A new decade has just begun and I already see a flood of new releases and covers to be painted at the horizon.
Plans for the New Year.
I can date exactly the day when my label’s new life began. Nine years ago. I have spent the last decade painting…
Of course the idea of waking up at dawn every morning for the next ten years doesn’t appeal to me much, it’s cold in the morning and I like to sleep, but this is my doom.
I have already sent three new albums to the vinyl factory, there are two new collaborations with People In A Position To Know, there are a lot of projects being defined, without forgetting some orders (and trades) that I have yet to complete. If you have not received any news from me or are still waiting for the records you have ordered, I apologize. I’m late and day after day the number of covers to draw increases and I still haven’t managed to multiply my hands. It will be a long, cold winter in my office, and maybe the time has come to get a stove.
Do you want to hear what is cooking for you?
”Brummagem Brilliance” by Wio
I have already announced the forthcoming release of this album. Test presses have been approved and the records are being pressed as I write. In the meantime you can listen to the first three singles taken from the album here:
”Floating In Weightlessness”
”(I’m Not A) Symphonic Orchestra”
”Ultrasound Reality”
”Let My Heart Not Become Blind” by MonThruSun
Lead singer Hans Bos of Soft Parade returns with a new album under the name MonThruSun. After an inspired collaboration with Dave Stewart (Eurythmics) that resulted in acclaimed albums ‘Pure’ and ‘Get Well Soon’, Soft Parade stopped in 1996. Bos always kept the music alive and now the hiatus is broken with a dazzling collection of new songs. ”Let My Heart Not Become Blind” reveals a loving view of the world in which the tent canvas reveals through its holes the starry sky – a feeling of being connected.
The album was recorded in Amsterdam IJland and Americain Studios with Tinca Veerman (vocals), Robin Berlijn (piano, guitar), Dick Brouwers (bass), Eric C. Maas (also Soft Parade, bass), Leon van Egmond (trombone), violinists Antonio Pliz and Robert Uchida, Robijn Boekelmans (cello), and Imke Jansen on viola.
Together with drummer / producer Remko Schouten (Stephen Malkmus, Zzz, Bull) and supported by these wonderful musician friends, Bos delves into pure, poetic words. With a voice as clear as Bowie and warm as Stuart Staples, he soothes the modern soul. Listen to a song like the hope-driven ‘Moon’; or ‘A Hole in Your Head’ that takes you to the bottom of your mind. The catchy ‘AWeSoMe’ will be stuck in your head, and after the grand finale of ‘Home’ a warm light continues to glow.
The music on the album resonates with artists like Adam Green, Spain, Pavement, The Velvet Underground, Tindersticks and – why not – The Beatles.
Videos
Right now, directors, filmmakers and animators are working on videos for each of the songs. The makers are Bara Lockefeer (Sorry), Willem Jan Bloem (Make Wishes), Eric Maas (Hole in Your Head), Stanley Kolk (Family it’s our Blood), August Swietkowiak (Inking Black), Susanne Engels (Moon), Jessica Gorter (Awesome), and Marjolein Hendrickx (I Can Be Who I Want).
It’s really a pleasure to work with Hans and I feel very lucky to have met him at a Bingo Trappers and Water show in Amsterdam on an Almost Halloween Time night .
”Let My Heart Not Become Blind” is a limited edition of 50 copies with hand painted unique covers inspired by the lyrics of the songs.
”Songs From Shell Beach” by Kiss Hello
Kiss Hello has already made an appearance on Almost Halloween Time Records a few months ago. His cover of ”Awful Bliss” has ended up on ”Lodger Doll Three”, the tribute compilation to Guided By Voices that we issued to celebrate the 25th anniversary from the release of ”Bee Thousand”.
Linus Landucci is a member of Gang Wizard and Kiss Hello is one of his projects.
”Songs From Shell Beach” is a corelease with Linus’ own label.
Kiss Hello’s music intertwines electronic looping and sampling with orgaqnic instrumentaion, often driven by emotion rather than rigid structure. It skirts the line between soundtrack, ambient music and melody-driven pop. Think Eno’s textural, tonal landscapes combined with the lo-fi demeanor of an early Mount Eerie record or Pixies B-side, pasted together and raw.
