{"title":"Mexican Summer","description":"","products":[{"product_id":"ade-connan-mockasin-its-just-wind-184923126105","title":"Ade \u0026 Connan Mockasin - It's Just Wind - Te Awanga Sunset Yellow Vinyl","description":"\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003carticle class=\"article-decorated\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eA few years in the not-so-distant past, a clairvoyant delivered an indelible message to Connan Mockasin. Inferring a project involving his father that had not yet been started, a woman he’d met only by chance told him: “You need to make it your priority, or you’ll regret it for the rest of your life”.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThough Connan and his father, Ade, had always joked that they’d make an album together, it was this extrasensory perception that summoned\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIt’s Just Wind\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e— its name a retort used by Ade’s father “whenever he broke wind and caused a ruckus around him” — into the realm of the real. Ade had himself only recently hovered precariously between realms; suffering a sudden cardiac arrest which left him flatlined for 40 minutes, and then in a coma. “I couldn’t win a raffle if there were two tickets in a plastic bucket” he muses, “so the chances of surviving a coronary ... surviving was good luck.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eMatch struck against the box by future-seeing eyes, Connan proposed that the next of his yearly artist residencies at Mexican Summer’s Marfa Myths festival, in Marfa, Texas, be used to make the album that had been stirring in Ade for 40 years or more; for despite maintaining a lifelong interest in music, playing in various bands throughout the 1960s and 70s, recording sessions, and even making an album with his band The Autumn Stone, which survives only in the form of damaged master tapes — a fate he blithely aligns with the nearly-but-never-quite of\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe League of Gentleman’s\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eCreme Brulee — an Ade Hosford album had never yet tasted the air.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWith both label and medical sign-off, Ade left New Zealand on a desert-bound plane, armed with a children’s school exercise book of song ideas (“I wrote ‘POETRY’ on the front so the Americans didn’t see I was writing lyrics”). Aside from Ade’s notes, the album didn’t yet have a definite shape. Travel-weary, knee-deep in first-night margaritas, and on the precipice of going to bed, Connan and his band spontaneously upped instruments and began playing together in the studio they’d set up to start recording the next day. And, in a souplike stupor of which he has little memory (“I had a lot of nasty drugs pumped through me, my doctor at the time said it’d cooked the brain a bit”) Ade joined them, testing out bits of lyrics from his book, getting them wrong by accident, getting them wrong on purpose, cutting, sticking and ad-libbing through the fug, around Connan and Co.’s improvised arrangements, never quite sure of what the hell was going to come out next. When they listened back to what they’d captured on the 8-track cassette the next morning, they found that they had, somehow, committed the majority of an album to tape. “The whole recording was quite a fluke; it was the most natural recording I’ve ever been involved with,” reflects Connan. “It just seemed to be the right thing at the right time... There was a nice magic to it.” Ade concurs: “I got a bit emotional at one point, because the music was rolling right over the top of my head. I was standing facing the engineer and I had keyboards [John Carroll Kirby] one side, Connan [guitar, number two vocals], drummer [Matthew Eccles], bassist [Nicholas Harsant] the other side, and number two guitarist [Rory McCarthy, aka Infinite Bisous] right behind me, sitting on the couch, so I was completely enveloped. The sound roared over the top, and it got me.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAfter just a couple more days of mixing and tweaking, still in-situ in Marfa,\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIt’s Just Wind\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003ematerialised: as much one continuous piece of music, operating on its own auto-written dream-logic, as a series of ten discrete songs. It starts with the big, bad tale of ‘The Wolf’ — a twisted, bongwater-and-panpipes spoken-word rehash of the familiar tale over a drum-machine beat, featuring three porky little shits and a rent-demanding lupine landlord. Sandwiched between instrumentals that are sometimes like mist rolling around a mountain-top (‘Edge of Darkness’), sometimes smooth, breezy and just slightly jolty, like the tape has worn thin in places (‘It’s Just Wind’) and sometimes 68-second master strokes of squelchy weirdo-funkery (‘What It Are’) are snippets of mussed-up vocal interjection from Connan (‘Tight Waxing’), and gruff rhythm-and-blues-inflected observations of the seemingly mundane (“Thirty-two leaf \/ sixty-four pages \/ seven millimeter ruled”, Ade sings on ‘Stuck’ — a lyric pulled not from inside his notebook, but from its very material reality).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTucked under the ruckus of jam, distortion, and wry surrealism, there’s also a quietly contemplative narrative thread. ‘Te Awanga’ tells of a 6-week journey, undertaken long ago in a metal boat, from a far-off land to a distant land. ‘Marfa’ laments the inevitability of the 9-5, and ‘Round Peg in a Square Hole’ considers the quiet melancholia of not fitting in. “It’s primarily a story about a guy who was born in London, England, and came to New Zealand as a young child ... just a matter of survival basically, a story of some guy surviving in a new land,” Ade surmises. The lines between the jest and the serious, the fictive and the lived, blur, as the plotline of\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIt’s Just Wind\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003ebends gently around Ade’s own. Indeed, the cover art — a drawing of a former boss, found by Connan with a stash of other artwork in the roof of Ade’s house — is also plucked from Ade’s past. A quality of bittersweet self-reflection, redolent of Bowie’s\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBlackstar\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eor Cash’s\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAmerican IV\u003c\/em\u003e, pervades, as an old man, from a point of slight detachment, surveys his life like a landscape. Whiskey in hand, Ade looks across life and land both, from a porch, on final track ‘Clifton’. He laughs at it all. At slight remove from his debut album — to be released on the occasion of his 72nd birthday — he laughs at that too. “I’ve been listening to it every day for three years, and I still don’t understand it”.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBoth a lifetime in the making and utterly impromptu, it means everything and nothing. It is, after all, just wind.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e-Diva Harris, June 2021\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/article\u003e","brand":"Mexican Summer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47589443698989,"sku":"184923126105","price":26.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0846\/5802\/8845\/files\/MEX261_Ade-ItsJustWind_ProductShots-GoldLP_02.jpg?v=1729260926"},{"product_id":"arp-new-pleasures-184923128611","title":"Arp - New Pleasures Standard Black Vinyl","description":"\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\n\u003carticle class=\"article-decorated\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eArp, a.k.a. Alexis Georgopoulos, makes his anticipated return to Mexican Summer with the second chapter in his ZEBRA trilogy. New Pleasures advances the narrative begun with 2018’s acclaimed ZEBRA; pastoral in mood, expansive in style, the record acted as a dawn on a nascent, Edenic landscape, reminiscent of a beautiful, long-lost Fourth World album. In this world, the music approximated the patient cadence of geological time – the way time suspends when you watch a river in motion. There was, nonetheless, the presence of something alien on the horizon.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eNow, Arp drops us deep into the grid of the city. (Or is it a complex lattice of microchips?) New Pleasures fast-forwards a few centuries, locating listeners in a post-industrial Sprawl (to borrow an expression from William Gibson’s Neuromancer) of concrete and glass, imbuing the album with the flinty glow of commerce, the sleek rhythms of industrialization, and the cool finesse of brutalism. The result is a collection of futuristic pop interiors with glinted exteriors; a prismatic inquiry into machine sentience, the economy of desire, and myriad forms of possession – a dystopian response to ZEBRA’s idyllic naturalism.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eCanny and time-bending, Georgopoulos sculpts angularities into fresh, alluring shapes, expanding and contracting song form into brain-teasing sound design. The sensation the music offers is almost rubbery; it makes you feel as if you could flex, bend and squeeze your body inside out – a vivid, deconstructed take on high-definition pop, avant-garde, and dance music forms. Drawing on the promise of futurism, New Pleasures reflects the slipperiness of time, the multidirectional, non-linearity of memory; how our minds shift millisecond to millisecond from past to present to future and back again, all epochs (personal and historical) available simultaneously.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIn this manner, New Pleasures recalls the way a sci-fi film might collapse multiple time periods on top of each other. This cinematic influence runs throughout the album, songs operating as though distinct scenes in a larger, unfolding narrative. Opener “The Peripheral” is the sound of machines stirring, or perhaps technicians starting the morning shift in a vast server farm. Computers chirrup, swoop, and gurgle in an alien language. Or is it free jazz? “Sponge (for Miyake)” sounds giddy, like gossipy chatter between chiming cash registers and pitch-bent synths, hyperactive 808 and 909 drum patterns pushing the music forward, detonating into dubbed-out percussion. “Le Palace,” meanwhile, launches us into the heart of night, inspired by the frisson of the legendary, late 1970s Parisian club of the same name.“Plaza” suggests disquiet lurking beneath the glowing lights; a mysterious fragment of a radio transmission floating through a deserted city, like something out of Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eA battery of analogue synths and techniques shape this texture. Georgopoulos fuses classic drum machine technology (Linn LM-1, Sequential Circuits Drumtraks, Oberheim DMX, Vermona DRM-1, 707s, 808s, 909s) with live hand percussion to create intricate rhythmic patterns that defy categorization. Liquid fretless bass (courtesy of Georgopoulos himself and Onyx Collective’s Spencer Murphy, who guests on “Eniko” and “i: \/o”) melts through the complex architecture of percussion. Vintage synthesizers (Prophet 5, Fairlight CMI, DX7, Moog Model D) pepper the album with harmonic overtones, chimes, stabs, and chordal voicings. Innovative use of call-and-response throughout transplants a song form more commonly found in folk and religious music into an alien, electronic landscape. Meanwhile, dance floor-focused tracks bounce to a see-saw of harmonized synth drums and electro conga rolls. Glistening electronic melodies crest, crash, and spray the air above.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"New Pleasures” proposes inventive drum programming in its build towards a peak replete with gleaming Prophet 5 chords and a percolating Moog bass sequence. “Preset Gloss” comes on like an advert, bouncing in and out before you realize what just happened; a sidelong glance from someone you didn’t know you wanted. “Eniko” swings into more moody territory. Snaky fretless bass winds its way around a loping drum pattern and a marimba played in a pentatonic scale. A dissonant synth clangs alongside, like sheet metal struck with a hammer, a dark counterpoint to the swishing melody. If much of New Pleasures suggests a fizzy futurism, there is something notably loose-limbed about “Embassy Disco” – a dusty old rhythm box, a marimba, and a Prophet 5 move arm-in-arm, gently bringing the tempo down. Meanwhile, “Cloud Storage,” a dubby bookend to “The Peripheral,” completely dismantles the rhythm, and in the process brings the album full circle, a vacuum sealed kiss back inside the server farm.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWhen asked to describe the strange, alluring sense of familiarity and dislocation the new Arp album evokes, Georgopoulos says: “sometimes the most alien thing is simply seeing what we take for granted from a slightly different angle.” In its dialogue of opposition, both theoretical and sensory—human\/machine, meta\/immediate, economic\/erotic—New Pleasures gleans political ideologies and spiritual deficiencies from the polishes and veneers of our world. One wonders if those so-called New Pleasures are in fact pleasures at all. Another meaning lurks, it seems, underneath the title’s ostensible advert-speak. By embracing overlapping methodologies, intersecting genealogies, and burgeoning technologies, New Pleasures offers the building blocks of something liberating rather than didactic. By turns imaginative, cheeky, and energetic, it’s Arp’s most experimental and yet most alluringly accessible work to date.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/article\u003e","brand":"Mexican Summer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47589444780333,"sku":"184923128611","price":24.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0846\/5802\/8845\/files\/ReleaseProduct-289859-168606.jpg?v=1700157136"},{"product_id":"arp-pulsars-e-quasars-184923119114","title":"Arp - Pulsars E Quasars Standard Black Vinyl","description":"\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\n\u003carticle class=\"article-decorated\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAlexis Georgopoulos aka Arp (rhymes with ‘harp’ – not pronounced “A.R.P.”) has always approached recordings with a conceptual bent. Imbued with an expansive sense of music history – he’s written about Pop and Avant-Garde music for i-D (UK), V, ANP Quarterly, BOMB, Fader, and Vice – he has a penchant for doing the unexpected and refusing to take part in the fleeting pop trends of the given day in favor of pursuing a more adventurous trajectory.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eGeorgopoulos made last year’s full–length MORE primarily by himself. The endeavor took time. With Pulsars e Quasars, he wanted to work quickly. He asked a few friends to join him in the studio. And while the same nuanced attention to detail that characterized MORE is present here (FADER’s Emilie Friedlander called it “beautiful psych-pop”), there is a looser, slightly more drugged–out, live band quality present here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAs the title infers, there is a ‘cosmic’ quality to Pulsars e Quasars – in a sense, it draws a link to his earlier Cosmic Synth work, albeit reclaiming and redefining it in a Pop songwriting context. Opener “Suns” sets the tone. And it glows. A bracing current of electricity, it’s a slate–cleaner, an improvised transmission capturing the group sound of this temporary ensemble in motion. “Pulsars e Quasars”, the title–track and mini–album’s first single, is a lysergic rush, a kaleidoscopic bite of psychedelic Anglophile pop. Settling into his singing voice – most of his earlier albums were primarily instrumental – his voice finds a comfortable spot between the narcotic resplendence of George Harrison and the delicacy of Broadcast’s Trish Keenan. The music, meanwhile, opens swathed in phased guitars before building into a prismatic, melodic fuzzed out mass. A tune that might just become a make-out classic. “Chromatiques II (Extended Mix), mixed in collaboration with Jefre Cantu–Ledesma (who runs the Root Strata label and whose forthcoming LP will be released on Mexican Summer) bleaches “Pulsars” into a sunkissed haze that you might want to go on forever. If, when it ends, you wonder if it had just been a mirage, you’ll have the warm sensation of having been singed. Just a little.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIf it feels that the poppier Arp gets, the noisier he gets, “UHF1″may provide further evidence. Over a chugging motorik pulse, phased out guitars and a melodic hook of a bassline, Georgopoulos narrates a moment of discovery while modular synthesizers float through the stereo field. It all mounts into a flurry midway through, with a guitar breakdown before splintering into a mini-symphonic guitar epic that spirals upwards before combusting altogether. “On Returning” is an anchor, providing the emotional catharsis of the EP. Built on a guitar loop, it smolders, a burning ember of guitar leads and textures before reaching up toward the heavens with a small chorus of vocals, featuring Georgopoulos joined by guitarist Evan Doering and Erin Fein. “The Violet Hour” revisits “Pulsars”, locating a composition via subtraction and abstraction. The equivalent of mini–film score, it showcases Georgopoulos’ taste for Sound Library recordings, combining plucked bass with tape delay flourishes, fuzz guitar tones and a strange analog bell tones. Montreal–based Roger Tellier–Craig aka Le Révélateur contributes the closing track. A former member of Godspeed You Black Emperor, he’s been wowing crowds in recent years under his Le Révélateur project (Gneiss Things). “New Persuasion (Le Révélateur Mix)” borrows elements of “MORE”‘s album–closing track “Persuasion” and extends the kraut-y rhythms into a shiny moving vehicle.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIf much of today’s heralded music falls into populist Pop on one side or a topography of obfuscated disinformation on the other, Arp is charting a path of his own. Does the cosmic nature of Pulsars suggest a marooning? An exploration of infinite voids? Or perhaps The Earthbound riding into the sun? Ultimately, the listener will decide. Either way, Pulsars e Quasars is joyful noise unto us, a vista of blissed–out Psychedelic Pop.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/article\u003e","brand":"Mexican Summer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47589444845869,"sku":"184923119114","price":20.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0846\/5802\/8845\/files\/195853.jpg?v=1700157210"},{"product_id":"arp-ensemble-live-184923127713","title":"Arp - Ensemble Live! Standard Black Vinyl","description":"\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAbout the Vinyl: Limited to 500 copies\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eLast summer’s spellbinding album ‘ZEBRA’ struck a chord with many listeners. Combining innovative production with an interest in music from around the globe – fourth world, Japanese avant-garde, minimalism, kosmische, dub, cosmic jazz and more – ‘ZEBRA’ found Arp (aka Alexis Georgopoulos) firing on all cylinders, drawing comparisons to Don Cherry, Midori Takada, Jon Hassell and Alice Coltrane and ultimately, made the best case yet for the polymath he is. \\nCritics said as much. The album featured in numerous Best of 2018 lists – The Guardian, The Vinyl Factory, Aquarium Drunkard, Unseen Worlds, Dublab among them – and found him gaining esteemed DJ fans such as Hunee, Andrew Weatherall, Prins Thomas, Jiro (NTS) and Growing Bin’s Basso.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ePrompted by Mexican Summer to debut a new live group for the label’s 10 year anniversary at New York’s art space Pioneer Works in November 2018, Georgopoulos assembled a quintet including three of the players on ‘ZEBRA’. Inspired by what they heard emanating from the stage, the label asked if Georgopoulos would be interested in recording a “live in the studio” album – a snapshot of a group “in motion”.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIf ‘ZEBRA’, the first album made primarily in his new home studio, showed Georgopoulos blossoming as an arranger\/producer, ‘ENSEMBLE – LIVE!’ emphasizes a different character – the sound of a group dynamic, of a vibe, of inspiration found in the moment – and how these songs work with 5 people playing them at the same time, together in a room.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e“The given definition of 'ensemble' tends to refer to a group of musicians performing together, but the etymology is more nuanced”, Georgopoulos explains. \"In French, 'ensemble' means 'together'. In Balinese, it translates to ‘gamelan’. It refers to a group viewed as a whole rather than individually.” If our historical moment is defined by broken lines of communication, of impasse, this music breathes life into the value of interaction. Communication is at the center of this album. A belief in exchange, of the sum being greater than it's parts. Of power in the collective.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e“I went into our first rehearsal not knowing how or if the group could play together, how electronic or how organic it would be. There were a lot of unknowns. But it was clear the first day we played together that there was something really tangible, an ease and a chemistry. Each player brings real expression to the table, so it made sense to let the music breathe – rather than create a facsimile of ‘ZEBRA’ – to let the songs take on their own life. Rather than over-orchestrate, I thought, let’s just put these guys in a room, give some direction, a compass arrow pointing in a direction, and just play music.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThat ease and openness are obvious from the first meditative tones of album opener ‘Eos’. The equivalent of a door opening (in Greek mythology, Eos is the Bringer of the Dawn), the airspace is wide open. Georgopoulos uses the piano to induce the listener into a kind of suspended consciousness, as the group falls in around him. David Lackner’s emotive wind playing speaking in turn. This music transmits. There are peaks and valleys here, lots of open space, and the light is shimmering.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe ebullient ‘Nzuku’, a stand-out from ‘ZEBRA’, is given a faithful if expressive interpretation here, with the middle section reaching new heights. ‘Kalimboid’ follows and finds the group in fiery form. A minimoog sequence, evoking a kalimba, begins, reverbed hand percussion dancing and getting quite loose, before drums enter, well charged. A horn motif enters before going into uncharted, heated terrain. Proof the group can not only create deep listening, but also propulsive music, on the edge of chaos.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe resplendent ‘Reading A Wave’, another ‘ZEBRA’ standout, is the album’s centrepiece. Electric piano, bowed double bass and percussion – going through what amounts to a King Tubby’s worth of tape delay – sets the airy tone. In comparison with the album version, the cadence of the two-note bass cycle here is positively reclined. Lackner is on top form here, conjuring a magical meeting of Terry Riley and ‘In A Silent Way’-era Miles in the ECM studio, before Georgopoulos switches to a piano that seems to descend from a cracking summer sky with thunderous clouds on the brink. Truly transcendent stuff.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e‘Voices’, one of the four new tracks written for this album, emphasizes the case that though ‘ENSEMBLE – LIVE!’ leans towards cosmic and exploratory jazz, there is more at work here. A kind of abstracted rainforest kosmische – evoking Finis Africae, one of Georgopoulos’ favorite groups – featuring harmonized flute shooting out atop a minimal Holger Czukay-like abstracted bassline, this is 4th World music par excellence.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe final two tracks pivot towards the introspective. ‘Ozu’ the album’s most pensive and spacious piece, is given a moody interpretation. Closer ‘Autumn Piece (for Jiri Kovanda)’, as its title hints, leans toward the autumnal. Inspired by the likes of the Entourage Music and Theater Ensemble, and Basil Kirchin, a dreamlike tone pervades. You can sense something in the air. The wind carries a message. There is a new door to be opened. A new key to find.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mexican Summer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47589444878637,"sku":"184923127713","price":24.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0846\/5802\/8845\/files\/ReleaseProduct-195503-111920.jpg?v=1700157072"},{"product_id":"arp-zebra-184923125429","title":"Arp - Zebra CD","description":"\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\n\u003carticle class=\"article-decorated\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eA mutant offspring of diverse stylings, unlikely convergences, unfixed constellations, ZEBRA, Alexis Georgopoulos’ - aka Arp - fifth full-length album, is a post-everything symbiosis of ancient to future psychotropics, emphasizing points of connectivity between far-flung traditions. ZEBRA is as naturalistic as it is alien, disrupting outdated boundaries between musical traditions, hierarchies and genre politics.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eUsing forward-looking production techniques and an idiosyncratic instrumental palette — analog synthesizers, double bass, Fender Rhodes, electronic and acoustic drums, flute, vintage harmonizers and tape delay — Georgopoulos proposes a vast, shimmering prospect, floralizing an array of styles and smiles — Fourth World tremors, vibey Cosmic Jazz, 80s Japanese production, floating kosmische drum atmospherics.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eEmphasizing 'points of connectivity' in a time when reactive and fractious isolationism threaten in divisive ways, ZEBRA is the sound of interaction. ZEBRA seeks something beyond definition of singularity perspective and division. It is constructive instead of flippant: ecstatic instead of wallowing; clear-eyed instead of opiated, romantic instead of cynical.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eLike the zebra, Georgopoulos’ latest album revels in contrast \/ duality - Naturalistic + alien. Urban + rural. Calm + unsettling. Lucid + mysterious. Bold simplicity + fiendish complexity. The result is a portal to a more curious world that compels repeat visits.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eZEBRA by Arp\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/article\u003e","brand":"Mexican Summer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47589444976941,"sku":"184923125429","price":9.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}]},{"product_id":"cate-le-bon-and-bradford-cox-myths-004-184923125917","title":"Cate Le Bon and Bradford Cox - Myths 004","description":"\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAs sure as if it had been mapped in the stars, or written in a prophecy buried deep beneath the sands of the Marfa desert, a collaboration between Cate Le Bon and Bradford Cox was always something of an inevitability.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eFourth in Mexican Summer’s Myths EP series (and following previous tie-ups between Dev Hynes and Connan Mockasin, Ariel Pink and Weyes Blood, and Dungen and Woods), Myths 004 sees Le Bon and Cox–each a much-revered musical innovator in their own right–finally united.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eFor both artists, Myths 004 signals a change of tack: meticulousness thrown to the wind as spontaneous, jammy tales of firemen and 5p plastic bags, unbrushed hair and shoelessness and makeup-daubed landscapes–all miraculously written and recorded in just one week–roll effortlessly off their cuffs.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThough this EP materialises after two individual 2019 album campaigns–Le Bon’s Mercury-nominated fifth album Reward, and Cox’s eighth with his band Deerhunter, Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared? (which Le Bon co-produced)–the chronologies are tangled: Myths 004 is in fact a snapshot of the pair’s very first meeting. After years of admiring each other’s work from afar, Cox and Le Bon finally converged on Marfa, Texas in 2018, at Mexican Summer’s annual Marfa Myths music, visual art, and film festival.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e“Marfa is an extraordinary town,” says Le Bon. “It feels like nothing else exists when you’re in it which is both comforting and unnerving.” In this otherworldly enclave, and with a band of frequent Cate Le Bon co-conspirators on hand to putty the gaps with drums, saxophone, percussion, keys, and additional guitar (Stella Mozgawa of Warpaint, Stephen Black of Sweet Baboo, Tim Presley of White Fence, and Samur Khouja), the EP was assembled whiplash-quick.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e“Writing and recording in a week is a tall order - especially when such chemistry exists between all the musicians involved, and the possibilities are boundless,” Le Bon explains. “We committed ourselves to embracing the chaos, surrendering to all moments and moods that travelled through. It’s a crude holiday scrapbook shared by all involved, an amalgamation of the changes in mood and light that shaped the days.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIndeed, Myths 004 is wondrous in its variety. On the opening song “Canto!”, Cox dons the ill-fitting leathers of an ageing biker and urges us to come ride with him, baby. He and Le Bon gaze into one another’s eyes with semi-serious sweetness as tough, wiry guitars stab through the romance.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eEverything shrinks and softens on the EP’s sole single, the gently melancholic “Secretary,” as Le Bon and Cox spout verse over a mysterious percussive rhythm; perhaps made by miniature cymbals from a mantric parade, perhaps by someone rummaging in the cutlery drawer. Together, they combat the office humdrum of filing, answering the phone, and eating “the same old plastic lunch” with a surreal and beautiful daydream of “mascara brushed across the plains \/ all of the phone calls you made disconnected.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eMost freeform are the short instrumental interludes–the garage-y, hammily menacing “Companions in Misfortune,” could easily soundtrack a gang sauntering down an alleyway, whilst “Jericho” emulates a dog and a brass band falling down the stairs (with jazzy panache, thank you very much).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e“Fireman” sees Le Bon and Cox cast themselves as postulating heroes, as in a flash of tongue-in-cheek, lyrical-comic wordplay, Cate sings “I am a fireman \/ putting out fires, man” and Bradford, in a low faux-macho drawl, rambles immodestly in the background about his fire-extinguishing prowess.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAnd final track “What Is She Wearing,” drips with cynicism, wit, and parody punk spirit as Le Bon lists universally relatable and not-so-nice, day-to-day shit: having to take the bins out, stepping in chewing gum, taking your jumper off when you’re wearing an ugly t-shirt underneath, finding dirt on the fork at a fancy restaurant, going to the supermarket and paying five pence for a plastic bag you don’t want. It wouldn’t be hard to believe that John Cale is sawing his bow across an electric guitar somewhere in the background as Le Bon lippily gripes: “I’m walking to get myself a croissant from the bakery \/ and everybody is looking at me as if I have committed a crime.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBut for all their twists and turns, Myths 004’s seven tracks sit perfectly alongside one another—each sounding simultaneously like a Bradford Cox song, and like a Cate Le Bon song. In the true spirit of collaboration, a feeling of sheer joy prevails, uniting the EP’s every shape, character, prang, plod and playful bite.