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What we're doing these days is the
Dark Beloved Cloud Singles Club--a series of 3-inch CD singles
that you get for art, not money! (Kind of like Artist Trading Cards... but
with extra music, and different dimensions.) Click for
the whole story. And have a look at some of the artwork that other subscribers have
done! Want new-release info, tour
dates and idle speculation emailed to you occasionally? Click to join the Cloudburst mailing list. If you're in the U.S. and
prefer to pay with a credit card (or directly from your checking account),
you can do it through PayPal! See details below. |
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NEWLY PRECIPITATED DBC255 Fly Ashtray Doodnat
Mahadeo
mini-CD Ten gyroscopically balanced
songs in nineteen minutes by NYC's immortal (they've been at this for 25
years!), inimitable, incredible weirdo rockers. Features live favorite
"Chrome Jefferson" and guest appearances by a horn section that
appears to be several sheets to the wind. Only available to singles club subscribers! DBC253 Grace Braun's
"The Soldier & The Lady" mini-CD Two trad.-arr. wonders from
the indelible voice of D.Q.E., "The Soldier & The Lady" and
"The Fox." Just Grace and a guitar, recorded on location on Earth,
the way these songs were intended to be. Only available to singles club subscribers! |
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ALSO AVAILABLE DBC252 Melt-Banana/Fat
Day Q./A.
split mini-CD Tokyo's scalding
skronk-tornado Melt-Banana torch Devo's "Uncontrollable Urge";
Boston's mind-mangling Fat Day contribute their version of the same band's
"Timing-X," then head out beyond the potato stratosphere with two
original... sound-things. Only available to singles club subscribers! DBC250 The Cannanes' Grassy
Flat mini-CD An exquisite four-song EP by
the magnificent, long-running Australian pop band: sinuous, insinuating,
comfortably personal, graced with a solitary trumpet. Only available to singles club subscribers! DBC251 The Nanobot
Auxiliary Ballet and the Museum of Modern Insect Art with the Office of
Woodland Security, and the Evil House of Handshakes, Present: Tylanolandadida
- The Deadly Ballerina - Featuring: The Chillbotslider, the Pushbuttonmaster,
and the WhiteHotFunkBot - And Introducing: The Doodads of Doom and the Recipe
Box of Spells' Thank
You Very Much For Coming: A Concept Single about Small Things in 3 Parts with
Lecture and Slideshow by Mr. Billy Mavreas mini-CD Er... yes. Exactly. The
Canadian "hand-cranked electronica" group that evolved from the
legendary Pest 5000 have come up with a very high-concept EP with some fine
bleepy-bloopy songs on it. Only available to singles club subscribers! DBC249 Ida's
"Wait" mini-CD Three rich, expansive and
daydreamy songs from the New Yorkers with the tenderest three-part harmonies
on the planet, recorded at the sessions for their Heart Like a River album. Only available to singles club subscribers! DBC248 The In Out's Fragmento mini-CD A five-song EP by Boston's
most knife-twisting garage-rock band, who've evolved into something stickier
and slitherier, all brains and viscera. Includes a Jethro Tull cover, of all
things. Only available to singles club subscribers! DBC247 Barbara Manning
& the Go-Luckys!' "Deep Sea Diver" mini-CD Three brief, serrated bursts
of double-distilled bittersweetness from the amazing Californian songwriter
and her faithful German band, Only available to singles club subscribers! DBC245 Franklin Bruno's Set
of Pipes
mini-CD Seven songs (well, six,
really) from the Nothing Painted Blue/Jenny Toomey songwriter, organized
around the idea of voice, both literal and political. Includes an absolutely
staggering cover of Brecht/Eisler's "Ballad of the Soldier." Only
available to singles club subscribers! DBC244 ninetynine's
"Receiving the Sounds of Science Fiction" mini-CD Five new songs from
Melbourne, Australia's Laura MacFarlane and company--everybody gets to write
a song of his or her own this time, and everything swirls against the rocks
and sends up spray. Only available to singles club subscribers! DBC242 Cordelia's Dad's
"Jane" mini-CD Two faces of this awesome,
long-running trio with roots in music much older than they are: a
bone-chilling trad. arr. acoustic epic about a terrible, terrible mistake,
plus a pair of crest-and-crash electric monsoons. Only available to singles club subscribers! DBC241 Oedipus's
"Hybrid Phase Yellow" mini-CD Alig (from Family Fodder)
and Ann-Marte Rygh collaborate on a delicately vertiginous 15-minute voice
vortex. Only available to singles club subscribers!
