The debut album from Andy Jenkins, released June 15th, 2018.

From the front porches, alleys, and rivers of Richmond, Virginia comes Andy Jenkins carrying a crisp, newly cut album, Sweet Bunch. Hatched in the tradition of Southern culture—unhurried in his art, yet weirdly ahead of the curve by the time he arrives— Andy is a joyously idiosyncratic songwriting talent, ripened over years of relative obscurity. Sweet Bunch springs into the world fully-formed, sitting at the crossroads of modernism and timelessness, sensitivity and decision, with the expansiveness and musical drawl of Big Star, the bounce of John Prine, and the curly, perfectly-carved melodies of George Harrison. Each song paints a wild landscape, the mood of a sun setting on a damn good day among friends and favored creatures.

Andy is a kind of unheard counterpoint, originating from the same small scene of independent Virginia youth culture that produced artists like Justin Frye (PC Worship) Natalie Prass, and Matthew E. White, all friends from his teenage years. He found the perfect seedbed for his particular sensibility in Spacebomb Records, a label known for offering high musicianship outside of the predictabilities of New York, Nashville, and Los Angeles. Produced by longtime collaborator White, with the Spacebomb crew and another old friend, Phil Cook, running hard into midnight, Sweet Bunch was essentially recorded in three days of flow-state, with the drums, bass, keys, and guitars all live and nothing to regret. The source of this musical surety lies with Jenkins’ songwriting— natural and effortless as the glide of a swan or sailboat— matched in spirit and strength by the sweet bunch in the studio. Backed by some ringers and a very full chorus, Andy’s warm words come buoyed on cool streams of melody, telling the greater world that Virginia has become, once again, a musical frontier.

Track listing: 01. Hazel Woods 02. Curve of Love 03. Genuine Heart 04. Ascendant Hog 05. Sweet Bunch 06. White Linen 07. Illuminated 08. Get Together 09. Song for Me

*“Jenkins emerges as a distinctive artist on Sweet Bunch, an affably charismatic vocalist and supremely resourceful songwriter…like Harry Nilsson if he’d been born a Southerner. 8/10" * — Uncut

"Matching Americana to underground indie rock, his style is personal but always open, a charming personality who engages at every turn." — CLASH

"...its intermittent sing-talking and indie twang somewhat resemble a stripped-down Beck" — Stereogum

Bedouine is singing, like rain down a granite ruin, sweet as jasmine in the summer darkness, lilting crystal movements, precise and sure, the kind of voice that forms civilizations. Bedouine has a story to match the name, Azniv Korkejian, born in Syria to Armenian parents, spent her childhood in Saudi Arabia, and moved to America when her family won the Green Card lottery. Living at various times in Boston, Houston, Lexington, Austin, and Savannah, she found a community of musicians in Los Angeles that feels like home.

One day she walked into Gus Seyffert’s studio to inquire about getting a reel-to-reel tape machine, something analogue and portable to record herself in small, quiet places. On a whim, he asked if she would play a song right then, so she stepped into the room and cut “Solitary Daughter” in a first take, and they were off on a three year collaboration. One night, she approached Matthew E. White of Spacebomb Records after a show at The Echo in L.A., saying that she wanted to send him a song. He remembers listening to “One of These Days” on the rest of that tour “like a thousand times,” it knocked him and his band right out, and they even set it as their alarm to wake up to in the morning. If that all sounds a bit mythic, a bit rock-and-roll legend, remember that reality always outdoes the script, even in a town like Hollywood.

Working on around thirty tracks, with remarkable musicians like Smokey Hormel stopping by to contribute parts, Korkejian selected ten, united by a sustained mood and presence, to bring east for the Spacebomb treatment and Trey Pollard’s expressive symphonic arrangements. It’s a celebration of the patient process of recording and discovery. Bedouine’s voice is at the center, a serene narrator, restless or still, taking deep pleasure in moments of trust and recognition, close observations or oblique truths, exploring the deep complications of displacement. Her debut collects two coasts, combining L.A. studio magic and Richmond’s Spacebomb sound in a rich new world of style and song.