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mexican Summer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47589445402925,"sku":"184923125917","price":20.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0846\/5802\/8845\/files\/ReleaseProduct-197972-111839.jpg?v=1700158034"},{"product_id":"cate-le-bon-pompeii-184923131529","title":"Cate Le Bon - Pompeii CD","description":"\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\n\u003carticle class=\"article-decorated\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eCD \u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003ecomes in a 4-panel gatefold with foldout poster insert\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ePompeii\u003c\/em\u003e, Cate Le Bon’s sixth full-length studio album and the follow up to 2019’s Mercury-nominated\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eReward\u003c\/em\u003e, bears a storied title summoning apocalypse, but the metaphor eclipses any “dissection of immediacy,” says Le Bon. Not to downplay her nod to disorientation induced by double catastrophe — global pandemic plus climate emergency’s colliding eco-traumas resonate all too eerily. “What would be your last gesture?” she asks. But just as Vesuvius remains active, Pompeii reaches past the current crises to tap into what Le Bon calls “an economy of time warp” where life roils, bubbles, wrinkles, melts, hardens, and reconfigures unpredictably, like lava—or sound, rather. Like she says in the opener, “Dirt on the Bed,”\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSound doesn’t go away \/ In habitual silence \/ It reinvents the surface \/ Of everything you touch.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ePompeii\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eis sonically minimal in parts, and its lyrics jog between self-reflection and direct address. Vulnerability, although “obscured,” challenges Le Bon’s tendencies towards irony. Written primarily on bass and composed entirely alone in an “uninterrupted vacuum,” Le Bon plays every instrument (except drums and saxophones) and recorded the album largely by herself with long-term collaborator and co-producer Samur Khouja in Cardiff, Wales. Enforced time and space pushed boundaries, leading to an even more extreme version of Le Bon's studio process – as exits were sealed, she granted herself “permission to annihilate identity.” “Assumptions were destroyed, and nothing was rejected” as her punk assessments of existence emerged.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eEnter Le Bon’s signature aesthetic paradox: songs built for Now miraculously germinate from her interests in antiquity, philosophy, architecture, and divinity’s modalities. Unhinged opulence rests in sonic deconstruction that finds coherence in pop structures, and her narrativity favors slippage away from meaning. In “Remembering Me,” she sings:* In the classical rewrite \/ I wore the heat like \/ A hundred birthday cakes \/ Under one sun.* Reconstituted meltdowns, eloquently expressed. This mirrors what she says about the creative process: “as a changeable element, it’s sometimes the only point of control… a circuit breaker.” She’s for sure enlightened, or at least more highly evolved than the rest of us. Hear the last stanza on the album closer, “Wheel”:\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI do not think that you love yourself \/ I’d take you back to school \/ And teach you right \/ How to want a life \/ But, it takes more time than you’d tender.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eReprimanding herself or a loved one, no matter: it’s an end note about learning how to love, which takes a lifetime and is more urgent than ever.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTo leverage visionary control, Le Bon invented twisted types of discipline into her absurdist decision making. Primary goals in this project were to mimic the “religious” sensibility in one of Tim Presley’s paintings, which hung on the studio wall as a meditative image and was reproduced as a portrait of Le Bon for Pompeii’s cover. Fist across the heart, stalwart and saintly: how to make “music that sounds like a painting?” Cate asked herself. Enter piles of Pompeii’s signature synths made on favourites such as the Yamaha DX7, amongst others; basslines inspired by 1980s Japanese city pop, designed to bring joyfulness and abandonment; vocal arrangements that add memorable depth to the melodic fabric of each song; long-term collaborator Stella Mozgawa’s “jazz-thinking” percussion patched in from quarantined Australia; and Khouja’s encouraging presence.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe songs of\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ePompeii\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003efeel suspended in time, both of the moment and instant but reactionary and Dada-esque in their insistence to be playful, satirical, and surreal. From the spirited, strutting bass fretwork of “Moderation”, to the sax-swagger of “Running Away”; a tale exquisite in nature but ultimately doomed\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e(The fountain that empties the world \/ Too beautiful to hold)\u003c\/em\u003e, escapism lives as a foil to the outside world. Pompeii’s audacious tribute to memory, compassion, and mortal salience is here to stay.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe past few years have seen Le Bon emerge as a much lauded and sought-after collaborator, producing albums for contemporaries such as Deerhunter (\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWhy Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared?\u003c\/em\u003e), John Grant (\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBoy From Michigan\u003c\/em\u003e), and forthcoming albums from both Devendra Banhart and H. Hawkline. She’s not so much a gun for hire as a multi-faceted artist and producer who can both steer the ship and tap into a collective mindset; in 2019, she joined John Cale for a three-night live stretch in Paris, and 2021 will see a bass appearance on the track \"If I Don't Hear from You Tonight\" from Courtney Barnett's\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThings Take Time, Take Time\u003c\/em\u003e. As Bradford Cox aptly notes about Le Bon, \"there are artists who look inwards or outwards, and then there are the very rare ones who transcend either location.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/article\u003e","brand":"Mexican Summer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47589445599533,"sku":"184923131529","price":13.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0846\/5802\/8845\/files\/ReleaseProduct-250514-158239.jpg?v=1700157504"},{"product_id":"cate-le-bon-pompeii-184923131512","title":"Cate Le Bon - Pompeii Standard Black Vinyl","description":"\u003cp\u003eStandard \u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eblack vinyl comes housed in a gatefold jacket with printed inners and download code\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003ePompeii\u003c\/em\u003e, Cate Le Bon’s sixth full-length studio album and the follow up to 2019’s Mercury-nominated\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eReward\u003c\/em\u003e, bears a storied title summoning apocalypse, but the metaphor eclipses any “dissection of immediacy,” says Le Bon. Not to downplay her nod to disorientation induced by double catastrophe — global pandemic plus climate emergency’s colliding eco-traumas resonate all too eerily. “What would be your last gesture?” she asks. But just as Vesuvius remains active, Pompeii reaches past the current crises to tap into what Le Bon calls “an economy of time warp” where life roils, bubbles, wrinkles, melts, hardens, and reconfigures unpredictably, like lava—or sound, rather. Like she says in the opener, “Dirt on the Bed,”\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eSound doesn’t go away \/ In habitual silence \/ It reinvents the surface \/ Of everything you touch.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003ePompeii\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eis sonically minimal in parts, and its lyrics jog between self-reflection and direct address. Vulnerability, although “obscured,” challenges Le Bon’s tendencies towards irony. Written primarily on bass and composed entirely alone in an “uninterrupted vacuum,” Le Bon plays every instrument (except drums and saxophones) and recorded the album largely by herself with long-term collaborator and co-producer Samur Khouja in Cardiff, Wales. Enforced time and space pushed boundaries, leading to an even more extreme version of Le Bon's studio process – as exits were sealed, she granted herself “permission to annihilate identity.” “Assumptions were destroyed, and nothing was rejected” as her punk assessments of existence emerged.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEnter Le Bon’s signature aesthetic paradox: songs built for Now miraculously germinate from her interests in antiquity, philosophy, architecture, and divinity’s modalities. Unhinged opulence rests in sonic deconstruction that finds coherence in pop structures, and her narrativity favors slippage away from meaning. In “Remembering Me,” she sings:* In the classical rewrite \/ I wore the heat like \/ A hundred birthday cakes \/ Under one sun.* Reconstituted meltdowns, eloquently expressed. This mirrors what she says about the creative process: “as a changeable element, it’s sometimes the only point of control… a circuit breaker.” She’s for sure enlightened, or at least more highly evolved than the rest of us. Hear the last stanza on the album closer, “Wheel”:\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eI do not think that you love yourself \/ I’d take you back to school \/ And teach you right \/ How to want a life \/ But, it takes more time than you’d tender.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eReprimanding herself or a loved one, no matter: it’s an end note about learning how to love, which takes a lifetime and is more urgent than ever.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTo leverage visionary control, Le Bon invented twisted types of discipline into her absurdist decision making. Primary goals in this project were to mimic the “religious” sensibility in one of Tim Presley’s paintings, which hung on the studio wall as a meditative image and was reproduced as a portrait of Le Bon for Pompeii’s cover. Fist across the heart, stalwart and saintly: how to make “music that sounds like a painting?” Cate asked herself. Enter piles of Pompeii’s signature synths made on favourites such as the Yamaha DX7, amongst others; basslines inspired by 1980s Japanese city pop, designed to bring joyfulness and abandonment; vocal arrangements that add memorable depth to the melodic fabric of each song; long-term collaborator Stella Mozgawa’s “jazz-thinking” percussion patched in from quarantined Australia; and Khouja’s encouraging presence.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe songs of\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003ePompeii\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003efeel suspended in time, both of the moment and instant but reactionary and Dada-esque in their insistence to be playful, satirical, and surreal. From the spirited, strutting bass fretwork of “Moderation”, to the sax-swagger of “Running Away”; a tale exquisite in nature but ultimately doomed\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003e(The fountain that empties the world \/ Too beautiful to hold)\u003c\/em\u003e, escapism lives as a foil to the outside world. Pompeii’s audacious tribute to memory, compassion, and mortal salience is here to stay.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe past few years have seen Le Bon emerge as a much lauded and sought-after collaborator, producing albums for contemporaries such as Deerhunter (\u003cem\u003eWhy Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared?\u003c\/em\u003e), John Grant (\u003cem\u003eBoy From Michigan\u003c\/em\u003e), and forthcoming albums from both Devendra Banhart and H. Hawkline. She’s not so much a gun for hire as a multi-faceted artist and producer who can both steer the ship and tap into a collective mindset; in 2019, she joined John Cale for a three-night live stretch in Paris, and 2021 will see a bass appearance on the track \"If I Don't Hear from You Tonight\" from Courtney Barnett's\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eThings Take Time, Take Time\u003c\/em\u003e. As Bradford Cox aptly notes about Le Bon, \"there are artists who look inwards or outwards, and then there are the very rare ones who transcend either location.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mexican Summer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47589445697837,"sku":"184923131512","price":24.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0846\/5802\/8845\/files\/ReleaseProduct-250514-158238.jpg?v=1700157528"},{"product_id":"cate-le-bon-reward-184923125016","title":"Cate Le Bon - Reward Standard Black Vinyl","description":"\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIt was on a mountainside in Cumbria that the first whispers of Cate Le Bon’s fifth studio album poked their buds above the earth. “There’s a strange romanticism to going a little bit crazy and playing the piano to yourself and singing into the night,” she says, recounting the year living solitarily in the Lake District which gave way to Reward. By day, ever the polymath, Le Bon painstakingly learnt to make solid wood tables, stools and chairs from scratch; by night she looked to a second-hand Meers — the first piano she had ever owned — for company, “windows closed to absolutely everyone”, and accidentally poured her heart out. The result is an album every bit as stylistically varied, surrealistically-inclined and tactile as those in the enduring outsider’s back catalogue, but one that is also intensely introspective and profound; her most personal to date.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThis sense of privacy maintained throughout is helped by the various landscapes within which Reward took shape: Stinson Beach, LA, and Brooklyn via Cardiff and The Lakes. Recording at Panoramic House [Stinson Beach, CA], a residential studio on a mountain overlooking the ocean, afforded Le Bon the ability to preserve the remoteness she had captured during the writing of Reward in Staveley, Lake District.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eOver this extended period a cast of trusted and loved musicians joined Le Bon, Khouja and fellow co-producer Josiah Steinbrick — Stella Mozgawa (of Warpaint) on drums and percussion; Stephen Black (aka Sweet Baboo) on bass and saxophone and longtime collaborators Huw Evans (aka H.Hawkline) and Josh Klinghoffer on guitars — and were added to the album, “one by one, one on one”. The fact that these collaborators have appeared variously on Le Bon’s previous outputs no doubt goes some way to aid the preservation of a signature sound despite a relatively drastic change in approach.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBe it on her more minimalist, acoustic-leaning 2009 debut album Me Oh My or critically acclaimed, liquid-riffed 2013 LP Mug Museum as well as 2016s Crab Day, Cate Le Bon’s solo work — and indeed also her production work, such as that carried out on recent Deerhunter album Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared? (4AD, January 2019) — has always resisted pigeonholing, walking the tightrope between krautrock aloofness and heartbreaking tenderness; deadpan served with a twinkle in the eye, a flick of the fringe and a lick of the Telecaster.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe multifaceted nature of Le Bon’s art — its ability to take on multiple meanings and hold motivations which are not immediately obvious — is evident right down to the album’s very name. “People hear the word ‘reward’ and they think that it’s a positive word” says Le Bon, “and to me it’s quite a sinister word in that it depends on the relationship between the giver and the receiver. I feel like it’s really indicative of the times we’re living in where words are used as slogans, and everything is slowly losing its meaning.” The record, then, signals a scrambling to hold onto meaning; it is a warning against lazy comparisons and face values. It is a sentiment nicely summed up by the furniture-making musician as she advises: “Always keep your hand behind the chisel.”\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mexican Summer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47589445763373,"sku":"184923125016","price":24.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0846\/5802\/8845\/files\/ReleaseProduct-195329-169152.jpg?v=1700157623"},{"product_id":"cate-le-bon-reward-184923125023","title":"Cate Le Bon - Reward CD","description":"\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIt was on a mountainside in Cumbria that the first whispers of Cate Le Bon’s fifth studio album poked their buds above the earth. “There’s a strange romanticism to going a little bit crazy and playing the piano to yourself and singing into the night,” she says, recounting the year living solitarily in the Lake District which gave way to Reward. By day, ever the polymath, Le Bon painstakingly learnt to make solid wood tables, stools and chairs from scratch; by night she looked to a second-hand Meers — the first piano she had ever owned — for company, “windows closed to absolutely everyone”, and accidentally poured her heart out. The result is an album every bit as stylistically varied, surrealistically-inclined and tactile as those in the enduring outsider’s back catalogue, but one that is also intensely introspective and profound; her most personal to date.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThis sense of privacy maintained throughout is helped by the various landscapes within which Reward took shape: Stinson Beach, LA, and Brooklyn via Cardiff and The Lakes. Recording at Panoramic House [Stinson Beach, CA], a residential studio on a mountain overlooking the ocean, afforded Le Bon the ability to preserve the remoteness she had captured during the writing of Reward in Staveley, Lake District.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eOver this extended period a cast of trusted and loved musicians joined Le Bon, Khouja and fellow co-producer Josiah Steinbrick — Stella Mozgawa (of Warpaint) on drums and percussion; Stephen Black (aka Sweet Baboo) on bass and saxophone and longtime collaborators Huw Evans (aka H.Hawkline) and Josh Klinghoffer on guitars — and were added to the album, “one by one, one on one”. The fact that these collaborators have appeared variously on Le Bon’s previous outputs no doubt goes some way to aid the preservation of a signature sound despite a relatively drastic change in approach.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBe it on her more minimalist, acoustic-leaning 2009 debut album Me Oh My or critically acclaimed, liquid-riffed 2013 LP Mug Museum as well as 2016s Crab Day, Cate Le Bon’s solo work — and indeed also her production work, such as that carried out on recent Deerhunter album Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared? (4AD, January 2019) — has always resisted pigeonholing, walking the tightrope between krautrock aloofness and heartbreaking tenderness; deadpan served with a twinkle in the eye, a flick of the fringe and a lick of the Telecaster.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe multifaceted nature of Le Bon’s art — its ability to take on multiple meanings and hold motivations which are not immediately obvious — is evident right down to the album’s very name. “People hear the word ‘reward’ and they think that it’s a positive word” says Le Bon, “and to me it’s quite a sinister word in that it depends on the relationship between the giver and the receiver. I feel like it’s really indicative of the times we’re living in where words are used as slogans, and everything is slowly losing its meaning.” The record, then, signals a scrambling to hold onto meaning; it is a warning against lazy comparisons and face values. It is a sentiment nicely summed up by the furniture-making musician as she advises: “Always keep your hand behind the chisel.”\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mexican Summer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47589445959981,"sku":"184923125023","price":12.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0846\/5802\/8845\/files\/ReleaseProduct-195329-112022.jpg?v=1700157577"},{"product_id":"connan-mockasin-jassbusters-two-184923128819","title":"Connan Mockasin - Jassbusters Two - Black Vinyl","description":"\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\n\u003carticle class=\"article-decorated\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eLimited to 500\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAs a solitary janitor buffs the floor of a tired high school building, a furtively jazzy bassline slips under a door and down the hallway. It’s after hours in the teachers’ lounge; perhaps someone’s smoked a little confiscated weed. The leather-blazered and bemulletted faculty members of Connan Mockasin’s upside-down music department adjust their sock garters and try their strings, as Jassbusters, the most tangible band of imagined music teachers the world has never seen, prepares itself for a second stab at after-school stardom.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ePulled from the same fictive universe as 2018’s\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eJassbusters\u003c\/em\u003e, the shrewdly named\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eJassbusters Two\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003emakes a languid counterpart to its predecessor – both albums were recorded by the aforementioned fictional band of schoolteachers from the as yet mostly unseen daytime TV miniseries\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBost’n ‘n Dobs’n\u003c\/em\u003e, conceived, directed by, and starring Mockasin himself, and possibly coming to a late night cinema near you.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIn the mists of 2016,\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eJassbusters\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003ehad found its feet in Paris, and\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eJassbusters Two\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003ematerialised only shortly thereafter in 2017, three-and-a-half-thousand miles across the Atlantic. “\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eJassbusters\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003ewas the first record I’d done as a band,” Connan reflects. “I really enjoyed it, and wanted to make more music while we were still in character as this group of music teachers.” At Gary’s Electric Studio in Brooklyn, New York, Mockasin, along with Jassbusters’ real-life counterparts (Nicholas Harsant on bass, Matthew Eccles on drums, and Rory McCarthy, aka Infinite Bisous, on rhythm guitar), freestyled across long live takes, weaving under, over, and straight through each other’s blurry riffs. “I was playing the role of the guitar teacher in the band, who was pushed into being the singer who didn’t have lyrics. So, like the first Jassbusters record, the lyrics were improvised, blurted out.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWhile the band let loose with\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eJassbusters\u003c\/em\u003e, its follow-up is so laid back as to be horizontal. Vocal improvisations — sometimes eerie, sometimes crooney, and often more shapeshifting, otherworldly sounds than definable words — slosh around Mockasin’s signature bent-over-backwards guitar arrangements. All here is smooth and unencumbered, viscous as a palmful of mercury. Opening track ‘Jass Two’, at first ghoulish and oversaturated, later sits back into its own mellow groove. The effortless flourishes of ‘K is for Klassical’ honour classical modes of play, Spanish-guitar-styled one second, and lutelike the next — though always with a maverick Mockasinian twist.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eKlassical sentiment overhangs into lead track ‘Flipping Poles’, a perfect spokesperson for the multitudes contained within\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eJassbusters Two\u003c\/em\u003e’s whole; rules by turns strictly adhered to and determinedly defied; here, as elsewhere, genres seeping into one another gooily: playful stringwork meets school-noise nostalgia meets science fiction sound effect.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e‘In Tune’ and ‘Maori Honey’ see the jassers swap leather for polycotton frills at a perfect pastiche prom; first a low-key, loungey wig-out, then later a punch-drunk slow-dance number. As ‘She’s My Lady’ plays, the band wordlessly watch the sun come up on the parking lot — and yet another day of coffee-stained carpet and red pen — and ‘Shaved Buckley’ brings things to a close in a subtly forlorn fashion; a lament, perhaps, for the passing of youth and its unhampered throes, and a reminder of the clock that ticks inevitably towards middle-age.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWith its bending of genre, a tinge of sensuality, and just enough wonk,\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eJassbusters Two\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eperfectly follows both\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eJassbusters\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eand the wider Connan Mockasin canon, the artist’s playfulness, surreal characterisation, and improvisational knack melted down and spread into new directions; chopped, churned, and smoothed with a jazzer’s intuition, a country fingerpicker’s dexterity, and a funkster’s flow. Be you listener, player, or faculty member of the mind, this latest Mockasin master work invites you to forget the grind, just for a bit, and settle into the syrupy, boundless world of Jass.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/article\u003e","brand":"Mexican Summer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47589446254893,"sku":"184923128819","price":21.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0846\/5802\/8845\/files\/ReleaseProduct-246533-147254.jpg?v=1700161239"},{"product_id":"connan-mockasin-jassbusters-184923123814","title":"Connan Mockasin - Jassbusters - Black Vinyl","description":"\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\n\u003carticle class=\"article-decorated\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eJassbusters is Connan Mockasin’s third album and first in five years. An unclassifiable, unconventional album that neither picks up from nor abandons the modes of 2013’s widely-embraced Caramel or its 2010 predecessor Forever Dolphin Love, Jassbusters foreshadows a five-part melodrama film titled Bostyn 'n Dobsyn, created by Mockasin. Jassbusters soundtracks the unpredictable narrative of the film in eclectic, electric ways.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWhether bending genres or collaborating with artists like James Blake, MGMT, and Charlotte Gainsbourg, Connan Mockasin has always maneuvered in mysterious ways. After touring with the likes of Radiohead and Neil \u0026amp; Liam Finn (Crowded House), the R\u0026amp;B surrealist continues assembling a cult around his theater, nay spectacle of life with Bostyn 'n Dobsyn screenings and Jassbusters performances around the globe.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/article\u003e","brand":"Mexican Summer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47589446320429,"sku":"184923123814","price":24.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0846\/5802\/8845\/files\/MEX253_Connan_Mockasin_-_Jassbusters_Product_Shots_LP_Front.jpg?v=1755532178"},{"product_id":"connan-mockasin-jassbusters-184923123821","title":"Connan Mockasin - Jassbusters - CD","description":"\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\n\u003carticle class=\"article-decorated\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eJassbusters is Connan Mockasin’s third album and first in five years. An unclassifiable, unconventional album that neither picks up from nor abandons the modes of 2013’s widely-embraced Caramel or its 2010 predecessor Forever Dolphin Love, Jassbusters foreshadows a five-part melodrama film titled Bostyn 'n Dobsyn, created by Mockasin. Jassbusters soundtracks the unpredictable narrative of the film in eclectic, electric ways.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWhether bending genres or collaborating with artists like James Blake, MGMT, and Charlotte Gainsbourg, Connan Mockasin has always maneuvered in mysterious ways. After touring with the likes of Radiohead and Neil \u0026amp; Liam Finn (Crowded House), the R\u0026amp;B surrealist continues assembling a cult around his theater, nay spectacle of life with Bostyn 'n Dobsyn screenings and Jassbusters performances around the globe.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/article\u003e","brand":"Mexican Summer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47589446353197,"sku":"184923123821","price":9.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0846\/5802\/8845\/files\/MEX253_Connan_Mockasin_-_Jassbusters_Product_Shots_CD_Front.jpg?v=1755532271"},{"product_id":"connan-mockasin-forever-dolphin-love-184923116625","title":"Connan Mockasin - Forever Dolphin Love - CD","description":"","brand":"Mexican Summer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47589446615341,"sku":"184923116625","price":7.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0846\/5802\/8845\/files\/195340.jpg?v=1700160953"},{"product_id":"connan-mockasin-caramel-184923117929","title":"Connan Mockasin - Caramel - CD","description":"","brand":"Mexican Summer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47589446713645,"sku":"184923117929","price":9.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0846\/5802\/8845\/files\/195343.jpg?v=1700160981"},{"product_id":"devendra-banhart-flying-wig-634457141476","title":"Devendra Banhart - Flying Wig CD","description":"\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\n\u003carticle class=\"article-decorated\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eFlying Wig is an album of recurrent dualities; a can of paradoxes, a box of worms. The redwood and pine-surrounded cabin studio where Banhart was “constantly listening to The Grateful Dead” somehow birthed something slick, modernist, city pop-adjacent and Eno-esque.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBanhart's eleventh record, it's the actualisation of a “precious friendship” with the acclaimed solo artist, multi-instrumentalist, producer and Mexican Summer stable-mate Cate Le Bon — a coming together prophesied by the mirror-image titles of their early solo albums (Banhart’s 2002 Oh Me Oh My to Le Bon’s 2009 Me Oh My) and a tenderness built on crude haircuts (“we finally met, soon after she was cutting my hair with a fork and that was that”) and home-made tattoos — but never previously translated into the recording studio.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e“It’s about transmuting despair into gratitude, wounds into forgiveness, and grief into praise,” - the product of a ritualistic creative practice that melts down and re-casts as it mulls, the stuff of sadness beautified as it changes shape — culminating in a record that “sounds like getting a very melancholic massage, or weeping, but in a really nice outfit… if I’m going to cry, I wanna do it in my best dress.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/article\u003e","brand":"Mexican Summer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47589446746413,"sku":"634457141476","price":15.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0846\/5802\/8845\/files\/ReleaseProduct-387837-208278.jpg?v=1700161447"},{"product_id":"devendra-banhart-flying-wig-634457141452","title":"Devendra Banhart - Flying Wig Standard Black Vinyl","description":"\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eFlying Wig is an album of recurrent dualities; a can of paradoxes, a box of worms. The redwood and pine-surrounded cabin studio where Banhart was “constantly listening to The Grateful Dead” somehow birthed something slick, modernist, city pop-adjacent and Eno-esque.