News

New Releases! May 31 2023

 

Earth Tongue - Great Haunting

We are proud to announce the sophomore album by New Zealand’s Earth Tongue, an incredible heavy rock two piece that is guaranteed to melt faces. This band has ben touring New Zealand and Europe like crazy and will be hitting the US later this year. For fans of Fuzz. Get it in either Reaper or Green Ghoul color vinyl! CD too.

LIZ LAMERE - One Never Knows LP
Liz Lamere was the wife and collaborator of Alan Vega but is a force of nature in her own right, as evidenced by her newest full length One Never Knows. Pledging to Keep it Alive with her debut album in 2022, Liz doubles down with this latest full-length second album,  which is dedicated to her late partner whom she collaborated on his solo works for over three decades. Lamere’s minimalist approach to creating music is clearly in line with the Vega aesthetic that she helped develop with him during countless experimental hours in the studio since the late 80s. 
Lamere teamed up again with her and Vega’s son Dante Vega Lamere in their Dujang Prang NYC home studio surrounded by the Suicide singer’s spectacular light sculptures, co-producer Jared Artaud, and mixing and mastering engineers Ted Young and Josh Bonati.

Limited edition color vinyl

Memo PST - S/T

Redd Kross - S/T

Pre-order available now, out June 28!!
To say we are excited about this release would be a gross understatement. We are over the moon to announce that we’re releasing the new album by one of our all-time favorite bands - REDD KROSS. This self-titled double LP (with artwork that pays tribute to another self titled LP) is the band’s ninth studio full length and it’s a monster! Eighteen brand new original songs that show that the McDonald brot
hers are at the peak of their powers. Vinyl comes in a gatefold sleeve with limited edition red vinyl. The band will be doing a full US tour this summer, a memoir about them will be hitting book stores soon and an amazing documentary titled Born Innocent: The Redd Kross Story is hitting theaters - 2024 is the year of Redd Kross!

Alan Vega - Insurrection Double LP/CD

In The Red are proud to announce the release of Insurrection - a previously unreleased album by the Brooklyn born master of minimalism Alan Vega. The 11 songs on "Insurrection" showcase the unparalleled vision and uncompromising force from one of the most influential artists of all time. Vega’s wife and collaborator Liz Lamere says of the album, "Insurrection was created in the time period around 1997/98, after Mutator and prior to Vega’s 1999 release of 2007 and captures the intense energy of NYC in the 90s rife with crime, killing, hate, fascism, racism, and moral bankruptcy. You can hear the tortured souls floating through this album.”
Fellow Vega collaborator Jared Artaud says, "Insurrection hits hard and shows the power and intensity of Alan Vega's visionary solo work. It feels like he was trying to break new ground. There's always a kind of magic that goes into working on Vega's music. I feel like he was tapped into some other dimension. One hand in the gutter and one hand in the stars.
The vinyl for Insurrection comes in a beautiful gatefold sleeve and limited edition color vinyl.

Earth Tongue - Great Haunting LP/CD

Available for pre-order now (ships first week of June)!
We are proud to announce the sophomore album by New Zealand’s Earth Tongue, an incredible heavy rock two piece that is guaranteed to melt faces. This band has ben touring New Zealand and Europe like crazy and will be hitting the US later this year. For fans of Fuzz. Get it in either Reaper or Green Ghoul color vinyl! CD too.

Meatbodies - Flora Ocean Tiger Bloom Double LP/CD

To say that we’re over the moon to be announcing the release of this album would be a gross understatement. The saga of the making of this album, their first full length since 2017s Alice, could fill a book but it’s finally here and we’re happy to report that it’s incredible! Flora Ocean Tiger Bloom is the Meatbodies most varied and realized work to date and a massive step forward, both by conventional standards and considering its tumultuous path toward completion. The album recalls the searing Blue Cheer-meets-Iggy Pop-with-psychedelia that permeated previous releases, but adds new elements of shoegaze, classic alternative, Britpop, drone, and hints of country—blazing trails without ever sounding forced or alien. Simultaneously an ode to ’80s LA punk and the rise of indie/alternative music in the U.K., Flora Ocean Tiger Bloom plays like a radio station broadcasting from the void, with a cosmic playlist of early Pink Floyd, Ramones, Roky Erickson, Kinks, and Spacemen 3. And while those names may seem outwardly disparate, Ubovich crafts a distinctively Meatbodies arc among the songs, creating an eclectic and unmistakably cohesive piece of work in total. It all adds up to an effort that shows strength in its diversity, which is only secondary to its impeccable songwriting. This album is essential!
The double vinyl comes in a beautiful gatefold sleeve. Limited edition clear vinyl.

Charles Moothart - Black Holes Don’t Choke LP/CD

Charles Moothart should be familiar to anyone on our mailing list - he’s the guitar slinger in Fuzz, the drum pounder in Ty Segall’s Freedom Band and he’s done several albums under the name CFM. We are happy to announce Charles first album released under his own name, Black Holes Don’t Choke. This is by far his finest solo work to date! These ten new tracks operate under the mantra “love songs for the apocalypse” - sort of a prayer for optimism amid chaos. It’s simply awesome. Three different color vinyl variants to choose from!

DION LUNADON - SYSTEMS EDGE LP 

In 2022 Henry Rollins heard an early version of Dion Lunadons sophomore album ‘Beyond Everything’.He liked it so much that he suggested that In The Red Records should release it and we did!

Just over a year later and we are set to release Dion's 3rd album, ‘Systems Edge’. Recorded, performed (sans drums) and mixed by Dion and mastered by Mikey Young, Systems Edge captures Dions unique style of Rock n Roll at its most dynamic. Real, raw and off the chain!

Born in Auckland, New Zealand and now residing in New York City, Dion has played in various bands, most notably The D4, who released two albums on legendary New Zealand label Flying Nun Records and A Place To Bury Strangers. He also played in the formidable Flowers Of Evil beside members of Crocodiles.

A note from Dion: 

"Systems Edge is a collection of songs I wrote between 2015 and 2022.  Most of them in 2021/22. 

I’ve used this before, but it’s taken directly from Systems Edge’s first single “Secrets” and I think it perfectly sums the song up. 

Beyond your skin, beyond your screen, beyond what you think you know. What lies in this area? An area with no opinions, motives, sides or divisions. An area where governments and capitalists have no currency and the absolute truth reigns supreme." 

 

 


SKULL PRACTITIONERS - NEGATIVE STARS December 12 2022


Proving once again that “power trio” isn’t just a descriptive handle from the distant past, but a louder-than-God 21st Century reality, New York's Skull Practitioners release their first full-length album, Negative Stars, for In the Red Records on January 20th. The album is the second release for Los Angeles-based In the Red by the trio — guitarist Jason Victor, bassist Kenneth Levine, and drummer Alex Baker, following the band’s acclaimed EP, Death Buy, issued in 2019.

 
Previously, Victor had established himself as the dazzling co-lead guitarist for Steve Wynn and the Miracle Three - when Wynn revived his ‘80s L.A. Paisley Underground consortium The Dream Syndicate in 2017, Victor took the guitar chair previously occupied by Karl Precoda and Paul Cutler.  Levine was playing in DBCR, a three-piece unit. “We wanted to go to a five-piece, and needed a drummer and another guitar player,” he says. “We put an ad out on Craigslist and met Jason and Alex that way. Alex was just two weeks into living in New York. We played together for a while, and then it just sort of dissolved. Jason, Alex, and I actually had more of a shared, common musical perspective, and the three of us decided, ‘Let’s stick together with just us three.’”
 
Skull Practitioners recorded a limited cassette-only debut, st1, which they self-released in 2014. The four-song collection, on which Baker was the lone band member to take a vocal, marked the start of a long hunt for the right voice. “We kept looking for a new singer, and that person never came,” says Victor. “None of us wanted to sing at all. After a while, we had been together as a three-piece for so long that we had our thing, and it became difficult for someone to fit into it. So we pulled a Genesis! The best thing about it is that now all three of us will sing, and that takes the pressure off just one of us.” Levine adds, “Whoever writes, sings. It’s their expression, so they should say what they have to say.”
 
