Check out this long-lost collection of unreleased Nazz studio recordings created by a burgeoning young songwriter/producer by the name of Todd Rundgren!. Taken directly from the original master acetates, this box set collects the originally conceived 1968 rough mix of Nazz’s sophomore album “Nazz Nazz” created by Rundgren as he begins to learn the production techniques that made him the highly acclaimed producer he is today! Also contains unreleased, alternate mixes from 1967-1968 of tracks such as “Hello, It’s Me,” “Open My Eyes” and many more not available anywhere else! Includes a full-color booklet featuring liner notes and rare photos!
• Taken directly from the original master acetates, this box set collects the originally conceived 1968 rough mix of Nazz’s sophomore album “Nazz Nazz” created by Rundgren as he begins to learn the production techniques that made him the highly acclaimed producer he is today!
• Also contains unreleased, alternate mixes from 1967-1968 of tracks such as “Hello, It’s Me,” “Open My Eyes” and many more not available anywhere else!
• Includes a full-color booklet featuring liner notes and rare photos!
LIMITED EDITION 180 GRAM BLACK VINYL!! releases December 2nd, 2022 through Purple Pyramid
Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds have shared a new song ahead of a forthcoming album. It’s called “Pretty Boy” and it features Johnny Marr on guitar.
In a press release, Gallagher said, “For this new record it was the first thing I wrote, the first thing I demoed and the first thing I finished, so it’s only right that it’s the first thing people get to hear. Massive shout out to my mainest man Johnny Marr for taking it somewhere special. Oh… and watch out for a cameo from me in the video… first one to spot me wins a bag of Flamin’ Hot Wotsits Giants!!”
Gallagher and his band recorded the track at the musician’s own London studio, where he co-produced the single with Paul “Strangeboy” Stacey. The next LP from Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds is due out next year, although a release date and other details have not yet been announced.
The group’s previous LP, “Who Built the Moon?“, arrived in 2017. In 2019, they issued the “Black Star Dancing” EP. In 2021, Gallagher curated a greatest hits album compiling tracks from his output with High Flying Birds. The collection, titled “Back the Way We Came: Vol. 1 (2011 – 2021)“, landed last summer.
For this new record it was the first thing I wrote, the first thing I demoed and the first thing I finished, so it’s only right that it’s the first thing people get to hear. Massive shout out to my mainest man Johnny Marr for taking it somewhere special.
Brand new single – ‘Pretty Boy’ – the first to be revealed from Noel’s forthcoming new studio album.
Psych rockers The Black Angels perform the song outside Space ATX studio on the release of their new LP “Wilderness of Mirrors” .
There is a whole lot more Black Angels recordings in the world, with the iconic Austin heavy-psych troupe releasing their double new album “Wilderness of Mirrors”. This morning they shared one last teaser from the LP with the wailing, politically charged single “Empires Falling”—but today they’re also offering an additional sneak peek at the project with a live video of another new track titled “Icon.” “The song ‘Icon’ has been floating around for about 16 years,” the band clarifies. “[Vocalist Alex Maas] had the original song idea, but we wanted to see what happened if The Black Angels gave it a go!”
Performing the track for a recent “Neighborhoods” session, the band did their best to illustrate the new album’s title by setting up in the woods outside Space ATX recording studio in Austin, while the psychedelic camera effects often mirror the imagery of the band’s setup. “We imagine this filmed version of ‘Icon’ as what we would have sounded like deep in the Texas woods in the year 1865,” the band adds—a point enhanced by one member donning a Civil War cap in the clip. “It is extremely exciting for us to watch, anticipate, and experience the transition of what a song becomes. It’s like directions to hearing a ghost—a ghost of who one used to be.”
For some, home is a place. For others, it’s an idea. For Scout Gillett, it’s a nebulous concept with constantly changing definitions. It’s no wonder the New Yorker can’t quite get to grips with it—she’s displayed an adventurous spirit all her life, cutting her teeth in the Kansas City punk scene before departing for Brooklyn. It’s there that she’s made her base, at least for now. Gillett’s reaction to returning home to her native Missouri led to her digging deep into what made a place feel like home—“Nothing was as I’d remembered,” she recalled. “I felt homesick for a home that no longer seemed to exist”—sowing the seeds for what would become her debut album.
