Tuesday, August 31, 2010

New Spectre Folk video Premier!!

The new video for the Spectre Folk song Burning Bridge premiered today on brooklynvegan.com... Check it out here

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Arbitrary Signs Radio Today! Spectre Folk Show!

Hey Everybody,

Tune into Arbitrary Signs radio today: www.newtownradio.com
between 3-5 .. I'll be djing some killer tunes live on the air!

Also.. Come check out the Spectre Folk band this thursday at Union Pool.. Pete, Pete, and Steve will kick out the zone along with Man Benu and Pure Horsehair.

Thursday, August 12, 2010

Arbitrary Signs Titles Currently Available


best album cover of the month in Vice (click it and see)



Devin Gary & Ross is a mind melting three- man music making machine. Four Corners Bounce is their first record. The six tunes on it are full spectrum serving of psychedelia that includes washed out wanderings over well- worn terrain, bold ventures into a candy-col- ored abyss and a snappy title track that you will end up signing in the shower.


Don’t just take it from us. Here’s Father Yod himself, Byron Coley, on the record about the record:



Gary Panter is a bad penny. If he were German, the phrase might be, schlechter pfennig, which is much less euphonimous. So it’s a good thing Gary is no Kraut. But what the fuck is he? A Texan. A famous artist. A writer of songs, poetry and prose. As well as a gifted primitve musician. Thus, in this instance, bad means good, and penny means rennaisance man.

Panter first burst into the public gut in the 1970s with his Jimbo strip in Slash magazine, his design work for Ralph Records, and some really goddamn UGLY commercial art. A few people were also aware he was a musician, although many who discovered him through his first single— “Colahaus”—would deny the word actually applies to what he does.

After his next record, a collaboration with the Residents entitled “Tornader to the Tater,” people began to take his roistering a bit more seri- ously. A Japanese company even let him do a gorgeous bizarro-world country-and-acid LP called Pray for Smurph. That one was so good, people started to realize—hey, he actually is a musician!.

Moving from L.A to Brooklyn, he eventually fell in with the evil genius, Devin Flynn, who widened Panter’s aural palette and also to got him playing somwhere besides closets full of pot smoke. The duo cut a dandy album, Go Outside, then managed to corral the wildly talented Ross Gold- stein into their conspiracy. The results are this new record, and brother, it is a treat. They create miniature brain-damaged nuggets ranging from fake jazz to sloth psych with a nimble touch that’ll make your head squeal with pleasure. Marty Robbins might toss around in his velvet-lined grave

when he hears it, but screw him. All four of your corners will bounce like crazy. Guaranteed.

—Byron Coley, Victoriaville QC 2011


Side B

El Paso Peppermint Patty Meets the

Phantom of the Opera Cat Swim

Side A

4 Corners Loin Green After Donk


About the band

Devin is Devin Flynn, best known as the creator and illustrator behind the very insane Y’all So Stupid, a cartoon that once ran on Super Deluxe. In DGR, he does the drumming and a lot of the singing and more or less plays just about everything. About the same goes for Ross Goldstein—the Ross of the band—except he plays a lot more piano than percussion and in the art zone he does more photography and sign painting than crazy animation. The G in DGR is for guitar, played by Gary Panter, who also blows a little trumpet on this record. Gary’s been blowing minds with his art—paintings, album covers, illustration, comics, set design, light shows—since the late seventies.

For more information, to order records, or just chat about how awesome DGR is, contact Arbitrary honcho











temporarily unavailable



The United Waters lp's have arrived! The new totally solo jam from Brian Sullivan of Mouthus fame is a quiet beautiful masterpiece of loner psych majesty. We went to great lengths to make sure these lp's maintained the pristine tones intended and have been mastered for crystal clarity. Beautiful full color sleeves with artwork by Mary Kidd and inserts with lyrics included. We're very proud of this record. Shipping is free. Get yours today!






