Constellation Mix Tape

Our friends at Constellation have posted a FALL MIX TAPE to show case their new releases:

Click HERE to listen to the MIX, read below to find out about the releases.

AVAILABLE 30 SEPTEMBER 2014:   AVEC LE SOLEIL SORTANT DE SA BOUCHE - Zubberdust! CST106 - 180gLP / CD / DL

We think it’s safe to call Avec le soleil sortant de sa bouche a bit of a Montreal supergroup, its members having been active in this city’s experimental rock communities for well over a decade, including participation in Panopticon Eyelids, Pas Chic Chic, Red Mass, Set Fire to Flames, and, from the Constellation roster, Fly Pan Am. Avec le soleil has solidified over the past year into a tight four-piece unit, and careened towards mastery of a highly original, deeply satisfying, giddy and heady avant-funk. The pair of exquisite and exhilarating 20-minute pieces featured on Zubberdust! is the culmination of the group’s first two years of conceptual and somatic development. (The pieces are subdivided into sections for CD and digital track IDs.) This is (mostly) instrumental rock that exuberantly succeeds in blending a primitivist, hypnotic energy with cerebral pleasures, seeding an addictive trail of sonic brain-candy throughout the mixes. The band wholly embodies and channels its inimitable square grooves, while teasing out the innumerable joys of repetition via micro-deployments of ever-shifting electronic overlays – along with the occasional full-stop and 180 degree turn. JS Truchy’s wordless lead vocals (and his choral arrangement on “Face à l’instant”) add compelling textural and melodic counterpoints while lending the music an especially timeless, deterritorialised and emotive dimension. For more info on Zubberdust, visit our release page. Our Fall 2014 sampler includes Avec le soleil’s “Face à l’instant Part 2″.

AVAILABLE 14 OCTOBER 2014:   LAST EX - Last Ex CST107 - 180gLP / CD / DL

Last Ex is the new instrumental rock ensemble led by Simon Trottier and Olivier Fairfield, both longtime fixtures of experimental/punk scenes rooted in the cross-province hub of Hull/Ottawa (straddling the border of Quebec and Ontario, respectively). In addition to duties in various groups orbiting Fairfield’s E-Tron Records (including H. de Heutz, Ferriswheel and many others), the two are perhaps best known as core members of haunted blues-folk ensemble Timber Timbre, which spawned the Last Ex project. When Timber Timbre’s ambient music for a horror film went unused back in 2012, Trottier and Fairfield began revisiting the sound palette they had built up for the soundtrack at Fairfield’s studio in Hull, expanding on their techniques and textures, adding drums, bass and various other instruments. The duo found that they had dug into some very fertile territory, writing additional songs throughout 2013 and bringing their obsessions with sound collage, tape-based music concrète and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop to bear on the cinematic lyricism of the initial widescreen guitar- and string-based material. Derived from the title of the abandoned film, Simon and Olivier dubbed their new project Last Ex. With its combination of assured lyricism, cinematic guitars, dusky analog atmospherics and taut percussion, this is a vivid, concise and expressive instrumental album that sits snugly between fellow label acts Do Make Say Think and Exhaust on the one hand, Hrsta, Tindersticks and Evangelista on the other. For more info on Last Ex visit our release page. Our Fall 2014 sampler includes Last Ex's “Hotel Blues."

AVAILABLE 28 OCTOBER 2014:   OUGHT - Once More With Feeling... EP CST106 - 180gLP / CD / DL

Montreal four-piece post-punk group Ought has been gathering momentum the old-fashioned way, with a humble and deceptively unassuming debut album that’s been worming its way into many many ears thanks to its combination of intelligence, authenticity, directness, simplicity and energy; and with live performances in which the band’s channeling of genuine passion, politics and charisma are consistently connecting with and exuberantly galvanizing audiences.

While they continue their relentless touring across North America and Europe this fall, we’ll be letting out this vinyl- and digital-only EP which corrals a couple of selections from the band’s older songbook, re-recorded this Spring at Hotel2Tango to reflect some of the ways they’ve grown and evolved over the past year or so. We think it’s a very fine set of tunes that highlights and brings fans up to date with Ought’s first two years of songwriting, revealing additional facets of the band, including its ability to play with nostalgia and balladry (“Pill”), feverish revival-tent testifying (“New Calm Pt. 2″), and improv/abstraction (“New Calm Pt. 3″).

For more info on the EP check our release page, and for a full listing of towns they’ll be hitting this fall (there are many!) check our tours page. The EP includes “Waiting”, which we let out early in the Spring as an MP3, and new track “Pill” is included on our Fall 2014 sampler.