It was in the Santa Cruz Mountains that Denys Kozakis developed his sound and songs before joining bassist Jon Payne, and vocalist Natosha Wengreen, to form The Painted Horses. After releasing their debut album, Ponderosa Pines (2015), The Painted Horses set out to roam the hills of California and the Pacific Northwest. With their thoughtful and beautifully written songs, they won over audiences wherever they played.
After a few years of performing live, The Painted Horses (now Kozakis and Payne) decided to return their focus to recording. Their sophomore album is self-titled and was recorded and produced by Marc Daniel Nelson and Ken Caillat(who produced many notable albums including the legendary “Rumors” by Fleetwood Mac) at Prairie Sun in Cotati, CA. Mastered at The Bakery in Los Angeles, CA by Eric Boulanger, this album adds a rock-n-roll element to the Americana and folk stylings of the debut LP. This album features many amazing musicians and friends including long time drummer Jeff Wilson, Lorenzo Loera on keys, Dan Talamantes, McCoy Tyler and Deren Ney on guitars, Jason Crosby on violin, Pat Hull, Dorota Szuta and Leigh Jones on backup vocals.
A British rock titan and an acclaimed member of New York’s acting community walk into a recording studio … and produce one of 2017’s strongest and most compelling albums.This odd couple consists of multi-instrumentalist Ian McDonald, a founding member of both King Crimson and Foreigner, and guitarist and lead vocalist Ted Zurkowski, co-founder of New York’s celebrated Shakespeare ensemble, Frog & Peach, and a long-time member of the world-famous Actors Studio.
Together, this unlikely new songwriting team conjured the album Bad Old World under the banner of their quartet, HONEY WEST.
Bad Old World is filled with memorable melodies and clever and sophisticated lyrics served on a bed of guitar-driven rock ‘n’ roll played by top-shelf musicians, including drummer Steve Holley, whose credits include Paul McCartney & Wings and many others, and McDonald’s son, Maxwell McDonald, on bass. The album also boasts a guest appearance by Graham Maby (Joe Jackson, They Might Be Giants) on bass (“Brand New Car,” “California,” “A Girl Called Life”). While it’s a modern sound stamped by Ian McDonald’s world-class musicianship and production, it also bears an instant familiarity, thanks to a sonic blueprint recalling such Brit-rock titans as The Move and Mott the Hoople.
Available as a limited edition, collectors’ release of the debut album from Honey West (Readout Records), featuring 12 newly-remastered versions of the original tracks on 180 gram audiophile vinyl, with band signatures, as well as liner and production notes from Ian McDonald.
Different Folk Records proudly announces Bird Ritual Interrupted, the first vinyl release from Sioux Falls, South Dakota’s JAS Quintet. Recorded January 2019 at Ware House Productions in Omaha, the album will be released June 7th on all digital platforms, CD, and vinyl. Pre-order now and pay no shipping through 6/7 (use the discount code BIRD at checkout!)
DAIS Records releases VR SEX’s debut album “Human Traffic Jam” on digital, vinyl LP (packaged in a thick matte stock jacket with a printed inner eurosleeve with lyrics and download card in various colored vinyl variants), as well as compact disc, housed in a digipack with lyric insert and features the bonus track “Corridor (Epilogue)”. Cover art by Brooklyn based artist Adam Helms. Package design by Nathaniel Young.
Technology was meant to be humanity’s tool to combat famine, disease, confusion, and to facilitate life, culture, and innovation. Instead, we’re mired in a digital labyrinth that few care to navigate or even solve. Perhaps it’s not a ruse and the matrices coded by keyboard maestros are a path to liberation, but without querying the constructs we cannot ruminate on their affectations on humanity.
VR SEX are audio/visual provocateurs who transpose the identifiers of death rock, synth punk, post-punk, ambient, and ethereal soundscapes into an audit on technology and its imprint on our collective psyche. Comprised of visionary mercenaries Noel Skum (Andrew Clinco of Drab Majesty), Z. Oro (Aaron Montaigne of Antioch Arrow/Heroin/DBC) on vocals and drums, and Mico Frost (Brian Tarney of Guardian) on synths and electric bass.
Their debut tome, Human Traffic Jam, focuses on lyrical themes that probe the possibilities of loss of autonomy through social media, the decline of human interaction, and celebrity favoritism. Skum believes in the stabilization of society and preservation of our planet by reducing its amount of procreators.
Through PSRS or Procreation Simulation Reproduction Stimulation, humans can act on their hedonistic desires and not face the responsibilities and consequences that come with being an ill-prepared guardian. The future of our offspring will exist in virtual realms and population growth in turn will be stabilized. VR SEX is the cure to most societal ills.
Thematically condensed into an eight song album, Human Traffic Jam was written and demoed by Skum in a flat in Athens, Greece during the winter of 2017. During a rigorous week long session at Figure 8 studios with experimental and dimensional production extraordinaire Ben Greenberg (Uniform/The Men), Skum solely committed all the instrumentation present on Human Traffic Jam.
Rather than being emblematic of influences, each song on the LP infuses a dire tension that cuts shimmer with fetid frequencies, never establishing an aural hierarchy or urgency. Instead, we’re lead into punchy capsules of “dour pop”; the balance of saccharine and sour so emblematic of the VR SEX hive mind.
Kelly Finnigan, the lead singer of Bay Area-based indie-soul auteurs Monophonics, has announced his debut solo album ‘The Tales People Tell,’ out April 26 on Colemine Records. Over the course of the album’s 10 new, original songs, Kelly channels a multitude of influences that reflect a lifetime immersed in the music and culture of soul, R&B, and hiphop – it’s the story of an outsider that followed an unorthodox route, always guided by his own creative north star.
Kelly guided the songs on ‘The Tales People Tell’ from their conception all the way to the record pressing plant over the course of two years. He wrote and produced each track on the record and plays 10 instruments throughout, while enlisting the help of friends and legends like drummer James Gadson (Bill Withers, Marvin Gaye, Beck), members of Monophonics, and Kelly’s own father, prominent sideman/keyboardist Mike Finnigan (Jimi Hendrix, Joe Cocker, Etta James). The result is a timeless collection underscored by a sense of community, a family affair of a record that’s at once raw and gritty, tender and emotive, lush and symphonic.
