SUN RA

  • The planet, Saturn

    Mythology is an essential characteristic of humanity. From Homer’s Odyssey, to Star Wars, it weaves itself in and out of timeless art. Ancient Greeks and Egyptians built empires around it. Sometimes our myths keep us insulated from reality. Sometimes we create our own reality. And sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction. Born Herman Poole Blunt in Alabama, the future Le Sony'r Ra was surrounded by a bright light in 1936, or ’37 while attending college there. In the midst of an almost hypnotic religious state, he was lifted up and transported to a planet he identified as Saturn. After being told he would “speak through music” and that the world would listen, he was returned to earth, reborn as the legendary Sun Ra. The music Sun Ra made after returning to earth and moving to Chicago in the 1940’s, until his death in 1993, proves that that was no myth.

    The Dead Currencies release, “Kingdom of Discipline” by the legendary Sun Ra & His Arkestra, offers an all encompassing snapshot of an artist who was always ahead of his own time. Weaving together performances that span nearly 20 years of his earthly voyage, from a 1971 blues riff, to a solo piano piece from 1990, just 3 years before his death. These tracks were chosen and arranged with both the Sun Ra fanatic, as well as the casual listener in mind. This set sheds new light on the established “myth,” while producing what is perhaps one of his most consistent and accessible efforts to date.

    Hearkening back to the first releases from his own El Saturn record labelin the 1950’s, where early Sun Ra records were typically printed in editions of 75 and featured hand-made or pasted-on sleeves, “Kingdom of Discipline” arrives in in a physical, hand-made edition of only 75 copies via Dead Currencies.

    Truly mythological characters aren’t as easy to come by in real life as they are in era defining novels or films. Getting to add to the narrative of a great mythological figure in music, by releasing an incredible new collection of unheard material, is a privilege. Sharing it with others is an honor. Doing it justice is a pretty daunting responsibility. Luckily, the mythos and the music that Sun Ra left behind are more than capable of shouldering that weight.

A man with face paint playing a gold-colored flute shirtless in a dimly lit room.

  • Chicago, IL

    In December 1979, the Iran hostage crisis was unfolding, the Soviet-Afghan war had begun, destabilizing the Middle-East and escalating the U.S.-Soviet Cold War. And the U.S. was on the verge of tumbling into the Reagan era excesses and supercharged class divisions that would make the wealthy, the ultra-wealthy and drive the poor further into poverty, while the evangelical religious-right would find its footing as a political powerhouse. Much of this would stretch into, and even define the coming decade. And since human beings are nothing if not predictable, many of those same forces define our current one, sadly. In the words of Voltaire, "History never repeats itself... man always does"

    As ICE agents murder American citizens and victimize minorities and immigrants today, it was the murder of the black poet Henry Dumas by an NYC transit police officer in a Harlem subway station a decade earlier, that was on the mind of Joseph Jarman in 1979.

    That year, Jarman and his Art Ensemble of Chicago band member, Don Moye, along with the great South African bas­sist Johnny Dyani, gathered together under the name “Black Paladins” in Italy’s Barigozzi Studio. Inspired by the words of Dumas, from his poem, "Saba: Black Paladins," which Jarman recites on the title track, the music traces a deep, dense sound path; from an­cient Africa, through the rural American south to those more mo­dern 1970’s urban landscapes. And after forty-five years, Black Paladins still resounds with the same grace, power and sense of urgency today.

    Though often overlooked, it has a place in the histo­ry of great experimental jazz music. Partly due to the weight of the players and their association with the now unanimously heralded Art Ensemble of Chicago, Allmusic called it “the Jarman/Moye duo's most successful effort, and one of the most rewarding projects either was involved with outside of the Art Ensemble. A delicious recording. 4-1/2 stars.”

    The Dead Currencies is proud to be able to re-issue this underrated gem. Stay tuned.

A black and white photo of a band performing with multiple musicians playing guitars and a keyboard, standing in front of a curtain.

