Thrill Jockey Us Vinyl & CDs

Review: Talk about the perfect meeting of minds. Ellen Arkbro is one of Europe's most sought after contemporary composers and musicians right now, having worked with revered institutions such as London's Barbican, GRM Paris, and Kolner Philharmonie in recent times, to name but a few. Johan Graden stands head and shoulders above almost all the rest in the list of Sweden's finest pianists and modern jazz masterminds.

Together, as you might expect, they make beautiful, sometimes sweet, occasionally mournful, always heartfelt music that refuses to sit in classical or jazz camps, and instead straddles the two while reaching for the stars in search of whole new tones that have never, or rarely, been discovered before. Really special stuff you'd be a fool to ignore, and crazy not to fall head over heels for.

Review: BIG BRAVE's music epitomises what has been called 'massive minimalism,' with layers of textural distortion and feedback accentuating its weight and frayed edges. Their artistry blends traditional folk techniques with a modern deconstruction of guitar music, all of which is evident in the new album A Chaos Of Flowers, which is a follow-up to their fierce 2023 album Nature Morte. Lyrically, the songs delve into vulnerability, isolation, and co-existence in nature and guitarist and vocalist Robin Wattie drew inspiration from poetry by female-presenting artists, exploring alienation's impact on the psyche. This record is a testament to the band's ability to evoke intense emotions through minimalist yet powerful arrangements.

Review: Rhode Island based metallic experimentalist duo The Body have become renowned, not just for their own unique brand of heaving, caustic, dread-laden doomgazing, but for their dynamic slew of collaborative projects which has seen them work with the likes of deathgrind extremists Full Of Hell, sludge metal bastions Thou and noisecore industrialists Uniform, to name but a few. Orchards Of A Futile Heaven is the latest work to join this ever-expansive list of collaborations, seeing the pair link up with Berlin based DJ and experimental producer Dis Fig (aka DJ Felicia Chen) in an effort "to find new avenues to make heavy music that looked beyond tropes of metal and electronic music by merging the two". The resulting maelstrom offers a cacophonous swarm of distorted, screeching electronics and ethereal, menacing vocals submerged beneath layers of haunting, nocturnal, sonic malevolence. Perfect for all the family.

Review: Spanish modular synthesist and multi-instrumentalist Cecile Schott, aka. Colleen, has been prolific since 2003, and shows no signs of stopping for anyone. Through hypnotic synthwork and repetition, her latest 'Le jour et la nuit du reel' ('The day and the night of the real') gets at just one theme and one theme only; the sheer incomprehensibility of reality in its totality. Whether this is a theme we could glean from the sound of the record alone, we don't know, although it's certainly a mood that could be evoked by it. A whopping 21 original pieces of whirling, looping arpeggios and muted, tuned blips hears Colleen draw on every inspiration from old French adages to day-and-night cycles, making for an impressively impressionistic work of art.

Review: Sludge-inflected noise-rock trio Eye Flys may have whittled themselves down following the departure of second guitarist/founding member Spencer Hazzard (Full Of Hell), but that seemingly hasn't diluted their sonic hubris by one single iota. Following on from their 2020 debut full-length Tub Of Lard and 2021's Exigent Circumstance EP, this self-titled sophomore effort continues their pummelling examination of a broken world and systemic prejudices through grinding, buzzsaw riffs and barrages of fuzzed out grooves that echo the likes of Melvins only if fed through a rusted woodchipper. Ugly music for ugly times.

Review: The third album from Baltimore synth pop romanticists Future Islands was one of 2011's best moments, and represented yet another change of tact from the band in question. We'd only just got over In Evening Air, the preceding record which felt like being trapped in your mind's eye as it descended into heartbroken madness following a sudden breakup (it remains, after all, one of the finest breakup albums of all time).

With that in mind, On The Water was the redemptive "everything might be OK there are plenty of fish in the sea we just need to embrace life" shot to the head everyone deserves once they've done with their wallowing. Which isn't to say things feel resolutely positive here, more that the tracks no longer feel confined, but instead free to run through wide open spaces.

