drag city
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.
Cole Berliner shares ‘Bongo Syndicate’, the second single and video from his Drag City debut The Black Door, out May 29th. Guitar and bass push and pull through interlocking lines at a glacial pace — fingerstyle weave evoking an ’80s Leo Kottke session at ECM. Brian Bartus’s accompanying video patches in mystic grasslands, with Berliner’s silhouette glitching from biome to biome.
Mixed and mastered by Jim O’Rourke, Tommy Peltier’s “Echo Park (The 70’s Sessions)” catches the moment a jazz lifer reinvented himself as a songwriter in 1970s Los Angeles. Recorded in a hillside house near Echo Park Lane, these eleven tracks brim with melodic invention — each could be convincingly sold as a long-forgotten seventies hit. Out now via Drag City.
Joshua Abrams’ Music For Pulse Meridian Foliation is a single, thirty-five-minute swathe of all-enveloping, slow-moving minimalism. Originally a score for Lisa Alvarado’s multidisciplinary installation at REDCAT, CalArts, the album tracks a semi-fluid path, advancing like cooling lava — a matrix of abundant and not always predictable intersections, there to be explored, to inspire fierce thought, but also to luxuriate in or meditate on.
Cole Berliner has signed to Drag City for his debut solo album, The Black Door. The title track is out now with a music video by Fred Joseph. He says, “The inspiration was drawn from the mystical sounds of American (and proto-American!) folk music and swing, filtered through the lens of heart-string pullers like Bert Jansch and Jim O’Rourke, and carved into something both personal and simultaneously universal.”
Glyders have shared a new video for Super Glyde, the electrifying opener from their latest album “Forever,” and announced European and UK tour dates for April and May. Directed by Eon Mora, the clip channels Jarmusch and Coppola into a tense, almost-Jungian visual trip — a fitting companion for a band firing on all cylinders.
Celebrate one year of Jim Franks’ acclaimed book Existential Bread with a new audiobook from Drag City. Out March 10th, this “Hardnose Prose” masterpiece is read by Franks and features a rhythmic, searching score by Whitney Johnson, Shutaro Noguchi, Bill MacKay, Rob Frye and James Scroeder. Move beyond recipes and explore the philosophical, whimsical world of baking as a life story of listening and adapting.
Drag City unearths Echo Park, a long-lost collection of “glitter-light” pop from LA jazz legend Tommy Peltier. Mixed and mastered by Jim O’Rourke, the album captures Peltier’s 1970s transition into a soulful troubadour. Lead single “Flight of the Dancer,” out now, is a lush, 1976-tracked ballad featuring ethereal vocals and sensuous slide guitar reminiscent of George Harrison.
Tashi Dorji returns with “burn the throne,” a haunting new single from his upcoming album, “low clouds hang, this land is on fire.” Accompanied by a monochrome video by Philippe Léonard, the track trades Dorji’s signature acoustic friction for meditative, reverb-drenched ambience. “Barbed with intention, it is a declaration of war rooted unshakably in peace.”
Chicago-based trio Glyders feel complete with drummer Joe Seger joining Joshua Condon and Eliza Weber on Forever. Regarded as their first true band album, it captures electrifying energy honed through relentless touring. Blending assertive riffing with old-school tunesmithery inspired by classic rock masters, these eight tracks offer a high-voltage ride from futuristic glam to electric country jangle, marking an exciting, stable new chapter for the group.
Sir Richard Bishop’s ‘Hillbilly Ragas’ sees the veteran guitarist in devilish, free-flowing form. This terrific set of solo acoustic instrumentals subverts the rigid “American primitive” genre with a ramshackle, rhythmic, and improvised approach, adding Indian and Arabic flavours. It’s a “total banger”—vital, super-focused, and creatively brilliant acoustic music at its most exciting and intelligent.