On Negative Stars, Levine performs “Dedication” and “What Now,” and Victor sings “Exit Wounds,” “Leap,” “Intruder,” and “Ventilation.” The album’s expansive instrumental tracks are “Fire Drill” and Skull Practitioners’ longtime club highlight “Nelson D,” which first appeared on st1 in a live version. You can hear a multitude of influences coming off each other in Skull Practitioners’ music, ranging from the Gun Club to Sonic Youth to Joy Division, Black Flag, and beyond. Each player brings something uniquely his own to the mix.
 
“Black Flag was huge for me,” says Victor. “There is that element of improv, and of aggression, that I was attracted to in that band. With our band, there’s definitely an aggressive angle there, and absolutely an improvisational one. We’re all willing to give everyone the space for contributing ideas. This band really does function as a democracy, which is nice.” Levine adds, “All of us were into different things, and there’s some kind of overlap and we kind of influence each other, and there’s stuff that we turn each other on to."
 
Everything on Negative Stars coheres so seamlessly, but like with so many others, its recording was hampered, and protracted, by the COVID-19 pandemic.“The main album session was a few years ago,” Baker says. “That was when we went into the studio for a couple of days with our friend, engineer Ted Young, and we tracked the bulk of the album there. We recorded the instrumental parts first, then started vocal tracking in January of 2021. It took us so long to decide that all the instruments were done at that point. The vocals were actually done at our practice space. We just set up the mics and did that ourselves.”
 
Levine adds, “The record was in mid-flight, and then the pandemic hit, so we were just sitting around for six months or a year, and we said, ‘Well, we may never finish this.’ So we wound up literally sitting in a room with masks on during most of the vocal tracking. If we’d waited to go into a real studio, it would have come out even later. Alex did all the engineering on that, and we’re very appreciative of all his engineering prowess.”
 
With their album finally complete and the pandemic lifting, Skull Practitioners have begun to take to the stage more regularly: they have opened shows for Lydia Lunch, Hammered Hulls, Live Skull, and In the Red label mates the Wolfmanhattan Project (Kid Congo Powers, Mick Collins, and Bob Bert). They plan to get on the road in the near future. 
 
Says Levine, “I think the band is represented at its best in a live setting. That’s where we’re in our element. Playing live, we’re out for blood.” Victor adds, “With the live thing, we just want to destroy, in the nicest, most friendly way — we’re nice people. Someone said about us, ‘These guys look like a bunch of accountants.’ People don’t really know what to expect before they hear us. I think they’re all a little surprised, maybe, and we like having that element of surprise — ‘We’re gonna blow your minds a little.’”
 

The C.I.A. - Surgery Channel October 20 2022



Step into a sick rhythm. And I mean sickly. Surgery Channel is a constructed world where everything is piercing and pinpointed. Every single word brings confrontation. With an intro as intimate and uncomfortable as this, The C.I.A. make you question what could be happening here…or what they’re after. Denée Segall (vocals, lyrics) is both haunting and seducing us at once with her voice. Something unhinged might be about to happen and they’re calmly dangling it over your head. Is it the possibility of dismemberment? Revenge?


There is something about Surgery Channel that is sterile and covered in dirt at the same time. Maybe it’s the feeling of simultaneous anger and defeat. Maybe it’s what comes after. Or maybe it’s about the ever-so-brief silent spaces between notes and words. Rhythm would be nothing without empty space. Words are rhythm at The C.I.A.

“Vicious visage / Internal monologue / Blink and stare / The metal and the glare / Intentions negating / The ego ascertaining / A pause / A cue / A push to make a move” from “Better”.

There’s nothing wishy washy about The C.I.A. or the way they sound. It’s all about precision and aim But really, it’s a warning... amplified by the suspense of tick-tocking drum machine beats that resemble a hospital room. Ty Segall (bass, percussion, back up vocals) and Emmett Kelly (bass, synth, back up vocals) have painted a jarring and dissonant landscape behind Denée’s story. Their basses could easily be swapped for bone drills and you might not be able to tell the difference. Emmett’s modular synth envisions an environment reminiscent of the instrument itself, a mess of wires and pulsing red lights. Ty’s subtle use of electronic and analog percussion fluctuates between the sound of a metal tray hitting the floor (“The Wait”), and the swish of an ultrasound scan (“Bubble”). At times, it projects the feeling of being probed and investigated. You could assume this reality has been lived by those at The C.I.A, though most listeners could only fear it. So... just how little of this portrayal is solely a work of imagination?

“I’ve been under / I’ve been down / Stripped and bound / Coming out” from “Under”.

“It’s a slight incision / Never really knowing / If we’re dead or living” from “Over”.

Dissection is but just one of the issues here. “Bubble” is a different story... of anxious desire. We will be consumed by what we must consume. Restraint backfires and drives a person to madness. Or maybe that’s just what they want you to think. It’s one of those tracks that feels as though Denée is whispering directly in your ear.

“She needed something to eat / She wanted to dine / But it was never enough / She was feeding all the time / She needed someone to see / To look at her and to vie / She puts her fist in her mouth / Tells you she’s losing her mind” from “Bubble”.

Both Surgery Channel and The C.I.A’s first Self-Titled record are ripe with straightforward conviction. However this most recent installment reveals a new side of their personality. Now The C.I.A. is communicating from an electrified, pulsating, metallic playpen that wants you to strut. “Impersonator” beckons a new groove, with call and response bass hooks that resemble a sequenced dance track and background vocals that invite a very steamy dynamic. High energy “You Can Be Here” is for those who can move fast, while “Bubble” is for those who want to sway in sultry slow motion. Surgery Channel shows punks a new way to move while remaining loyal to the traditions of catharsis and social commentary.

This record is an astute observation and blunt critique. Both inward and outward. It is an exploration into how harshly intimate that process can be. It was written in 2021 by Denée Segall, Ty Segall, and Emmett Kelly. It was recorded at Harmonizer Studios and mixed at Golden Beat by Mike Kriebel.

Words by Sofia Arreguin


SÉANCE! the new album by ZABRECKY September 23 2022

“Zabrecky is one of LA’s most interesting natives.”-LA Weekly


The title of this glow-in-the-dark vinyl record is not merely a title: it is the first step on a journey to exploring the spirit realm with Zabrecky as your tour guide.


For well over a decade, within the mysterious Houdini Séance Room at the world-famous Magic Castle, Zabrecky has conducted literally hundreds of seances. One day in the not so distant past, Zabrecky had a revelation... or was it advice whispered from the great beyond? “It occurred to me that with gentle and simple guidance, people could conduct their own séances in the comfort of their living spaces... or in nearly any space, to connect with a spirit of their design,” Zabrecky said.


Harking back to his time in the post punk milieu (Zabrecky fronted the popular LA Silverlake band Possum Dixon from 1989 to 1999), in which the DIY ethic came to a head, he continues, “Ghost seekers don’t need me, but they do need this record. Who wouldn’t want their own do-it-yourself séance record?”


Produced by the illustrious Emmett Kelly (The Double, The Cairo Gang, Ty Segall, Bonnie “Prince” Billy), Séance employs curious layers of 1970s analog synths while weaving in harp and other instruments that wouldn’t typically be associated with séance music. The addition of Zabrecky’s hypnotic spoken vocals lead the listener to contact a spirit of their choice. The result is a record that could be considered a spooky-cool novelty...or lead the listener directly to a connection with the afterlife.


Ultimately, the listener will decide on the direction this record leads them; perhaps with a bit of help from a long lost loved one, a beloved pet, or an unknown disincarnate entity from the shadows. Either way, as Zabrecky opines, the main rule of the Séance is: 


“If you believe, you will receive.”


If you’re unfamiliar with Zabrecky check him out here and here


Glow in the dark vinyl! Gatefold sleeve! You can perform an actual seance in your own home!

Available for pre-order: DION LUNADON - BEYOND EVERYTHING April 13 2022

Beyond your skin, beyond your screen, beyond what you think you know. What lies in this area? An area with no opinions, motives, sides or divisions. An area where governments and capitalists have no currency and the absolute truth reigns supreme.


After releasing his self titled debut album in 2017, Dion Lunadon (The D4, ex A Place To Bury Strangers) is set to release his sophomore album - Beyond Everything June 10th via In The Red Records.


Beyond Everything
 will be his first release on In The Red Records (an ideal match for his music) as well as his first full length since departing A Place To Bury Strangers. Written, performed and recorded by Dion, the songs tap into a raw, palpable energy that blur the line between the music and the person. Drums on the record were played by Blaze Bateh (Bambara) and Nick Ferrante (The Black Hollies).


