Ways to pay:

1. click on the "Add to Cart" buttons beneath each release and pay via paypal (super easy)
2. mail cash (hidden) or check (made out to NNF Records) to

5109 Loleta Ave,
Los Angeles, CA 90041

and include a note saying what you want.

Then we’ll ship you yr stuff. Many mail orders get rad gifts.

NOTE: We are not responsible for lost or damaged orders. If you have problems or concerns, please write us and we'll do what we can to help.

Wholesale/huge orders, and international folks, please get in touch first to work out special shipping: presents@notnotfun.com





Psychic Reality/
LA Vampires

NNF185—LP ($12)

Every day’s as new as you want it to be so take up the torch and light something unlit. Definite off-the-grid mentalities prevail on this genre-dissolving split 12” between San Fran anima soul voyager Leyna Noel aka Psychic Reality and So-Cal acid-jazz crate-digger LA Vampires. Noel’s toured the states coast-to-coast and dropped a couple potent tape/CDR effigies in the past year but this is her vinyl debut and it captures everything searing and singular about her live alchemy in glowing, glorious detail. Four inter-flowing songs of tone-float piano keys, bedroom drum machines, and white light amplifier vox. Trance-damaged and truth-seeking. LA Vampires’ side madlibs through a more mercurial matrix, using slowed/screwed tapes, boombox Casio FX, low end theories, and bleached voice patterns to conjure a reverb chamber’s worth of dance floor mirages. Future collabs with Zola Jesus and Sun Araw should expound her rhythm method mission. Abuse yr illusion. Black vinyl LPs in glossy jackets with a boldly disrobed duo cover portrait by Caitlin C. Mitchell. Edition of 450.


Topping Bottoms

Towers Of Spines

NNF182—CS ($5)


Don’t even bother trying to fathom the name, it’s a bottomless game. Here’s what we do know: Topping Bottoms are a loose liberated squad of itinerant Tokyo drifters that traffic in a billowing, burned out brand of post-millenial psych-loitering that feels like someone slow-motion shattering a lava lamp over yr skull and letting the fluorescent slime drip-drop into yr eyes. That good/weird. Featuring sometime members of an odd constellation of other projects (Ainotamenishis, Evangelista, Duchesses, etc), the semi-steady TB line-up (Kate, Masaki, Tracy, Ryo) wields shadow-sleaze PSF guitar licks over dark drugged drumming lightly splattered with Bore-junk electronic sludge. Towers Of Spines is actually a reconfigured and re-sequenced version of an earlier OOP self-released CDR (on Ryo’s own Create Evil imprint) but packed out with a fresh unreleased live cut tracked at a riotous spring 2008 performance. Tapes come in insane double-sided fold-out silkscreened j-cards designed by Ryo which are in turn housed in stunning exterior cassingle-style art shells, all done up in a spectrum of shades and art-paper variations. Basically: the visual quotient on this tape is huge. Edition of 150.


Dylan Ettinger

Bringin' The Heat

NNF180—cassingle ($4)

Companion cassingle to the Smokin’ 7 inch (NNF177) finds Ettinger out on his own, sans The Heat, but even without back-up he still brings it. “Bringin’ The Heat” is a killer coast guard coda, searchlights fanning out, SWAT Team guitar licks, hypnotized Kevlar keyboard prisms, delicate synth wah surf spray misting up your teal iridium Oakleys. It’s make-it-or-break-it time; be a pro. The other song on here is “Cancer,” which washes over the closing credits as the cast and info scroll down and people leave the theater. A melancholic cocaine-y synth-pop outro ode with multiple micro-solos and some defeated echo vocals crooning out the final fade-to-black vibes: we did what we could, it was what it was, but forget it Jake that’s life on the squad, another day another dollar (or something). Material repeats on both sides to save you some flipping. Pro-imprinted cassettes in full-color J-cards with art by NNF. Edition of 125.