Review: "Sonic Citadel" marks Brians Gibson and Chippendale's seventh studio album and it is one that finds them revealing a little more of themselves than before. "Blow To The Head" is an intense opener with caustic texture, dense layers and scuzzy noise that soundtracks a manic episode, while elsewhere there are much more angular and punk influenced rhythm tracks with deathly vocals mired in gauzy riffs engulfed in dirt, grit and sandpaper sonics. Standout track "Halloween 3" is a suitably horror fuelled track of high energy, lo fi fuzz that will keep any demons away.

Review: Apparently critics have been coining the phrase OOIOO-ish to describe the sound of this Japanese experimental rock band meet avant-garde jazz or polyrhythmic progressive sound walls. Those looking for anything but brevity will be in their element, these are epics in the truest sense of the word. And not just in running time. The 11-minute "Walk for "345" Minutes, While Saying "Ah Yeah!" with a "Mountain Book" In One Hand, Until A Shower Of Light Pours Down" might be the longest song name we've ever encountered. It's slow build from staccato warm up into layer upon layer of cosmic greatness pretty much summarising this entire record. Put it this way, you'll not be bored for the duration with this mystic meld of Far Eastern nuances and daring rock.

Review: Sam Prekop and John McEntire made their debut as a collaborative partnership on Thrill Jockey with this album. Sons Of came on CD and limited, long since sold out cassette in 2022 and now it arrives on wax as a double LP that also includes the bonus cut 'A Drink At The Banquet.' Their experimental sound is a nimble mix of supple synth work an involving beats. Texture and timbre plays heavily across each freeform cut as moods build and grooves grow. There are rueful, far sighted star-gazers like 'Ascending By Night' and more lush dancers such as 'A Yellow Robe" (part 1)'.

Review: Fans of The Grateful Dead listen up: you should have been taking note of Rose City Band before now. Don't worry, though, this self-titled from a blues-tipped troupe - who clearly understand the joys of psychedelia - is the outfit's debut. As such while you've missed a bit, there's hopefully far more to come. When it comes to outfits like Rose City Band it's easy to simply reel off a list of people the pack have elements of, partly because accurate definitions don't come easy when there are shades of garage rock, tripped out roll, and even some hallucinogenic take on country and western swoon at play. And that's just on the appropriately titled "Wandering Feeling". You could well nod to Moon Duo, Little Feat and the aforementioned Dead, alongside Cosmic Americana, of course. References aside, RCB rank among the finest making this fare, so prepare to get lost in a kaleidoscopic road trip.

Review: Wooden Shjips and Moon Duo vocalist-guitarist Ripley Johnson seems like the kind of guy who's never going to get boring. Having seduced pretty much everyone in earshot with a unique brand of psychedelic country music, earning the kind of cult following that gets you booked for the equally cult, sorely-missed, and utterly legendary All Tomorrow's Parties festival (RIP), he's continued to explore the possibilities and prospects of that sound.

Garden Party is the fourth LP under his Rose City Band project, and is gorgeous and alluring as ever. Apparently Johnson was inspired by long summer days and nights spent on verandas kicking back and enjoying balmy temperatures, and that feeling emanates from the tracks here. A beautiful collection of crooning guitars within lackadaisical arrangements, capable of transporting you to warmer, slower places.

Review: Rose City Band is a solo project of Ripley Johnson, who is known for his work in Wooden Shjips and Moon Duo. 'Garden Party' is the fourth album of the project. Thematically, it deals with the summer months and what Johnson has taken to calling 'porch music', two words which conjure a wealth of relaxing mental images. From 'Chasing Rainbows' to 'El Rio', Johnson creates lush, rich psychedelic rock soundscapes with a country influence, sure to excite road-trippers just as much as they are to sate veranda-loungers alike.

Review: Rose City Band is a solo project of Ripley Johnson, who is known for his work in Wooden Shjips and Moon Duo. 'Garden Party' is the fourth album of the project. Thematically, it deals with the summer months and what Johnson has taken to calling 'porch music', two words which conjure a wealth of relaxing mental images. From 'Chasing Rainbows' to 'El Rio', Johnson creates lush, rich psychedelic rock soundscapes with a country influence, sure to excite road-trippers just as much as they are to sate veranda-loungers alike.

