Smokey Robinson stopped by the shop today!

NEW STUFF FOR THIS WEEK

 Hello to everyone out there in the internet. Havent had much time to write on here lately as we have been hard at work on the store itself, trying our best to make HPR is a welcoming place to visit where you always leave with something your excited about regardless of what its what you walked in the door looking for or not.

  First of all we spent some time going through the CD's and ordering some much needed re-stock. We did a lot of ordering for the jazz and rock sections and hope to have all these items on the shelf by the end of the week including a bunch of Modest Mouse (including the infamous 764 hero split), Explosions in the Sky, Do Make Say Think, Mogwai (including the amazing soundtrack they recorded for the film Zidane) The National, Broken Social Scene, Radiohead, Slint, Fugazi,. Joy Division, Pavement and many others!!!

 Perhaps most exciting are the new additions to our Jazz vinyl section. I have been slowly getting them ready over the past week since I would like to make sure we are selling you a nice clean vinyl that you can enjoy (They may have a few scuffs but they all play great!). I will be putting out a nice chunk tomorrow including some amazing early Impulse and Blue Note releases.

 This stuff goes fast so get here early

 Love,

 HYDE PARK RECORDS

Release show for IKE 7 inch announced

Our first release "The I Know Everything 7 inch" will be released June 28th 2011. On that same night the band will be playing a very special show at The Fireside Bowl right here in Chicago.

 Fireside Bowl became legendary in the 1990's music scene in Chicago. You could literally see at least one good show a week at this spot all year long. Everyone from At the Drive in to Mineral and local legends like Braid could be seen at fireside bowl during its heyday.

We here at Hyde Park Records along with the members of IKE are very excited and honored to be able to do this show here. We would like to thank Sam at House Call Entertainment for making it possible!!

Make sure to RSVP to the show here:

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=153703031361499

Hear first track from "I Know Everything" 7 inch now!

I KNOW EVERYTHING SELF TITLED 7 INCH OUT JUNE 28TH 2011 ON HYDE PARK RECORDS!

I Dont Have Enough Time for You by I Know Everything

Hear a new track from Okkervil River now, pick up the new record "I am very far" May 10th!

Click below to listen to the song "Rider" off of the forthcoming LP "I am Very Far" from Okkervil River out May 10th on Jagjaguwar.

Okkervil River - Rider by The Big Beat

Big thanks to our friends in The National

Thanks to The National for providing us with this sweet drum head for our wall after their show on 4/25 with Arcade Fire at UIC pavilion.


 The show was great!!!!

New releases coming soon

Fleet Foxes - Happiness Blues
Available 5/3/11
CD - $13.99 LP - $18.99

From Pitchfork:

 Fleet Foxes are one of those bands that arrived so fully formed that it was hard to imagine where they'd take their sound next, and judging by the long gap between their Debut LP and the upcoming Helplessness Blues, it seems the group may have struggled with that notion some as well. The eponymous lead single from the record finds them honing their intricate baroque folk while at the same time trying out a more straightforward, lyrical approach. The most notable difference between "Helplessness Blues" and the Sun Giant/Fleet Foxes material is that frontman Robin Pecknold's words and vocals are front and center, high in the mix. Over a surging acoustic instrumental, he sings about existential fear ("What's my name? What's my station? Oh, just tell me what I should do") in a hopeful and earnest way. Some will probably call these lyrics hokey, but they're delivered with such sincerity (and vocal warmth) that I can't help but go along for the ride. The song is essentially two halves, and around the three-minute mark, the whole band appears, and it bursts into a more reverberant, orchestral section that just shimmers. It's here where you remember how great these guys sound when they're firing on all cylinders, and it's easy to think there could be more of this kind of lovely sprawl on the record's other tracks.

 Dredg - Chuckles and Mr. Squeezy
 Available 5/3/11
 CD - $15.99  LP - $N/A

 From Brixton Mixed Reviews:

In music, reinvention is always a dangerous game to play. Few bands are more up for a game of Career Russian Roulette than dredg. Making such a dramatic change in your sound can sometimes lead to acquiring new fans who like the new sound. The same can also alienate long-time fans who have enjoyed the band’s body of work up to that point. Time can only tell what the result of their latest transformation will bring them. Being around for nearly two decades, they have two EP’s and five full-length albums to their name. In the beginning dredg was largely inaccessible to casual music fans. Their brand of thoughtful, progressive alternative rock that alienates a lot of people is what made them so great. While they have changed so much since the beginning, it has been a graceful and gradual change. On an album that I assumed was some kind of joke after seeing the album art and title, Chuckles and Mr. Squeezy shows the band’s most severe shift of their career. Unfortunately, it is not a change for the better and for the first time in their long history, dredg have spun the chamber and found the bullet. Producing the effort is Dan the Automator. He produced two of my personal favorites in Head Automatica’s Decadence and Gorillaz’ Self Titled album. He is known for producing hip hop and dance pop for the most part. He brings what he is best at to Chuckles and Mr. Squeezy in heaping quantities. One can’t help but question the choice of producer for a band who hasn’t even dabbled in any similar music to that of what’s on Dan the Automator’s resume. His influence and areas of expertise shine through far too brightly on the album. I am someone who enjoys dance pop for the most part. I just can’t get behind dredg’s attempt at it. Rather than adding his touch to a dredg album, Dan the Automator has completely bogged down an album with out of place synth beats and dance hooks. They have always featured a little synth and sometimes are heavy on electric effects but those worked perfectly for them. Most confusing given their past albums is the complete absence of guitars on most tracks. Tracks like the lead-off “Another Tribe” and “Down Without a Fight” epitomize the transitions made on this album. In a way they epitomize what is wrong with the album as well. The former starting off with a gangsta rap beat that sounds comical alongside the voice of singer Gavin Hayes. The latter having a techno beat atmosphere that just clutters up what seems like an otherwise solid effort.
There are a few select tracks that save the album from being a complete waste. “The Thought of Losing You” sounds like it wouldn’t be too terribly out of place on Catch Without Arms. It’s one of the few tracks that only show subtleties from the producer and is much more true to their roots.  “The Tent” is a modern take on Dark Side of the Moon era Pink Floyd. With a repetitive chorus that is so hard to deny no matter how underwhelming the rest of the song may be.
There’s an oft-told adage about the fluctuating climate here in the Midwest. “If you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes”. I suppose similar can be said about a dredg album. If you don’t enjoy it, just savor the incredible back catalogue until their next reinvention. One can only hope they haven’t finally found a sound that they want to stick with this time around. [Andy Young]

Man Man - Live Fantastic
Available 5/10/11
CD - $15.99    LP -  $17.99

From Prefix Magazine:

Philadephia's Man Man recorded their fourth album, Live Fantastic, with indie producer extraordinaire -- and fourth member of Monsters of Folk -- Mike Mogis in Omaha, Neb. The album promises much of the feral energy we've heard from Man Man in the past, but according to singer Honus Honus, there's also some seriously depressing material on the album, suggesting a dark side that works against that bright album title. So even if the darker territory here reigns in the chaos a bit, don't expect them to totally abandon all the raucous noise and oddball vocals that made them stand out in the first place.

Okkervil River - I am very far
Available 5/10/11
CD - $14.99    LP - $19.99

“I am alone”—“je est un autre”—I Am Very Far. In the album’s title, there tussles a bold-faced, Rimbaudian anguish. And it is a bold, tussle-riddled album, this sixth from Okkervil River, filled to the brim and beyond with a theatrical display of effusive elements of such variety and viscera, they make war and make war unceasingly. Loudly. Unmistakably. It is an album that is nothing if not a veritable tower of warring, waltzing, rock and roll mattresses towering over a pea-sized question as to whether rock and roll even has a place here.
Frontman Will Sheff comes off as the artist who succumbs to or suffers under the thumb of every variety of anguish and struggle under the sun. Even in the discourse outside the songs: struggle. In beating away terms like “literary,” “country,” “rock,” or even “violence”—having embraced all of the above and also having to defend all those qualities—in a lot of deliberation and defensiveness, Sheff carries on that virtuous wrestle with songwriting that’s so minuscule it’s almost impossible not to pick it out of where it’s hidden and inflate it into everything I’ve appreciated to date about Okkervil River. And then all these attributes seem to sprout in a really organic way from a really, believably, visceral core, lying at the center of a really, sincerely, visceral kind of artist.
So visceral that it’s surprising just how guarded I Am Very Far sounds. It could be the unrelenting profusion of elements and cyclonic trials that give that impression, from the ambling waltz of “Hanging From a Hit,” to the assertive thrust and snare-accentuated crashes of highly declarative opener “The Valley,” to the almost Of Montreal-ish, brackish discotheque shuffle of “Your Past Life As a Blast.” Sheff, like Joseph Beuys’ performance wherein he locked himself up in a room for the better part of a week with a wild coyote, has isolated his pivotal push-and-pull essence in the massive content of the album. It’s…well, impenetrably epic in a way recent single “Mermaid” didn’t prepare me for.
Literally isolating himself within the task of songwriting in the first place, Sheff hid away in nature’s pretty-much Nowhere, with only the occasional company of his grandparents, to write. I never personally latched onto the The Stage Names (2007) or The Stand Ins (2008), so this return to the method of Black Sheep Boy, notably, drew me back for a listen. And with considerable curiosity.
But I Am Very Far is no Black Sheep Boy. The meat of the songs seems egregiously more concealed, for one, but Sheff’s songwriting has acquired an acute focus I don’t remember it having before. The songs are less about the intent and more about how Sheff strong-arms them into claiming their territory. Few artists fight with (and for?) an aesthetic and for “rock and roll” the way Sheff does: pursuing those words exactly like it’s a quality that wasn’t there by rights, but should have been. Capturing it, wrangling it in the mire; taking futile swings; working it into Bjork covers, into Hank Williams covers, and willing it into ballads as bleak as “Omie Wise,” even penning the term right into his lyrics. It’s penned again, right off the bat, in the chorus of ”The Valley,” between the stomping, clapping, and amplifying tensions from the strings section. Check the discontent of “Rider”—however buried it is in jingly synths and overextended vocals in the rundown of the bridge. The song runs rampant with itself. It’s a battling element that’s present there and every song after.
To some extent, it’s always been there. Right from the Stars Too Small To Use EP (1999). Even in the way the roughest of Sheff’s screeches not only grate against the back of his larynx but come off as the grate of his nails as they scrape the bottom of the barrel, searching for whatever he’s run out of or whatever used to be there and suddenly isn’t. Literary but carnivorous. Flauntingly calloused. Shouting words with a frothing spray of spittle. Romantically vicious or viciously romantic. But “rock and roll!”, he stresses. This happens in every song, in every song so covered by Sheff’s struggles and inaccessibilities, by the two drummers, two pianists, harmonicas, clarinets, two bassists, seven guitarists…is that a flute?
“I wanted to isolate myself, insulate myself, see nothing of America other than the coyote”—so Sheff seems to want to insulate himself from the listener and the listener from the music, to allow those outside of it to only experience it as the intimate, contentious relationship between the smallest of elements. But if—hear the words “rock and roll” appearing in the opening track’s chorus?—I think what Sheff wrestles with most is rock and roll itself, then it’s a fight I like watching.
What’s strange is: with all the obvious battling going on within the songs, all the rabid tearing of words away from the air, Sheff’s personal wars seem less prevalent—and even more buried. Because they’re so hidden in songs that mostly just sound like Okkervil River songs, produced with exponential resources, and because for all this whirling clusterfuck, the real battle is isolated and sealed away from us. Sheff is he orchestrator, but through all the manipulating elements, all the new band members, Sheff seems to be more at odds with his art than ever before.