Topaz Rags

Capricorn Born Again

NNF179—LP ($12)

Grey clouds stay grey. Low light situations birth low-lit moods. It's all bummer clockwork. West Coast lurk-jazz triad Topaz Rags return to vinyl with their debut long player, Capricorn Born Again, an eight-song comedown recorded/mixed from spring-to-fall of '09 via a complex 4-track/boombox assemblage method. Everything creaks and hisses, there's smoke in the air, players at the end of their ropes, lyrics washing over faded raga ballads, slinky electric piano bar depressions, shadow gauze cavern pop. The bell jar is half empty, obviously. Slow dive and sink in. Black vinyl LPs (mastered by Pete Swanson) in jackets designed by Amanda. Edition of 400.




Sex Worker

The Labor Of Love

NNF178—LP ($12)

Still waters run deep but wild waters run deeper. Both when fronting San Fran free-punk body-music trio Mi Ami or performing angst-dance psycho-dramas under his solo alias, Sex Worker, Daniel Martin-McCormick always succeeds in generating total motion (and emotion) and breaking the fourth wall. His vision of tranced/anguished rhythm questing hits an apex on The Labor Of Love, his LP debut under the Sex Worker guise, and we’ve been soaking in its dark arts for months. Pulsing, lo-fi kraut electronics bubble and sputter under hazy arcs of weirdo vocal smear. Escapist disco drum machines cruise into the horizon under a canopy of dubby accents and FX percussion, sometimes peaking in harsh frenzies of echo-scream meltdowns. All three pieces function as anthems or elegies or protest songs articulating Daniel’s heavy anti-sex trafficking/enslaved bodies activist agenda but you don’t have to know the depths of the ethical framework to grasp the vibe. An intensely unique and hyper-personal statement from one of our favorite west coast music-dreamers. Black vinyl LPs in jackets designed by the artist. Edition of 450.




Dylan Ettinger & The Heat

Smokin'

NNF177—7" ($5)


We had heard a couple cassette outings by this Bloomington young-bloomer over the last 4-6 months and each one hit us better than the last but nothing had prepped us for Ettinger’s most recent evolution into neon skyline chase scene soundtracker and that’s part of what makes it so amazing. For Smokin’ he wrangled together a small posse of close comrades (enter The Heat) and tracked a sick session of smoky synth themes, Corvette noir moods, echo dystopia, faded voices, and sleazy Miami sax. The A, “Smokin,’” is the more ballad-y of the pair, sad and smooth, just fired-from-the-force, midnight cruising on the strip, no one to call. The B, “Miami Heat (The Stakeout),” amps the tension, camera zooming in over palm trees and blue-lit swimming pools, a deco mansion on the coast, the place is surrounded, the heat is on, all that. A cool sleaze-psych vision, sickly executed, by a rad fresh energy from the underground. Fingers are crossed there’s more where this came from. Black-vinyl 7 inches, plus a photocopied insert, in full-color sleeves with art by NNF. Edition of 380.




Blank Realm

Heatless Ark

NNF176—LP ($12)

We’ve touted this Brisbane clan on multiple occasions in the past (the Mind Peril and The Returner tapes on NNF) but they say the third time’s the charm and clearly that’s true because not only is Heatless Ark Blank Realm’s vinyl debut, it’s also by far the weirdest, deepest, punkest, freakiest, aka BEST album the band’s ever made. And so for all these reasons (and more) we are happy as heaven to offer it up for the world. The porous BR line-up allows for a lot of instrumentation flux and this transience translates on record here to a strange range of agendas: open electric ecstasies (“Fabulous Terror Index”), dissonant outsider-wave art-punk (“Saint Tegram,” “Heatless Ark”), loner Jandek-y demos (“Blues Helix,” “Blues Helix 2”), slow-diving femme-sung dream-gaze (“Till I Clear My Own Name”), and beyond. Varied, wild, and intensely ambitious, this LP establishes Blank Realm as high on the high heap of the rich Australian underground, with miles more expansion potential. Hopefully western world touring plans can congeal soonishly to drive the point home. Black vinyl LPs in beautiful metallic ink smoke-ritual jackets (these jpegs don't do them justice) screenprinted by art-wizard Ryo from Topping Bottoms. Edition of 400.

