FRIENDS RECORDS IS A RECORD LABEL BASED IN BALTIMORE, MD. THIS IS OUR SPRING 2017 LINEUP + CATALOGUE. ENJOY.
OH HANG ––– COUNTRY MY SKULL 1. Conquistador Hop (05:19) 2. Sisters (03:57) 3. Oasis In Slow Motion (04:15) 4. You’re Waking Me Up (03:42) 5. Country My Skull (03:51) 6. Memory In The Slow Devour (05:10) 7. Dzoura (04:01)
Tongues Out SWEEPSTAKES
1. Great City (03:32) 2. Invitational (02:44) 3. Tongues Out (05:06) 4. Deserts And Dungeons (02:59) 5. Hands In The Air (03:30) 6. Crowd (04:55) 7. Beach Flex (02:48) 8. Table Shake (02:32) 9. Special (04:25) 10. Bad Enough (03:07) 11. Get You Alone (02:35) 12. This Feeling (03:35)7. Only 8. Dock 9. Brogue 10. Rule 11. Tips 12. Jewel
Shroud CHESTER ENDERSBY GWAZDA
1. World Killer (01:33) 2. Globes (03:18) 3. Sun Burner (01:44) 4. Baby’s Bones (01:12) 5. Skewed (03:39) 6. Debbie Drowner (01:44) 7. Another Life (01:29) 8. Changing Your Life (Future Islands Cover) (02:37)
She Is Me NATURAL VELVET
1. Sewn Through (03:27) 2. Skin (04:23) 3. Fruits (03:37) 4. She Is Me (06:27) 5. Subterrain (Black & White) (03:58) 6. Crash! (03:47) 7. Perfect Roleplay (02:32) 8. When You Come (01:51) 9. Swell (05:12) 10. Psyche Skullfuck (02:51) 11. MM (05:58)
All items come with a download code for the entire record as well as album art.
Angel BLISS
1. Angel (04:39) 2. Cake (03:38) 3. Still (03:20) 4. Angel (Couples Counseling Remix) (06:30) 5. Cake (Permanent Remix) (04:03
Creature of Nature OUTER SPACES
1. Creature Of Nature (03:56) 2. Roy (03:23) 3. Do I Sound Like Myself Now (03:45) 4. Grey (02:53) 5. Forget (03:05) 6. Changing My Stride (04:03)
PEALS
BUY LOCAL HONEY The Musicians Behind Honey, Future Islands, and Double Dagger
William Cashion (Future Islands) and Bruce Willen (ex-Double Dagger) recorded much of Honey in Willen’s Baltimore home. Together they build rapturous melodies of interlocking and looped guitars that channel kosmische musik, ‘70s Eno, and new wave hooks à
la Robert Smith into abovethe-clouds dreamscapes. Unexpected and delicate textures—wind, bells, the whirs of a film projector— situate listeners in the elemental immediacy of Peals performances, which take place in art galleries or open fields as often as traditional music venues.
Natural Velvet is Corynne Ostermann (bass, vocals), Greg Hatem (drums), Spike Arreaga (guitar) and Kim Te (guitar). The post-punk quartet is known in their native Baltimore for a distinct sound that is both aggressive and catchy. Framed by washing guitars, vocals that alternately howl and harmonize, and throbbing drum sounds, Natural Velvet creates music that moves between gazey indie pop and guttural, “wall of sound” noise rock. Aggressive bass
lines throughout tie together a dark and foreboding framework, ultimately leaving the listener with haunting melody and hypnotic rhythm. At times confrontational, at times seductive, Ostermann’s vocals guide the listener through dark rolling narratives of identity, existence and femininity. Natural Velvet has played with a variety of national acts, including Cayetana, Crocodiles, Ex Hex, Guerilla Toss, PC Worship, Thin Lips and many more, and has
played festivals such as CMJ, Ladyfest Baltimore, Artscape, and Ratscape. Active in the underground music scene, the band has performed in both commercial and DIY spaces in native Baltimore and beyond. RIYL Siouxsie Sioux and the Banshees, The Birthday Party, Cocteau Twins, Hole, Sonic Youth, Bauhaus, Ride, alien movies, feminist content, villainesses, etc.
NATURAL VELVET CREATES MUSIC THAT MOVES BETWEEN GAZEY INDIE POP AND GUTTURAL, “WALL OF SOUND” NOISE ROCK.
OXES – BILE STBUDY Baltimore, Maryland’s Oxes are back with their first U.S. release since 2005. Marc Miller, Chris Freeland, and Nat Fowler have a 7” and 12” due out before the end of 2011. In the past 6 years their appearances have been sporadic, including two Baltimore Whartscape festivals, one of which they performed under the spotlights of police helicopters, the other closed off from the audience in an abandoned storefront. They’ve not wasted any time though. Miller has been involved in multiple Baltimore based projects including
Microkingdom which debuted their first proper LP, Three Compositions of No Jazz, via Friends Records earlier this year. Freeland has released multiple solo records and has produced the likes of Lower Dens, Wye Oak and Double Dagger in his Beat Babies recording studio, and Fowler has pioneered confrontational Karaoke in Berlin with Pantyload and explored the science of the Atari ST and Acid House with his projects Novoline and Tru Funk Posse. Oxes subscribes to the philosophy that good songs are more important than
mediocre full-length albums, so when they assemble they write 5 songs and throw out 4. Their current international status translates into EPs and 1” extended remix singles. The Bile Stbudy 12” features new songs produced by Freeland, including “Crunchy Zest”, “Orange Jeweleryist”, and “Bile Stbudy”. This item comes with a download code for the entire record.