  • Los Angeles, CA

    Hyloxolos is the expansive new psych-rock supergroup featuring Dave Harrington, (Darkside), Peter Matthew Bauer, (The Walkmen), the nearly mythical Dylan Carlson (Earth), drummer Dylan Fujioka (Meatbodies) & Otis Bauer (Trench) on bass.

    The album, like the founding of the band itself, was birthed last year over an intense 48 hour period of writing and recording at 64sound in Los Angeles with engineer Tyler Karmen (Bat for Lashes, Devendra Banhart). The massive walls of sound, rolling swells and long, winding passages unfold deliberately, in heavy, kaleidoscopic waves. These six tracks are the sound of an inspired group of strangers cleaving something new out of the ether on arrival. The first notes of the record are the first notes played in the room, and the nearly 40 minutes that follow capture the adrenalized immediacy of those two days, which culminated in a packed and chaotic sold-out show at the East Hollywood nightclub, Gold Diggers, with some of the band having just met for the first time on entering the studio, days before.

    Other projects, Darkside and Walkmen tours, and a few false starts, including a planned performance at the shuttered Desert Daze festival, delayed work on the recordings. Regrouping to mix the project, Dave and Peter discovered a truly unique document of those original 72 hours and refined it into the completed work presented here. The record only got stranger and heavier along the way. Made up of incredible driving drum performances by Fujioka, the American doom blues of Dylan Carlson, Harrington’s pyrotechnics and ambient washes, and the focus on a distorted darkness to the sound by both Bauers, Hyloxolos is an original album that hints at a larger universe of music to come.

Four men sitting on chairs in front of a colorful background. The man in the front left has glasses, a beige shirt, and a beard. The man in the front right has glasses, a dark shirt, and a beard. The man in the back left has curly hair, a beard, and wears a light blue shirt. The man in the back right wears a pink cap and a patterned shirt.

  • Rio De Janeiro, Brazil

    Formed during one of the most turbulent periods in recent Brazilian history (which has seen a coup d’état, political imprisonment, and the rise of the extreme right), Oruã was idealized by Lê Almeida, a cultural agitator in Rio’s independent music scene. For 20 years he has run his own label called Transfusão Noise Records and founded an all-ages music venue/recording studio called Escritório (the “Office”), a space of collective creation that showcased the Rio underground music scene. Out of this space, Oruã emerged from the venue’s improvisational sessions. Their sound became a mix of lo-fi indie rock, noise, afrobeat, and Brazilian references that range from Luiz Gonzaga’s primal Pernambuco sound to classic Brazilian psych rock. The name came about when Lê misunderstood a word he heard Lee Ranaldo sing during a concert in Brazil. Lê jotted it down on a piece of paper in the dark, and the next day the Sonic Youth guitarist had baptized the group, without even knowing it.

    At the same time that fascist extremism was coming out of the sewers to reach federal power, a new racial consciousness was emerging in Brazil. This deeply affected Lê, a Black Brazilian man, born in one of the poorest areas of Rio de Janeiro – Baixada Fluminense – who then began to realize that he was not only a key player in the Brazilian independent music scene, but that his work echoed the resistance of ancestors who fought to be able to do what they wanted, even if they were forbidden. This awakening coincided with the moment in which the group decided to start touring through Brazil and the world, crossing state borders in the US and many countries in Europe.

    In 2019, their sound was discovered by indie rock legend Doug Martsch of Built to Spill.

    Doug became enchanted by Oruã and invited three of its members to join his band’s new line-up: Lê on drums, João Luiz on rhythm guitar, and João Casaes on bass (later joining Oruã on synths). The Brazilians spent three years working with Built to Spill, playing with the band and also opening for them on tour. In 2020, Lê and João Casaes recorded, co-produced, and co-mixed Built to Spill’s most recent album, When the Wind Forgets Your Name, released in 2022 on Sub Pop Records. During this period, Oruã was also able to record and release their critically-acclaimed records Romã (2019) and Íngreme (2021), both released in Brazil and abroad.