Bonus detail: LP is available by itself OR with a killer C33 companion album called Dirty Ark (culled from the same sessions as the LP) housed in yet another radical silkscreened J-card courtesy of Ryo. Scroll down to check it out. Paypal accordingly.


Blank Realm

Heatless Ark + Dirty Ark

NNF176/NNF176A—LP/CS ($15)

Combo deal of Blank Realm's Heatless Ark LP and the bonus cassette, Dirty Ark
(pictured). Musical description above.




Little Claw

Human Taste

NNF174—LP ($13)

Portland, OR-by-way-of-Michigan garage gang Little Claw first tripped our radar with their self-released Why Not 7 inch, which was/is raw and physical and swingin’ in all the ways you want a 7” to be. Their LA live shows proved even more ripping and charged; we were sold. So we sprung at the offer to enshrine their latest (and best) album, Human Taste, on vinyl for the world’s turntables to adore. Packed with classic, cracked anthems (“Frozen In The Future,” “Colors You Drown”), basement weirdo stompers (“Modern Vampire,” “Breathing Tape,”) and naked art-punk riddles (“Lay To Waste,” “Summerphile”), the LP’s two sides are slyly sequenced to seduce, blind, and devour, demonstrating a rad range of attacks, escapes, claws, tongues. It’s a great late summer record: between styles, beyond genres, and aggressively alive. Taste the Taste. Black vinyl LPs in jackets with art designed by the band, plus a pro-printed, double-sided 11x17 poster/insert. Edition of 600. CD edition available on Ecstatic Peace.


Expensive Shit

Powwow With Chopper

NNF173—CS ($4)

FINAL COPIES. REDUCED PRICE.

Named (hopefully) after the scorching ‘75 Fela LP that was inspired by an incident where Nigerian cops planted a joint on him but then he ate it to destroy the evidence and then they detained him till they could inspect his feces (can you believe that?!), Expensive Shit are a wrecked wrecking crew from Austin that specialize in braindead riff carnage of the rawest order. By their own interweb admission they consider their influences “sludge meditation” and “winging it” and their band policy is “no practice, we play anywhere.” That said, Powwow With Chopper – the band’s first public release as far as our we know – road-blasts through gnarly terrain: pulsing avalanches of zen distortion, basement garbage drums, mono-chord ascension marches, etc. No maps, no artifice, just now-minded in-the-blood-red street fighter rock chaos. Pro-imprinted tapes in wild double-sided full-color J-cards with crazy “Zangief chain fight” artwork by Pittsburgh rip-nagogic scholar Spencer Longo. Edition of 128.




Wet Hair

Glass Fountain

NNF172—LP ($12)

Welcome back. One of NNF’s total favorite active bands return with a second full-length (most of which was recorded during the same sessions that birthed their debut LP, Dream) and we are pleased as spiked fruit punch. The Reed/Garbes duo mainly sticks to their guns, mining the same post-Suicide art-trance vein they perfected on Dream, but with Glass Fountain there’s an added emphasis on the disembodied, oscillator pop mode that Wet Hair often toy with. Fountain’s five tracks include some of the band’s simplest but catchiest songs (“Crucifix In The Waves,” “When The Right Time Comes,” etc), mesmerizing organ melodies over plink-plonky vintage drum machines with weirdo soulful singing and outer space electronics, like an outsider-punk Silver Apples or something. Hard to say exactly what universe Wet Hair are operating in and that’s probably part of why we love it so much. A killer record that gets better each spin. In jackets with art drawn and designed by the band, plus a pro-printed 11x11 insert. Edition of 600 (400 on opaque lavendar vinyl, 200 on black).




Robedoor

Raiders

NNF167—LP ($11)

BACK IN STOCK! FINAL REPRESS OF 250 COPIES ON BLACK VINYL.

