"Ohio has been rampant on the Ecstatic Peace play lists lately with the release of a long player earlier this year by Leslie Keffer and a forthcoming split LP by Emeralds and Tusco Terror. Like Keffer, who's moved to Nashville (to be closer to Be Your Own Pet), 16 Bitch Pile-Up and Mike Shiflet are both ex-pats of Ohio. 16 Bitch to California and Shiflet to some weird small town in Japan. Mike Shiflet we've known for years as he has produced some of the more interesting tapes and whatnot of midwestern out-ness from his Gameboy label and from his legendary duo tour with Burning Star Core/ C. Spencer Yeh of a few years back. Like the amazing beard he has sported since childhood his music is a free-fall of acoustic wonder. He is also the cat responsible for turning on most of the world to the radical charms of three girls from Ohio wickedly named 16 Bitch Pile-Up. With a name like that you may have expected something just kinda funny but what made itself imminently obvious was that 16 Bitch was really and extremely into producing a wholly personal thrombosis of noise improvisation. Crystallized to the trio of Sarah Bernat, Sarah Cathers and Shannon Walter this trio has become one of the most consistently exciting live experiences of the last five years. These recordings by both artists were done when both were still residents of Ohio and reflect that time and space right before each other's exodus. They are raw and righteous and ready for you to take a bite. Edition of 500 copies." - EP.

New edition of 500 copies solo album from one-woman noise orchestra Leslie Keffer. The whole record feels caught up in a dense blizzard of barely-legible noise tectonics, with noxious clouds of day-glo psych/noise oblivion that seem to gradually mutate into melancholy atonal nocturnes. Comes with a double-sided laser print-out insert. "When Leslie Keffer lived in Athens, OHIO she was asked about the noise scene there. "You're looking at it", she responded. Indeed. Leslie is one of the more fascinating proponents of homegrown Middle America noise music. A single girl drawn to the more ravaged and magical aspects of noise as source music, art and lifestyle. She has since moved to Nashville where she has been developing and progressing her personal take on what is basically a highly marginal genre of music. Her inputs are radio transmission wave-noise, the living aura of Lindsay Lohan, punk, pop, Madonna, her amazing girlfriends and defiltering the terror of male-centric Power Electronic depravity and goon-ism. Her last two No Fun festival performances, in duo with Thurston Moore in 2006, and the Noise into dance beat into 'Where's The Party' slumber party freak out where all the noise girls fem-exorcised an already somewhat de-clawed noise misogynist is already legendary. Leslie's sound has been heard on various cassette labels (Rampart, Gameboy, I Just Live Here, Epicene, Cherried-out Merch) and most recently her own imprint Action Claw. She has issued a number of hand-made CDRs with her own touch of knitted fabric pouches. She has two tracks on the 2XCD Tarantula Hill Benefit (Ecstatic Peace E#107), one with Baltimore's Nautical Almanac who have been championing Leslie's work for years now. We are only too happy to release this premier full-length LP of Leslie's demonstrating where she's been and where she's going." Ecstatic Peace

From alla the pre-release noise surrounding this new album from Wooden Wand you might've been led to think that was gonna be some massive misstep into the tepid waters of airbrushed mainstream oblivion for Mr James Toth. But then that's the problem with press releases; send em out to a bunch of jobbing journos and they'll swallow the program without even tasting the meat. And if any of those duds had bothered actually listening to the rec they'd have figured out that alla that 'big-time' production hoo-haa was just another red herring. Fact is James And The Quiet sounds a lot like the last few Wooden Wand albums and feels more like a further refining of the less improvisatory road that he has been heading along since The Vanishing Voice pretty much set out on their own. Which means it's a fucking doozy. Sure it has a slightly more 'produced' feel, but all that really means is that James's voice has more space to hypnotise and the arrangements seem to sit a little neater around all the kinda serpentine shapes that his quixotic song-writing logic has always seemed to demand. In fact, if anything, this album feels even more stripped back than previous entries, with James and Jessica's vocals working malevolent harmonic smoke rings around blasted country ballads with the kind of supernatural grace that will almost have you reaching for Chris D's Divine Horseman side in order to compare notes. Anyone who has caught him live recently or kept up with the archival From The Road series will recognise a bunch of the songs here but honestly, they never sounded better. So, it's another record from James, and another fucking great one. Simple as that. So can the fucking press release. Recommended.

