Empty Cellar Records and the Earth Girl Helen Brown Center for Planetary Intelligence Band are pleased to announce the sixth installment of the E.G.H.B.C.P.F.I.B. planetary series, EARTH, featuring performance and production by Heidi Alexander, Eric Bauer, Lisa Boldyreva, Emilee Booher, Bradley Caulkins, Bjorn Copeland, Bart Davenport, John Dwyer, Tahlia Harbour, James Finch Jr., Graeme Gibson, Emmett Kelly, Enrique Tena Padilla, and Mikey Young. EARTH arrives on a charged planet with reflections on the greediness of life.
“For Earth Day, we’ve got the premiere of the title track, a danceable post-punk/no-wave style number with a killer breakbeat groove and gentle marimba and ethereal harmonies floating above.”
– Brooklyn Vegan by Bill Pearis
Available from Empty Cellar Records on limited edition 100% post-consumer recycled cassette tape January 2021, all proceeds benefit organizations committed to the preservation of biodiversity and to reduction of socioeconomic greed on EARTH.
Peace,
Empty Cellar Records/E.G.H.B.C.F.P.I.B.
Track Listing:
1. The Color Green
2. Feed Me
3. Pay to Play
4. Fountain of Life
5. Earth
Cool Ghouls – a band fledged in San Francisco on house shows, minimum wage jobs, BBQ’s in Golden Gate Park and the romance of a city’s psychedelic history turns 10 this year. What better a decennial celebration than the release of their fourth album, At George’s Zoo!
How did San Francisco’s fab four arrive at George’s Zoo? The teenage friendship of complimentary spirits Pat McDonald (Guitar/Vox) and Pat Thomas (Bass/Vox) serves as square one. The Patricks were munching on Eggo-waffle-sandwiches and downing warm Taaka in suburban Benicia years before McDonald would hear George Clinton address his fans as “Cool Ghouls”. The boys played their debut gig as Cool Ghouls at San Francisco’s legendary The Stud in 2011, but there’s no doubt the musical moment cementing the band’s trajectory was much earlier at the 18th birthday party for boy-wonder Ryan Wong (Guitar/Vox) – at the Wong household.
“Power pop, psych rock – there’s a whole lotta love (or rather Arthur Lee) in here but it’s the band’s fearlessness in going for the obvious hooks, and their love of concision that makes At George’s Zoo more than just a retro exercise. At all points the songwriting is marshaled to a ruthless Brill Building directness and avoidance of flab. Great playing of great songs. No beard necessary.”
You might remember the Ghouls’ earliest days… McDonald’s hair hung luxuriously past his waist, Thomas dreamt of no longer having to crash on friends’ couches to call SF home and Wong looked forward to turning 21. Cool Ghouls’ Pete Best, Cody Voorhees, thrashed wildly – but briefly – on the drums and Alex Fleshman (Drums), who still claims he’s not really “a drummer”, turned out to be a really good drummer. Thomas would sleep pee on tour. Those were golden days!
Flash forward to today and everything is up in flames. No shows, parties or bars. Cool people are streaming out of SF. It’s been 2 years since the last time Cool Ghouls have even played. The STUD is gone, The Eagle Tavern is for sale and The Hemlock has been demolished for condos. Your boss is an app. Fascism is no-knocking down the door. There’s a pandemic.
Fortunately for us, the ghouls got an album in before it all went to shit, and they made it count. At George’s Zoo includes 15 of the 27 tunes they managed to eke out while simultaneously working through major life moves. It was a 5-month, all out, final sprint down the homestretch (to Ryan’s moving day) with affable engineer Robby Joseph, at his makeshift garage studio in the Outer Sunset (pictured on the cover). Instead of recording the entire album over a few consecutive days – like they’d done with Tim Cohen, Sonny Smith and Kelley Stoltz for the first three LPs – the band took it slow by working through a few songs each weekend after rehearsing them the week before. Robby would cue up the tape, McDonald would throw some steaks on the grill and they’d get to work – much to the neighbor, George’s, chagrin.
“At George’s Garage, their fourth album and first in four years, is their most accomplished yet, indebted to their city’s rich musical heritage while showcasing their formidable skills as songwriters, arrangers and musicians. This is a lush production, rich with harmonies, strings, horns, and keyboards, which compliment the songs and lead vocals (Pretty impressive given it was recorded in an actual garage and self-produced.)”
These guys have a real commitment to elevating as songwriters, musicians and ensemble players. It’s always been for the music with Cool Ghouls and this long-awaited self-produced outing is a track by track display of the ground they’ve covered and heights they can achieve. Their vocals and trademark harmonies are front and center and out-of-control-good. Ryan’s guitar solos are incredible. The horns by Danny Brown (sax) and Andrew Stephens (trumpet) hit in all the right places. Maestro, Henry Baker (Pat Thomas Band / Tino Drima), plays keys throughout. There’s even a mesmerizing string section (“Land Song”) by sonic polyglot, Dylan Edrich.
