Discography
TOPOGRAPHIES - Ideal Form04/12/2020 · Format: Cassette · MT22
"Ideal Form" is Topographies debut full-length.. The album synthesizes and clarifies the band’s aesthetic in eight drum-machine and synth heavy tracks, accompanied by Jérémie Rüest's ethereal guitar work, the nimble basslines of Justin Oronos, and Gray Tolhurst’s poetic lyrics. The album was engineered and produced by Chris King (also a member of LA-based band, Cold Showers) and mastered by Rafael Anton Irisarri at Black Knoll Studios in New York. Tolhurst (whose early exposure to music came from his father Laurence Tolhurst, drummer/keyboardist of The Cure) draws on his dual fascinations of independent music and 20th century poetry to craft songs and lyrics that seek to explore the complex map of occurrences that situate and shape a life."Ideal Form" is concerned with the projections human beings place upon experience and the impossibility of a perfectly realized existence.
INGRINA - Siste Lys 27/11/2020 · Format: Vinyl, CD · MT20
Siste Lys is an album featuring old Ingrina songs (Casual, Stolidity, Frozen), reworked for the occasion, and new ones, products of troubled times (Jailers, Now, Walls). The album was recorded, mixed and mastered by the band, amidst the epidemic waves.
Like Etter Lys (debut album), Siste Lys is based on a metaphorical tale of the geological and oceanic trials that life forms go through when faced with civilisational nightmares.
Siste Lys depicts the reappearance of the jailers, the walls and the bodies, from the turbulent swampy life forms, heckled by the waters. The vital movement is gradually fading away, as the light behind the walls disappears. Lives now lodge themselves in the ether of consciousness without being able to take on neither body nor matter. The intensity of the internal madness is equaled only by the absolute paralysis of the physical movement outside. The world is so frozen, the bones so solidified, that life takes refuge in the heart of a narrow and egotistical nothingness that leads only to insanity. Siste Lys tells the story of these lives trying to break the civilizational ice that imprisons them. To finally give substance to the ecstatic dreams, whose memory is already faltering.
SPOTLIGHTS - We Are All Atomic07/11/20 · Cassette · MT21
Heavy, dreamy, sweeping and atmospheric, Spotlights blend shoegaze and doom metal on their new post-nuclear EP.
With the massive impact of their 2017 Ipecac debut and tours with The Melvins and The Deftones, Spotlights secured a place in the heavy music consciousness with their crushing, dreamy and atmospheric blend of shoegaze and doom-metal. Following acclaimed 2019 album 'Love and Decay,' the band return with the boundary-pushing 'We Are All Atomic' EP to further validate the majesty of what they do.
TESA - Control12/08/2020 · Format: Cassette · MT19
Four years after the release of GHOST (their fourth album) and tours with bands like Neurosis, WLVS and Whores, TESA are back.
CONTROL is the new and sixth studio album of the band form Riga, Latvia, and will be released in May 2020.
Recorded and engineered by Girt Laumanis, with whom the band has worked on all previous records, and mastered again by James Plotkin who worked with artists like Sunn O))), Electric Wizard, ISIS, EARTH and Pelican.
With this release TESA has ventured into a more dynamic and diverse part of songwriting and composing.
Significantly, the first complete instrumental album (even though vocal parts have always been more of a contextual, often barely noticeable layer) that drifts from monotonous rhythmics, dark but still melodic riffs into layers of drone, ambient and even harsh noise.
Blending all tracks together with interludes and ambient passages, the album is best experienced as a whole, as was the band's primary intent when arranging the composition and flow of the songs.
TOPOGRAPHIES - Not My Loneliness, But Ours03/07/2020 · Format: cassette · MT18
Topographies’ newest release, an EP entitled Not My Loneliness, But Ours, is a meditation on community, collectivity, and isolation recorded during the world coronavirus pandemic. The tracks were written and recorded by individual members in their San Francisco bedrooms and home studios and augmented by passing the files back and forth online before being sent to friend and collaborator Alexis Berthelot in New York for mixing and mastering. The EP then is a transcription of the collaborative process, removed from the communal spaces of the rehearsal room and the stage, the locations where the band usually works out new ideas and songs. Still, the four songs express a longing for the presence of others in a world that has become increasingly remote, both before and as a result of the pandemic. The lyrics posit that the organizing element of being human is an innate aloneness. Paradoxically, this collective loneliness unites us, gives meaning to art, and offers us a chance at connections with not only those who we live with or around but the panoply of human existence; the living and the dead. The mood of the songs is one of melancholy hope and faith in a world that can seem at times permeated with an ever-deepening darkness. The band hopes that these songs can act as small wayposts within this “land of shadows”, as Tolhurst intones in the dreamy ballad “In Your Hands”, somewhere to rest, take stock, and move forward with others and within oneself.
HININ - Hors-Jeu13/12/2019 · Format: Vinyl, CD · MT14
"This LP is so melodic and full, it’s surprising it was made by a two-piece. Hinin’s synth-heavy, oi-inspired coldwave soars above most contemporary post-punk"- Kerry Cardoza, Bandcamp
"French atmospheric post punk act HININ have managed to show off really creative songwriting and some of the most peculiar vocals I’ve heard in a while, putting a fresh spin on the well explored subgenre with a style." - Idioteq
GLACIER - No Light Ever22/07/2019 · Format: Cassette · MT16
Glacier is a five-piece instrumental band based in Boston, MA whose music fully embodies their name: a crushingly loud and unrelenting force.
