Everything on this page is GONE. However, lots of rad distros & dudes carry NNF stuff from time to time, so feel free to explore some of these places, as there's a chance they've still got a stray copy or 2. if you'd like specific help, go ahead and write presents@notnotfun.com Revolver/Midheaven Forte (UK) Bis Auf's Messer (GERMANY) Tomentosa Volcanic Tongue (UK) DNT Records Time-Lag Forced Exposure Release the Bats (SWEDEN) Fusetron Sound Eclipse Apop Blackest Rainbow (UK) Gilgongo Morphius The Lotus Sound Staalplaat (GERMANY) Aquarius Family Conspiracy (BELGIUM) |
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SKULL NNF100—art book After some 27 LPs, 48 tapes, 25 seven inches, 33 CDs/CDRs, and 4 ten inches, the time has finally come for Not Not Fun’s first foray into the great wide world of book publishing. And there’s few better NNF BFFs we could hope to share the adventure with than Fuck It Tapes/Woodsist CEO (and Meneguar/Shepherds/Woods multi-instrumentalist) Jeremy Earl. Since early on in FIT’s adolescence, he began incorporating his own loosely composed symbolist/primitivist designs into the label’s aesthetic (highlights like The Brain Band and Blues Control’s “Riverboat Styx” J-card come to mind), but constant focused labor and the endless march of new projects forced his craft into a heightened state of evolution, birthing countless killer compositions along the way. SKULL is here to pick up some of the choicest pieces from bone-yard and bind them all together. The art inside spans several years worth of work, from 2006-era obsessively rendered ritual serpents and bleeding, 8-fingered hands up through Earl’s most recent experiments with collage and multi-media hieroglyphics. Over a dozen of his most striking and iconic cassette covers are included as well, in addition to scores of never-before-seen images. Dazed pterodactyls, radiant pyramids, possessed worms, faceless figures beneath winged specters: all lurk and loom from the eye of the SKULL. 40 full-color pages, professionally printed and bound, in a one-time edition of 500. |
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Pocahaunted NNF099—LP Been beautifully blissed on this pairing for months now and we’re amped it’s finally public unveiling time. Christina Carter has trekked around this country (and planet) countless times in the past decade plus, both by herself and with Tom Carter in Charalambides, and the constant gypsy-drifting has weathered her song-stories down into spare, spiral reflections on life, death, and afterlife. Here she lays down four perfect vignettes of acoustic guitar pattern, softly sung desperation, and dangerous intimacy. A beatific bring-down. Sisters-with-voices Pocahaunted handle the B side wax, and their two tracks span the psych-ward spectrum from doomy warpath exile (“Sweat Lodge”) to octave-climbing estrogen ecstasy cloud-tripping (“Silk Fog Traveler”). Both were recorded by Bobb Bruno at Eagle Rock HQ across summer ’07 and cling like cotton to the memory banks. Marbled-peach vinyl LPs in matte jackets with hooded/devoted artwork by Carrie Dietz. Edition of 500. |
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Occasion NNF098—CD Hollywood, Florida family/band Max and Leslie Soren have been unleashing their private bouts of punishing ceremonial sludge-gaze for the past half a decade now, and there’s been some total titanic highlights (Between the Dead, Grandeur of Hair, etc). But the grunge swamp graveyard they seem to unearth their moss metal from must be profoundly fertile ground, because each new song-cycle they lay to tape is somehow even more miraculously brutal and shimmering and visionary than the one before it. This phenom holds true for Occasion, The Goslings’ newest and maybe deepest doom/beauty inquest. Eight thundering masterpieces of molten slime riff majesty, nightstalker drums, and soaring-into-the-sun female vox that crush the earth, bleed, and breathe in humid darkness. Ranging from the Slowdive-meets-Skullflower transcendent descent of “Motorcade” through to the quaking basement funeral of “Little Horn,” Occasion is a glorious passage into The Goslings’ hidden holy land. Mastered for optimal audio gravity by James Plotkin, and housed in a swank six-panel wallet-style metallic-ink digipak with artwork by the band. |
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Earth Lodge NNF097—2 x CS Winter may be dead and gone (for now) but the haven of hibernation still calls out across the plains. And no landscape is more laid low by malevolent elements and psychic ice than the level-plane tundra of Oklahoma, which is where buffalo robed drone duo Ajilvsga (Brad Rose, Nathan Young) hole up/hibernate and eye the harvest moon. Earth Lodge is the soundtrack to a season spent in dirt shelters, hands in cold clay, amps bleeding out brown-green groans of bone OM and predatorial rapid eye movement. Riffs burrow through frozen soil, skull necklace percussion rattles under piles of pelts, inner spaces open up and unfold into invisible fields of blood and color and celestial imagining. Withdrawn and drawn out. Grey-sky tapes with printed labels in oversized cases with full-color double-sided antler mausoleum collage artwork by Manda. Edition of 100. |