    In 2020, Built to Spill continued with a different lineup and Oruã experienced a shift in theirs: Lê and João were then joined by Karin Santa Rosa (leader of the band Balbela) on drums and Bigu Medine (a long-time collaborator) on bass. With this new groove-centric formation, they played more than 60 shows in 4 months across the United States in 2022 and returned in 2023 to international stages through the US and Europe while opening for Built to Spill.

    Oruã (now with their original drummer, Phill Fernandes) plan to tour through the US again in 2024 in support of their latest album, PASSE. Their sound continues to mix the electric pulses of deconstructed guitars over a mesmerizing groove, taking both audience and band into a collective trance.

    Dead Currencies is proud to partner with Lê & Co. on a special project coming up in 2025. Stay tuned!

Black and white photo of a musician singing and playing an acoustic guitar on stage with microphones, stage lights, and equipment in the background.

  • Omaha, NE

    Cited as a key influence by Conor Oberst (of Bright Eyes), Beck and Kevin Morby, (who listed him as the answer to every question in this interview with The Reader) Omaha, Nebraska native and singer/songwriter Simon Joyner has been putting out delicate, intimate, mournful songs since the early '90s. Despite his status as a respected and influential performer, and his collaborations with members of Wilco, Lambchop, the Dirty Three, and other commercially successful artists, Joyner has remained staunchly independent, working without managers, booking agents, or publicists for the entirety of his career. His focus on songcraft has resulted in a steady run of brilliant albums, with frequent highlights such as 2012's sprawling double album Ghosts, the insular reflections of 2019's Pocket Moon, and 2022's Songs from a Stolen Guitar, which ruminated on themes of isolation and memory.

    Prolific and illuminated, Simon has been flying under the radar since 1991, releasing music on various independent labels including: Team Love, Jagjaguwar, Secretly Canadian, and more. He is also the co-founder of Grapefruit Records (grapefruitrecordclub.com) and an occasional producer of other people's albums.

    Dead Currencies is thrilled to be working with Simon on a 12” release and we were honored to produce a limited edition, blue* 7” exclusively for his 2023 European Tour as the second entry to our 7” Series. We are told that these sold out quickly. More surprises are surely on the way.

    “Joyner doesn’t go for big moments or calculated melodrama, instead exploring the emotional resonances of the mundane, everyday experiences that shape lives. In these songs can be heard the influences of Cohen and Guthrie”

    -Pop Matters

    “…once you've let Simon Joyner hold you in his poetic grip, you're likely to return for more very soon.”

    -Pitchfork

    Check out the European Tour Exclusive 7” here. Stay tuned for updates on the new release.

A man with styled hair and a mustache sitting by a table, looking to his left. The background is dark with some equipment visible on the left side.

  • Baltimore, MD

    In addition to helping kick off the big early-aughts NYC post-punk revival with the band, Jonathan Fire*Eater, then later riding that wave as the guitarist for The Walkmen, musician Paul Maroon is also an accomplished composer, having scored the Oscar-winning documentary, Heaven is a Traffic Jam on the 405, in 2016. Maroon recorded six highly influential albums with The Walkmen from 2002-2013 before going on an “indefinite hiatus,” broken recently by the world reunion tour that saw them playing sold out shows in Chicago, NYC, Boston, Nashville and several European festivals in 2023. In between, Paul has collaborated on side projects and notable one-offs with Walkmen bandmate Hamilton Leithauser and Noah Lennox (Animal Collective, Panda Bear), while as a solo artist, he has recorded two proper albums, Instrumental Music and 13 Short Piano Pieces. Instrumental Music was recorded by Paul between 2018 and 2020, at home in New Orleans and Montreal, and is an experiment in textures that varies, sometimes wildly, from solo guitar, sample based collages and full band recordings, with Paul serving duty on every instrument.