DBC239 Cantilever mini-CD A celebration of ten years
of Dark Beloved Cloud, with a whole bunch of artists intersecting each
other's work. Hrvatski remixes God Is My Co-Pilot, Uncle Wiggly blazes
full-on live, Azalia Snail reconfigures Spaceheads, Robert Scott overdubs Liz
Bustamante, Alan Smithee covers the In Out, and Sinistre disintegrates
pHoaming Edison. Only available to singles club subscribers! DBC238 Family Fodder's
"Tender Words" mini-CD A new wave song about making
love not war, a twitchy bit of dub, two brief conversations about making a
point, and a traditional chanson about making love not war (which was illegal to perform in
France until the mid-'70s). Only available to singles club subscribers!
DBC237 DQE & Grace
Braun's I'm Your Girl double-CD Two albums' worth of
Atlanta's most astonishing songwriter. Grace Braun is a kick-ass rockabilly
singer/guitarist with a voice like nothing you've ever heard. She plays wild
electric rock 'n' roll with her long-running trio DQE, and acoustic old-time
country and folk music under her own name. I'm Your Girl is actually two albums with the same
name, showing off both sides of Grace: one disc is a finely drawn acoustic
pastoral, the other one a brawling, hollering electric hootenanny. 37 songs
in all (well, 36--she tackles the title tune both ways), including covers of
Nick Drake, the Carter Family, Daniel Johnston and, er, Robert Frost. And the
whole thing is only $13 postpaid! Want to hear some MP3s first? There are
four on Grace's own site, here. DBC236 Fat Day's Fat
Day IV CD Boston's insane art-hardcore
veterans Fat Day included an "Order Your Own Fat Day Song!"
postcard with their album Burrega! This is the result of the postcards they got back: 21
songs written by 21 Fat Day fans. It's the accomplishment of their career,
one of the most alien punk records ever made: they've taken a stylistic leap
in all directions at once, and the result is pretty incredible. It took two
years to make, culminating in a sewer-pipe rupture that covered their entire
studio and all of their equipment in human feces. As they put it, "so
Fat Day it hurts." You can see all the original postcards and other
"scores" here (link now fixed)--we recommend it very highly. $10 postpaid. DBC234 Purple Ivy
Shadows' Field Guide CD Purple Ivy Shadows creep up
on you. Their fifth album is the high point of over ten years of the
Providence, RI quartet's search for the perfect drone through foggy shoegazer
rock, heartbroken country, and the roaring buzz of the bayou. It's their
warmest and darkest record to date, slow and rich, dense with detail and
instrumental crosstalk. Field Guide includes devastating live favorites like "Oh My
Word" and "Deepstep in a Baptist" that have never made it to a
CD before, and it flows like molten glass--the perfect synthesis of
"cosmic American music" and kosmische Krautbuzz. $10 postpaid. DBC233 Dark Beloved
Cloud Singing Catalogue II CD A small present for you: a
3-inch CD with 17 brief new songs by dbc artists and friends: Franklin Bruno,
Hrvatski, Jad Fair, Purple Ivy Shadows, Robert Scott, Azalia Snail, Greenpot
Bluepot, pHoaming Edison, Grace Braun of DQE, Chris Knox, ORTHO, Oedipus,
Sinistre, Tara Needham, Fly Ashtray, Family Fodder, and God Is My Co-Pilot.
Specially engineered to make you want to buy stuff here! Want one gratis?