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBanhart's eleventh record, it's the actualisation of a “precious friendship” with the acclaimed solo artist, multi-instrumentalist, producer and Mexican Summer stable-mate Cate Le Bon — a coming together prophesied by the mirror-image titles of their early solo albums (Banhart’s 2002 Oh Me Oh My to Le Bon’s 2009 Me Oh My) and a tenderness built on crude haircuts (“we finally met, soon after she was cutting my hair with a fork and that was that”) and home-made tattoos — but never previously translated into the recording studio.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e“It’s about transmuting despair into gratitude, wounds into forgiveness, and grief into praise,” - the product of a ritualistic creative practice that melts down and re-casts as it mulls, the stuff of sadness beautified as it changes shape — culminating in a record that “sounds like getting a very melancholic massage, or weeping, but in a really nice outfit… if I’m going to cry, I wanna do it in my best dress.”\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mexican Summer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47589446779181,"sku":"634457141452","price":25.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0846\/5802\/8845\/files\/ReleaseProduct-387837-208276.jpg?v=1700161419"},{"product_id":"devendra-banhart-flying-wig-634457141469","title":"Devendra Banhart - Flying Wig Opaque Blue Vinyl","description":"\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eFlying Wig is an album of recurrent dualities; a can of paradoxes, a box of worms. The redwood and pine-surrounded cabin studio where Banhart was “constantly listening to The Grateful Dead” somehow birthed something slick, modernist, city pop-adjacent and Eno-esque.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBanhart's eleventh record, it's the actualisation of a “precious friendship” with the acclaimed solo artist, multi-instrumentalist, producer and Mexican Summer stable-mate Cate Le Bon — a coming together prophesied by the mirror-image titles of their early solo albums (Banhart’s 2002 Oh Me Oh My to Le Bon’s 2009 Me Oh My) and a tenderness built on crude haircuts (“we finally met, soon after she was cutting my hair with a fork and that was that”) and home-made tattoos — but never previously translated into the recording studio.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e“It’s about transmuting despair into gratitude, wounds into forgiveness, and grief into praise,” - the product of a ritualistic creative practice that melts down and re-casts as it mulls, the stuff of sadness beautified as it changes shape — culminating in a record that “sounds like getting a very melancholic massage, or weeping, but in a really nice outfit… if I’m going to cry, I wanna do it in my best dress.”\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mexican Summer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47589446877485,"sku":"634457141469","price":26.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0846\/5802\/8845\/files\/ReleaseProduct-387837-208275.jpg?v=1700161388"},{"product_id":"drugdealer-hiding-in-plain-sight-184923129205","title":"Drugdealer - Hiding in Plain Sight Table Wine Rouge Vinyl","description":"\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe third and most seasoned Drugdealer album, Hiding in Plain Sight, almost didn't happen at all. Frustrated and insecure with his own singing voice prior to the pandemic, Drugdealer founder and primary songwriter Michael Collins was nearly ready to throw in the towel. With hits like \"Suddenly\" and \"The Real World\" (from the band's 2016 debut, The End Of Comedy) and \"Honey\" (from their first album for Mexican Summer, 2019’s Raw Honey), Collins had plenty to be happy about. But due to a frequent impulse to hand over the microphone to friends and collaborators like Weyes Blood, Jackson MacIntosh, and his trusty musical companion Sasha Winn, Collins became increasingly unsure of himself as a singer. Then, amidst the windswept art colony of Marfa, Texas, a chance encounter with the visionary artist and composer Annette Peacock changed his outlook.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWhile attending Mexican Summer's annual Marfa Myths festival, Collins ran into Peacock backstage. \"I was so inspired by [Annette]. But similarly to all these other vocalists I'd worked with, I didn't feel like I had it in me.\" he recalls. \"I told her my plight, then I played her a song, and she told me I wasn't singing high enough for my speaking voice. When I returned to LA, I started coming up with new progressions, which I'd modulate up three half steps. It forced me to find a new way to sing.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIn the valley of the shadow of doubt, during a period when Collins was considering giving up on music and embarking on his lifelong dream of filmmaking, a furtive conversation with a legend allowed him to find his own distinctive voice. But, as the title implies, the lockdown era during which Collins wrote the bulk of the record was a time spent searching for answers – searching for love.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"Madison,\" the opening track on Hiding in Plain Sight, is the first song Collins wrote singing in this suggested range. His newfound confidence as a yarn-spinning vocalist in the gruff tenor tradition of Nick Lowe, or even Van Morrison, is readily apparent, with Conor \"Catfish\" Gallaher's pedal steel adding a dusting of cosmic country to Collins' down-hard love song.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWhen Collins wrote the would-be AM Gold hit, he was summoning an imaginary vision of a love that had eluded him in reality. The song focuses on an unknown figure he could idealize. \"All the art I've made is related to this searching archetype,\" Collins says. \"I feel there's no one way that people find love in their life. When I started to make this album, I noticed that all the lyrics dealt with this subject. On 'Madison,' the chorus goes 'Hoping you'll find a love\/You're one design of love.' Then the next song I wrote went 'Find someone to love...' At that point, I pretty much knew where it was going. Sasha (my main musical partner) and I are both incredibly romantic. We've worked on multiple projects that are all based around this search for love.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBut this quest spanned beyond the traditional conception of love. It takes a village to put together Drugdealer records. The Greek term for love of friends, philia, translating to \"the highest form of love,\" is evident in a deep cast of characters including Drugdealer band members Mikey Long, MacIntosh and Josh Da Costa (CMON), as well as Southland virtuosos like John Carroll Kirby (Frank Ocean, Stones Throw) and Daryl Johns (Mac DeMarco, The Lemon Twigs).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTim Presley sings on the second song, \"Baby,\" and Collins had a clear role in mind for the California avant-rock mainstay. \"I love White Fence so much, but I also wanted to hear Presley sing a song that sounded like an early '60s sock hop band who had never tried drugs in their life.\" Meanwhile, Kate Bollinger floats an effervescent lead vocal over the Rhodes-driven groove in “Pictures of You.” As usual, Collins wrangled a who's who of background singers and instrumentalists to carry out Hiding in Plain Sight's vision. Mainly, however, the record acts as a welcome showcase for Collins as an emboldened lead singer, a wayward bandleader who has found a way to love himself as a singer, songwriter and storyteller.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTaking inspiration from a canon of gruff but soulful rock vocalists like Phil Lynott, Collins looks back on his nocturnal meanderings through LA's warrens of bars and clubs (\"New Fascination\"). He’s right up front in the mix, detailing a search for love in all the wrong places. All the while, his band turns on a dime, with Long and Sergio Tabanico trading respective electric sitar and electric sax solos.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eOn \"Hard Dreaming Man,\" he looks back at a restless decade on the road through the rearview mirror. \"Hard dreaming man\/lemme tell you anything I know... I gotta go any place I can go,\" he sings over a chorus of honky-tonk guitars you might hear wafting out of saloon doors. \"The thing I actually do at a high level isn't playing piano,\" Collins says, \"it's telling stories. Our group of musicians, we all just really like to hang out and tell stories together.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eCollins once again hands the mic over to his talented friends on the final, celebratory track, \"Posse Cut.\" The latest, greatest entry in a Los Angeles funk tradition spanning from Leon Sylvers to Warren G, the six-minute jam finds a groove and rides it, with Bambina, Winn, Sean Nicholas Savage, Video Age, and Kirby showing out. In what could be a summation of the record's themes, Winn sings, \"I don't wanna stop the flow\/But there's something you should know\/I've been known to move around\/I get lost before I get found.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eUltimately, Hiding in Plain Sight is an odyssey from philautia—the ability to love oneself —to philia, a greater ability to love and embrace the contributions of those around you. Only then does a path clear for an encompassing and passionate romantic love, eros. Ultimately, Collins finds love all around and, finally, feels in possession of the voice to sing about it, resulting in the most joyful and fully-realized Drugdealer album to date. Hiding in Plain Sight is the sound of Michael Collins and Drugdealer getting their groove back.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mexican Summer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47589446943021,"sku":"184923129205","price":26.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0846\/5802\/8845\/files\/ReleaseProduct-311427-170125.jpg?v=1700161838"},{"product_id":"drugdealer-hiding-in-plain-sight-184923129212","title":"Drugdealer - Hiding in Plain Sight Standard Black Vinyl","description":"\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe third and most seasoned Drugdealer album, Hiding in Plain Sight, almost didn't happen at all. Frustrated and insecure with his own singing voice prior to the pandemic, Drugdealer founder and primary songwriter Michael Collins was nearly ready to throw in the towel. With hits like \"Suddenly\" and \"The Real World\" (from the band's 2016 debut, The End Of Comedy) and \"Honey\" (from their first album for Mexican Summer, 2019’s Raw Honey), Collins had plenty to be happy about. But due to a frequent impulse to hand over the microphone to friends and collaborators like Weyes Blood, Jackson MacIntosh, and his trusty musical companion Sasha Winn, Collins became increasingly unsure of himself as a singer. Then, amidst the windswept art colony of Marfa, Texas, a chance encounter with the visionary artist and composer Annette Peacock changed his outlook.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWhile attending Mexican Summer's annual Marfa Myths festival, Collins ran into Peacock backstage. \"I was so inspired by [Annette]. But similarly to all these other vocalists I'd worked with, I didn't feel like I had it in me.\" he recalls. \"I told her my plight, then I played her a song, and she told me I wasn't singing high enough for my speaking voice. When I returned to LA, I started coming up with new progressions, which I'd modulate up three half steps. It forced me to find a new way to sing.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIn the valley of the shadow of doubt, during a period when Collins was considering giving up on music and embarking on his lifelong dream of filmmaking, a furtive conversation with a legend allowed him to find his own distinctive voice. But, as the title implies, the lockdown era during which Collins wrote the bulk of the record was a time spent searching for answers – searching for love.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"Madison,\" the opening track on Hiding in Plain Sight, is the first song Collins wrote singing in this suggested range. His newfound confidence as a yarn-spinning vocalist in the gruff tenor tradition of Nick Lowe, or even Van Morrison, is readily apparent, with Conor \"Catfish\" Gallaher's pedal steel adding a dusting of cosmic country to Collins' down-hard love song.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWhen Collins wrote the would-be AM Gold hit, he was summoning an imaginary vision of a love that had eluded him in reality. The song focuses on an unknown figure he could idealize. \"All the art I've made is related to this searching archetype,\" Collins says. \"I feel there's no one way that people find love in their life. When I started to make this album, I noticed that all the lyrics dealt with this subject. On 'Madison,' the chorus goes 'Hoping you'll find a love\/You're one design of love.' Then the next song I wrote went 'Find someone to love...' At that point, I pretty much knew where it was going. Sasha (my main musical partner) and I are both incredibly romantic. We've worked on multiple projects that are all based around this search for love.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBut this quest spanned beyond the traditional conception of love. It takes a village to put together Drugdealer records. The Greek term for love of friends, philia, translating to \"the highest form of love,\" is evident in a deep cast of characters including Drugdealer band members Mikey Long, MacIntosh and Josh Da Costa (CMON), as well as Southland virtuosos like John Carroll Kirby (Frank Ocean, Stones Throw) and Daryl Johns (Mac DeMarco, The Lemon Twigs).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTim Presley sings on the second song, \"Baby,\" and Collins had a clear role in mind for the California avant-rock mainstay. \"I love White Fence so much, but I also wanted to hear Presley sing a song that sounded like an early '60s sock hop band who had never tried drugs in their life.\" Meanwhile, Kate Bollinger floats an effervescent lead vocal over the Rhodes-driven groove in “Pictures of You.” As usual, Collins wrangled a who's who of background singers and instrumentalists to carry out Hiding in Plain Sight's vision. Mainly, however, the record acts as a welcome showcase for Collins as an emboldened lead singer, a wayward bandleader who has found a way to love himself as a singer, songwriter and storyteller.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTaking inspiration from a canon of gruff but soulful rock vocalists like Phil Lynott, Collins looks back on his nocturnal meanderings through LA's warrens of bars and clubs (\"New Fascination\"). He’s right up front in the mix, detailing a search for love in all the wrong places. All the while, his band turns on a dime, with Long and Sergio Tabanico trading respective electric sitar and electric sax solos.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eOn \"Hard Dreaming Man,\" he looks back at a restless decade on the road through the rearview mirror. \"Hard dreaming man\/lemme tell you anything I know... I gotta go any place I can go,\" he sings over a chorus of honky-tonk guitars you might hear wafting out of saloon doors. \"The thing I actually do at a high level isn't playing piano,\" Collins says, \"it's telling stories. Our group of musicians, we all just really like to hang out and tell stories together.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eCollins once again hands the mic over to his talented friends on the final, celebratory track, \"Posse Cut.\" The latest, greatest entry in a Los Angeles funk tradition spanning from Leon Sylvers to Warren G, the six-minute jam finds a groove and rides it, with Bambina, Winn, Sean Nicholas Savage, Video Age, and Kirby showing out. In what could be a summation of the record's themes, Winn sings, \"I don't wanna stop the flow\/But there's something you should know\/I've been known to move around\/I get lost before I get found.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eUltimately, Hiding in Plain Sight is an odyssey from philautia—the ability to love oneself —to philia, a greater ability to love and embrace the contributions of those around you. Only then does a path clear for an encompassing and passionate romantic love, eros. Ultimately, Collins finds love all around and, finally, feels in possession of the voice to sing about it, resulting in the most joyful and fully-realized Drugdealer album to date. Hiding in Plain Sight is the sound of Michael Collins and Drugdealer getting their groove back.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mexican Summer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47589447041325,"sku":"184923129212","price":25.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0846\/5802\/8845\/files\/ReleaseProduct-311427-170124.jpg?v=1700161811"},{"product_id":"drugdealer-hiding-in-plain-sight-184923129229","title":"Drugdealer - Hiding in Plain Sight CD","description":"\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\n\u003carticle class=\"article-decorated\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe third and most seasoned Drugdealer album, Hiding in Plain Sight, almost didn't happen at all. Frustrated and insecure with his own singing voice prior to the pandemic, Drugdealer founder and primary songwriter Michael Collins was nearly ready to throw in the towel. With hits like \"Suddenly\" and \"The Real World\" (from the band's 2016 debut, The End Of Comedy) and \"Honey\" (from their first album for Mexican Summer, 2019’s Raw Honey), Collins had plenty to be happy about. But due to a frequent impulse to hand over the microphone to friends and collaborators like Weyes Blood, Jackson MacIntosh, and his trusty musical companion Sasha Winn, Collins became increasingly unsure of himself as a singer. Then, amidst the windswept art colony of Marfa, Texas, a chance encounter with the visionary artist and composer Annette Peacock changed his outlook.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWhile attending Mexican Summer's annual Marfa Myths festival, Collins ran into Peacock backstage. \"I was so inspired by [Annette]. But similarly to all these other vocalists I'd worked with, I didn't feel like I had it in me.\" he recalls. \"I told her my plight, then I played her a song, and she told me I wasn't singing high enough for my speaking voice. When I returned to LA, I started coming up with new progressions, which I'd modulate up three half steps. It forced me to find a new way to sing.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIn the valley of the shadow of doubt, during a period when Collins was considering giving up on music and embarking on his lifelong dream of filmmaking, a furtive conversation with a legend allowed him to find his own distinctive voice. But, as the title implies, the lockdown era during which Collins wrote the bulk of the record was a time spent searching for answers – searching for love.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"Madison,\" the opening track on Hiding in Plain Sight, is the first song Collins wrote singing in this suggested range. His newfound confidence as a yarn-spinning vocalist in the gruff tenor tradition of Nick Lowe, or even Van Morrison, is readily apparent, with Conor \"Catfish\" Gallaher's pedal steel adding a dusting of cosmic country to Collins' down-hard love song.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWhen Collins wrote the would-be AM Gold hit, he was summoning an imaginary vision of a love that had eluded him in reality. The song focuses on an unknown figure he could idealize. \"All the art I've made is related to this searching archetype,\" Collins says. \"I feel there's no one way that people find love in their life. When I started to make this album, I noticed that all the lyrics dealt with this subject. On 'Madison,' the chorus goes 'Hoping you'll find a love\/You're one design of love.' Then the next song I wrote went 'Find someone to love...' At that point, I pretty much knew where it was going. Sasha (my main musical partner) and I are both incredibly romantic. We've worked on multiple projects that are all based around this search for love.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBut this quest spanned beyond the traditional conception of love. It takes a village to put together Drugdealer records. The Greek term for love of friends, philia, translating to \"the highest form of love,\" is evident in a deep cast of characters including Drugdealer band members Mikey Long, MacIntosh and Josh Da Costa (CMON), as well as Southland virtuosos like John Carroll Kirby (Frank Ocean, Stones Throw) and Daryl Johns (Mac DeMarco, The Lemon Twigs).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTim Presley sings on the second song, \"Baby,\" and Collins had a clear role in mind for the California avant-rock mainstay. \"I love White Fence so much, but I also wanted to hear Presley sing a song that sounded like an early '60s sock hop band who had never tried drugs in their life.\" Meanwhile, Kate Bollinger floats an effervescent lead vocal over the Rhodes-driven groove in “Pictures of You.” As usual, Collins wrangled a who's who of background singers and instrumentalists to carry out Hiding in Plain Sight's vision. Mainly, however, the record acts as a welcome showcase for Collins as an emboldened lead singer, a wayward bandleader who has found a way to love himself as a singer, songwriter and storyteller.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTaking inspiration from a canon of gruff but soulful rock vocalists like Phil Lynott, Collins looks back on his nocturnal meanderings through LA's warrens of bars and clubs (\"New Fascination\"). He’s right up front in the mix, detailing a search for love in all the wrong places. All the while, his band turns on a dime, with Long and Sergio Tabanico trading respective electric sitar and electric sax solos.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eOn \"Hard Dreaming Man,\" he looks back at a restless decade on the road through the rearview mirror. \"Hard dreaming man\/lemme tell you anything I know... I gotta go any place I can go,\" he sings over a chorus of honky-tonk guitars you might hear wafting out of saloon doors. \"The thing I actually do at a high level isn't playing piano,\" Collins says, \"it's telling stories. Our group of musicians, we all just really like to hang out and tell stories together.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eCollins once again hands the mic over to his talented friends on the final, celebratory track, \"Posse Cut.\" The latest, greatest entry in a Los Angeles funk tradition spanning from Leon Sylvers to Warren G, the six-minute jam finds a groove and rides it, with Bambina, Winn, Sean Nicholas Savage, Video Age, and Kirby showing out. In what could be a summation of the record's themes, Winn sings, \"I don't wanna stop the flow\/But there's something you should know\/I've been known to move around\/I get lost before I get found.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eUltimately, Hiding in Plain Sight is an odyssey from philautia—the ability to love oneself —to philia, a greater ability to love and embrace the contributions of those around you. Only then does a path clear for an encompassing and passionate romantic love, eros. Ultimately, Collins finds love all around and, finally, feels in possession of the voice to sing about it, resulting in the most joyful and fully-realized Drugdealer album to date. Hiding in Plain Sight is the sound of Michael Collins and Drugdealer getting their groove back.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/article\u003e","brand":"Mexican Summer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47589447172397,"sku":"184923129229","price":13.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0846\/5802\/8845\/files\/ReleaseProduct-311427-176565.jpg?v=1700161778"},{"product_id":"drugdealer-raw-honey-184923124828","title":"Drugdealer - Raw Honey CD","description":"\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\n\u003carticle class=\"article-decorated\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e“All anyone wants to be is what they can.” In an era when networked access to information is nearly universal and wearing influences on your sleeve is normalized, it often feels like everything’s been done. Which begs the questions: What’s the point of creating? Does the world need another still life of fruit? Another film about love? Does the world need another melody?\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eOn Raw Honey, his second album as Drugdealer, Michael Collins colors these existential conundrums with lush arrangements, memetic melodies, and a vulnerable tunefulness that tries to make sense of self-doubt and connected loneliness in our shared simulacra.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eCollins, who never played an instrument let alone received musical training in any formal capacity, began experimenting with sounds in 2009 after traversing the US on freight trains. After a few years crafting abstract sampledelia, he decided to forgo his experimental exercises in favor of teaching himself how to write a traditional song. In doing so, he made the decision to approach songwriting from the perspective of a listener, rather than a “musician.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIn 2013, Collins headed west and enmeshed himself in the Los Angeles underground scene. It was there and then that he began collaborating with players in the orbit of Ariel Pink, over time crafting what would become Drugdealer’s debut album, The End of Comedy, a collection of sunlit songs as indebted to Laurel Canyon psych pop as it is Bacharachian orchestration.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eRaw Honey continues where The End of Comedy left off, with Collins leading an ace crew of collaborators to coalesce the spirit of Drugdealer’s classically modern pop. Built on the foundation of a creative partnership among Collins, Sasha Winn (vocals) and Shags Chamberlain (bass, production), Drugdealer is more a collective than band. Raw Honey features contributions of Josh Da Costa (drums), Jackson MacIntosh (guitar), Danny Garcia (guitar), Michael Long (lead guitar), and Benjamin Schwab (backing vocals, guitar, organ, piano, wurlitzer), as well as guest vocalists like country balladeer Dougie Poole (“Wild Motion”), Harley Hill-Richmond (“Lonely”), and frequent collaborator Natalie Mering (Weyes Blood) whose dulcet tones sing low before soaring on “Honey,” a track as silky as the nectar itself.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThroughout Raw Honey, Collins and crew display their influences as a new tapestry, one woven with the fibers from thousands of tapestries that have colored our collective listening histories. As evidenced throughout Raw Honey, Collins has an ear for penning numbers that would sound as at home on Classic Rock radio as they would at Zebulon in Los Angeles, where any of the contributors to Raw Honey might likely be found on any night of the week, on stage, or in the audience supporting another Angelino’s modern pop aspirations.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eRather than hiding behind a curtain or casually sidestepping AOR tropes, Raw Honey adheres to a modern kind of creation — one that cultivates influences and espouses reverence. An honest totem, Raw Honey isn’t tangled up in social norms, with Collins preferring to air his self-doubt as a northern star to guide like-minded people wherever they need to go.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/article\u003e","brand":"Mexican Summer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47589447205165,"sku":"184923124828","price":10.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0846\/5802\/8845\/files\/ReleaseProduct-195517-112010.jpg?v=1700161933"},{"product_id":"dungen-en-ar-for-mycket-och-tusen-aldrig-nog-184923133622","title":"Dungen - En Är För Mycket och Tusen Aldrig Nog CD","description":"\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGustav Ejstes has always been on his way to someplace else. The Swedish musician has been making records as Dungen for two decades now, and while he’s lauded as one of the sharpest and most adventurous musicians in psychedelic music since 2004’s breakthrough Ta det lungt, for Ejstes psych has always been only a starting point. Or maybe it’s something more like an ethos—psych with its promise of exploration, the way it prioritizes seeking out new sounds, of leaving the old self behind, of setting into the ether to see what else might be out there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEn Är För Mycket och Tusen Aldrig Nog (One is Too Much and a Thousand is Never Enough) is the first Dungen record since 2016’s Häxan and the first proper Dungen studio album since Allas Sak was released in 2015. If we’re thinking of psych-rock as a genre, with its readymade tropes—fuzz guitars, shimmering harmonies, pastoral textures—it’s possibly the least psychedelic record Ejstes has ever made. But if psych is really about transcending what’s come before in favor of new ways of seeing and hearing, then the opposite is true.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd that means En Är För Mycket och Tusen Aldrig Nog goes further out than any Dungen record before it. There are classic psych rave-ups, of course, and the kind of brilliant vocal harmonies Ejstes has long made his trademark. There are soft, shuffling grooves that transform into wide-eyed cosmic revelations. There are intimate songs guided by Ejstes and his piano, which he plays so gently it sounds like he’s trying not to wake someone in the next room.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mexican Summer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47589447369005,"sku":"184923133622","price":14.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0846\/5802\/8845\/files\/ReleaseProduct-311664-172846.jpg?v=1700162815"},{"product_id":"dungen-en-ar-for-mycket-och-tusen-aldrig-nog-184923133608","title":"Dungen - En Är För Mycket och Tusen Aldrig Nog Burgundy Vinyl","description":"\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGustav Ejstes has always been on his way to someplace else. The Swedish musician has been making records as Dungen for two decades now, and while he’s lauded as one of the sharpest and most adventurous musicians in psychedelic music since 2004’s breakthrough Ta det lungt, for Ejstes psych has always been only a starting point. Or maybe it’s something more like an ethos—psych with its promise of exploration, the way it prioritizes seeking out new sounds, of leaving the old self behind, of setting into the ether to see what else might be out there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEn Är För Mycket och Tusen Aldrig Nog (One is Too Much and a Thousand is Never Enough) is the first Dungen record since 2016’s Häxan and the first proper Dungen studio album since Allas Sak was released in 2015. If we’re thinking of psych-rock as a genre, with its readymade tropes—fuzz guitars, shimmering harmonies, pastoral textures—it’s possibly the least psychedelic record Ejstes has ever made. But if psych is really about transcending what’s come before in favor of new ways of seeing and hearing, then the opposite is true.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd that means En Är För Mycket och Tusen Aldrig Nog goes further out than any Dungen record before it. There are classic psych rave-ups, of course, and the kind of brilliant vocal harmonies Ejstes has long made his trademark. There are soft, shuffling grooves that transform into wide-eyed cosmic revelations. There are intimate songs guided by Ejstes and his piano, which he plays so gently it sounds like he’s trying not to wake someone in the next room.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mexican Summer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47589447401773,"sku":"184923133608","price":26.