drive

DZ15 is on its way down I-95 courtesy of Baltimore duo Romantic States, who continue their minimalist approach to writing and recording, while integrating dynamic shifts not explored in earlier work. The result is a collection of raw, sparse, and skeletal lo-fi rock songs that are sincere, vulnerable, and haunting. Jim and Ilenia's newest works have been compiled for release on a self-titled album out February 6 and the band will be touring the East Coast throughout the month.

Special thanks to Spanish magazine Shook Down for their kind words about the album and for premiering "Back Pain" on their site. Look out for an interview with the band in the next physical copy of their magazine, and check out the track below for your first sneak peak at DZ15:

"9 canciones honestas, cristalinas y eso, minimalistas, una propuesta de corazón lo-fi que desprende honestidad, la misma que habían desfilado en algunos de sus trabajos anteriores" - Shook Down

"Romantic States are a minimalist experimental rock band from Baltimore, emphasizing rhythm and melody over instrumental complexity. Their sound is spectral, with live drums and drum machines combined to provide a back beat for reverby guitars and washed out, dream-like vocals in their own version of deconstructed pop/rock songs." - The Modern Folk Music Of America

Tapes are available for pre-order in the merch store, along with a limited number of older cassettes unearthed during my move, including releases by Wavepool Abortion, Ghostandthesong / Chris Rehm, Terror Bird, Adam Torres, Pool Holograph, and Birkwin Jersey, plus one last copy of DYVNZMBR2.

Additionally, Tape School in Tokyo is now stocking some more recent releases - Big Hush, Hazey Jane, Easily Suede, The Sweets, and Seabright all safely made the trip across the globe.

Stay tuned for more updates on DZ15, including new tracks and event info, coming very soon...

petrichor

Production on DZ14 has begun to wrap up, and a cassette release show in DC is in the works. Stay thirsty with this Big Hush video for one of their classic tracks "Where I End":

Meanwhile, Pool Holograph have been staying busy in Chicago, keeping warm with fiery science experiments, like this new track "Crazy Lane". I was lucky enough to catch the premiere in person and think you all should take a listen:

Folks in Atlanta should make sure to check out Easily Suede and Narrator play in the Social Synth public art installation built into a dumpster:

It Is Rain In My Face. plays live at the Palisades in Brooklyn on Monday, October 27:

In Austin, Adam Torres has a string of shows coming up in late October and early November:

Belgian blog Cutting Edge had some nice things to say in Dutch about Hazey Jane:

"Bij het horen van het krakerige (en naar het einde toe licht vervormde) 'Being in mint condition' en het treffend getitelde 'Outside it's good' waanden wij ons immers meteen in een zonovergoten parkje op een zorgeloze zomerdag: héérlijk gevoel."

Which loosely translates to:

"Upon hearing the crackling (and towards the end slightly distorted) 'Being in mint condition' and the aptly titled "Outside it's good" we thought we were, after all, once in a sunlit park on a carefree summer day: wonderful feeling."

And finally, some photos from the last show at the Dougout, featuring Romantic States, Halfsour, Thee Lolitas, and Foul Swoops, all courtesy of Ron Akins:

Romantic States

Halfsour

Thee Lolitas

Foul Swoops

being in mint condition

DZ13 showcases the work of Hazey Jane, the serene sample-based folktronic pop project of Jeroen de Meyer from Belgium, drawing from styles of artists like of Bibio, Baths, and Blithe Field. After self-releasing the Spring EP in 2010, his style evolved from more raw upbeat sound collage to the blissful snowy soundscapes heard on 2012’s Winter Walks. These days, Jeroen is recording with a laptop, guitar and SP 404, creating samples and loops with buoyant beats and vocal manipulations to arrange a distinct blend of wistful ambience.

Being In Mint Condition conjures up the type of melancholy summer memories that will ease your mind with breezy warm sentiment, coat your skin in glistening balmy glaze, and stir up your thirst for an ice-chilled glass of nostalgia. The album greets you with a woozy and warbled uncoiling of warped textures that hover like refracting heat waves on the horizon. Jovial melodies shine through fuzzy muffled wails and slow grating rhythms as the sun begins to peak. Aural anodyne flows like sand sifting down a synesthetic hourglass while the divine afternoon auras dissolve and make way for the otherworldly glow blown in by evening tides. Dusk fades to darkness, a shimmering hum resonates in the air and the firelight dwindles down to reveal a boundless black canvas speckled with of soft celestial tones. The hushed ambience envelopes you and your eyes grow heavy as the ocean withdraws back into itself.

The album was originally released for free on Jeroen’s bandcamp in late 2013, and is now available on pro-dubbed clear-translucent mint condition cassettes in the store. Not much else remains in the DZ inventory save for a few copies of Reliefs, but digital downloads are all free all the time. 

i didn't ask your permission

With The Sweets cassettes having all sold out, and Easily Suede tapes following in suit, production on the next DZ release is right around the corner. While no pertinent details can be made available just yet, there will be more to share later this month. For now, take a look at the new video for "Sister":

Friends of the label Wildhoney are one of Baltimore's finest shoegazing noise pop punk bands, and they've got a brand new 7" release coming out on Photobooth Records. The "Seventeen Forever" single will feature 3 new tracks and is set to drop this oh-so-special Sunday, April 20.

