Queen Of The Wave is the startling new album from Pepe Deluxe. It’s an esoteric pop opera that’s a totally unique proposition, thematically based around the mystical 19th Century novel A Dweller On Two Planets which was supposedly channelled by its American author, Frederick S Oliver, from a cosmic entity called Phylos the Thibetan and concerns life in Atlantis and on Venus, sci-fi futurism and reincarnations.

Rafter: “when nathan and i were touring around the us after animal feelings came out, we listened to a lot of black metal demo tapes in the car… it was really inspiring, extreme, blown out, ridiculous but heartfelt… i made this album, fed by those inspirations and a wave of existential freakout, human mind explosion. in my fantasy, it’s like darkthrone meets the kinks meets lee perry… ”

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credits :

rafter – guitars, bass, singing, moog

nathan hubbard – drums

chris cory – saxophone on 7, 11, 12, metals on 7

lizeth santos – singing on 9

rulian roberts – guitar on 10

Over the course of 17 tracks, Sealess See is a beachy landscape of summer sound.

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This remix record wanders through the minds of Jaytram (drummer for Yeasayer) and Prefuse 73. They were both asked to plunder and ravage the entire Epstein catalog as the source material and pass it through their respective creative processes. These two creators are less worried about a notion of sanctity of the original and instead are visionaries with the material, engineering something previously unimaginable. There are about 1 million adjectives needed to try to cartograph a tangible roadmap to where this record leads, but we would rather you just take your own journey.

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We present Say Goodbye. A wholly new thing. A departure from what came before and an adventure story and hard luck tale all in one.

Released in lieu with Sounds Are Active.

An astounding work of passion and patience over one thousand hours in the making, Long Beach musician/composer Chris Schlarb bestows his latest musical vision, Psychic Temple, onto the world. Known for his work as half of the hypnotic, jazz/drone duo, I Heart Lung, Schlarb’s latest work expands wildly in new directions, incorporating wordless vocal choirs, string quartets and horn sections into his 29-member ensemble.

Inspired by the rhythmic pulse of microhouse, and the melodic vocabulary of jazz and folk music, Psychic Temple is a deeply considered meditation on beauty. Recording began in January of 2009 and over the next nineteen months Schlarb collaborated with twenty-eight musicians (including four bassists, three drummers and six vocalists) to build Psychic Temple.

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It would not be an exaggeration to boast that Psychic Temple contains performances from some of today’s finest musicians including Mick Rossi of the Philip Glass Ensemble, legendary Minutemen bassist Mike Watt, vocalists Julianna Barwick, DM Stith, Joel St. Julien (of ELLUL), Aaron Roche, trumpeter Kris Tiner, Brian Blade Fellowship pedal steel guitarist Dave Easley, Weird Weeds percussionist Nick Hennies, guitarist Danny Miller and drummer Tabor Allen (of Rare Grooves and The Widow Babies), bassists Steuart Liebig, C.J. Boyd and Anthony Shadduck, and Danny T. Levin and David Moyer on horns.

Originally released on Homesleep in 2003, You Are in the Line of Fire and They Are Shooting at You included special guests Todd Barnes, Pall Jenkins, Larry Lilvick, Dylan Rice-Leary, Caroline Branstetter, Marcel Lavergne, Jude Galloway and Cherry.

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Originally released on Emperor Jones and Delboy in 2001, this self-titled release was mostly recorded by Greg Paul at Herbert House. In addition to the core band of the Branstetter brothers (Kirk and Kevin), Glen Galloway and Kevin Cascell, the album features contributions from Jason Funk on drums (tracks 2, 8, 9 and 11), and Dylan Rice-Leary on bass (track 1).

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Originally on vinyl by Infinite Chug and CD on Emperor Jones in 1998, Fragments of a Lucky Break was mostly recorded by Greg Paul at the Herbert House in 1997 and was mastered by Ryan Foster. This was the core Trumans Water band of Kevin and Kirk Branstetter, Kevin Cascell and Glen Galloway.

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