Clearing - Distance

Muddy shifting walls of ambience from Clearing, with Distance on No Kings. For devotees of pure ambience, this is damn near a religious experience. Nine tracks of sad, beautiful, reflective stuff. Piercingly emotional melodies smeared like thick paint across your skull, dripping down into your eyes causing a hazy hallucinatory vision of the future. There is a dignity within these crumbling walls of sound. Just immeasurable depth, unfolding another world within your headphones. Rather than try to dissect each moment and understand the construction of these tracks, it seems best to just let it be what it is. Sounds like a head held high among the ruins of an unknown civilization.

Edition of 100 with risograph art from Lee Noble, individually stickered, which I haven't seen before, and really quite like. Suprisingly this isn't sold out yet, and can be grabbed direct from No Kings along with a few remaining copies of a killer from Sparkling Wide Pressure.

Secret Birds - In Hex

A challenging and progressive confluence of styles from Secret Birds, with In Hex on No Kings. Wonderful transition between genres, from front to back. Tracks like the hypnotic opener Century Waves bathe the ear in damaged, low resolution loops, sometimes somber, others warm and uplifting. Others, like the exceptional close, Zen Pyramid, begin in a swirl of loose reverberating drums, and end in a tumbling cyclical mix of buzzing guitar. A grey (or is it pink?) area where drum circles, hallucinatory images, electronics, and sludge guitar fuzz share an unusual kinship. A future earth forest ritual where extraterrestrial druids have begun reconstructing the Eagle Twin studio outtakes. An extremely rewarding and transportive recording. Killer.

Edition of just 80 copies, sweet pink risograph j card, channel enlightenment directly from No Kings.

Lee Noble - Persona + Zine 04

Second pressing of Persona from Lee Noble on No Kings. Originally released on the exceptional Bridgetown records, Persona is six tracks of incredible outsider pop swimming lazily among fragmented bits of vocal and warm ambient sound collage. Meloncholic, depressed, nostalgic, and somehow sill hopeful and even at times joyful. Sounds like your favorite Sparklehorse track played backwards at half speed in a haunted farmhouse, or something like that.

Snatch this up along with one of the incredible collaborative zines on offer at No Kings. Zine 04 is an absolutely stunning 68 pages of art from names such as Felicia Atkinson, Frank Baugh, Grant and Rachel Evans, Geoffrey Sexton, and of course Lee Noble and many others.

If you cherish your j-cards as much as your tapes, these will melt your mind until it runs out your ear.