DESMADRADOS SOLDADOS DE VENTURA – THE GRAND CELESTIAL PURGE 4LP BOX

180g 4LP box set w/ 8-page booklet

£44.99 + shipping (£6 UK, £9 Europe, £12 US/Canada, £14 r.o.w.) payable by PayPal to goldenlabrecordings@hotmail.co.uk

“Sweet fancy moses, a 4x lp boxset from the best rock band on the planet… GCP is DSDV’s most refined work yet, as they congeal into thee ultimate stoner psych band… this is straight up like BARDO POND plays LIVE/DEAD… higher than highest possible recommendation.” PSI LAB

“If you love hearing live cuts of The Grateful Dead veering off path and breaking into 15 minute guitar jam sessions, you’ve found your new band.” Sly Vinyl

The eighth Desmadrados Soldados De Ventura album is a three-hour series of musical musings on the departed musicians of 2016 and is out October 2016 in the hope that its release will ward off any further cultural devastation before the year is out.

Housed in a heavyweight full-colour card box with cover art by Wendy Mitchell and insert art by Bart De Paepe (Sloow Tapes). Full colour 8-page booklet inside with detailed notes on the recording by producer/engineer/synth player Richard Formby.

The Doozer ‘Flying Bird’ LP

The Doozer Flying Bird LP (ROWF 71)
Ltd to 300 copies on 180g vinyl – OUT NOW
£15.49 + shipping (£4 UK, £7 Europe, £10 US/Canada, £12 r.o.w.)
Payable by PayPal to goldenlabrecordings@hotmail.co.uk
Fifth LP of slow-burning, disparate psychedelic pop music from Cambridge, UK’s Doozer, following on from his truly wondrous and tragically ignored (due to lack of distribution), self-released Future Songs LP. Written while living in Fes and recorded upon his return to the UK, the songs have the distinct feel of a man, planted in a foreign land, searching for meaning. Simply titled songs such as “Village”, “Memory”, “Farewell To The West” and the brilliant title track, “Flying Bird” are not only meditative in their lyrical content, but also right down to The Doozer’s inimitable deadpan playing and singing style. You can hear the flop of his arm as he strums downward on the acoustic guitar in repetition and his voice expresses a quasi-religious detachment that encourages quite the horizontal listening experience. Like all Doozer LPs, this starts out as a kinda jaunty aural experience but only gets richer with every listen – epiphany is inevitable – just keep that turntable spinning and get ready for lift-off.

Tom Settle & Friends ‘Old Wakes’ 2LP/3LP

2LP gatefold edition LTD TO 200 COPIES on 180g vinyl housed in super heavyweight casebound, UV coated sleeves – £24.99 + shipping (£5 UK, £8 Europe, £11 US/Canada, £14 r.o.w.)

3LP gatefold edition on 180g vinyl, inc. bonus disc (on 140g vinyl), LTD TO 100 COPIES housed in super heavyweight casebound, UV coated sleeves – £31.99 + shipping (£6 UK, £9 Europe, £12 US/Canada, £15 r.o.w.)

Payable by PayPal to goldenlabrecordings@hotmail.co.uk

OUT NOW

Tom Settle is one of those guys that everyone likes when they meet him. A gentle soul with a sharp, understated wit and endless good humour. And, above all, humble. It comes across not only in the way he plays and writes music, but in the way he eschews acknowledgment for doing so. He’s played in the wonderful Serfs with Jon Collin on and off for over ten years, as well as Beach Fuzz, Former Bullies, Desmadrados Soldados De Ventura and Dinner Party. He’s even released a couple of tapes under his own name that no one really got to hear as they were put out in such small numbers, which is a shame (not least because his cover of the Dead’s “Dire Wolf” was enough to melt your cold heart). He’s not only one of Manchester’s finest guitar players but, Golden Lab thinks, one of the most intuitive and evocative in the world today. This 2LP (with a limited 100-copy run including a bonus third LP of entirely different and equally amazing material) featuring guests including Jon Collin, Nick Mitchell (Desmadrados Soldados De Ventura), Edwin Stevens (Irma Vep) and more, is a stunning example of his creative prowess and features a host of original compositions and improvisations as well as a handful of lesser known covers and traditionals, including some hitherto ignored-by-the-underground Lancashire folk music. It’s far and away the most accomplished (if roughly recorded) psychedelic folk record to have been made in Britain in the last 40 years as far as GLR is concerned. Sitar, guitar, drums, bells, penny whistles, recorders and more gorgeously rough vocal harmonies than you can shake a stick at. We who call ourselves his friends haven’t stopped crying since we started listening to it. Time ya got up to speed with what’s going on with Lancashire’s mellowest lad. Don’t hang about.

