Most recent releases from 5 Rue Christine:

DEERHOOF Friend Opportunity CD $12
Just when you think you're too jaded to swoon over anything, or clasp your hands to your chest and just smile and say "Yes!" out loud when it gets to your favorite part of a song, well, throw on Friend Opportunity and give it a few spins so it sinks in. Songs like the "The Perfect Me" have three or four sections of heart-stopping epiphanies of the sublime; "Matchbook Seeks Maniac" pulls a "99 Luftballoons" breakdown move in the middle, rocks a Brahms interval in the pop-narcotic chorus, and the Beach Boys and the Who are all over the mix – it's one of the most glorious things I've ever heard. Friend Opportunity is a feat of reinvention that could only come from artists willing to rethink everything. Even though Deerhoof has been around a long time, they're still restless, still hungry for the rush of the new. Not coincidentally, and fortunately for Deerhoof, they've attracted a burgeoning following who absolutely love to be challenged – from album to album, from song to song, from moment to moment. Friend Opportunity will not disappoint them. Or anyone else.

DEERHOOF Friend Opportunity T $13
White Friend Opportunity Logo by David Shrigley on Slate T-Shirt. Available in girl medium, girl large, small, medium, large, xl.

Deerhoof Special Offer:

Starting in 2007, Kill Rock Stars will offer a T Shirt and CD for a cheaper price on selected new releases. This promotional sale will
last for approximately 30 days.

DEERHOOF Friend Opportunity T and CD $23
Friend Opportunity CD and T Shirt available together at a cheaper price for a limited time only.

 

THE PUNKS Unanimous Bangers LP/digital
"unanimous bangers" is the lp/digital download only 2nd full length by oly, wa noise jammers the punks.
recorded live to cassette while watching "how high" on vhs for inspiration, the punks use delayed vocals, effected guitar, tribal drumming, primitive bass lines, sk-1 spasms, and broken electronics to create a heavy smoke guaranteed to touch you on the vibrational level.
r.i.y.l: explodic plastic inevitable era-velvet underground, magik markers, nnck, the godz, half japanese, really fucking freaky jam music
p.s. some of the songs on this lp are at 33rpm and some are at 45 rpm. trust us, you'll figure it out.

XIU XIU The Air Force CD $12/LP $9
It comes in waves of nausea and unease. The Air Force is a wraith, and wraithlike it moves according to genuine, human rhythms; we see frontman Jamie Stewart staring into the void, or into the past, or dipping his hands into the sick pink hues of human grease, into bad love, suicide, rape, sex, stormy friendship, domination, dependency, with husky voiced lyrics that come rising up like steam from some deep and dark and cold dungeon miles below Earth's surface. It's a feverish and disturbing set of 11 songs but just the same, it's some of the group's most accessible: producer Greg Saunier's (Deerhoof) multi-instrumental wizardry, David Horvitz' koto work, Devin Hoff's bass, Nedelle's violin, right down to Jamie and Caralee McElroy's lyrics and vocals. It's the kind of humanity we can all relate to. (Make it through Caralee's feminist/dependency tone poem “Hello from Eau Claire” without feeling her frustration, and there might be something wrong inside you.)

HELLA Acoustics CDEP $8
Drummer Zach Hill and guitarist Spencer Seim have been spending the better part of the past year recording and touring in support of the last few Hella releases (a recent EP and DVD on Kill Rock Stars / 5RC, as well as their critically acclaimed "Church Gone Wild, Chirpin Hard" double disc, not to mention national US tourdates w/ Dillinger Escape Plan, The Mars Volta, System of A Down, and Les Claypool), and have also been focusing on their other projects (Hill finding his place behind the drum kit for all-star bands Team Sleep, Goon Moon, and The Ladies, and Seim touring relentlessly with The Advantage). Needless to say, the two have been taking their skills to the masses as of late. Now, as if asking themselves what they could do next, Hella releases their "Acoustics" EP, a collection of previously released songs mostly from "The Devil Isn't Red" and "Hold Your Horse Is" with a new, stripped down and beautiful take on their already magical songs.

INCA ORE with Lemon Bear's Orchestra The Birds in the Bushes CD (5RC)
In late 2005 Inca Ore met Lemon Bear and the duo rented a cabin on the Oregon Coast and made The Birds in the Bushes. Dodging fierce storms and gloomy heaves, the duo improvised for hours and hours daily in January 2006, building the skeletons for the songs that are the body of the 5RC album. Lemon Bear is a composer and multi-instrumentalist from Oakland, a musician living in total obscurity in his devotion to music and obsessive practice. Inca Ore and Lemon Bear cooked up a special and private kind of magic for this album. The music is the sound of a pact of belief, a belief in the sounds people make as individuals and the effervescence of the beautiful friction between devoted artists. The Birds in The Bushes is a salutation from two people who plucked each other from a canyon of static and invented a pigment which is the pinkish blush, a greeting which is a defiant fingerprint on the sheen of the mundane and lukewarm.

