NYNT008 7″ $5 + Shipping & Handling

LA’s Static Static latest incaration is equal parts rabid timber wolf and laser guided cyborg killing machine. It is a volatile mixture of two parts Detonations and one part Red Aunts, so be sure to wear eye protection and a lead smock before loading these jams onto the decks. “No Bodies” b/w “Go Get It Now” vinyl 7-inch with jacket hand-screened by the band themselves.

NYNT007 7″ $5 + Shipping & Handling

New York Night Train presents Melbourne’s Witch Hats’ first states-side taste of their latest full length “Celluloid Soul”; and “Hell Hole” does not disappoint! These 4 lads are the new heirs to the throne of Australian noise rock, and they channel The Birthday Party and The Scientists and shake and bake it all with their own secret recipe of sturm und snot.  And it is produced by the very Phil Calvert himself! Plus an unreleased S3 cover song on the b-side? CLIKC-BUY-NOW, the first pressing is almost gone!

“Hell Hole” b/w “Revolution” 140g vinyl 7-inch w/ silk-screened jacket on silver card stock.

WTCHT01 $12 + Shipping & Handling

Last time the Witch Hats raided New York city they left a pile of shattered ear drums, hanging jaws and broken hearts. Plus, they forgot a crate of their Austrailian-only 12-inch EP “Wound of a Little Horse”! This was the release that first turned us on to these lads so we’re just tickled to be able to have some of these “imports” to sell! Check out our full review of this record here.

NYNT006 CD EP $4 + Shipping & Handling

S-S-S-Spectres debut EP Sea Potentia Divina was recorded in seclusion by the band with little or no aid from outsiders. Indeed, S-S-S-Spectres guard their mysteries well, and these four songs hide as much as they reveal. Each two-minute no wave nor’easter hints at moments of tight, layered post-punk dance even as they careen toward chaos and dissolution. Mr. Flaherty’s manic, sizzling 12-string guitar work owes more to the car-crushers at the impound lot than to the Byrds. Ms. Zumas likewise cuffs and stomps her belabored drum set into an insistent cacophony of jungle creatures one minute, and the grim, disciplined report of one hundred carronades the next. Through it all M. Zbyszynski’s bass lurches like a drunken sailor with a serious case of the heebie-jeebies. The band hangs their cryptic whispers, chants and yelps over this precarious frame like so much voodoo ouanga. New York Night Train is pleased, honored and little bit terrified to bring one of Brooklyn’s most well-kept and sinister occult secrets finally to the surface.

Track Listing:

1. Raise The Guns 
2. Possession Confession
3. Witches vs Wolves
4. Your Faux Pas

$4 + Shipping & Handling

Viva l’American Death Ray Music’s long-awaited fourth album, In The Meantime… is as stylistically restless as the members’ rootless lifestyles. Touring extensively in Europe the last few years, singer/guitarist Nick Ray, drummer Jeff Buock, and bassist Harlan T. Bobo currently reside in New York, Austin, and Memphis respectively. Cutting their teeth in acts as diverse as Polyphonic Spree, Reigning Sound, 68 Combeback, American Death Ray, in the first years of the 21st Century, formulated an artful fusion of glam and soul unparalleled on their recordings for Sympathy Record Industry.  Perhaps the best description of that sound comes from Rolling Stone editor David Fricke:

The vocal acid of Lou Reed; Jerry Harrison’s churning garage organ in the early Modern Lovers; Andy Mackay’s sequined, squealing sax in Roxy Music; the crusty fidelity of old Sun 45’s. With fun like that, who needs radios?

In The Meantime… is V.L.A.D.R.M.’s first full-length domestic release since 2003’s A New Commotion A Delicate Tension (And The Exquisite Corpse Of Mr. Jimmy). The evolution since their Sympathy period has found the band gradually de-emphasizing the glam and R&B influences and exploring their latent dub, no wave, post-mod, and post-punk tendencies in greater depth. While the fragments that reference these subgenres are readily identifiable, adding the familiar feel of the subcultural classics you’ve never been able to abandon, as always, Viva l’American Death Ray Music, with the other hand groping in the future, struggles to avoid retro-trappings – retaining a sound and general aesthetic that’s beyond category, distinctly their own, and super-soulful.

