Ian Rosenbaum - “Memory Palace”
“Andy Akiho and I met in 2010 while in school. Since then, we have worked on many projects together, but the largest thing we have collaborated on is Seven Pillars, an evening-length work that was written for my group Sandbox Percussion that includes percussion quartets and percussion solos. Or Not At All [a brand new track for this reissue] was completed in 2021, but Andy started to write it in 2013, when he composed Pillar IV, the central movement of the work. As he was writing Pillar IV, Andy also started work on Spiel, a frenetic and raucous glockenspiel solo that would become part of Seven Pillars. As he composed, he had another idea for a glockenspiel solo - a lullaby, played only with chopsticks. Over the span of two days in March 2013, he composed this beautiful work and sent the manuscript to me. He didn’t include a title, but at the top of the score he wrote a note for me to keep in mind as I learned the music - ‘effortless or not at all’.” - Ian Rosenbaum
Poolblood - “there's_plenty_of_music_to_go_around.zip”
“A small batch of songs that I wrote after coming off of tour in March 2023. The songs are an expansion of the mole world which ultimately concludes it. I recorded twinkie at one of my favorite studios and live venues in Toronto called Tibet Studio Records with the help of my friends. Louie Short, who I worked with on mole, produced, mixed and mastered the live session. I recorded resin and wringer at Better Company Studios with my pal and producer Allen Tate. The highlight of recording was getting to work with Palehound’s El Kempner. I've been a fan of theirs for a while so it was so awesome getting to work together.” - Maryam (Poolblood)
San Fermin - “Arms”
Arms, the fifth full length LP from indie rock mainstays San Fermin, was written by bandleader Ellis Ludwig-Leone in the topsy-turvy months after the end of two relationships, one very long and one very short. To help navigate the ultraviolet days, he turned to longtime collaborator and vocalist Allen Tate, who helped channel the experience into a lean 9-track LP. Written from the multiple viewpoints characteristic of San Fermin’s previous albums, but with stripped back musical accompaniment that exposes the dissociation, humor, and regret of a life turned upside down, Arms is San Fermin’s most emotionally vulnerable album to date, and features some of its most potent songwriting.
Nathan Schram - “I’d Swear There Was Somebody Here”
Nathan's first meeting with David Crosby was at the recording sessions of Snarky Puppy's “Family Dinner 2” in New Orleans in 2015. Since then, Nathan and his wife, Becca Stevens, have had a growing relationship with Crosby and his family. Years before Crosby's passing he asked Nathan to rework some of his a cappella tracks from his past. While some of these reworking can be heard on Nathan's solo projects like “Where We Are Not,” this recording is an unadulterated version of his original. Nathan and producer Fab Dupont made this recording together upon David's request and used 7 different violas to record each of the tracks. David heard and praised this recording before his passing but no plans were made to release it until now.
Arly Scott - “Head in the Walls”
Arly Scott’s “Head in the Walls” is an Extended EP filled with indie-pop, folk-rock and Americana heart. While living in New York City, Scott found her way to Better Company Records in Brooklyn where she started to write and record music with producer and musician Allen Tate (San Fermin). Scott tracked the EP in New York in late 2022, then returned to her hometown of Los Angeles to finish the recordings with her uncle, producer/composer Jason Gallagher (Z Nation, Leroy Justice). The songs feature a slew of seasoned musicians, including Justin Mazer (Daniel Rodriguez, Midnight North), John Kimock (Mike Gordon), Margaux (Closeby, Poise), and Brother Sal (Jeremy Renner, Jellyroll, Kamasi Washington). ‘Head in the Walls’ started as an introspective journey taken from Scott’s diary entries and bedroom melodies and grew into a collection of songs about self-discovery, finding her voice, and sharing it with others.
Lilts - “Waiting Around”
Dreamy, catchy and playfully rueful, “Waiting Around” is the debut EP from Lilts, the new collaborative project from John Ross (Wild Pink) and Laura Wolf. Both songwriters and producers for their own projects, the pair began trading song ideas in 2021 via email. The pairing elevates Wolf’s ease of melody with John’s knack for instrumental part writing into a dreamy and catchy collection of songs about nostalgia mixed with playful pangs of regret.
