Yoga Records

Goodbye tumblr, it’s been real. You never really totally worked, and some of the stuff you did was pretty annoying. At a certain point it was like you weren’t even trying anymore. Most troublingly, google acted like you don’t exist. And perception, or lack thereof, has a way of becoming reality. But I loved your minimal design, and best of you remind me of before, so although I will probably find a new blogging platform, or just continue use this new thing they call instagram, I will miss you. Twitter, you’re next -- you’ve got to go, and you will not be missed. But that’s for another day. Right now we’re here to say goodbye to tumblr, and to recap on Yoga Records and talk about what’s next.

I was hired to do A&R for Numero Group in May 2015. Yoga Records finished up a great dozen-record record run with Drag City in early 2016, with the overlooked and underrated Creation by Lightstorm. Since then it’s been mostly Numero most of the time, culminating in crazy projects like the crucial Jackie Shane anthology Any Other Way, Laraaji’s new age masterwork Vision Songs Vol. 1, and Environments for iOS -- as of this week the best selling mobile app in the world (seriously). 

I’m going to keep making records for Numero Group -- the stoned, synthed out labor of love Switched-On Eugene is out October 19, 2018 -- but I’m also glad to say Yoga Records is back in November with I Saw You by Peter Kardas, a coproduction with the new Echo Ocho label run by my friend & hero Tyler Craft. I Saw You is a boil down of Right Belief and Right Action two completely unknown tapes from the mid-80s -- so fully realized it’s astonishing. Discovering Peter Kardas was one of the many highlights of researching Switched-On Eugene, Kardas having been one of the few artists outside of the PNW who responded to the Eugene Electronic Music Collective’s call for submissions. We’re only doing 500 and they won’t last, so get them while you can. (You can check out the couple Yoga titles remaining in print from the label at Forced Exposure.)

Also in stores November, Yoga Records finally, proudly presents a definitive new edition of the self-titled record by the master, Ted Lucas. If you’re actually reading this, Ted Lucas probably requires no introduction. If you somehow don’t know about this incredible musician, go to spotify or apple music, where you’ll find an ever-growing number of Yoga releases for your penny-fractional streaming pleasure -- including Ted. 

Anyway -- goodbye tumblr. It’s always hard to mindfully leave a platform, but as Shmi Skywalker said, you can't stop the change any more than you can stop the suns from setting. I’m going to leave this page up for now anyway. It’s good to retain a document. For the most part I stand by the best of the year lists. And I’m proud of the label and looking forward to doing it bigger and better going forward. For the folks who supported the label in the first decade, thank you for noticing. For everyone who took note of the work beyond Ted Lucas and I Am The Center, thank you for noticing. To all the freaks, thanks.

Good shows and movies from 2017

Search Party S1/S2 Wonder Woman American Vandal Crazy Ex-Girlfriend S3 A Quiet Passion Logan Jim and Andy Phantom Thread Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt S3 Silicon Valley S4 Rick and Morty S3 Baywatch A Ghost Story

10 great albums from 2017

I woke up to the news on facebook this morning that my beloved friend and musical heroine Joanna Brouk passed away last week. She was just beginning to finally enjoy international acclaim for her music in the past year, with a show in France a month ago, and another planned for New York in June. I’m too upset to say much right now but will post more about her in the coming days.

Joanna Marie Brouk of Carlsbad, California passed away on April 28th, 2017. Joanna was born in St. Louis, Missouri to John and Ruth Brouk on February 20th, 1949. She is survived by her son, Brouk Peters of Los Angeles, CA, her brother, Joseph “Jody” (Barbara) of Leslie, MO, her nieces, Courtney (Jon) Fitzgerald of Bella Vista, AR, Ashley Brouk of Leslie, MO, and her great niece, Skyler Brouk of Leslie, MO.

