Tag: In the Red Records

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: The C.I.A. Share Abrasive Ripper “Inhale Exhale”

The C.I.A. are a new indie all-star trio featuring Denée and Ty Segall and Emmett Kelly. Their latest album Surgery Channel is slated for a January 20, 2022 release through In The Red was written last year and was recorded with Mike Kriebel at Ty Segall’s Harmonizer Studios. The album is reportedly is an astute observation and blunt critique — both inward and outward. It’s also an exploration into how harshly intimate that process can be.

Surgery Channel also sees the band crafting an electrified, pulsating, metallic playpen that will get listeners strutting and moving. Essentially, the album shows punks a new way to move while remaining loyal to the punk traditions of catharsis and social commentary.

Surgery Channel‘s second and latest single “Inhale Exhale” is centered around buzzing and slashing guitars, skittering beats and rattling thump, electronic pulse and Denée’s punchy shouting. Seemingly meshing elements of industrial electronica, classic punk and old school hip-hop, “Inhale Exhale” is confrontational and abrasive yet accessible — and mosh pit friendly.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Dion Lunadon Shares Raw and Anthemic “It’s The Truth”

Dion Lunadon is a New Zealand-born, Brooklyn-based singer/songwriter and bassist, who has had a rather lengthy career: He started his career as a member of several Kiwi-based acts including The D4 and for a lengthy stint as a member of noise rock titans and JOVM mainstays A Place to Bury Strangers.

During a short break in APTBS’ touring schedule in 2017, Lunadon had a sudden rush of inspiration that resulted in what he described as a neurotic impulse to write and record a bunch of songs right here and then, which resulted in his solo debut EP Com/Broke, a batch of material inspired by the bands he loved as a youngster — including Toy Love, The Gun Club, Gestalt and Supercar.

A few months later, Lunadon  released his self-titled full-length debut, which featured the feral album singles “Fire,” and “Howl.”

Lunadon’s sophomore album Beyond Everything is slated for a June 10, 2022 release through In The Red Records. The album marks two significant milestones in Lunadon’s career: His first album released through In The Red, which he believes is an ideal match for him and his music. And the first album since leaving A Place to Bury Strangers.

Written, performed and recorded by Lunadon, the album’s material reportedly taps into a raw, palpable energy that blurs the lines between the music and its creator. The album features drums from Bambara‘s Blaze Bateh and The Black Hollies‘ Nick Ferrante.

“The record was written and recorded sporadically between 2017 and 2019,” Lunadon says in press notes. “I probably wrote about 100 songs during this period. The first album was pretty relentless which I liked, but I wanted to make something more dynamic for the 2nd record. Something that could be more conducive to repeated listens. I’d get in my studio, come up with a song title, and start working on any ideas that I had. For example, with Elastic Diagnostic, the idea was to create a hum that evokes the sound of life coursing through your body. Everything else kind of formed around that idea.”

Beyond Everything‘s second and latest single “It’s The Truth” is a gritty and raw glam-like anthem centered around chugging power chords, Lunadon’s howled and desperate delivery, forceful and propulsive drumming paired with a explosive feedback-driven coda. “It’s The Truth” further cements the Kiwi-born, Brooklyn-based artist’s reputation for crafting anthems meant to be played as loud as humanly possible. “This is one of my favorite songs on the record,” Lunadon says. “It started with the opening drum beat and the rest came together quickly. It’s about me writing songs in my little hovel of a studio and looking forward to my wife’s return home from work. A ‘distance makes the heart grow fonder’ kind of thing.” 

Directed by Alexander Barton, the accompanying for “It’s The Truth” was shot on old black and white film, and features Lunadon brandishing a chain — and playing his bass with the chain wrapped around him. It’s dangerous and downright erotic. “In Dion’s live performance he has a wall of sound and noise, it’s very textural and real. About 3/4 of the way through his set, he drags a chain out of a bag like a snake wrangler presenting a cobra to the audience,” Alexander Barton explains. “It’s an exciting moment of the set where he breaks the routine of the rock formula and shares his experimental interests and the audience really laps it up. The cameras pop out and feed his exhibitionism. I make films that feel and use not only the beauty of film, but welcome the noise and error that come with the raw and naive nature of my tools. The chain as an object and material is a fully loaded symbol and historical icon which is a powerful character itself. I wanted to honor the chain for all its brilliance, referencing metal, design, rock n’ roll, violence, sculpture, industrialism, eroticism, and Jacob Marley. ‘It’s The Truth’ is about material and the spectacle.” 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Liz Lamere Shares Sultry, Boxing-Themed Visual for Thumping “Lights Out”

I’m grateful for New Colossus Festival’s triumphant return this week. But as you can imagine, it means that this week I’ll be very busy running around Manhattan’s Lower East Side to cover shows; chatting and bullshitting with friends and colleagues; and of course, doing that valuable in-person networking that has been hampered by the pandemic. I’ll be posting when I can; it’ll just be kind of sporadic.