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0846\/5802\/8845\/files\/ReleaseProduct-311664-171572.jpg?v=1700162739"},{"product_id":"dungen-en-ar-for-mycket-och-tusen-aldrig-nog-184923133615","title":"Dungen - En Är För Mycket och Tusen Aldrig Nog Standard Black Vinyl","description":"\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGustav Ejstes has always been on his way to someplace else. The Swedish musician has been making records as Dungen for two decades now, and while he’s lauded as one of the sharpest and most adventurous musicians in psychedelic music since 2004’s breakthrough Ta det lungt, for Ejstes psych has always been only a starting point. Or maybe it’s something more like an ethos—psych with its promise of exploration, the way it prioritizes seeking out new sounds, of leaving the old self behind, of setting into the ether to see what else might be out there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEn Är För Mycket och Tusen Aldrig Nog (One is Too Much and a Thousand is Never Enough) is the first Dungen record since 2016’s Häxan and the first proper Dungen studio album since Allas Sak was released in 2015. If we’re thinking of psych-rock as a genre, with its readymade tropes—fuzz guitars, shimmering harmonies, pastoral textures—it’s possibly the least psychedelic record Ejstes has ever made. But if psych is really about transcending what’s come before in favor of new ways of seeing and hearing, then the opposite is true.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd that means En Är För Mycket och Tusen Aldrig Nog goes further out than any Dungen record before it. There are classic psych rave-ups, of course, and the kind of brilliant vocal harmonies Ejstes has long made his trademark. There are soft, shuffling grooves that transform into wide-eyed cosmic revelations. There are intimate songs guided by Ejstes and his piano, which he plays so gently it sounds like he’s trying not to wake someone in the next room.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mexican Summer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47589447467309,"sku":"184923133615","price":24.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0846\/5802\/8845\/files\/ReleaseProduct-311664-171573.jpg?v=1700162849"},{"product_id":"dungen-skit-i-allt-184923100600","title":"Dungen - Skit I Allt CD","description":"\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003ci data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eOnly available in North America\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"color: #000000;\"\u003eIn what felt like a very short decade, Sweden’s \u003ca href=\"http:\/\/www.mexicansummer.com\/artist\/dungen\" style=\"color: #000000; text-decoration: underline;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-href=\"http:\/\/www.mexicansummer.com\/artist\/dungen\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eDungen\u003c\/a\u003e has mutated at a furious pace. Main man\/ producer\/ arranger\/ singer\/ golden child Gustav Ejstes’s lone constant has been change. Take the leap from Dungen’s self-titled 2001 debut, featuring long psilocybic exploratory tracks of aural tomfoolery, to next year’s \u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eStadsvandringar\u003c\/em\u003e, which found Ejstes coming to grips with the language of rock. It all converged with the zeitgeist that is Dungen’s third album, \u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTa Det Lugt\u003c\/em\u003e, an album that ignited the blogosphere so that it glowed like the aurora borealis. Not content to revel in such accolades, \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/shop.mexicansummer.com\/product\/dungen-tio-bitar\/\" style=\"color: #000000; text-decoration: underline;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-href=\"https:\/\/shop.mexicansummer.com\/product\/dungen-tio-bitar\/\"\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTio Bitar\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e flashed the band’s pop smarts as well as their incandescent freakouts while \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/shop.mexicansummer.com\/product\/dungen-4\/\" style=\"color: #000000; text-decoration: underline;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-href=\"https:\/\/shop.mexicansummer.com\/product\/dungen-4\/\"\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e4\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e put the band’s cohesiveness on display, at once gorgeous and biting.\u003c\/span\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #000000;\"\u003eFor those who don’t have their English-Svenska Dictionary close at hand when plunking\/ popping\/ importing \u003ca href=\"http:\/\/www.mexicansummer.com\/artist\/dungen\" style=\"color: #000000; text-decoration: underline;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-href=\"http:\/\/www.mexicansummer.com\/artist\/dungen\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eDungen’s\u003c\/a\u003e sixth album\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e Skit I Allt\u003c\/em\u003e into their respective LP\/CD\/ MP3 listening devices, let’s make sure the title doesn’t get lost in translation: “Fuck All.” Really? Should we be expecting a nihilistic punk album? “For me, it means ‘Don’t give a shit, forget about it, just go ahead and do it,'” laughs Ejstes. “\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSkit I Allt\u003c\/em\u003e is about a certain feeling: you’re with your friends and mates, all hanging out till 6 in the morning. You’re the last one left at the party and you call this person that you want to be with. They’re asleep, but they still say, ‘Ah, fuck it, come over.’ It’s \u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ethat\u003c\/em\u003e feeling.”\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #000000;\"\u003eJust don’t think that with \u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSkit I Allt\u003c\/em\u003e the band is reducible to any one feeling. Or musical genre. At ease with effervescent pop, third-eye popping psychedelia, heavy rock, spider-web folk and breezy jazz, \u003ca href=\"http:\/\/www.mexicansummer.com\/artist\/dungen\" style=\"color: #000000; text-decoration: underline;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-href=\"http:\/\/www.mexicansummer.com\/artist\/dungen\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eDungen’s\u003c\/a\u003e dynamism astounds throughout. Rather than remain only Ejstes’ studio vision, \u003ca href=\"http:\/\/www.mexicansummer.com\/artist\/dungen\" style=\"color: #000000; text-decoration: underline;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-href=\"http:\/\/www.mexicansummer.com\/artist\/dungen\"\u003eDungen\u003c\/a\u003e is a muscular full band now. Guitarist Reine Fiske, bassist Mattias Gustavsson, and drummer Johan Holmegard are fully integrated into Ejstes’ vision of \u003ca href=\"http:\/\/www.mexicansummer.com\/artist\/dungen\" style=\"color: #000000; text-decoration: underline;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-href=\"http:\/\/www.mexicansummer.com\/artist\/dungen\"\u003eDungen\u003c\/a\u003e: “Whether you perceive \u003ca href=\"http:\/\/www.mexicansummer.com\/artist\/dungen\" style=\"color: #000000; text-decoration: underline;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-href=\"http:\/\/www.mexicansummer.com\/artist\/dungen\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eDungen\u003c\/a\u003e as a band or as me and my songs and my productions, the band is something totally free. They take the songs somewhere else.” Take “Soda,” which moves from gentle finger-picked guitar to a rollicking beat that makes the song gush forth in all its glory. With the sumptuous opener “Vara Snabb,” \u003ca href=\"http:\/\/www.mexicansummer.com\/artist\/dungen\" style=\"color: #000000; text-decoration: underline;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-href=\"http:\/\/www.mexicansummer.com\/artist\/dungen\"\u003eDungen’s\u003c\/a\u003e jazz chops are evident. From there, the band reveals the aching, handclap-propelled, strings-laced ballad “Min Anda Van.” Ejstes confesses: “It translates as ‘My Only Friend.’ It’s dedicated to a friend who got very ill and it’s my most personal song yet.”\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #000000;\"\u003eWhile the album is stuffed with concise songs (nothing running beyond five minutes) there are already candidates aplenty here for \u003ca href=\"http:\/\/www.mexicansummer.com\/artist\/dungen\" style=\"color: #000000; text-decoration: underline;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-href=\"http:\/\/www.mexicansummer.com\/artist\/dungen\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eDungen’s\u003c\/a\u003e live blotter-fueled sonic maelstroms. ““Hogdalstoppen” (named for a massive junkyard near Ejstes’ flat) is already a massive instrumental track that we’ve started expanding between 5 and 15 minutes,” Ejstes says. Perhaps the instrumental “Blandband” (trans. “Mixtape”) exemplifies the \u003ca href=\"http:\/\/www.mexicansummer.com\/artist\/dungen\" style=\"color: #000000; text-decoration: underline;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-href=\"http:\/\/www.mexicansummer.com\/artist\/dungen\"\u003eDungen\u003c\/a\u003e philosophy best. A mélange of bright piano chords, snaking lead guitar, and weightless woodwinds, it twists and turns like a forest path. The song was inspired, says Ejstes, “by a friend made me a cassette recently and I missed that antiquated way of listening. I like finding out about music fast but at the same time, I like listening to whole albums. I conceive \u003ca href=\"http:\/\/www.mexicansummer.com\/artist\/dungen\" style=\"color: #000000; text-decoration: underline;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-href=\"http:\/\/www.mexicansummer.com\/artist\/dungen\"\u003eDungen\u003c\/a\u003e music in that same way: side one, side two, a journey.” Enjoy the trip.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mexican Summer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47589447500077,"sku":"184923100600","price":8.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0846\/5802\/8845\/files\/302227.jpg?v=1700163008"},{"product_id":"dungen-skit-i-allt-184923100617","title":"Dungen - Skit I Allt Standard Black Vinyl","description":"\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003ci data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eOnly available in North America\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"color: #000000;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-style=\"color: #000000;\"\u003eIn what felt like a very short decade, Sweden’s \u003ca href=\"http:\/\/www.mexicansummer.com\/artist\/dungen\" style=\"color: #000000; text-decoration: underline;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #000000; text-decoration: underline;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-href=\"http:\/\/www.mexicansummer.com\/artist\/dungen\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eDungen\u003c\/a\u003e has mutated at a furious pace. Main man\/ producer\/ arranger\/ singer\/ golden child Gustav Ejstes’s lone constant has been change. Take the leap from Dungen’s self-titled 2001 debut, featuring long psilocybic exploratory tracks of aural tomfoolery, to next year’s \u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eStadsvandringar\u003c\/em\u003e, which found Ejstes coming to grips with the language of rock. It all converged with the zeitgeist that is Dungen’s third album, \u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTa Det Lugt\u003c\/em\u003e, an album that ignited the blogosphere so that it glowed like the aurora borealis. Not content to revel in such accolades, \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/shop.mexicansummer.com\/product\/dungen-tio-bitar\/\" style=\"color: #000000; text-decoration: underline;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #000000; text-decoration: underline;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-href=\"https:\/\/shop.mexicansummer.com\/product\/dungen-tio-bitar\/\"\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTio Bitar\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e flashed the band’s pop smarts as well as their incandescent freakouts while \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/shop.mexicansummer.com\/product\/dungen-4\/\" style=\"color: #000000; text-decoration: underline;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #000000; text-decoration: underline;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-href=\"https:\/\/shop.mexicansummer.com\/product\/dungen-4\/\"\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e4\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e put the band’s cohesiveness on display, at once gorgeous and biting.\u003c\/span\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #000000;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-style=\"color: #000000;\"\u003eFor those who don’t have their English-Svenska Dictionary close at hand when plunking\/ popping\/ importing \u003ca href=\"http:\/\/www.mexicansummer.com\/artist\/dungen\" style=\"color: #000000; text-decoration: underline;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #000000; text-decoration: underline;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-href=\"http:\/\/www.mexicansummer.com\/artist\/dungen\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eDungen’s\u003c\/a\u003e sixth album\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e Skit I Allt\u003c\/em\u003e into their respective LP\/CD\/ MP3 listening devices, let’s make sure the title doesn’t get lost in translation: “Fuck All.” Really? Should we be expecting a nihilistic punk album? “For me, it means ‘Don’t give a shit, forget about it, just go ahead and do it,'” laughs Ejstes. “\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSkit I Allt\u003c\/em\u003e is about a certain feeling: you’re with your friends and mates, all hanging out till 6 in the morning. You’re the last one left at the party and you call this person that you want to be with. They’re asleep, but they still say, ‘Ah, fuck it, come over.’ It’s \u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ethat\u003c\/em\u003e feeling.”\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #000000;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-style=\"color: #000000;\"\u003eJust don’t think that with \u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSkit I Allt\u003c\/em\u003e the band is reducible to any one feeling. Or musical genre. At ease with effervescent pop, third-eye popping psychedelia, heavy rock, spider-web folk and breezy jazz, \u003ca href=\"http:\/\/www.mexicansummer.com\/artist\/dungen\" style=\"color: #000000; text-decoration: underline;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #000000; text-decoration: underline;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-href=\"http:\/\/www.mexicansummer.com\/artist\/dungen\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eDungen’s\u003c\/a\u003e dynamism astounds throughout. Rather than remain only Ejstes’ studio vision, \u003ca href=\"http:\/\/www.mexicansummer.com\/artist\/dungen\" style=\"color: #000000; text-decoration: underline;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #000000; text-decoration: underline;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-href=\"http:\/\/www.mexicansummer.com\/artist\/dungen\"\u003eDungen\u003c\/a\u003e is a muscular full band now. Guitarist Reine Fiske, bassist Mattias Gustavsson, and drummer Johan Holmegard are fully integrated into Ejstes’ vision of \u003ca href=\"http:\/\/www.mexicansummer.com\/artist\/dungen\" style=\"color: #000000; text-decoration: underline;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #000000; text-decoration: underline;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-href=\"http:\/\/www.mexicansummer.com\/artist\/dungen\"\u003eDungen\u003c\/a\u003e: “Whether you perceive \u003ca href=\"http:\/\/www.mexicansummer.com\/artist\/dungen\" style=\"color: #000000; text-decoration: underline;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #000000; text-decoration: underline;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-href=\"http:\/\/www.mexicansummer.com\/artist\/dungen\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eDungen\u003c\/a\u003e as a band or as me and my songs and my productions, the band is something totally free. They take the songs somewhere else.” Take “Soda,” which moves from gentle finger-picked guitar to a rollicking beat that makes the song gush forth in all its glory. With the sumptuous opener “Vara Snabb,” \u003ca href=\"http:\/\/www.mexicansummer.com\/artist\/dungen\" style=\"color: #000000; text-decoration: underline;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #000000; text-decoration: underline;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-href=\"http:\/\/www.mexicansummer.com\/artist\/dungen\"\u003eDungen’s\u003c\/a\u003e jazz chops are evident. From there, the band reveals the aching, handclap-propelled, strings-laced ballad “Min Anda Van.” Ejstes confesses: “It translates as ‘My Only Friend.’ It’s dedicated to a friend who got very ill and it’s my most personal song yet.”\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #000000;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-style=\"color: #000000;\"\u003eWhile the album is stuffed with concise songs (nothing running beyond five minutes) there are already candidates aplenty here for \u003ca href=\"http:\/\/www.mexicansummer.com\/artist\/dungen\" style=\"color: #000000; text-decoration: underline;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #000000; text-decoration: underline;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-href=\"http:\/\/www.mexicansummer.com\/artist\/dungen\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eDungen’s\u003c\/a\u003e live blotter-fueled sonic maelstroms. ““Hogdalstoppen” (named for a massive junkyard near Ejstes’ flat) is already a massive instrumental track that we’ve started expanding between 5 and 15 minutes,” Ejstes says. Perhaps the instrumental “Blandband” (trans. “Mixtape”) exemplifies the \u003ca href=\"http:\/\/www.mexicansummer.com\/artist\/dungen\" style=\"color: #000000; text-decoration: underline;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #000000; text-decoration: underline;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-href=\"http:\/\/www.mexicansummer.com\/artist\/dungen\"\u003eDungen\u003c\/a\u003e philosophy best. A mélange of bright piano chords, snaking lead guitar, and weightless woodwinds, it twists and turns like a forest path. The song was inspired, says Ejstes, “by a friend made me a cassette recently and I missed that antiquated way of listening. I like finding out about music fast but at the same time, I like listening to whole albums. I conceive \u003ca href=\"http:\/\/www.mexicansummer.com\/artist\/dungen\" style=\"color: #000000; text-decoration: underline;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #000000; text-decoration: underline;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-href=\"http:\/\/www.mexicansummer.com\/artist\/dungen\"\u003eDungen\u003c\/a\u003e music in that same way: side one, side two, a journey.” Enjoy the trip.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mexican Summer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47589447565613,"sku":"184923100617","price":24.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0846\/5802\/8845\/files\/ReleaseFormat-1025072-165004.jpg?v=1700163029"},{"product_id":"dungen-tio-bitar-184923122015","title":"Dungen - Tio Bitar Standard Black Vinyl","description":"\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003ci data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eOnly available in North America\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"color: #000000;\"\u003eFrom the moment siren-like screeching descends into the guitar-furious melody of the “intro” track, \u003ca href=\"http:\/\/www.mexicansummer.com\/artist\/dungen\" style=\"color: #000000;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-href=\"http:\/\/www.mexicansummer.com\/artist\/dungen\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eDungen\u003c\/a\u003e and \u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTio Bitar\u003c\/em\u003e embraces with a warmth that transcends feeling, space, and time. It takes the listener on a journey through a utopia where the sounds of the guitar, drum, bass, organ, violin, and flute are drawn to dance together in melody around Ejstes’ hypnotizing vocal force. Before leaving the listener alone in the world again, Tio Bitar floats away on the wings of “En Gång I År Kom Det En Tår” with the melancholic hum of a flute that grabs the listener just before the piano drifts back into reality.\u003c\/span\u003e","brand":"Mexican Summer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47589447663917,"sku":"184923122015","price":24.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0846\/5802\/8845\/files\/ReleaseFormat-1025064-164999.jpg?v=1700163425"},{"product_id":"dungen-4-184923000818","title":"Dungen - 4 CD","description":"\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"product-details\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\n\u003csection class=\"description product-description module\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"description-wrapper\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\n\u003carticle class=\"description-article article-blurb\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p1\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"s1\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eDungen's\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003efourth studio album extends the acclaimed Swedish outfit's sound past psychedelia into something far more rare. Moving beyond mere stylistic concerns,\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e4\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003efinds Gustav Ejstes' focus on the extremes of\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e Dungen'\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #000000;\"\u003es\u003c\/span\u003e sound separating into two entities. Blazing, raw guitar workouts have their own time and place, but now, so do stirringly orchestrated, jazz-cooled compositions with cinematic undertones.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p1\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"s1\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBandleader Gustav Ejstes has made many allusions to his creative process as it likens to that of a hip-hop producer. On\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e4\u003c\/i\u003e, that process is more evident than ever, both in the feel of each piece, and in the sense of intuition and control within the members of the group. New drummer Johan Holmegard joins guitarist Reine Fiske and bassist Mattias Gustavsson, while Ejstes steps away from guitar for the entire album, focusing on the piano as his lead instrument. Together, they have honed a classic and seamless sound, constructed with lavish studio flourishes and moving, narrative arrangements, and yet able to toughen up to tear veins of fierce blues-psych instrumentals up from the surface.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p1\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"s1\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe ten tracks on\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e4\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003ecomprise\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e Dungen's\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003ea most concentrated effort, beats surging forth and atmosphere changing as their sound continues to evolve. Every song here runs under five minutes, pushing the group to introduce confident melodies and arresting ambiance in tighter frameworks.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/article\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/section\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003csection class=\"track-list-container module\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/section\u003e","brand":"Mexican Summer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47589447696685,"sku":"184923000818","price":8.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0846\/5802\/8845\/files\/302224.jpg?v=1700162062"},{"product_id":"dungen-allas-sak-184923120721","title":"Dungen - Allas Sak CD","description":"\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAllas Sak\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e. It’s a short phrase with enormous implications.\u003c\/span\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThose two Swedish words translate loosely into English as “everyone’s thing” or maybe “anyone’s thing.” They not only provide the title for\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e Dungen's\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003elatest collection of sophisticated psychedelic rock, but explains how the band works creatively and collaboratively.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e“I was told by a friend once that as a songwriter and as a musical artist, you have to understand that as soon as the music leaves your body, it is no longer strictly yours,” explains Gustav Ejstes, Dungen’s mastermind and main songwriter. “The listener also owns it and filters it through their personality, their thoughts and feelings.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIn other words, the music is everyone’s thing. It belongs to the band and to whoever hears it, which means that everyone is empowered to decipher the Swedish-language lyrics for themselves, to locate their own stories in the magisterial instrumental jams, to make all of this mean whatever they need it to mean. For Dungen, this communion between artist and audience is a beautiful and necessary process that makes the music mean more, not less. It becomes, in a sense, infinite. “These songs are my everyday experiences, my thoughts and stories from the life I live,” says Ejstes. “I hope people can create their own stories around the music and maybe we can make music together, the listener and I.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eEjstes has been making music—at first for himself, then eventually and inevitably for all of us—for nearly twenty years. Growing up in rural Sweden, he became obsessed with hip-hop and sampling. Digging through crates and searching for obscure source material provided him with an informal education in ‘60s pop and psychedelia, and soon he learned to play the bits and pieces he was sampling. He took up guitar and bass, drums and keyboard and even flute, then took to his grandmother’s basement to put it all on tape.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWhen Ejstes recorded his first album, he released it in 2001 under the name\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e Dungen\u003c\/span\u003e, which means “The Grove”— a nod to his village upbringing or perhaps a deeper reference to American folk songs like “Shady Grove.” While his music has routinely garnered comparisons to acts like Love, Pink Floyd, the Electric Prunes, and Os Mutantes, he has always emphasized a strong sense of songcraft. The music has deep roots in history, but it blooms in the present.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWith 2004’s breakout\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTa Det Lugnt\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eDungen garnered an avid fanbase outside of Scandinavia. Pitchfork lauded the album with a 9.3 and asserted that Ejstes’s “songs are painstakingly arranged with a sense of depth, gradations, and tonal three-dimensionality redolent of something as off the charts as\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ePet Sounds\u003c\/em\u003e.” Only on the road did Dungen blossom into a full band, with a rotation of musicians joining Ejstes onstage and eventually coalescing into a fully democratic band that includes Reine Fiske on guitar, Mattias Gustavsson on bass, and Johan Holmegard on drums. Starting with 2007’s\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTio Bitar\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/em\u003eand 2009’s\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e4\u003c\/em\u003e, the band members helped Ejstes realize his own vision while adding flourishes of their own. As a result, Dungen grew into something bigger and more formidable: one of the best and most consistently inventive psych rock bands in the world.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAt the height of their powers, however, the band took a step back.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIt’s been five years since the last Dungen album, 2010’s\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #000000;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/shop.mexicansummer.com\/product\/dungen-skit-i-allt\/\" style=\"color: #000000;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-href=\"https:\/\/shop.mexicansummer.com\/product\/dungen-skit-i-allt\/\"\u003eSkit I Allt\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e, which is by far the longest interval between releases for a band that proved especially prolific and inspired during the 2000s. “We have all been away during this period for different reasons, playing music in different projects,” says Ejstes. “I have been writing songs in the meantime, so the actual recording process has been pretty short.” During the interim, several members of the band released albums as the Amazing, including 2012’s\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eGentle Stream\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eand 2015’s\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ePicture You.\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/em\u003eEjstes himself co-founded the Swedish supergroup Amason, which includes members of Idiot Wind, Little Majorette, and Miike Snow. They released their debut,\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSky City\u003c\/em\u003e, earlier this year.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAllas Sak\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/em\u003epicks up where Dungen’s previous album left off, but somehow it sounds bolder and livelier, feistier yet more focused. The four of them jam with greater purpose and principle on songs like the otherworldly instrumental “Franks Kaktus” and the stately “En Gång Om Året,” while the prismatic “Flickor Och Pojkar” and closer “Sova” reveal subtle nuances in the band’s arrangements. Listening becomes an especially galvanizing experience, heady and enlightening. If psychedelic music has often been associated with drug use, for Dungen music itself is the drug: the most effective vehicle for transcendence.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe band brought in “a good friend of ours” named Mattias Glavå to produce the record. In addition to helming records for the Soundtrack of Our Lives, Sambassadeur, and the Amazing, Glavå worked with Dungen on 2005’s\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eStadsvandringar\u003c\/em\u003e, which made these sessions a reunion of sorts. “Mattias is a true wizard of analog sound engineering, but he’s more than a technique nerd,” says Ejstes. “He’s the ultimate hand between my vision of a sound and reality.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eGlavå suggested the band work out songs before they entered the studio, rather than writing during the sessions. It was a different way of working, but one that Ejstes found invigorating. “He suggested we come to his studio with finished songs, and we did live takes directly to tape—the old-school way. It has truly been a quite different experience from the earlier records.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAllas Sak\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eis about everyday matters: family, friends, the fine texture of life. Common but never mundane, these subjects anchor the music in the here and now, while the music lends a certain grandeur to ordinary moments. “Lyrics are very important to me,” says Ejstes. “We know a lot of people who don’t speak Swedish who love the music anyway. Music comes first every time. I think it could be wordless if the moods in the music take you somewhere, but often the melodies are attached to words that came up the first time they were played.