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Emerald Snake on Ruby Velvet NNF096—3" CDR Here’s the deal: despite all hoopla/wrath/rapture focusing on Pocahaunted’s feather headdress mythos, their true vocal and musical reality draws equally from such non-native locales as the Staples Center (hi-tops) and Nature Mart (gluten-free raw-volutions). And this is key/crucial to keep in mind when meditating on the street beats and dub futurism of Emerald Snake on Ruby Velvet, the Eagle Rockers most recent reverb guitar mantra. A late summer set staple and a water-testing foray into the echo chamber percussion of Pocahaunted’s impending world/trance/dub-inspired LP on Arbor, Emerald Snake... coils in concentric circles of voice-wave wash-out and upsetter drone stutter, buoyed by Bobb Bruno’s drum pad path-finding. A new step away from the Trail of Fears of reinvention. Mystic-eye-stamped discs in cases with hand-cut covers embroidered with swatches of dyed snakeskin, in a hand-numbered edition of 99. |
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Drumlins NNF095—7" To those not well versed in the studies of esoteric land mass terminology, the word “drumlin” might be pure WTF. But to Heidi Diehl and G. Lucas “Non-Horse” Crane it’s the key to a musty trunk ripe with memories, magic, mystery. In plain terms it describes a specific sort of glacially-carved hillock endemic to upstate NY (and Antarctica and Greece) which in recent years and regions have been utilized as dumping grounds for mining town industrial slag. A childhood spent summering on such junkyard drumlins spawned the strange smoggy swan-songs of Drumlins, Time Life’s vinyl debut. Decaying tape loops rumble beneath somberly sung lyrical riddles and bowed-string tonal arcs. Electric Appalachian regression fantasies. Metal mountain music. All of this and more (more or less). Black vinyl 7 inches with snowflake stickers in hand-cut full-color cardstock fold-over sleeves with drumlin collage by Manda and adorned with 2 pairs of (the hills have) eyes. Edition of 252. |
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Ritual Heirs NNF094—CDR Out of the past and into the white. A three song cellblock originally slated for JYRK but Detainment Yellow Swans’ endless global touring enterprises and various other peripheral obstacles/injuries stranded it in limbo until now. And the omnivorous Now is all that matters. Recorded at the close of the Shining Smoke sessions, and edited/tweaked slightly by Pete Swanson in PDX, Ritual Heirs drifts from centrifugal spiral light patterns into a rarefied air of slowly choking atmosphere, ascending gravitational violence, the world’s weight dissolving into the marrow like a brick of hash lodged in the throat. No drums, no mass cult life to shoulder blame or sorrow. Only unclean clocks ticking above bodies, goatskin strings bowed by blind men, corridors of cold distortion. Inherit the end times. Metallic-stamped CDRs in white-on-white silkscreened sleeves with triforce die-cut ghost-painted/silver sequined plastic cases. Limited 165. |
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Black Zurnai NNF093—CS In Pink Luminous Invocation, Magnus Olsen Majmon works the fog machine, emitting sensory deprivation clouds of holistic brain smoke. But in his solo universe as Elektronavn, his duties run darker and deeper. Black Zurnai showcases a recent pair of summer collage-composition offerings from his Danish pedal factory, and they both traverse strange terrains of chain-shaking hymnals, enchanted echo attic exploring, and timeless vocal phantasmagoria. Personal, parallel odysseys into devotion and repetition. A forthcoming Qbico LP will only heighten the post-hypnotic haze. In hand-sewn cloth cases entwined with purple mesh and gold beads. Limited to 99. |
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Devil If You Can Hear Me NNF092—LP Heather Leigh’s set at last year’s Colour Out Of Space festival in Brighton was everything music should be: personal, deranged, profound, loud. Her song mode meshes astral-traveling electric pedal-steel guitar with a wasted sense of Western expanse and a lyrical, drugged vocal mood, and the results are weird and wonderful. Devil If You Can Hear Me, her debut vinyl full-length, spills across three varying arenas of psychedelic privacy, loaded with loaded statements, wild Charalambides-ish tunnel-digging, and an almost Jandek-ian jam-driven wanderlust. An intense, brave step forward/outside 2006’s phenomenal Jailhouse Rock CS on Fag Tapes and her string of solo CDRs on Volcanic Tongue. Black-vinyl LPs in matte jackets with a “Heather-in-sunlight” cover photo plus some of her abstract/confessional drawings on the back. Edition of 500. |
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Flowstone NNF091/ARBOR020—LP Flowstoned and dethroned, finally. Last year’s bored/burning summer spell of Eagle Rock entropy birthed a numb drum ‘n drones duo dubbed Black Monk. The aesthetic of inept, free-punk drumming and red-eyed, void-surfing low-end infinity found output on two micro-limited cassette releases (one on Buried Valley, one on Zac/Lambsbread’s Maim & Disfigure) and one weedian live show (in Tempe, AZ) and then the scholars split to separate coasts. Fortunately for us/you, Flowstone comes crawling outta the caverns of a babeless summer on a slab of black wax, collecting their out-of-print Murmur CS and half the V CS, plus an unreleased side-long wastoid-land of subterranean percussion and roaring magma. Just in time for 2012. Black vinyl LPs in stark pro-printed fold-over covers plus a poster of arcane team scribble by BM. Limited to 270. Co-released with Arbor. |