Dion says “The record was written and recorded sporadically between 2017 and 2019. I probably wrote about 100 songs during this period.  The first album was pretty relentless which I liked but I wanted to make something more dynamic for the 2nd record. Something that could be more conducive to repeated listens. I’d get in my studio, come up with a song title, and start working on any ideas that I had. For example, with Elastic Diagnostic, the idea was to create a hum that evokes the sound of life coursing though your body. Everything else kind of formed around that idea.”

Dion will also be touring with a full band in North America and in Europe/UK throughout 2022.


US dates begin on the western side of the US in June starting in Denver (some of these dates are supporting The Black Angels) and the European and UK dates are in November.


Born in Auckland, New Zealand and now residing in New York, Dion most notably played in The D4, who released two albums on legendary NZ label Flying Nun Records and in New York noiseniks A Place To Bury Strangers.


While taking a break from touring with A Place To Bury Strangers, Dion recorded the self-titled debut solo album encompassing all that he loves about rock ’n’ roll. Previewed by the single Com/Broke, Dions LP arrived in 2017.


Just as the pandemic hit, Dion decided to leave A Place To Bury Strangers and focus on his own music. In June 2020, he released the song When Will I Hold You Again and in September 2020 the Schreien EP which featured a Deutsch version of his song Howl as well as the scorching rocker, Speed.


In 2021 he put a band together to give his songs life.


PRE-ORDER: THE LINDA LINDAS EP! December 16 2021

In The Red is proud to announce the 12” vinyl release of six songs from the Linda Lindas’ early recording sessions on beautiful color vinyl variants that were specifically picked by each member of the band. The group released the tracks digitally a year ago and have since become instant sensations when their song Racist, Sexist Boy went viral - now everyone knows how awesome they are. We were already huge fans of the band and are thrilled to be giving these songs the vinyl treatment. This release will be priming the pump for their debut album which will be out later in 2022 on Epitaph.


Alice Bag says…
I first had my mind blown by The Linda Lindas at a Save The Music in Chinatown Event. The series of concerts was meant to raise funds for the music program at Castelar Elementary School in Chinatown. At that point, the girls played covers of popular punk songs and traded instruments. They played with skill, joy and zero pretense. The children in the audience danced and chased each other around to the music. As I recall, the old timers in the audience included OG members of the Adolescents, the Dils, the Zeros, the Alley Cats, Nervous Gender, and of course the Bags. We were all smiling from ear to ear during the entire set, recognizing that punk spirit of fearlessness and an eagerness to take on the world.
  
But how did they get to be so good? Eloise, Mila and Lucia had all taken classical piano lessons before the idea of forming a band occurred to anyone and their friend Bela was studying guitar. They had already dipped their toes in the fundamental ooze of music theory. Kristin Kontrol stepped into this swirl of stardust and helped the band coalesce. Like the best fairy godmothers, she helped them learn to play together then allowed them to continue growing on their own. Of course, the girls themselves are the source of the melodies, harmonies, and the song lyrics inspired by their experiences, told from their personal points of view. All this is delivered onstage with conviction and confidence, punk-rocking swagger and an uncontrollable effervescence.
 
Let me say that a good part of the band's success story should be credited to the parents who have supported and encouraged these girls in every way. I’ve seen them taking the girls to rock concerts, working the merch tables at their shows, being roadies, managers, stylists, engineers and producers - not in a pushy, stage parent way but in a way that serves their daughters' dreams. I love seeing these young girls supported with the kind of enthusiasm usually reserved for high school boys on sports teams. It’s this strong foundation that allows the girls themselves to deliver the goods with a combination of musicianship, songwriting ability, and commitment to rock. You can hear those elements shine through in every song of these early recordings.
I can still vividly recall being in the audience at the Masque for the debut show by a brand new, all-female punk band called The Go-Go's. After the set I was talking to my Bags bandmate, Craig Lee and we both agreed that the girls were destined for big things. Aside from their undeniable style and charisma, they had a unique ability: they wrote songs with catchy hooks, melodies and backing vocals that set them apart from most of the other bands at the time. No one could have guessed that forty-four years later, the Go-Go's would be inducted into the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame as much for their classic tunes as for changing the face of rock and proving definitively that women in rock weren't flukes or novelties. Women belonged onstage in a rock band.
  
As you listen to this EP, keep in mind that The Linda Lindas are not just here to entertain - they’re writing a new chapter in rock herstory.

Piano Tunnels: Songs by Bill Gage & Cheater Slicks September 30 2021

Bill Gage is a quasi-famous singer with a raw, rock 'n' roll voice. Cheater Slicks are an infamous, raw, rock 'n' roll band. Put the two together and the resulting album is a stream-of-conscious stew of wild, fuzz-drenched rock 'n' roll! 


Some history: Both 
Cheater Slicks and Bill Gage's band BILL began in Boston in 1987, and it was sometime around then that Bill first sang with Tom and David Shannon playing guitars, in Bill's bedroom in Laconia, New Hampshire. The first BILL shows were organized by Bill's brother John after hearing positive and excited feedback from various musicians regarding Bill’s singing voice, which has been compared to the likes of Captain Beefheart, David Thomas, Damo Suzuky, and Yoko Ono. It was an intense and primal sound that was not forgotten by those involved. 

In spring 2018, when Cheater Slicks were presented with the idea of a collaborative record they wasted no time, and began writing and  arranging new songs for the project, sending rehearsal demos for Bill to hear and sing with at home in New Hampshire. Bill and John traveled to Columbus to record at the legendary Musicol studios in November of 2018. 

After 30 years of performing, is the world finally ready for Bill Gage— accompanied by the seismic Cheater Slicks? We think so! 
All profits from this record will benefit the Arts Resources programs of the National Association for Down Syndrome. Comes in limited edition on beer colored vinyl.

 


In The Red + 2.13.61: Limited Edition Archival 7” Records August 27 2021

SEVEN INCHES!!!!!!
As you may or may not know, for the past four years In The Red has partnered with Henry Rollins’ 2.13.61 label to release some limited edition archival 7” records. Up until now we’ve sold them as RSD releases and they sold exclusively to stores where they sold out immediately. Going forward we will be releasing our co-releases online at www.intheredrecords.com. Henry did a commercial for us, check it out here!

We are proud to announce our latest co-release - a reissue of the Four Plugs - Wrong Treatment / Biking Girl 7” 
Originally released in 1979 on their own Disposable Records, this record was the brainchild of John Irvine in the UK. The record was pressed in a tiny edition, was played on John Peel several times and vanished without a trace. An excellent example of the UK DIY scene of the time later popularized on the Messthetics compilation series. It ranks number 12 in the top 100 DIY singles list that ran in Ugly Things issue #78. We’ve repressed it in an edition of 400 on red, purple, double mint green and olive green vinyl.


Also, to celebrate this new release we have done limited (200 of each) re-presses of our four previous co-releases on new color variants. Once these are gone there will be no more pressings of these titles. We have…
 
 
Alan Vega - Murder One Pts. 1 & 2
This one was originally done in an edition of 200 and went FAST. It comes in two different picture sleeves which we’ve done on two different color vinyl variants different from the first pressing.
 
 

Gun Club - Eternally Is Here / Psycho
Two exclusive live Gun Club tracks including the band’s only known performance of the Sonics’ Psycho. Light blue with dark blue splatter vinyl.
 
 

Ruts DC - War On Crime / War On Crime (version)
The legendary UK band Ruts DC were kind enough to let us issue these fantastic dub versions of War On Crime mixed by Prince Fatty. The original pressing was 200 copies. This pressing is on yellow, black and green (Jamaican flag colors) vinyl.
 


Pure Hell - Wild One / Courageous Cat
These are the earliest known recordings of this legendary Philadelphia punk band. These songs were cut on the New York Dolls’ tape machine in 1975 and put onto an acetate which Henry Rollins located a few years back. The songs were sonically restored by our pal Time Warren. This new limited edition is yellow vinyl with black splatter.


Also, we have very limited quantities on these:
 

Warm Drag - Your Thunder And Your Lightening / Butch Things
 
(Six Tonnes De Chair Records, France)
Our very own Warm Drag released this new single in france earlier this year. We have a very small amount available. It’s incredible!