The single “One To Ten” and a subsequent EP of the same name, “No Roof No Floor” is a remarkable record full of hushed intimacy that creates its own unique type of intensity, Gillett’s voice able to turn on a dime from a whisper to a soaring, cathartic belt. It’s an album of many shades, autumnal enough in spots that an October release makes perfect sense. She’s arrived as close to fully-formed as it’s possible to get, updating early singles “Mother Of Myself” and “Signal” to fit into the 10-track record’s more expansive vision.
She’s been involved in music for longer than you’d think; the groundwork for Gillett’s solo endeavors was laid back in 2016 with the “Scout & the Snaggles” solo EP, referenced below, but it feels like she’s just getting started. “No Roof No Floor” is the kind of album you’ll regret missing out on, so make time for it the first chance you get.
Richmond, Virginia’s James Goodson makes scrappy guitar rock that’s piled high with hooks
If there’s one belief that guides James Goodson’s songwriting, it’s that rock music should be fun. You can’t miss this when you talk to him—on our hour-long call, he uses the word nine times. “We’re talking about catchy guitar music. I think it’s undeniable that this is fun stuff,” he says, with one of many laughs. “Guitars and loud music, and cool lyrics, and all these things, it should be moving you and hitting you on some level that almost gets around your brain.” Goodson spoke before kicking off a run of East Coast shows with his “Pressure Cooker” collaborators Militarie Gun (and MSPaint), and days before the release of his debut album, “OUTOFBODY”, out now on Lame-O Records. It’s hardly a position he thought he would end up in when he first started releasing music as Dazy in 2020: “I definitely did not expect anybody to find it at all, so to even be talking to you about it now is pretty wild,” says Goodson.
But push play on any of his songs—I mean it, just throw a dart at his discography—and in a matter of seconds, you’ll see why listeners have gravitated to Dazy. Goodson’s one-man band has been fully formed from the start, and on “OUTOFBODY”, it only gets bigger and better.
Nowhere is this more apparent than on singles “Rollercoaster Ride,” “Split” and “On My Way,” none of which stretch past the two-minute mark. Goodson recalls “Rollercoaster Ride” as the result of him “trying to write something as poppy as possible,” pinpointing its echoing drum loop as a particular point of pride. Goodson’s insistent vocal interlocks with equally melodic guitar and mellotron lines in the track’s two-word choruses, creating the kind of ride you jump right back in line for the second it ends. On both “Split” and “On My Way,” Goodson’s wellbeing is entirely at the mercy of external forces (“You could paint a smile on my face / Then tell me something that would make it fade,” he sings on the former, while on the latter, he shrugs, “Comet won’t miss but I’ll just be on my way / Spreading that stress but I’ll just be on my way”), yet the sugar-rush instrumentals cast a rosy tint over even those situations, as if to prove there’s nothing more powerful than a pop song.
Goodson shouts out his beloved Ramones on “Choose Yr Ramone” and bemoans the writer’s dilemma on “Deadline.” He dismisses the never-ending quest to achieve someone else’s idea of success as a sucker’s game over the sludgy guitars and Primal Scream-y beat of “Ladder,” and avoids the void on “Asking Price,” which leaves room for R.E.M. jangle amid torrents of distortion. Goodson is more comfortable than ever with the sonic elements that he once felt self-conscious about, citing drum machines, in particular, as having “opened up a lot of songwriting stuff for me”—he not only inhabits the Dazy sound more confidently than ever on “OUTOFBODY”, but he also expands it.
On “Motionless Parade,” he reduces the tempo and gain both, delivering an imaginative strummer with some of his most resonant songwriting yet: “Nothing like a little fun thinking about what could go wrong,” he muses, formless fear paralyzing an otherwise pleasant scene. And on “Inside Voice,” Goodson pushes his vocals in a more natural, gentle direction, a development that he notes has been “a big part of Dazy” overall. “I guess we oughta try to say the things that stick to our insides,” he croons over acoustic guitar and mellotron, evoking an atmosphere of intimacy and vulnerability not yet seen in his discography.