None of this growth is to the detriment of the fun, natural, feeling that fans have come to expect from the band. This is a fully realized Cool Ghouls album. It paints a remarkable portrait of SF’s homegrown heroes and the many corners they’ve explored over the last decade. The songwriting, harmony and playing are nothing if not solid. The lyrics are keen. Robby’s recording and mixing sound great start to finish and even better after mastering by Mikey Young. It’s a triumphant addition to their catalogue. Recommended for Stooges and Beach Boys fans alike. Listen and see!
“Everything the band touches turns to gold here; At George’s Zoo is an impressive display of musical skill, and every stylistic gamble they take pays off.”
Yes, many things have changed since 2011. Who knows what the 20’s will have in store for life on Earth, let alone the Cool Ghouls? We at least know that 2021 has At George’s Zoo for us, a beautiful keepsake from the Before Times when we used to stand in living rooms together while bands played.
Available on LP / CD / Digital via Empty Cellar Records and Melodic Records worldwide.
Track Listing:
1. It’s Over
2. To You I’m Bound
3. Smoke & Fire
4. Flying
5. Land Song
6. In Michoacan
7. How Free
8. Helpless Circumstance
9. The Way I Made You Cry
10. 26th St. Blues
11. Surfboard
12. I Was Wrong
13. Feel Like Getting High
14. Look In Your Mirror
15. Living Grateful
The world has a way of tethering us down with its turmoil but there are keys to float free. It sometimes takes an equal and opposite reaction to snuff out the madness. Whether your destination is far out or deep within, you need a spark to set these moves in motion. Thankfully, Gravité are here to help. Their heavy vision sounds light the path and give weight to release.
"'Window Paine' is an honorable entry in the analog continuum due to Riley and Diko's knack for a dreamy melody. Classic synth tones float and interlock, the short track falling somewhere between Musik Von Harmonia and Chris & Cosey's most romantic, blissed-out material."
"As much as we love the ambient direction many synth-driven artists have embraced lately — we’re still a sucker for songs that sound like a turbo-charged trip around the sun.
Matthew Riley and Aaron Diko pursue that path on their first proper Gravité LP, a self-titled space race led by the analog lines of nine different synths."
These eight tracks – performed on a collection of classic and reissued analog equipment: Juno 60, Prodigy, Mono/Poly, Minimoog, SH-01A, MS20, Minilogue, Volcakeys, TR-08 – are an introduction to a new creative collaboration.
"Floating like the fog that sits above the San Francisco sky that they live in, Gravité’s synth melodies are blissful and free. The pair jam on well-weathered machines for a warm and psychedelic sound that effortlessly floats from one song to the next. Gentle percussion helps provide some structure to these ambient and psychedelic synth jams that would feel right at home in a sci-fi TV show or late at night watching the waves gently roll up on the beach somewhere warm."
This is portal music for mortal metamorphosis, shaped and reshaped via endless improvisation and perhaps some psychedelics. So when the whirlwind world gets you blitzed out, it’s time to bliss out. Gravité will set you soaring.
Recorded by Matthew Riley, mixed and mastered by Mikey Young and featuring album art by Billy Werch
Recorded at El Studio by Phil Manley (Life Coach / Trans Am), mixed and mastered by Mikey Young (Total Control) and released by Empty Cellar Records – home to Coopers’ old band The Sandwitches – the album will be accompanied by a 32-page book of Coopers’ illustrations and lyrics.
“A beautiful and timeless piano ballad from her stellar new LP as Grace Sings Sludge — stunningly austere and intimate”
There has always been a dreamy American gothic sensibility to Coopers’ sound, and on Christ Mocked she continues to lean into this mood and presents us with a collection of deeply felt ballads and stories that have as much in common with Shirley Jackson as they do Karen Dalton or anything we’ve heard from her before.
“Though Cooper says she’s in her “comfort zone with buzzy, shitty sounding stuff,” this album brings out the peculiar beauty of her voice in ways previous DIY affairs didn’t quite capture; threaded with sparse guitar, meandering basslines, or dissonant piano, Christ Mocked is a bit reminiscent of early Cat Power, if Chan Marshall had somehow been more awkward (and obsessed with horror movies, religious iconography, and sketches of nude women).”
Taking the album to the studio has added some polish to Grace Sings Sludge but as these songs and stories intertwine, it’s clear that Cooper is evolving her sound forward in strange and unexpected ways – even putting her own spin on audio drama with The Hackers and Borderlands. This is very much the sound of an artist experimenting and pushing expectations. Beneath the surface of these songs is a lovely mystery; a whelm in the gloom; a hope and a resilience that glow and thrive in the bottomless sea.
