Railcars – Cities vs Submaries 7″ (preorder)

A1. there is ice; it is blue
A2. saints are waiting for me, (outside my door)
B1. concrete buildings
B2. through the trees lay smokestacks
B3. bohemia is without a sea

Label: Gold Robot Recordings:
Buy/Listen: From the Band

From yesterday’s Bonnie “Prince” Billy post comes this record from Railcars (formerly Aria C Jalali), which is also forthcoming on Gold Robot Recordings (pre-order now; 500 copies). Electronic malfunctions, random noises, and blown-out buzzings layered over some intense melodies. Reminds me of Xiu Xiu crossed with Wolf Parade or Frog Eyes, which is suiting since it was recorded by Jamie Stewart himself, and he has shared a stage with Wolf Parade side project Handsome Furs. I can get behind this, especially “Bohemia is Without a Sea” with all of its jerks and glitches. Check it out!

Bonnie “Prince” Billy – Notes for Future Lovers 7″

A1 – Notes For Future Lovers
B1 – Donde Esta Prufrock

Label: Gold Robot Records
Buy: From the Label

I love how Oldham is always randomly releasing records – this 7″ kind of came out of nowhere. At 500 copies, this 7″ should go quick, so act now or ebay later.

The Hozac Gold Rush!

From the Hozac mailing list!

We have three brand new releases, ready for your sticky, soiled hands!

HZR-018  BLACK ORPHAN – Video Kids 7″ EP
From the ominous depths of hell’s inner circle, Black Orphan rises up and takes off where Spider left off, and their slimey drooling of punk’s primordial ooze seeps into every exposed pore on your body, languishing and writhing with emotional destitution. Four ethereal tomes that decapitate, reverberate, and exacerbate the unruly demons that live deep in your mind, these songs allow you to walk through walls, see through clothing, and transcribe weird animalistic codes that only owls and sloths can truly understand, yet their presence in your life is unmistakably prerequisite. First 150 Gold editions come with alternate ‘Lunar Lobotomy’ sleeve design.

HZR-019  JACUZZI BOYS – Island Ave. 7″ EP
Miami, Florida’s Jacuzzi Boys have captured the heart of a nation (well, not exactly Milwaukee after last weekend, but hey…) with their mystically jangling, gypsy-tinged haunting songs that stick with you right on contact.  With a stellar debut 7″ last year in Floridas Dying and a recent tour with King Khan and the Shrines almost wrapped up, these three off-center souls drift back and forth between contagious melodic anthems of delirium, and bonafide modern classics destined to entertain generations of weirdos for years to come. First 150 Gold editions come with alternate ‘Tongue of the Snake’ sleeve design.

HZR-020  DUTCHESS and the DUKE – ‘Never Had A Chance’ b/w ‘Scorpio’ 7″
If you’ve ever been seriously in love with the magical ’65-66 era of the Rolling Stones songbook, and wished someone would take it upon themselves to capture that scintillating and raw sound for the contemporary stage, the Dutchess and the Duke are prime for your new favorite band slot. Jesse from Fe Fi Fo Fums, along with Kimberly of numerous Seattle bands (Rat Fancy, Flying Dutchmen, Unnatural Helpers, etc) have come into your life with a sound that’s as irresistible as the originals that inspired them. This single contains two exclusive cuts not on the debut LP, and first 150 Gold editions come with alternate ‘Half-tone Z Face’ sleeve design.

all ordering information is listed below so please get your copies right away if you “need” the gold edition.
(NOTE: *need = plasma, oxygen, bread, water  *want = records, fancy sunglasses, expensive sandwiches)

Ordering Info:

Sorry, but we have to limit the Gold Editions to ONE copy PER release title, PER order. Please don’t beg! If you order more than one copy per record, you will get one Gold edition (if still available) and one Black Edition, or possibly even TWO black editions if the Gold are sold out. That’s just the way this shit works folks. Lucky for you, we don’t release dogshit, so it shouldn’t be a problem. You can always trade these things, ya know…

Canada and Euro orders ship airmail.
All prices are postage paid. We are offering a special low price for one of each single which is obviously the best deal.

PLEASE INCLUDE WHICH RECORDS YOU’D LIKE IN YOUR comment field.

