LULU'S JULY 2021 NEWSLETTER

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Featured in this newsletter:

THE STOOGES - “FUNHOUSE” 2xLP

CARL MATTHEWS - “COL” LP

JOKE'S ON YOU (JOY) - "DEMO 21" CS

ISOBEL D'CRUZ BARNES - "SUNGAI" CS

REPTANT / SANSIBAR - "SPLIT" 7"

DARKTHRONE - “ETERNAL HAILS......” LP

Hey mates,

Sorry ‘bout the lack of a physical newsletter last month - our trusty photocopier died and that combined with the snap lockdown meant it just wasn’t going to happen.

Got heaps of extremely exciting news in the pipeline for members of the LSD Club; you’ve either heard about it alrady by the time your reading this or will be getting all the deets soon - please look forward to it.

As usual we’ve got heaps of fresh heat filling out the racks atm, including (but not limited to) the following choice discs.

As a sweet lil bonus this month, Yas has put together a playlist of some of the primest cuts July has to offer, which you can access via Soundcloud or Spotify.
Suss it. Love you all lots.

Until next time,
xoxo Lulu’s

NEW ARRIVALS

THE STOOGES - “FUNHOUSE” 2xLP
Elektra

Lulu's as a general rule avoids participating in the overpriced reissues market. Pressing plants across the world are crowded with triple LPs from Fela Kuti or the Beatles or whatever, slowing down releases from the international punk and weirdo underground who never gave up on vinyl as the preferred medium and now have to get in the queue behind record store day clowns.

This record is one of the exceptions, because if there's an overpriced reissue that we'd always want to have on the shelf at Lulu's, it would be this. (And Mayhem Deathcrush.) There are plenty of record stores in this city, and most of them have a really good angle on the secondhand record market, but as you'd be hard pressed to find an OG of this drug punk classic under $100 anywhere, if you've got money to burn on a copy that isn't 50 years old (yuck!), burn it with Lu. Get your OWN fluids into these grooves! You don't need to pay for someone else's mistakes!

This particular overpriced reissue of Funhouse features an additional LP of session tracks. These sessions are worth hearing for any Stooges freak, or anyone who likes guitar, saxophone, drums, bass and drugs. Cops do not want you to listen to these session tracks.  Every single version of every song from these sessions has the kind of subtle nuance that could create the greatest song you've ever written and the worst kind of decisions that any human could make, and whoever put this reissue together had a discerning ear.

This is one of the greatest records to come out of Detroit, our spiritual home. Detroit brought us many of our heroes, from Funkadelic and Alice Cooper to Negative Approach and Underground Resistance. This record is one of the greatest records to feature Iggy, our patron saint and survivor of a lifestyle of intensity and derangement that many are crushed by. This record is one that we get a spiritual healing from just having it on the wall in the store, but we welcome you to come and get it off the wall and into your home where it can corrupt you and your family, your pet and your dreams. You too can ride on this death trip!

CARL MATTHEWS - “COL” LP
Abstrakce Records

I didn’t really see my ambient electronic phase coming, but here we are. Potentially a positive side effect of protracted lockdowns, and getting most of music in 2021 from online mixes rather than at packed gigs. Whilst my tastes might have changed, I don’t quite have the vocabulary to talk about electronica yet. Thankfully, Carl Matthews' extremely intimate and DIY approach to music making is so beyond the standard gear nerd electronic record. Made at his home in ’91, the record is comprised of rhythm machines, samplers and bowed guitars. The joyous moments on the record are reminiscent of Mort Garson’s Plantasia, or Japanese minimalist synth. But there are also moments of deep reflection and pain. Carl Matthews somehow manages to convey so much, with so little instrumentation. The simple combination of drum machine, piano and bowed guitar on Airways is deeply moving. Similarly, Veering North achieves so much dynamism within such rigid confines. The drums are outstanding and incredibly similar to some of Dean Blunt’s work, especially Babyfather.

