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The man behind Camden is Cole Weiland of Daughters of the Sun notoriety, but knowing who created "Life of Devotion" (MG09) makes it no less mysterious. Described by its creator as a meditation on betrayal, it is an album of shrouds: synths veiled in noise and echo; vocals cloaked in reverb. It is a record that requires devotion in its listener - a pulsing, simmering, crackling piece of work that reveals itself only in layers and only to those who listen with intent.
Ed. of 100. Art by Suzanne Pfutzenreuter

MP3: Camden - "A Snake's Poison"

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For Moon Glyph's eighth release, the label offers up Dante & the Lobster's "Wonders". Appropriately titled, this selection seems to bounce along on a sense of wonderment. Aurally, any of these songs would not sound out of place on a Nuggets compilation, each featuring boyish harmonies and the jangling guitars so prominent in the mid-Sixties. There are moments on this record that might remind listeners almost simultaneously of the Troggs, Comus, the Yardbirds, the 13th Floor Elevators and the Chocolate Watch Band - an impressive feat of psychedelic pop amalgamation.
Ed. of 100.

MP3: Dante & the Lobster - "Marine Life"

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Somewhere, in some alternative reality, there is a film to correspond with Jonathan Delehanty's "Prisms Opposed to Prudence" - an art-house movie heavy on beautiful imagery, light on narrativity (like a good art-house flick should be). "Prisms", Moon Glyph's 7th release, began as Delehanty's response to a near failing grade he'd earned in a Philosophy of Music class at a local university. But what started as an act of revenge, crystallized into a korg-damaged opus that can be described as a noise-baroque cycle of synth auto-didacticism.
Ed. of 100.

MP3: Jonathan Delehanty - "A Prism Opposed to Prudence"

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Ever-changing, Olives (Ross Nervig and Moon Glyph head Steve Rosborough) return with a third offering, entitled Tremble. If their previous effort was conceived as a musical response to Jorge Luis Borges' The Book of Imaginary Beings, this new album is an act of hymnal disassembly - a subversion of traditional spiritual song structures and lyrical tropes. Recorded in Des Moines, IA and Minneapolis, MN, with the alacrity that has become typical of the band's creative habits, the two members of Olives were surprised to to find they'd put to tape a collection of songs bereft of the irony and distance disassembly and subversion often require. Remaining, a remarkably sincere and ecclesiastical cycle of music that proves to be as challenging as it is listenable.
Ed. of 100.

MP3: Olives - "Michael 'Dracula' Goldberg"

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The peaceful side of the word 'primordial' is not often mentioned when discussing music, but it does exist and if it didn't exist before, it will with the release of Daughters of the Sun's Ancient of the Ancients. Texturally, the two swathes of music splitting this album evoke an antediluvian pre-dawn, when wildness and stillness were on in the same. The Daughters begin and end Ancient with passages constructed with flutes, chimes and ostensible field recordings that tend to teem and effervesce around the throbbing tribal eruptions at the heart of the cassette.
Ed. of 100.

foxy digitalis review

MP3: Daughters of the Sun - Ancient of the Ancients(excerpt)

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"Songs of the Forest", the Castles' first release on the Moon Glyph imprint, is a study in delicate psychedelia. Throughout the album, the group harnesses sounds that harken to the mid-Sixties experimentalism. From beginning to end, it is a collection that houses surprises, such as the killer organ riff buried deep in "The Mole People" and the unexpected trombone in "Songs of the Forest" to name only a few. Recorded between the witching hour and three a.m. over the course of several months, this autumnal record is a revivalist showcase that straddles audacity and restraint with aplomb. Play it and float along.
Ed. of 100. Art by Suzanne Pfutzenreuter

jason edmonds - guitars, fuzz bass, keyboards, percussion & vocals
jeremiah doering - guitar, bass, drums, vocals on "Katie Crow" & "Wayne-O"
noah skoagerboe - leslie organ on "Herbs of Life", vocals
duane 'birdman' mcdowell - trombone on "Songs of the Forest" & "Wander"

foxy digitalis review

MP3: Magic Castles - "Songs of the Forest"

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Moon Glyph's sonic template will expand with the release of Velvet Davenport's "Lemon Drop Square Box". Kaleidoscopically so. The Minneapolis group cherry picks elements from an idyll when psychedelia was beginning to burgeon mid-1960s. In fourteen paisley minutes, "Lemon Drop Square Box" tells the story of someone opening a box of candy to find baby venus inside and then this fortunate soul must take care of the goddess. The tale is enhanced by the baroque soundings of a group who've clearly mastered a blend of record collector homage and a sense of forward-looking fun. The record is in turns jaunty and ruminative, experimental and comforting. The band employs a palatable production showcasing its jangling guitars and cartwheeling organs. Wherever he is, Syd Barrett is smiling.
Ed. of 200

parker sprout - vocals, guitar, organ, bass
samuel cramer - bass, vocals, drums
sean hartman - synth, drums, guitar
jonathan delehanty - backup vocals on "Square"

produced by aaron baum & samuel cramer

foxy digitalis review

MP3: Velvet Davenport - "Lemon"

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Soothsayer's debut, Neptune's Daughter, is a stark product of tensions, tensions that can be mapped through a sonic ether evocative of the deepest ocean depths and/or the far reaches of outerspace. The music can be both cavernous and claustrophobic, sometimes simultaneously. Soothsayer achieves this atmosphere by implementing, above all else, a mature restraint as well as Reverb, synth lines both brittle and crystalline, guitar oscillations and noises not attributable to given instruments. As a whole, the album conjures the act of untethering, pushing off into an expanding cathedral.
Ed. of 50

MP3: Soothsayer - "Neptune's Daughter"

Olives' second album was put to tape fast. "Fauna" finds Olives adding elements (beats, vocals, whistles) and layering their sonics as opposed to improvising live. Emboldened by Jorge Luis Borges' The Book of Imaginary Beings, the record was made in just five days. If "Cuba" is the band's wild island of guitar spikes and broken glass piano, their sophomore effort is an expedition into diverse psychedelia. The members could not tell you who played what during that week of recording in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Instruments were traded, concepts were discussed and then employed, unexpected trails were happened upon and likewise followed to stranger environs. While Rosborough and Nervig have retained their dedication to unpredictability, the tunes contained here within wink at structure and shake hands with certain aspects of pop.
Ed. of 100

MP3: Olives - "The Remora"

Olives debut, "Cuba" was created by four ears and twenty fingers attached to the band's two members, Steve Rosborough and Ross Nervig. The album proper features the sound of a pair of brains being circumvented. These improvised songs are instinct songs, knee-jerk constructions. "Cuba" was recorded in a tiny room in the city of Des Moines, Iowa over a hundred or so sessions. It captures (in hoary lo-fidelity) the two-piece attacking their instruments.
Ed. of 100

Ross Nervig - prepared guitar
Steve Rosborough - synth, sampler, snake-pit of cables