Following their 2008 East Coast tour with Woods and Pocahaunted the Robedoor agenda has mainly been: hibernating in the City Terrace zone above east LA, adding a drummer/modular synth dealer, and letting the smoke rise. Raiders is the first RBDR LP since 2008’s Endlessly Blazing and is the result of almost six months of slow-burn transformative tape machine meditation helmed by Mr. Ged Gengras. Bummed guitars, loner drone tones, low caverns of reverbed drums and rumble, echo dislocation, and dead voices cascade down into the isolated highways. Song modes are carved out and then left to rot. Features early trio live set staples like “Indo Shadow” and “The Downcast Eye.” You can’t stick your hand in the same black river twice. Change or be changed. LPs in jackets with cover photo by Caitlin C. Mitchell. Edition of 500 (250 on marbled grey, 250 on black).




Explorers

Bermuda Telepaths

NNF166—LP ($11)

Bermuda Telepaths is the latest title lifted out of the fruit-and-photocopy-strewn Outer Limits Recordings archive and into the ears of the world at large. Recorded under the never-again-used Explorers moniker and first edited into album form about a year ago, this hallucinatory patchwork trip into the ether synthesizes all of OLR’s deepest loves – boombox fidelity, quick cuts, keyboard loop sorcery, underwater pop, general mind surfing – into a humbly hypnotic whirlpool of energies. Apparently there was a concept/thesis behind the album’s genesis somehow involving psychic powers, lizard people, and the Bermuda Triangle, but the details are hazy. Which befits the audio in question. Read your palm. Take a walk in your thoughts. Explore away. Black vinyl LPs in jackets with artwork designed by the artist, plus a copy shop poem insert. Edition of 330.




Eternal Tapestry

The Invisible Landscape

NNF165—LP ($12)

BACK IN STOCK!! FINAL REPRESS OF 400 COPIES. MYSTERY-COLORED VINYL.

Last year’s Mystic Induction LP captured PDX wah junkies Eternal Tapestry at their hairiest hour, awash in color trails and nightshade flashbacks. Since then they’ve reverted back to their original power trio line-up, circled the tube amps, and written a fresh, flooring set of brand new electric rippers. And The Invisible Landscape is the fruit of this from-bliss-to-blistering evolution/revolution. It’s packed deep with six kraut-punk psych-shredders, huffing fumes from the twin guitar hero dogfighting of Dewey Mahood and Nick Bindeman while drum demon Jed Bindeman does barrel rolls and nosedives into the eye of the storm. There’s also a rawness and warmth to the production that helps the songs bleed into the ear with more electricity than before, and the riff/vocals interplay is streamlined for optimum mainlining. A fiery high point for a fiery high band. Hit it or quit it. Randomly colored LPs (hues range from silt grey to swamp green and beyond) in pro-printed jackets with art by the band plus a photocopied insert. Edition of 500.




Vibes

Psychic

NNF159—7" ($4)

BACK IN STOCK!! FINAL REPRESS OF 250 COPIES.

Every family has a freak (or 2). Every deck’s got a wild card. We’ve got Vibes. Ante up. NNF’s loosest cannons return to the recording fray with Psychic, a blown-out briar patch of basement garage fantasy masquerading as obscurist protest funk – and the band’s first vinyl statement. Recorded in Eagle Rock on a “last legs”-style 4-track, the EP’s four songs are jacked deep in the red, with fuzz bass, wah shrapnel, vocal sloganeering, and drum racket all fighting for tape room. Competition is fierce. Recent live faves like “Dead Horses” and “Night Court” appear in particularly revved-up form, as do the first two Vibes songs ever written, “Psychic” and “Prisms Of Fame.” All bases are covered. All soul trains are derailed. Here comes the judge. Black vinyl 33 RPM singles in full-color fold-over sleeves with collage artwork and lettering by Cameron Stallones, photographs by Caitlin C. Mitchell, plus a rant-y revolution scrapbook insert. Edition of 400.




Wet Hair

Dream

NNF154—LP ($12)

BACK IN STOCK!! FINAL REPRESS OF 400 COPIES.