    13 Short Piano Pieces was recorded in New York in 2023 at the historic Sear Sound by Michael Harris (Lana Del Rey, Arctic Monkeys, Vampire Weekend), using analogue equipment, historic techniques and old microphones and tape machines. It finds him collaborating with internationally acclaimed pianist, Jenny Lin, herself well known and respected for her close work with Philip Glass on his piano etudes. Paul studied composition at Columbia University, notably under Tristan Murail and is a classically trained pianist, but is largely self taught on the guitar. With “Piano Pieces” and the seven new string quartets he has written, which are scheduled to be recorded in January 2025, Paul is stretching himself in compelling ways that will often be received far from the indie-rock spotlight his earlier work afforded him. All of this is why Dead Currencies is thrilled to be partnering with Paul on a special release that collects these varied projects, for the first time, into one long player. As always, hand-packaged and super-limited, the forthcoming, Instrumental Music & Piano Pieces makes for an interesting and adventurous listen, and we can’t wait to share it.

    Paul currently resides in Baltimore Maryland with his wife, who is a professor. They have lived in Washington DC, New York, Philadelphia, Lisbon, Seville, New Orleans and Montreal.

a&h - Big Bend Photo

  • Mansfield, OH

    “Cloudshaped” is the debut collaborative album of the combined musical projects of Craig Schenker (a&h) and Nathan Phillips (Big Bend). The instrumental offering anchored by bass flute and moog is interwoven with piano, strings, saxophone, bowed psaltery and cassette tapes, swirling into joyful and drifting atmospheric impressions. Subtle, textured layers reveal themselves upon subsequent listens, like pealing back the layers of an onion. An instrument playing onion (we love anthropomorphic food here). The accumulated experience recording and playing live with a myriad of musicians, experimenting with styles and song structures, is all evident in the restraint and in the ease with which Craig and Nathan have constructed each track. Their previous collected work has garnered praise and admiration from peers, collaborators and journalists alike.

    Big Bend's “Last Circle in a Slowdown” co-produced by Shahzad Ismaily, was released on Shimmy-Disc in 2024 – “a lithe grace in the interstices of the regular and the revolutionary” (Aquarium Drunkard). While Pitchfork described 2019’s Radish, highlighted by performances by Ismaily, Susan Alcorn, and Nathan’s mother Pam Phillips among others, as "curious, open-ended, and slyly resistant to categorization, Radish is the best kind of mystery." The band was recently invited to record a Lagniappe Session for the beloved Aquarium Drunkard series.

    Craig (a&h) has released albums as part of a duo with John Thayer (Aural Canyon) and a trio with Mason Macias and Thayer as M/S/T (Moon Villain) and has more recently performed as part of a duo with Zosha Warpeha. His self-released detritus series features raw live home recordings and renditions of American and British folk tunes.

A man with long hair, wearing glasses, a brown beanie, and a black t-shirt, sits with an acoustic guitar against a dark background.

  • Cleveland, OH

    Matthew J. Rolin’s emotionally resonant fingerstyle guitar is a direct result of his d.i.y. upbringing. Created primarily on solitary acoustic six or twelve strings, these pieces are technically stunning but not afraid to wander, offering a surreal and sometimes psychedelic counterpoint to instrumental guitar music modeled more traditionally after American Primitive sounds. Deep roots in punk, noise, and other fiercely independent music and cultural communities informs every step of Rolin’s hyper specific approach, including his prolific release schedule, embrace of collaboration, experimental edges, and non-stop touring that’s more likely to find him playing at a gnarled house show or d.i.y. venue than in a stuffy auditorium.

    Rolin grew up in Cleveland and spent his formative years immersed in his city’s local scene. He consistently played in a string of bands, sometimes as a leader, sometimes in a supportive role, eventually landing in Chicago where he started focusing on instrumental guitar composition sometime around 2016. He worked backwards to discover the roots of fingerstyle guitar, learning about some of the heroes of Appalachia and rustic folk blues only after getting into contemporaries of his own who were doing new things with the format. This helped him develop a personalized language with his guitar playing, one that skipped over reverence and nostalgia for an unlived past, and more directly reflected his own experiences. Because of this, Rolin’s songs can contain as much pastoral beauty as they do jittery confusion or dazed droning. He finds a path separate from both the overly-serious academia mindset and hokey front porch romanticism, instead delving deeper within for inspiration. The playing is executed with precision, but not tethered to any roots or rulebook, allowing for unlimited and ongoing exploration.