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Pig Cooks Pig NNF090—CS This California beard-commune have been jamming at a furious pace since forming back in who knows when. Featuring a rotating cast of VxPxC-ers, Antique Brothers, and other East LA psychedelicates, Thousands are limitless in their instrumentation, enthusiasm, and willingness to trek into the deepest deserts (both literally AND metaphorically) to excavate/achieve the perfect chemistry of tattered clatter and tripped vibes. On Pig Cooks Pig they turn in two side-long monsters of conceptual cop contempt, loose Mansonian lore, and fried pork psychosis. Greasy slabs of wasted guitar and synth smoke twirl on sticks above a pit of simmering campfire flames, loping drums creepy-crawl over murmuring voices and pitch-black hippie grooves. Bold, boundless, and broasted. Purple tapes in silkscreened art-flaps with printed labels. Hand-numbered edition of 72. |
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Logic On Its Head NNF089/WOODSIST010—10" Portugal’s greatest export (besides cork and textiles) continues its dusky, creeping bleed of six-limbed psychedelic windmilling. Loosers have always excelled at ripping strange spatial curvatures out of drums, electronics, and exotic moods, and Logic On Its Head serves up two more classic black platters of sidelight ritualism. The A drapes incense and chimes atop an old copper bowl of ringing tones and tentacle percussion fusion that slow-burns a sweet smoke you never wanna exhale. Don’t. The B, “Daeh Sti No Cigol,” is even more perverse, as backwards as its title and dusty as a mosque. Sudden gestures flutter in the dusk and the sky turns purple. Really commanding and liberated in a way few improv outfits achieve so easily. Impending double LPs on Eclipse and Qbico should only escalate their visionary aura. Two-color silkscreening on fabric-photocopied, hand-stamped sleeves. Black vinyl. Edition of 340. Co-released with the crew at Woodsist. |
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California Night Burning Dreams NNF088—LP + 3" CDR These world wide web weavers work in waves, assembling for key shows and small tours, then dissipating into their respective networks of parallel projects/bands (Magik Markers, Moongang, Hototogisu, etc). Their time together, however, burns bright. Last summer the GHQ triumvirate of Nolan/Gunn/Bassett united for a leg of west coast wandering and all who bore witness left converted. Fortunately for those not there, the minidisc was ON at these gatherings and the California portion of the proceedings have been pored over and wreathed into this luminous masterpiece of Golden State mind-reading ragas. The sets showcased (Sacramento, Eureka) shine like electric dew on a dawn Sequoia and sprawl through sitar starscapes, acoustic fingerpicking, cosmic harmonica, and forest floor hand-drums. A raw document of real time dream machine vision-questing. Slate sky-blue vinyl LPs in full-color jackets (with California-collage art by Manda) adorned with a GHQ “winged skull” logo sticker, plus a bonus 3” CDR of their Seattle performance. Limited to 500. |
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Taiga Remains NNF087—LP Sky of blue and sea of green, in our yellow methedrine. Unnatural energies harnessed into a new universe of planetary tumult and astral injection courtesy of bi-coastal frequent flyers Heavy Winged and sultan of Cincinnati solitude, Taiga Remains. Pure planar schizophrenia carved into perfect circles of fool’s glass. The Winged’s war, “Witches Cradle,” immolates a levitating altar of prehistoric granite into an ashen mass that blocks out the light from a hundred suns. As raw and frenzied and hypnotically devastating as any single piece of hyperkinetic sludge the power trio has released to date. The flip is the same radiant annihilation only spread across 66 million millennia….all motion and violence stretched into historical cirrus clouds trembling with gravitational tension. Infinity’s burden burning off in wisps of audio mirage and glacial stasis. Go nowhere fast. Originally released as a micro-edition CDR on the Australian MYMWLY label, this LP re-issue was pressed from a fresh edit of the HW material and comes with an entirely unreleased bonus TR track as well. Coke-bottle clear 12 inches in art-cage silkscreened picture disc sleeves bedecked with painstaking full-color mystico-textile sticker compositions. Edition of 300. |
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Vibrations New Dawn NNF086—CS Nothing ever ends. Eternal Tapestry’s fibers fray like worms up from the Oregon dirt, morph into cords coiled on the damp practice room floor, crawl the walls, and stitch themselves into the sky. The fabric is infinite, in/of everything. Comprised of the brothers Bindeman (Nick of Jackie-O Motherfucker, Jed of Heavy Winged) and bassist Dewey Mahood Wah, ET spike into a particularly pure vein of raw soul haze hidden in the forearm of today’s psyched/fucked underground. Vibrations New Dawn unfurls from fractured, feedback crystal-divining into slow-burn gravitational mass into astral kraut-rock motion/destruction. This is the new age of the newest new age. Black tapes in cases with hand-numbered, patterned textile J-cards adorned with hand-cut diamond-ranges of vision-colored cloth. Limited to 100. |