 

Track list

OLD WAKES

1a. Morning

2a. Garden Music

3a. Jolie Blon

4a. Snakeshead Fritillary

5a. Song for Two Guitars

6b. Anglesea Avenue

7b. United Stringdom

8b. Zorro

9b. Babe it ain’t no lie

10c. Sow ’em on the Mountain

11c. Gathering

12c. Stairs Dream

13c. Surprise to see me

14d. New Lancashire Hornpipe

15d. Old Wakes

16d. Magnet Rag

17d. Daisy, Daisy (a bicycle made for two)

Bonus disc (first 100 copies only)

 

OLD RAGS etc…

1a. Hello Stranger

2a. As Long as I Live

3a. The Children are Cryin’

4a. The Dallas Rag

5b. Toy Heart

6b. Brunswick Road

7b. ‘…’

8b. Brunswick Stomp

9b. Hawkins Rag

Matt ‘MV’ Valentine/Nick Mitchell split 7″

 
£6.99 + shipping (£1.80 UK, £3 Europe, £4 US/Canada, £6 r.o.w.) payable by PayPal to goldenlabrecordings@hotmail.co.uk 
Limited to 100 copies only w/ individual photo prints in ‘frame’-style covers VERY LIMITED QUANTITY REMAINING

“OK, let’s get right into it. Matt “MV” Valentine’s side first, then: fluctuating analogue synth, wah-wah guitar and sitar combine and interplay to trance-inducing effect and just over-half way through a tabla joins in. It all sounds like one cosmic jam, baby, yeah! It builds and builds before an abrupt and all-too-soon halt with electronic drone to fade. That was real nice, MV. More like this, please.

“Nick “NM” Mitchell’s side is an altogether more tropical propostition. It will transport you briefly to an Hawaiian island where the coconuts will drive you mad but NM’s dazzling, sinuous and serpentine guitars and muted tabla and island percussion will become the refreshing antidote. There might even be the soft swish-swish of a grass skirt too. That’s one flight path I’d like to live on.” Norman Records

Connie Acher – For Giving LP (ROWF 72)

180g vinyl with super heavyweight casebound tip-on jackets
OUT NOW
£15.99 + shipping (£4 UK, £10 Europe, £12 US/Canada, £14 r.o.w.)
Payable by PayPal to goldenlabrecordings@hotmail.co.uk

Connie Acher is the songwriting pseudonym of New York City artist Melodie Provenzano. Known primarily for her hyper-realist paintings, which undermine her love of 20th Century detritus – junkshop porcelain figurines, ribbons, wallpaper and arts-and-craft toys – either overtly, by juxtaposing those objects with grotesque symbols of decay, e.g. rats – or subtextually, by suggesting decay purely through the capturing of the objects on canvas, her songwriting on her debut album for Golden Lab Records, For Giving, gives way to similar thought paths. Titles such as “Treasure”, “Rats” and “Precious” (with its repeated pay-off, ‘Someday we’ll all be gone’) tell stories of a young woman in early 21st Century New York City, which are at once banal and weighty. Her deadpan voice delivers sublime melodies over sauntering cadences of unadorned instrumentation – acoustic guitar, bass, drums, Casios, Crumars and their ilk – which reinforce the junkshop theme. They’re everyday songs of love and loss – drab revenants of 20th Century ideals doomed to haunt us through our memory of promise. Stunning in their understatedness, they take us back to a simpler time that perhaps never really existed and, yet, make us wish for it anyway. Absolutely essential.

BURN HILLS ‘LIVE AT THE LOW BEAT’ LP (ROWF 55)

EDITION OF 250 COPIES ONLY
140g vinyl in super heavyweight casebound jackets with black paper inners
Cover art by Dylan Hughes (Desmadrados Soldados De Ventura)
OUT NOW
£15.99 + shipping (£4 UK, £6 Europe, £9 US/Canada, £12 r.o.w.)
Payable by PayPal to goldenlabrecordings@hotmail.co.uk