Lastly, thanks to the Washington City Paper for the shout-out to the Dougout in their Best of D.C. feature! It's an honor to be recognized and we look forward to supporting live music in the district for as long as we're able to.

showtime

Here's yet another badass screenprint from my main man Sean Berg for today's show at the Dougout, featuring WEEKENDS, BEST WITCHES, BBAATBIFFFS, and CRUMMS. More details about the show can be found by clicking the poster below. We'll be giving these out with every purchase of band merch while supplies last!

The Sweets just put out a new 7" from Bleeding Gold Records, featuring four flawless tracks pressed on glow-in-the-dark vinyl and limited to 250 copies.



Lastly, wanna send thanks out to Creative Loafing for the Easily Suede shoutout! Nice little blurb there plus a preview of a new cassette from another fellow Faun and a Pan Flute member Carey, released on Crash Symbols.

spring solstice

The Dougout has a few shows lined up for the upcoming months, but the one I'm most excited about is coming up on Saturday, March 29. As always, anybody who happens to be in the DC area is welcome to drop by and check out the music! All pertinent details can be found here, and stay tuned for a sick screenprinted show poster coming soon from Sean Berg. The lineup is as follows:

☯ WEEKENDS (noise rock from BALTIMORE)
☯ ☯ BEST WITCHES (post-punk from CHICAGO)
☯ ☯ ☯ BBAATBIFFFS (grindcore thrash from CHICAGO)
☯ ☯ ☯ ☯ CRUMMS (garage surf from DC)

Easily Suede tapes have begun to disseminate around the globe, and due to a slip up on my end a decent chunk of the orders were made with no charge for shipping. Thanks to everyone who's bought a copy thus far, and enjoy the free delivery on me!

Our good friend It Is Rain In My Face. continues to shine through the endless gray sky with yet another new EP entitled "Permanent Winter". Thanks to everyone who donated to Mat's recent kickstarter, he'll soon be making the trip down to Ardent Studios in Memphis to record yet another EP due out by the end of the year.

reliefs

In between working on various creative projects, Adam Babar has thoughtfully developed a unique dose of intimately lucid aleatoric electronica. Throughout the years, his solo act Easily Suede has been knitting a boundless audio quilt of sample-based soft beats, warm hushed tones and candid sound collage. See "Reliefs", an album weaved from sunbeam strings that shimmer through cracks in the canopy, shining on keys that crisply cut through the air like leaves in a breeze, and rest upon the biolectronic cadence of a forest floor suppressing endless molten gyrations.

DZ TAPES is proud to present this long overdue physical release, originally put out digitally through Atlanta collective Primitive Patterns. Available March 12 in a limited run of so-fresh-so-clean solid-white cassettes, the album will be accompanied by a brand new collection of Adam's work entitled "Easily" out on Mission Trips the same day. Babar will be celebrating his tandem triumphs at The Mammal Gallery in Atlanta this Saturday with a performance by his side-project Suffer Dragon. In his own words, he describes DZ12:

"[It's] kind of an audio journal of the year 2012. I spent the better part of the year recording it and each track references inside jokes and snippets of my friends from candid recordings on my phone, or inebriated Voxer threads from throughout that year. The entire album was recorded on little-to-no budget. All the tracks were recorded direct into the microphone jack on my laptop, recorded and mixed using Audacity, and mastered by Atlanta pop-smith David Norbery in exchange for a bottle of whiskey."

"Take an immersive listen through headphones and each number reveals nods to high-minded sonic explorers such as Christian Marclay, Philip Glass and Steve Reich; crate-digging hip-hop producers like Madlib and DJ Shadow; audio anthropologists Matmos, and skittering, modern electronica synthesists like Four Tet. Ultimately, Reliefs highlights Babar's effortless, almost accidental approach to capturing audio impulses and shaping them into multi-faceted sonic sketches that function on a number of levels: headphone pop, hip-hop instrumentals, audio pranks, ethereal ambient, and the list goes on." - Creative Loafing

narwhalmilk

The DYVNZMBR2 mixtape has at long last been released to the wild. The compilation contains 21 tracks, each uniquely voltaic and illustrative, from DZ homies near and far, spanning from east to west across the entirety of this new weird America that I call home, to the outskirts of distant mother Russia's electrowasteland, and a freckling of spots spaced out in between.

Available as a free stream and download below, the mixtape is also (naturally) available on cassette as part of a limited edition release of 50 professionally dubbed C75s housed in bumblebee-yellow shells. At the time of this posting, almost half of these tapes have already been spoken for, but you can still visit the shop to claim one for yourself.



We've also got something new to whet your appetite for ocular entertainment from DZ favorite It Is Rain In My Face., who has been busy this year having just recently released his new Languish In The Evening EP and is currently on tour with Tom Kitty Oliver to promote the release of their joint project Pressed And's latest release Stone Candles on Mush Records. Now we revist one of the singles from his self-titled full-length debut, "Duck In A Row", with a new video directed by Tobias Stretch. Check out the chilling scene below, and grab one of the last few copies of DZ06 at the shop if you're looking for something to keep you cool this summer.


"Duck In A Row" - It Is Rain In My Face. from Mat Jones.