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All vinyl records are produced to be played at either 33 1/3 RPM or 45 RPM. Most of the full-size 12-inch records we offer will be 33 1/3 RPM, though some — mainly EPs and maxisingles — will be at 45 RPM.
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Friends Records announces the following new albums on vinyl:
You Look Smashing RAINDEER
1. This is Rock N’ Roll 2. I Dunno 3. Blasting 4. Slayer
We’ll All Collide Moss of Aura
1. Wheels 2. Brink 3. Compound 4. Dim 5. Don’t 6. Fools
7. Only 8. Dock 9. Brogue 10. Rule 11. Tips 12. Jewel
Honey PEALS
1. Become Younger 2. Wind Honey 3. Essential Attitudes 4. Tehachapi Loop 5. Punk Migration
6. Trillium 7. Grapefruit 8. Pink Cloud 9. Koan 2
Glow Ahead WING DAM
1. Feel Real 2. Dig 3. Beached 4. How To Swim 5. I’m Wild 6. Ride Or Die 7. Re-Move Me
8. Mostly Concrete 9. She Clouds 10. Job 11. Real Life Dream 12. Smoke Entwined
Shivers
BLACKSAGE
1. Reciprocity 2. All Alone 3. Shivers 4. Free Range 5. Make Out Interlude
6. Sight See 7. Slow Down 8. Possess Me 9. Outro / Hidden Hymn
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IN T E R W IT H OX
When I asked Miller for an interview, he made a half-hearted attempt at shrugging me off, calling himself a “lousy interviewee.” The self-deprecation is a little ironic considering that his
Friends Records’ Soundcloud page mentions that the “Strong Enough” cover has been “hidden in the vaults for years.” It has. We recorded it back in October of 2001, when we were recording our second record [Oxxxes] in Chicago. We knew Will [Oldham], and we knew Bob Weston who recorded it and played bass on the track, and somehow in conversation it had come out that we all had an affinity for Sheryl Crow. So it’s been sitting around for 11 years. Well, we played it live with Will three times: once in a basement in Baltimore, once in Bordeaux when we opened for him, and once at All Tomorrow’s Parties. We never had a good B-side for it. There were various ideas. For a while we wanted to put it out
two main projects are the bombastic, mathy Oxes and the bombastic, avantjazzy Microkingdom — whose drummer Will Redman often extemporizes absurd and long
with a Baltimore club remix on the B-side — we were trying to spread the word about Baltimore club before people really knew about it. We had a bunch of covers under our belts at that time. We recorded them ourselves in the hopes we’d add vocals to them later. We did this one in pretty quick fashion — we sent it to Will in Kentucky, and he recorded his vocals with his brother and added all that feedback that you hear. None of that feedback is Oxes? It’s all Will. A lot of our covers tend to be more straightforward, which maybe doesn’t even make sense.
introductions to the band’s improvisations while a seated Miller waits patiently to start playing and occasionally breaks into a smile.
What other cover songs has Oxes recorded? At that recording session we recorded five covers. But [“Strong Enough”]’s the only one we had someone put vocals on. The other stuff is lingering around, instrumental versions of things. One of them got released — our cover of “Everlong” by the Foo Fighters. It got released as a B-side. We played that slow and faithful; I played all the vocal parts on guitar.
How did “I’m on Fire” come about? Most of the time you hear Sam sing, it’s not really my thing — that’s not the Sam I like. But I work at the record store, so I hear all the Future Islands records — and sometimes he’s mellow-Sam and I’m like, He’s got a great mellow-voice. I don’t think of Sam as anything like Bruce Springsteen, but he’s a great choice for the song — it’s so moody. My first exposure to Sam singing was me just thinking, Why is Bruce Springsteen
wearing all white? And then I got to know him — and he’s a super sweetie, and we got along really well. And I thought we should take this Springsteen thing to the logical extreme and record this song that I’m obsessed with and always have been. Springsteen in general isn’t my bag, but that song kills me. And it’s so short, and that’s part of the idea — like, Man, this song should be long. The rims shots are still there. When you hear the whole thing I think it all makes sense.
1. Peppermint Crab (02:48) 2. Aire Metal (05:42) 3. Real Constituent Planets (00:55) 4. Gamut Runner pt. 1 (09:11) 5. Gamut Runner pt. 2 (07:15) 6. DKR RZR (00:37) 7. The Myth of the Rainy Night (04:35) 8. Surgery Ghosts (06:38)
NO JAZZ A psychosonic curatorial adventure Microkingdom (Baltimore, MD) is a psychosonic curatorial adventure led by Dr. Will Redman (percussion) and Marc Miller (OXES) (guitar), and usually John Dierker (reeds). The music exists in both the
acoustic and electro acoustic realms. They specialize in zone variance of extra-cognitive spiritual magnetism, or No Jazz. It is transbehavioral, multivalent, history-dependent composition.
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USB Port with Cable included for Converting Vinyl Records to Digital Format, with Software Included for Recording, Editing and Converting Your Audio Content to MP3 Format
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Power Indicator, Auto Stop Switch, Dust Cover. Power: AC 120V 60Hz. If you are purchasing and shipping to an international country, product may be damaged if you do not have have the correct voltage requirements.
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Auxiliary Input Jack for Connecting Your iPod, MP3 or other Digital Audio Players. Includes RCA Line-out Jacks and Stereo Headphone Jack
Pitch Control for Adjusting the Record Speed; Volume Control, Tone Control
Friends Records has teamed up with TRNTBL to create custom Belt Driven 3-Speed Stereo Turntable 33/45/78 RPM with Stereo Speaker System.
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2212 HARGROVE ST BALTIMORE, MD 21218 UNITED STATES
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