Tracklisting: 01. Nice and Quiet 02. One of These Days 03. Back to You 04. Dusty Eyes 05. Solitary Daughter 06. Summer Cold 07. Mind’s Eye 08. You Kill Me 09. Heart Take Flight 10. Skyline

Released June 23, 2017

★★★★★ – The Independent “A modern folk masterpiece" – The FADER “One of the most charming albums of the year” ★★★★ – The Guardian “A hushed, haunted, delicate wonder” – Associated Press “Gorgeous… stellar” – The Line of Best Fit “A triumph” ★★★★ – Mojo ★★★★ – Q 8/10 – UNCUT “Dreamy” – UPROXX “Captivating” – Rolling Stone The Best of What’s Next – Paste “Downright stunning” – Stereogum

CD Gatefold Limited to 500 copies Released May 20, 2014

Grandma Sparrow & his Piddletractor Orchestra is a psychedelic children’s song-cycle for adults that reveals Joe Westerlund’s fascination with collage, improvisation, humor, and the convergence of atonal and popular melodies. It’s the kind of project that is rarely dreamed up these days, rarer still to be executed with such skill, bravado and glee (complete with an amateur youth choir). An over-the-top, richly realized musical vision from an over-the-top musical visionary, Westerlund (Megafaun, Gayngs, Califone) takes the listener on a wild ride of audio collage, drifts of radio static, and orchestrated grooves–the Beach Boys and Charles Ives wandering through Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood. It’s another bold production from Spacebomb Records, ever dedicated to the redefinition of what a record can be in the 21st century.

More info on the album

Fall down the rabbit hole of Ivan Howard’s alter ego and wake up in a stylized soundscape, surrounded by twisting melodies and singing shadows. Beautiful Tired Bodies is the latest installment of chromatic-eyed soul from the man who brought us a “magnificent art-funk treasure” (SPIN) and “a symphonic funkscape worthy of Quincy Jones” (UNCUT). Talking to the mirror in the man, Howard Ivans delivers his full-length debut, co-produced by Trey Pollard and Cameron Ralston, featuring the Spacebomb house band and a VIP list of Richmond musicians. The experience is immersive, a headlong rush, shot through with highlights like Pollard’s transfixing string arrangements and bold keyboard riffs from Devonne Harrison (Stones Throw). Howard Ivans stands in the spotlight, a man who once recorded a bold, song-by-song remake of Sade’s Love Deluxe, delivering a new soft funk tone poem, a voice crooning out in the wilderness.

Track list: 1. Denise 2. King of Careless 3. Jump In 4. Idle Lights 5. Come On 6. Back to the Life 7. Second Spring 8. Supersonic Love 9. Keep Breaking It Down 10. They Don’t Know How It Feels

In-house arranger for Spacebomb, Trey Pollard, makes his debut as a composer in his own right on Antiphone. Antiphone is an album of chamber pieces under his own name featuring a set of preludes and fugues for string quintet and pieces for chamber string orchestra and piano. Pollard’s work has been a vital component of productions by a growing list of rock and pop artists in the know – Natalie Prass, The Waterboys, Foxygen, Helado Negro, Matthew E. White and Bedouine – and expanded to projects outside of that context, recently contributing to the score of S-Town, the groundbreaking long-form podcast. The music of his mind is of such quality – agile and prescient, conceptual yet emotional, with an absorbing sense of beauty. Though he might not try to bring down the heavens, they swing low just the same. Pollard moves through the potentialities of sound with surety, finding his own line on the thrill of sound.

“Pollard...has created a stunning collection of memorable moments that feel like a score for a film — one that’s playing in your mind as you listen. Close your eyes and let it overtake you." — RVA Magazine

"Antiphone is nothing short of an achievement." — You Hear That?!

