drag city

Chicago trio Bitchin Bajas, featuring Cooper Crain, Rob Frye and Dan Quinlivan, share a live video for “Ajami”, filmed at their Los Angeles Lodge Room show on miniDV tape by Shambling History. The track is from their new EP Isle Peaks, out today on Drag City. They’ve also announced a new show at Chicago’s smartbar, adding to an already packed autumn of both US and EU/UK dates.

Ed Askew’s posthumous “The Final Painting” captures the fragile poignance of a great artist in the December of his years, giving one last shake of his feathers before exiting the stage. The album occupies a space between Bowie’s “Blackstar” and Cohen’s “You Want It Darker,” not raging against the dying of the light but dancing towards it with outstretched arms.

Sir Richard Bishop’s “Hillbilly Erotica” moves away from the gnarly aggression of “Hillbilly Ragas” into gentler territory, with mostly improvised solo guitar that ebbs and flows with sharp dexterity. The music soars with clusters of notes in places and creates space and quiet with minimal, precise picking in others — minimalist maximalism from a guitarist of remarkable prowess.

Bitchin Bajas give their “Isle Peaks” EP a wide release on August 28th via Drag City, after an initial Qobuz-exclusive run. Vinyl and cassette add the physical-only track “Watch Your Step”. The three cuts, pulled from the “Inland See” sessions and recorded to analogue tape, move between krautrock and new age. New US and European tour dates are also announced.

Ed Askew’s posthumous single “Tough Guys” is out today — a slow-burn chamber-pop piece about gay relationships observed and lived, with Fulvio Sigurta’s trumpet and lyrics of crushing intimacy. Also announced: “Boy with a Hat,” an exhibition of Askew’s paintings from 2014–2024, opens at Chicago’s Soccer Club Club on July 31st, the same day The Final Painting arrives on Drag City.

Sir Richard Bishop shares “Back Forty Lashes”, the ferocious, trance-inducing second single and self-directed video from “Hillbilly Erotica”, out July 31st on Drag City. A sequel of sorts to 2025’s “Hillbilly Ragas”, it carries Bishop’s argument with the “American Primitive” tag deeper into rural Tennessee. He’s on his US tour now through the summer, but stops in the UK for the Green Man Festival in August.

“Stash,” the second album from BCMC — the Chicago guitar-and-keys duo of Bill MacKay and Cooper Crain — pulls a range of styles from their minimalist set-up. More excitable than 2023’s “Foreign Smokes,” the musicians are happy to explore dynamically within a song. This is a generous, joyous album, brimming with life, energy and a real love of music.

Prison pull up with their third album, “Big Rigs on the BQE”, out July 31st, a long way from last year’s “Downstate”. They’ve shared lead cut “Sunrise Highway” with a scorching single edit video from Johnny Celentano and Cliff Elor — a fast, garage-bred psych charge built live from guitars, bass, drums, fuzz organ and vocals. Two side-long trips, tracked overlooking the highway.

BCMC — Bill MacKay and Cooper Crain — return with “Tête-à-Tête”, the second single from their forthcoming Drag City album “Stash”, out June 26th. Where lead single “Kaleidosmoke” unfurled in patient, accumulative psychedelia, this one rotates skyward — Crain’s organ tearing through prog, gospel, psych and funk, MacKay’s twin guitars tracing intricate, Krautrock-leaning patterns. A new visualiser arrives alongside the single.

A final album from Ed Askew is on the way. “The Final Painting,” a posthumous album from the late outsider songwriter, painter and poet, arrives July 31st — assembled in his last years with producer Jerry David DeCicca. Lead single “Gray Air-o-Plane,” featuring Sharon Van Etten, is out today with a music video framed by Ed’s own paintings.

Sir Richard Bishop returns to Drag City on July 31st with “Hillbilly Erotica”, a sequel of sorts to 2025’s “Hillbilly Ragas”. Eight tracks, one acoustic guitar, no overdubs — and save for the closing piece, entirely improvised. Bishop again wrangles with John Fahey’s “American Primitive” tag, finding clearings, hills and valleys glimpsed in the distance… Watch his video for the lead single “Finger, Tennessee”.

White Fence’s Orange, out now via Drag City, is Tim Presley’s first album in seven years — and it sounds freer and more expansive than ever. With Ty Segall again in the producer’s chair, these songs are built for electricity, celebrating melody whilst unafraid to show hurt, fear, and despair. There is an audible joy in the playing.