Best movies / TV of 2016

10 favorite records from 2016 

Anohni Hopelessness 

Blood Orange Freetown Sound 

Charli XCX Vroom Vroom EP 

Chris Cohen As If Apart 

Jenny Hval Blood Bitch 

Puro Instinct Autodrama 

Hope Sandoval and the Warm Intentions Until The Hunter 

Santigold 99 Cents 

Sean Nicholas Savage Magnificent Fist 

During the summer of 1969, my anthropologist/scifi friend, Arthur Louis Joquel II, took me around New York City to further my education. We visited the Temple of the New Dawn, a metaphysical society linked to the Philosophical Research Society in Los Angeles. The PRS was founded by the famous metaphysical teacher, Manly Palmer Hall, author of hundreds of works still in print. Nesta had a small meeting room set up in a walk-up apartment building, somewhere in the Upper West Side of NYC. I visited their simple metaphysical meetings a couple of times in the company of my friend before the 'Event' and realized that his interest in the little Temple of the New Dawn was simply research for him as he was a student of metaphysics and had been Manly Hall's Librarian at the PRS in LA. He and Nesta had a common bond.

On about my third visit, I sat on a rickety little folding chair in an audience of about a dozen. Art Joquel sat beside me. We watched and listened to Nesta for about an hour. I was mesmerized by the events to follow.

Nesta Karin Crain was apparently a medium or a spiritual go-between. After completing some rituals and burning some incense and chanting some prayers along with another woman and a man, all dressed in Tibet inspired robes, Nesta took on the spirit of an ancient holy person. Her expression changed, her whole body changed and her voice became the voice of the ancient Lama. I cannot remember the message, as it was all so new to me and I understood very little about Tibetan Buddhism. She went into a trance that lasted for about five minutes. After that she slumped and had to be revived by her two robed associates. I think they were elders in the Temple of the New Dawn. 

After or before, I can't remember the exact order of the events, Nesta told the audience about her many trips to Tibet and her collection of ancient healing gongs. They were beautiful and produced tones unlike anything I have ever heard since. She had a solo on the hanging gongs and bells that would have awakened everyone in the nearby cemeteries. It was LOUD! Then she demonstrated the healing properties of the various bell gongs that looked like huge bowls with Tibetan characters and creatures sculpted on their sides. I think they were made of brass and they were very tarnished and dark.

On my last visit to Nesta's prayer meeting and gong playing event, she was telling us about some very powerful Lama's spirit that lived on in the magical power of the healing gong. It was about two feet in diameter and sat on a table, center front of the little stage in her meeting hall. Nesta struck the gong softly at first as she invoked the spirit of the gong. After the final strokes and her final chants, I saw something. I am sure I saw something rise out of the bowl gong.

I nudged my metaphysical student friend, Art Joquel, and asked what that was. He looked at me as if he had seen a ghost himself. He quickly asked me several questions about what I had seen as he cupped his hand over his mouth and whispered into my ear so as not to disturb other visitors. He was actually frightened when I told him what I saw very clearly. He had read of such spirit images seen by sensitive people. I think he had never been that close to ectoplasm and realized that Nesta Karin Crain was more than a mere gong playing priestess of the Temple. Apparently my learned friend and desciple of Manly Hall, had just been amazed by my ability to see something he could see.

Here it is. I saw a greyish blue something that seemed like the waves over a room heater of radiator, or a mirage on a hot stretch of highway in the South West that fools you into thinking that you are seeing water. The image seemed to rise out of the bowl gong like a five foot stream of smoke or something. Maybe it was ectoplasm. It seemed alive and it disappeared but did just rise up to the ceiling like smoke, but hung around the bowl for about a minute and then simply vanished, maybe back into the bowl gong.

We quickly said our goodbys and scrambled down several flights and fled out into the streets for some fresh air and tried to get a grip on our minds. I was quite amazed that he had not seen the image evoked by Nesta from the lovely healing bowl gong on the stage. He said I might be in grave danger. We never went back there. He told me that I had a gift of being able to see things in other dimensions and asked me to study the works of Joseph Campbell, the famous anthropologist and teacher of religious myths and history.

