Фирма Hardly Art

Artist: Chastity Belt Label: Hardly Art

"I can't for the life of me figure out why The Moondoggies aren't one of the largest independent bands in the country." -- Performer Magazine "It's the rich three-and-four-part harmonies that really give the Moondoggies' expansive, epic jams their distinctive, vintage sound." -- Pitchfork "The Moondoggies have hit upon a nice balance of tradition and contemporary influence." -- The Big Takeover Everett is a small city in northern Washington state, perhaps best known as the birthplace of Kenny Loggins, Carol Kaye, and, as of 2006, The Moondoggies. The Moondoggies are a four-piece band that plays timeless American music. Warm three-part harmonies, gothic Rhodes organ, and wanderlust guitar mark a sound rooted in boogie blues and cosmic country; their whip-smart songwriting leads to hook-heavy tunes that bristle with originality. The Moondoggies' inaugural full-length release, Don't Be a Stranger, was first released in 2008 and contains shades of gospel, blues, rock, and country - each of these songs have earned their slot in the great American jukebox. As of 2016, The Moondoggies as a band will have existed for a full decade. To commemorate, Hardly Art will issue Don't Be a Stranger on vinyl for the very first time. In addition to the original album, five previously unreleased bonus tracks have been tacked onto the release, all recorded during the same Don't Be a Stranger sessions with producer Erik Blood in Seattle. The Moondoggies are pleased to re-present this album and its new-old songs to you, dear listener, in lieu of new material that has been brewing since 2013. Record Label: Hardly Art Style: Alternative Rock

Artist: the Julie Ruin Label: Hardly Art (Cargo Records)

We've thought a lot about rock-music. One selects one's influences and moves from there, a process made simpler in the networked age. The result often resembles a collage, unified by the aesthetic leanings of its maker. Music writers and peers in conversation map out the references and citations made by their favorite new bands - "just like early SST punk" or "frigid cold-wave resembling." As musicians in 2013, we wanted to produce a record of many thoughts and feelings without abandoning the time-tested format of rock-music. We were less interested in "resembling" our favorite bands and songs than in searching for the small, indescribable things within that made them special. We wanted to make plain the conditions of rock-music's existence and how it could be formed. In doing so, we sought to produce a substantive, affective entity beyond a series of reference points. We've participated in a feedback loop. Our band was born between March 1991 and July 1992 but formed in 2010 while attending college in Portland. We started as many do, with a desire to write and play songs to and for our friends, evolving slowly, ever-mediated by our academic schedules. What Hardly Art will release this summer is a collection of songs written step-wise in Portland, Seattle, and Los Angeles between March 2011 and January 2013, recorded at YU Contemporary in Portland by Dylan Wall. "Total" then serves to document the evolution of our experience, to be understood in spite of and indebted to our time in school. Our tastes have changed and the emotions that informed earlier songs have faded into memory. In any case, music listening and playing has always remained crucial. As a result, our record is an assemblage of observations made by four different people collected in one place. As a public document, "Total" allows us to extend ourselves into a broader dialogue. The beauty of rock-music lies in the expanse of terrain that it encompasses as a definition. "Total" aims to acknowledge that freedom; it is at times melodious and at others dissonant, all in all, a finished product, a totality. CD, Album