Christopher Alan Durham - Peacetime Consumer 7” - Gratiot Crawl / 50’s House Blues
Our pals have done it again at Spacecase. Peacetime Consumer is the new 45 from Detroit’s Chris Alan Durham (Roachclip, The Bibs, Church Shuttle and co-founder of All Gone Records). This one’s lo-fi and captures the Midwest sound. For fans of The Mirrors and Jim Shepard. Pressed in an edition of 300 copies on black vinyl.
 

TWO NEW PRE-ORDERS! Alan Vega After Dark & Meatbodies - 333 June 29 2021

ALAN VEGA, BEN VAUGHN, BARB DWYER & PALMYRA DELRAN - ALAN VEGA AFTER DARK  LP & CD

2021 is shaping up to be the year of Alan Vega. Every year should be but, this year is definitely it. The announcement of the opening of the Alan Vega archives which will be unleashing an untold amount of unreleased material dating back to 1971 via Sacred Bones, the release of Mutator (a lost album from the mid 90’s) which has gained rave reviews, a massive feature in the NY Times…Alan has been celebrated everywhere of late. In The Red is over the moon to participate in this celebration with the release of Alan Vega After Dark - an album that captures a late night rock n’ roll session with Alan backed by Ben Vaughn, Barb Dwyer and Palmyra Delran (all members of the incredible Pink Slip Daddy as well as countless other cool projects). This album serves as a reminder that Alan Vega was an incredible rock n’ roll/blues/rockabilly vocalist. He was one of the best.
From the desk of Jason P. Woodbury:
I only spoke with Alan Vega once. It was over the phone and the topic of discussion was the 2015 reissue of Cubist Blues, the phenomenally out there album he’d originally released with collaborators Alex Chilton and Ben Vaughn in 1996. I was in a noisy stadium for reasons that no longer matter at all, on a cell phone, but even with all that extra noise considered, Alan was exceptionally difficult to understand. At first at least. He’d suffered a stroke a few years earlier, in 2012, which still had lingering effects on his speech. But even before that, his heavy East Coast accent had sometimes made him hard to decipher, lending his voice the character of “a cab driver describing fine art,” Vaughn says. If you weren’t from New York—specifically Alan’s New York, an older version of Gotham that may have died with him on July 16th, 2016, when he passed on his sleep—it could be hard to keep up. But after a few minutes, I adjusted to the rhythm. Suddenly, without warning, I found myself able to dance to the peculiar beat of Vega’s jutting back and forth, his Jewish mystic cadence, the kind you hear in gasps and yelps on the transgressively savagely conceptual records he made in the late ‘70s with Martin Rev as Suicide, or the solo records he made starting in the 80s and continuing through to his final studio album "IT" finished in early 2015 and released posthumously in 2017, collages of machoismo-powered rockabilly, space cadet hard rock, renegade cowboy soul, and neon-drenched pop art Americana. You acclimate and then boom: You’re immersed in the “one-man subculture,” to borrow Vaughn’s description, of Alan Vega. 
Though his relationship to the mainstream was flirtatious but never a fully committed one, Vega’s sub rosa influence on a disparate but extensive list of punks, new wavers, industrial deconstructionists, garage rockers, and pop stars is clear. His admirers included Ric Ocasek of the Cars, a frequent collaborator, and Bruce Springsteen, whose 1982 album Nebraska, particularly the creeping song “State Trooper,” explored the same haunted backroads Vega sang about. “The bravery and passion he showed throughout his career was deeply influential to me,” Springsteen noted on his Facebook page, memorializing Vega. “There was simply no one else remotely like him.” 
No one else like him. That was certainly the case in 2015, when Vega decamped to Renegade Studio in New York City’s West Village with Vaughn on guitar, bassist and keyboardist Barb Dwyer, drummer (and Sirius XM DJ) Palmyra Delran, and engineer Geoff Sanoff. Sporting sunglasses, a knit cap and long rider coat, Vega looked tough as nails in his 78th year, and as always he was dedicated to the moment, to capturing the ghosts for what would prove to be his final live band recording.  
Years before, the stroke had slowed Vega down, but he’d recovered and continued making music, often remotely, vocalizing over pre-recorded tracks by electronic musicians. He wanted a different feel for this project, wanted “to feel connected,” Vaughn says, to the musicians in the room, the way it had worked when they made Cubist Blues with Chilton, a music industry rebel in his own right. That record had taken two frenzied, off-the-cuff nights, this album required only one. “We got better at it,” Vaughn says with a chuckle, his velvet voice—the one I’ve so often heard on his essential and always joyous radio program and podcast The Many Moods of Ben Vaughn —underserved by my cellular telephone (once again). 
Vega was obsessed with the enormity of any given moment, and to that end, he insisted the band be assembled with absolutely no preparation. They would be responsible for creating, ears tuned to each other and Vega’s incantations, a spontaneous space for his magical recitations. “It’s the only way I’ve ever worked with him,” Vaughn says. “We would start playing, and Alan would wait a little bit,” drawing in a notepad the entire time, working on his “zillions of sketches” — potential self-portraits, though he’d be loathe to indulge you asking if they were — or reading his copy of the New York Post. Eventually he’d rise to the microphone. “Some of the stuff he comes up with, it’s really unbelievable,” Vaughn says, citing the elementally profound lyrics for “River of No Shame,” delivered for the first time as the band churned on. “The animals are hunting, the animals are hunting/Making a break for the river/Making a break for the river/The river of no shame,” Vega riffs, over a motorik groove that’s somehow equal parts Neu! and John Lee Hooker. 
Vega didn’t consider the marketplace at all, never considered what would become of his art after he made it, living like the embodiment of what visionary director David Lynch would describe as “the art life.” For Vega creating was the sacred act. Creations? He could take them or leave them. “Liz, Alan’s wife, has told me that when he would finish a painting, he’d immediately paint over the canvas — she’d have to snatch them away from him,” Vaughn says. 
Luckily, Vaughn and company have been able to do something like that with Alan Vega After Dark, a set of songs that exist fully in their genesis, realized and recorded one night in New York City. They snatched one away from Alan, so we can pore over it. Listening to it, Vega’s words sometimes slip past me, like they did early in our single phone call. Wait, what was that he just said? It might have been the secret of the world! But I have the luxury of knowing that even as I can return to the LP over and over again, I’ll never hear the same thing twice. “Alan was writing from the future,” Vaughn says. I think back to 2015 when, during my interview for Aquarium Drunkard, Vega swatted away my inquiries about where his visions originated: “I don’t know where it comes from. People ask, ‘Why?’...There is no why. Who gives a shit? It’s not supposed to be why. It’s supposed to be the world. The mystery.”

 

 

MEATBODIES - 333 EP

Within the fertile West Coast rock scene of the 2010s, Meatbodies’ Chad Ubovich was a perennial candidate for MVP. Over the course of the decade, the Los Angeles native could be seen peeling off guitar solos in Mikal Cronin’s backing band, supplying the Sabbath-sized low end for Ty Segall and Charlie Moothart as the bassist for Fuzz, and, of course, fronting his own Meatbodies. That recently dormant noise-damaged freak-rock outfit now returns with 333, a corrosive stew of guitar scuzz, raw acoustic rave-ups, and primitive electronics. That acidic mix didn’t come from nowhere. Because the downside to maintaining such a prolific work rate is that the threat of burnout becomes a looming occupational hazard, and after touring behind Meatbodies’ second album, 2017’s Alice, Ubovich finally hit his breaking point. 


“I’d been touring for eight years straight with all these bands, and just couldn't do it anymore,” he says. “There was also a feeling in the air that everything was changing, politically. Things just didn't feel right, and I went down a dark path.”


Fortunately, Ubovich was able to pull himself back from the brink and, upon getting sober, began writing and recording at a furious pace. By mid to late 2019, Meatbodies—Ubovich and drummer Dylan Fujioka—had a new album in the can, ready to be mixed. But when COVID hit, the band, like so many other artists, put their release on hold as they rode out the pandemic’s first wave. During that idle time, Ubovich discovered a cache of demos that he and Fujioka had recorded in a bedroom back in the summer of 2018, and he really liked what he heard. In contrast to Meatbodies’ typical full-band attack, it was deliriously disordered. “It sounded gross, like a scary Magical Mystery Tour,” he recalls proudly. After subjecting them to some mixing-board freakery, Ubovich fast-tracked the songs into becoming Meatbodies’ third release, 333.  


