Merry Christmas from all of the Gotta Groovies!
Gotta Groove Records
The Artist's Preferred Pressing Plant.
Record Highlight — Algernon Cadwallader
Algernon Cadwallader is Tank Bergman, Peter Helmis, and Joe Reinhart — three friends from Philadelphia that grew up playing loud, sloppy, fun music. They have all played together in different bands, with different people, but this lineup seems to stick. They like to do things themselves. Pete makes the t-shirt designs. They print all the shirts in their warehouse. Joe records and mixes all the music in his studio. They book our own tours. Tank likes drums. The best way to get in touch with them about playing (they love to play) is emailing them.
We pressed their new Parrot Files LP last month, and they already sold out of the first pressing! Not to worry though, we’ll be pressing up another 1,000 LP’s early in the New Year, so be sure to hit them up if you haven’t grabbed one yet.
Record Highlight — King Dude
King Dude‘s Love LP is dark pagan-fueled folk wrapped tight with outsider Americana, steeped in themes of love, death and redemption. …an atmosphere filled with hope and salvation, drawing sound influence akin to Death In June & Sol Invictus but sewing together a hybrid of true folk tradition alongside Woody Guthrie and Johnny Cash. Limited to 500 hand-numbered copies. The records come in thick die-cut cardstock sleeves revealing beautiful inner sleeve printed artwork beneath. Designed by T.J. Cowgill.
Record Highlight — The Graduate
The Graduate‘s Horror Show is their first EP, and first release ever. The record was written and recorded in just 3 short months, and it features the first 6 songs the band ever wrote including early versions of “Sit & Sink” and “Justified” (which later appeared on Anhedonia). After much demand, the record is finally available on vinyl for the first time!
This pressing was limited to 250, and is available directly from the band now through January 15, 2012!
Record Highlight — How To Wreck A Nice Beach
Earlier this fall, we were approached to press a bonus 7 inch to be housed in the new full color edition of the book by Dave Tompkins – How To Wreck A Nice Beach. The book, a history of the Vocoder, is published by Chicago-based Stop Smiling Books.
From the publisher:
The vocoder, invented by Bell Labs in 1928, once guarded phones from codebreakers during World War II; by the Vietnam War, it had been repurposed as a voice-altering tool for musicians and soon became the ubiquitous voice of popular music.
In How to Wreck a Nice Beach—from a mis-hearing of the vocoder-rendered phrase “how to recognize speech”—music journalist Dave Tompkins traces the history of electronic voices from Nazi research labs to Stalin’s gulags, from the 1939 World’s Fair to Hiroshima, from artificial larynges to Auto-Tune.
We see the vocoder brush up against FDR, JFK, Stanley Kubrick, Stevie Wonder, Neil Young, Kraftwerk, the Cylons, Henry Kissinger, and Winston Churchill, who boomed, when vocoderized on the morning before V-E Day, “We must go off!” And now vocoder technology is a cell phone standard, allowing a digital replica of your voice to sound human.
From T-Mobile to T-Pain, How to Wreck a Nice Beach is a riveting saga of technology and culture, illuminating the work of some of music’s most provocative innovators.
Record Highlight — Tenderizor
Touch The Sword is the debut album from desert thrash-noise shredlords Tenderizor. Layers of distortion disguised as speed-power-metal epics. Eight songs of brutality, mastered by Lorin Edwin Parker of Electric Western Studios. Run your fingers along the blade….
Record Highlight — Kimono Draggin’
Kimono Draggin’ is an American avant-garde Indie Rock band formed in 2003 from New Haven, Connecticut. The lineup consisted of Joseph Nolan (Guitar,vocals), Yossi Hatton (Bass,vocals), and Chris Swirski (Drums,vocals). Their version of progressive rock is strongly influenced by bands of the 1970s and 1980s including The Stooges, The Mothers of Invention, Talking Heads and Minutemen. We just finished pressing their Kimono Gold LP on gold wax, and you can pre-order it now!
The band is currently in the final Top 30 of the Verbicide Magazine Unsigned Band Contest, so if you get a minute, feel free to give them a vote!
Record Highlight — The Black Swans / Fishermen Three
The Black Swans are Jerry DeCicca, Canaan Faulkner, Chris Forbes, Keith Hanlon, and Noel Sayre (R.I.P). They reside in Columbus, Ohio.
The Fishermen Three is the music of Simon Beins (Brooklyn, NY) and Raphi Gottesman (Berkeley, CA) and a revolving case of other characters.
Their new split 7” — Knives b/w Up Here is now available through Shelved Records. The Black Swans and The Fishermen Three will be going on a short west coast tour in January to celebrate. Check out their dates!
Record Highlight — Train
Thanks to Clifton Motel Records, Train’s Save Me San Francisco is now available on vinyl for the first time!
Over the course of 15 years, Train has made its mark on music history with their Grammy Award-winning song ‘Drops of Jupiter (Tell Me)’ and other chart-topping singles. Since forming in San Francisco in 1994, the multi-platinum selling band has traveled a long, successful and sometimes arduous journey. Now, with their fifth album, Save Me San Francisco, Train has channeled their early days, revisiting the Roots Rock sound that has made the band such a tour de force and, in turn, the band is united stronger than ever before. This special 180 gram pressing is very limited, so be sure to pre-order your copy soon!
Record Highlight — The Offset: Spectacles
The Offset: Spectacles relocated to Beijing, China over two years ago, bringing their dusty Velvet Underground-influenced Cantonese noir garage sound into the city’s most obscure weird music scene. After jump-starting their homegrown imprint with releases from fellow outlying comrades Hot & Cold, Soviet Pop, and Canada’s Dirty Beaches, they traveled to Manchester, UK last November to record their debut album at Analogue Catalogue studio with Rob Ferrier (Clinic) behind the desk. The sonic critique of modern alienation is condensed into a 45-minutes-long meditation on wax, disregarding international rules of popular music to compose its very own hollow spectacle of information.
Compressed, self contained, and brazenly unique, each song by the Offset: Spectacles hits like a short, sharp shock. Percussive guitar and organ scrape at the surface of the left eardrum, and the bass hits like a combination of a synthesizer and a bongo. Get ready to be hectored by the ghosts of Cantonese poets and the Kowloon King.