But let’s get to the business at hand . . .

Liz Lamere is a New York-based singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, who has had a lengthy career playing drums in several local punk bands — and perhaps more famously for collaborating with her late partner, the legendary Alan Vega on his solo work for the better part of three decades.

Lamere finally steps out into the spotlight as a solo artist with her solo debut Keep It Alive. Written and performed entirely by Lamere, Keep It Alive was recorded in her Lower Manhattan apartment during pandemic-related lockdowns in the same space where the Suicide frontman constructed his light sculptures. Keeping it a family affair, the album was engineered by Vega and Lamere’s son, Dante Vega Lamere — and then co-produced by Lamere and The Vacant Lots‘ Jared Artaud.

“There’s something very magical about creating music in the same environment where Alan created his visual art,” Liz Lamere says in press notes. “His energy is pervasive and is inevitably infused in the recordings.” She continues “ We were living through unprecedented times and Keep It Alive took adversity and uncertainty and turned it into a message of resilience and empowerment.”

The album’s material reportedly courses with the bold and defiant energy that motivated a young Lamere through her early double life as a Wall Street lawyer by day and a downtown New York musician, before she met and fell i love with Vega. Her relationship with Vega led to her becoming his manager, creative foil and keyboardist on his solo work including albums like Deuce Avenue, Power On To Zero Hour, New Raceion, Dugong Prang, 2007, Station and IT, as well as the posthumously released, lost album Mutator, which lead to the Vega Vault, which she curates with Jared Artaud.

After Vega’s death in July 2016, Lamere found it cathartic to write down thoughts and observations in notebooks. Simultaneously, she and Artaud had started working together on overseeing the mastering of IT and the production and mixing of Mutator. Interestingly, during this very busy period, the pair discussed working together on her own solo material.

Keep It Alive‘s first single, “Lights Out” is a swaggering banger, featuring tweeter and woofer rattling 808s, glistening and melodic synth washes paired with Lamere’s coolly delivered boxing and fighting metaphors. While centered around a gritty and familiar, in-your-face, New York aggression, “Lights Out” is an upbeat, life-affirming song that will give you the energy to keep on fighting the necessary and good fight.

Interestingly, “Keep It Alive” is a homage to a song on her late husband’s New Raceion that has a deep and significant meaning for her. It was one of the key lines she would chant on stage, becoming a staple of their live performances together. The main theme and vision of the album is preserving your own inner fire. “Alan always encouraged me to make my own music, and I’ve waited until the time was right as I’ve been dedicated to preserving Alan’s vision and building his legacy,” Lamere says.

Lamere is an avid boxer, who has been involved in the boxing world for over fifteen years. And the Jenni Hensler-directed video for “Lights out” was fittingly filmed on 8mm film at New York-based Trinity Boxing Club. The sultry video features Lamere and a collection of men and women of various ages and backgrounds at the punching bag and sparring to strobe lights, while others dance along.

“’Lights Out’ was the very first track I wrote,” Lamere says in press notes. “You write about what you know. It’s boxing themed. When you step in the ring your life is literally on the line. ‘Let your hands go’ is a boxing term and my mantra for going full tilt in whatever I’ve set out to do.” 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Meatbodies’ New Scorching Ripper “Cancer”

Over the course of the past decade, Los Angeles-born and-based singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Chad Ubovich has developed and honed a reputation as a key mainstay of one of the country’s most fertile and important music scenes: Ubovich had a lengthy stint playing guitar in Mikal Cronin’s backing band and he’s currently contributing bass with Ty Segall and with Charlie Moothart and as a member of Fuzz. Additionally, the founding member and frontman of his own band, the experimental noise rock/freak rock outfit Meatbodies.

Meatbodies’ latest effort 333 was officially released today through In The Red Records. The album, which features corrosive bangers, raw acoustic rave-ups and primitive electronics, charts Ubovich’s personal journey from drug-induced darkness to clear-eyed sobriety — while simultaneously reflecting on how the world he re-entered was still pretty messed up — if not more so. “I’d been touring for eight years straight with all these bands, and just couldn’t do it anymore,” Ubovich recalls. “There was also a feeling in the air that everything was changing, politically. Things just didn’t feel right, and I went down a dark path.” Ubovich adds, “These lyrics are dark, but I think these are things that a lot of people are feeling and going through. Here in America, we’re watching the fall of U.S. capitalism, and 333 is a cartoonish representation of that decline.” 