Kiss Hello often collaborate with others and record their playing, but ultimately have the final say on how a part fits into a song. Linus writes all the msuci. For example, he might record a friend violin, but edited it heavily and chop it up, making it indistinguishable from the original. This synthesis and processing is what gives Kiss Hello its sound.
”Less Ready To Go” by Michael Nau
What I’m going to talk about now is the seventh collaboration with People In A Position To Know, the other half of the apple of Almost Halloween Time, a label that I love and that is one of my main sources of inspiration. I’m really excited about the idea of ??working with Michael Nau. His new album ”Less Ready To Go” was the soundtrack for my summer and I can guarantee you that it sounded equally good in autumn and it sounds great now that is winter and that I’m painting a set of artworks for it. Michael Nau’s name has been linked to three different record projects in the past, after dissolving the band Page France, the American musican gave birth to Cotton Jones and The Broadway Hush, but while of the latter there are only a traces left (three singles), the former boast a cult-status record triptych.
Michael Nau’s latest solo effort, proceeds on the path traced by the previous records and incorporates his unique blend of psychedelic folk, R&B, and indie rock. It features incredible collaborators like Whitney McGraw (Cotton Jones), Andrew Dost (fun.), Zach Miller (Dr. Dog), Benny Yurco (Grace Potter & the Nocturnals), Seth Kauffman (Floating Action), and Scott McMicken (Dr. Dog), who also served as producer.
Nau says of the album: ”We recorded these songs at hi-dez in Joshua Tree. It happened quickly. For each song, we’d do a live take, then switch instruments & do a live overdub on top. It was a fresh way to work. Going in, I was sure I had at least one song to do – we started there, and a couple days later it felt like a record was finished. I got scooped up by whatever happened those couple days – felt good to be moving. Any time I try to contrast one record, or process, from the previous one, it becomes more clear that it’s all pretty much the same thing. I think I’ve been ‘working on an album’ every day for the last 12 years, yet I always feel underprepared. I’m lucky to get to make music with people who’s energy can supersede my self doubt. That’s the thread through all this.”
The covers I’m painting are abstract, images seen through smudged windows.
Only 50 copies, 25 available through Almost Halloween Time Records and 25 through People In A Position To Know.
”Eighteen” by Home
One day ”Planet Rock”, my favorite radio show, broadcast a piece of a band called Home.The title was ”Halloween”. I was taking my first steps in the world of the music that I still listen to today.
The program had already introduced me to the music of Smog, Palace, Sebadoh and Cat Power. Within a couple of days I ordered my copy of ”X” (the Roman numeral). All Home albums are in fact numbered. Something that has intrigued me from the start and that has almost made me crazy. It was useless to search the previous chapters on mailorder catalogs and internet was a minefield. In 1995 if you searched Home on the web and you were not an experienced spider, you would have had hundred thousand results but noone matching your request.
But I’ve never been one that gives up at the first difficulty. I contacted Emperor Jones, I learned about Screw Music Forever, I wrote Home and got in contact with Eric Morrison. All this process took years and in this space of time I got my hands up on a copy of ”IX” (bought at Used Kids Records in Columbus, OH and ”Elf :: Gulfborewaltz”. I also started looking for the first eight chapters everywhere. Unobtainable, not to be found, very little information. Luckily Eric was kind enough to send me dubbed copies of the tapes. I still keep them as precious relics, although some years ago they were made available on a larger scale in digital format.
If you don’t know them, it is better that you remedy this as soon as possible. You don’t know what you are missing in your record collection.
Here I copy and paste a bio that is available on the Screw Music Forever website (by the way, all previous Home recordings are available for streaming and download there too).