When Iowa City freak-out free-rockers Raccoo-oo-oon called it quits last year it left a bummer scar in the Midwest underground scene. But time is a great healer, and so are new bands. So out of the ashes of the RAC pack comes Wet Hair, a synth-punk-trance duo composed of keyboardist/vocalizer Shawn Reed and keyboardist/drummer Ryan Garbes, and Dream is the band’s debut vinyl full-length after a series of increasingly shredding limited-edition cassettes on their own Night People label. Piling together an unlikely trash heap of Suicide-style drum machine beat-bops, zone-droned krautrock keys, and fucked up outsider crooning, the LP’s four tracks careen across a spectrum of moods and mangled melodies. Recorded at Flat Black Studios by Luke Tweedy and mastered by Pete Swanson, Wet Hair’s cult electric annihilation has never gleamed with such razor-edged weirdness; this is their dream made real. Black vinyl LPs in jackets with artwork by Reed and Garbes, plus a pro-printed full-color 11x11 insert. CD edition available on Release The Bats.




Heather Leigh

Jailhouse Rock

NNF153—LP ($11)

It’s been a while since Scorces sorceress, Jandek collaborator, and Volcanic Tongue branch manager Heather Leigh has ventured out on vinyl under her own name. And it may be a while longer, as Jailhouse Rock is in fact a wax reissue of a long OOP 2006 cassette classic on Michigan crud factory Fag Tapes. It was a fave of ours that year (and every year), so it feels extra celebratory to be able to offer up a freshly remastered (by Pete Swanson) LP edition of the album for global re-appreciation. Sprawling, long-form descent/ascents into mythic electric disorientation, powered by her trademark recipe of FX-soaked pedal steel and voice. Jailhouse feels loosely more aligned with a mid-aughts drone/noise aesthetic than the outsider dirt road Americana of her Devil If You Can Hear Me LP (also on NNF), but the distinction is a slight one. Side A swims in swooping sheets of vox and tempestuous wind tunnel dynamics before slowly dying away to wheezing disembodied harmonica. The B piece begins in a more overtly beautiful mode, a trinity of crystalline notes picked and stretched until they’re transformed into a rapturous sky of textural distortion. Sensual and vertigo-inducing in equal measure. Black vinyl LPs in jackets with brand new paint/collage artwork by Heath Moerland (of Sick Llama, Slither, Odd Clouds, etc). Edition of 400.




V/A

My Estrogeneration

NNF150—LP ($12)

First ever NNF vinyl compilation (more in the future hopefully?) finds the spotlight landing fairly on the fairer sex, and the glare is glorious. 11 diverse femme musical energies corralled across 12 inches of black vinyl, all exclusive contributions, and the breadth of zones and interzones traversed is a beautiful thing to hear. Carry on my wayward non-sons. LPs in jackets with artwork by Pocahaunted bassist/scholar Diva Dompe, plus a full-color double-sided insert. Edition of 500. This year's Estrogeneration includes:

-Zola Jesus
-Tickley Feather
-Pocahaunted (vintage unused track from
Gold Miner's Daughters sessions)
-Inca Ore
-Topaz Rags
-HNY
-Talk Normal
-Islaja (featuring Samara Lubelski and Blevin Blectum)
-L.A. Vampires
-U.S. Girls
-Valet




Raccoo-oo-oon

NNF145—2xLP ($18)

BACK IN STOCK!! FINAL REPRESS OF 320 COPIES.

All things must come to pass, if you love something set it free, it’s better to burn out than fade away, blah blah blah. No platitude can mask the permanent bummer of a favorite band breaking up in their prime, and such is the case with Iowa City’s most untamed civic treasure, feral-psych foursome Raccoo-oo-oon, who decided to dissolve this year after nearly half a decade of radical and galvanizing activity (tapes, tours, t-shirts, etc). Fortunately they’re generous sorts, so their parting gift to the fans/haters/planet is a vicious, thorny wilderness of endless, nameless songs heaved across four fried sides of black vinyl. Crawl a mile in their shoes. As far as R.I.P. band statements go, this self-titled monster is tough to beat, by far the most ambitious slabs of sounds the RAC pack has ever put together. Doomed, desperate prog-rock flailings decay into hollow purgatories of dimly pulsing ambience, only to re-erupt into pissed percussion firestorms and experimental electricity. There are a few moments of Behold Secret Kingdom-style focus, but for the most part the mood remains raw and acidic, four souls on edge, backs to the crowd, channeling everything they have left inside. It’s deconstruction time again. Nearly 80 minutes of music, mastered by Pete Swanson, housed in reinforced double LP jackets with “Andy/Daren in repose” photo artwork, plus a pro-printed 11x11 insert. Edition of 500.