PAYPAL account is : todd (at) horizontalaction.com

USA
one 7″ – $6.50 ppd
two 7″ – $12.75 ppd
three 7″ – $17.50 ppd
four 7″ – $22.25 ppd
five 7″ – $26.50 ppd
six 7″ – $31.75 ppd

CANADA/MEX/South America
one 7″ – $6.95 ppd
two 7″ – $13.50 ppd
three 7″ – $18.25ppd
four 7″ – $23.00 ppd
five 7″ – $27.75 ppd
six 7″ – $32.95 ppd

EUROPE/rest of WORLD
one 7″ – $10.75 ppd
two 7″ – $16.95 ppd
three 7″ – $21.95 ppd
four 7″ – $26.95 ppd
five 7″ – $31.95 ppd
six 7″ – $38.50 ppd

regular mailing address below (MO payable to Horizontal Action, or well-concealed cash at your own risk),
– PLEASE EMAIL TO RESERVE COPIES – todd (at) horizontalaction.com

Jay Reatard/Deerhunter Split 7″ Preorder

a: Jay Reatard – Florescent Grey (Deerhunter cover)
b: Deerhunter – Oh, It’s Such a Shame (Reatard cover)

So, if you are obsessive as me, you just spent the last 20+ minutes trying to pre-order the fourth single from Matador’s ever decreasing Jay Reatard singles-sweepstakes. The masses were waiting at the gate to grab one of these after the last single sold out almost immediately (and if you pay any attention to eBay, most of them went up for auction), hammering Matadors checkout cart, and generally pissing everyone off in the process. I got one (or so I think – who knows how many orders were processed before me), but this whole process makes me feel dirty. Think Cabbage Patch kids in the 1980’s; think sports cards in the early 1990’s; think Beanie Babies at McDonalds…

UPDATE: This is from Matador:

To Everyone That Ordered Today,
To start off with, we are deeply sorry about how messed up everything got with the Jay Reatard pre-order. There were a number of frustrations and mess-ups along the way that made ordering this record insanely difficult. It initially got put up too early, and those that ordered it early ended up not being able to re-order during the regular time. The first orders were deleted, but their cancellation wasn’t processed in time. Coupled with the slow server speed, a lot of people who signed in very early ended up empty handed.

To make up for this, and make it fair for all of the people that want to order the record we are going to re-start pre-order Tomorrow, 7/15 at 3PM ET. All orders from today are getting cancelled. I know it’s even more annoying to go through all of this again but we will work incredibly hard to ensure that there is more room on the server to accommodate traffic, and make sure that we don’t have any more “FRAUD” notifications for people that already ordered.

Once again, we’re going to do pre-order again Tomorrow, 7/15, at 3PM ET at matadorrecords.com/store

I’m very sorry about this and sincerely hope that we can regain your trust.

So fucking stupid.

Update: Looks like Matador is doing the right thing here:

As many of you are aware, the preorder process for Jay Reatard 7″ #4 turned into a nightmare for you and for us. First, on Monday, the preorder accidentally went live at 1:30 PM, 90 minutes earlier than was announced. Early orders poured in, and since this seemed unfair to those who were waiting until 3:00 PM to order, we cancelled those orders and started the process again at 3. However, due to a rule at our credit-card processing company that we had never had reason to encounter before, anyone who ordered for a second time on the same card got a duplicate/fraud message, and were not allowed to complete the order. In addition, the rush of orders at 3 was so intense that the server slowed down to a crawl, and many people were not able to complete their orders at all.

In light of all this we decided to redo the order at 3 PM on Tuesday. We cancelled all orders for a second time, got with our credit card processing company to shorten the timeout period for duplicate orders, and got with our ISP to prepare for an onslaught of traffic at 3.

However we were not prepared for the amount of traffic we did get yesterday – over 10,000 unique visitors at 3 PM, and the server once again slowed to a crawl or worse, leaving many people out in the cold, disgusted, and fed up with Matador – understandably. (For comparison’s sake, the entire Matador website usually gets 8,000 unique visitors per day.) We’re still not clear whether the publicity resulting from the previous two preorders led to the increase in visitors, or whether this was some kind of denial of service attack from a disgruntled customer.

In any event, we have collated orders from everyone who ordered successfully the first OR second time with those who ordered successfully the third time, and we are filling orders for everyone who got a successful order confirmation from us, whether it was cancelled or not.