All LPs include a download code and come housed in a fancy old-school tip-on jacket. FERGUS & GERONIMO return with their second full-length record, "Funky Was The State of Affairs", a sixteen-track weirdo-opus about aliens, mind-control, conspiracy theories, and intergalactic courtship. Also: numbers, symbols, parties, Heather Strange, and LSD. The record is entirely unpredictable, even as it tackles reoccurring themes, including "aliens, technology, intergalactic dating/hooking up, the Roman Empire, and the earthling resistance movement." At times the story seems filtered through the earthling point of view; in the next, extraterrestrials listen to phone-tapped conversations by some understandably paranoid humans. Though at times it sounds like fairly serious subject matter, the group employs a sharp-tongued attack with the same sort of gallows humor cracked wise by the likes of their equally Doubting Thomas inspirational figures, everyone from the Mothers of Invention to Devo. Within the first few minutes, the tone is set; the bright, spiky, opening track over a Krautrock rhythm, "No Parties," contains a line summarizing the restlessness caused by the alienation of modern habits, sung in a mock-English accent: "Collecting devices, you're paying the prices/Of overconsumption, with mental destruction." Founding member Andrew Savage is very conscious of the risks the band took, the changes that were made in order to avoid being marginalized. "Basically, its a dystopian sound-scape of our civilization's collapse," says Savage. Indeed, those feelings of dread are sometimes instrumentally emphasized by passages of synthesizer static and noise, which Savage attributes to being influenced by groups like Chrome. New members Bob Jones (guitar, bass, analog synth) and Jef Brown (Tenor Sax) also add to the playful chaos. Savage says the original duo of Jason Kelly and him added members in order to achieve "the tightness that can only come from recording with a live core," as "musicianship is extremely important to Jason and I.". Since Brown and Jones both played in the self-explanatory Evolutionary Jass Band - which evolved out of the equally experimental Jackie-O Motherfucker - there is an expansion in the group's improvisational capabilities that wasn't as obvious on past recordings. Yet nothing sounds forced, each interlude is enjoyable, each hip-hop-inspired skit serves a narrative-pushing purpose. The record bounces from Booker T-styled soul ("Wiretapping Muzak I and II") to early 80s New York dance rock ("Marky Move") with an immodest ease. "Hi, I'm Heather Strange, and I'm a 23-year-old human earthling female" says a woman between the first and second track. "Really, I'm just looking for a man whose cerebral capabilities haven't been fried by LCD screens yet." Most people reading this might be able to relate to Heather's plight, or worse yet, sink under the weight of being the type of person she's desperately seeking to avoid. But such is the genius of FERGUS & GERONIMO. They have made all of these variously opposing forces; dark and light, alien and earthling, melody and noise, condemning and being condemned, something that you feel like listening to over and over again. If only to hear what happens next. Vinyl, LP, Album

FERGUS & GERONIMO return with their second full-length record, "Funky Was The State of Affairs", a sixteen-track weirdo-opus about aliens, mind-control, conspiracy theories, and intergalactic courtship. Also: numbers, symbols, parties, Heather Strange, and LSD. The record is entirely unpredictable, even as it tackles reoccurring themes, including "aliens, technology, intergalactic dating/hooking up, the Roman Empire, and the earthling resistance movement." At times the story seems filtered through the earthling point of view; in the next, extraterrestrials listen to phone-tapped conversations by some understandably paranoid humans. Though at times it sounds like fairly serious subject matter, the group employs a sharp-tongued attack with the same sort of gallows humor cracked wise by the likes of their equally Doubting Thomas inspirational figures, everyone from the Mothers of Invention to Devo. Within the first few minutes, the tone is set; the bright, spiky, opening track over a Krautrock rhythm, "No Parties," contains a line summarizing the restlessness caused by the alienation of modern habits, sung in a mock-English accent: "Collecting devices, you're paying the prices/Of overconsumption, with mental destruction." Founding member Andrew Savage is very conscious of the risks the band took, the changes that were made in order to avoid being marginalized. "Basically, its a dystopian sound-scape of our civilization's collapse," says Savage. Indeed, those feelings of dread are sometimes instrumentally emphasized by passages of synthesizer static and noise, which Savage attributes to being influenced by groups like Chrome. New members Bob Jones (guitar, bass, analog synth) and Jef Brown (Tenor Sax) also add to the playful chaos. Savage says the original duo of Jason Kelly and him added members in order to achieve "the tightness that can only come from recording with a live core," as "musicianship is extremely important to Jason and I.". Since Brown and Jones both played in the self-explanatory Evolutionary Jass Band - which evolved out of the equally experimental Jackie-O Motherfucker - there is an expansion in the group's improvisational capabilities that wasn't as obvious on past recordings. Yet nothing sounds forced, each interlude is enjoyable, each hip-hop-inspired skit serves a narrative-pushing purpose. The record bounces from Booker T-styled soul ("Wiretapping Muzak I and II") to early 80s New York dance rock ("Marky Move") with an immodest ease. "Hi, I'm Heather Strange, and I'm a 23-year-old human earthling female" says a woman between the first and second track. "Really, I'm just looking for a man whose cerebral capabilities haven't been fried by LCD screens yet." Most people reading this might be able to relate to Heather's plight, or worse yet, sink under the weight of being the type of person she's desperately seeking to avoid. But such is the genius of FERGUS & GERONIMO. They have made all of these variously opposing forces; dark and light, alien and earthling, melody and noise, condemning and being condemned, something that you feel like listening to over and over again. If only to hear what happens next. CD, Album