Prices








ASCS008 Magik Markers "Isolated from Exterior Time" Cassette... get some basement clues to the Markers new direction... 60 minums long






prices







AS LP 003 Spectre Folk "Compass Blanket Lantern Mojo" Psych lushness miraculously recorded in a home studio while looking after a 3 month old. Close to my heart. Not many left:


Spectre Folk




PRICES







AS LP 002 Magik Markers "BOSS" Recorded in the cavernous confines of Echo Canyon West with Sonic Youth maestro Lee Ranaldo running the boards. Screen printed covers WITH ORIGINAL POSTER INSIDE





PRICES







Magik Markers/Sic Alps split lp Yik Yak recs
Not and Arbitrary release.. but a burner for sure.. Good old Steve Lowenthal at Swingset says it's his fave Markers release to date.. Mike Wolf said it sounds like Yeti.. WE'LL TAKE IT!





PRICES







Spectre Folk s/t cd on 3 Lobed
Early Bushwick 4 track recordings from the s.f. Got a birds cover and still has that dirt porch vibe. Nice little package from 3 lobes.


TLR 019: spectre folk — requiem for ming aralia

$10.00 -

available as a digital download from



PRICES






Spectre Folk "Sparking Age" Cassette
latest Spectre cassette in stunning mono. Get a clue to the new zoo.





Prices







Please feel free to inquire about any past Arbitrary Signs releases that you don't see listed with me: petenolan@hotmail.com ..

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Spectre Folk Union Pool 8/19 + MV EE review at TMT



This gig is happening on the 19th.. It's a record release for our friend Bentley's band Man Benu. Should be a rad night.

Also.. check out Jeff Roesgen's review of the latest Arbitrary Signs release from Tiny Mix Tapes:

MV & EE


Liberty Rose

[Arbitrary Signs; 2010]

STYLES: experimental/minimal blues, sparse psychedelic jam
OTHERS: Spectre Folk, Pink Floyd, Wooden Wand/Vanishing Voice


Beaming down from the cosmos to a transmitter in some desolate place west of the Appalachian Mountains comes Liberty Rose, the new LP from Brattleboro, Vermont’s prolific duo/collective MV & EE. Noted for their ability to assemble both musicians and noises into dense, reverb-laden compositions, Matt Valentine and Erika Elder’s music describes the companionship between human-modified sound and nature’s own silence and echoes. Aptly split into two suites of equal running length, Liberty Rose, like most of the duo’s discography, hearkens back to the days of Scott Walker and Pink Floyd’s explorations into music’s atmospheric qualities, making it a perfect fit for Arbitrary Signs’ vinyl- and cassette-only release format.

With the air of dissonance that’s common throughout their discography, MV & EE capture well the state of being lost. Rather than forging through the anxiety and helplessness that this state offers, however, the band lavishes in its adventurousness and liberation. Unlike previous recordings, which feel dense and stratified, Liberty Rose is open and sparse: the difference between being lost in the woods of Appalachia and in the deserts of the Southwest. “Right to Dry" — an abstract, shimmering piece of reverb devoid of both structure and vocals — descends like stray noise into a transmitter. The absence of percussion sets the raga-infused tone for what’s to follow. “Flow My Ray” and “Crow Jane Environs,” which will be recognizable to fans, are electrified blues drones that aspire toward melodies amid distant, twangy whines and indistinguishable vocals. These voices are mere whispers moving across the sound plane, as much an instrument as the amplified strings that surround it.

Suite two (side two), which is largely acoustic, relies more solidly on songwriting. “Death is My Friend” is an acknowledgment of the spiritual realm. Drawing macabre incarnations of seemingly Buddhist and Gnostic notions of transcendence, Elder eerily mutters, “When you’re a man/ You’re a lonely man/ Your body’s frail/ When you die you’re a holy man/ Your poetry’s better then.”Distracting from the hazy exuberance of the album is its meatiest piece, “Out in Space,” which ultimately feels uncertain as to whether it should act as a companion to “Death is My Friend” or go to venture off again. The album concludes perfectly with “Streams,” which finds a lonesome, pretty, finger-picked acoustic guitar dissolve away into the slow, electrified echoes and then silence.

Liberty Rose will deliver listeners to a remarkably different place than most MV & EE recordings. Lacking the psychedelic, collective-driven euphoria of Barn Nova (2009) or the cosmic folk of Green Blues (2007), this new album reaches slowly inward and outward at the same time, connecting distant echoes with our own utterances and creeping notes with our own synapses.

01. Right to Dry
02. Flow My Ray

03. Crow Jane Environs

04. Death is My Friend
05. Out in Space
06. Streams