We’d like to offer apologies for all the drama and hassle, but we’ve been apologizing non-stop and that’s not what you guys want – you want an efficient order process, and that’s what we pledge to offer in the future. It’s going to be even harder to buy singles #5 and #6 – that’s the whole point of this exercise after all – but it won’t be due to technical problems. We’ll have security, traffic, credit card processing and everything else sorted out and tested well in advance of the remaining 7″ preorders, and it will work the way it’s supposed to. I think that’s all we can say at this time.

Matador Records

The Midnight Kicks – Time for Fun 7″

a: You’re Not The Scientist
b1: Whoaaa!
b2: She Said

Label: Iekk Sounds
Purchase: Boom Chick
Listen: Myspace

Midnight Kicks are three lads from the UK, and they have a high-octane garage-rock sound reminiscent of the good parts in your favourite garage-rock hits. A-Side “You’re Not the Scientist” is a catchy little song, the other two are pretty good. As decent as these songs are, it took me way too long to get past the artwork, this record having the unfortunate distinction of the worst cover art I have seen in 2008.

The Wiggins – Feed the Ghost 7″

a1: Dog
a2: Feed the Ghost
b: In the Night

Label: Dull Knife
Buy: From the Label
Listen: Myspace

Sometimes the weirdest key words will trigger me to buy a record. In this case, I read a review that mentioned “David Lynch”, and that was all I needed. I didn’t need to hear a note of this, and I figured I would like it.The Wiggins is John Read, who you might include in the current lo-fi movement that privileges the simplicity of early Rock ‘N Roll, Rhythm & Blues, Surf, and a little hint of country twang (especially in the vocals), recording everything in the red and releasing records like this one that seem effortless. I suppose the drum machine (at times) gives this a Jesus and Mary Chain vibe, but in the end this record is one of the best I have heard in a while, leaving me to track down the other Wiggins releases.

Limited to 300, this one is a must buy.

Sub Pop Singles Club 2008/2009

This just totally made my day, and I can’t think of a better thing to bring SevenTenTwelve back from the grave. The legendary Sub Pop singles club is coming back!! You can sign up now, and the whole series will set you back $75. Sweet.

Here is the fact sheet according to Sub Pop:

Fact 1!
This run of The Sub Pop Singles Club will run for 1 year only, before returning to its secret island vacation spot for eternity (or until we here at Sub Pop feel masochistic enough to take on coordinating this debacle again.)

Fact 2!
This year’s Sub Pop Singles Club will include records (of the 7” variety) with music from such artists as Om, Unnatural Helpers, Tyvek, Black Mountain, Black Lips, Arthur & Yu, Mika Miko, Blues Control, Notwist, plus some stuff we’re not yet at liberty to divulge. And they won’t come out in that particular order, necessarily.

Fact 3!
We will mail you 1 record per month, every month for an entire year beginning on August 15th with a fantastic pair of songs from Om.

Fact 4!
For shipments to North America, you will pay us $75 in exchange for receiving this monthly boon from us. If you live elsewhere, in places outside of North America, we will require $90 from you.

Fact 5!
We will be pressing 1,500 copies of each single and so the number of subscriptions available for sale will be correspondingly limited. When these subscriptions are gone, that’s it!

Fact 6!
In addition to the singles themselves, each subscriber will receive a coupon enabling the download of high-quality MP3s of each record. No need to worry about how you’ll jam that 7” into your disk drive, we’ve got all you technophiliacs with your new-fangled gadgets covered.

Fact 7!
Subscriptions will be limited to 5 per person.

So here’s your chance to join the throngs of assholes selling their collectibles on eBay for ridiculous sums! All you have to do is: SEND US YOUR MONEY!

PLEASE NOTE: The subscription is $90 USD for all customers outside North America. The extra charge will be added in the checkout process.

Things are back on track here – records have been received and listened to, reviews have been written and judgements have been made. Sorry for the delay – I was having too much fun (Endangered Ape played 6 shows in the last three weeks, which is a thing), went to Sled Island (had a beer with Mark Sultan! Went to a BBQ where the members of Wire were sharing the table over! Saw Fucked Up twice!) and generally spent the last month in an altered state. Home for now (West Coast Tour with The Wicked Awesomes and possibly The Ostrich is in the works for August – still need help in Portland and perhaps Tacoma or Seattle).