"Bass, drum and guitars meshed together with a synthetic twine envisioned in future think tanks. Literally the sound of human progress darkened with a profound fidelity so loud the dark matter of the universe quivers in a deadly orgasm. Guitar, bass and drums reconfigured for a new purpose. This is the band's sixth album and takes the notch so much higher than previous efforts in terms of songwriting and production. With ANDREW W.K. as a producer, some of the caustic curtains that swathed past albums have been parted to reveal a coldly pulsing artificial heart. And the beat of this heart sounds off in an alien tongue of bass and drums. Guitars descend like unforgiving sheets of napalm from the smoldering skyline. Songs pop out of this miasma that tick off icy coolness with piano and vocal stylings. Indeed, hot and cool. To accentuate the difference this album has versus previous Sighting's records, a Scott Walker cover is included. This is a rock album, but a rock for times coming, a sound of future days. Break the chains from the days of past, listen to SIGHTINGS and evolve." - EP.

Torrential three way free jazz/rock pile-up that tracks all the way back to Thurston’s epochal Barefoot In The Head date with Sauter and Dietrich while instant-visioning the future via minimal, psychedelic interventions, classic Sonic Youth-sounding guitar clank and explosive sax/string bulldozing. Some of the playing here is straight-up gorgeous, with the way the group build luminous form from a bed of hovering guitars and Flaherty’s bold tenor sax form sounding like a classic late-Coltrane take on devotional hymn forms. Bill Nace (Vampire Belt/Northampton Wools et al) and Thurston’s guitars are often indistinguishable, with Nace’s up-close modified guitar style pulling Thurston into gravities of microtonal detail and subtle textural invention while Flaherty takes the lead and just bleeds all over the goddamn room. A fantastic set, way more than a mere jam, and one that feels sourced from deep inside the classic free jazz tradition. Recommended.

“Maya Miller and Michael Bernstein met in New York a decade ago, and began making music together as half of sturm und drone quartet Double Leopards a few years after that. Religious Knives came later still, away from the road and the rehearsal space, borne and nurtured in cramped apartments throughout Kings County. Beginning in 2005, the pair released a string of CD-Rs and cassettes, both on their own Heavy Tapes imprint and through the labels of kindred spirits. Steadily moving away from the psychedelic tone baths and modern industrial scrape for which the Leopards had become known, Religious Knives coursed through minimal synth oscillations and spare Kraut repetition. Mouthus' Nate Nelson joined the pair in 2006, lending a powerful presence behind the drums that shaped Religious Knives' rudimentary jams into rough-hewn, long-form paeans to tar-blackened bummer psych. Soon after that, old friend Todd Cavallo completed the quartet on bass, adding a sturdy low end and dubwise groove that lifted Religious Knives from cellar murk to black cloud puffs of bone deep alarm. An active four-piece for a little more than a year now, Religious Knives have presided over a pair of twelve-inches, a couple of collections of out of print singles and long gone burns, and one full-length. All throughout, these four have traced a path away from the clamour they once knew, bathing slight guitars, interlocking vocals, and solemn basslines in reedy organs and recalcitrant modular synths. The seemingly tin eared would call it noise, but in these eight hands such a set plays as anything but, instead a (cough) syrupy stroll in search of the ghosts of rock's classicist past. With The Door, Religious Knives have not only found those bygone days, but broken them apart. There are bookmarks to be found here, pages creased in well-worn chapters. But make no mistake - theirs is a sound tied to the here and now, a summer record for those dread days when the heat holds low and skin sticks to cheap car seats and old patio furniture. These six songs are brighter, sharper than anything that has come before, locking in tight on jugular rhythms. It's the score for disappearing neighborhoods and crumbling buildings, a hope of holding onto the past as those around us move fast to forget it. It is scent as sound, the stench of smog and sickly smoke spiraling towards the sky. It is Brooklyn, July of 2008. The sun has left us in the East, disappearing somewhere behind Jersey, leaving our borough to find the pulse of another night deep with the city's streets.” – EP.