‘Hey daddy-o, I don’t wanna go down to the basement,’ spat some lanky bespectacled dope once a long time ago. Trust Burnt Hills to wait until he was long enough dead to afford the opportunity to not have to. Holed-up at the Helderberg House in Albany, NY, these cuddly middle-aged monsters of tuff, levitational, psychedelic thug punk swirliness have made an avant-rock legend of their agoraphobia. They played out a few times over the years – Bard College, NY; Weirdo Records, MA; Ron Schneiderman’s Festival Of Endless Gratitude back during the heyday of that ‘New Weird America’ boom; the legendary Elevens show in Northampton, MA – but their collective heart has remained between four breeze-blocked walls, surrounded by the washing machine, some DIY tools, a wall of 4×12 cabs loud enough to be heard four streets away and an occasional Monday night party crowd, every member of which knows how utterly blessed s/he is to be there witnessing this glorious band take flight. When the party’s not there, the band still is – pretty much every Monday for the past 10+ years now – doing it purely for its own reward. Real goose bump shit. Golden Lab feels no smugness in having witnessed this thing in action seven times now (and sat in on one unforgettable occasion). Rather a sense of longing that the rest of the right thinking world could be afforded the same opportunity. But then, isn’t it the inaccessibility that makes it so special?

Live At The Low Beat does much to disprove that theory. The show presented on this LP, recorded to digital handheld recorder and mastered in Manchester, UK by Dom Tanner, took place at a local eatery regularly frequented by the band (the restaurant boasts bottles of BH founder Jackson Wingate’s homemade ‘Flipped Out Records Habanero Death Sauce’ on its tables) on December 4th 2014. It was the first of what, it has been decided, will be an annual Burnt Hills performance outside the basement. At time of writing, the second event is about to occur and your humble narrator is somewhat down-beaten to be sitting here in drab central Manchester instead of on a flight to Albany to witness the rare spectacle of Burnt Hills on an actual sound stage. All ten members of the band were in attendance on this night and it’s safe to assume that they were all pretty well smoked, fed and oiled by the time they took to the stage as it doesn’t take long for shit to really fly. Close to 50 minutes in total, this is the most savage, raging, oblivion-bound Burnt Hills set yet committed to wax. There’s a whole bucketload of sensitive noodling amidst the chaos – along with the obligatory shred – but it’s, of course, the six-guitar pile-up that really takes this crescendo-obsessed troupe of suburban weirdos into the ‘Lord take me now!’ zone. As with the prior two Burnt Hills releases on Golden Lab, we feel blessed to be the label putting this out into the world. In an edition of just 250 copies with stunning psychedelic splurge art by Desmadrados Soldados De Ventura guitarist Dylan Hughes, this is gonna fly far and fast. Grip one while ya can.

RICHARD YOUNGS – VARISPEED ETUDES LP (ROWF 64)

Limited to 300 copies on 140g vinyl in heavyweight, UV-coated jackets.
OUT NOW
£15.49 + SHIPPING (£4 UK, £6 Europe, £9 US/Canada, £12 R.o.W.) 
Payable by PayPal to goldenlabrecordings@hotmail.co.uk

Varispeed Etudes was conceived by revered, quixotic, Glasgow-based avant-garde populist Richard Youngs very much as an analogue ‘record of two halves’ in the spirit of David Bowie’s Low and Heaven 17’s Penthouse and Pavement. Side A showcases his bent for electronic experimentation and those inimitable, hauntingly reedy, standard English vocal tones that have placed him squarely alongside a peer group of British vocalising weirdos that includes Robert Wyatt, Ivor Cutler and Charles Hayward. Side B strips away the vocals and replaces the electronics with a series of shorter, dissonant, slow-moving, acoustic clatterbang soundscapes. The whole thing is ‘held together by the joy of varispeed pitch control – major delight of reel-to-reel recording’ and it’s as rich, conceptually oblique, throwaway but important as anything in Youngs’s catalogue. A strange, drop-out beauty that flicks ash on the brown bedsit carpet and never pays the gas bill. Spend your dole on it today.