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Riven NNF085—LP Denmark's deepest dope-dreamers dig up another pair of prism-splitting slabs of decaying radioactivity. Riven is the FU crew at their most crouched and concentrated, couched in fever, fog, futurism, and fucked densities, channels of brain-wave light fusion overloading with synergistic zero hour tectonics. Uncanny ex-men (and woman) aktivity. More metallic than Axial and far hungrier than Future Bread, Riven resonates like a dead bell in a buried valley, ringing, subterranean, wasted, industrial. Man-made clangs echo in mechanized caverns. Hologram hands sweat black light in the center of the earth. Implosion fantasies bloom. Black LPs (mastered by Pete Swanson of Yellow Swans) in fractal cave art jackets by Svend Balslev plus a band-made insert. First 75 direct mail orderers also receive a limited FU pin. Limited to 450. |
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Hungry Ghosts! These Songs Are Doors NNF084—LP For most of us, the doors of perception are triple-bolted shut and cast in bomb-proof iron. Only supernatural shapeshifters (or career criminals) can slip through and seize the wisdom within. But, sweetly, there is a hidden entrance: musick-as-magick. Providence, RI patch-cable conjuror Mudboy is one such secret key-crafter and his unlocking labors on this long-player stand at the summit of his already awesome discography. Alchemizing stylized soundtrack spells, organ wizardry, melodic mind-reading, and elegantly meditative harmonium hallucinations, Hungry Ghosts! These Songs Are Doors lights an urn’s worth of ritual powders and powers, filling the speakers with a sign language of smoke runes and ghost tones. Lie on the floor and be floored by Mudboy’s primordial plainsongs. Record comes housed in a dizzyingly intricate laser die-cut fold-over cover with an acutely aligned flame-silkscreened inner sleeve. Painstaking and perfect. Half on blood-red wax, half on black. Limited to 500. |
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Eyes of the World NNF083—CS Named (maybe?) after some not-too-noteworthy Grateful Dead hoedown (off the Wake of the Flood LP, FYI), Eyes of the World here means the banner-in-the-sky under which Brooklyn’s tenders of the wandering psych flock, Shepherds, communed with Raccoo-oo-oon’s singer/shredder Shawn Reed for a C50-something of carefully cultivated rhythmic primitivism and early man ghost-chanting. Non-Horse-play tape loops spool in the shadows while J Earl percussion flashes light on cave art corridors of SK1 wave-walking and Christian’s stringed psycho-babble. Hold hands in the flames of the fire till your eyes are radiant with Right Now. Live and learn: regression is progression. Pro-manufactured-and-mastered orange tapes with full-color double-sided fold-out J-cards group-designed/drawn/written by Jeremy Earl, Shawn Reed, and Gabriel Lucas Crane. Edition of 200. |
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Feeders of Ravens NNF082—LP Prepare for sudden death. San Francisco brutalizers Ettrick finally deliver the full-length destruction they've been threatening for so long now. Feeders of Ravens is definitely the most potent collection of harsh jazz violence the duo's ever laid to tape, showcasing all their classic kill-moves: slaughtering saxophone dialogues, jittery percussive fits, raging horn/drum self-annihilation, etc. What escalates their improv attacks above just blind frenzy is the warped telepathy Jacob Heule and Jay Korber exhibit in their playing, wordlessly intuiting one another's energy upswings and downturns. And nowhere is this psychic connection more apparent (and demonic) than on "Raven Harvest,” the LP's final onslaught. Searing sax blasts burn through the ear drum, giving way to splatter paint percussion flailings and scraping metal, which then slowly take shape, coagulating into a dense, aggressive avalanche of pummeling, white-hot drum rapture. Life into death into life. Black LPs in pro-printed jackets with majestically sinuous, Haida-style cover art (and memento mori raven back art). Limited to 350. |
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Behold Secret Kingdom NNF081/NP015—LP You know what they say: beautiful tribal spirit psych lies in the eyes of the beholder. So enter the kingdom and hold the secret in your hands. Iowa City’s prodigal sun-starers offer up the fruits of their deepest inquest yet into the heart of the heart of the country. Eight wilderness rituals of swirling percussion, mossy guitar noise, forest howls, and animal instincts that unfold and erupt with more focus, intensity, and complexity than anything else in Raccoo-oo-oon’s discography thus far. The songs were tracked in the studio with warmth and power by Mike Dixon and then given a heavy mastering job by Pete Swanson, so sonically the vinyl shines and burns and explodes in all the right places. A crushing statement of electric alchemy by one of our favorite bands in the world. Black vinyl LPs in awesome pro-printed jackets, plus an insert, with Midwestern magick color visions/nature photography art by the band. Co-released with Night People. |
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Myth Of The Hirsute NNF080—CS First time we saw Sasqrotch play was at a bowling alley bar after a Robedoor set, and it was PERFECT. A guitarist decked out in a baffling bearded-elf costume from the neck up (complete with rubbery oversized ears) stared at his guitar, holding an amp-eating drone tone with some wah-pedal oscillation while bassist and another dude crouched in front of speaker cabinets, drinking in the low-end, the whole place just fucking QUAKING with sound. Then third man moved over to the drums, counted some shit off, and let loose. We were floored. Lumbering untamed electric wilderness howling through lucid streets of puke and ice. Basement Sabbath breakdowns. Wasted, sub-human distortion. Basically: savage awesomeness. So here is Myth of the Hirsute, Sasqrotch’s debut release, a brutal, blown-out snapshot/C38 of the North Hollywood power trio’s hairy grandeur in action. Black tapes in hand-stamped origami-folded metallic paper sleeves adorned with fang/sequin braids, and limited to 100. |