"beautiful" — Composer's Toolbox

"perfection" — Schmutz

"Antiphone [is] set to emphasise Pollard's emotional and conceptual sound… Jumping between producing, piano and conducting the small ensembles, his debut album will highlight Pollard's prowess and attention to minor detail." — The Line of Best Fit

Zagg is the debut full-length album by Jackie Cohen and the follow-up to her two introductory EPs released last year, Tacoma Night Terror Parts 1 & 2, which were called "utterly spellbinding" (The Line of Best Fit), "a stunning and complete debut" (Vinyl Me, Please), and "sleazy-listening glam" (The Guardian). The playing on Zagg – by Cohen with the Spacebomb House Band – and production – by Jonathan Rado (Foxygen) and Matthew E. White with freak-of-nature orchestral arrangements by Trey Pollard – is bright and beautiful across the whole grab-bag of love songs, laments, self-mortifications, meditations on sunscreen, hammer-anvil jams, and kit v. kit double drum cardio smash-bros looney tunes suicide pursuits. More than one of Jackie’s many nicknames, “Zagg" is also a shout out to her uncanny ability to select an unanticipated word or musical flourish, her disarming poetic acumen, her ability to zoom in and out at lightning speed and spin a phrase into a mantra, or the opposite of a mantra. Each song on this record is its own unique little world, keeping a listener delightfully off-kilter throughout the entire affair. Here’s the record. Listen hard. Read the signs. Pack a lunch. Enjoy.

Chillin’ in her tower like a doomed princess, over-feeler supreme Jackie Cohen has two options: she can either stress-vomit herself into the great beyond, or she can present her debut EP. Tacoma Night Terror, Part 1: I’ve Got the Blues / Part 2: Self-Fulfilling Elegy is her first collection of English Department anti-folk songs, full of piquant poetry set to curious nods to classic and country pop and rock.

Half a decade ago, living on Spring Street in Lower Manhattan, not yet official wine-hiccoughing age, not yet (to knowledge) getting Roland Barthes quotes tattooed on her “under-boob [sic],” Cohen was absolutely of the Lower East Side. Pixie-cut, book-laden, always whooshing to or from a lit theory class — she had that particular New York hypochondria and fidgetiness, which she now comments is “actually just a byproduct of Jewishness,” and by the seriousness of her Uniqlo heat-tech turtleneck, you would never have guessed that she was actually a transplant of the “janky but charming” San Fernando Valley.

In her EP, recorded post-grad back in the SFV with some rando prog-nerds (read: Jonathan Rado and The Lemon Twigs), flavors of each location permeate her poem-songs. The Greenwich Village smartypants, fuck-fashion folk of the Moldy Peaches and Regina Spektor pokes its head up in the jaunty greek tragedy “Ladies’ Man.” Then, on Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Marriage Plot-referencing “Maddy” and desert grunge “Bold,” we hear echoes of Topanga Canyon’s finest — Stevie Nicks and On The Beach-era Neil Young, respectively.

In her songwriting, Cohen’s dissections are precise and fantastic, almost like psychological fables. In one moment (on standout “Ladies’ Man”), she recites the inner thoughts of a woman who carries a torch for some shallow, ridiculous young grifter. In the next, she zooms out for a picture of Daphne, transformed into a laurel tree only to be dry-humped by Apollo for eternity, and lets the image just hang in a pregnant silence.

“Bold” is a diss track of the highest order. Over a dirgy, lo-fi strum and a coyote-howl slide guitar, Cohen coos about a young man who fancies himself fancy, lost in some grandiose idea of himself. “There are crystals in the closet of your room/You appear in lovely colored fabrics/Dreamt up by a man bolder than you/ Oh I hope I can be bold, too/Oh I hope you’ll learn to be brave soon.” In the last lines, you understand that Cohen reproaches not only her illusion-draped subject, but herself for giving a f*ck.

Her lyrics and melodies are wonderful, careful, and winding, but they don’t feel particularly fussed over. One gets the sense that Cohen just starts singing lines on a jog or a drive, filling the dishwasher or raging against a heavy-bag in kickboxercise class. You also get the sense that Cohen’s done some hard, regular time in the therapist’s armchair, just as busy judging herself as she is everyone else. She’s developed a droll perspective on her own anxiety and depression, but it seems that the voice we’re hearing is more self-assured than it was a short time ago; it carries a nimbleness and an endearing twang to it — in some moments, you can almost hear her grinning.