Odd Clouds

Deceiving Illusion

NNF143—LP ($12)

A thousand years ago, in 2006, Michigan moonlighters Odd Clouds drizzled down their LP opus, The Cavernous End. Within the sphere of open-eyed freeform organized psych-jazz sprawl, nothing compared. Years later that album still kills, but not much has followed in its wake (there have been some loose tapes but those roll in a cruder basement fuckaround vein). So we are personally xxtremely pleased to be able to finally offer up the band’s latest album-length affair, Deceiving Illusion. A six-song spelunk into the deranged group brain responsible for noise scene mainstays like Fag Tapes and Tasty Soil Records, Illusion rumbles through a hall of mirrors of zones/styles, from freaky garbage punk to robot throat games to motorik brass meditations to unhinged 70s German commune beardo psych-blazers. The journey is the destination and all that. Abuse yr Illusion. Black vinyl LPs in stunning 4-color pro-silkscreened jackets with artwork by Chris Pottinger and Jamie Easter, plus a double-sided photocopied insert. Edition of 400.




Emaciator

Coveting

NNF131—LP ($10)

BACK IN STOCK! FINAL 3 COPIES.

Misery wears many masks, but Tulare, California fatalist Jon Borges has etched his mark on most of them. For at least half a decade he’s pursued increasingly suicidal tendencies under his Pedestrian Deposit guise (which is currently on hiatus), splicing subdued loops of morbid beauty against savage canyons of harsh noise histrionics. Lately, though, he’s been straying more and more from this aggressive exercise in contrasts in favor of his Emaciator alias, which draws from the same dark wellspring of bitter memories and bipolar rage but, instead of unleashing it in grand frenzies, bottles everything up inside until it seeps out the pores. Early efforts/cassettes retained a strain of buzzing nausea reminiscent of his PD days, but the last 12 months have witnessed a complete abandonment of any ties to the past. Times are still bleak, sure, but the grey prisms of brooding ambience Borges now conjures and slowly collapses convey a depth of mood and subtlety far surpassing simple signifiers like Indifference, Resentment, Remorse. Coveting collects together five exquisite Emaciator compositions (including two particularly riveting songs that were debuted live at Echo Curio last winter) for a harrowing 40 minutes of troubled solace, crisscrossing suicide guitar lines, and entranced self-reflection. Meditation is a myth; desire does not sleep. Black vinyl LPs in shrinkwrapped jackets with photography and layout by Borges. Mastered by Pete Swanson, edition of 430.




Sun Araw

The Phynx

NNF112—LP ($12)

BACK IN STOCK!! FINAL REPRESS OF 300 COPIES.

All wild, natural organisms have roots, and some even say they’re a good thing to return to from time to time. For instance, right now. In the wake of the jazzed reactions garnered by his Beach Head album and split LP with Predator Vision, today seems as ripe a time as any to re-introduce yrself to chapter one of Cameron Stallones’ Sun Araw saga: The Phynx. Originally released on NNF as a micro-edition CDR in early ’08, this four-song scorcher blinded us the first time ‘round, but now, fully re-mastered by James Plotkin and spread across 12 inches of black vinyl, these raw electric stomping grounds sound positively holy. Our first-time descrip read: “Spanning Spacemen 3 garage cosmos, Starving Weirdos coastal séance, and a healthy stratosphere of pan-dimensional astral feedbackers, The Phynx is a fantastic four-track suite that floats freely from form to formlessness in the blink of a third eye. A great journey into white light dirge and dead distortion blues, and as killer a debut full-length as a label/listener/fan/head could hope for.” All of this rambling was, and remains, true blue. Black vinyl LPs in matte jackets with art designed by Stallones.




Jeremy Earl

SKULL

NNF100—art book ($13)

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.




The Goslings

Occasion

NNF098—CD ($8)

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.