The Amps

Instrumentals inspired by all genres from the Sixties: Surf, TV Themes, Memphis, Fuzz, Spaghetti Western, Pop, Schmaltz–played by some of the best musicians from the modern surf scene.
And just who is “Cap’n Coconuts”??? Simian spy turned Hollywood cad, now a bouncer at a bar in San Francisco? Or star of a 60’s TV sitcom that apparently only Pool Boys leader Ferenc Dobronyi remembers. “He was my muse for this record. I wanted to write instrumentals that evoked the feelings that I get when I remember the music of my childhood"…

A live document of the Brian Jones-era Rolling Stones sounds enticing, but the actual product is a letdown, owing to a mixture of factors, some beyond the producers' control and other very much their doing. The sound on the original LP was lousy – which was par for the course on most mid-'60s live rock albums – and the remasterings have only improved it marginally, and for that matter not all of it's live; a couple of old studio R&B covers were augmented by screaming fans that had obviously been overdubbed.

The warm roots rock of Frank Migliorelli & The Dirt Nappers glows throughout their newest release, The Things You Left Behind as they inject power pop, country twang, love ballads and protest anthems into their well-worn sound.

The transaltlantic trio that is King Hobo will release its new album, "Mauga", on May 31 via Weathermaker Music. The disc was produced by Tobias Strandvik and recorded at his studio in Varberg, Sweden. King Hobo consists of Thomas Juneor Andersson (KAMCHATKA) on vocals, guitars and percussion, Per Wiberg (KAMCHATKA, SPIRITUAL BEGGARS, CANDLEMASS, ex-OPETH) on vocals, bass, and keys, and Jean-Paul Gaster (CLUTCH) on drums.

The twelfth show of the Nighttime Stories tour took place at the Grog Shop, a venue that has played host to many, many memorable Pelican shows over our nearly 20 year tenure. This night was no exception, as we were joined by our great friends Bloodiest and Six Kills Nine. Moreover, this leg of the tour - four shows in the Midwest over the course of a long weekend - kicked off with Trevor crushing a fingertip on his left hand while loading amps into the practice room two days before hitting the road. For this jaunt we enlisted the talents of our longtime friend and erstwhile live sound collaborator Matt Hannigan, who has a habit of recording multitrack audio of the shows he mixes. On listening back to the recordings, we were particularly into this one: it seems to really capture the excitement and energy of the night (and tour, overall).

Yaoundé, in the 1970´s, was a buzzing place. Every neighbourhood of Cameroon´s capital, no matter how dodgy, was filled with music spots but surprisingly there were no infrastructure to immortalise those musical riches. The country suffered from a serious lack of proper recording facilities, and the process of committing your song to tape could become a whole adventure unto itself. Of course, you could always book the national broadcasting company together with a sound engineer, but this was hardly an option for underground artists with no cash. But luckily an alternative option emerged in form of an adventist church with some good recording equipment and many of the artists on this compilation recorded their first few songs, secretly, in these premises thanks to Monsieur Awono, the church engineer.