TELECOMS - “TELECOMS I”
“I hadn't realized I had started putting this album together until I was driving upstate with Zeno Pittarelli in the spring of 2021 as we were coming out of the pandemic. I had three songs I had recorded on my four-track during lockdown that were sticking with me in this fever-dreamy 70's world I was starting to put together after revisiting some records my mom gave me. Zeno convinced me to put the songs out, close to their original rough-and-ready form. I continued to put together a small group of songs over the course of the next year as the project continued to form. I didn't want to do another solo record, I wanted to get different folks and more people involved. Soon after I connected with Abe Seiferth and him and I drank coffee, ate sandwiches and polished the original bedroom recordings. I flew to LA and it rained the entire time, and I met Ryan Pollie and we recorded a song that I wrote two hours before the session. I tried every song in a different key, I re-recorded entire songs three times, I waited months for my piano to go back into tune when the weather warmed up, I wondered if trying a new thing was a mistake- then I went for run and I felt better. I wanted to be in a big room with all of my friends, playing and singing- so I made this album for that - and here we are.” - Sean McVerry of TELECOMS
Sandbox Percussion, Jerome Begin - “WILDERNESS”
“'WILDERNESS” is an hour-long, multi-movement work by composer Jerome Begin, who fuses live percussion instruments with electronic manipulations in real time. Jerome’s music employs the forms and processes of classical music, mixing them with electro-acoustic effects. The result, which the album captures, is an innovative textural blend. “WILDERNESS” is all about variety of timbres.
Jerome performs with Sandbox Percussion on the album, handling the live electronic processing, which enhances the percussion quartet in an organic and musical way. The live performance, and the interplay between the five performers, results in haunting sonic landscapes, digital whirlwinds, and electronic resonances. Along the way, the general textures — built from an array of roto-toms, crotales, kick drums, snares, and assorted percussion instruments — and moods change from stark, to lush, to meditative.
Paul Moody - “Life That Still Grew in the Dust”
"Life That Still Grew in the Dust" finds songwriter Paul Moody probing the dark subconscious of relationships, looking for something solid to grasp. Often finding himself adrift, unsure of where he is heading. As he sings about love that is bound to be slowly washed away by the tides of time: “Our hands our skin our everything, a shapeless strange shore, forevermore.”
hex gf -
“Haters”
“Haters” is the debut album by hex gf, an indie rock band formed by two exes: Justine and Sam. Despite a messy end to a once impassioned romantic relationship, their enduring friendship evolved into a flourishing musical collaboration. hex gf is a product of having fun, not overthinking it, and making new music that they’re excited to share with the world.
The album cover represents their desire to create music that is honest and free-spirited, rather than trying to fit into a specific aesthetic or image. The songs, which project the same ethos, were written with no expectations of how they would be received. Instead, they focus on authenticity and the celebration of the process. The resulting album is simple, unpretentious, and reflective of the band’s desire to embrace joy.
Divine Sweater - “Down Deep (A Nautical Apocalypse)
“Down Deep (A Nautical Apocalypse)” is a series of vignettes from the end of the world. When Earth becomes unlivable, survivors seek shelter in abandoned submarines in a last-ditch attempt to keep living. In each track, characters reflect on their past-lives above the surface, detailing colorful memories of loss, joy, regret, and revelation. What begins as a story of intense hope for new beginnings slowly unravels into the ultimate, final disaster.
With the primary goal of writing a concept album in mind, we leaned into our love of science fiction, pulling inspiration from records like Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust and The Flaming Lips’ Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. However, we wanted our story to be grounded on Earth, focused on regular people, centered around the very real effects of climate change. Since the last few years on this planet have felt sufficiently bizarre, it would be fairly unsurprising if, tonight, Earth’s mantle split open and set society ablaze, forcing the surviving factions of humanity to move underwater and live out the remainder of their scattered lives in submarines. This album, like all good stories, is a murky blend of fiction and non-fiction, the fantastic and the ordinary.
Ellis Ludwig-Leone - “False We Hope”
False We Hope is the first album of concert works by composer Ellis Ludwig-Leone. Performed by the Grammy-winning Attacca Quartet and vocalist Eliza Bagg (Roomful of Teeth), with Ludwig-Leone on piano and synthesizer, its movements flicker through themes of hope and loss, connection and isolation: a prayer book for the nonbeliever. Featuring a libretto by MacArthur recipient and Pulitzer finalist Karen Russell (Swamplandia!) and poet Carey McHugh, False We Hope is an attempt for ritual and connection in the face of cosmic indifference and the white noise of isolation.
Chelsea Lane - “Suspensions”
Thomas Adès’s introspective “Souvenir” [“Memory”] is a solo piano work written for the end credits of the film Colette (2018). Its inclusion in Chelsea Lane’s album Suspensions marks the first occurrence of its transcription for harp. The musical content pays homage to fin-de-siècle composers such as Claude Debussy and Erik Satie, contemporaries of the French novelist Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette. The piece’s sparseness and wandering, questioning chords imbue the piece with nostalgia, much like Erik Satie’s Gymnopédies, with a melodic climax that recalls a vivid memory before it becomes (re)-obscured.