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAgain, it comes back to the listener. Even as the band continues to grow, the listener remains a constant collaborator, not only inspiring new songs but rejuvenating old ones. “I can definitely feel a new significance in some of our older songs, mainly because of the people we’ve met and the stories about their own experiences with the music.”\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mexican Summer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47589447827757,"sku":"184923120721","price":8.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0846\/5802\/8845\/files\/ReleaseFormat-1025054-164992.jpg?v=1700162268"},{"product_id":"dungen-allas-sak-184923120714","title":"Dungen - Allas Sak Standard Black Vinyl","description":"\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAllas Sak\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e. It’s a short phrase with enormous implications.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThose two Swedish words translate loosely into English as “everyone’s thing” or maybe “anyone’s thing.” They not only provide the title for\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e Dungen's\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003elatest collection of sophisticated psychedelic rock, but explains how the band works creatively and collaboratively.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e“I was told by a friend once that as a songwriter and as a musical artist, you have to understand that as soon as the music leaves your body, it is no longer strictly yours,” explains Gustav Ejstes, Dungen’s mastermind and main songwriter. “The listener also owns it and filters it through their personality, their thoughts and feelings.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIn other words, the music is everyone’s thing. It belongs to the band and to whoever hears it, which means that everyone is empowered to decipher the Swedish-language lyrics for themselves, to locate their own stories in the magisterial instrumental jams, to make all of this mean whatever they need it to mean. For Dungen, this communion between artist and audience is a beautiful and necessary process that makes the music mean more, not less. It becomes, in a sense, infinite. “These songs are my everyday experiences, my thoughts and stories from the life I live,” says Ejstes. “I hope people can create their own stories around the music and maybe we can make music together, the listener and I.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eEjstes has been making music—at first for himself, then eventually and inevitably for all of us—for nearly twenty years. Growing up in rural Sweden, he became obsessed with hip-hop and sampling. Digging through crates and searching for obscure source material provided him with an informal education in ‘60s pop and psychedelia, and soon he learned to play the bits and pieces he was sampling. He took up guitar and bass, drums and keyboard and even flute, then took to his grandmother’s basement to put it all on tape.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWhen Ejstes recorded his first album, he released it in 2001 under the name\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e Dungen\u003c\/span\u003e, which means “The Grove”— a nod to his village upbringing or perhaps a deeper reference to American folk songs like “Shady Grove.” While his music has routinely garnered comparisons to acts like Love, Pink Floyd, the Electric Prunes, and Os Mutantes, he has always emphasized a strong sense of songcraft. The music has deep roots in history, but it blooms in the present.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWith 2004’s breakout\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTa Det Lugnt\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eDungen garnered an avid fanbase outside of Scandinavia. Pitchfork lauded the album with a 9.3 and asserted that Ejstes’s “songs are painstakingly arranged with a sense of depth, gradations, and tonal three-dimensionality redolent of something as off the charts as\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ePet Sounds\u003c\/em\u003e.” Only on the road did Dungen blossom into a full band, with a rotation of musicians joining Ejstes onstage and eventually coalescing into a fully democratic band that includes Reine Fiske on guitar, Mattias Gustavsson on bass, and Johan Holmegard on drums. Starting with 2007’s\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTio Bitar\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/em\u003eand 2009’s\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e4\u003c\/em\u003e, the band members helped Ejstes realize his own vision while adding flourishes of their own. As a result, Dungen grew into something bigger and more formidable: one of the best and most consistently inventive psych rock bands in the world.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAt the height of their powers, however, the band took a step back.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIt’s been five years since the last Dungen album, 2010’s\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/shop.mexicansummer.com\/product\/dungen-skit-i-allt\/\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-href=\"https:\/\/shop.mexicansummer.com\/product\/dungen-skit-i-allt\/\"\u003eSkit I Allt\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e, which is by far the longest interval between releases for a band that proved especially prolific and inspired during the 2000s. “We have all been away during this period for different reasons, playing music in different projects,” says Ejstes. “I have been writing songs in the meantime, so the actual recording process has been pretty short.” During the interim, several members of the band released albums as the Amazing, including 2012’s\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eGentle Stream\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eand 2015’s\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ePicture You.\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/em\u003eEjstes himself co-founded the Swedish supergroup Amason, which includes members of Idiot Wind, Little Majorette, and Miike Snow. They released their debut,\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSky City\u003c\/em\u003e, earlier this year.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAllas Sak\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/em\u003epicks up where Dungen’s previous album left off, but somehow it sounds bolder and livelier, feistier yet more focused. The four of them jam with greater purpose and principle on songs like the otherworldly instrumental “Franks Kaktus” and the stately “En Gång Om Året,” while the prismatic “Flickor Och Pojkar” and closer “Sova” reveal subtle nuances in the band’s arrangements. Listening becomes an especially galvanizing experience, heady and enlightening. If psychedelic music has often been associated with drug use, for Dungen music itself is the drug: the most effective vehicle for transcendence.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe band brought in “a good friend of ours” named Mattias Glavå to produce the record. In addition to helming records for the Soundtrack of Our Lives, Sambassadeur, and the Amazing, Glavå worked with Dungen on 2005’s\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eStadsvandringar\u003c\/em\u003e, which made these sessions a reunion of sorts. “Mattias is a true wizard of analog sound engineering, but he’s more than a technique nerd,” says Ejstes. “He’s the ultimate hand between my vision of a sound and reality.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eGlavå suggested the band work out songs before they entered the studio, rather than writing during the sessions. It was a different way of working, but one that Ejstes found invigorating. “He suggested we come to his studio with finished songs, and we did live takes directly to tape—the old-school way. It has truly been a quite different experience from the earlier records.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAllas Sak\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eis about everyday matters: family, friends, the fine texture of life. Common but never mundane, these subjects anchor the music in the here and now, while the music lends a certain grandeur to ordinary moments. “Lyrics are very important to me,” says Ejstes. “We know a lot of people who don’t speak Swedish who love the music anyway. Music comes first every time. I think it could be wordless if the moods in the music take you somewhere, but often the melodies are attached to words that came up the first time they were played.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAgain, it comes back to the listener. Even as the band continues to grow, the listener remains a constant collaborator, not only inspiring new songs but rejuvenating old ones. “I can definitely feel a new significance in some of our older songs, mainly because of the people we’ve met and the stories about their own experiences with the music.”\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mexican Summer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47589447893293,"sku":"184923120714","price":24.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0846\/5802\/8845\/files\/ReleaseFormat-1025053-164990.jpg?v=1700162404"},{"product_id":"dungen-dungen-live-184923128215","title":"Dungen - Dungen Live Standard Black Vinyl","description":"\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\n\u003carticle class=\"article-decorated\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThose who’ve been fortunate enough to catch Dungen in a live setting, are aware of the transformative experience in store, how they stitch together a fine and fiery tapestry of song. Dungen’s new album Live is the golden, glimmering thread holding it all together.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eLive is Dungen in their own land, saving up stunning solos and fiery interplay for their home team, elements of their farthest-out and most inspired moments assembled into one piece of continuous music by producer Matthias Glava. Dungen worked with Glava on their second album Stadsvandringar, aka 2, when the band was just gaining traction in Sweden and a bit beyond. Glava returned to help Dungen capture the beautiful, crisp stillness of their 2015 return Allas Sak, and stayed on through the creation of Haxän, their interpretive soundtrack to the silent film The Adventures of Prince Achmed.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIt’s right around Glava’s return that the source material for Live was recorded, in late November 2015, at Stora Teatern in Gothenburg and Victoriateatern in Malmö. Joined by Swedish sax deity Jonas Kullhammar (who brought his skills to Allas Sak), these were undoubtedly some massive experiences. Live drops us into moments where Dungen’s right at the edge of the cliff, right at the point where they’re getting out of the time machine to bust into John Anthony’s studio right when Affinity is cutting their album for Vertigo, right at the point where you discover the break on a record that snaps into place over some hip hop track you’ve been listening to for years, and you play it over and over.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eEntirely instrumental (including a footstompin’ cover of Doug Jerebine’s “Ain’t So Hard to Tell” – check with our buds over at Drag City for the full story on that one), Live showcases what Dungen does best: create a vibe where none existed, build a mood out of circumstance, attack the music with a fan’s soul and a master’s scorching virtuosity. It extends moments out of their catalogue that seemed like they were already explored and breathes new life into them, at times graceful, at others rambunctious, and sometimes a little of both. It stirs memories of when those first import copies of Ta det lungt hit the record store, how we listened in awe and watched the customers turn around, that first shock of awareness, that anxiety over trying to take home what appeared to be the last copy on the shelf before someone else with the same idea beat you to it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eFans of Reine rippers need look no further. His classic burnt guitar tone and masterful touch is on full display within Live, as is his more recent propensity to build vibes with the Mellotron. Matthias and Johan are locked in as usual, the backbone, wildly swinging in the way they do. Gustav seems to be peaking here, directing currents of energy and melody with the precision of an air traffic controller. This thing gets air; it gives the sense of a band playing purely out of their own time, passionately reviving seldom-remembered histories of recorded sound.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWhat makes Live really work is the notion that Dungen have this side in them at all times, the idea that all it takes is time and a response to get them into this form. Going through the band’s entire catalogue, growth as musicians is a constant. They’ve afforded themselves the luxuries of being able to go at their own pace, and one of the best things about doing that is that they’re always aware of where you came from, and they build on that to take themselves and the listener out to the rarefied spaces explored within. It’s an intense ride through everything that makes a Dungen show special, back to back to back. All the peaks, all the moments of improvisation and connectivity through sound. It’s pieces of everything you know about them, reinterpreted out of love and respect for the craft. All things that are unmistakably part of what puts Dungen in the top tiers of latter-day psychedelic soul expression. Please hold onto your ticket because it’s about to get punched.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/article\u003e","brand":"Mexican Summer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47589447926061,"sku":"184923128215","price":24.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0846\/5802\/8845\/files\/ReleaseProduct-195377-111918.jpg?v=1700162651"},{"product_id":"dungen-haxan-184923122220","title":"Dungen - Häxan CD","description":"","brand":"Mexican Summer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47589447991597,"sku":"184923122220","price":9.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0846\/5802\/8845\/files\/195551.jpg?v=1700162901"},{"product_id":"gregg-kowalsky-eso-es-634457148932","title":"Gregg Kowalsky - Eso Es Standard Black Vinyl","description":"\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eLimited Pressing of 500\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eA thrilling immersion into FM synthesis and a puzzle of MIDI data, the Los Angeles based multi-instrumentalist\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eGregg Kowalsky\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003ereturns to\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eMexican Summer\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003ewith\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eEso Es\u003c\/em\u003e, his sophomore outing for the label and first new music since 2017’s\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eL'Orange L'Orange\u003c\/em\u003e. Representing a significant creative leap for the veteran composer,\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eEso Es\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eunfolds as a hypnotic journey into Kowalsky’s inner world, laced with a depth of emotiveness and vulnerability that’s rarely encountered in the electronic music realm.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eRaised in South Florida and trained at Mills College under\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eFred Frith\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eand\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ePauline Oliveros\u003c\/strong\u003e, Kowalsky first came to prominence during the mid-2000s as a member of the thriving experimental music scene in the Bay Area, issuing a series of stunning albums on imprints like\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eKranky\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eand\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eRoot Strata\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003eand contributing to a reinvigoration of American made Minimalist and electroacoustic music. In an addition to composing solo works, pieces for large ensembles, film soundtracks, dance performances, and site-specific installations over the past twenty years, during the 2010s Kowalsky concentrated his energies as one half of the critically acclaimed duo\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eDate Palms\u003c\/strong\u003e, performing extensively and releasing three hypnotic albums, including 2011’s\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eHoney Devash\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eon Mexican Summer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eHistorically, Kowalsky’s solo efforts have favored durational tonality and harmonic tension, culminating as immersive compositions of textural ambiences, but by 2017’s\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eL'Orange L'Orange\u003c\/em\u003e, subtle shifts were underfoot. Delicate melodies threaded the album’s compositions, while the harmonic relationships hummed with intoxicating warmth. Six years on, what began as subtle interventions have flowered into the monumental creative leap represented by\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eEso Es\u003c\/em\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eEso Es\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eis an album that might not have been; a phoenix from the ashes, born of restlessness and fatigue, that doubles as a poignant reminder that experimental music doesn’t have a fixed aesthetic or “sound.” Returning to Kowalsky's childhood fascination with synthesizers and plunging headlong into the joys of the unknown that drew him toward experimentalism decades ago, the album was composed and recorded almost entirely on a Yamaha DX-7 synthesizer and sequencer both guided by overdriven MIDI data. The album’s seven compositions are the result of an entirely new process for the artist, embracing chance and the organic dialogue between an artist and the limitations and possibilities naturally presented by an unfamiliar instrument. While unquestionably led by a clear sense of process and structure, both were developed responsively, in real time, emphasizing listening as a key element within the act of composing. The resulting lines of shimmering synthesizer and intoxicating rhythms bubble with a gleeful naiveté that often informs the early years of an artist’s practice.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBegun as a simple series of rhythmic sequences overlaid as interlocking cycles,\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eEso Es\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eunfolds as a hypnotic journey into Kowalsky’s inner world as he emerged from the chrysalis of silence. With the dancing, arpeggiating tones of the album’s opener, “Fragile Water,” we are reminded of early New Age and ambient music’s close ties to Minimalism, as expansive melodies fold back into themselves in seductively repetitive patterns It’s at the tail end of “Fragile Water” that we can listen deeply for Oliveros’s imprint on Kowalsky; a meditative field recording from his time spent recording\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eEso Es\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003ein the Everglades of Florida manifests, before entering a state of hypnotic ecstasy across the length of “Fontainebleau.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eEach of\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eEso Es’s\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003ecompositions follows its own inner logic and path, while establishing startling, unexpected conversations and an energetic, forward momentum across its entire duration, feeling akin to states of evolving meditation. Passing through the playful sway of “A Chorus of Trees” and the complex tonal tension of “Cold Open Cascade” before entering the constrained elegance of “Nights Move,” the spellbinding rhythmical tonalities of “Throwing Shapes,” and the gauzy dreaminess of “Brass Dolphins,” elegance and simplicity prevails, each note falling exactly where it should and requiring nothing more or less.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIssued by Mexican Summer as a limited edition vinyl LP,\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eEso Es\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003emarks the return of Gregg Kowalsky as a gentle force in electronic and electroacoustic music and represents another high-water mark in an already remarkable career.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mexican Summer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47589448384813,"sku":"634457148932","price":25.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0846\/5802\/8845\/files\/ReleaseProduct-406686-218712.jpg?v=1700163516"},{"product_id":"gregg-kowalsky-lorange-lorange-184923124613","title":"Gregg Kowalsky - L'Orange L'Orange Standard Black Vinyl","description":"\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWhat does the sun sound like? L’Orange, L’Orange, Gregg Kowalsky’s first solo album in eight years, might have the answer. Its vivid music – sourced from analog synths and mixed on a laptop – arrives in rays of sound that shine skyward. There are many moods in each track, but the overarching aura is one of brightness and optimism. Hence the album title, which nods toward the radiant hue of our life-sustaining star. “That’s the color I started to hear when I mixed these tracks,” Kowalsky says. “Mixing when it’s sunny out every day affects you.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eKowalsky knows sunny days. He was raised in Miami, and has lived in Los Angeles for the past three years. The warm atmospheres of those shining coastal cities infuse the luminous ambience of L’Orange, L’Orange. “After I had worked on this album for a while, I realized the music sounds like those places to me,” Kowalsky explains. “This record is basically about my connection to Florida and California – even the song titles reflect that.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAs an example, Kowalsky points to the album’s second track, “Maliblue Dream Sequence.” Its lapping synth waves mirror the time he spent working on the record at a friend’s home in the beachside city of Malibu. But you can hear echoes of blue skies, sun-baked shores, and drifting tides throughout L’Orange, L’Orange – from the sparkling ripples of “Tuned to Monochrome,” to the rising rhythm of “Pattern Haze,” to the sandy layers of “Ritual Del Croix.” And it’s not just about LA. “Florida shaped my sound directly, and part of this album is me sticking up for Florida too, a beautiful place that gets a bad rap,” he says. “Florida's all right. That's one thing I want people to take away from this record.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBetween growing up in Florida and landing in LA, Kowalsky spent a decade in the Bay Area. He completed an MFA in Electronic Music at Mills College in Oakland and recorded two solo albums, 2006’s Through the Cardinal Window and 2009’s Tape Chants. In his last few years there, he concentrated on installations and conceptual pieces, alongside his work in Date Palms, his duo with Marielle Jakobsons (their album Honey Devash was released by Mexican Summer in 2011).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAfter relocating to Southern California, Kowalsky focused back on making solo music, and realized he had to relearn his approach. “It was a long process of exploration, but I ended up going back to how I started with my first two records,” he explains. “I just wanted to make music to make music, and not think as much about concepts and making the process a big part of the composition. I basically made music that I wanted to listen to.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eKowalsky concocted that music using recordings he had made in Oakland, when his job at an engineering school afforded him the chance to play and record on a collection of analog synthesizers. When editing and mixing those sounds on his computer, he set a few parameters: “work smaller”, creating shorter pieces that didn’t stretch to the 10-minute mark; make sure his drones have rhythm, though without using beats; and, most importantly, “I wanted it to feel like a human made it,” Kowalsky explains. “There are no drum machines, there's no sync. It was about not being constrained to time signatures and being OK with the music drifting. So if an edit was a little off, I thought, ‘Who cares? I'm a human and I made it.’”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ePerhaps the most human moment on L’Orange, L’Orange comes at the end, when Kowalsky trades synths for acoustic piano on closer “Blind Contour Drawing.” He has no formal piano training, but he used that to his advantage. “That's why I gave the song that title,” he says. “It’s like drawing where you don't pick the pen up – that's how I play piano. I play as if it's a song through spacing.” Once again, Kowalsky’s environment had an impact: he used a piano he found in a rented apartment during a trip to Joshua Tree, and the results – run through a cassette tape echo – have the desolate but wide-open feel of the California desert, sparse but full of potential.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAs the tracks he was building for L’Orange, L’Orange began to click, Kowalsky was surprised to find he had made something so sunny, given how he got there. The struggle to reboot his solo process, as well as the disorientation of moving to a new city, had made his initial years in LA difficult. “That time was dark, and making this record was what I needed,” he says. He cites the steadying bass line on “Maliblue Dream Sequence” – the only discernible bass on L’Orange, L’Orange – as an emotional analog to his life in the City of Angels. “I made a blissful record, and that’s not usually what I do,” he admits. “Just making it was meditative.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eDon’t mistake meditative for placid, though. Kowalsky has no interest in creating background music, and there are moments throughout L’Orange, L’Orange that surprise, confound, and provoke (just wait until you hear how opener “L’Ambience, L’Orange” ends). “My early work was once described as furniture music, and I was like, ‘What the hell is that?’” Kowalsky recalls. “Everything I’ve made after that forces you to engage. You can't just put it on and do something else. It's nice, but it demands your attention. I don't want to make music that serves any other purpose – that's not why I make music.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSo the sunshine of L’Orange, L’Orange isn’t just about brightness and bliss. It’s also about engrossing your mind – creating an omnipresence not unlike that shiny orange orb whose ubiquity defines our days and whose absence fills our nights. For Gregg Kowalsky, music can have that same kind of overpowering effect. The sounds of L’Orange, L’Orange can calm your nerves, warm your mood, and maybe even enlighten your mind.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mexican Summer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47589448483117,"sku":"184923124613","price":24.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0846\/5802\/8845\/files\/ReleaseProduct-195444-111939.jpg?v=1700163599"},{"product_id":"gregg-kowalsky-lorange-lorange-184923124620","title":"Gregg Kowalsky - L'Orange L'Orange CD","description":"\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWhat does the sun sound like? L’Orange, L’Orange, Gregg Kowalsky’s first solo album in eight years, might have the answer. Its vivid music – sourced from analog synths and mixed on a laptop – arrives in rays of sound that shine skyward. There are many moods in each track, but the overarching aura is one of brightness and optimism. Hence the album title, which nods toward the radiant hue of our life-sustaining star. “That’s the color I started to hear when I mixed these tracks,” Kowalsky says. “Mixing when it’s sunny out every day affects you.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eKowalsky knows sunny days. He was raised in Miami, and has lived in Los Angeles for the past three years. The warm atmospheres of those shining coastal cities infuse the luminous ambience of L’Orange, L’Orange. “After I had worked on this album for a while, I realized the music sounds like those places to me,” Kowalsky explains. “This record is basically about my connection to Florida and California – even the song titles reflect that.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAs an example, Kowalsky points to the album’s second track, “Maliblue Dream Sequence.” Its lapping synth waves mirror the time he spent working on the record at a friend’s home in the beachside city of Malibu. But you can hear echoes of blue skies, sun-baked shores, and drifting tides throughout L’Orange, L’Orange – from the sparkling ripples of “Tuned to Monochrome,” to the rising rhythm of “Pattern Haze,” to the sandy layers of “Ritual Del Croix.” And it’s not just about LA. “Florida shaped my sound directly, and part of this album is me sticking up for Florida too, a beautiful place that gets a bad rap,” he says. “Florida's all right. That's one thing I want people to take away from this record.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBetween growing up in Florida and landing in LA, Kowalsky spent a decade in the Bay Area. He completed an MFA in Electronic Music at Mills College in Oakland and recorded two solo albums, 2006’s Through the Cardinal Window and 2009’s Tape Chants. In his last few years there, he concentrated on installations and conceptual pieces, alongside his work in Date Palms, his duo with Marielle Jakobsons (their album Honey Devash was released by Mexican Summer in 2011).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAfter relocating to Southern California, Kowalsky focused back on making solo music, and realized he had to relearn his approach. “It was a long process of exploration, but I ended up going back to how I started with my first two records,” he explains. “I just wanted to make music to make music, and not think as much about concepts and making the process a big part of the composition. I basically made music that I wanted to listen to.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eKowalsky concocted that music using recordings he had made in Oakland, when his job at an engineering school afforded him the chance to play and record on a collection of analog synthesizers. When editing and mixing those sounds on his computer, he set a few parameters: “work smaller”, creating shorter pieces that didn’t stretch to the 10-minute mark; make sure his drones have rhythm, though without using beats; and, most importantly, “I wanted it to feel like a human made it,” Kowalsky explains. “There are no drum machines, there's no sync. It was about not being constrained to time signatures and being OK with the music drifting. So if an edit was a little off, I thought, ‘Who cares? I'm a human and I made it.’”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ePerhaps the most human moment on L’Orange, L’Orange comes at the end, when Kowalsky trades synths for acoustic piano on closer “Blind Contour Drawing.” He has no formal piano training, but he used that to his advantage. “That's why I gave the song that title,” he says. “It’s like drawing where you don't pick the pen up – that's how I play piano. I play as if it's a song through spacing.” Once again, Kowalsky’s environment had an impact: he used a piano he found in a rented apartment during a trip to Joshua Tree, and the results – run through a cassette tape echo – have the desolate but wide-open feel of the California desert, sparse but full of potential.