“OUTOFBODY” ends with “Gone,” an absolute epic by Goodson’s standards, and his longest Dazy song to date at 3:45. The track “[went] through a lot of different versions,” he recalls, “and every time I would dust it off, I’d add something new to it.” With its mellotron strings and layered vocals, the track felt “too crazy” at times, but “I always knew it was going to be a closer on something. And I have a real soft spot for that huge closer. So I decided to just go nuts with it,” he says. If ever a Dazy track felt stadium rock-sized, it’s “Gone”—its dizzying crescendo is the kind of thing that gets people popping up out of even the cheap seats, with Goodson’s overlapping voices and volcanic guitars intertwined around the hopeful refrain, “And when they’re gone, you’ll be holding on.” It’s moments like this where you can forget that Dazy is just one person, recording in his spare room in Richmond. It already feels like much more.
A month ago, Yeah Yeah Yeahs made a triumphant return with their fifth studio album and first release in nearly a decade, “Cool It Down”. While the record is steeped in elements of horror—born as it was as the result of the pandemic and all the anxieties that came flooding up to the surface during those early months—the track “Wolf” stands out as a worthy candidate for any Halloween playlist. Today they’re further building a case for the song’s spooky themes with an Allie Avital–directed music video that feels particularly seasonal due both to its subject matter and its star, who you may recognize from a recent TV series dealing in a very different kind of horror.
“When I heard the title of the song and description of the role were both ‘Wolf’ it was a full-body ‘yes,’” shared Severancestar Britt Lower, who becomes increasingly wolf-like as the new visual progresses. “To get to work on a story about a woman discovering the wild within and without was a dream. And to do so alongside legend Karen O…I mean, I’m speechless.”
On their first album in nine years, the Brooklyn post-punk trio give us the most open-hearted and deeply felt music of their career. They open with “Spitting Off the Edge of the World,” a song that’s every bit as towering as their classic ballad “Maps,” but this time the crisis isn’t romantic, it’s political, environmental, and generational. Then they proceed to dance the pain away on “Wolf” and “Fleez,” songs steeped in the arty New York grooves that have kept cool kids moving things forward since the 1970s. On the heartrending “Blacktop,” singer Karen O quotes Dylan Thomas over a Brian Eno synth drone. As she begs us to “hold on ’til the love is gone,” her words move through the music’s dark engulfing beauty like a faint message of hope in a sea of doubt and chaos.
“We were beside ourselves with excitement when Allie cast Brit as the lead in the video,” Karen O added of the collaboration. “YYYs are serious nerds for Severance—what luck when the stars align.”
from the album ‘Cool it Down’, out now on Secretly Canadian.
Two boys with guitars on their chests, stretching their song writing muscles and finding, to their delight, new possibilities at every run up the neck. This means trading vocal parts mid-song, then trading back again, modulating madly through rhythm changes, looking for a note in the harmony they’d never played or sung before. All in the service of locating the feelgood pop alchemy in a song in which no parts are repeated. laying it all down with a sweet solid state vibe.
“ w h a t e v e r h a p p e n e d t o ‘s h e’s a b e a m’! ? ! ” has been a question/passive-aggressive demand from Ty and Cory aficionados over the past few years. This is what happened. it went to heaven and lived a beautiful life there. this is the sound of it. guitars and harmonies. helium-coated keyboards. a celestial, steve millerish synth transformation. positivity. lightness. rock. epic. energetic. happy, headbanging days. ‘Milk Bird Flyer’ is a perfect other ‘a’ to pair with ‘she’s a beam’, hovering on a fade-in fanfare of gleaming guitar godness before shifting into a countryish tripper with cheerful psilo-sci-fi-bin lyrics to bend and stretch the ecstatic shuffle of the beat.