Gemma Laurence - “Lavender”
Timeless in their specificity, the vignettes that make up Lavender guide Laurence’s listeners through a labyrinth of rosy memories and monuments to the past. In the powerful trans rights anthem “Lavender,” Laurence opens the door to a more all-encompassing kind of femininity through the eyes of her best friend (who the album is dedicated to). And in “Adrienne” we are lead back into an almost diary-like account of Laurence’s own queer awakening through the words of Adrienne Rich. “Watchdog” hurdles us into the snowy foothills of New England to witness the beautiful, fickle, and anxiety-producing beginnings of a new relationship. The album draws to a finale with “Rearview,” a waltz that Laurence initially wrote as an “epilogue” to her first album, Crooked Heart: one that looks in the rearview at her past self, her past work, and her past loves, and leaves it behind for a brighter future.
Youth in a Roman Field - “Get Caught Trying”
“So much of our world is bombardment, distraction, noise. I wanted to make something that created space and time for sifting and soothing. I wanted to make music that had the effect of nourishing and nurturing. I needed it when I wrote it, and I need it now. In making it, I imagined bathing in the warm glow of sunshine - the kind that creeps in through curtains or a tree canopy. The kind that warms you to your bones, that makes you feel seen, that reminds you that you still exist and the sun still shines.” - Claire Wellin, Youth in a Roman Field
Arly Scott’s “Future Feeling”
"Future Feeling" started as a diary entry while Arly was staying with a friend in Costa Rica. She usually takes comfort in writing in places that feel like home, but there was something magical about writing on a beach, so far away from everything she knows.
"'Future Feeling' was my favorite track to record with Allen. We worked hard on giving the vocals a very spacey sound using Tape Echo, and giving the track an overall nostalgic and warm feeling. I wanted the drums to sound like the sand under my feet when I took long walks and listened to the waves." - Arly Scott
Paul Moody’s “By Your Side”
"'By Your Side' was not planned to exist, I was supposed to record just a few songs in upstate New York but ended up staying longer than I anticipated due to the start of covid. I found myself living in a big and almost entirely vacant hotel with nothing to do but write and record songs - and that is what I did. I would work on lyrics while wandering around the pool, arcade and empty corridors of a hotel long past its thriving days in a bygone era, then head to a small windowless cabin in the woods to record them. There were no shows to play, no rush to finish the thing and get back out there- for the first time I found myself getting every single note the way I wanted it and making no compromises recording. This album was how I learned to truly make a record, often figuring things out slowly as I went. I wanted it to have the spirit of the folk songs I love, organic and unconcerned with imitating a modern sound or following a recipe that is not true to the music I love." - Paul Moody
San Fermin’s “Your Ghost”
“This is the first group of songs that Allen has produced for San Fermin, and recording them together felt like the start of a new chapter for the band. We aimed at more classic songwriting— songs with good bones that you could play alone at a piano or a guitar and still have the emotion come through. I’m proud of these three songs and especially excited for the new direction they pushed us when we were working on them. And there’s much more new music coming soon!” - Ellis of San Fermin
Wormy - “I’m Sweating All The Time”
“I started recording these songs in 2019 with the idea to release a full LP. Coming from a folk singing and rock drumming background I was itching to try something new. I recorded the initial tracks in a friend's very minimal home studio in Queens, NY with the idea of creating almost everything with almost entirely programmed and midi instruments. During the lockdown, I realized I wanted a more flushed out, fully produced record. I asked my friend Nathan Stocker (Brotherkenzie, Hippo Campus) in Minneapolis to take a look at the tracks and fully produce the demos we'd created. We spent much of the lockdown sending tracks back and forth, never actually working together in person and created this record. I sent a few extra tracks to my friend Erik Paulson (Remo Drive) also in Minneapolis to produce! With touring (drumming for Samia) taking up a lot of my time after lockdown, I found myself itching to release the record I'd been anxious to release for years. And here it is!!” - Wormy
Sean McVerry’s “Slow Motion”
“‘Slow Motion’ was originally written as a part of a series on my TikTok, where fans and followers would submit adjectives for him to build a song around. This began as ‘Something Twirly’ back in March of 2021 and garnered over three hundred thousand views. At the behest of the folks and fans, I decided to finish this song with a handful of others to release. I tried to keep the whole thing relatively light and fun, which hopefully will be obvious with the inclusion of the 2nd marimba solo in this collection of tracks.” - Sean McVerry
Nathan Schram - “Nearsided”
“The main inspiration for this album was to not be held back by genre. As a string player, so much of what is expected of me is to either play classical music or be a topical string arrangement on more mainstream music. I wanted to delve into the world of instrumental music (electric and acoustic) without feeling like I had to write a string quartet or solo viola work.” - Nathan Schram
Blackbird Blackbird - “Hey Lover”
“Inspired by classic disco & psychedelic animation from the 70's, Hey Lover teleports you to an interstellar dance party where you can leave your worries behind.--Especially any qualms you might have about an ex-lover.” - Mikey Maramag, Blackbird Blackbird