But while the new record diverts sharply from the evolution established by the punk rippers of Meatbodies’ 2014’s self-titled debut and the fuzz-metal fantasias of Alice, it’s born of the same econo spirit that birthed the band in the first place. Ubovich founded Meatbodies in 2011, when a new generation of outfits rose from the ashes of the previous decade’s geopolitical tumult. The period set a whole generation adrift—there were no jobs, no money, no opportunities. The stability of previous eras was out of reach. But for artists like Ubovich, there were still ways to move forward. “We had vans and guitars,” he says. “So we made our own thing.”


While 333 charts Ubovich’s journey from drug-induced darkness to clear-eyed sobriety, it also reflects how the world he re-entered was still pretty messed up—if not more so. That psychic tug-of-war plays out on the opening “Reach for the Sunn” whose distorted slow-motion creep leads to a chorus both celebratory and dispiriting: “Reach for the stars/reach for the sun/reach for the trigger/reach for the gun.” In writing these songs, Ubovich realized that he wasn’t so much singing about his own path, but something much greater than himself. “These lyrics are dark, but I think these are things that a lot of people are feeling and going through, especially Americans,” he says. “We’re watching the fall of U.S. capitalism, and 333 is a cartoonish representation of that decline.” 


But as much as it speaks to the disillusionment of a lost generation, 333 also abounds with the innovation that limited resources can inspire. To set the Zeppelin III-styled pagan-campfire jam “Let Go (333)” in motion, Ubovich tapped out the beat with drumsticks on his pillow, while “Nighttime Hidden Faces” melds two completely different demos together, steering its Stereolab synth drones into a mind-bending boogie worthy of Royal Trux. The instrumental “Eye Eraser” might be 333’s greatest example of hermetic ingenuity—what may have turned into a shoegaze rager is instead rendered as a blissful union of brain-fogging fuzz and minimalist electro beats.  


Ironically, by working within a tighter lo-fi schematic on 333, Meatbodies have greatly expanded their palette, opening new portals to explore. And yet for all its free-ranging experimentation, 333 arrives at a tidy, full-circle conclusion with the sundazed serenade, “The Hero,” a song that Ubovich sees as a logical bookend to the opener. As he explains: “One is the id, one is the super-ego, Although I don’t know which is which. They're both very sardonic and defeatist in a lot of ways, but ‘The Hero’ is supposed to be a little funnier, laughing at everything.” He’s earned the right to a chuckle: For an album that wasn’t supposed to exist, 333 is the ultimate testament to Meatbodies’ renewed vitality. 


Pre Order: Divine Horsemen / Hot Rise Of An Ice Cream Phoenix June 17 2021

Available on Double LP & CD. Starts shipping mid August.

LOS ANGELES, Calif. — Divine Horsemen, the fiery, eclectic ’80s group that rode the unique vocal chemistry of Chris Desjardins (a.k.a. Chris D.) and Julie Christensen, return to the musical stage with Hot Rise of an Ice Cream Phoenix, a collection of all-new recordings, on In the Red Records on August 20.

 

Co-produced by Desjardins and Craig Parker Adams (who engineered I Used to Be Pretty, the 2019 release by Chris D.’s groundbreaking ’70s punk band the Flesh Eaters), the new 13-track album comprises the first new music by the Horsemen in 33 years.

 

Founded after the dissolution of the Flesh Eaters and launched with the 1984 Enigma Records album Time Stands Still, billed as Chris D./Divine Horseman, the band released three albums and an EP on SST Records, all of which featured the searing harmonies of Desjardins and Christensen, who were married at the time. The couple split professionally and personally just prior to the release of their January 1988 EP A Handful of Sand.

 

However, the two musicians remained in touch over the years, and Christensen contributed vocals to five tracks on I Used to Be Pretty, which reunited the 1980 “all-star” edition of the Flesh Eaters heard on the Ruby/Slash classic A Minute to Pray, A Second to Die. By then, the idea of reviving Divine Horsemen was already percolating.

 

“Julie had asked me about six or seven years ago about doing Divine Horsemen again,” Desjardins says. “I told her I wasn’t quite ready yet, though I did want to do it eventually. Then in 2015 the Flesh Eaters started doing reunion shows. In 2018 we did it some more, and we recorded the album, released it in early 2019, and we went out on tour and supported it. Since the beginning of 2018, Julie and I had been talking about Divine Horsemen again.”

 

Christensen — who had moved on to work with Leonard Cohen in the 1990s and release seven albums of her own work — adds, “We recorded I Used to Be Pretty in April of 2018. Previous to that we had started plans for a Divine Horsemen tour in the fall, playing older stuff. Chris had song ideas and cover ideas for a studio album — it was just kind of forming in his head. I started looking for covers, too. I did some of the Flesh Eaters ‘live’ gigs the first three months of 2019, and found out that we were getting along really well.”

 

The singers’ plans called for reuniting with such onetime Divine Horsemen as guitarist Peter Andrus, who had appeared on A Handful of Sand and the 1987 album Snake Handler, and bassist Robyn Jameson, who had worked with Desjardins on the majority of his recordings between 1982 and 2004. However, Jameson tragically died in 2018 following a street assault; Bobby Permanent, Andrus’ longtime musical collaborator, was recruited to take the late musician’s slot on the new recordings. Andrus is also a veteran of bands Crowbar Salvation and Detroit’s the Volebeats. Permanent (under the name Robert Pollard) has also contributed to various movie soundtracks, most notably John Cassavetes’ final film, Love Streams.

 

The 2021 Divine Horsemen lineup is completed by drummer DJ Bonebrake of the incomparable L.A. band X; he also was a member of the 2018 recording and 2019 touring editions of the Flesh Eaters (which also included X’s John Doe, Dave Alvin and Bill Bateman of the Blasters, and Steve Berlin of Los Lobos). Keyboardist Doug Lacy, another veteran of the Snake Handler sessions, returns to the fold; he and Christensen both later sang backup for the duo of Gaby Moreno and Van Dyke Parks, and Lacy has appeared on several of Parks’ other projects.

 

The release of Hot Rise of an Ice Cream Phoenix was prefaced in late 2020 by Feeding Tube Records’ package of unreleased vintage recordings Divine Horsemen ‘Live’ 1985-1987 and two Bandcamp singles, “Mystery Writers,” a new composition by Desjardins and Andrus, and “Mind Fever Soul Fire,” a song that originally appeared on Love Cannot Die, a 1995 Chris D. solo album issued by Sympathy for the Record Industry. (A new rendition of that set’s title song is also heard as the concluding track on the new album; a high-intensity re-recording of “Handful of Sand,” the 1988 EP’s title number, is also featured.)

 

The new material on the album reflects a diversity of sources.

 

“I wanted to mash up some European folk material,” Desjardins says of “No Evil Star,” a madrigal-like composition. “There are a whole bunch of sites on the internet that have public domain folk songs from Europe, specifically England, Scotland, and Ireland. These are all from the 1700s and 1800s. The music for the verse is from one folk song I found on a Celtic folk site. The words are all original. But the chorus music is not Celtic, it’s more Latin — they also had a few Spanish folk songs on there. Peter joked when we were working up that tune that it was our Jethro Tull song.”

 

Like “Ghost Cave Lament” — the sprawling number that concluded I Used to Be Pretty — both “Barefoot in the Streets” and “Stony Path” reflect Desjardins’ ongoing fascination with Spanish flamenco.

 

“Those songs are linked lyrically,” Desjardins says. “‘Stony Path’ is a continuation of ‘Barefoot in the Streets.’ They’re both murder ballad-styled songs. The lyrics of ‘Barefoot in the Streets’ is flamenco-inspired, but the music is not really Spanish — Julie came up with the music.”

 

Christensen says the writing of the latter number came late in the recording of the album: “Chris called and said, ‘You know, I’ve just been remiss. I feel like we should write a song together, and I have this “barefoot in the streets” idea.’ He’d already written the lyrics. He had a little bit of a melody idea, too, but not much of one — there was just the scan of it.”

 

She adds that singing “Stony Path” presented some unique vocal challenges: “Flamenco singers break their voices in order to do what they do.” The song was left for the end of the album sessions, and she nailed her demanding part in a single take.