Solo album from Matt Krefting, a member of Duck, Idea Fire Company, Face/Ass, Son Of Earth, The Believers et al. All cover versions, with tracks by Richard Thompson, Jerry Garcia, Rick Danko and more cut with the help of J. Masics and members of Sunburned Hand Of The Man and The Believers. "My "career" in music is about to enter its 13th year. Lucky 13! I've performed in at least 15 groups (probably more on the order of 20 if you count guest spots) over the years, the most prominent being the long-running "quiet music" combo Son of Earth and the short-lived-but-much hyped Believers. Historically more of an experimental man, the Believers project showcased my always right-below-the-surface interest and passion for all things rock, and so, a couple of years after the demise of that group, I was approached by Ecstatic Peace, who asked me to produce a solo record. For the better part of a year I conceptualized, recruited, and eventually came up with I Couldn't Love You More. An early attempt to marry electronics, field recordings, and song was scrapped in favor of the personal and perhaps obvious choice of producing a covers record. It was the perfect idea, the realization of a dream. Years of singing in the shower and on long car trips had given way to the stuff of fantasy. Why stick to what you know when you can reach for what you've always desired? I asked friends to help with the realization. John Moloney, Phil Franklin, Ron Schneiderman, and Rob Thomas (all of Sunburned Hand of the Man), I've known for years. Same with J Mascis. Old friends John Shaw (who I've done more music with than anyone) and Lynn Myers provide some vocals here and there, as does my wife, Jamie Jo Oltmans. The Wild Card here is John Townsend. Andrew Kesin of Ecstatic Peace introduced me to him, and he was a jack-of-all-trades. He plays on most of the tracks, sometimes exclusively, and co-produced. I chose songs from all over the map, from Rick Danko to John Martyn to the great Bill Fay. Not exactly lightweights, and quite intimidating when their full historical weight is taken into account. However, I attacked each piece with the intensity of one who truly loves these songs. I didn't concern myself with being overly arty or inventive in my interpretations (there are no truly radical re-workings of anything here), instead allowing my own emotional investment in the material to guide me and inform the other players. These are songs of love and longing. The themes are eternal. It's an honor to have had the chance to play them. Enjoy the music." - Matt Krefting, December 2008

Excellent collection of demos, home-recordings and out-takes from James Toth, recorded to portastudios between the years 2002-2007. Up-close, intimate atmosphere on this and combined with the quality of Toth's throwaways (which for anyone else would be prima material) this almost has the feel of his Nebrasaka, a series of dark, loner postcards from the other side of America that would bolster and explode traditional country, folk and ballad forms. Excellent. "To quickly address the elephant in the room - certainly, collections of demos, outtakes and home recordings are mostly bogus, but obviously you're reading this, so obviously I've somehow been coerced into releasing this batch of tunes, and you've bought it or stolen it or borrowed it or gotten a promo or whatever, so let's cut to the chase. In my defense, all of the cuts contained herein are 'songs' in the traditional western sense - my experiments in "surf harmonica" and "doom zydeco" will not be chronicled here, deep and plentiful as those archives may be. Everything here was recorded by me on either a Roland BR-8 digital 8-track or it's flashier, more cosmopolitan cousin, the BR- 1600, with incalculable assistance from Jexie Lynn, who accompanies me on many of these songs and who's encouragement and creativity allowed many of them to be. Most of the recordings were done at my then-home in beautiful Knoxville, TN between October 2002 and January of 2007, just prior to the retirement of the Wooden Wand name.  You've already pardoned the narcissism, now pardon the cliche: I stand behind these songs as snapshots and enjoy them despite their many flaws. I hope you do, too." - Wand.