators, Jeremiah Maddock and Marty Anderson. The expansive 180 gram audiophile-grade gatefold 2xLP includes full-color printed inner sleeves featuring hundreds of previously unpublished photos documenting the inspired early era in the band’s history, as well as a massive full-size 24-page art book of previously unpublished artwork by Maddock. It’s an exquisite opus that masterfully captures a band who ultimately inspired artists that followed them, and whose members’ later collaborations with the likes of Foals, Pinback, Sweep the Leg Johnny, Sleeping People and HEY!TONAL would underscore how uniquely diverse and prolific Rumah Sakit truly were.