New album Lewiston By The Sea, again released with Antiquated Future, only furthers these sentiments. The record originated from what is described as “skeleton recordings,” produced at the beginning the pandemic with nothing but a cheap synthesizer and a guitar, then evolved slowly over the year as long-distance collaborations fleshed out the tracks. Featuring guest vocals from the likes of Colleen Johnson (Flying Circles) and Jeff Shannon (If It Ain’t Breakfast Don’t Fix It), the result is experimental even by Theodore’s standards, cycling between a variety of narrators and personalities. The shapeshifting doesn’t end there, as the sound also refuses to settle in any one groove, constantly switching between genres and styles.

Single ‘Hollow’ is therefore not so much an introduction to the record, but merely a glimpse of one of its many faces. This track sees Tucker Theodore joined by Madeline Johnston (Midwife) on vocals, their joint chorus emerging stark and ominous from a twitchy lo-fi gloom.

But as if to prove the variability of the album, the song’s portentous, Biblical weight is bookended by very different sounds. Predecessor ‘Spindle Heart’ combines post-punk, post-rock and shoegaze to form a soaring electronic number, while the expansive ambient track ‘Dreaming of Paris’ follows, a song built around Travis’s monologue from Paris, Texas that’s rich with the film’s sense of spacious melancholy. The only real common theme, beyond that nameless Tucker Theodore spirit, is an intermittent glitch, some electronic ripple that either grounds the artifice of the pandemic-era collaboration, or else centres the lonely futuristic potential humanity has now reached.

This question hints at a bigger one which hangs over the record. Is Lewiston By The Sea an organic album? Is it warm or cold? Take ‘Coming Home (I Can See the Fire)’, a seven minute stretch which dips to hell and back, somehow digital and primordial both. Or the removed flickering warmth of ‘Two Turns of the Handle’, the ancient latent dread of ‘After the Fire’ which sounds like the space either pre- or succeeding some great event. But even in the record’s most suffocating moments, those blackest, bleakest or electrical, there is a sense of humanity too. Perhaps hiding somewhere in the shadows, or merely conspicuous in its absence, a living spirit mapped by its own negative space.

Lewiston By The Sea is out now via Antiquated Future Recordings and you can get it from the Tucker Theodore Bandcamp page.

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Excitingly, this summer is Antiquated Future Records’ seventh birthday, and to celebrate the label are releasing The First Seven Years, a compilation that spans their releases to date. Mastered by Fred Thomas, the nineteen-song release is a celebration of the entire Antiquated Future Records roster. Today, we have the pleasure of hosting the whole thing ahead of the physical release next month.

The album opens with the pleasingly retro-sounding (and previously unreleased) ‘A Fast Ska’ by Evan Hashi’s Little Angry & The Sweets, and from there dives into the last seven years of Antiquated Future releases. From the sultry slow burn of Flying Circles to the unmistakable, oddly graceful folk of David Thomas Broughton, the compilation illustrates both the range of the Antiquated Future discography and the common thread that unites every artist, a spirit more than a sound—an unwavering dedication to make art in their own unique way. There are moments of power too, like Tucker Theodore‘s ‘Movement 9 (High Descent)’ with it’s distorted post-rock vibes, and the slow tidal rhythms of Midwife‘s ‘Angel’, Madeline Johnston’s voice grainy as though beamed from the bottom of a murky pool of static.

This variety continues across the entire compilation. The subtly euphoric crystalline dreamscape of Reighnbeau‘s ‘Gold Face’ segues into the sparkling but emotionally poignant pop gem ‘Never Finds You’ by VSF fav The Washboard Abs, a track we previously described as “quietly devastating […] forgo[ing] any sense of metaphor or allusion in favour of a brave and direct account of dealing with the serious illness of a loved one.” There’s a devotional quality to Jordan O’ Jordan‘s ‘Patience is Gruesome’, a wheezing hymn that escalates into a shrieking choir, while Sara Renberg brings wry humour that wouldn’t be out of place in a whip-smart graphic novel, and Eleanor Murray delivers a smooth and intimate folk song to close things out.