Fortunately Ubovich was able to pull himself back from the brink and upon getting sober, began writing and recording material at a furious and impassioned pace. By late 2019, the band — Ubovich and Dylan Fujoka (drums) — had a new album in the can, ready to be mixed. Much like countless other artists, the pandemic forced the band to put their record on hold.

With some newfound downtime, Ubovich discovered a cache of demos that he and Fujoka recorded in a bedroom during the summer of 2018. As it turns out, Ubovcih really liked what he heard. Unlike their established full-band attack, the demos were deliriously disordered. Ironically, because 333’s material found the band working within a much tighter lo-fi aesthetic, the restriction allowed them to open space for more free-ranging experimentation. While speaking of the disillusionment of a lost generation, the album’s material is sparked by the innovation that limited resources and moxie can inspire.

333’s latest single “Cancer” is an expansive mosh pit ripper centered around scorching power chords driven riffage, thunderous drumming and mantra-like lyrics. While on one hand, the song superficially seems nihilistic, the song is fueled by a celebration — albeit of very small things.

The Josh Erkman-directed video for “Cancer” is a fittingly trippy visual split between the members of the band in the studio, shot in a hallucinogenic haze and two costumed men riffing out in front of a camp fire in the middle of nowhere.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Jon Spencer Releases Dread-Filled Visuals for Scuzzy and Groovy “I Got the Hits”

Best known as the founding member of New York-based alt rock acts, The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Boss Hog, Heavy Trash and Pussy Galore, Jon Spencer will be releasing his first solo album, Spencer Sings the Hits! on November 9, 2018 through In The Red Records, and the Bill Skibbe-produced album, finds the renowned guitarist and frontman embracing a DIY approach while collaborating with Quasi‘s and Heatmiser’s Sam Coombes and M. Sord. Now, as you may recall, earlier this year, I wrote about “Do The Trash Can.” Spencer Sings the Hits!’ first single, a blistering, scuzzy and abrasive ripper that drew from blues, industrial rock and metal centered snarling, garage punk attitude, caustic power chords and an oddly danceable groove.

Unsurprisingly, the album’s second and latest single is the swaggering and scuzzy industrial, garage blues “I Got the Hits,” and much like it’s predecessor, it’s an explosive ripper centered around explosive and abrasive guitar chords, a shit ton of double entendres and a propulsive junkyard groove that’s manages to be danceable and mosh pit friendly.

Directed by Alex Italics, the recently released video for “I Got the Hits” delves into the darkest and murkiest corners of America, and throughout the video we see a completely immobilized and helpless Jon Spencer, as life and sinister and shadowy figures lurk move around. “Over the past year I kept seeing wonderful and strange music videos that had one thing in common: all were directed by an Alex Italics,” Spencer explains in press notes. “I determined to track down this young auteur with the aim of getting a similar cinematic sensation for my new album Spencer Sings The Hits!. Alex turned out to be a mild-mannered young man from Tucson, Arizona living in Southern California. I gave him a free hand to pick the song and devise a treatment. The result is the scary slice-of-life that you can now see for yourself.”

“I love the creepy contrast with the song’s punk abandon,” Spencer continues. “We filmed at a rented house in Santa Ana. At the end of each day, after the nearby nightly Disneyland fireworks had faded and the cast and crew had left, I would sleep in a bunk bed in the child’s bedroom. Turns out doing an entire video laying on the floor is harder than it looks!” 

Adds the video’s director, “nothin’ says ‘rock and roll’ like suburban angst, existential dread, and shadowy figures!”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Best known as the founding member of New York-based alt rock acts, The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Boss Hog, Heavy Trash and Pussy Galore, Jon Spencer will be releasing his first solo album, Spencer Sings the Hits on November 9, 2018 through In The Red Records, and the Bill Skibbe-produced album, finds the renowned guitarist and frontman embracing a DIY approach while collaborating with Quasi‘s and Heatmiser’s Sam Coombes and M. Sord. Now, as you may recall, earlier this year, I wrote about “Do The Trash Can.” Spencer Sings the Hits’ first single, a blistering, scuzzy and abrasive ripper that drew from blues, industrial rock and metal centered snarling, garage punk attitude, caustic power chords and an oddly danceable groove.

Unsurprisingly, the album’s second and latest single is the swaggering and scuzzy industrial, garage blues “I Got the Hits,” and much like it’s predecessor, it’s an explosive ripper centered around explosive and abrasive guitar chords, a shit ton of double entendres and a propulsive junkyard groove that’s manages to be danceable and mosh pit friendly.