By far their most abstract, raw, and skeletal effort to date, In the Meantime… plays with space, repetition, and groove, while retaining a rough punkish edge, danceablity, and a catchy pop-conscious songwriting sensibility. Though you’ll never be able to put your finger on it, try to imagine an obscure intersection of canonical works like Here Come the Warm Jets. Jane from Occupied Europe, Adventure, Unknown Pleasures, and Grotesque (After the Gramme). You can’t? Well maybe should try… This is your subliminal subterranean favorite album of the year… And a creeping addiction…

Most of the tracks were some of the last recordings made at Memphis’ legendary Easley McCain Studios before it’s tragic fire.

“Starting his recording career at the dawn of the 80’s, Kid Congo Powers sidestepped the prevailing shallowness of that decade to appear on some of the finest records of that era- The Cramps “Psychedelic Jungle” and “The Smell of Female”, Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds “Tender Prey” “The Good Son” and Barry Adamson’s “Moss Side Story” to name a few. This latest addition to his discography easlily lives up to that pedigree. Songs such as “The Last Word” with superbly discordant guitars and anguished vocals, call to mind the first Voidoids album, whilst JOHNNY could be Blitzkreig Bop put thru a blender and sung down a telephone. Most of the lyrics on these songs wouldn’t have disgraced even the most laconic of Warhol’s Factory hands “It’s the weather, it’s the war/ I’m confused, I’m a whore.” - MOJO, February 2007 (4 stars)

After twenty-five years in the music business, Kid Congo Powers has finally decided to release his first LP as a singer, songwriter, and bandleader. Kid Congo and the Pink Monkey Birds, who have informally existed on and off in different incarnations since 2001, included New York heroes Jack Martin, Jerome O’Brien, Josh Belknap, and Jorge Velez at the time of this recording. Sean Maffucci (of Icewater Scandal, and current Pink Monkey Bird, and the man behind the board for Gang Gang Dance and others at The Social Registry’s Junkyard Studios.), turned the knobs. Kid and Jack cut a guitar team to be reckoned with (Jack being no slouch himself – you may know him Honeymoon Killers, Little Porkchop, Knoxville Girls, Cause for Applause, Dimestore Dance Ensemble, etc.). Belknap and O’Brien lay it down a groove that is both solid and sleazy at the same time. And Velez’s warehouse of sound effects are varied and dynamic. In terms of guests, Captain Comatose, techno musicians Khan and Snax, do the backing vocals on “The History of French Cuisine” and legendary punk diva Little Annie (Crass, Coil, Wolfgang Press, etc.) duets with Kid on “The Weather The War.” Finally, the cover features the sexy chest of David Lloyd of The Boggs and Cause for Applause.

Philosophy and Underwear is a unique fusion of elements – garagy punk, glam, dirty soul, experimental noise, dark balladry, and even abrasive mechanical electro – all filtered through The Pink Monkey Bird’s unique post-no wave aesthetic. This grab-bag of songs from Kid’s past and present show the guitarist emerging as a mature singer and songwriter. Concentrating mostly on the themes that deal with good lovin’ gone bad, cheap thrills, perversions, and how to make sense of it all, his city of night tackles both the heart of a Saturday night and Sunday morning – and I do mean this as a John Rechy, Tom Waits, and Velvet Underground allusion. Kid’s grotesques: drag queens, leather men, and hustlers – turn tricks in 1950s Times Square, explore bondage in contemporary rent-controlled Tompkins Square apartments, and even engage in sexual cannibalism.