    True to a do-it-yourself work ethic, Rolin recorded all of his early albums at home while he was developing his style. This included a self-titled 2019 debut and 2021 double album The Dreaming Bridge, both released on Feeding Tube. Along with various one-off tapes, more fully-formed albums like 2022’s Passing quickly followed. An improviser’s spirit offsets the more clearly drawn boundaries of Rolin’s solo work, as does steady touring and frequent collaboration. Along with wife Jen Powers, Rolin improvises and records as part of both Powers/Rolin Duo, a dulcimer and guitar configuration that expands to become Gerycz/Powers/Rolin when drummer Jayson Gerycz (Cloud Nothings, Monocot, etc.) joins in. Along with early joint performances with noise figureheads Wolf Eyes and work with experimental saxophonist Cole Pulice, Powers/Rolin duo were asked to open a 2022 tour for Bonnie “Prince” Billy and Matt Sweeney’s Superwolves that found both acts joining forces on stage some nights. On his own, Rolin plays guitar in Winged Wheel, a band that began as a remote project in the deepest dregs of pandemic lockdown with members of Spray Paint, Matchesse, and Tyvek, but took on a new life when the players could meet in person, and Sonic Youth’s Steve Shelley stepped in on drums for the recording of their second album.

    Dead Currencies is very excited to be able to release Rolin’s “Twos” in 2024. Stay tuned for details.

    “The playing is so sure footed that it gets out of the way of itself and the music casts a spell that is somewhere between an embrace and an uplift.”

    -Matt Sweeney

    “Rolin's deft hands on his instrument display an assured sense of composition, and a bright present for the state of guitar soil.”

    -NPR

The band, AU performing

  • Portland, OR

    AU (pronounced ‘ay-you’) was Portland, OR composer & multi-instrumentalist Luke Wyland and his many collaborators, who joyously unfolded a world of musical nuance and a wall of cathartic sound, as anyone who's heard the band’s 2008 breakthrough record, Verbs, can attest. Situated among the spheres of Avant-Folk, Art-Pop, Free-Jazz & Indie Rock--while never strictly adhering to any one of them--AU is a genre-defying trip able to reach celestial realms by doggedly organic means.

    Over the course of 10 years (2006-2016) AU released 5 critically acclaimed records - Au (2007), Verbs (2008) Versions (2009) Both Lights (2012) and AU & the Camas High School Choir (2016) (a monumental collaboration with a 155 person high school choir) while touring the US and Europe endlessly with such bands as Deerhoof, WHY?, Xiu Xiu, and Akron Family. The live band saw a revolving cast of collaborators but most consistently Dana Valatka on drums, Holland Andrews on vox and clarinet, Sarah Winchester (A Weather) on vox, and Jonathan Sielaff (Golden Retriever) on guitar and bass clarinet.

    Wyland continues to push the limits of his musical language releasing records as Methods Body, LWW, and most recently a live solo piano and electronics record, Winter Solstice, as well as composing original scores for modern dance and film/television. He continues to perform throughout North America and Europe and has released records on New Amsterdam Records (US), Beacon Sound (US), The Leaf Label (EU), Aagoo (US), Hometapes (US), Crammed Discs (EU), Inpartmaint (Japan), and Pop Frenzy (Australia), amongst others.

    Luke's current project, Methods Body (Beacon Sound/New Amsterdam), is a collaboration with virtuosic drummer John Niekrasz that is “overflowing with polyrhythms and layers of microtonal melodies” in what feels like the perfect evolution from his AU roots. Methods Body has a new record, Plural Not Possessive, that drops on June 16th. We’re excited to work backward to shine a light on Luke and AU’s truly singular musical landscape.