Here's how: send a note to sing [at-sign] darkbelovedcloud.com, and tell us
your name, your address, and (this is important) your happiest music-related
memory. DBC231 Azalia Snail's Brazen
Arrows CD Azalia's eleventh solo album
is a major change for her--she's put down her guitar and picked up an
Omnichord (the chiming autoharp-like keyboard favored by Chris Knox) and a
new affection for the color of the sky at daybreak. Brazen Arrows is a different, abstractly expansive
breed of juice-drizzled psychedelic whispering, warmed by the West Coast sun
and inspired by clock chimes and 8-track-tape mirages. The sweetness is front
and center; the pungent overtones buzz around it. $10 ppd. DBC229 DQE's The Queen
of Mean CD Grace Braun returns to the
rock with 19 songs that deserve to have appeared on Sun 45s--rockabilly,
gospel and a Half Japanese cover--not just because they rock so rawly but
because they shine so radiantly. As a bonus, if you order The Queen of
Mean directly from
DBC and mention this offer, we'll include a free copy of DQE's "Tell Me
Why The Ivy Twines," a 1994 7-inch single on Colossal Records of which
we located a stash. $10 ppd. DBC228 Mass Producers' Performances
for Large Saxophone Ensemble CD The Mass Producers are
Caroline Kraabel's twenty-woman saxophone ensemble; they surround their
audience from every side, and ROAR. They've been playing all over Great Britain
and Europe for the last few years, and they've finally recorded their
repertoire: two very long, mind-expanding compositions by Kraabel. Robin
Edgerton of Other Music writes: "As the overtones accumulate (think
Terry Riley's 'In C'), so does the intensity -- you can just imagine some
sort of massive energy being coming to life in the air above them, curling
and yawning and stretching in a ravishing asymmetry." Couldn't have put
it better ourselves. Also, in keeping with Caroline's tradition of including
handmade elements with all her releases (see also Now We Are One Two, below), there's a different
photograph on the cover of every copy of PLSE. $10 ppd. DBC227 The In Out's A
Living Memorial In Deutschland CD Boston's hottest and
harshest band, rocking like nobody has since Rough Trade 1981. The recorded
document of the molten four-piece lineup that toured Europe with Sebadoh, and
the third and final installment in the trilogy "Cosmosis of the
Cosmopolites." The In Out would like to note that "a 'living'
memorial is that which lives on in your DNA." $10 ppd. DBC226 Family Fodder's Water
Shed CD The first new Family Fodder
album in 17 years. Dominique Levillain (now a writer and teacher living in
California) and Alig Fodder (lately recording as Johnny Human and living in
London) got together to celebrate the release of Savoir Faire (see below), and ended up writing a
big bunch of new songs. And here's the thing: they're great. Graceful, funny, catchy, deep--like
they never went away. Original Fodder drummer Rick Wilson, bassist Martin
Harrison and percussionist Cecile Rabhi jumped on the train; they recorded
all over Europe for a couple of months, brought in some friends to play bass
clarinet and Uillean pipes, and ultimately came up with the wonderful Water
Shed. It pulses and
leaps and purrs and dubs like nobody'd ever discovered boredom. $10 ppd. DBC224 pHoaming Edison's Happy
Nap Casino CD The return of James
Kavoussi, the man who's played on more Dark Beloved Cloud releases than
anyone else (he's also in Fly Ashtray, Uncle Wiggly and the Hattifatteners),
not to mention one of the most unusual songwriters and song-titlers we've
ever heard. A whole bunch of chewy, twisty little new songs, a few pH
classics upgraded with a full-on band, and some covers that now have amnesia
about their former owners. One admirer has described it as "like
Television playing early Boredoms," which is completely wrong but less
completely wrong than some other descriptions we could imagine. $10 ppd. DBC223 Fly Ashtray's Sawgrass
Subligette CD Formed in 1983, Fly Ashtray
are the captains of a scene that's been bubbling ever since then--the Trouser
Press Record Guide
calls them "one of New York's most musically adventurous and rewarding
bands," and they bridge the gap between the city's tradition of smart,
tricky, wiry guitar bands and its new breed of twisted sound-sculptors.
