A Number Of Small Things/Artists/MV & EE products

MV & EE - Country Stash 12,74 €

Three Lobed Recordings is stoked to be involved with Blatant Obviousness in the release of “Country Stash,” the latest studio album from the psych stalwarts Matt Valentine and Erika Elder. Rather than bore you with our own words on this fantastic album, Three Lobed turned to label friend Pete Coward, one of fandom’s leading experts on MV+EE as well as the United Kingdom’s foremost underground live music archivist, for his well-informed opinion.
“Studio-recorded albums from MV & EE fulfill a singular role in the development of their music. The steady stream of live releases, whether on their own craft imprint, Heroine Celestial Agriculture, or elsewhere provide snapshots from the road, vital for their immediacy and for the insight into how those songs sounded with the feeling of that place on that night. But it’s when the bags have been un-packed, Zuma has been given his tour bones, and they recuperate with the only means of R&R that these guys know, playing music, that the studio magic happens. There they can really reflect on where they’ve taken their music each night, and been taken by it, and distil some of that knowledge into classic versions of live jams and the birth of new ones, future classics themselves. That’s exactly what’s happening here on “Country Stash.”
It’s fitting that this record should be released in part through Three Lobed. The album is redolent with a sense of friendship and home, and the label is a home of sorts, having had a particularly long and fruitful relationship with MV & EE. It also features contributions from a number of long-time friends, collaborators and road travelers, from both sides of the Atlantic and of the US/Canada border. And listening to this record you feel right at home in their musical parlor, safe and warm in the welcoming, instantly familiar, glow of Spectrasound. Right now I can’t think of any other place where I’d like to stay and linger for a while.
You’re deep in that zone right from the moment the pulsing bass of Mick Flower kicks the first track, “Foxy (One)”, up a gear and it coasts along on the beautiful three-way harmonies of MV, EE and Jeremy Earl and waves of tambourine from Coot Moon. The mellow vibes and those harmonies continue through “Crash Palace Of Records”, here the rhythmic momentum provided by Canadians Mike Smith on bass and Doc Dunn on drums. Up next is the title track (...as every crash palace needs a stash, right?), which provides the centre-piece of the record and its longest track. And this is some potent stash. The return of three members of the mighty Wolf Pack -- Rongoose, Rafi Bookstaber and Paulie G -- is felt most markedly in a pastoral flute motif from the latter which drifts hazily in & out of focus, subsumed by the weight of Rongoose’s bass. The tempo drifts likewise, from a woozy crawl to a wide-eyed tumble of bass, drum and hi-hat. Throughout it all MV and EE bust out incredible guitar moves, from some particularly Garcia-esque riffing to the blasted scree that brings the track to an exhausted close. I’m not going out on any limbs when I predict this will soon be a live MV & EE favorite.
The comedown to that comes in the shape of a long-standing live favorite, “Tea Devil”. The tempo here is uniform, a graveyard stomp laid down by the UK team of Mick and Andy Ramsay. The tension between that earthbound rhythm and the sinuous guitar lines enact the eternal, inescapable blues cycle of temptation and damnation. EE’s vocals, at their most languidly sensual since “Freight Train”, make the latter seem unbearably attractive. The redemptive coda to that and to the album comes with “No There, There”, a dense, multi-layered piece where acoustic and electric guitars drift above shifting foundations of bass, lap steel, synth and percussion. Its deep kosmische resonance provides an oddly comforting close, a long exhalation drawn out over 11 minutes. The only hint of anxiety comes in the Gertrude Stein reference of the title; that and the sublime short outro, which mirrors the intro to the opener, provide a reminder that soon it will be time to leave these home comforts, saddle up the palomino and hit the road to allow new places to breathe new vibes into these songs. When that happens I look forward to taking my spot in the tapers’ pit to hear the songs on this masterful album take flight.”

MV & EE - Space Homestead from 14,99 €

“MV & EE” is slang for zero gravity, and even though they’ve been doing it consistently better since forever, they still want to give you more of their best.
The DIY wall of sound of Space Homestead was recorded over the course of a year in nine different studios, presenting as clearly as circumstances permit a living idea right here and now of what it is all about. These are sonics in motion, the satiate plural perfect supply of the hunger unusual, the picturesque in sound. Grab a shuttle for your spectra-sound furniture any time in any aeon and dig the volume of their trip.

MV & EE - Fuzzweed 19,99 €

With each successive release, MV & EE strive to map new territory and to travel more distant orbits. It makes sense that this mission is their furthest reaching yet. While they’ve long been comfortable navigating the same planes as such cosmic explorers as Sun Ra and Alan Silva, Fuzzweed sees them planting their freak flag in the sorts of different galaxies where the atmospheres counterpoint the music of the spheres with the more earthbound plaints of the blues. Please remember that The Golden Record that NASA sent up with Voyager back in more optimistic times included “Dark Was The Night.” That concept – listening to Blind Willie Johnson in space - strikes me as an apt analogy for what this Fuzzweed accomplishes on every spin.

Fuzzweed is from an edition of approximately 900 copies and is pressed on 140 gram Dutch vinyl by Record Industry. The album is housed within a handsome multi-color silkscreened jacket bearing new artwork from John Moloney. (As an added bonus, be sure to pop your LP cover under a blacklight to see some super-reactive HOT pink ink.) The album is accompanied by a download coupon for DRM-free digital files. Fuzzweed was tenderly mastered by Patrick Klem.
Initial orders include an exclusive bonus CD. This bonus disc is titled Fantasy Set (TLR-098) and is a new full-length MV&EE release assembled from live recordings made during the duo’s january 2012 month-long residency at Brooklyn’s Zebulon. Fantasy Set presents a sort of “dream set” and features guest turns from Pat “PG Six” Gubler, Jeremy Earl, Willie Lane, Jarvis Taveniere, Matt “Herbcraft” Lajoie, Carson “Smokehound” Arnold and Ron Schneiderman. Similar to prior Three Lobed bonus discs, this one will be a glass-mastered CD (not CDR) and feature artwork. It is only available in pre-order/initial retail copies and then only while supplies last. Don’t miss out!