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Pink Fog NNF079—CDR Psychic smog. Memory-loss drugs. Tapestries of delay pedals. All great avenues to feeling fucked up and blissed/lost. Here’s another. Danish combo Pink Luminous Invocation serve up a half-hour bowl of sonic syrup, laced with wind chimes, methedrone, and déjà vu. Buried voices bleed like clouds, bouts of phasing stasis lapse into electric déjà vu. Like a more burned-out Pelt, or a sleeping Ghosting. Meditative and sedated. Silkscreened CDRs in black plastic cases with silk-screened, hand-stamped wraparound covers studded with jewels, plus a full-color insert. Hand-numbered edition of 71. |
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Water-Born NNF078—3" CDR Lie down in darkness, awake in white water. Eagle Rock’s most amp-laden spirit-talkers block out the sky with this deep, inner piece of elemental communion. Lulling, long-hair guitar strums flow into sweeping sea-breeze feedback while tidal dream-noise ebbs/flows over your blistered feet. Slowly siren voices wing down from grey mists and call you to wade into the warm waves, let go, be washed away…gradually the chanting submerges, dissolves, surrendering to the blood’s undertow, the ocean’s blue womb. A spectral, moving rite of psych passage. Spray-misted, hand-numbered 3” CDRs in full-color wraparound portrait-collage covers in plastic bags adorned with heavy woven strips of native textiles. Limited to 100. |
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Abasement Tapes NNF077—CDR Confusion is hex. Or worse. Digging around in the BBC vaults yields a lot of dubbed-over Aerosmith tapes and scrawled notes like “chaos jam – LOUD.” Factor in the steady membership flux and restless vibe/sound shifts and you’ve got an archivist’s nightmare on your hands. But here it is anyway. Abasement Tapes spans the band’s last 15 foggy months, culling fucked cuts from early Grace-phase, dual-drummer, post-political, microphone assault all the way to relatively recent Roy-era, stoned-free, art-rant amp-songs. Five tracks, fifty minutes, a thousand years of historical/celebrity shit-talking. Neon stenciled CDRs in black plastic cases with full-color wrap-around collage covers (artwork by Manda), affixed with weird beaded safety pins, plus a stenciled, hand-numbered insert. Limited to 120. |
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Pocahaunted Gone to Grey b/w Swayed Tongue NNF076—12" If the body is a temple, then the human voice is the endless Om pulsing within the architecture. And if the body is a corpse, then it's the post-life ghost mist hissing in the wind. Either way, it's a heavy force, and this split LP spotlights two of today's greatest vocal ritualists at the peak of their process. Drone gypsies Mythical Beast have spent the last few years like nomads, drifting from N'awlins to Austin to Kansas City, and their piece here ("Gone to Grey") throbs with a weary hypnosis, too many nights spent staring into foreign freeways, alien landscapes passing in the dark. These are blues for the rootless, homeless feedback curling up by the side of the road, by the side of a grave. Hitchhiking into the void. Pocahaunted, too, beckon the dead, turning in a crushing, low-lidded amplifier chant of clanging guitar and primitive distortion. "Swayed Tongue" treads even deeper into the forests of noise they explored on Native Seduction, bathing their tribe-song prayer shawls in rivers of electricity and twilight static. Totem soul totality. Opaque violet LPs in pro-printed jackets with unbelievable colored pencil tomb rumination artwork by NNF's favorite color dreamer, Devon Varmega, plus an eagle feather. Direct mail-orderers also receive a bonus MB/PHAUNT split C22 with exclusive material by each band (available while supplies last). Limited to 380. |
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Dear Robert Hanoy NNF069—CD All aboard, gang. After 23 months of back-and-forth and waiting/wondering, Zoe and Silvie have finally docked the debut Belly Boat album in NNF harbor, and we are BEYOND happy about it. Dear Robert Hanoy is a scratchy, expansive masterpiece, 14 sung songs of outsider ragtime, rambling European café waltz, and charismatic lyrical chemistry. Influenced equally by Cocorosie, Celine Dion, and Chamillionaire (circa “Ridin’ Dirty”), BB weave piano, accordion, and dueling voices into a freaky, frayed woolen mitten of strange emotions. Put it on, feel weird, throw a snowball. This is a storybook soundtrack for barefoot exploration and natural wonder, culled from years of face-painting, taking pictures of horses, and making best friends laugh. CDs come with full-color 8-panel booklets of artwork by Belly Boat. Half the run is housed in sleeves sewn with grunge flannel, strung with grey yarn/clear beads, and flecked with gold dust, and the other half come in plain plastic slipcases. Limited to 500. |