 

 

 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Jon Spencer Teases Solo Debut with Scuzzy Trashtastic Visuals for “Do The Trash Can”

Best known as the founding member of New York-based alt rock acts, The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Boss Hog, Heavy Trash and Pussy Galore, Jon Spencer will be releasing his first solo album, Spencer Sings the Hits later on this year through In The Red Records, and the Bill Skibbe-produced album, which finds the renowned guitarist and frontman embracing a DIY approach while collaborating with Quasi’s and Heatmiser’s Sam Coombes and M. Sord.

“Do The Trash Can,” the album’s propulsive and blistering first single will further cement Spencer’s long-held reputation for a scuzzy and abrasive sound that draws from the blues, industrial rock and metal centered snarling, garage punk attitude, caustic power chords and an oddly danceable yet mosh pit friendly groove — while kicking ass and taking names. Interestingly, the album will reportedly feature percussion with a metallic edge as a nod to Spencer’s past with Pussy Galore. 

Created by Andrew Hooper, the recently released video for the song is aptly scuzzy and trashy, as its centered around utterly trashtrastic horror film footage, bikini beach movies and other vintage ephemera — with the result being visuals that are a trippy mind fuck. 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Over the past couple years, Memphis, TN-based punk band Ex-Cult emerged into the national scene and became a JOVM mainstay with the release of their sophomore effort 2014’s Midnight Passenger and its follow-up, 2015’s Cigarette Machine EP, two efforts which cemented the act’s reputation for a furious, bruising sound — and an equally intense, bruising live show. 2016 may arguably be the biggest years to date in the band’s history as Famous Class Records released the “Summer of Fear”/”1906” 7 inch last month and the band’s highly-anticipated third full-length Negative Growth is slated for a September 23, 2016 release through  In The Red Records.

As the band’s frontman Chris Shaw explains in press notes, “In the year of the snitch, there are forces beyond your control that keep you up at night. Ghost notions that swirl around your room while you sleep. Your own pillow laughing right in your face while you fight for an hour of rest. There are voices that whisper from the corner, telling you everything you never wanted to hear. Negative Growth, our third album , is dedicated to fear and deception.

“This collection of songs were conceived in Memphis and finalized in Los Angeles with the help of our family doctor, Ty Segall. It was created in February 2016, when we traded Memphis misery for a week of California sunshine. Negative Growth is a nine-track nightmare, a death trip in the crystal ship.” Now, if you were frequenting this site last month you may recall that I wrote about Negative Growth‘s first single “Attention Ritual,” a tense, bilious and abrasively paranoid song that evokes the narrator’s desperate, self-flagellating, self-doubting and fucked up psyche, and the inner voices that fuel one’s anxious nightmares — and on another level, it evokes the absolutely mad times we live in.  The album’s second and latest single “Let You In” is a urgent, desperate howl into an unceasing, cold and uncaring void with all the fury and anger within every sinew and figure of your body.

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms


Certainly, if you’ve been frequenting this site for some time, you may be familiar with Memphis, TN-based punk band Ex-Cult, a band that emerged into the national scene with the 2014 release of their sophomore effort Midnight Passenger and its follow-up, 2015’s Cigarette Machine EP — and simultaneously, the band became a JOVM mainstay for a raw, angry, bruising sound and live show. Interestingly, 2016 may arguably be one of the biggest years to date in the band’s history as Famous Class Records will be releasing the “Summer of Fear”/”1906” 7 inch on August 12, 2016 and September 23, 2016 will mark the highly-anticipated release of the Memphis, TN-based punk band’s third, full-length album Negative Growth through In The Red Records.

As the band’s frontman Chris Shaw explains in press notes,  “In the year of the snitch, there are forces beyond your control that keep you up at night. Ghost notions that swirl around your room while you sleep. Your own pillow laughing right in your face while you fight for an hour of rest. There are voices that whisper from the corner, telling you everything you never wanted to hear. Negative Growth, our third album , is dedicated to fear and deception.

“This collection of songs were conceived in Memphis and finalized in Los Angeles with the help of our family doctor, Ty Segall. It was created in February 2016, when we traded Memphis misery for a week of California sunshine. Negative Growth is a nine-track nightmare, a death trip in the crystal ship.” And as a result, the album’s first single “Attention Ritual” is a tense, bilious, caustic and paranoid song that evokes the narrator’s desperate, fucked up, self-doubting and self-flagellating inner voices that keeps him up at night, fraught with worry and hatred — and the tense, nightmarish times we live currently live in, in which everything seems  to have gone absolutely mad.