 

Christensen is represented as a co-writer on another song, “Falling Forward,” written with Lathan McKay. “He’s an actor and musician who lives in Austin,” Desjardins says. “He’s also the foremost authority on Evil Knievel!”

 

Beyond her writing, Christensen served an invaluable function by finding outside compositions for the album.

 

“I found a couple of covers from Tennessee writers,” the former Nashville resident says. “‘Any Day Now’ is by Tim Lee and Susan Bauer Lee. They used to have a band called Tim Lee 3, he was also in a band called the Windbreakers, and now Bark. They used to get hold of Divine Horseman LPs and hand them out to people – ‘Here, you’ve gotta hear this.’ We got to be fast friends, and their song ‘Any Day Now’ just floored me.

 

“‘Strangers’ is by another Tennessee writer named Johnny Duke — he wrote it with Will Kimbrough. I originally heard it acoustically, just him and a guitar. I spoke to him after I heard him play it, and I said, ‘I don’t know if you’d be into this, but I have this band, and I’d love to try doing it with them as a Neil Young and Crazy Horse kind of thing.’”

 

Hot Rise of an Ice Cream Phoenix is rounded out by a typically diverse selection of covers. “25th Floor” is a Patti Smith-Ivan Kral original, heard on the 1978 album Easter. “Ice Cream Phoenix” was a vehicle for the vocal harmonies of Grace Slick, Marty Balin, and Paul Kantner on Jefferson Airplane’s 1968 LP Crown of Creation. But the album’s greatest curiosity may be the raucous, profane “Can’t You See?,” an oddball tune that had obsessed Desjardins for years.

 

He says, “That’s a song written by Charlie Cuva and Robert Downey Sr., for Downey’s movie Pound. I’d heard that song at the Fox Venice Theatre in 1972, in the intermission of a double feature. Robert Downey Sr. had pressed up 100 or so copies of five songs from Pound to send out to independent theaters, as a promotion. It was never commercially released as a record. I had not heard it in years, and the guy who put out my book A Minute to Pray, A Second to Die sent me an MP3 of it. When the prospect came to do this album, I thought, we’ve got to do this. I played it for Julie and Peter, and they went through the roof over it.”

 

In all, Hot Rise of an Ice Cream Phoenix stands as a bracing new achievement by a distinctive musical partnership that has always marched to the beat of its own drum. Like the Flesh Eaters’ recent reunion, it’s a welcome return that plays to the group’s historic strengths.

 

“It was really good for both of us,” Desjardins says “and we really enjoyed it. There’s also — unintentionally — context in some of those songs about what happened between us as a couple.” Christensen adds, “One thing Chris has always been adept at is taking a song, and you hear the raw bones of it, and then he casts the band so well, and he runs a rehearsal like a tight ship. We would fashion these gems of songs out of rocks. He’s always been really good at directing a song toward what it’s supposed to do.”

 

It should be noted, in addition to producing (or co-producing) all of his Flesh Eaters and Divine Horsemen efforts, Desjardins has a modest but important legacy as an A&R man/in-house producer at Slash/Ruby Records from 1980-1984, co-producing with Tito Larriva seminal work by the Gun Club (their debut album, Fire of Love), producing the Dream Syndicate (Days of Wine and Roses) and Green on Red (Gravity Talks), and mixing with Glenn Danzig the Misfits (Walk Among Us). He also shepherded the Lazy Cowgirls on their eponymous debut (released through Enigma subsidiary Restless Records in 1985). Last but not least, Desjardins produced Soulsuckers on Parade, a wildly unhinged, never-available-before-to-the-public 1984 session by Jeffrey Lee Pierce (with a backing group of then-Blasters Dave Alvin, Bill Bateman, and Gene Taylor, and Green on Red’s Jack Waterson) that is only now being released in 2021 by Minky Records — 36 years later!


The Scientists - Negativity April 20 2021

The Scientists’ powerful brand of deranged swamp-rock returns with a vengeance on June 11, when In the Red Records unleashes Negativity, an all-new magnum opus featuring the first new full length album by the Australian band’s penultimate line-up in 35 years.
The bruising 13-track collection features a Scientists configuration much beloved by connoisseurs of the band’s work: singer-guitarist Kim Salmon, lead guitarist Tony Thewlis, and bassist Boris Sujdovic, all veterans of the group’s defining 1981-85 outfit, and drummer Leanne Cowie, who replaced drummer Brett Rixon on the storming 1986 release Weird Love.
 Happily, rousing receptions during the band’s American treks and a sense that fans would welcome a new full-length project resulted in sessions for Negativity, the Scientists’ first full-length collection of new material since their 1987 last bow Human Jukebox.
It can’t be overstated how thrilled In The Red is to be unleashing this album. The vinyl comes in a handsome gatefold sleeve with a limited edition on gold vinyl. It’s also available on CD, which also looks really suave.


Available now! Kid Congo & the Pink Monkey Birds - Swing From the Sean DeLear 12" January 26 2021

“Swing From The Sean De Lear” is the new 4 song EP by Kid Congo & The Pink Monkey Birds on In The Red Records. It celebrates dreamlike bridge between life and memory. Recorded and mixed with Jim Waters, (Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Sonic Youth etc.) at Waterworks Recording in Tucson AZ,  “Sean DeLear”, is a tribute to the late, magical, and ubiquitous Los Angeles underground institution named Sean De Lear. The rocking song uses the metaphor of those passed on as swinging from a chandelier, a festive image we all hope is true! 

Side Two of the EP is a 14 minute psych, Chicano groove titled “He Walked In.” The text is based on a visceral fever dream Kid had about his friend, and Gun Club bandmate, Jeffrey Lee Pierce, whom passed away in 1996. Leading us back to the theme of feelings sustained between life and memory, the song dreams on as the band spreads their monkey bird wings, Mark Cisneros on flute, and guest, tambourine queen Cesar Padilla lost in music but found in sound. 

In such uncertain times, one thing is most certain; Kid Congo & The Pink Monkey Birds will always bring the party.. and the other world.

Limited edition on pink and black splatter vinyl.


FUZZ III - Limited Edition Hoodie + FUZZ I & II repress on color vinyl!! October 23 2020

Happy FUZZ III release week!!

 

Thanks to everyone who pre-ordered the new Fuzz album from us! It was by far the most orders we’ve received for one of our titles ever. Igor has been furiously packing packages for days and we have almost all of them out. Hopefully everyone will have theirs soon and be as stoked about it as we are.
To celebrate the album finally coming out this week we have the following limited edition Fuzz items for sale:
Fuzz III design tie dye pullover hoodies! Designed by Tati Compton, hand dyed by Kevin Emerson and screen printed by E.S. Serigraphy. We only made 100 of these and when they’re gone they’re gone. They look awesome! They run a bit small so please see size chart attached. There will be no exchanges because of the limited quantity.
 We’ve re-pressed Fuzz I and Fuzz II on limited color vinyl! Fuzz I is on light blue and Fuzz II is on clear with traces of black and white. Both colors chosen to compliment the album artwork. Both pressed in an edition of 300. Once they’re gone it’s back to black (the way God intended). 

Pre-Order DEMOLITION DOLL RODS & New book by ROSS JOHNSON September 28 2020

DEMOLITION DOLL RODS - Into The Brave LP


Those masters of Motor City mayhem have returned. Perhaps the only band to be asked by a promoter to keep their clothes on, the Demolition Doll Rods – who have not been in a studio together in fourteen years  – are set to unleash Into the Brave in October 2020.
Formed in a Detroit basement in 1993, the Demolition Doll Rods are infamous for their rude, crude two-guitars-drums-no-extra-stuff rock n’ roll, not to mention those minimal matching Doll Rod outfits, which included wearing hubcaps, doll heads and even swiss cheese. They recorded four very singular albums together – starting with their outrageous debut Tasty in 1997 (coproduced by Jon Spencer and Mick Collins)– but called it quits in 2007 when co-founders Margaret Doll Rod and Danny Kroha went their separate ways. Until last year, that is, when out of the blue Margaret suddenly reunited with Danny to perform some scorching live shows alongside new drummer Shelby Murphy.
Twelve brand new tracks as loud, crazy and demented as anything they have ever created. Limited edition on blue vinyl. Ships mid October.