”Pianist Eric Morrison and guitarist Andrew Deutsch meet in a performing arts high school in South Florida, and soon start collaborating on camcorder movies. The two ramble around various Floridian cities, moving from filmmaking to music. Eventually, they land in Tampa where they meet bassist Brad Truax and drummer Sean Martin and formally dub themselves Home (a nod to a fictional band in a soap opera they were writing). As the recordings started to pile up, they form a label/collective called Screw Music Forever and begin to offer $1 cassettes at local record stores. In a freak happenstance, one of these cassettes lands in the lap of a Relativity Records A&R man, who soon rolls up smoking large cigars and offering money for Home IX.
After Home IX, Sean gets a hold of some bad shellfish and disappears for 10 years. Home carries on, making six more albums. Then, Sean reemerges, just as Brah Records befriends Home, with the notion of creating a musical tribute to fucking, resulting in Home’s first Brah release, Sexteen. Phase I (in which…)
The Home boys, in post-coital bliss return from traveling the land (metaphorically) having spent their wad on Home Sexteen and begin to envision an Alternate Reality (heretofore notated as ”AR”) from which to begin writing Home XVII. The basic story arc finds each member’s life so suddenly destroyed that they are forced to all move back into a communal living space to start over and retreat to the pop-rock origins of their genesis. Par exemplar:
A) Andrew returns home to find his entire apartment building decimated and all physical manifestations of his identity completely erased.
B) Eric is excommunicated by his wife when she discovers he is a crossdresser and he embarks on a sweet but ill-conceived plan to win her back by exploding the sun on her birthday.
C) Chris discovers that his lover is an android of unknown design and motive.
etc/etc
Home converges in the Devils Isle WetLab Studio and records the skeleton tracks of Home XVII.
Phase II (in which..)
The Actual Reality (heretofore notated as ”AR”) Home embarks on a leisurely summer of overdubbery, during which they decide to tackle the long-overdue task of digitizing and mastering their first eight albums which have dangerously oxidized in a Makers Mark wooden box for nearly 15 years. Somewhere in analyzing these early recordings, Home becomes re-interested in the sound of songs in their genesis; the (wholley) imperfect object that is felt but not yet processed.
Phase III (in which…) Each member of (AR) Home is cast about to their individual places of comfort to record their pressing concerns. The carefully crafted uber-story abandoned for passing fancy. The MS-16 fullness for the red-line compression of a 4-track. When they reconvene, they sort through some 60 songs to file down to the ”new” Home XVII, a scattershot sampling of moments and perspectives that somewhat awkwardly leaves archeological traces of cross-dressing and identity destruction.”
After 10 years, Home is back with a surprise new album to close out the decade. 18 is full of songs about the heart, inviting ghosts into your house, sending your kids off when they start a band and more.
Home started recording 18 a week after David Bowie passed, when Home played a set of Bowie classics at the Creative Alliance in Baltimore. That set helped lead to ”The Wrecker” a Ziggy Stardust homage about fans so smitten with their idol, they don’t even notice when they’re choking on the rain.
Other songs include ”Ghost: A Ghost Story by Home”, which has Eric Morrison, over a melodic, upbeat backdrop, telling a story of trying to convince a ghost that it should come into his house to haunt it. After the bottom of the song drops out, sounding a little like what the Big Crunch will probably sound like, the Ghost (played by Eric’s son, Eli) sings of drops of blood and London Bridge, which is still falling down.
”The Pictures You Took” invites the listener to step outside of their safe space and think about how lucky they are they’ve made it this long, dressed in a mid-tempo, sunshiney shape.
”Farewell” introduces us to a person who in the midst of losing a supernatural battle to save humanity from an evil force who awakens to a reality that is nearly as bad.
”Fine” was written for Sean Martin, Home’s original drummer, who passed away in the fall of 2017. The cover art is from a laser tag arcade Sean painted in Bradenton, Florida. 18 is dedicated to Sean and his family.
The rest of 18, which Dave Friedman mastered, includes dedications to Keith Emerson, embracing the void, new beginnings and never givin’ up.
It’s a limited edition of 250 copies (137 available here and 138 available directly from the band).
Two different editions, one with unique hand drawn, hand painted artworks featuring one of Sean’s flying saucers and the other with screen printed covers.