"Jackie Cohen’s hazy, dreamy Americana is for those overthinking, sensitive souls who like their delicate melodies with a literary edge." — The Line of Best Fit

"Sleazy-listening glam, an exploration of a fabulous never-was 70s boulevard of the sort of broken dreams that only hot people have.” — The Guardian

"could fall under the category as an instant classic. At a minimum, it’s timeless." – The Revue

Richmond Folk Festival and Spacebomb Records team up for a special compilation album celebrating the 15th anniversary of the Richmond Folk Festival. All Together Now: 15 Years of the Richmond Folk Festival Live includes select tracks recorded live over the years since the National Folk Festival first came to Richmond in 2005.

The full compilation album will be released on October 11, 2019, the first day of the Richmond Folk Festival. It will be available for purchase in multiple formats, including digital download, CD, standard black vinyl and even an orange and green tie-dye pressed vinyl collector’s edition (only 300 made). All proceeds from sales of the album will go directly to support the Richmond Folk Festival.

Track List

1. Clinton Fearon and the Boogie Brown Band – Feel the Spirit
2. Lulo Reinhardt and Daniel Stelter – Swing 2012
3. Maggie Ingram & The Ingramettes – Family Prayer
4. Lunasa – Ryestraw (medley): The New Day March/Reystraw/An Old Woman Would
5. Nathalie Pires – Loucura (Madness)
6. The Holmes Brothers – Baby What You Want Me To Do
7. Peter Rowan Bluegrass Band – Don't Ask Me Why
8. The Quebe Sisters – Speed the Plow Medley: Speed the Plow/The Maid Behind the Bar/Temerance Reel
9. Altai Kai – My Native Land, Altai
10. Mariachi Los Camperos de Nati Cano – México lindo/¡Viva México!
11. Sona Jobarteh – Mamamuso
12. Dale Watson and His Lonestars – Real Country Song/A Nashville Rash
13. Rare Essence – Overnight Scenario
14. BeauSoleil Trio – Le Sud de la Louisiane
15. Sammy Shelor and Kirk Sutphin – Angeline the Baker
16. Spanish Harlem Orchestra – Son de Corazón

Tracklist:

1. I Don’t Believe In Death
2. Karma the Knife
3. Jícama
4. It Don’t Hinder Me
5. La Enorme Distancia
6. Guadalupe
7. Lucifer Waiting
8. Llorona
9. Valentina in the Moonlight
10. Agua De Rosa
11. Penny in my Back Pocket
12. Jícama Pt. Dos
13. The Big Machine

When you listen to the love songs of LA-based Bedouine, you will be reminded of Karen Dalton’s world-wise voice or the breathy seduction of Minnie Riperton's vocals, the easy cool of French ye-ye singers, and the poetry of Joan Baez. Her folk is nomadic, wandering across time and space. On first discovery you may ask whether they're dated to 2019, or whether you've uncovered some forgotten classic. It makes sense that singer-songwriter Azniv Korkejian's arrival – both musically and personally – on her second record has been influenced by her own wanderlust, displacement, and curiosity.

Bird Songs of a Killjoy is a soundtrack to Spring blossom, to warm air on skin, to the concept of possibility. Some of the songs on this sophomore effort were from that same time period of fruitful creativity as her self-titled debut, which came out in June 2017. She continued her creative partnership with Gus Seyffert (Beck, Norah Jones) who produced them in his studio. For Bedouine, these songs have already served their healing purpose. Now it's time for them to move others.

'Out of My Province' is Nadia Reid's third album, following 2017's critically acclaimed 'Preservation.' This album is Reid's first with Spacebomb Records, produced by Matthew E. White and the Spacebomb House Band, and her first album on Spacebomb Records. Between European tours, appearing on 'Later…with Jools Holland' and singing with the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra, 'Out of My Province' is the sound of a young artist growing in profile and dexterity before international audiences and whose world has changed before her eyes.

TRACKLIST

1. All of My Love
2. High & Lonely
3. Oh Canada
4. Heart to Ride
5. Other Side of the Wheel
6. Best Thing
7. I Don’t Wanna Take Anything From You
8. The Future
9. Who Is Protecting Me
10. Get the Devil Out

1. American Nights 02. Fault Is Me 03. Attention 04. Wake Up 05. Prelude 06. I Can't Wait 07. Never Enough 08. Reasons To Give Up In You 09. Coyote 10. In My Dreams 11. Bride Of The Burden 12. Ages