ROSS JOHNSON - Baron of Love: Moral Giant  paperback book
 

Our friends at Spacecase Records have done a real public service by releasing this fantastic new book by Ross Johnson! Ross Johnson (Panther Burns, Alex Chilton, Jeffrey Evans, etc.) puts it down over 153 pages in his long-awaited memoir. Everything’s here — from bagging groceries for the late Al Jackson, Jr., at the Big Star grocery store to his thoughts on the present-day Memphis scene. In between Ross discusses writing for CREEM in its halcyon days, playing on Like Flies on Sherbert, the brilliance of Lesa Aldridge and Jim Dickinson…and that’s just the beginning. A must have for fans of Make it Stop! and Memphis music. Limited to 200 copies.

Red Lights (Jeffrey Lee Pierce) / CCR Headcleaner / Lamps August 17 2020

AVAILABLE NOW!

Red Lights - s/t 12” EP
We teamed up with our pals at Spacecase Records to co-release this amazing archival record. Prior to forming The Gun Club, Jeffrey Lee Pierce fronted the short-lived Red Lights in 1978. A power-pop obsessive at the time, Pierce managed to record a Red Lights demo. These tracks have remained obscure ever since. Included here is the Pierce original “Jungle Book,” later covered by The Last on their ill-fated album, Look Again (1980). Limited edition on red vinyl.
 
 
 
 
 
CCR Headcleaner - Street Riffs LP
San Francisco’s CCR Headcleaner are back with a brand new full length of dark, heavy, brutal, face-melting punk-adjacent stoner noise. These guys are as good as fucked up acid fried rock n’ roll gets and Street Riffs is their best statement yet! Limited edition on orange sunshine vinyl.
 
 
 
 
 
Lamps - People With Faces LP
is available for pre-order now! Listen to the first track “Horse Cow Goat Pig Dog” here: https://soundcloud.com/blankfrank13/horse-cow-goat-pig-dog
 
 
 
 
 
Ex-Cult - Blurry/ Final Exits/ Double Hits 7”
We got a very small supply of Ex Cult’s 2017 European tour 7” on Red Lounge Records. If you don’t already have this now you can fix that.
 
 
 
 

The Return of FUZZ July 22 2020

Fuzz is back with their first new album in 5 years "III" Listen to the debut single "Returning" here

LP / CD available here

Shirts and pin available here

One only knows one. Two is balanced therefore stagnant. III both active and reactive. Charles Moothart, Ty Segall and Chad Ubovich are FUZZ. FUZZ is three. And III has returned. Songs for all, and music for one. 

 

III was recorded and mixed at United Recording under the sonic lordship of Steve Albini. Keeping the focus on the live sounds of the band, the use of overdubs and studio tricks were kept to a minimum. Albini’s mastery in capturing sound gave FUZZ the ability to focus entirely on the playing while knowing the natural sounds would land. It takes the essential ingredients of “guitar based music” and “rock and roll power trio” and puts them right out on the chopping block. It was a much more honest approach for FUZZ -- three humans getting primitive, staying primitive. The goal was never to reinvent the wheel. Sometimes it’s just about seeing how long you can hold on before you’re thrown off.

 

Album opener “Returning” serves as a sort of mission statement for the album. It’s an auditory meditation on the power of one and the different perspectives of one,  whether it is the singular person looking inward, or a group of people coming together as a single unit. Not only is it an echo of the return of FUZZ, but also a broader return to form - raw and empowered through vulnerability. 

 

“Nothing People” and “Spit” served as a launching point into the new sphere that would become III. They were written around the same time, and felt like they opened two different doorways -- familiar in some ways and new in others. “Time Collapse,” a rogue cut from the days of FUZZ’s II, landed soundly on the scorched surface of side A to round things out.

 

“Mirror” opens up the B side and the collective consciousness. Mirroring the call to arms of “Returning,” the song asks the listener to link arms with the band, march to the same drum of love, and create a space of equality among the freaks. The pummeling rhythm demands the request to crush the mirror that feeds you lies. In the end, it’s a ballad for the unique, twisted, and natural self that should be exalted before any falsehood. 

 

The stomping back half of III serves as a self aware call out to the lineage in which this record calls home -- both personal and general in the historical context of raw power trio records. “Blind to Vines” and “End Returning” accentuate the meditative qualities of FUZZ. While coming from opposite ends of the spectrum, they balance restraint and compulsion. FUZZ will ultimately cave to compulsion. That is without question. But what good is a freak out without an initial glance inward? “End Returning” takes that look inward and scrambles the timeline. It finds peace and challenges it in the next breath. Arguably, it brutalizes this peace to test the foundations on which it rests, inevitably bringing the origin back into focus.


Three points reflected in three Mirrors; a pyramid of sonic destruction and psychic creation. Nothing People feed the roots while the freaks fly free in the treetops - Blind to Vines, Eyes Closed, Stuck in Spit, triumphing the Returning of beginnings and Ends Returning while beginning to see the Time Collapse. Love is the only way to annihilate hate, and Sketchy freaks live to bleed. All shades of color, truth and lies, III is the pillar of unity and singularity. All is nothing, and only nothing can generate everything. Log out, drop thought, turn up.


NEW RELEASE FROM: DON HOWLAND, A BURNING BUS + MORE! May 07 2020

Hello!

We hope everyone is staying safe and well during this time of unprecedented weirdness. Despite the fact that most everything is closed down right now, we’re still making records. When things start to reopen we’ll have some pretty amazing stuff to announce but right now we have these awesome new releases ready to order:

 


Don Howland - Endgame LP

We’re proud to announce the new solo album by Don Howland. Don’s been pursuing his brand of scuzzy roots rock for over a quarter of a century, first as a member of the Columbus’ beloved Gibson Bros and later as the main man in the Bassholes. His music is a raw convergence of country blues, ’76 punk and lo-fi garage. Don was one of the original flagship artists for In The Red and we’re happy to be working with him again. Don’s been a crucial figure in underground music for several decades and is of American underground’s true originals. Limited edition on splatter vinyl.

 


A Burning Bus - s/t LP

Another Don Howland-related album! That’s right, we’re putting out two albums by the man at the same time! That’s how much we love him and his music. This full length is by his now defunct five piece band Burning Bus. The band released two 7”s earlier this decade and recorded this album which has laid dormant until now. While Don’s solo work and the Bassholes tend to be stripped-down, terrible-kicking affairs, Burning Bus is a full throttle three guitar and bass attack. It’s much noisier and more brutal than anything else he’s done. Fans of Pussy Galore will want to take note. Limited edition on splatter vinyl.

 

 

Also in from our pals at Spacecase Records we have these awesome new titles:

 

Rubber Blanket LP

Rubber Blanket is a new group featuring Brad Eberhard and Jun Ohnuki of Wounded Lion and The Intelligence’s Lars Finberg. This is their debut LP. For fans of The Screamers, Fast Product-era Human League, and The Better Beatles. Limited to 500 copies.

 

 

Walter Daniels and the Hungry Hearts 7”

The 7” features Walter Daniels’ usual all-star lineup, including Texacala Jones (Tex and the Horseheads), Marco Butcher (Jam Messengers), Cypress Grove (Jeffrey Lee Pierce) and Luis Tissot (Jesus and the Groupies). Cover art by Art Chantry. Limited to 300 copies. 

 

 

Also, we’re now shipping Alice Bag’s awesome Sister Dynamite album. Flame color vinyl is going fast!

 


PRE ORDER: ALICE BAG - SISTER DYNAMITE February 25 2020

AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER NOW!

L.A. punk icon Alice Bag has announced her new album Sister Dynamite,
out April 24 on In The Red Records! Her third solo effort, the album marks a thrilling return to the full-throttle punk that Bag pioneered with her legendary first-wave punk band, The Bags. An unbridled celebration of community and the undeniable power in embracing your own truth, the collection confronts some of the most pervasive problems troubling our world today: unchecked privilege and willful ignorance, systemic inequality and fragile masculinity. Bag will kick off a national spring tour on March 6 in Vancouver, joining her like minded sisters Bikini Kill on several dates. Tickets will go on-sale Friday February 28 @ 12:00pm local time.