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAs the tracks he was building for L’Orange, L’Orange began to click, Kowalsky was surprised to find he had made something so sunny, given how he got there. The struggle to reboot his solo process, as well as the disorientation of moving to a new city, had made his initial years in LA difficult. “That time was dark, and making this record was what I needed,” he says. He cites the steadying bass line on “Maliblue Dream Sequence” – the only discernible bass on L’Orange, L’Orange – as an emotional analog to his life in the City of Angels. “I made a blissful record, and that’s not usually what I do,” he admits. “Just making it was meditative.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eDon’t mistake meditative for placid, though. Kowalsky has no interest in creating background music, and there are moments throughout L’Orange, L’Orange that surprise, confound, and provoke (just wait until you hear how opener “L’Ambience, L’Orange” ends). “My early work was once described as furniture music, and I was like, ‘What the hell is that?’” Kowalsky recalls. “Everything I’ve made after that forces you to engage. You can't just put it on and do something else. It's nice, but it demands your attention. I don't want to make music that serves any other purpose – that's not why I make music.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSo the sunshine of L’Orange, L’Orange isn’t just about brightness and bliss. It’s also about engrossing your mind – creating an omnipresence not unlike that shiny orange orb whose ubiquity defines our days and whose absence fills our nights. For Gregg Kowalsky, music can have that same kind of overpowering effect. The sounds of L’Orange, L’Orange can calm your nerves, warm your mood, and maybe even enlighten your mind.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mexican Summer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47589448548653,"sku":"184923124620","price":10.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0846\/5802\/8845\/files\/ReleaseProduct-195444-111935.jpg?v=1700163572"},{"product_id":"hayden-pedigo-the-happiest-times-i-ever-ignored-184923134513","title":"Hayden Pedigo - The Happiest Times I Ever Ignored Standard Black Vinyl","description":"\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"Hayden Pedigo's new record is the cure; a warm, meditative salve which will wash over you and heal all wounds.\" -\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTim Heidecker\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e“We’re lucky that Hayden Pedigo stumbled upon the footsteps of John Fahey and followed them into the deep wordless wood. I cannot wait to hear all that he discovers there.” -\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eGillian Welch\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e“Hayden Pedigo's acoustic guitar sound is intimate and authentic – it's rooted in tradition but fresh as tomorrow.” -\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eDr. Demento\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSo run the reels of\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe Happiest Times I Ever Ignored\u003c\/em\u003e, Pedigo’s sixth studio album (and second for Mexican Summer) in the cinema of your ear; its script written in steel-string, its starring director a 28-year-old performance artist, politician, model, and fingerstyling maestro whose talent is as irrepressible as it is undeniable.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ePedigo has lived many lives, having been homeschooled in Amarillo, Texas by his truck-stop preacher father; run for Amarillo City Council in 2019, aged 25—as documented by Jasmine Stodel’s SXSW-premiering, PBS-acquired film\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eKid Candidate\u003c\/em\u003e—and struck up pen-friendships and collaborative partnerships with the likes of Terry Allen, Charles Hayward (This Heat), Werner “Zappi” Diermaier (Faust), and Tim Heidecker. A move south from Amarillo to Lubbock in 2020 put a spark to the powder keg of his creativity. “It’s even more flat, desolate, windy and dirty – like being on Mars,” Pedigo observes. “It’s pushed me to create more because there’s not really much to distract.” The move produced not only\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe Happiest Times\u003c\/em\u003eand its predecessor\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eLetting Go\u003c\/em\u003e, but also an Internet presence that showcases a panoply of ever-more outlandish outfits and an effortless deadpan wit. Both the former and the latter helped parlay him into the fashion world, too, having walked the runway for Gucci and been photographed by Hedi Slimane.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eInspired by the tragicomedic legacy of\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eNational Lampoon\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eco-founder Doug Kenney (in whose notes the line ‘These last few days are amongst the happiest I’ve ever ignored’ was found following his mysterious and untimely death), Pedigo embarked upon\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe Happiest Times\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003ewith a no-shit aim: to create “the best instrumental acoustic guitar album of the past twenty years.” Though canonical works of comedy and music show their influence—the mournful beauty of Nick Drake, the puckish abandon of John Fahey—Pedigo by no means places their creators on pedestals; if anything pulling them from their plinths, smashing the alabasters, pocketing some pieces, gluing others back together upside down, or leaving them floating free.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eHow might Fahey have played in a Midwest emo band?\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003ePedigo posits on “Nearer, Nearer,” while the specters of Bert Jansch and John Renbourn float somewhere above “Signal of Hope” – “the most British-sounding thing I’ve ever written;” an echo in an empty church. Pedigo flits through the cycle of songs, coiling and uncoiling like the mechanism of a clockwork bird on “When It’s Clear;” rambling, a tiny speck in the landscape, on “Elsewhere.” “Then It’s Gone” stands as stark as a leafless tree, guitar spilling a somber tale in its truest voice – and nowhere more than on the title track is Pedigo’s playing more affecting: regret and optimism balanced on intimate, intricate arrangement, as carefully poised as raindrops on guitar strings.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eCiting a “rigid relationship with guitar” in which he has only slices of time to adequately express himself (“I have a five minute window to do something meaningful, and if it doesn’t come within five minutes, then it goes back in the case”), Pedigo wrote each song separately, start to finish, one by one. When an album’s worth of songs had been written, he undertook an intense regime of rehearsal, playing and replaying\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe Happiest Times\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eon a loop, testing his technical ability, always striving for tighter, purer and more concise iterations.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIn June 2022, Pedigo transported the limbered-up record to Pulp Arts in Gainesville, Florida, where the relentless practice paid off: he played the core acoustic compositions in track order, beginning to end, and by the evening of the first day, realized he’d essentially nailed the record in one go. After tracking the main narrative of the guitar, a studio team of producer Trayer Tryon (Hundred Waters, Moses Sumney) on synths and bass, Luke Schneider (Margo Price, Orville Peck) on pedal steel, and Robert Edmondson on electric bass and piano painted in a sunset of sound behind the acoustic parts, lighting them with a warm glow while allowing them to remain front and center of the scene.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIf the rolling strings of\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eLetting Go\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eplanted and germinated the seeds, then\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe Happiest Times\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003esees Hayden grow the flowers, admire their ruffles, and take newly sharpened scissors to the stems; turmoil and perfectionism and the gods of chaos driving the hand that holds the shears. “I want to create something very melodic, and then put it behind a barbed wire fence,” Hayden reflects. “If you’re gonna get this pretty thing, then you might get cut up trying to get to it.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ePedigo’s particular brand of barb comes in a variety of shapes: the carousel of internet personas that prod and jest (one day a 1970s car salesman, the next perhaps a Burger King attendant or gogo-booted knight); beautiful yet uneasy technicolor album artworks that place him incongruously corpse-painted at a gas station or glowing in ultraviolet on the parking lot of a flaming Walmart; or, in the music itself, pauses which verge on the uncomfortably long while the well-mannered audience member shuffles in their seat, trying to work out whether to clap yet or not.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAt their most profound, Pedigo’s spacious, pristine soundscapes communicate an essential truth about the pursuit of artistic perfection. Creating The Happiest Times I Ever Ignored was, he surmises, a process akin to “the dog chasing the mail truck – what do you do when you catch it?”\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mexican Summer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47589448810797,"sku":"184923134513","price":25.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0846\/5802\/8845\/files\/ReleaseProduct-376028-196969.jpg?v=1700163826"},{"product_id":"hayden-pedigo-letting-go-184923131918","title":"Hayden Pedigo - Letting Go Standard Black Vinyl","description":"\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe only thing you can ever really expect from Hayden Pedigo is the unexpected. The son of a truck stop preacher, raised and home-schooled in a \"super religious family\" (his own words), the acoustic guitarist and soundscape composer from Amarillo, Texas, has an unlikely origin story. After releasing a series of solo albums, the most unanticipated plot twist in his multiverse came in 2019 with an endearing bid for Amarillo City Council at the age of 25, following his Harmony Korine-inspired spoof campaign video that went viral. The whole story was brought to the big screen in Jasmine Stodel’s 2021 SXSW-premiering documentary\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eKid Candidate\u003c\/em\u003e, which followed Pedigo on the campaign trail as he became the unsuspecting folk hero in a hopeful tale of integrity, corruption, and small city politics.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ePedigo's music is as equally enchanting as his backstory, combining the American Primitive guitar picking styles of John Fahey with a proclivity for experimental sound design and manipulation. Conceived and written on the 27-year-old’s porch, his new album\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eLetting Go\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003ecame about after he left his beloved hometown during the COVID pandemic to move to Lubbock, Texas, where he currently lives with his wife. However, moving down the dusty panhandle from the comfort blanket of Amarillo wasn’t the easiest. \"I felt absolutely lost and had a heavy heart for months upon arriving in Lubbock,\" shares Pedigo. \"I wanted to write a new album, but I was scared it wouldn’t turn out okay. I wanted to talk to my family again [after temporarily losing touch] and try to reconnect and heal despite our differences, but I was scared it wouldn’t turn out okay. The isolation made me reconsider a lot of things, and start making music again and working things out with my family.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eLetting Go\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eis very much a modern album of looking out, backwards, upwards and in; the songs forged by the upheaval brought on by Pedigo’s move and the subsequent reckoning with his upbringing. \"I was home-schooled and lived in the middle of nowhere in Amarillo,\" he describes. \"So it drove me to create my own world and sent me down a rabbit hole of strange music”. By his early twenties, Pedigo had already collaborated with acoustic and electronic musical luminaries such as Charles Hayward (This Heat), Fred Frith, Werner \"Zappi\" Diermaier (Faust), Stephen Basho Junghans, Chuck Johnson, Danny Paul Grody, and outlaw country legend Terry Allen (in an uncanny twist of fate, he works at the same school in Lubbock that Allen—who is now a kind of dream pen pal to Pedigo—used to attend.) He also curated the 2015 solo guitar compilation\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eImaginational Anthem\u003c\/em\u003e, Vol. 7 for Tompkins Square Records.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eFormative releases on Joel Ford’s Driftless Recordings and a handful of good-natured cold emails eventually led Pedigo to Mexican Summer in March 2021. In making\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eLetting Go\u003c\/em\u003e—his first album for the label—Pedigo was recapturing the relationship he’d had to music growing up. ”I wanted to return to the mindset of escape, like John Fahey’s records did for me at 15 years old. I wanted to fall in love with music again while reconciling with my past and learning to forgive and let go.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ePedigo recorded the album in Littlefield, Texas (a tiny town 45 minutes outside of Lubbock, best known for being the birthplace of Waylon Jennings), with his friend, the underground composer Andrew Weathers. \"On the first day, Andrew set up the mics and I recorded each guitar piece live as a solo composition one after another – each take was live, no overdubs. I got the idea from Leo Kottke’s 1969 record\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e6- and 12-String Guitar\u003c\/em\u003e, where he recorded each piece live in one take,” he explains. “On the next two dates, we recorded overdubs and fleshed out the solo guitar pieces with ambience, bass, field recordings, and pedal steel. But we wanted to ensure the record still felt like a solo guitar record.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eFollowing Kottke’s influence through to 1971’s\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eMudlark\u003c\/em\u003e, Pedigo brought in some like-minded musicians to contribute and fill out the songs, including pedal steel player Luke Schneider and Rich Ruth on synthesizer. Their contributions—like all the other overdubs—work to add weight and heft to Pedigo’s moves, never detracting or calling attention to themselves, but helping shape the songs to something higher. \"Forgiveness was a big part of the record,\" he elaborates, \"and I think that’s why the album has a brighter, uplifting feel threaded throughout.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe result is a mesmerising work of profound beauty. Stripped of some of the ambience that had filled the soundscapes of his previous albums, the guitar playing on\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eLetting Go\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003estands alone, stark and highly melodic, lonesome and ghostly, evoking a sense of absence and longing. Wordless melodies weave in and out of compositions where the interstices can be as affecting as the notes themselves. Pedigo’s fingers pick a path between Fahey’s slow introspection and young Kottke’s joyous struts, coming to a sound more in line with William Ackerman’s early works.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe influences on display throughout\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eLetting Go\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003emove beyond the Takoma school, however; Pedigo has a light thumb, and his airy playing borders on the celestial. The stillness and gentle drift of Brian Eno’s ambience are hinted at on album closer “I Wasn’t Dreaming,” while John Renbourn’s stately phrasing can be heard on “Something Absolute.” Pedigo cites the progressive classical playing of Anthony Phillips on the early Genesis records as a point of reference for the album’s ethereal opener, “Carthage.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eVaried as his inspirations are, it’s important to always expect the unexpected from Pedigo. He names Earl Sweatshirt as his biggest influence on the record, in terms of its formatting, concise nature, and desire to dissolve the parameters of its genre label. Outside of music, he references Korine and the director’s ability to create something from nothing, as well as comedian Tom Green, whom Pedigo deems a visionary with supreme artistic sensibilities. As a sworn hater of the term \"Cosmic Country\" and with album artwork that depicts black metal connotations, Pedigo’s anything-goes sense of humor extends from the ingenious campaign videos through to the various characters he portrays on his Instagram page, and into every fiber of his being.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eLetting Go\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003etakes open-hearted moments of solitude, confusion, longing, and acceptance and sends them skywards, where they refract and sun dance into our ears. Like William Tyler, Marisa Anderson, Chuck Johnson or any of the new wave of guitarists altering the very DNA of American guitar music for a new generation, Pedigo’s songs aren’t so much here to bring you into his world as to illuminate and color your own. With\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eLetting Go\u003c\/em\u003e, Hayden Pedigo proves he has already become such a painter. And that’s just about the best thing you can do with a guitar.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mexican Summer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47589449007405,"sku":"184923131918","price":24.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0846\/5802\/8845\/files\/ReleaseProduct-240261-142791.jpg?v=1700163675"},{"product_id":"iceage-shake-the-feeling-outtakes-rarities-20152021-184923133103","title":"Iceage - Shake The Feeling: Outtakes \u0026 Rarities 2015-2021 Bordeaux Red Vinyl","description":"\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e“Shake The Feeling” is open to interpretation. The phrase can refer to the Rock ‘n’ Roll clarion call of “shaking of some action.”\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eOr\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eit can be taken as a callback to the even more primal urge to “shake what your mama gave you.” Ultimately, the phrase can be seen as an expression of existentialism; an acknowledgement of our consigned inability to be free of the human condition. It’s the latter interpretation, the usage that–while ostensibly romantic–implies something inescapable, that Iceage are using for the title of their new record. As with everything Iceage does, it’s a come-on delivered as a threat, a sexy invitation to get irretrievably lost.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWhile not as anachronistic as a B-sides album, an outtakes compilation is something older, classic rock bands, like Deep Purple or Pavement have. Nobody saw this for Iceage. Hell, nobody saw Iceage surviving their first US tour, let alone living long enough as a band to have songs they actually left off of records. But Iceage haven’t just survived - they managed to get better, so much so that even their wretched castoffs shine in god’s light like golden teeth from a pirate’s sun bleached skull. Even as teens, the spirit was indeed in them, and it was a spirit of both epistemological violence and euphoric grace. When lead singer Elias Bender Rønnenfelt looked dead-eyed and stalwart, out across those crowds and sang the chorus of ‘Total Drench,’ he was speaking both truth and prophecy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAs with all of Iceage’s albums, whether it be the sensual daring-do of their dark-hardcore masterpiece debut, the Flying Nun-dappled “Oi!!!!” of\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eYou’re Nothing\u003c\/em\u003e, the shift to cowpunk gothic romanticism on\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ePlowing Into the Field of Love\u003c\/em\u003e, or the space truckin’ gospel-rock of their most recent albums, Elias Bender Rønnenfelt, Johan Suurballe Wieth, Jakob Tvilling Pless and Dan Kjær Nielsen make the impossible seem effortless.\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eShake The Feeling: Outtakes \u0026amp; Rarities 2015-2021\u003c\/em\u003e, the band’s second full length for Mexican Summer, is a collection of non-LP cuts (or “misfit children,” as Elias describes them) from the seven years during which Iceage made\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ePlowing Into the Field of Love\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e(2014),\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBeyondless\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e(2018),\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eand Seek Shelter\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e(2021).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWhy does any band leave a song off a record? Some, like ‘All The Junk On The Outskirts,’ were enjoyed by the band but “didn't fit the framework” of the album they were working on at the time (\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBeyondless\u003c\/em\u003e). Others, like the compilation’s title track, may have seemed “lacking in intent” or too “happy go lucky” at the time of their recording but, in retrospect, are correctly seen as being the opposite of what ruled them out. The burly guitars of ‘Shake The Feeling’ are almost\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eentirely\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eintent; the lyrics, as carried by Elias’ breathless need and Dan’s tumbling dice drum fills, are only “happy go lucky” if your favorite part of going out at night is going home, texts unanswered, with your heart on. And finally, raucous, pre-post punk bruiser ‘I’m Ready To Make a Baby’ was indeed recorded but never included on an album due to the song’s initial impulse to (according to Elias) be “so dumb I have to act on it,” but “we couldn’t in our right mind put it on an album.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTrue to Iceage’s confounding instincts, the songs of\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eShake The Feeling\u003c\/em\u003e, rather than being in chronological order, are presented in the order that makes most sense to them. The album begins with the aforementioned ‘All The Junk On The Outskirts,’ a track Iceage built around a drum machine (a process that, despite it being what Elias calls a “daunting breach of formula,” resulted in a slithering and serpentine bad boy of a song that they all quite liked). The album proceeds to jump forward and backwards in time, with tracks written in the four years between\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ePlowing Into The Field of Love\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eand\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBeyondless\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003ecolliding into tracks like ‘Order Meets Demand’ that were considered “slightly [too] epic to find a breathing space” on 2021’s Seek Shelter, as well as covers of two 1960s songs (‘I’ll Keep It With Mine’ by Bob Dylan and Abner Jay’s ‘My Mule’) given their own distinctive spin.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe album culminates with a pairing of ‘Lockdown Blues’ and ‘Shelter Song’. ‘Lockdown Blues,’ being the song released at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, is certainly of its time (with even Elias calling it “a bit on-the-nose”) but also displays the desperate vigor of being “written one night, rehearsed on the second, and recorded on the third,” at a time when the band was unsure when they’d see each other again. The version of ‘Shelter Song’ that ends the album is an appropriately roots-signifying stripped down acoustic rendition of the track that–in full string and choir-drenched glory–opened\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSeek Shelter\u003c\/em\u003e. “Johan is playing some pretty flute on it,” Elias says of\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eShake The Feeling’s\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003ecloser. “I didn’t know he could play the flute. He’s a surprising motherfucker, that Johan.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAs to whether\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eShake The Feeling\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003ehas a dominant theme, Elias says: “not really, and then somehow yes.” “No, but also yes” is as perfect an encapsulation of an Iceage-ian ethos as there could ever be. More than just about any other band from Europe working within American Rock ‘n’ Roll traditions, Iceage maintain their initial embracement of the no-but-yes, life-affirming negativity of punk and hardcore. Like Dante’s journey through Hell to get to heaven, Baudelaire’s bridging of the profane, and a million Irish poets in between, Iceage understands that “we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars” was always a two-way street. Stars are admittedly lovely, but the gutter has some cool attributes as well.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eShake the Feeling\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eis a collection of misfit toys, by and for misfit toys. Maybe Elias considers it more a document of the band at different points of the members’ young lives than a “piece of artwork.” Maybe he’s right and maybe the fact that the songs “seem like they can get along” is enough. Getting along was good enough for The Libertines and Chet Baker, so why not Iceage? But, conversely, maybe the songs on\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eShake the Feeling\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003ework together as well as any band of outsiders, huddling alone together in the world’s dark. Maybe none of these tracks were the exact right fit for either the gutter or the stars, but like Iceage (or, for that matter, any human condition survivors when the spirit is in us), they slosh about in the moon-lit muck like they consider themselves wild and alive, and they can’t shake the feeling that they’re lucky and strange just to be anywhere at all.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mexican Summer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47589449072941,"sku":"184923133103","price":26.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0846\/5802\/8845\/files\/ReleaseFormat-1080583-175167.jpg?v=1700164187"},{"product_id":"iceage-shake-the-feeling-outtakes-rarities-20152021-184923133127","title":"Iceage - Shake The Feeling: Outtakes \u0026 Rarities 2015-2021 CD","description":"\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e“Shake The Feeling” is open to interpretation. The phrase can refer to the Rock ‘n’ Roll clarion call of “shaking of some action.”\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eOr\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eit can be taken as a callback to the even more primal urge to “shake what your mama gave you.” Ultimately, the phrase can be seen as an expression of existentialism; an acknowledgement of our consigned inability to be free of the human condition. It’s the latter interpretation, the usage that–while ostensibly romantic–implies something inescapable, that Iceage are using for the title of their new record. As with everything Iceage does, it’s a come-on delivered as a threat, a sexy invitation to get irretrievably lost.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWhile not as anachronistic as a B-sides album, an outtakes compilation is something older, classic rock bands, like Deep Purple or Pavement have. Nobody saw this for Iceage. Hell, nobody saw Iceage surviving their first US tour, let alone living long enough as a band to have songs they actually left off of records. But Iceage haven’t just survived - they managed to get better, so much so that even their wretched castoffs shine in god’s light like golden teeth from a pirate’s sun bleached skull. Even as teens, the spirit was indeed in them, and it was a spirit of both epistemological violence and euphoric grace. When lead singer Elias Bender Rønnenfelt looked dead-eyed and stalwart, out across those crowds and sang the chorus of ‘Total Drench,’ he was speaking both truth and prophecy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAs with all of Iceage’s albums, whether it be the sensual daring-do of their dark-hardcore masterpiece debut, the Flying Nun-dappled “Oi!!!!” of\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eYou’re Nothing\u003c\/em\u003e, the shift to cowpunk gothic romanticism on\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ePlowing Into the Field of Love\u003c\/em\u003e, or the space truckin’ gospel-rock of their most recent albums, Elias Bender Rønnenfelt, Johan Suurballe Wieth, Jakob Tvilling Pless and Dan Kjær Nielsen make the impossible seem effortless.\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eShake The Feeling: Outtakes \u0026amp; Rarities 2015-2021\u003c\/em\u003e, the band’s second full length for Mexican Summer, is a collection of non-LP cuts (or “misfit children,” as Elias describes them) from the seven years during which Iceage made\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ePlowing Into the Field of Love\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e(2014),\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBeyondless\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e(2018),\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eand Seek Shelter\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e(2021).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWhy does any band leave a song off a record? Some, like ‘All The Junk On The Outskirts,’ were enjoyed by the band but “didn't fit the framework” of the album they were working on at the time (\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBeyondless\u003c\/em\u003e). Others, like the compilation’s title track, may have seemed “lacking in intent” or too “happy go lucky” at the time of their recording but, in retrospect, are correctly seen as being the opposite of what ruled them out. The burly guitars of ‘Shake The Feeling’ are almost\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eentirely\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eintent; the lyrics, as carried by Elias’ breathless need and Dan’s tumbling dice drum fills, are only “happy go lucky” if your favorite part of going out at night is going home, texts unanswered, with your heart on. And finally, raucous, pre-post punk bruiser ‘I’m Ready To Make a Baby’ was indeed recorded but never included on an album due to the song’s initial impulse to (according to Elias) be “so dumb I have to act on it,” but “we couldn’t in our right mind put it on an album.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTrue to Iceage’s confounding instincts, the songs of\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eShake The Feeling\u003c\/em\u003e, rather than being in chronological order, are presented in the order that makes most sense to them. The album begins with the aforementioned ‘All The Junk On The Outskirts,’ a track Iceage built around a drum machine (a process that, despite it being what Elias calls a “daunting breach of formula,” resulted in a slithering and serpentine bad boy of a song that they all quite liked). The album proceeds to jump forward and backwards in time, with tracks written in the four years between\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ePlowing Into The Field of Love\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eand\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBeyondless\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003ecolliding into tracks like ‘Order Meets Demand’ that were considered “slightly [too] epic to find a breathing space” on 2021’s Seek Shelter, as well as covers of two 1960s songs (‘I’ll Keep It With Mine’ by Bob Dylan and Abner Jay’s ‘My Mule’) given their own distinctive spin.