But don’t take our word for it, stream the whole thing below and find your favourite:

Design and layout by Andrew Barton at Two Plum Press

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Now Tucker Theodore is back with a new album, LSG, a collection of ten “movements” organised into two 25 minute tracks. The record sees Theodore continue to push the boundaries of what he can do with his music, ranging from lonely lo-fi guitar to pummelling post-rock. As label Antiquated Future Records describe, “it’s wild and unruly and impossible to put in any box.”

LSG is its own world, segueing from shimmering crystalline electronic effects and moments of ethereal grace, to muscular and mean rock songs. The first track, ‘Movements 1-6’ gathers from a swirling murk, secluded guitar winding across a landscape of distorted drums and otherworldly atmospherics. The rest of the movements ebb and flow in tidal tempo—at times relatively calm and enveloping, and others roaring with nature’s full fury—but infused with a kind of patient, elemental rhythm regardless.

‘Movements 7-10’ begins with just over seven minutes of elegiac guitar and burbling effects. Ruminative, repetitive and truly affecting, the song is a great example of the quieter moments on LSG. Perhaps even more illustrative is the transition into the next movement, which is equally affecting but in a different way, sky-wide guitar slashing across a dark landscape like cracks of electric light. The effortless move from intimate and insular to wide-screen epic somehow works perfectly, a feat that Tucker Theodore repeats across LSG as a whole. It’s brave and bold and quite unlike anything else you’ll hear this year.

LSG is out now and you can get it via Antiquated Future Records.

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Tracklisting:

Half Gringa – Marte
CHUCK – Happy Birthday
Ian Terry – Cut
Bea Troxel – Let Them Know
Dana Gavanski – How Long Has It Been?
Honey Joy – Done
Miseryslims – Onto Elm Street
See You At Home – Summer Is a Long Way Off
Camp Counselor – Limo Speech
Windbury Street – Skinny Jeans and Sweaters
Philippa Zawe – Time
Big Baby – Not That
Illuminati Hotties – (You’re Better) Than Ever
Señor Fín – Joe Charmers
M Grig – Still Life I
Jacob Faurholt – A Lake of Distortion
Lazy Legs – Bed Head
Steakhouse – National
Francis – Swing
all-caps LADD – Computer Kids
Happy Abandon -Severed Seams
pastel – Silhouette
Nice Legs – I Never Knew
Tucker Theodore – Our Lady Hope

If you’ve missed more than a month of VSF, or just want some good music to listen to, check out our other Monthly Roundup mixes.

The post August 2017 Roundup appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Lady Hope is a difficult album to categorise, it’s blown-out lo-fi aesthetic transforming what in another life were folk songs into something with a strange weight and power. It’s music constructed from the base elements, big and powerful and oddly foreboding, the perfect soundtrack for you lucky folk who get to watch the solar eclipse today.

Slow winding guitar opens ‘Dunes Revisited’, which eventually emerges as an ominously charged rock song, Theodore’s voice distorted and humming with feedback, like a radio wave pulled thin across miles and miles of barren sand. The initially simple acoustic folk of ‘Skin’ soon begins to ripple and roil like a fever dream, electric guitar rising at the midway point as Theodore, joined by Madeline Johnston, repeating slight variations on the same line in increasingly desperate tones.

In fact, no two tracks are quite the same. ‘Flu’ is a relatively sedate psych-tinged guitar instrumental, while ‘All the Dogs Revisited’ is wrapped in a storm of feedback, and ‘Equinox’ sees crunchy electric guitar shred and squeal. Penultimate track ‘Helios Adrift’ is a vivid, widescreen slice of near post-rock richness, rising to crescendos before sinking back into its slow tidal rhythm, the title track closer reverts to something far more grounded, an rough indie rock song of insistent instrumentation and hypnotic, spiralling vocals.

With its combination of droning noise and outsider folk, wrapped up with snaking tendrils of dense and snarling rock, Lady Hope is quite unlike any other album you’ll hear this year. It’s an hour long beast that’s unapologetically complex and opaque, but also has an uncanny ability to move you on an instinctive, subconscious level. In other words, the album serves as the perfect antidote to the age of the Spotify playlist, and we should be thankful that there are still people like Tucker Theodore plying their trade, prepared to pour everything into making art like this.

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