    “Difficult to define. They inhabit some musical halfway house where no one genre-defining label is sufficient.”

    -Exclaim! Magazine

    “Free music that is dynamic and serene; songs guided by an understanding of the bucolic that grasps its elegance as well as its occasional tumult… AU is both expansive and accessible”

    -Pitchfork

Monde UFO in Italy

  • Los Angeles, CA

    Monde UFO provides a trippy lo-fi soundtrack to your weirdest L.A. dreams. You’ll be floating on a beach breeze, right into a dark back alley. This loose fit project centers around the singing, playing and songwriting of Ray Monde and Kris Chau, and features Kern Haug and Evan Tetrault on drums. Ray Monde began writing songs on an old Yamaha church organ for a project that eventually became Monde UFO. Utilizing the organ as a bass, alongside keyboards and a drum machine, he began making demos on a four-track cassette recorder, adding only vocals and guitar to the organ pieces. He explored making haunting and optimistic sounds while living in Skid Row as a one-man band. Heavily influenced by the musician Sandy Bull, sonically landing in a similar no-man’s land of Worldly Jazz and Psych Folk. Monde experimented with the themes mostly of meditation and UFO lore. After a series of DIY releases, including their 2021 album “7171” and last year’s set of Fugazi covers, “4 Songs,” Monde UFO have landed with a distinctive album of dream pop vignettes and outer-rim punk exotica. The resulting sound on “Vandalized Statue to be Replaced with Shrine,” appears as a resourceful analogue of plush 60’s pop captured with a DIY ethos.

    The music touches on dubby atmospherics, the lilting breeze of bossa nova and the introverted muse of indie rock, but the overall result is a natural, cohesive whole centered around Ray Monde’s songwriting. The stories in the lyrics unfurl as meandering narratives taking you through everyday exchanges and far-fetched, cosmic scenarios alike. At every turn the cozy musicality gives everything a relatable, homespun charm, even as sh*t gets weird. MONDE UFO’s oeuvre is at once intimate and projected into the cosmos.

    “Monde UFO wander through a humid mist of exotic samba shuffles, shamanic whispers, and reverberating laser beam synthesizers”

    -New Commute

    “Bridging a gap between quieted bedroom recordings and bossa nova sentimentality”

    -Austin Town Hall

    Check out the joint release with Quindi Records (Italy), Vandalized Statue to be Replaced With Shrine here.

The band, Reverse Death

  • Seattle, WA

    Exploring the cosmic countryside between american-primitive and impressionism, Reverse Death takes a worldly approach to the psych/garage genre with complex arrangements, fragile lyrics, and night and day dynamics from the heaviest doom to the faintest whisper. Channeling fire from the San Francisco garage explosion, feels from 60’s heartbreakers, and electric doom from the stoner dungeons, Reverse Death stakes claim on an uncharted landscape of beauty and destruction with a hypnotic ambiance that ushers you through the beyond.

    Birthed in Seattle, WA by Daniel Onufer & friends, Reverse Death slows time on their moss laden debut, Stretching to Infinity, bringing together garden hymnal oddments, and nocturnal lo-fi textures to create a moonlit world of echoes bubbling up through a mineral rich past.

    This dulcet palette was developed during a tour in Mexico while discovering new improvisational techniques and diving deep into the music of Tengger, Jessica Pratt, Emahoy Tsegue-Maryam Guebrou and John Fahey. Channeling the afterglow of these explorations, the debut album was recorded after sundown, with closed eyes, and aims set on stretching the body and mind through all the spiritual hangups of life. We’re fine tuning our chakras in preparation for the follow up, which is coming near to soon-ish. Stay tuned!

    Creates a hypnotic middle ground between American primitive and spiritual jazz with spiraling melodies plucked from shifting layers of cello, guitars, and piano. Droney, meditative, limitless.