Review: Los Angeles-based Canadian-American experimentalist Claire Rousay has made a name for herself due to her unique approach to post-rock-inflected ambience built off of primitive DIY field recordings captured on a Zoom H5 Handy Recorder, resulting in a curious form of emo musique concrete or "emo-ambient". Following on from a myriad of collaborations, projects, and singles, Sentiment marks her first full-length to put her usually hidden voice front and centre; utilising auto-tune to craft emotive hyper-folk musings delivered with androgynous hues. Described as a "meditation of the poignant emotional terrains of loneliness, nostalgia, sentimentality, guilt, and sex"; Rousay uses fractured narratives and one-way conversations to deliver painfully relatable, often uncomfortable musings, smothered beneath layers of droning reverb, monotonous acoustic plucking, and everyday sounds almost too familiar to pinpoint. The end result is the musical equivalent to our inner monologue at its lowest ebb, nattering incessantly while the world moves on around us, while sonically, it's the culmination of all Rousay's experimentation thus far, yet simultaneously more fearless and fragile.

Review: Claire Rousay's Sentiment album is a captivating exploration of poignant emotional landscapes, encompassing themes of loneliness, nostalgia, sentimentality, guilt, and sensuality. Through a blend of experimental and ambient music, Rousay deftly incorporates textural found sounds, sumptuous drones, and candid field recordings to create music that celebrates life's banalities with granular detail. Rousay's vocals and guitar take centre stage, conveying a powerful desire for connection amidst a backdrop of resignation. The album that balances vulnerability with innovation, delivering anthemic yet deeply personal songs that resonate with listeners on an emotional level. Sentiment is a blissfully melancholic and undeniably sensual listening experience.

Review: Claire Rousay continues her compelling evolution with this stunning new album on Thrill Jockey. sentiment once again finds threads of instrumentation and field recordings interweaving with snatches of poetry, dialogue and of course rousay's heart-rending vocal turns. The lens on this particular record is focused on loneliness, nostalgia, sentimentality, guilt and sex, captured in moments of heartfelt songwriting and passages of experimental, ambient exploration. It's simultaneously challenging and immediately endearing, adding ever more depth to rousay's intriguing profile as she dabbles in pop without ever compromising her experimental instincts.

Review: Sightless Pit is Lee Buford (aka The Body) and Dylan Walker (aka Full of Hell). The creative pair's debut album Grave of A Dog put them right up there with the best bands in the heavy metal scene. They now follow it up with another album that redefined heavy guitar sounds. Lockstep Bloodwar is an eclectic one sound wise and it features some big names making guts appearances such as Gangsta Boo from Three 6 Mafia, YoshimiO from Boredoms, plus Midwife, Lane Shii Otayonii and more. This version comes on limited translucent red marbled vinyl for a look as freaky as the music sounds.

Review: Esteemed American IDM producer Drew Daniel is back with a new album under his The Soft Pink Truth alias titled Is It Going To Get Any Deeper Than This? Of the title, Daniel explained it's an actual question proposed to him which has become a mantra of sorts, with the album created as a way to imagine possible musical responses to her question. Created during Covid lockdowns, Daniel recruited a virtual disco band from friends across the world and traversing many genres such as disco, minimalism, ambient, shoegaze and jazz, then pieced together in his Baltimore studio. Guests include Turkish arranger Ulas Kurugullu, Jamie Stewart of Xiu Xu, Jenn Wasner (Wye Oak, Flock of Dimes), Brooklyn techno artist Rose E Kross and Daniel Clark.

Review: Purely democratic bands are hard to come by, but Tortoise might just be a known exception to that rule. 'Rhythms, Resolutions and Clusters' is probably ther best LP in their lot to encompass this outlook; a well-rounded album of trudging quasi-electronic codi, released in 1995 as part of the industrial and post-rock scenescape. It hears 7 tracks nod to wonky, pained, muddy dub in the vein of 23 Skidoo, This Heat, Pole or Muslimgauze, and this new cream reissue of course contains all the remixes; Steve Albini, Jim O'Rourke, and Bundy K. Brown et al.

Review: Tortoise's 1995 album Rhythms, Resolutions & Clusters gets a first new vinyl pressing in almost three whole decades. It is a fine collection of remixes that is from ended associates and family including Casey Rice, Mike Watt (Minute Men), John McEntire, Bundy K.Brown and many more. They all help make it a much better than average remix album with a couple of all time gems from these a-listers who are all in fine form. Jim O'Rourke's 'Initial Gesture Protraction' and Steve Albini 's take on 'The Match Incident' are two particular standouts.