“Cooper’s hushed avant-Americana. The song sways with delicate instrumentation and her powerful voice, weaving around the track and soaring without warning. Cooper’s voice is spectacular and full of character, breaking and retreating in ways that push the composition and shift expressions.”
Grace Cooper plays all instruments on Christ Mocked, except drums and piano on “Horror for People That Don’t Like Horror” played by Nic Russo/Dick Stusso.
– Glenn McQuaid (Tales From Beyond the Pale)
Track Listing:
1. Christ fucking mocked
2. He is in our hearts
3. Born again wagon
4. The pledge
5. The Hackers
6. Falling in love with him was the most exciting time in my life
7. Friend to All
8. Walnut Creek Death Trip
9. In your arms forever
10. Horror for people that don’t like horror
11. Borderlands
12. It Can Wait.
The Leader of Bay Area rockers Cool Ghouls more than likely has a framed photograph of Todd Rundgren on his work desk. …on further inspection the influence of other celebrated popsters becomes apparent. The goofball track “Are You Ok” pulls at the playfulness of Harry Nilson, while the show stopping closing track “Give the Land to the People” would not only be the perfect soundtrack to a 1960s sequence of street skirmishes between police and radicals, but also boasts the elevating properties of Jimmy Webb’s arrangements for The Fifth Dimension.
– The WIRE (Avant Rock by Tony Rettman)
Pat Thomas has been known as a driving singing/writing/bass-playing force behind San Francisco band Cool Ghouls for years and, over those years, in tandem with the band’s group effort, has cultivated an interesting voice as a solo act. “Solo” isn’t really the correct word though because the tracks on I Ain’t Buyin’ It showcase recordings complete with fully fleshed out arrangements, not unlike other ambitious California classics like The Beach Boys or Love. These comparisons seem lazy, given the obvious associations of the west coast with this sort of sonic imagery, which bands from San Francisco or LA – but SF especially – are seldom able to shake off. But at the entry point of this record, you welcome it as you would a lover of this style.
I Ain’t Buyin’ It sounds as if it’s dropped straight in from the late ’60s, not just with the psych/jug sound that recalls classic West Coast rock bands like Jefferson and Country Joe on “Are You Okay”, “New Star Ell” and “The Money Guys”, but also the straightforward anti-capitalist political sentiments of the lyrics. Thomas, also the frontman of Cool Ghouls, slides effortlessly into Southern soul on tracks like the gorgeous “Alternator” and “Egypt”, and it’s his perfect sense of pop melody that really holds it together. This is the sort of album you’ll buy on a whim and then keep coming back to.
– Peter Watts for UNCUT
As this album’s initial feeling moves forward, you get better acquainted with Thomas’s idiosyncratic song-writing and production style, which are playful and groovy and light-hearted. But these songs also convey a deeper inner dialogue which reflects the inherent paradox of life in a city such as San Francisco, or many other American cities. The feeling of general displacement and falling victim to commerce is real. A feeling that includes everything from the seduction of empty suburban idealism, to the city being robbed of its creative force by pointless commerce, to the entire USA being literally robbed from Native Americans. It’s hard to maintain a positive outlook when one reflects on the depth of this situation, but Thomas has succeeded in presenting a way to embrace these circumstances: through this music. From The Beach Boys Friends-era wellness sing-along style on “Are You Okay”, to the almost Curtis Mayfield-style mantra of “Give The Land To The People”, you see that our situation somehow calls for celebration, a spirit that music has forever represented.
Fueled not just by the divisiveness of housing in his native San Francisco, but by the larger implications of space both borrowed and stolen, “Give The Land To The People” is a psyched-out 7 minute opus that reaches emphatic peaks. As a delirious, kraut-y rhythm is propelled by a swirling suite of percussion, horns and guitars, Thomas’ vocal refrains are sturdy and resolute. “The infrastructure of communities should be owned by the residents and workers who utilize it everyday,” said Thomas. “Not by some money guys who really have nothing to do with the daily happenings of these places.”
Music has always been a way to raise one’s spirit to a higher place, despite life’s hardships. Music is material proof that all is not lost! In fact the opposite. And the emotion expressed in music proves that hardship is real, regardless of who you are or where you live. There is always something which cannot be lost and, with music like this, you can conjure a spirit that suggests a world of better possiblities. I Ain’t Buyin’ It is sung mainly by Thomas in his characteristic projectile voice, a thing of confidence and delivery, except the song “Reflection Chamber” which features C. Claire Doyle on lead vocals – a welcome beautiful melodic respite à la Judy Dyble circa Giles, Giles & Fripp. It culminates with a big group vocal by Thomas and other ghouls. For someone who has seen the amazing growth of the Cool Ghouls, you will similarly be impressed by this new piece by Pat Thomas.
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