Nesta is probably a person worth studying because of her knowledge of metaphysics, healing techniques of the Tibetan teachers, and because she had been to Tibet and had collected some gongs, pretty lively ones with spirits included. She was a vibes expert. I think she was one of the most amazing mediums and spirit catchers I have ever heard of.

I have done my best and since all this memory has been invoked, I may have dreams and other memories of this very interesting personage. I would dearly love to know more about her. I have the impression from Art Joquel that she was known to Roerich, the famous artist who traveled in the Himalayas and Tibet. Check out the Roerich museum on the web. Check out the Theosophical Society and the Philosophical Research Society. Roerich, Joquel, Crain and Hall are now deceased.

Art and all of the folks above have influenced my search for the meaning of existence and have contributed to the founding of the little known, as yet unfunded nonprofit peace organization. There is a little bio of Art Joquel at the site, see the history page. He was my history teacher, my first love and my first husband. He gave me many many more adventures like the events at Nesta's loft in Manhattan in the late 1960's. I really miss all of these folks.

Chloe Joquel 

Without Other Music there would be no Yoga Records.

OM opened in 1995, just after I got to Sarah Lawrence College. Soon I was there as often as time and finances would allow. Every spare cent in those days went to buying 40s, alt comics, and to records and yes, CDs, most of them from OM. I went hard on Tropicalia, Krautrock, 60s French pop, J-pop, and anything Tim Gane namedropped.

It could be intimidating entering the store and being confronted with so much that I didn't know but wanted to. Contrary to their rep as music snob HQ (as perfect example of projection as ever there was), the staff always seemed glad to share their knowledge, were always nice to me. When I called to get them to hold a copy of whatever new perversely limited edition 45 (usually Stereolab), even though it was an unreasonable request, they'd do it if I got in there as fast as I always did. When I lingered in the shop like someone with no where else to go, no one gave me a hard time. I learned so much and I am so grateful to everyone who worked there in the 90s.

OM is more than just an irreplaceable retail space. As a source for music reviews, their newsletter, although it's a sales tool first, is worth a hundred Pitchforks. But to make this about me -- in 2007, the store looked at the ways iTunes was failing the kinds of hyper-informed music consumers that shop at their store, and created their own system, Other Music Digital. With the creation of this very curated little online store, I saw an opportunity to virtually establish a label as a first step towards actual corporeality. I wrote to them and asked if they would work with a nobody assuming the product was legit, and they said they would, and with that, Yoga Records was born. As anyone who ever explored alternative digital channels as a business model can tell you, this was never going to be a significant source of income, but for me that was somewhat beside the point. From a financial perspective, OM undoubtedly put more time and energy into pushing the digital store than they should have, and few benefited from this as much as I did. By the time the digital store closed, I was well into making actual records. Before any of that happened though, they devoted an entire digital newsletter to spotlighting my releases. They fucking made Yoga Records the Other Music Digital label of the week. For a kid who used to take the Metro North on the weekends to this mecca of musical supremacy... It's hard to express how much it felt like I had made it. In a way it was the first serious validation I ever experienced that felt totally, 100% meaningful, substantial. If you could make it here, you could make it anywhere.

I wrote the following kidding / not kidding rebuttal to the author of a smug piece about “Our Misplaced Nostalgia For Cassette Tapes” back when the NY Times ran it in December 2015, and, unsurprisingly, never got a reply. It just popped into my head for some reason, and my disdain for these kinds of bullying, no-basis-for-saying-a-goddamn-thing takedowns of innocuous microtrends is evergreen, so figured I’d share it here. If it seems harsh well, it was Christmas, I was visiting my family:

Just making sure you read this response to your piece about tapes --

Let’s All Chill The Fuck Out (And Stop Bashing Cassettes)

Although it lacks your lighter-than-air wit, the assertions in this article are true. The stuff about audio quality is correct for those who care enough to sort it out. And utility is a huge part of why tapes have been and will continue to be niche-relevant for a long time. You didn't mention the blind, you didn't mention tapes in prisons. Do you have any idea what I'm talking about? No, of course not. Yes, nostalgia and fashion are at work here but did you really just write a fashion piece? And/or do you really want to be the guy who tells his wife to toss her old mixtapes? That's monstrous bro.