They've spent the last few years recording mountains of material and
reworking and processing it in their infamous Brooklyn space
Rubulad--sometimes into tense, whiplash-swift song forms, sometimes into
abstract smears of sound, more often both at once. With songwriting and mix
contributions from all four members (as well as a couple of bass alumni), Sawgrass
Subligette is their
richest disc to date, playing up both their non-obvious sense of humor and
their dizzying sonic intensity. $10 ppd. DBC222 The Magick Heads' Transvection CD "Transvection" is
the act of riding through the air on a stick or a broom, and The Magick Heads'
glorious ride spanned almost a decade. Natives of Dunedin, New Zealand,
driven by the songwriting prowess of Robert Scott (of the Bats and the Clean)
and the throbbingly gorgeous singing of Jane Sinnott, they released two
exquisite albums on Flying Nun and a couple of EPs. Before they called it a
day, they assembled this collection of levitational performances from their
entire career: studio recordings, live tracks, radio sessions and 4-track
demos--13 never-heard songs and three radically different versions of Magick
Heads classics. Delicious he sang/she sang harmonies, the savory friction of
acoustic guitars against electrics, backing by members of the 3Ds--it's all
here, and it's all exquisite. $10 ppd. DBC221 Azalia Snail's Soft
Bloom CD Recorded in NYC and England,
Soft Bloom has a
happiness and openness that's new to Azalia's work; the stars shine for her
in the daytime now, too, and they've shed a new light on her legendary taste
for rare and sweet instrumental noises. The album has little bursts of pretty
sound erupting everywhere, like tiny flowers blooming softly. Bits of it
sound like the backwards whistling of microscopic birds, others like
dream-logic neural patterns transplanted into Saturnian android bodies, and
she sings with a gentle, spacy joy that's new to her. $10. DBC220 Chris Knox's Almost CD Ten new songs from the king
of New Zealand rock. Written over the last 10 years, blasted onto tape in a
single day. Includes the international oughtta-be-a-hit "Don't Worry, B
Major." Unremittingly catchy. $7--such a deal! DBC219 World (of
Dreams)'s Who Is Yahdoosh? CD World (Of Dreams) is Wm.
Berger, genius guitarist of Uncle Wiggly, DJ who spearheaded the Krautrock
revival with his WFMU show "The Hip Bone," and occasional member of
Smack Dab, the Gamma Rays and Princess Superstar. This is his homage to and
fantasia on the sound he loves: the sound of Faust, Harmonia and Karuna
Khyal, of steam-thick, mind-warping textures, prickly electronic drones and
spidery psychedelic guitar. The first album in this series, World Without
End, was a
limited-edition LP that sold out almost instantly. Who Is Yahdoosh? is a series of five psychic
phenomena manifested as extended audio dreams of the secret Autobahn exit in
Brooklyn; it's also got three tracks from World Without End, and three more previously
unreleased bonus tracks. Timeless and ecstatic, this album will pulse its way
into your genes. $10. DBC217 The
Hattifatteners' Rabbit Rabbit CD Occupying an aesthetic space
exactly halfway between Can and the Shaggs, the Hattifatteners have had
dozens of members wander through their ranks. The present disc involves
several stray members of God Is My Co-Pilot, Chan (Cat Power) Marshall, Syd
Straw, Alexa Firat (of the original Silver Jews), James Kavoussi (of Fly Ashtray),
a 14-year-old violinist, and a number of people who only speak Finnish. With
a whole bunch of new stuff as well as selections from their sought-after,
long-out-of-print EPs Vogue Bambini and Constantly On The Move, Rabbit Rabbit is a testament to the power of
positive peculiarity, love for Finnish children's books and what can happen
when improvisation, songwriting and claw-hammer-style tape-splicing meet.