After the 1995 dissolution of Hartford, CT’s mess-rock poster children St. Johnny, who Sonic Youth signed to Geffen in 1992, bandleader Bill Whitten, with only an Epiphone Les Paul Jr. copy and a notebook full of rough edged hits to his name, found himself in New York. Informed by New York Dolls, T-Rex, and Mott the Hoople instead of his previously slack, droning St. Johnny work, Whitten introduced Grand Mal later that year. Whitten has spent the last decade since writing brilliant off-kilter rock’n’roll gems about first round K.O.’s. bail-jumping ex-wives, disaster films, mustachioed fascists and endless misadventures. Continuing work with St. Johnny producer Dave Fridmann, including studio appearances by friends like the Flaming Lips Stephen Drozd and Mercury Rev’s Grasshopper, Grand Mal released a slew of albums on Number 6, Slash/London, and Arena Rock before calling it quits after 2003’s critically acclaimed Bad Timing. Whitten quietly returned to home recording, and, out of nowhere, delivered his most realized, relaxed album to date: Love Is The Best Con In Town.

The first Grand Mal record Dave Fridmann did not produce, Love is the Best Con in Town was created in Whitten’s apartment over a seven-month period. He explains, “It was all done in a casual yet unrelenting way. My girlfriend had just moved out and I used that as an opportunity to get some real work done. Shaggy-headed young men were coming in and out of my apartment day after day, week after week. I think my neighbors were deeply gratified when I finally decided to take what I had up to Tarbox Studios and have Dave Fridmann master it.” The list of Whitten’s collaborators on the record includeJoan Wasser (AKA Joan as Policewoman), current members of The Gnomes, The Silent League, Hopewell, Adam Green, Antony and the Johnsons, Antony and the Johnsons, and a cast of many more.

Simmering with homegrown soul, the piano-based album is more stripped down and less bombastic than previous Grand Mal efforts – think of a collision of early Todd Rundgren, Holland-era Beach Boys and of course the relaxed swagger of classic Grand Mal-style r’n’r. Loaded with some of the best songs of Bill Whitten’s career.

Best known for his guitar work with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, The Cramps, The Gun Club, Congo Norvell, and Knoxville Girls, KID CONGO POWERS has also played with the Legendary Stardust Cowboy, Make-Up, Mark Eitzel, The Angels of Light, and many more. SOLO CHOLO, a collection of rare nuggets and previously unreleased tracks compiled by Kid himself, focuses on the other side – his substantial body of work as a singer and songwriter. There’s also no shortage of the guitar work that made Kid famous in the first place.

Spanning a twenty-year period, these ten eclectic tracks follow Kid through a number of phases. You will find him experimenting with garage rock, techno, balladry, noise, goth, and whole lot more. The bands backing Kid on SOLO CHOLO are as eclectic on the songs within – German instrumentalists DIE HAUT (on a duet with LYDIA LUNCH), garage rock supergroup KNOXVILLE GIRLS, German electro-superstar KHAN, moody lounge-rockers CONGO NORVELL, LA/NY cosmopolitans BOTANICA, and THE FUR BIBLE – Kid’s 1985 dark heavy London band featuring PATRICIA MORRISON (The Gun Club, The Bags, The Damned, Sisters of Mercy), MURRAY MITCHELL (Siouxsie and the Banshees), and DESPERATE (The Gun Club).

Kid’s collaborators on SOLO CHOLO include BARRY ADAMSON (Magazine, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds,…), ROBIN GUTHERIE (Cocteau Twins), MARCIA SCHOFIELD (The Fall), STEVE YOUNG (Colourbox, M.A.R.R.S.), JIM SCLAVUNOS (Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Sonic Youth, Teenage Jesus, 8-Eyed Spy,…,…,…), ABBY TRAVIS (Beck, Elastica,…), PAUL WALFISCH (Firewater, Botanica, etc.), JIM THIRWELL (AKA Foetus, Clint Ruin, etc.), and more. And, just in case you need one more name followed by parentheses, the liner notes are by BB Gun’s BOB BERT (Sonic Youth, Pussy Galore, Chrome Cranks,…).