 MOST ANTICIPATED NEW RELEASE: 

Efrim Manuel Menuck - Plays "High Gospel"
Available 5/24/11
CD - $13.99  LP - $15.99

From Constellation Records:

Efrim Manuel Menuck is best known as co-founder of Godspeed You! Black Emperor, leader of agit-chamber-punk group Thee Silver Mt. Zion, and member of the Vic Chesnutt Band (2007-2009); he has a combined thirteen albums under his belt with these three groups. He is also co-founder of Montreal's Hotel2Tango recording studio, with dozens of recording, arranging and guest playing credits to his name, for a list of artists as diverse as British Sea Power, Carla Bozulich's Evangelista, and Grant Hart.

Fans of Menuck will be well versed in his highly original and constantly evolving approach to the sound of the electric guitar – a unique combination of short and long analog delays, biting compression and blown-out clouds of pink noise distortion. His recasting of various folkways through the lens of uncompromising punk-rock is also well-documented in the discography of Thee Silver Mt. Zion, with that band's use of poetically political group singing set against a hybrid of damaged blues, waltz, klezmer and folk instrumental tropes.

Perhaps less appreciated is Menuck's work as an inventive signal-bender and sound-sculptor, with an overriding commitment to analog processing, tape manipulations, re-amping and other iterative strategies. Efrim's aesthetic and techniques remain about as diametrically opposite to the dominant Pro-Tools and DSP culture as it gets for someone working in contemporary multi-tracked rock composition and production.

Efrim Manuel Menuck Plays "High Gospel" rallies all of these talents and sensibilities to deliver a powerful and personal album that serves as an ode to his adopted Montreal hometown (where he has now lived for two decades), the passing of great friends (Vic Chesnutt, Emma) and new fatherhood. Entirely self-produced and tracked at various Montreal locations, the album offers a confident, focused, humble and enveloping song cycle.

The droning, mangled electric guitar beds that underpin group-vocal melodies and dive-bombing electronics on the album’s opening track, and the hauntingly processed field recordings and ominous tape-delayed sound-sculpture of "a 12-pt. program for keep on keepin’ on", establish Menuck’s inimitable sonic palette in uncompromising and inspired style. "12-pt. program" ends in a glorious squall of soaring tones and distorted breakcore beats that yield to the ensuing song's intimate yet wide-screen suite for electric guitar and violin (courtesy Silver Mt. Zion bandmate and partner Jessica Moss). "heavy calls & hospitals blues" closes Side 1 with a simple piano-based ballad that harkens back to Efrim's vocal debut on the first Silver Mt. Zion album in 1999.

The first three songs on Side 2 deploy otherwordly ambience against repeating and contrapuntal melodies filtered through various pedal chains, occupying a distinctive interzone between electronic music and instrumental rock. In the second of these,"kaddish for chesnutt”, Efrim astonishes with lyrics that convey a profound intimacy with Vic, celebrating his life and death in unflinching eulogy. The final scorched-earth solo guitar figures that introduce "i am no longer a motherless child" relent to organ and keyboard oscillations and what is perhaps the most unabashedly celebratory pop song Menuck has ever produced, propelled by a wide-eyed, joyous, deeply proud (and existentially relieved?) vocal that is all chorus: the song title sung over and over....

EFRIM MANUEL MENUCK - Plays "High Gospel" [preview] by Constellation Records