Part Wild Horses Mane On Both Sides “Pike/Portent” LP OUT NOW

Ltd to 250 copies on 140g vinyl
OUT NOW
£14.99 + shipping (£4 UK, £6 Europe, £9 USA/Canada, £12 r.o.w.) payable by PayPal to goldenlabrecordings@hotmail.co.uk

Utterly stunning new album from the long-running (and just married) duo of Kelly Jayne Jones and Pascal Nichols, better known to the world as Part Wild Horses Mane on Both Sides. They’ve moved so far, now, from their Japanese-esque psychedelicised beginnings back in the mid-‘00s where celebratory flute and drums cascaded into one another like competing tsunamis. Not that what they were doing back then wasn’t already brilliant – in fact, they heralded what felt, at the time, like it might be a whole new era of British drone (a movement that never really came to pass). It’s just that, since then, they’ve become such masters of their craft that it’s hard to feel anything but awe upon listening to Pike/Portent. For starters, they do less. In other words, they seem to be as obsessed nowadays with the space between sounds as they do with the sounds themselves. Resonance too. This record sounds like it was recorded in a cave by the ocean, it’s as simple as that. Secondly, whilst it’s still an exploration of the transitory potential of the relationship between the embellished trapezoid drum kit and the naked flute, it’s just more interrelated, more dynamic, more alive. Jones, in particular, seems to have found the perfect spaces in which to interject complementary and/or jarring sounds (clanking pebbles, pouring water, electronics, etc). It’s almost impossible to consider the result in terms of improvisational music – it’s just so considered, so accomplished, so communicative. This is as pure a demonstration as I’ve ever known of the axis at which populism tipples over into the realm of classicism. Prepare yourself. It’s going to change you. For real.

LINDA SHARROCK / (IN) THE ABYSSITY OF THE GROUNDS 3LP

GODS 180g 3LP W/ TRIPLE GATEFOLD
LTD TO 300 COPIES ONLY
SOLD OUT

Payable by PayPal to goldenlabrecordings@hotmail.co.uk

First major release of brand new material arguably since her work with Wolfgang Puschnig in the late ’80s by one of free jazz’s most important icons whose transition via a debilitating stroke into deep, guttural wordlessness has seen her enter a new realm of primal vocal raging. This is Linda Sharrock, best known for her show-stealin’ voice work on ex-husband Sonny’s two albums Black Woman and Monkey-Pockie Boo, at her wailing, heart-stopping best, flanked by a stellar group of Theresa Eipeldauer (voice), Mario Rechtern (soprano, alto, baritone, saxoline and voice), Max Bogner (guitar, electronics and voice) and Didi Kern (drums), recorded in 2014 for over TWO HOURS presented here across THREE heavyweight vinyl LPs. A truly stunning, demented and absolutely essential bombardment of relentless energy by one of the giants of avant-garde music, this is gonna sell out FAST FAST FAST, so pre-order now to avoid disappointment.

DESMADRADOS SOLDADOS DE VENTURA ‘CLIFTON PARK, NY VOLS 1&2’ LPS (ROWF 65 / ROWF 66)

Vol. 1 – £15.99 + shipping (£4 UK, £6 Europe, £9 US/Canada, £12 r.o.w.)

Vol. 2 – £15.99 + shipping (£4 UK, £6 Europe, £9 US/Canada, £12 r.o.w.)

Both volumes – £27.99 + shipping (£5 UK, £7.50 Europe, £11 US/Canada, £14.50 r.o.w.)

“Surely it is the dream of anybody who got into listening to rock music (as a passionate life changing force rather than a head nodding space filler) to learn the basics needed to play an electric guitar and just let loose with everything turned up full blast. The act is intensely invigorating, but there’s also something spiritual at work that has a life of its own – a surge of raw power that only the guitarist can control… Comparisons can be made to Glenn Branca’s guitar orchestras, The Velvet Underground’s “Sister Ray” improvisations (especially when the feedback begins to howl on the B side of Vol 1) and “Expressway To Yr Skull”-era Sonic Youth, but also to the Howling Hex Hildreth Tapes triple that Golden Lab unleashed in 2013… Far out or full on, this is the sound of rock’s past, present and future crashing together and reinventing itself.” The Wire, Nov 2015

“absolutely essential two volume collection with crazy HEITKOTTER esque artwork courtesy of SUNBURNED HAND’s JOHN MOLONEY – both references work sonically as well — DSDV are one of the preeminent “free rock” bands out there, cutting edge, tip of the spear, reconciling out-there free jazz- maybe think COLTRANE’s ASCENSION- with pummeling heavy psych straddling BARDO POND and THE STOOGES — the drummer and bassist maintain an in-and-out telepathic groove while six freaked out guitarists cut loose like almost nothin you’ve ever heard, a semi improvised yet well considered exposition of riffs – my god, it’s full of riffs – prepare yourself for a hundred minute hurricane of mind-blowing finger-blistering bliss” PSI LAB

Individual artwork combinations with every copy – no two alike. Each LP in an edition of 250 and selling fast. Don’t miss out.