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe album culminates with a pairing of ‘Lockdown Blues’ and ‘Shelter Song’. ‘Lockdown Blues,’ being the song released at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, is certainly of its time (with even Elias calling it “a bit on-the-nose”) but also displays the desperate vigor of being “written one night, rehearsed on the second, and recorded on the third,” at a time when the band was unsure when they’d see each other again. The version of ‘Shelter Song’ that ends the album is an appropriately roots-signifying stripped down acoustic rendition of the track that–in full string and choir-drenched glory–opened\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSeek Shelter\u003c\/em\u003e. “Johan is playing some pretty flute on it,” Elias says of\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eShake The Feeling’s\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003ecloser. “I didn’t know he could play the flute. He’s a surprising motherfucker, that Johan.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAs to whether\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eShake The Feeling\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003ehas a dominant theme, Elias says: “not really, and then somehow yes.” “No, but also yes” is as perfect an encapsulation of an Iceage-ian ethos as there could ever be. More than just about any other band from Europe working within American Rock ‘n’ Roll traditions, Iceage maintain their initial embracement of the no-but-yes, life-affirming negativity of punk and hardcore. Like Dante’s journey through Hell to get to heaven, Baudelaire’s bridging of the profane, and a million Irish poets in between, Iceage understands that “we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars” was always a two-way street. Stars are admittedly lovely, but the gutter has some cool attributes as well.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eShake the Feeling\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eis a collection of misfit toys, by and for misfit toys. Maybe Elias considers it more a document of the band at different points of the members’ young lives than a “piece of artwork.” Maybe he’s right and maybe the fact that the songs “seem like they can get along” is enough. Getting along was good enough for The Libertines and Chet Baker, so why not Iceage? But, conversely, maybe the songs on\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eShake the Feeling\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003ework together as well as any band of outsiders, huddling alone together in the world’s dark. Maybe none of these tracks were the exact right fit for either the gutter or the stars, but like Iceage (or, for that matter, any human condition survivors when the spirit is in us), they slosh about in the moon-lit muck like they consider themselves wild and alive, and they can’t shake the feeling that they’re lucky and strange just to be anywhere at all.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mexican Summer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47589449171245,"sku":"184923133127","price":14.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0846\/5802\/8845\/files\/ReleaseFormat-1079422-175176.jpg?v=1700236660"},{"product_id":"iceage-shake-the-feeling-outtakes-rarities-20152021-184923133110","title":"Iceage - Shake The Feeling: Outtakes \u0026 Rarities 2015-2021 Standard Black Vinyl","description":"\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e“Shake The Feeling” is open to interpretation. The phrase can refer to the Rock ‘n’ Roll clarion call of “shaking of some action.”\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eOr\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eit can be taken as a callback to the even more primal urge to “shake what your mama gave you.” Ultimately, the phrase can be seen as an expression of existentialism; an acknowledgement of our consigned inability to be free of the human condition. It’s the latter interpretation, the usage that–while ostensibly romantic–implies something inescapable, that Iceage are using for the title of their new record. As with everything Iceage does, it’s a come-on delivered as a threat, a sexy invitation to get irretrievably lost.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWhile not as anachronistic as a B-sides album, an outtakes compilation is something older, classic rock bands, like Deep Purple or Pavement have. Nobody saw this for Iceage. Hell, nobody saw Iceage surviving their first US tour, let alone living long enough as a band to have songs they actually left off of records. But Iceage haven’t just survived - they managed to get better, so much so that even their wretched castoffs shine in god’s light like golden teeth from a pirate’s sun bleached skull. Even as teens, the spirit was indeed in them, and it was a spirit of both epistemological violence and euphoric grace. When lead singer Elias Bender Rønnenfelt looked dead-eyed and stalwart, out across those crowds and sang the chorus of ‘Total Drench,’ he was speaking both truth and prophecy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAs with all of Iceage’s albums, whether it be the sensual daring-do of their dark-hardcore masterpiece debut, the Flying Nun-dappled “Oi!!!!” of\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eYou’re Nothing\u003c\/em\u003e, the shift to cowpunk gothic romanticism on\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ePlowing Into the Field of Love\u003c\/em\u003e, or the space truckin’ gospel-rock of their most recent albums, Elias Bender Rønnenfelt, Johan Suurballe Wieth, Jakob Tvilling Pless and Dan Kjær Nielsen make the impossible seem effortless.\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eShake The Feeling: Outtakes \u0026amp; Rarities 2015-2021\u003c\/em\u003e, the band’s second full length for Mexican Summer, is a collection of non-LP cuts (or “misfit children,” as Elias describes them) from the seven years during which Iceage made\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ePlowing Into the Field of Love\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e(2014),\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBeyondless\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e(2018),\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eand Seek Shelter\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e(2021).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWhy does any band leave a song off a record? Some, like ‘All The Junk On The Outskirts,’ were enjoyed by the band but “didn't fit the framework” of the album they were working on at the time (\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBeyondless\u003c\/em\u003e). Others, like the compilation’s title track, may have seemed “lacking in intent” or too “happy go lucky” at the time of their recording but, in retrospect, are correctly seen as being the opposite of what ruled them out. The burly guitars of ‘Shake The Feeling’ are almost\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eentirely\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eintent; the lyrics, as carried by Elias’ breathless need and Dan’s tumbling dice drum fills, are only “happy go lucky” if your favorite part of going out at night is going home, texts unanswered, with your heart on. And finally, raucous, pre-post punk bruiser ‘I’m Ready To Make a Baby’ was indeed recorded but never included on an album due to the song’s initial impulse to (according to Elias) be “so dumb I have to act on it,” but “we couldn’t in our right mind put it on an album.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTrue to Iceage’s confounding instincts, the songs of\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eShake The Feeling\u003c\/em\u003e, rather than being in chronological order, are presented in the order that makes most sense to them. The album begins with the aforementioned ‘All The Junk On The Outskirts,’ a track Iceage built around a drum machine (a process that, despite it being what Elias calls a “daunting breach of formula,” resulted in a slithering and serpentine bad boy of a song that they all quite liked). The album proceeds to jump forward and backwards in time, with tracks written in the four years between\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ePlowing Into The Field of Love\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eand\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBeyondless\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003ecolliding into tracks like ‘Order Meets Demand’ that were considered “slightly [too] epic to find a breathing space” on 2021’s Seek Shelter, as well as covers of two 1960s songs (‘I’ll Keep It With Mine’ by Bob Dylan and Abner Jay’s ‘My Mule’) given their own distinctive spin.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe album culminates with a pairing of ‘Lockdown Blues’ and ‘Shelter Song’. ‘Lockdown Blues,’ being the song released at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, is certainly of its time (with even Elias calling it “a bit on-the-nose”) but also displays the desperate vigor of being “written one night, rehearsed on the second, and recorded on the third,” at a time when the band was unsure when they’d see each other again. The version of ‘Shelter Song’ that ends the album is an appropriately roots-signifying stripped down acoustic rendition of the track that–in full string and choir-drenched glory–opened\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSeek Shelter\u003c\/em\u003e. “Johan is playing some pretty flute on it,” Elias says of\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eShake The Feeling’s\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003ecloser. “I didn’t know he could play the flute. He’s a surprising motherfucker, that Johan.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAs to whether\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eShake The Feeling\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003ehas a dominant theme, Elias says: “not really, and then somehow yes.” “No, but also yes” is as perfect an encapsulation of an Iceage-ian ethos as there could ever be. More than just about any other band from Europe working within American Rock ‘n’ Roll traditions, Iceage maintain their initial embracement of the no-but-yes, life-affirming negativity of punk and hardcore. Like Dante’s journey through Hell to get to heaven, Baudelaire’s bridging of the profane, and a million Irish poets in between, Iceage understands that “we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars” was always a two-way street. Stars are admittedly lovely, but the gutter has some cool attributes as well.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eShake the Feeling\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eis a collection of misfit toys, by and for misfit toys. Maybe Elias considers it more a document of the band at different points of the members’ young lives than a “piece of artwork.” Maybe he’s right and maybe the fact that the songs “seem like they can get along” is enough. Getting along was good enough for The Libertines and Chet Baker, so why not Iceage? But, conversely, maybe the songs on\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eShake the Feeling\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003ework together as well as any band of outsiders, huddling alone together in the world’s dark. Maybe none of these tracks were the exact right fit for either the gutter or the stars, but like Iceage (or, for that matter, any human condition survivors when the spirit is in us), they slosh about in the moon-lit muck like they consider themselves wild and alive, and they can’t shake the feeling that they’re lucky and strange just to be anywhere at all.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mexican Summer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47589449204013,"sku":"184923133110","price":24.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0846\/5802\/8845\/files\/ReleaseFormat-1079421-175172.jpg?v=1700236692"},{"product_id":"iceage-seek-shelter-184923129038","title":"Iceage - Seek Shelter Orange Vinyl","description":"\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eA decade on from their first record, Iceage continue to harness their lives together through music. This journey, in music and life, has never progressed in a linear fashion.\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSeek Shelter\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e— Iceage’s fifth LP and first for Mexican Summer — is proof that their lives are still happening through their music, and that they remain determined to harness it. Enrolling Sonic Boom (Pete Kember of Spacemen 3) to produce,\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSeek Shelter\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003esees Iceage’s propulsive momentum pushing them in new, expansive, ecstatic directions. The sound of an emotional core unwound,\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSeek Shelter\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eradiates warmth and a profound desire for salvation in a world that’s spinning further and further out of control.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIn an extraordinary and unexpected run following the release of their debut LP, Iceage went from the fertile hyperlocal Copenhagen scene to stages all over the world. Their recordings reflect their journey: 2012’s\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eYou’re Nothing\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003ewas hard, fast and raw, a bold doubling-down on the aggression of youth in the first record as well as the weight of expectation.\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ePlowing Into the Field of Love\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e(2014) and\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBeyondless\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e(2018) saw a softening of the band’s hardest edges and the arrival of a certain world-weary vaudeville in the Iceage sound. The band’s past two records — all filtered twangy guitar riffs, sparse piano arrangements, and slinky, slow-moving rhythms — ventured into an intoxicated but knowing swirl, surveying the party at the end of the night. They’d seen it all, at least once, and their music rode the crest of that chaos.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSeek Shelter\u003c\/em\u003e, the band’s first record made with an outside producer, is the place they have been called to next. The LP was recorded at Namouche, a dilapidated wood-paneled Lisbon radio studio of 1960s vintage where the band set up for 12 days. It is the longest time they have spent recording a record. Steady rain dripped through the ceiling; they had to arrange their equipment around puddles and slowly-filling buckets covered in cloth so that the sound of droplets wouldn’t reach the mics. Sonic Boom arranged garden lamps from a nearby party store for mood lighting in the high-ceiling space. A choir, the Lisboa Gospel Collective, joined the band for two tracks on the final day in the studio providing a new scale to Rønnenfelt’s incantations.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSinger and primary songwriter Elias Rønnenfelt casts their new producer as a sparring partner, another wayward mind to bounce ideas off of. “We wanted a partner that had some noise that we didn’t have, more a wizard than a producer. We thought he’d be that kind of wizard for us, and we were right — he came in with a truckload of strange equipment that we’d never seen before.” Kember, reflecting on the session and reaching for his highest praise, describes Iceage as “fucking show offs, like everyone who was ever great and emotional and honest.” “Writing a song is like trying to find a space where you can make something that’s been riled up and down through the years feel like it belongs to your present moment,” says Rønnenfelt. This record, written in a single week’s long session of isolation with journals from the past two years, is a summation of life through this period of time. “It becomes an amalgamation of ideas and impressions of things that you’ve been provoked by or had to live through. You end up with something that is a rough, blurry perspective of what that period of time was like, a mishmash of personal struggle that is shaded throughout by a world that seems more transparent in its inherently cruel ways.” Romance and desire, as described in “Love Kills Slowly” and the album closer “The Holding Hand,” are feelings that stretch torturously — a race without a finish line.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWhat precisely makes an Iceage song is still a mysterious thing, and the band wishes to maintain this protean quality. “If there’s ever a point in our history when something in the songs starts to seem easy but doesn’t really excite us that much, we just discard that shit right away,” says Rønnenfelt. With\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSeek Shelter\u003c\/em\u003e, they’ve managed to hold onto this core of total presence and constant risk while writing their most ambitious songs. Even Rønnenfelt was surprised with what they were able to create together. “When we started, I think we were just lashing out, completely blindfolded with no idea as to why and how we were doing anything. For\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSeek Shelter\u003c\/em\u003e, we had a definite vision of how we wanted the album to be carved out, yet still the end result came as a surprise in terms of where we sonically were able to push our boundaries.\" He’s speaking of the new record and also of their entire existence as a band, a travelogue that has catapulted these four friends far past the horizons of punk. “Some of that we wanted to remain intact. We try to keep the mystery. If there's no sense of mystery in it for us, then it's not fun.”\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSeek Shelter\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eis a record that now exists at a moment of a collective unknown, when every beating heart wonders what will happens next.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mexican Summer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47589449236781,"sku":"184923129038","price":26.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0846\/5802\/8845\/files\/ReleaseProduct-220931-169917.jpg?v=1700164089"},{"product_id":"iceage-seek-shelter-184923129021","title":"Iceage - Seek Shelter CD","description":"\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eA decade on from their first record, Iceage continue to harness their lives together through music. This journey, in music and life, has never progressed in a linear fashion.\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSeek Shelter\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e— Iceage’s fifth LP and first for Mexican Summer — is proof that their lives are still happening through their music, and that they remain determined to harness it. Enrolling Sonic Boom (Pete Kember of Spacemen 3) to produce,\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSeek Shelter\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003esees Iceage’s propulsive momentum pushing them in new, expansive, ecstatic directions. The sound of an emotional core unwound,\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSeek Shelter\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eradiates warmth and a profound desire for salvation in a world that’s spinning further and further out of control.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIn an extraordinary and unexpected run following the release of their debut LP, Iceage went from the fertile hyperlocal Copenhagen scene to stages all over the world. Their recordings reflect their journey: 2012’s\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eYou’re Nothing\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003ewas hard, fast and raw, a bold doubling-down on the aggression of youth in the first record as well as the weight of expectation.\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ePlowing Into the Field of Love\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e(2014) and\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBeyondless\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e(2018) saw a softening of the band’s hardest edges and the arrival of a certain world-weary vaudeville in the Iceage sound. The band’s past two records — all filtered twangy guitar riffs, sparse piano arrangements, and slinky, slow-moving rhythms — ventured into an intoxicated but knowing swirl, surveying the party at the end of the night. They’d seen it all, at least once, and their music rode the crest of that chaos.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSeek Shelter\u003c\/em\u003e, the band’s first record made with an outside producer, is the place they have been called to next. The LP was recorded at Namouche, a dilapidated wood-paneled Lisbon radio studio of 1960s vintage where the band set up for 12 days. It is the longest time they have spent recording a record. Steady rain dripped through the ceiling; they had to arrange their equipment around puddles and slowly-filling buckets covered in cloth so that the sound of droplets wouldn’t reach the mics. Sonic Boom arranged garden lamps from a nearby party store for mood lighting in the high-ceiling space. A choir, the Lisboa Gospel Collective, joined the band for two tracks on the final day in the studio providing a new scale to Rønnenfelt’s incantations.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSinger and primary songwriter Elias Rønnenfelt casts their new producer as a sparring partner, another wayward mind to bounce ideas off of. “We wanted a partner that had some noise that we didn’t have, more a wizard than a producer. We thought he’d be that kind of wizard for us, and we were right — he came in with a truckload of strange equipment that we’d never seen before.” Kember, reflecting on the session and reaching for his highest praise, describes Iceage as “fucking show offs, like everyone who was ever great and emotional and honest.” “Writing a song is like trying to find a space where you can make something that’s been riled up and down through the years feel like it belongs to your present moment,” says Rønnenfelt. This record, written in a single week’s long session of isolation with journals from the past two years, is a summation of life through this period of time. “It becomes an amalgamation of ideas and impressions of things that you’ve been provoked by or had to live through. You end up with something that is a rough, blurry perspective of what that period of time was like, a mishmash of personal struggle that is shaded throughout by a world that seems more transparent in its inherently cruel ways.” Romance and desire, as described in “Love Kills Slowly” and the album closer “The Holding Hand,” are feelings that stretch torturously — a race without a finish line.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWhat precisely makes an Iceage song is still a mysterious thing, and the band wishes to maintain this protean quality. “If there’s ever a point in our history when something in the songs starts to seem easy but doesn’t really excite us that much, we just discard that shit right away,” says Rønnenfelt. With\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSeek Shelter\u003c\/em\u003e, they’ve managed to hold onto this core of total presence and constant risk while writing their most ambitious songs. Even Rønnenfelt was surprised with what they were able to create together. “When we started, I think we were just lashing out, completely blindfolded with no idea as to why and how we were doing anything. For\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSeek Shelter\u003c\/em\u003e, we had a definite vision of how we wanted the album to be carved out, yet still the end result came as a surprise in terms of where we sonically were able to push our boundaries.\" He’s speaking of the new record and also of their entire existence as a band, a travelogue that has catapulted these four friends far past the horizons of punk. “Some of that we wanted to remain intact. We try to keep the mystery. If there's no sense of mystery in it for us, then it's not fun.”\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSeek Shelter\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eis a record that now exists at a moment of a collective unknown, when every beating heart wonders what will happens next.\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA decade on from their first record, Iceage continue to harness their lives together through music. This journey, in music and life, has never progressed in a linear fashion.\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eSeek Shelter\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e— Iceage’s fifth LP and first for Mexican Summer — is proof that their lives are still happening through their music, and that they remain determined to harness it. Enrolling Sonic Boom (Pete Kember of Spacemen 3) to produce,\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eSeek Shelter\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003esees Iceage’s propulsive momentum pushing them in new, expansive, ecstatic directions. The sound of an emotional core unwound,\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eSeek Shelter\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eradiates warmth and a profound desire for salvation in a world that’s spinning further and further out of control.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn an extraordinary and unexpected run following the release of their debut LP, Iceage went from the fertile hyperlocal Copenhagen scene to stages all over the world. Their recordings reflect their journey: 2012’s\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eYou’re Nothing\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003ewas hard, fast and raw, a bold doubling-down on the aggression of youth in the first record as well as the weight of expectation.\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003ePlowing Into the Field of Love\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e(2014) and\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eBeyondless\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e(2018) saw a softening of the band’s hardest edges and the arrival of a certain world-weary vaudeville in the Iceage sound. The band’s past two records — all filtered twangy guitar riffs, sparse piano arrangements, and slinky, slow-moving rhythms — ventured into an intoxicated but knowing swirl, surveying the party at the end of the night. They’d seen it all, at least once, and their music rode the crest of that chaos.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eSeek Shelter\u003c\/em\u003e, the band’s first record made with an outside producer, is the place they have been called to next. The LP was recorded at Namouche, a dilapidated wood-paneled Lisbon radio studio of 1960s vintage where the band set up for 12 days. It is the longest time they have spent recording a record. Steady rain dripped through the ceiling; they had to arrange their equipment around puddles and slowly-filling buckets covered in cloth so that the sound of droplets wouldn’t reach the mics. Sonic Boom arranged garden lamps from a nearby party store for mood lighting in the high-ceiling space. A choir, the Lisboa Gospel Collective, joined the band for two tracks on the final day in the studio providing a new scale to Rønnenfelt’s incantations.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSinger and primary songwriter Elias Rønnenfelt casts their new producer as a sparring partner, another wayward mind to bounce ideas off of. “We wanted a partner that had some noise that we didn’t have, more a wizard than a producer. We thought he’d be that kind of wizard for us, and we were right — he came in with a truckload of strange equipment that we’d never seen before.” Kember, reflecting on the session and reaching for his highest praise, describes Iceage as “fucking show offs, like everyone who was ever great and emotional and honest.” “Writing a song is like trying to find a space where you can make something that’s been riled up and down through the years feel like it belongs to your present moment,” says Rønnenfelt. This record, written in a single week’s long session of isolation with journals from the past two years, is a summation of life through this period of time. “It becomes an amalgamation of ideas and impressions of things that you’ve been provoked by or had to live through. You end up with something that is a rough, blurry perspective of what that period of time was like, a mishmash of personal struggle that is shaded throughout by a world that seems more transparent in its inherently cruel ways.” Romance and desire, as described in “Love Kills Slowly” and the album closer “The Holding Hand,” are feelings that stretch torturously — a race without a finish line.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat precisely makes an Iceage song is still a mysterious thing, and the band wishes to maintain this protean quality. “If there’s ever a point in our history when something in the songs starts to seem easy but doesn’t really excite us that much, we just discard that shit right away,” says Rønnenfelt. With\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eSeek Shelter\u003c\/em\u003e, they’ve managed to hold onto this core of total presence and constant risk while writing their most ambitious songs. Even Rønnenfelt was surprised with what they were able to create together. “When we started, I think we were just lashing out, completely blindfolded with no idea as to why and how we were doing anything. For\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eSeek Shelter\u003c\/em\u003e, we had a definite vision of how we wanted the album to be carved out, yet still the end result came as a surprise in terms of where we sonically were able to push our boundaries.\" He’s speaking of the new record and also of their entire existence as a band, a travelogue that has catapulted these four friends far past the horizons of punk. “Some of that we wanted to remain intact. We try to keep the mystery. If there's no sense of mystery in it for us, then it's not fun.”\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eSeek Shelter\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eis a record that now exists at a moment of a collective unknown, when every beating heart wonders what will happens next.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mexican Summer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47589449269549,"sku":"184923129021","price":12.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0846\/5802\/8845\/files\/ReleaseProduct-218419-128502.jpg?v=1700164056"},{"product_id":"iceage-seek-shelter-184923129014","title":"Iceage - Seek Shelter Standard Black Vinyl","description":"\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eA decade on from their first record, Iceage continue to harness their lives together through music. This journey, in music and life, has never progressed in a linear fashion.\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSeek Shelter\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e— Iceage’s fifth LP and first for Mexican Summer — is proof that their lives are still happening through their music, and that they remain determined to harness it. Enrolling Sonic Boom (Pete Kember of Spacemen 3) to produce,\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSeek Shelter\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003esees Iceage’s propulsive momentum pushing them in new, expansive, ecstatic directions. The sound of an emotional core unwound,\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSeek Shelter\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eradiates warmth and a profound desire for salvation in a world that’s spinning further and further out of control.