News/Updates 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.
Eagle Rock’s most reclusive comedown crew creep back into the blacklight for their vinyl debut with a pair of loosely more focused excursions into cold soul music and post-beatnik jazz shadowplay. Dress accordingly. Recorded in the weeks preceding the ritual void sessions that birthed the California Ash cassette, both tracks here tread the grey but groovy haunted interzone between bummed DIY ghost bop and outright goth lament. It’s a fine line, watch it closely. “Tarot Harem” is the A side, and it feigns a pure funeral mood before slowly stirring to life with erotic spectral voices, distant trumpet, and a swingingly narcoleptic rhythm section. The B is “Black Honey,” which tip-toes a similar path through 3 AM city streets while forlorn piano notes fall like light rain, the drums gently rev up, and vocals scat about “black tar black tar” and how “the beat goes on.” It does. This is the wrong side of town. Hang around if that’s yr thing. Black vinyl singles in hand-silkscreened, photocopied, and die-cut sleeves with topless nature nymph/burnout artwork. Edition of 250. First 78 copies come with a tarot card from the 1970’s Aleister Crowley edition illustrated by Lady Frieda Harris. California Ash tape
About People in the West blame weird moods on a string of things: the wind (those Santa Anas), the end (of the country), the moon (crescent is cursed), even the movies. But it doesn’t matter which is right/real, because the effect is the same, freaked souls in a trapped environment, lotuses floating on a lake littered with bodies. Topaz Rags is a new late night downer trio devoted to mapping these sour times and long goodbyes. Tunes Capricorn Born Again: Sightings Contact
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