As with She’s A Beam’, Ty and Cory are floating so tight in the harmony that we’re like “ w h o’s w h o ? ” the pure sounds of yesterday are bright like a moment in time just waiting for its chance to exist, a nugget of potency landing right between the eyes in any era. turn it up and smile, smile, smile
“Milk Bird Flyer” · Ty Segall & Cory Hanson released on Drag City Records
Back in June, Sophie Allison, a.k.a. Soccer Mommy, released her third studio LP, “Sometimes, Forever”. The album was produced by Oneohtrix Point Never’s Daniel Lopatin, received resounding acclaim, and sent her even further into the stratosphere. Now, to celebrate this year’s Halloween, her favourite holiday period, Allison has released an alternate version of album highlight “Darkness Forever.” Officially titled “Darkness Forever (Sophie’s Version)” in homage to Taylor Swift, the song is presented in one of its earliest forms, a draft that didn’t make the final cut for the record.
Though the album version is already dark and distorted, the Halloween edition achieves a sound that’s even more underwater, foreboding, and climactic. “This version of ‘Darkness Forever’ is really exciting for me because it’s kind of what got me inspired to start working on the rest of the album,” Allison shared of the new release. “It felt new and fresh, and I had a lot of fun making it. When I was done with it, I felt very ready to work on more stuff for the record.”
The song originally appeared on Sophie Allison’s album “Sometimes, Forever” released back in June.
After a seven year absence with new material, Billy Idol has popped back and in a big way. His last album was 2014’s “King &Queen of the Underground” (which absolutely stellar) and then in 2021, he released an E.P. called ‘The Roadside’ which has one of his best songs ever called “Bitter Taste”. Almost exactly one year later in 2022, Billy released another E.P. and this one was called “The Cage” and is another 4 song set. This leads me to think that Billy might not be up for doing a full album, but if he wants to put out 4 new songs every year and with the caliber of these songs, count me in.
Billy Idol and his long time partner, Steve Stevens have crafted another batch of great songs with the help of famed producer, Butch Walker along with Tommy English and Zakk Cervini.
In an interview recently, I heard Billy talk about the fact that he was happy he somehow survived his drug induced rock & roll lifestyle because it has all been worth it. That worth it he is talk about is his granddaughter. He has seem to have found a new appreciation for life and that is reflected in his music and writing and I’m starting to think Billy is a fine wine because he keeps getting better with age!.
The opening track, “The Cage”, is basically about all the pent up energy everyone was feeling coming out of the Covid Lockdown. It felt like we were all in a cage and it was time to bust out. Written by Billy, Steven, Tommy and Joe Janiak. It is a high energy, punk rock song and Billy feels right at home on this track. If there is a Billy Idol sound…this is it and with Steve Stevens on guitar, there is no mistaken that sound. A perfect song to catch your attention and reel you in.
And if you think “The Cage” is the best song on the E.P., you’d be wrong. That belongs to the introspective “Running from the Ghost”. Lyrically, the song seems to be about Billy running from his demons all his life. He has seen some dark things in this life and his alcohol and drug addiction are a battle every day. The song starts off slow and then it explodes and the guitar work by Stevens is some of his best ever. That drum beat with it are powerful and engaging. It is a beast of a track and has such a mature and serious tone.
“Rebel Like You” with its fun motorcycle revving at the start. The electronic drum beat comes blaring in and Billy sings with umph and you can feel that snarl. The song has Billy on stage looking out in the audience and sees another woman dressed like him, but I’m not sure that is the gist of the story. I think the song is a shout out to his grand daughter and that she is a rebel just like him.
The last track is called “Miss Nobody” and it is an electronic, dance song. This one was produced by Butch Walker and co-written by Sam Hollander. It is a slick pop track about a down & out woman who still is kicking ass. It is not my favourite track on the album, but it has its merits as it is catchy and contagious and will get you moving. A little less on the guitars, but still feels like a Billy track.