    - Bandcamp Essential Releases

    …Earth-toned acoustic drones, idyllic stream-of-consciousness spirals of electric guitar, and murmuring deep-space signals waft together into a sedative salve.

    - New Commute

    There’s something quite timeless about Stretching to Infinity, but it’s hard to properly contextualize the experience of losing yourself to its sensations.

    -Raven Sings the Blues

Mike Tolan of Talons'

  • Akron, OH

    Talons' is the post-folk project of Mike Tolan (The Six Parts Seven, Trouble Books). Unlike his work helping to build delicate and meticulously constructed instrumentals to shimmering crescendos with The Six Parts Seven, Talons' has always been a decidedly minimal, and much more intimate exercise. The enviable earnestness makes it easy to find yourself identifying with Mike’s ever prescient point of view in any number of Talons’ songs. Even the ones you haven’t actually lived, can feel like a personal memory.

    Tolan was called "Ohio's most under appreciated songwriter" by VICE magazine for his plaintive, honest takes on the confusion and boredom of everyday life. Heartbreak, listening to Steely Dan, and eating Taco Bell are nearly universal themes after all.

    After a trio of albums which perfectly documented the ridiculous and horrifying double trauma of Donald Trump and the Covid pandemic, Talons' offered up a sort of palate cleanse on his first release with Dead Currencies, with 2022’s "At Light/Dark," a 20 min. swell of e-bowed guitar and synth, meant to reflect the odd meeting place of life’s dichotomies; good/bad, light/dark and the constant tension that is present in our collective PTSD. Talons' has released music independently and with the help of label heroes Bark & Hiss, Own Records, Positive Beat, Powershovel, MIE, Broken Circles, i-absentee & Storm Chasers ltd.

    With so many artists struggling to come to terms with how they fit into this strange, contemporary moment in indie rock, Tolan’s contributions feel careful and heartfelt.

    SPIN Magazine

    …dense narrative, meticulous field recordings, and crafty tunings and production to build something as infinitely complex as it is gloriously, melodically comforting.

    VICE Magazine

    Mike Tolan’s project is one of my very favourites, more than just a pretty melody or catchy chorus, the songs feeling like things to hold on to, timely reminders for the slow and sometimes sad day-to-day…

    -Various Small Flames

    Check out At Light/Dark here. Talon’s is also featured on our Split 7” series #1 with Mount Olympic, here.

Four men sitting in a row at a sports arena, with other spectators seated behind them, some holding popcorn.

  • Akron, Ohio

    Veterans of the close-knit Akron, Ohio music scene, one and all, the foursome of Stephen Clements, Corey Farrow, Kit Freund, and Gabriel Schray make up the Lemon Quartet. These fellers have had tentacles in projects from post-rock meditations (The Six Parts Seven), to experimental pop (Trouble Books), to indie rock (Houseguest), and lofi beats (Miyamigo), with countless collaborations and solo efforts in between. All that is to say, they've been around. They've seen and done. And you've had to have seen and done plenty to so effortlessly land such intricately layered melodies with such a deceptive ease. It's not aesthetic either. Every Tuesday night the quartet gathers at Clements' home, usually with snacks from the gas station, to choose instruments and settle in for a session of seeing where their musical whims take them. These sessions have, thus far, been collected into two LPs on Last Resort Records - Crestless (2020) and ArtsFest (2023). Adding to those two efforts, the new EP, Lemon Law via Dead Currencies, showcases the years of constant exploration and fine tuning on stage and in many a midwest rehearsal space.

    Capturing all the intimacy and the amp-hum in its unfussy, impromptu recording sessions, Lemon Law is dripping with atmosphere. The buzzing of that cable, that weird phase-y sound from the un-gated mic. It's all here. The lack of overdubs might even make Neil Young jealous. The complexities and the intricate arrangements feel easy and natural, and naturally nostalgic. It's all vaguely familiar and fresh at the same time. It takes 8 deft hands to build these 5 arrangements and not break a sweat, and with 2 hands each and zero sweat glands, the 4 dudes in Lemon Quartet are the only ones who could have delivered these goods.

    for Lemon Quartet’s Crestless:
    “Lemon Quartet deliver ambient jazz mood music in the best sense, filled with drifting melodies and just enough rhythmic pulse to keep things interesting and moving forward. Beautiful and strange, strangely beautiful.”