I'd just add the important detail that 1000s of amazing tape-only releases are currently being sorted by the same diggers who discovered all that amazing, once-unknown vinyl-only stuff that we all know and love. It's about the content, and there's no content on minidiscs. That's the bottom line about the tape revival... It's not about fashion, it's about something real. You may see it as a Nelly Furtado tape but it's really about what's being discovered. For young people raised on ipods it's discovering the most delightful physical medium, for us old collectors it's about discovering what's out there.

Worthwhile Movies and Shows of 2015

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt S1

Anomalisa

Mad Max: Fury Road

Documentary Now! S1

Welcome To Me

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend S1

Pelican Dreams

Ex Machina

Jupiter Ascending

True Detective S2

Irrational Man

Spy

Louie S5

Inside Out

Maps To The Stars

The Big Short

10 Great Albums of 2015

Beach House / Depression Cherry

Miley Cyrus / Dead Petz (abridged)

Deradoorian / The Expanding Flower Planet

Empress Of / Me

Colleen Green / I Want To Grow Up

Julia Holter / Have You In My Wilderness

Night Beds / Ivywild

Jessica Pratt / On Your Own Love Again

Purity Ring / Another Eternity

Jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr observed that "even a dog distinguishes between being stumbled over and being kicked." And so it is with Ariel Pink's mostly amazing Pom Pom. It literally couldn't be clearer which songs are by Ariel Pink the heartfelt genius behind The Doldrums and Before Today and which are by Ariel Pink the wasted provocateur who gets all of the attention in the press.

Shortly after it came out I assembled my own Pom Pom playlist to excise the songs that (I'm guessing) inspired Matthew Perpetua to describe the record "as though it was made by a literally soulless creature with an unlimited supply of cocaine".

Using the free Audacity app I cut the lousy first halves of Sexual Athletics (clip at 1:49) and Dinosaur Carebears (2:14) and removed six tracks altogether (Pig Parade, Not Enough Violence, Nude Beach, Negativ Ed, Jello, and Exile On Frog Street). All of a sudden the album starts with White Freckles. All of a sudden, no more dogs are being kicked. A bloated, 2LP hot mess is suddenly a single disc masterpiece that more than lives up to the career-best reviews for the version released last fall. All it takes is about five minutes and basic competency with itunes.

I considered putting the playlist up on this blog as Pom Pom: The Phantom Edit, but opted to keep it to myself and a few friends and a vague mention on my year's ten best list.  Aside from, you know, not wanting to insult artists I respect and in some cases know personally (like anyone cares), perhaps my biggest reason for keeping the thing under wraps was the fact that Kim Fowley died around this time, and having cut all but half of one of his credited compositions, it felt like putting the edit out there may seem uncool toward someone who inspired so many RIPs.

But the fact is, I never liked Fowley or his music. In spite of all the accolades, it doesn't take a science fiction empath to see the dude was a sinister creep. Just how much of a creep wasn't a matter of public record until last week, when Runaways bassist Jackie Fuchs heroically revealed her horrifying experiences with the maestro. And so it seems like it's time to share the optimized, De-Fowleyed Pom Pom.

Yes, I do like the outro second half of 'Sexual Athletics', credited to Pink, Fowley, and Los Angeles legend Don Bolles. And maybe it's fitting that Fowley's presence isn't totally removed. All I can say is I'd like to think that his contribution to the track comes somewhere in the deleted first half, the part that goes "I'm sweet / Eat raw meat / Don't admit to defeat / Some say it's bittersweet".