UMC release “Zappa ’75: Zagreb / Ljubljana“, featuring the best performances of the Yugoslavian concerts sequenced in the exact order of the show’s setlist to present the crème da la crème from each night for the first time ever. Produced by Ahmet Zappa and Zappa Vaultmeister Joe Travers, the 27-track live album boasts nearly two and half hours of completely unreleased music and will be available on 2CD complete with a 32-page booklet filled with photos of the era and lineup by Gail Zappa and John Rudiak with insightful liner notes from Travers, an interview between him and recording engineer Davy Moire who recorded the show and worked with Zappa from 1975-78, plus a firsthand account and illustration from drummer Terry Bozzio.
Previously the only recording ever released from these concerts was a performance of “Black Napkins” from Ljubljana included on the 1996 release, Frank Zappa Plays The Music Of Frank Zappa: A Memorial Tribute; the version of “Black Napkins” featured here is from Zagreb.
The details surrounding the concert’s recordings are unknown but somehow it was organized that the shows were semi-professionally recorded. Despite Zappa usually touring with his Scully ½” 4-track recorder that machine was not used and instead the Zagreb and Ljubljana shows were recorded on an obscure format of ½” 8-track. After painstakingly baking the tapes and running multiple passes, the tracks were successfully transferred and have all been re-mixed by Craig Parker Adams at Winslow Ct. Studios and mastered by John Polito at Audio Mechanics, who both also aided in restoring the audio as needed.
One notable exception is the track “San Ber’dino” from Ljubljana which somehow wasn’t captured on the 8-track master and so the line mix from Zappa’s Nagra tape was used. Zappa arrived in Yugoslavia on the heels of releasing “Bongo Fury”, his collaborative album with Captain Beefheart released in the October. While several songs from the record were included in the setlist, such as souped-up versions of “Advance Romance,” “Carolina Hard-Core Ecstasy,” and “Muffin Man,” Zappa treated the audiences to songs from his then already expansive catalogue, from “I Ain’t Got No Heart,” “How Could I Be Such A Fool” and “I’m Not Satisfied” from The Mothers Of Invention’s 1966 debut, “Freak Out!”, and a three-song suite of songs from 1968’s “We’re Only In It For The Money” (“Lonely Little Girl,” “Take Your Clothes Off When You Dance,” “What’s The Ugliest Part Of Your Body?”) to 1973’s “Over-Nite Sensation” standouts “Camarillo Brillo,” “I’m The Slime,” and “Dirty Love,” plus tracks from 1974’s “Apostrophe (‘)” and 1975’s “One Size Fits All”.
One of the highlights of the album is the improvisational instrumental jams of the concert, specifically “Chunga’s Revenge” and “Zoot Allures,” which Zappa used as a palette to experiment with soloing and bounce new riffs off the band in real time.
Here we get to hear works in progress such as the embryonic versions of “Filthy Habits,” (1979’s Sleep Dirt), “Five-Five-Five” (1981’s “Shut Up And Play Yer Guitar“) and “Wind Up Workin’ In A Gas Station” (1976’s “Zoot Allures“).
In addition to experimenting with new ideas, Zappa also used the opportunity to preview more fully fleshed out compositions such as early versions of his signature songs, “Black Napkins” and “Zoot Allures,” which would end up on the album of the same name the following year.
This 2CD set, also available on digital and streaming platforms, combines performances from both shows, recorded live in Zagreb on November 21st and Ljubljana on November 22nd, 1975. This release showcases a rare band line-up of The Mothers, featuring Norma Bell on saxes and vocals. Re-mixed from the original 1/2” 8-track tape masters by Craig Parker Adams and mastered by John Polito, this historical set is the only multi-tracked document of this group in the Vault.
Frank Zappa’s autumn 1975 touring schedule brought him to two cities in Yugoslavia, marking the first and only time he played shows in that country.
It showcases a rare band line-up of The Mothers, featuring Norma Bell on saxes and vocals. Frank Zappa would discontinue using The Mothers name for good after the European and Australian leg in early 1976.
Re-mixed from the original 1/2” 8-track tape masters by Craig Parker Adams and mastered by John Polito, this historical set is the only multi-tracked document of this group in the Vault.