COL is supposedly a lo-fi bedroom record of sorts, but sounds rich and inviting to my untrained ears. Abstrakce Records describes it as an “a foreverland of non-academic modernism.” If ever there was a record to get you into this sometimes pretentious and frightening genre, maybe this is the one.

JOKE'S ON YOU (JOY) - "DEMO 21" CS
Self Released

Spankin' nu demo from Nu South Walez' Nu York animal style outfit J(oke's)O(n)Y(ou). Bowery bonehead drum parts and some real great Lower East Side riffs and for you to skank yourself to death to. Despite their mean spirit there's a sense of fun (or J.O.Y. if you will) that's evident and you just know with a few shows under their belt these are the kinds of jams that are gonna BUST... DA HOUSE... DOWN! PS. If anyone in the band is reading, let me know when you're playing a show with Rapid Dye because that's what's up.

ISOBEL D'CRUZ BARNES - "SUNGAI" CS
Cease + Desist

Sungai (Malay for "river") Mix is Isobel D'Cruz Barnes' response to Shah Sharafi's Nile Mix, a collection of Arabic and North African hits. Sungai Mix #1' is a compilation of psych-rock, bent disco and acid folk from South East Asia, Japan, South Korea and India.

The collection explores Asian alternative music made between 1964 -1981, and asks us to consider: what are the impacts of civil war, military coups, dictatorships and colonisation on global alternative music subcultures? How have different Asian nations, in their varying responses to political turmoil and Western interference, responded to attacks on their artistic freedom?

Cassette to be released July 15th on Cease + Desist

REPTANT / SANSIBAR - "SPLIT" 7"
Warning

Local warm-blooded hothead Reptant teams up with like-minded Finnish producer Sansibar (who the real heads amongst us might remember from an extremely fresh cassette on Altered States a while back...) to spit out a track each of tough, horny + sweaty electro. 

There's a consistency here in a bare bones hardware approach that draws a through line between the two tracks, with Reptant's production offering some of his most earnest Drex worship in recent memory, and Sanibar's number recalling the likes of kindred underground freaks such as Beau Wazner.

Presented in the under appreciated split 7” dance single format, this one is already long sold out from the label and Lulu's has some of the last copies going - don't sleep.

DARKTHRONE - “ETERNAL HAILS......” LP
Peaceville

When the album was released and I saw that it’s 5 tracks clocking seven to ten minutes each I had a feeling this was going to be their doom album, and a stone cold love letter to heavy metal. I wasn’t wrong. The heaviest influences here sound like a stylistic blend between Celtic Frost, Mercyful Fate and 80’s doom metal. When it kicks into gear and goes into full throttle Darkthrone, it tends towards the their 90’s output post the Unholy Trinity records. It’s been 27 years since Transylvanian Hunger and Panzerfaust - the singular energy and serious satanic fervour of their early tunes haven’t been Darkthrone’s jam for a while. Enter “Too Old Too Cold” era Darkthrone; where the group began to operate in perhaps the only way which was going to bring creative longevity to the remaining duo of Fenriz and Nocturno Culto (maybe it’s true that Zephyrous walked into a forest in 1993 and never returned?) and that has been something which has felt like Master Satan’s Black Hearts Club Band, which is to say; their approach has been Darkthrone Presents…… whatever metal/punk style they want. The new modus operandi is to create riff heavy rock and roll records to for freaks crank loud when they’re getting freaky, way too blitzed to play guitar or drive or perform sexually or walk into the forest and expect to safely return. And they nail it. They nail it because Darkthrone know their history and they know themselves. There are some seriously excellent parts on the album, some riffs are memorable and timeless after just the first listen and I am convinced that the album closer (Lost Arcane City Of Uppakra) is a new classic, with the outro section being quite easily one of the best pieces of music they've written. So I must finish by saying; for giving us jewels among the treasures of 90’s black metal and for continuing to give us killer records to get annihilated to, I offer Darkthrone my sincerest eternal hails……