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIn an extraordinary and unexpected run following the release of their debut LP, Iceage went from the fertile hyperlocal Copenhagen scene to stages all over the world. Their recordings reflect their journey: 2012’s\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eYou’re Nothing\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003ewas hard, fast and raw, a bold doubling-down on the aggression of youth in the first record as well as the weight of expectation.\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ePlowing Into the Field of Love\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e(2014) and\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBeyondless\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e(2018) saw a softening of the band’s hardest edges and the arrival of a certain world-weary vaudeville in the Iceage sound. The band’s past two records — all filtered twangy guitar riffs, sparse piano arrangements, and slinky, slow-moving rhythms — ventured into an intoxicated but knowing swirl, surveying the party at the end of the night. They’d seen it all, at least once, and their music rode the crest of that chaos.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSeek Shelter\u003c\/em\u003e, the band’s first record made with an outside producer, is the place they have been called to next. The LP was recorded at Namouche, a dilapidated wood-paneled Lisbon radio studio of 1960s vintage where the band set up for 12 days. It is the longest time they have spent recording a record. Steady rain dripped through the ceiling; they had to arrange their equipment around puddles and slowly-filling buckets covered in cloth so that the sound of droplets wouldn’t reach the mics. Sonic Boom arranged garden lamps from a nearby party store for mood lighting in the high-ceiling space. A choir, the Lisboa Gospel Collective, joined the band for two tracks on the final day in the studio providing a new scale to Rønnenfelt’s incantations.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSinger and primary songwriter Elias Rønnenfelt casts their new producer as a sparring partner, another wayward mind to bounce ideas off of. “We wanted a partner that had some noise that we didn’t have, more a wizard than a producer. We thought he’d be that kind of wizard for us, and we were right — he came in with a truckload of strange equipment that we’d never seen before.” Kember, reflecting on the session and reaching for his highest praise, describes Iceage as “fucking show offs, like everyone who was ever great and emotional and honest.” “Writing a song is like trying to find a space where you can make something that’s been riled up and down through the years feel like it belongs to your present moment,” says Rønnenfelt. This record, written in a single week’s long session of isolation with journals from the past two years, is a summation of life through this period of time. “It becomes an amalgamation of ideas and impressions of things that you’ve been provoked by or had to live through. You end up with something that is a rough, blurry perspective of what that period of time was like, a mishmash of personal struggle that is shaded throughout by a world that seems more transparent in its inherently cruel ways.” Romance and desire, as described in “Love Kills Slowly” and the album closer “The Holding Hand,” are feelings that stretch torturously — a race without a finish line.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWhat precisely makes an Iceage song is still a mysterious thing, and the band wishes to maintain this protean quality. “If there’s ever a point in our history when something in the songs starts to seem easy but doesn’t really excite us that much, we just discard that shit right away,” says Rønnenfelt. With\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSeek Shelter\u003c\/em\u003e, they’ve managed to hold onto this core of total presence and constant risk while writing their most ambitious songs. Even Rønnenfelt was surprised with what they were able to create together. “When we started, I think we were just lashing out, completely blindfolded with no idea as to why and how we were doing anything. For\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSeek Shelter\u003c\/em\u003e, we had a definite vision of how we wanted the album to be carved out, yet still the end result came as a surprise in terms of where we sonically were able to push our boundaries.\" He’s speaking of the new record and also of their entire existence as a band, a travelogue that has catapulted these four friends far past the horizons of punk. “Some of that we wanted to remain intact. We try to keep the mystery. If there's no sense of mystery in it for us, then it's not fun.”\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSeek Shelter\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eis a record that now exists at a moment of a collective unknown, when every beating heart wonders what will happens next.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mexican Summer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47589449400621,"sku":"184923129014","price":24.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0846\/5802\/8845\/files\/ReleaseProduct-218419-128504.jpg?v=1700164115"},{"product_id":"jess-williamson-time-ain-t-accidental-184923133813","title":"Jess Williamson - Time Ain’t Accidental Standard Black Vinyl","description":"\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEndless prairies and ocean waves; long drives and highway expanse; dancing, smoke, sex, and physical desire – the core images of Jess Williamson’s new album Time Ain’t Accidental revel in the earthly and the carnal. After a protracted breakup with a romantic partner and longtime musical collaborator who left Williamson and their home in Los Angeles at the start of the pandemic, the album’s reckoning with loss, isolation, romance, and personal reclamation signals a tectonic shift for Williamson as a person and as an artist: from someone who once accommodated and made herself small to a woman emboldened by her power as an individual.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA daringly personal but inevitable evolution for the Texas-born, Los Angeles-based singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist, Time Ain’t Accidental is evocative of iconic Western landscapes, tear-in-beer anthems, and a wholly modern take on country music that is completely her own. Above everything, sonically and thematically, this album is about Williamson’s voice, crystalline and acrobatic in its range, standing front and center. Think Linda Rondstadt turned minimalist, The Chicks gone indie or even Emmylou Harris’ work with Daniel Lanois. Ringing boldly and unobscured, it’s the sound of a woman running into her life and art head-on, unambiguously, and on her own terms for the first time.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLast year, Williamson and Katie Crutchfield of Waxahatchee released I Walked With You A Ways under the name Plains; a critically acclaimed record filled to the whiskey-barreled brim with feminine confidence, camaraderie, and straight-up country bangers and ballads. After past records Cosmic Wink (2018) and Sorceress (2020), both released on Mexican Summer, Williamson felt primed to shift in a new direction. Revisiting what she loved growing up, simplifying her process, and making music with a friend proved to be the best step forward for Williamson.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAmidst the uncertainty of the pandemic, Williamson began dating in Los Angeles and tracking demos centered on the realness of those experiences, filled with excitement, anxiety, and disappointment. The drum machine stuck around (this time in the form of an iPhone app), as did her determination to forge a new path as a truly solo singer and songwriter; as a woman finding the sound of herself without anyone else’s input. It was a lonely, but revelatory, period.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe core essence of that time is summed up in the opening line of “Hunter.” “I’ve been thrown to the wolves and they ate me raw,” Williamson sings, clear-eyed and with resolve, having come out the other side. Though tumultuous, the process of dating in LA revealed the album’s North Star, which anchors the song’s chorus and the album’s underlying sentiment more broadly: “I’m a hunter for the real thing.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWilliamson brought the suite of demos and her newfound assurance to Brad Cook (who’d produced Plains) in Durham, North Carolina. The familiar setting fostered a safe environment for the deeply personal material, and Williamson unleashed her voice with total unselfconsciousness. They tracked her vocals in just a couple of takes for each song. “I kept thinking, ‘my voice feels different now – it’s been liberated,’” Williamson reflects. Cook encouraged Williamson to keep the iPhone app drum machine beats she’d programmed for some of the demos, then married it with banjos and steel guitars for an evident sense of old-meets-new.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWilliamson now splits her time between Marfa, Texas and Los Angeles. Time Ain’t Accidental, with its synthesis of traditional country instrumentation with digital effects and modern sounds, unequivocally embodies the energy of the two very different places that she calls home. The album’s artwork, subtly menacing and neon in awareness and strength, displays, in Williamson’s words, “that supernatural forces are acting all around us, that we can trust that we will be in the right place at the right time.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhile Time Ain’t Accidental is remarkable for its bare confidence born of searching and longing for something real, Williamson also recognizes the mysterious whims of time that bricked her path (and she memorialized them on the title track). Ultimately, these unseen forces lured the singer back into her own. The timing was, indeed, no accident.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mexican Summer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47589451497773,"sku":"184923133813","price":25.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0846\/5802\/8845\/files\/MEX338_JessWilliamson-TimeAintAccidental_Mockups-Standard-2_Cream.jpg?v=1700508222"},{"product_id":"jess-williamson-time-aint-accidental-184923133820","title":"Jess Williamson - Time Ain't Accidental CD","description":"\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEndless prairies and ocean waves; long drives and highway expanse; dancing, smoke, sex, and physical desire – the core images of Jess Williamson’s new album Time Ain’t Accidental revel in the earthly and the carnal. After a protracted breakup with a romantic partner and longtime musical collaborator who left Williamson and their home in Los Angeles at the start of the pandemic, the album’s reckoning with loss, isolation, romance, and personal reclamation signals a tectonic shift for Williamson as a person and as an artist: from someone who once accommodated and made herself small to a woman emboldened by her power as an individual.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA daringly personal but inevitable evolution for the Texas-born, Los Angeles-based singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist, Time Ain’t Accidental is evocative of iconic Western landscapes, tear-in-beer anthems, and a wholly modern take on country music that is completely her own. Above everything, sonically and thematically, this album is about Williamson’s voice, crystalline and acrobatic in its range, standing front and center. Think Linda Rondstadt turned minimalist, The Chicks gone indie or even Emmylou Harris’ work with Daniel Lanois. Ringing boldly and unobscured, it’s the sound of a woman running into her life and art head-on, unambiguously, and on her own terms for the first time.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLast year, Williamson and Katie Crutchfield of Waxahatchee released I Walked With You A Ways under the name Plains; a critically acclaimed record filled to the whiskey-barreled brim with feminine confidence, camaraderie, and straight-up country bangers and ballads. After past records Cosmic Wink (2018) and Sorceress (2020), both released on Mexican Summer, Williamson felt primed to shift in a new direction. Revisiting what she loved growing up, simplifying her process, and making music with a friend proved to be the best step forward for Williamson.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAmidst the uncertainty of the pandemic, Williamson began dating in Los Angeles and tracking demos centered on the realness of those experiences, filled with excitement, anxiety, and disappointment. The drum machine stuck around (this time in the form of an iPhone app), as did her determination to forge a new path as a truly solo singer and songwriter; as a woman finding the sound of herself without anyone else’s input. It was a lonely, but revelatory, period.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe core essence of that time is summed up in the opening line of “Hunter.” “I’ve been thrown to the wolves and they ate me raw,” Williamson sings, clear-eyed and with resolve, having come out the other side. Though tumultuous, the process of dating in LA revealed the album’s North Star, which anchors the song’s chorus and the album’s underlying sentiment more broadly: “I’m a hunter for the real thing.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWilliamson brought the suite of demos and her newfound assurance to Brad Cook (who’d produced Plains) in Durham, North Carolina. The familiar setting fostered a safe environment for the deeply personal material, and Williamson unleashed her voice with total unselfconsciousness. They tracked her vocals in just a couple of takes for each song. “I kept thinking, ‘my voice feels different now – it’s been liberated,’” Williamson reflects. Cook encouraged Williamson to keep the iPhone app drum machine beats she’d programmed for some of the demos, then married it with banjos and steel guitars for an evident sense of old-meets-new. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWilliamson now splits her time between Marfa, Texas and Los Angeles. Time Ain’t Accidental, with its synthesis of traditional country instrumentation with digital effects and modern sounds, unequivocally embodies the energy of the two very different places that she calls home. The album’s artwork, subtly menacing and neon in awareness and strength, displays, in Williamson’s words, “that supernatural forces are acting all around us, that we can trust that we will be in the right place at the right time.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhile Time Ain’t Accidental is remarkable for its bare confidence born of searching and longing for something real, Williamson also recognizes the mysterious whims of time that bricked her path (and she memorialized them on the title track). Ultimately, these unseen forces lured the singer back into her own. The timing was, indeed, no accident.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mexican Summer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47589451563309,"sku":"184923133820","price":14.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0846\/5802\/8845\/files\/MEX338_JessWilliamson-TimeAintAccidental_Mockups-CD-2_Cream_Ochre.jpg?v=1700508078"},{"product_id":"jess-williamson-sorceress-184923128024","title":"Jess Williamson - Sorceress CD","description":"\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eOffering a deep-hued kaleidoscope of dusty ‘70s cinema, ‘90s country music, and breezy West Coast psychedelia, Jess Williamson’s Sorceress weaves a woman’s wild love letters to a confusing present and uncertain future—with reflections on femininity and the pursuit of perfection, New Age beliefs and practices, critiques of capitalism and social media, southern and western landscapes (and the birds who inhabit the skies of each), and intimate details of the lives and deaths of loved ones and friends. It’s a record about loss of innocence and acquired wisdom that’s self-critical, self-assured, and soul-searching.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAcross eleven country western prayers and pop incantations, Williamson melds the magical with the day-to-day, and makes it feel universal. On the title track, a gorgeous fireside ballad that finds her accompanied by the chirps of cicadas, she sings “Yes, there’s a little magic in my hat \/ But I’m no sorceress.” The thing is, she certainly sounds like one.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSorceress is polished and assured and it hits immediately—like a modern classic should. It does fit with her previous work, but it then goes miles beyond it. From her first home recordings that bled into her proper 2014 debut Native State, Williamson’s music has kept a ragged folk energy at its core. The Texas singer and songwriter makes deeply felt songs that orbit around her powerful voice, a voice that’s strong and vulnerable, big-room flawless, quietly ecstatic, and next-to-you intimate. When she has something to say, even when it’s a kind of Dolly Parton whisper, you listen.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWilliamson’s fourth album and second with Mexican Summer, Sorceress was written in Los Angeles, recorded at Gary's Electric in Brooklyn, and then finished at Dandy Sounds, a home studio on a ranch in Dripping Springs, Texas, where she recorded all of 2018’s Cosmic Wink. While she’s stayed true to her deep country roots, the music has grown in its ambitions. The shift happened incrementally, though without skipping a step, so like the rest of what Williamson does, it feels perfectly natural and true. Because of that honesty, even though the complex, multi-layered music on Sorceress is so different from where she started, you can still feel everything she’s done previously breathing contentedly in its shadows.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mexican Summer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47589451727149,"sku":"184923128024","price":12.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0846\/5802\/8845\/files\/JessWilliamson-Sorceress_Mockups_CD-Front.jpg?v=1700507860"},{"product_id":"jess-williamson-sorceress-184923128017","title":"Jess Williamson - Sorceress Standard Black Vinyl","description":"\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eOffering a deep-hued kaleidoscope of dusty ‘70s cinema, ‘90s country music, and breezy West Coast psychedelia, Jess Williamson’s Sorceress weaves a woman’s wild love letters to a confusing present and uncertain future—with reflections on femininity and the pursuit of perfection, New Age beliefs and practices, critiques of capitalism and social media, southern and western landscapes (and the birds who inhabit the skies of each), and intimate details of the lives and deaths of loved ones and friends. It’s a record about loss of innocence and acquired wisdom that’s self-critical, self-assured, and soul-searching.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAcross eleven country western prayers and pop incantations, Williamson melds the magical with the day-to-day, and makes it feel universal. On the title track, a gorgeous fireside ballad that finds her accompanied by the chirps of cicadas, she sings “Yes, there’s a little magic in my hat \/ But I’m no sorceress.” The thing is, she certainly sounds like one.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSorceress is polished and assured and it hits immediately—like a modern classic should. It does fit with her previous work, but it then goes miles beyond it. From her first home recordings that bled into her proper 2014 debut Native State, Williamson’s music has kept a ragged folk energy at its core. The Texas singer and songwriter makes deeply felt songs that orbit around her powerful voice, a voice that’s strong and vulnerable, big-room flawless, quietly ecstatic, and next-to-you intimate. When she has something to say, even when it’s a kind of Dolly Parton whisper, you listen.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWilliamson’s fourth album and second with Mexican Summer, Sorceress was written in Los Angeles, recorded at Gary's Electric in Brooklyn, and then finished at Dandy Sounds, a home studio on a ranch in Dripping Springs, Texas, where she recorded all of 2018’s Cosmic Wink. While she’s stayed true to her deep country roots, the music has grown in its ambitions. The shift happened incrementally, though without skipping a step, so like the rest of what Williamson does, it feels perfectly natural and true. Because of that honesty, even though the complex, multi-layered music on Sorceress is so different from where she started, you can still feel everything she’s done previously breathing contentedly in its shadows.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mexican Summer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47589451792685,"sku":"184923128017","price":24.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0846\/5802\/8845\/files\/Jess-mockup-front.jpg?v=1700507934"},{"product_id":"jess-williamson-cosmic-wink-184923125313","title":"Jess Williamson - Cosmic Wink Standard Black Vinyl","description":"\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"product-details\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\n\u003csection class=\"description product-description module\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"description-wrapper\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\n\u003carticle class=\"description-article\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" itemprop=\"description\"\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eCosmic Wink by Jess Williamson “Cosmic Wink is about Love. That’s Love-with-a-capital-L, true deep love. Ancient love. Across many lifetimes kind of love. It’s about grief, loss, and guilt too. The anguish that comes from having to choose just one path. It’s about the dark side of love: jealousy, and letting people down. It’s about mortality, and how the time we have with the ones we love becomes so much more precious when we realize that we have a finite amount of breaths in these bodies we walk around in.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSo here’s to Love, Time with her double-edged sword, and the cosmic winks that help us along the way.” – Jess Like the “White Bird” on her new album Cosmic Wink, Jess Williamson is also avian, though of a different feather. While the bird in Williamson’s lyrics sits caged with clipped wings, the artist is a reborn phoenix from a nest in the west.Native State, her debut album, with its taut, spindly tales, felt like Williamson was singing from a roadside motel at 3 am on an empty desert highway. It was a reflective place in the mind of a Texan who spent time living in New York City; the songs were developed and mature, emotionally steeped to a darkened brew from a profound experience elsewhere. Williamson’s sophomore album Heart Song marked a dramatic departure from Native State, bristling beyond the confines of folk to question the comforts of home.On Cosmic Wink, her third album and first for Mexican Summer, Williamson emerges with another self part of an even wider consciousness. A self that bears wise evidence of past lives, but also feels new and unfamiliar, if at times from a different artist entirely.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eA reference to the Jungian idea of synchronicity, or “meaningful coincidences,” Cosmic Wink is as much a reflection on inspired companionship as it is a rebirth. She fell deeply in love, and then her life was uprooted; Williamson left Texas for California, leaving behind the roadworn verses of her previous albums for brighter, bolder songwriting. It was this love and new location that inspired Cosmic Wink.Both musically and lyrically, the exploding postmodern spirit of California - and Los Angeles in particular - is infused in the DNA of Cosmic Wink. The Byrds-ian jangle of album opener “I See The White” airbrushes halos around the brain with an immortal pop hook. Williamson’s contralto sheds the delicate vulnerability of Heart Song for an assuredness, intoxicating in its deep sermon. When Williamson asks her listener to “tell me everything you know about consciousness,” it’s an invitation down a two lane blacktop, both vessels heading the same direction.The brightest moment of Cosmic Wink arrives on the broken wings of “White Bird,” Williamson’s dualistic testament of curiosity for an unknown coast with experience driving some uncertainty. “Be kind to me \/ This is not my city \/ I don’t know \/ What I miss anymore” she sings. But this isn’t the voice of someone irreversibly rattled, it’s a voice that knows the more the tides turn, the more one learns.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eDespite a generally warmer climate, Cosmic Wink doesn’t abandon the brooding moods of Heart Song entirely. Those moments are acknowledged on new terms though, utilizing instrumental textures and shapes to create curious depth. The Rhodes-soaked “Wild Rain” begins with a ghostly air until a swell of synths gives way like the heavens parting. Williamson’s voice emerges from the clouds promising that she will “I will treasure your patience \/ from you I learned what it means to make a family.”Concluding Cosmic Wink with “Love On the Piano,” Williamson’s new musical and lyrical mind declares “Love is my name now \/ Love, Darlin” over a revolving acoustic guitar line and lightly pressed upright piano notes. Vulnerability can feel something less vulnerable when love - true, deep love - creates a latticework to hang the frame of our humanity, which in many ways is the message underlying the entire album.Cosmic Wink was recorded and mixed in Dripping Springs, Texas by Dan Duszynski.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/article\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/section\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003csection class=\"track-list-container module\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/section\u003e","brand":"Mexican Summer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47589451825453,"sku":"184923125313","price":24.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0846\/5802\/8845\/files\/MEX253_JessWilliamson-CosmicWink_ProductShots_LPFront.jpg?v=1700507758"},{"product_id":"jess-williamson-cosmic-wink-184923125320","title":"Jess Williamson - Cosmic Wink CD","description":"\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"product-details\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\n\u003csection class=\"description product-description module\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"description-wrapper\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\n\u003carticle class=\"description-article\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" itemprop=\"description\"\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eCosmic Wink by Jess Williamson “Cosmic Wink is about Love. That’s Love-with-a-capital-L, true deep love. Ancient love. Across many lifetimes kind of love. It’s about grief, loss, and guilt too. The anguish that comes from having to choose just one path. It’s about the dark side of love: jealousy, and letting people down. It’s about mortality, and how the time we have with the ones we love becomes so much more precious when we realize that we have a finite amount of breaths in these bodies we walk around in.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSo here’s to Love, Time with her double-edged sword, and the cosmic winks that help us along the way.” – Jess Like the “White Bird” on her new album Cosmic Wink, Jess Williamson is also avian, though of a different feather. While the bird in Williamson’s lyrics sits caged with clipped wings, the artist is a reborn phoenix from a nest in the west.Native State, her debut album, with its taut, spindly tales, felt like Williamson was singing from a roadside motel at 3 am on an empty desert highway. It was a reflective place in the mind of a Texan who spent time living in New York City; the songs were developed and mature, emotionally steeped to a darkened brew from a profound experience elsewhere. Williamson’s sophomore album Heart Song marked a dramatic departure from Native State, bristling beyond the confines of folk to question the comforts of home.On Cosmic Wink, her third album and first for Mexican Summer, Williamson emerges with another self part of an even wider consciousness. A self that bears wise evidence of past lives, but also feels new and unfamiliar, if at times from a different artist entirely.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eA reference to the Jungian idea of synchronicity, or “meaningful coincidences,” Cosmic Wink is as much a reflection on inspired companionship as it is a rebirth. She fell deeply in love, and then her life was uprooted; Williamson left Texas for California, leaving behind the roadworn verses of her previous albums for brighter, bolder songwriting. It was this love and new location that inspired Cosmic Wink.Both musically and lyrically, the exploding postmodern spirit of California - and Los Angeles in particular - is infused in the DNA of Cosmic Wink. The Byrds-ian jangle of album opener “I See The White” airbrushes halos around the brain with an immortal pop hook. Williamson’s contralto sheds the delicate vulnerability of Heart Song for an assuredness, intoxicating in its deep sermon. When Williamson asks her listener to “tell me everything you know about consciousness,” it’s an invitation down a two lane blacktop, both vessels heading the same direction.The brightest moment of Cosmic Wink arrives on the broken wings of “White Bird,” Williamson’s dualistic testament of curiosity for an unknown coast with experience driving some uncertainty. “Be kind to me \/ This is not my city \/ I don’t know \/ What I miss anymore” she sings. But this isn’t the voice of someone irreversibly rattled, it’s a voice that knows the more the tides turn, the more one learns.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eDespite a generally warmer climate, Cosmic Wink doesn’t abandon the brooding moods of Heart Song entirely. Those moments are acknowledged on new terms though, utilizing instrumental textures and shapes to create curious depth. The Rhodes-soaked “Wild Rain” begins with a ghostly air until a swell of synths gives way like the heavens parting. Williamson’s voice emerges from the clouds promising that she will “I will treasure your patience \/ from you I learned what it means to make a family.”Concluding Cosmic Wink with “Love On the Piano,” Williamson’s new musical and lyrical mind declares “Love is my name now \/ Love, Darlin” over a revolving acoustic guitar line and lightly pressed upright piano notes. Vulnerability can feel something less vulnerable when love - true, deep love - creates a latticework to hang the frame of our humanity, which in many ways is the message underlying the entire album.Cosmic Wink was recorded and mixed in Dripping Springs, Texas by Dan Duszynski. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/article\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/section\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"spotify-artist-embed\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/artist\/784kOgkd1H6jU4KgPMYHi9\" class=\"spotify-artist-link\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/artist\/784kOgkd1H6jU4KgPMYHi9\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003csection class=\"track-list-container module\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/section\u003e","brand":"Mexican Summer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47589451890989,"sku":"184923125320","price":10.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0846\/5802\/8845\/files\/MEX253_JessWilliamson-CosmicWink_ProductShots_CDFront.jpg?v=1700507680"}],"url":"https:\/\/mexicansummer.myshopify.com\/collections\/mexican-summer.oembed?page=5","provider":"Mexican Summer","version":"1.0","type":"link"}