Since their inception, Glacier has played heavily throughout the Northeastern U.S. with friends such as Astronoid, Big Brave, Black Pyramid, Pray for Sound, Lume, Au Revoir, Shy Low, Set and Setting, thisquietarmy, Infinity Shred, InAeona and many more. In the process they have built a reputation for being an honest and hardworking band in the community.
Glacier returns in 2019 with their strongest effort to date. Simply titled "No Light Ever", the album is a collection of songs that is the culmination of years of hard work that is every bit as bleak as the name implies.
BOOJI BOYS - Tube Reducer28/08/2019 · Format: Cassette · MT15
‘Tube Reducer’ follows 2017’s double whammy of their self-titled debut and its gnarlier-than-thou follow-up ‘Weekend Rocker’ – the latter of which was released on Xmas day, cuz what’s more festive than the gift of ultra-lo-fi punk that sounds like The Undertones playing ‘Smarter Than U’ inside a hairdryer while dragging The Jags by their skinny ties and throwing them in a chemical waste dump?
And guess what? It’s more of the good stuff. In fact it could well be their best record so far. Sonically, you should know what to expect by now – a disregard for fidelity that’d make Guided By Voices knock back another beer or 12 in appreciation; songs that sound way more effortlessly simple than they necessarily are; melodies that’ll burrow their way into your head even as you fight through the fuzz to make out what the hell vocalist Alex Mitchell is actually singing…
‘Stevie Cool’ is the bona fide winner this time – the scuzzed-out powerpop anthem to end all scuzzed-out powerpop anthems – but there’s not a bad cut on offer here. ‘Nothing Good’ blazes by in a fit of nail-biting energy and hooks so razor-sharp you could use ‘em to cut through sheet metal, and if you’ve not donned your pogo-ing shoes to throw yourself between the walls of your house when ‘Life As A Fed’ kicks in… well shit, man, do you even punk rock? By the utterly batshit closer ‘Moto-Hard’ they’ve even thrown a brass section into the mix, skronking away cheerily and deliriously like Flipper’s ‘Sex Bomb’ running the wrong way up an escalator.
Basically, with every passing record, the songs get even more brain-searingly awesome, the vocals get more buried and the air above your head gets punched that bit harder. Booji Boys are on a roll. It’s anybody’s guess as to how long the Halifax-hailing quintet can continue to put out records as heroically thrilling as this, but at least we’ve got ‘em in the here and now. For fuck’s sake, treasure ‘em while you can."
Will Fitzpatrick.
ORBEL - Hegan19/09/2019 · Format: Cassette · MT13
A dark ocean where a bright sun sets, Orbel is this horizon where this contrast dawns.
Highlighted in 2018 with the release of a first EP « Beyond There », the music of the band paints lunar landscapes where melodies reverberate like baroque mantras chanted by female voices.
After this effort, sometimes remembering Shannon Wright or Chelsea Wolfe, the quartet has refined its sound through the guitars rawness and the tension on the layers of synths, while leaving a more personal mark with lyrics in basque language.
Their first album ‘Hegan’ is a unique universe, an introspective and thrilling journey unveiling itself track after track. Through this one and outstanding live shows, Orbel now navigates on those dark waters, crossing waves with the confidence of reaching the light.
LANAYAH - Forever In May19/07/2019 · Format: Cassette · MT12
"Pulling from doom, folk, post-hardcore, post-metal, screamo, shoegaze, and more, Lanayah create the sonic embodiment of Forever in May‘s album cover: rooted in organic compositions that are accented by color, atmosphere, and massive musical results." - Scott Murphy, heavyblogisheavy.com
"There are the hardcore sections that carry a debt to Envy, wounds as gaping maws roaring until they bleed out. “Wind Chimes” is the post-hardcore I want to hear, treading close to classic emo before sprawling out into liberatory anger. Sometimes they crumble into doom, sometimes they crumble into synths that come from college dorms on Eno and second-wave black metal benders." - Andy O'Connor, vinylmeplease.com
"Don’t be led one way or the other by the serenity and simplicity of the album art, Forever in May is packing some evocative power." - Andrew Rothmund, invisibleoranges.com
GLASSING - Spotted Horse17/05/2019 · Format: Vinyl, CD, Cassette · MT11
Cold sand on a barren coastline. Spectral blackness. Godless nights. The calmness of undisturbed water. The illusion of belonging. Death As A Gift. These are but a minute illustration of the vast array of themes and explorations deliberated upon by Austin, TX trio GLASSING on their sophomore opus Spotted Horse. Weaving together layers upon layers of dense textures, swirling blast beats and looming atmospheres, GLASSING excel at the art of organized chaos through sound. Across 10 songs and 44 minutes, GLASSING blend elements of black metal and post-hardcore with ambient explorations, dream-pop sensibilities and grinding walls of sound that defy categorization. Spotted Horse is, at its core, a construction of dynamic, beautifully unsettling soundscapes and nothingness unsurfaced
MOTIONAL & GRAND CIEL - Ater Iterare21/09/2019 · Format: Vinyl · MT10
Stoned the stars look at the sudden flight nocturnal autumn invited itself to the feast of the apostles we left doors open there is no real entrance nor exit everything seems to wear the apparats of a beginning and an end everything is only between both there are traces left so that we can walk in these majestic solitudes we are no longer guided by fear desire or anything rational we do not understand them more is drunkenness a relic an artifact a guide a door no side A nor side B neither a beginning nor an end these are footsteps outside there are traces there are traces
there are traces...