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Fifth Sun Visions NNF068—CS Watching Steve Gunn’s fingers fly as he shred-drones an acoustic guitar is probably the chief joy of witnessing a GHQ set (at least, it was for us when they cruised through LA this past summer). But when he’s not on the road with Magik Markers or GHQ or Nolan-knows-who-else, he builds buzzing structures of six-string acid navigations under the guise of Moongang. Past dispatches (mainly self-released) have ranged from tranquilizer ragas to swarming arkestral maneuvers to blissed emptiness, but Fifth Sun Visions offers up yet another orbit in Gunn’s psych solar system. Urban field recordings slowly dissolve into stumbling folk trance while static clouds of menace hover in the sky…later thick riffs emerge, bathed in black light, shot through with gross growling and crawling undertones of templar apocalyptica. An awesome oracle of ruin from one of NNF’s favorite psych shapeshifters. Purple tapes with painted skull labels in bags with full-color shadow-shrine collage covers, plus a black spider. Hand-numbered and limited to 100. |
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NNF067—7" Here it is. Crouched cloud-summoning from two of the west coast’s most coma-coaxing cloak teams. Both have been questing/crawling after the holy drug-drone grail for years now, but this vinyl union is an even deeper step into their respective fog/smog voids. Ghosting’s A-side, “Rivermouth,” might be the most awesomely charged piece of weather-stricken wire-séance the Portland duo’s ever recorded. Roiling banks of suspended densities and white-hot metals are shot through with flickering loops of lightning, lances of light beams. Stunning spiral sky-welding. The B-side (“Roving Shaman”) is more of a white-eyed trance, with Robedoor throwing bones under a thatched roof, eyes sewn shut. Smoke-tones spin and wobble while sixth sense frequencies chime in the distance. A no-mind ritual of atmospheric fear. White vinyl 7 inches with hand-stamped labels in 2-color silkscreened fold-over cardstock sleeves. Limited to 325. |
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Sudden Arrhythmic Death Volume 2 NNF066—3" CDR Imagine an immediate/permanent global blackout. Tons would change about daily life (duh): no TV, computers, light bulbs, AMPS. Severed from the electric mainline, a lot of bands would break up – or suck. But not Ettrick. The San Franciscan saxophone/drums duo need nothing but their own breath/blood and your bored ears to wreak consummate audial carnage. This 3 inch is brutal proof. Documenting a desperate session of their free jazz war at the last stop on their October US tour, Sudden Arrhythmic Death Vol. 2 morphs from skittering, sticks-on-steel heartbeat clatter to harrowing/hemorrhaging sax chaos incantations before finally mounting to a black death apocalypse of possessed percussion immolation. Far, far, FAR beyond driven. Brace yrself for the forthcoming LP (out spring '07 on NNF). Stenciled CDRs in Mayan-tile encrusted mini-jewel cases with color-printed wraparound covers (plus a quote from the Popul Vuh). Hand-numbered, and limited to 100. |
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We Grow NNF065—LP Today is the greatest. Cause time has come for total take off. Brooklyn/PDX instrumental interstellar overdrivers Heavy Winged deliver the most gravity-crushing pair of fight-flight journeys in their entire cumulative psych revolution thus far. And it is glorious. We Grow is the apex realization of every tectonic assault, wind tunnel vortex, and outer space meltdown HW have ever unleashed across the past 15 months worth of stunning CDRs, splits, and comp appearances. The A side, “A Stretch of Time,” slow-burns an ascent into explosive galactic violence, guitars, bass, and drums detonating into endless feedback fireworks. Then “Shifting Clouds” closes the album, marching a drifting riff of haze and mass into a majestic no man’s land of darkening space. A masterpiece record, and packaged accordingly. Blackened-blue vinyl LPs with collage center labels housed in full-color pro-printed jackets, in sleeves adorned with rad oval vinyl stickers, plus a hand-numbered insert. Limited t0 450. |
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Live NNF064—CS The holidays are supposed to be AWESOME. You wear crazy scarves, hang out with weird cousins, and secretly spike the eggnog (with soy-nog)!! Another good thing to do is play shows with your friends and go crazy. That’s why this applause-heavy C30 is PERFECT. A++ are the trumpet/drums pop-monster duo starring Grace from Foot Village/Gang Wizard and their side documents an Il Corral show from 2006 summertime. They pass out trivia questions, yell about animals and sneak attacks, and even cover some 80s song. The sonic equivalent of rainbow confetti exploding in yr face. Tempe, Arizona’s hardest working posi-wave trio Soft Shoulder shred sax, riffs, and drums across the B side, which is culled/compiled from a trilogy of early December shows in Phoenix and Flagstaff. Their jump-cuts from angular feedback action to beatless skronk drift keeps you (and the crowd) guessing. Good luck! Printed-label tapes in stapled, spray-painted cardstock fold-over cases. Googly-eyed horn-blower blob beast art by Manda. Hand-numbered, and limited to 100. |
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The Defeatist NNF063—CDR For a while it looked like OC loners Horse Head were gonna follow the path out to pasture and never look back. Their Birds and Bees tape (Arbor) was pure nature, a feathery field recording of grassy, buzzing bliss, and even the singer/songwriter folk diaries of Make It Something Else (also Arbor) were pretty unplugged and barefoot-vibed. However: NEVERMIND, cause The Defeatist fucks this theory/trajectory to hell. Gone is the wind-in-yr-hair acoustic delay, the whispery poet croons. In its place? Total teenage guitar trash, exploratory garage chaos, psychedelic puberty. Percussion like metal shelves full of wrenches being kicked on to concrete. Pissed kids scream-talking at dry walls. Uncomfortable and ugly. Maybe this is a concept album? Hand-stamped CDRs in blurry woven fiber paper, with one-of-a-kind collaged wooden horses, and a hand-numbered insert. Limited to 64. |