$10. DBC216 Uncle Wiggly's Farfetchedness
CD Uncle Wiggly's sixth
full-length release and their masterpiece to date, a 74-minute instrumental
CD that took three years to record, and a dazzlingly intricate, nuanced piece
of on-the-cheap studio genius. Imagine if Henry Cow and the early-'80s Fall
had collaborated on a wordless psychedelic album, or if The Faust Tapes had fermented for 25 years before
poking its head up, and you'll be on the right track. Shivering guitar-rock
sandstorms, tangly overdubbed/edited improvisations and sampladelic home
recordings link arms and somersault forward in tandem, magically shaping
forms out of the chaos and vice versa. We have been listening to this nonstop
since Uncle Wiggly gave us the master recording, and we are thrilled to be
releasing this deep, rich, mindbendingly great record. $10. DBC214 Dreams Are Free
(With Purchase)
compilation CD Otherwise unavailable songs
from Attitude & Couture, Grace Braun, the Magick Heads, Spaceheads, Jad
Fair, the Shock Exchange, pHoaming Edison, God Is My Co-Pilot, Dymaxion,
Sarge, Alan Smithee, Uncle Wiggly, Marion Coutts & Caroline Kraabel,
Purple Ivy Shadows, the Autumn Teen Sound, the In Out, Kleenex Girl Wonder,
Azalia Snail, Fly Ashtray and World Without End. $10. DBC212 Spaceheads' Ho!
Fat Wallet CD
A reissue of their earliest
cassette and singles from 1989 and 1990, back when this
trumpet/drums/electronics duo was crisp, crazed and even kind of rock. $10. DBC211 The Magick Heads' Lazy
Ways CD EP Four brief, beautiful songs
by the New Zealand wonders including Robert Scott (of the Bats and the
Clean), Jane Sinnott (who channels Sandy Denny here) and their new rhythm
section. $3. DBC210 God Is My
Co-Pilot's Je Suis Trop Content CD EP Recorded in a jiffy for
their Euro-tour: 15 songs, 40 minutes, including covers of Spaceheads, France
Gall, the Carter Family and Beausoleil. Lotsa fun. $7--not available anywhere
else! DBC209 Azalia Snail's Breaker
Mortar CD An hour of mostly
instrumental raw delights from the Snail, plus a surprisingly wonderful
trip-hop experiment (!). $10. DBC207 Caroline Kraabel's
Now We Are One Two CD Honkies leader goes solo
with a very out-there solo-saxophone-and-voice album. Imagine if Arthur Doyle
were obsessed with Swell Maps. Incredible handmade cover. $10. DBC206 Fly Ashtray's Flummoxed CD EP Great, weird, veteran NYC
band moves into a new studio and spikes its bizarro rock with smears of
tapework and sampler-abstraction. Half an hour long, $7. DBC205 DQE & Jad
Fair's self-titled collaboration CD A lovely
sitting-on-the-back-porch-making-up-songs kind of album from this odd team.
Includes new songs, a couple of traditional tunes, some improvised numbers
and a musical game or two. $10. DBC204 Spaceheads'
self-titled CD First full-length from this London-based
trumpet/drum electro-acoustic dub-improv duo. Think Pram, Sun Ra, Tackhead,
Dog Faced Hermans (whose Marion sings one track). Amazing, unique stuff. $10.
DBC203 phoaming Edison's Sold
To The Second Highest Grady CD An all-new collection of 36
brilliant pop/noise home recordings, including some surprising covers.
Imagine if GBV drank less and did more unusual drugs. Beautiful letterpress
package, too. $10. DBC202/TMOA020 God Is My
Co-Pilot's Puss 02 CD 29 new songs, a cast of
thousands of musicians, masterful, witty, original and startlingly fresh.
Their best album to date by a wide margin. $10. DBC037 World Without
End's "World Without End III" 7" A sequel to the
long-since-sold-out LP: a long, pulsing drone-throb by the incomparable Wm.