NY's K-Holes have returned with "Dismania", the group's second full-length and first for Hardly Art. "Dismania" comes packed with the same kind of sinister, feverish punk skronk the New York quintet (featuring former members of Golden Triangle and the Black Lips) is known for. Their abdication follows a natural extension of the atrophied rock/roll ligament - unfurling from H. Williams to G. Vincent to Larry & the Blue Notes to the Pagans, Birthday Party, Flesh Eaters, Scientists, beyond - colored, at times, with smudges of primitive ceremony. As we follow their trajectory, running from the towering urban oppression, we catch whiffs of guttural noir in the honk of the sax, we hear the jagged swaths of guitar, we sense the bite and lust in their gang vocal. It's a dark, brutal, menacing trip; the sound of escape with the sheen of redemption, fueled by the low, thundering beat of tribal divination. Record Label: Hardly Art Style: Independent

Olympia three-piece, BROKEN WATER- a sometimes noisy, sometimes droning, often pretty and subtly pop sounding band-is very much a product of its hometown. Shape-shifting over the course of EPs, singles, and full-length albums released consistently since 2009, the band has managed the rare feat of evolution in the service of a signature sound, wild experimentation that ultimately works as a harness, locking down the music's unique and idiosyncratic internal logic. All band members contribute lead vocals- Jon Hanna often sounds like Thurston Moore at his bratty best singing from the belly of a giant grizzly, and Kanako Pooknyw and Abigail Ingram balance things out with a mix of Mazzy Star-like precision and eerie, haunting melodies that can draw a jagged line back to My Bloody Valentine, Cocteau Twins, or even the springy, deadpan vocals of Black Tambourine. Add to this the way each instrument plays both for and against the others, and BROKEN WATER creates an energetic crescendo; a cont CD, Album

Record Label: Hardly Art Style: Independent

This is the second full-length from San Francisco's Magic Trick. In the beginning it was just Tim Cohen alone in his San Francisco bedroom studio, swatting songs out of the ether during the spare hours between tours with his other project, weirdo-pop juggernauts, The Fresh & Onlys. "Ruler Of The Night" features members of The Fresh & Onlys and Aislers Set. Cohen recruited a handful of friends -- including James Kim (Kelley Stoltz's band), Alicia Vanden Heuvel (Aislers Set), and Noelle Cahill. Working on a first-thought-best-thought basis allows for a certain kind of freedom. Cohen forces a private world into existence through the sheer volume of his creative output. But it's a strangely comfortable place - where tuneful strands of '70s folk rock and familiar chords are embellished with dream-logic narratives that draw you in, even if their true meaning hovers just outside of easy comprehension Record Label: Hardly Art Style: Independent

The Seattle-based songwriter Grant Olsen -best known as half of the duo Arthur & Yu-christens his new project GOLD LEAVES. An autumnal character imbues these nine originals. Just as foliage buds, changes color, and eventually falls from the branches every Record Label: Hardly Art Style: Independent

Olympia three-piece, BROKEN WATER- a sometimes noisy, sometimes droning, often pretty and subtly pop sounding band-is very much a product of its hometown. Shape-shifting over the course of EPs, singles, and full-length albums released consistently since 2009, the band has managed the rare feat of evolution in the service of a signature sound, wild experimentation that ultimately works as a harness, locking down the music's unique and idiosyncratic internal logic. All band members contribute lead vocals- Jon Hanna often sounds like Thurston Moore at his bratty best singing from the belly of a giant grizzly, and Kanako Pooknyw and Abigail Ingram balance things out with a mix of Mazzy Star-like precision and eerie, haunting melodies that can draw a jagged line back to My Bloody Valentine, Cocteau Twins, or even the springy, deadpan vocals of Black Tambourine. Add to this the way each instrument plays both for and against the others, and BROKEN WATER creates an energetic crescendo; a controlled and restless sound, one that is ambient and ethereal without denying itself the messy joy of punk rock; a loud band, with seeds of aggression, but one that doesn't mask melodyfor the conceit of a sonic assault. Record Label: Hardly Art Style: Alternative Rock