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Unsummoning NNF062—CDR Too much voodoo, too little light, the cords coil into an elliptical infinity helix, the prayer rug bleeds. Darkening signs o’ the times. LA’s blindest seers peer once again into the voice/void for this pentagrammic document of dim delay worship and retching distortion ritual. Five fully forsaken tracks of synth séance, cello reckoning, and unholy howl. Anti-invocations for four-dimensional forces. Painted CDRs in witch-stitched, silk-screened cases with full-color wrap-around covers, plus a hand-numbered, silk-screened cardstock insert. Comes with a crust punk patch too. Limited to 100. |
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Moccasinging NNF061—CS Not Not Fun's newest ancestral spirit team is Pocahaunted, and this sunset-kissed C38 is their first foray outside the inner psychic teepee/sanctum of private dreamsong. So dance round the fire, the war for the plains is ON (yr tape deck). A spectral feather headdress of bone cloud chanting, turquoise noise, ocarina whispers, and trail-of-tears tom-tom tribalism, Moccasinging weaves together a ragged patchwork equal parts mother/earth lamentation, battle prayer, and primitive creation myth. Four tomahawk hymns of buffalo skull sisterhood. Hand-painted tapes in tie-dyed canvas pouches adorned with golden beads and eagle feathers, plus an insert. Limited to 100. Member of Quintana Roo. |
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NNF060—CS Hello/goodbye. Entrance tones and farewell dissolves. Two of NNF’s pinnacle favorite cell-melting haze-raisers bow heads across a bliss-blind C50. Watersports are the heroically rad Russ and Lea, who head up NYC’s chief trickle-down esoterica fountain/label, White Tapes. The duo’s flow session here, “Mother’s Touch,” rides a smoke-wave of four-dimensional heartbeat pulses and spirit-organ drift-shift into pure hypno-unbecoming. Like being absorbed into a holy amoeba. Obviously: beautiful. Changeling’s B-side, “Great Tranquility,” buries yr ears in even more dream-fog, with voices flayed across infinite green/grey webs of lattice glowing clouds. New age prism-swimming through skies of delay. Color-misted tapes in hand-numbered olive vellum J-cards, with hand-colored off-set heaven-cell stickers on the cover. Artwork by Roy Tatum of Changeling. |
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Runes Translucent NNF059—CS Looking down, looking in, under the sand, under the skin. A tape/trip for star/shoe/dirt-gazing, soundtracks for shapeshifting glow-zones deep in the distance. QR cast “Black Dreaming Place,” a 25-minute soul séance of sparse ghost dust and moonlit rattlesnakes. Recorded in the middle of the Anza Borrego desert with the rumbling help of Josh Taylor’s legendary generator. Warmth is Steev (aka the late Roxanne Jean Polise) and Branden (of Quilts, etc) and their tone blanket B side, “Sharing Antique Mothers,” crawls on slow and soft like a morphine drip. A drugged electronic massage from amplified hands with wire fingers. Painted-label tapes in white vinyl cases with dual-layer dream-vellum covers, plus an origami insert with a piece of found film salvaged from a trashed Brussels fleamarket. Artwork by Roy Tatum of Changeling/Quintana Roo. Limited to 100. |
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Bumba Meu Boi NNF058—CS The great unraveling continues. We first heard Loosers’ fried/frayed spool of sound-sprawl last year, via the Ruby Red/Jelle Crama-splattered LP/CDR offering. Immediate Portuguese fever set in. They, however, are a busy crew, dropping albums for Qbico and Our Mouth, touring Europe with Mouthus, generally ruling, etc. So NNF release plans moved slow. Fast forward to today: the CS is HERE, the time is NOW. Named for a semi-metaphorical 18th century Brazilian tale/dance concerning the FUCKED hierarchical relations between slaves and lords at the time, Bumba Meu Boi boils/roils with post-rational uprise, alchemical percussion ritual, and pulse-of-the-people electronic sub-consciousness. Two beautiful sides of fluidly splayed labor-as-magick post-Sunburned collectivist psych action. REAL tapes (a first for NNF) in hand-color-dyed, hand-numbered cardstock J-cards with cult cave-art covers. Limited to 200. |
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Astral Arch NNF057—1-sided 7" Attention sky-walkers: the eagle has landed. After an honest fistful of serenity-smoke cassette releases, Changeling finally alights his wings-of-gauze/claws-of-fog on this one-sided black vinyl seven inch. “Astral Arch” is a tranquil electric halo of hushed guitar sunrays flickering on lapping waves of cloud voice peace. A song for closed eyes, no memory, and impossible drift. Hand-numbered, hand-screened olive-branch cardstock jackets with unreal shape-shift cover art by Changeling himself. Plus the B-sides are stenciled with cryptic metallic runes. Limited to 176. |