Berger. Gorgeous minimalism, in form and content. One-sided, lathe-cut in New
Zealand, strictly limited to 100 copies, and individually hand-etched on the
obverse by Laura Leila. $5 ppd. DBC035 The In Out's CosmOsis LP First full-length from this
awesome and snarly Boston band of Fall fans. A co-release with Oblivion
Recordings and Viscera-Versa. $7. DBC033 Purple Ivy
Shadows' Whoever's South Is Northern Also LP 5 new songs, 3 lovely demos,
lathe-cut and limited to 100 copies, gorgeous silkscreened sleeve by Brian
Chippendale. $12. DBC028 Mr. Quark's Enjoy
Nuoc-Mam With Mr. Quark 7" EP We'd thought it was out of
print, but then we found a small stash of this unforgettable mini-pop opera
by four French teenagers about a superhero who pretends he's a postman and
ends up getting killed by a pile of socks that turn into devils. Really. $3. DBC027 pHoaming Edison Sold
To The Highest Grady
LP 30 amazing 4-track pop songs
and noise creatures in 47 minutes. Rich & crunchy. $7. DBC025 Sympathy For
Count Pococurante, Vol. 1 7" EP Infidelity from infidels. A
six-course banquet from Napalm Parade, God Is My Co-Pilot, Flying Saucer,
Princess Superstar, The Mad Scene and S!T!O!I!N!K!. $3. DBC020 The Clean's
"Late Last Night" 7" Exactly like the good part of
your favorite song. Pure unconnected transcendence. $3. DBC019 Fifth
Column/Trailer Queen split single Two songs dressed to the
nines in the hip boots of your youth. The ultimate in kiss-off girl-pop. $3. DBC017 God Is My
Co-Pilot's "Su Vot Vot Esta Su Voz" 7" Two songs, two minutes, two
dollars. "...too cool!"--C. Flanagin. Yes, it's $2 postpaid. DBC014 Uncle Wiggly's
"Make You Crawl" 7" Awesome bouncealong pop:
more songs about doubt, and a pink elephant. $3. DBC005 VPN's Penny 7" EP Four or five songs on a
very, very yellow record from the Very Pleasant Neighbor. Prepare to be snuck
up on. $3. |
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plus, from THE MAKING OF
AMERICANS' fine catalog (& friends) The Abraham Lincolns' Standing
By My Window Looking At The Rain 7" EP The 1983 lineup of Half
Japanese, more or less, plays the real folk blues. Four songs, six tracks,
including a Nirvana cover. $3. D.Q.E.'s Jump On In CD 18 new songs by the rough,
beautiful, soulful duo of Grace Braun and Dugan Trodglen. Should have been on
78s. $10. Jad Fair's Gunfighter
Ballads And Songs Of The Old West 7" EP Like it says. Nine or ten
songs. Must be heard to be believed. $3. and lots of God Is My
Co-Pilot things: I Am Not This Body CD The first album. Rough, religious
and flush with its own power--a band learning what's at its command. 34
songs. $10. Speed Yr Trip CD Album #2. Almost live in the
studio, battering through 26 songs in 35 minutes, a pure adrenaline shot to
the heart. $10. How To Be CD Album #7. Sustained vision,
artful production, 19 musicians, 23 songs, rocks, does many things besides
"rock." Wow. $10. Children Can Be So
Cruel CD EP An import on the Swiss label
Miguel, an extension of the Puss 02 flip-out: eight songs, including traditional Javanese
and Schwabisch tunes, a toy accordion solo, and lots of fun machines. $7. |
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All prices include postage
in the U.S. Make checks payable to Dark Beloved
Cloud. If you're overseas, add a couple of dollars to the total of your
order. If you prefer to pay with a credit card or bank transfer, you can also
send a PayPal payment to dbcloud@panix.com, and email me the details
of your order and your address (this now works in a lot of other countries,
too). Please note: we are no
longer in New York, if you have that address! Send letters, music, money
and cards for singles club subscriptions to and hey, thanks for asking
again... |
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Check out links to our bands' pages elsewhere!. Got any questions? Send mail
to cloud [at-sign] darkbelovedcloud.com. This page was last modified March 30, 2009 |