    -Aquarium Drunkard

    “It’s not every day that you listen to a record where jazz and ambient genres can meld so cohesively that they form another thing altogether.”

    -In Sheeps Clothing

    for Lemon Quartet’s Arts Fest:
    “The so-called “ambient jazz” world is well-populated at this point, but it’s hard to think of anyone doing this kind of thing as well as the Lemon Quartet.”

    -Aquarium Drunkard

    The new EP, Lemon Law is coming soon on Dead Currencies.

The mysterious, Infinite Curses

  • *Coming soon

J.R. Bennett of Mount Olympic

  • Nashville, TN

    A nearly 4 acre, mostly wooded, plot of land just outside of Nashville is a fairly unassuming hub for the sort of artistic activity that is abuzz just beyond the natural screen of old growth trees these days. That’s where musician & artist J.R. Bennett spends his days with his wife and kids, drinking pot after pot of coffee, chopping firewood, building furniture, printing, folding & packaging records and making music in between. The wood shop doubles as a recording space when needed. A mic stand can be seen careening over a table saw and craning down to an amplifier stationed just under a stack of walnut plywood. A skeleton drum kit can be stored in the small loft space above the antique doors in storage for a future wood-working project. Bennett has been angling for this for a decade. A connected solitude.

    There is a past life in Ohio, fronting the Cleveland band, Unsparing Sea, that includes all of the shows and DIY mini tours through the northeast and midwest, $400 worth of unpaid NYC parking tickets, sharing a stage with the likes of Vetiver, Wussy and Bonnie Prince Billy, a slot at NXNE in Toronto, and an invitation to play SXSW in the late-aughts that went ignored as his former band burned out and called it quits.

    This is where Bennett’s current “Mount Olympic” sits, far removed from the tilt-a-whirl, in the slightly experimental hemisphere of the indie-rock & folk aether. Bennett stitches together found sounds & broken electronics, arranging and looping organic samples to supplement the uncomplicated song structures and self-depreciatingly poetic lyrical flourishes of his tunes. A fully realized, proper full-length of music could materialize between the woodworking and art projects this year… or next. But anymore, there is no particular rush.

    Check out Mount Olympic’s YUMA here. M.O. is also featured on our Split 7” series #1 with Talons’ here.

Peter Hollo performing in Australia

  • Sydney, Aus.

    Australia’s “raven” is the solo project of Peter Hollo, cellist in FourPlay String Quartet, improv electro-acoustic band Tangents and indietronic trio Haunts, as well as presenter of Utility Fog on Sydney's FBi Radio.

    Peter inhabits a singular space in an experimental, post-classical landscape. At times the music can recall the weirder work of Morton Feldman, but it can leave any descriptions just as quickly, as improvised cello loops glitch into “beats” and are allowed to meander into uncharted territory. This is the magic that can be captured with the sort improvisation at the heart of Peter’s work.

    Dead Currencies presents Peter here with a limited re-release of his collection of archival tracks from 2009-2013, “In a Cold Cottage, In the Dirt, In Outer Space.” A varyingly raw, occasionally delicate and consistently gorgeous recording featuring cello & piano tracks, electronically manipulated, for a haunting and sparse atmospheric listen. Confident & experimental, this hypnotic record will reward you if you let it.

    The tracks were conceived and recorded partially during a month-long trip to the US in 2013, whilst driving from Chicago to Detroit to Toronto and then through upstate New York to New York City.

    Two nights in a little cottage on a property in Tivoli provided the space to start to narrate these scenes. Much of it is raw and unmediated by anything much except what Peter felt like playing.

    Check out “In a Cold Cottage” here.