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NNF056—7" A pair of implosion constructs from Denmark’s finest and Eagle Rock’s vaguest. Originally conceived for the Quintana/Underground doomed west coast tour dates, but car rental hostilities and passport chaos shot the drone team scheme dead. Alas. At any rate: the single still stands. “Vengeance Valley” finds FU at their most steeped-in-dread, channeling Spahn Ranch brainwash kill vibes into rumbling black hills of bad acid alchemy. Pure murder magick. Q Roo’s “Horses Neck” wanders its own Death Valley nothingness, loses contact/control, and carves slow sigils in the sand. A hovering aura of desert oblivion. Black vinyl 7 inches in hand-numbered, hand-screened grey cardstock jackets with skull-rider/ancient ruins cover art. Limited to 300. |
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Live in Tempe, AZ NNF055—CDR This country’s way too big (cant we sell off a few states already??) but every blue moon or so faraway friends fuck distances, drive a billion miles, and UNITE. June 28th, 2006 was one such mesh/bond party of peace-pipe passing, extended high fives, and amplifier team spirit between Tent City, Quintana Roo, Black Monk, and Haunted Castle. Heavy ruling ensued. John Ryan & Co.’s sprawling Arizona backyard – and mercifully dim living room – played host to the geographical delirium of Michigan feedback, California smoke spirits, and hometown desert circle circuitry. Things ended in a 100-plus degrees 5 AM haze, but fortunately the mic was ON. Hear it all. Hieroglyphic-stamped CDRs in full-color hand-numbered fold-out cardstock cases bedecked with sun-gold string. Hand-numered, limited to 100. |
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NNF054—CS Modern life is full of chains: of ice, iron, money, ideas. So nothing suits the dull scorch of endless summer better than violent prison break catharsis. This sunshine gold/yellow tape holds up to the sky eighty awesome minutes of liberated blood rumblings, meandering animal thrash, and shattered-shackle séances. No walls, no laws, no limit. Two editions of 100 (same music, different packaging). One comes housed in hand-sewn cloth creature-heads with basement button eyes and dripping gore fangs (pictured above), the other in oversized flexi-plastic tape cases with color collage covers plus silkscreened meditative sasquatch-mystic cover art — courtesy of Shawn Reed of Raccoo-oo-oon — and illegibly psychedelic cloud-text band roster art on the back by Roy Tatum of Quintana Roo/Changeling (pictured below). The uncaged include: Goliath Bird Eater Mammal Non-Horse Pterodactyl Barrabarracuda Raccoo-oo-oon Bonzai Kitty Horse Head Alopex Lagopus Manipulator Alligator Grace’s Amazing Kitty Cat Band Mythical Beast Hive Mind Apple Snails Polar Goldie Cats Worm Hands Tusk Mammoth Wether |
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NNF053/FIT032—CS Growth is god dudes. Gotta change, morph, MOVE, ring in new harvests and let fresh blank tapes bloom black in the sun. This shadowy C60 is a cryptic/cloaked stare-off between two recently-birthed coastal crews. Shepherds traverse the Bushwick/Brooklyn axis, watching their flock from a high crooked branch off the Fuck It Tapes tree of life/death. Old world clatter meanders against dead-dub bass echoes while thin air prayers levitate from weary throats. A spiral-eyed masterpiece of tattered tunic improv. On the flip is west coast crawl unit, Quintana Roo, who burrow through sub-cellar levels of spirit dust and cursed dirt worship. “Mythological Animals” ponders bowed drones, autoharp rust, and disembodied drumming for a haunted half hour, before drifting back to tomb hum. Painted tapes in silver-mist latticework cases, with full-color covers. Co-released with Fuck It Tapes. |
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Rigor Lore NNF052—CS Hope you like to read/research. Cause Gabriel Lucas Crane aka Non-Horse here unfurls an ancient 80 minute scroll of dense cryptic sound/texts, perfect for dream-diviners and out-of-work drone-archeologists. The Brooklyn tape-manipulator conspiracy theorist (and full-time Vanishing Voice chief) has crafted similarly mystic audio-calligraphies for other visionary label undergrounders like Release the Bats and Fuck It Tapes but Rigor Lore is his first real novel-length outpouring. The A side walks through wondrous home recorded catacombs of dead machine murk and hieroglyphic mystery, murmuring million-year-old Masonic secrets to pharaoh ghosts, while the B terrain documents a series of his live rituals, which are equally occult and symbol-ridden. Fire-red tapes with printed labels in cases with runic/riddle cover art by GLC himself, color-copied on heavy Byzantine-gold paper, plus a lengthy scripture insert. Limited to around 200. |
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Courtesy Run Rampant NNF051—1-sided LP + CDR LA’s king discontent Loopool finally achieved such core-level burn-out at day-to-day California-cation that he uprooted his Sycophanticide mini-empire and bolted for greener/rainier pastures (the Pacific Northwest). That said, Courtesy Run Rampant is the perfect Not Not Fun-eral for our favorite post-noise avante cultural disintegrator. Three bizarrely orchestrated manifestoes ringing with bashed upright piano, harsh drum distortion, and elegiac clarinet lament, often complimented with Herr Loopool’s Leonard Cohen-like dead poeticizing. Recorded during a day-in-the-studio birthday present at The Distillery in Costa Mesa on thick reel-to-reel tape, and effused with focus/purpose. One-sided LPs – with an ornate conspiracy-theorizing art chart etched on the B side – housed in hand-stamped, stenciled, painted jackets, plus a full-page insert AND a bonus full-length CDR of additional music/musings. Limited to 200. |
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