NEW LAVENDER FLU! + RECORD STORE DAY RELEASES February 19 2020

Lavender Flu - Barbarian Dust LP
In The Red is proud to announce the release of the new album from Portland, Oregon’s Lavender Flu and it’s their best yet!
In contrast to their prior mobile-unit hole-ups and home-taped fryers, Barbarian Dust, the third album from LAVENDER FLU, marks the band’s first raid of a proper studio.  Extending the formalities further, the conceptual impetus for the sessions stems from a collective meditation on cosmic biker rock.  Smokey, sure --- and that peculiar, chunky ether seeps into the resulting collection --- but it all ultimately serves to a liquid frame, a set of parameters imposed purely to burst through.  Compositionally and thematically, Barbarian Dust alternates between hope and anger, each idealized, a sway thoughtfully achieved through an often-soaring, occasionally busted version of rock heaviness (without ever approaching “Heavy Rock”, thank heaven/hell).  In every sense of the word, it’s their most aggressive work to date.
Limited edition purple vinyl. Includes download code.
Coming soon!
 
Don Howland - Endgame LP
Burning Bus (Don Howland fronted band) - s/t LP
Alice Bag - Sister Dynamite LP/CD
Lamps - People With Faces LP
Also, keep an eye out on Record Store Day for the following!
Gun Club live 7” (co-release with Henry Rollins’ 2.13.61)
Ruts DC 7” (co-release with Henry Rollins’ 2.13.61)
100 Flowers - Drawing Fire + LP

THE VICTIMS - LP & 7" EP October 21 2019

AVAILABLE NOW!

The Victims - s/t LP

The Victims - Horror Smash 7” EP

Punk music, at its most effective, its most important, exists at a nexus of a few simple but important ideas. Punk needs to be youthful, it needs to be reactionary, it needs to be short-lived and it needs to be controversial.

So for a group of twenty-something Australians, excitable as the frontline first wave of kids responding to both the Ramones and the Sex Pistols (yet still influenced by the New York Dolls and Stooges and Flamin’ Groovies), who existed for but barely for a year from 1977-1978 and wrote songs about serial killers, high school girls and hating disco…well, I’d argue they are the most perfect punk band ever.

The band was Dave Flick (aka Dave Faulkner later of the Hoodoo Gurus) on guitar and vocals, Rudolph V (Dave Cardwell) on bass and James Baker on drums. Best known for their classic “Television Addict”, that song is but the tip of the iceberg of the band’s powers. Having self-released two godhead 7-inches during their brief existence, the seven songs on those singles are absolute cannon at this point. Quintessential, pure, unfuckwithable.

Of particular note is the blast beat, proto-hardcore velocity of “Perth Is A Culture Shock” an ode to the band’s isolated hometown, unreleased at the time, which presages the vibes that would emanate from Black Flag, Minor Threat and Negative Approach in just a few years.

And all that is just side one of the LP.

Side two contains a bounty of unreleased-for-decades demos of nine otherwise undocumented Victims originals. Demos in name alone, these properly recorded songs brim with all the identifying marks of the known Victims classics…irreverence, taking the piss, murderers and an invigorating youthful attitude. 

The sheer perfection of songs like “Horror Smash” and “I Wanna Be With You” only further cements how essential the Victims were…that even their outtakes are A+ prime material.

The last thing to remember about punk as a theory, an aesthetic, is that its "ideas" are all bullshit anyway. That’s easily proved by the 7” EP released alongside this release of new recordings of “Charlie”, “Horror Smash”, “I Wanna Be With You” and “Everynite” which proves that the Victims now (featuring Ray Ahn from the Hard-Ons on bass), some 40 years after their heyday, could still easily take on any au courant band half their age

-Ben Blackwell

The LP comes in a handsome gatefold foil-stamped cover. Limited edition color vinyl on both but, black is always best! Essential!

IN THE RED IS NOW ON BANDCAMP! September 18 2019

https://intheredrecords.bandcamp.com


The DUM DUM BOYS - Let There Be Noise LP September 12 2019

The DUM DUM BOYS - Let There Be Noise LP
We are proud to announce the first ever reissue of the first ever punk rock full length album to emanate from New Zealand. The Dum Dum Boys were more than a little informed by the proto punk sounds of Detroit - in particular The Stooges (they took their name from an Iggy song). They also were obsessed with the sonic mayhem produced by the likes of the Dead Boys and The Ramones. Hailing from working class West Auckland, the band formed in 1980 and started playing their brand of thug punk, which branded them as instant outsiders to most of the West population still clinging to their Zeppelin and James Taylor albums. In 1981 the band self-released Let There Be Noise on their own Bondage Records. It’s been out of print for decades and when copies turn up they aren’t cheap. We are happy to make this punk rock classic easily accessible once again. Newly remastered for better sound, original artwork and insert replicated and limited edition on blood red vinyl. A must for any punk rock enthusiast!

NEW! SKULL PRACTITIONERS / DAN MELCHIOR BAND / TYVEK July 26 2019

THIS JUST IN: NEW STUFF AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER NOW!

Skull Practitioners - Buy Death 12” EP
We are proud to announce the debut vinyl release from NY’s Skull Practitioners - a three piece featuring Jason Victor (current lead guitarist in the Dream Syndicate), Kenneth Levine and Alex Baker. This band’s brand of heavy psych post punk skronk is some of the coolest sounds we’ve heard in eons and we are excited to be working with them! Jason’s guitar shredding is positively brain splattering and Kenneth’s huge bass throb and Alex’s propulsive drumming make these guys sound bigger and heavier than most five piece bands. This 12” is limited edition, vinyl-only. A full length is in the works. You need this!

 



Dan Melchior Band - Negative Freedom LP
The highly prolific Dan Melchior is back again with a new album - this time with the Dan Melchior Band. The band consists of Dan (obviously), Adam Charles Cooper and Pat Ganely, both formerly of the Taiwan Housing Project. Negative Freedom once again proves Dan to be a treasure who continues to musically and lyrically evolve in the most twisted way. His garage/blues tendencies of his early output have all but completely given way to weirdo/outsider post-punk damage, though this record still rocks…sorta the same way The Fall rocked. With as many records as Dan Melchior has already unleashed on the world you may ask yourself “do I really need another one of his albums?” When you hear Negative Freedom you will no doubt answer “YES!” Limited edition on red vinyl.
                         


Tyvek - Changing Patterns Of Protective Coating 4 song 7” EP

We are happy to be distributing this brand new, limited edition seven inch EP which the band has just pressed up themselves. If you’re on this mailing list then you are no doubt already familiar with this incredible Detroit-based band and you already know you need this. We have a couple of new Tyvek releases in the works but, in the meantime, this fantastic record should keep you tided over.


Pre-Order: CFM - Soundtrack To An Empty Room June 17 2019

AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER NOW!
CFM - Soundtrack To An Empty Room LP/CD
CFM (aka Charles Francis Moothart) is back with his third and strongest album yet! Henry Rollins says, "Something that's immediately apparent on Soundtrack is that it's a harder record than its predecessors. The shift isn't subtle but it is tremendously cool. A lot of the material for Soundtrack was written while Charles was on tour with Ty and working on the GØGGS Pre Strike Sweep album. The first two CFM efforts gave Charles the experience to work effectively on his own in the studio, the live shows infuse Soundtrack with the confidence and attitude that comes from a lot of nights playing where there are no second takes. 
Soundtrack For An Empty Room is an exciting follow up and further proof that Charles is one of those people with a lot of music in him. Such a great record.
Limited edition on blue vinyl.
Our pals at Space case Records have a new single and it’s a good one!

 

Phast Phreddie and Thee Precisions - Hungry Freaks Daddy b/w What a Friend I Have in Whiskey 7"

Forty years ago, rock scribe Phast Phreddie Patterson of Back Door Man fame formed Thee Precisions with Jeffrey Lee Pierce (Gun Club). Phreddie was known for putting LA supergroups together for Precisions recordings; “What a Friend I have in Whiskey” features Jeffrey Lee Pierce on guitar—his earliest appearance on vinyl—The Screamers’ KK Barrett on drums, Phreddie on vocals and Precisions mainstay and fellow rock writer Don Snowden on bass. The cover of the Mothers Of Invention’s Hungry Freaks Daddy is killer!! Limited to 300 copies. An essential piece of LA rock history!



Coming soon
 new stuff from: Dan Melchior Band, Victims, Dum Dum Boys, Don Howland and Burning Bus!