EXCEPTER Alternation CD $12 (5RC)
Half-recorded in one blizzard, and completed by the next, Alternation is a years-in-the-making, tossed-off-in-a-moment exploration of the difference between EXCEPTER live on stage and EXCEPTER alone at home and the goal to eradicate the distinction between the two. Double the length and twice the depth of past EXCEPTER releases, Alternation is EXCEPTER looking both ways, a geometric expansion around all the territories marked so far in their brief discography: the primal death trips of Ka, the noise pop tropics of Vacation, the long drone goodnight of Throne, the cool electro doom of Self Destruction and the blasted steam cycle of Sunbomber.

THE ROBOT ATE ME Good World CD $12
Good World, the follow-up to 2005’s Carousel Waltz, was recorded by Ryland Bouchard alone in a near-freezing firehouse with a thrift store clarinet, an eighties drum machine, an eighties synth, and an out of tune 1800s piano. With 17 tracks in under 23 minutes, Ryland Bouchard presents the listener with a imaginative world that presents mythical characters like Djien (a monster spider the size of a man whose heart is buried in the ground causing it to survive the most critical attacks), the Stone Giants (who are invulnerable except on the soles of their feet) and She Owl (the wife of Bloody Knife). Musically, the arrangements are simple and delicate, with harmonized falsetto vocals and staccato clarinet lines floating above minimal percussion and the occasional synth. Choruses and verses blur into musical interludes that travel with the characters they represent. Songs become puzzle pieces as parts of a much larger narrative that is alluded to but ultimately left up to the listener’s imagination.

AMPS FOR CHRIST Every Eleven Seconds CD $12
Amps For Christ was founded by Barnes, guitarist and electronics wizard of Man is the Bastard and co-founder of Bastard Noise. Barnes has been building and playing stringed instruments, tube oscillators and caveman electronics in his home sound laboratories most of his life. Barnes unparalleled background is what creates Amps For Christ's radically distinctive sound. Every Eleven Seconds is different from all other Amps For Christ albums, while retaining a Folk-core tradition; exploring pure energy forms and varied influences. Recorded in 2006, at Baldy's Big Toe Studios, located on the alluvial plains of the San Gabriel Mountains, Enid Snarb wears his production hat for this ninth full length Amps For Christ release. Mastered (the Black Art...) by the gifted Karl Froylocker, Every Eleven Seconds is an expression of Barnes’ interests (time travel, wave theory, human politics, etc..) and reflects the evolution of both Barnes and Amps For Christ.

 

5RC LOGO HOODY $30
Black 5RC logo on the back of a heather gray hoody with 5 Rue Christine in small print on the upper right corner. Logo design by Fon-Lin Nyeu. Available in girl medium, girl large, small, medium, and xl. larges are coming soon!

WOODEN WAND Harem of the Sundrum & the Witness Figg CD $12
Wooden Wand's first album a solo artist (he regularly records and tours with bongtastic loft-psych champions The Vanishing Voice) is influenced in equal parts by legendary hedonists Fleetwood Mac and West Coast sad sac Judee Sill. The intention to create something timeless and ageless informs each note of the music, for better or worse. For those of you subscribing to the 'art as immortality' school of thought, consider this Wooden Wand's first mark, his initial score against the reaper.

ZACH HILL & MICK BARR Shred Earthship CD $12 (5RC)
Incredible musicians Mick Barr from Octis/Orthrelm and Zach Hill from Hella/Team Sleep teamed up to record Shred Earthship over several magicial days in Sacramento, CA. The result: Mike Patton is jealous. Witness the combined forces of these weirdo tour monsters this spring.

 

THE MAE SHI Lock the Skull, Load the Gun DVD $15
A timeline: It’s spring 2004, and the Mae Shi have just learned (via an Instant Message chat with KRS/5RC founder Slim Moon) that their debut full-length Terrorbird will be released on 5RC that summer. To celebrate, the band embarks on a new project – the DVD that would become Lock The Skull, Load The Gun. They ask every visually-minded friend they’ve made in the past decade to direct a video. The magic begins.“Burn My Eye” creator Virgil Porter and On/On Switch head honcho Dan Belyusar bring “Takoma the Dolphin is AWOL” to life using stop motion and a bathtub full of toys. Pat McHale turns “Body 2” into an animated Maurice Sendak-inspired werewolf story. Chris Levitus weaves "One Mississippi" into a live-action futuro-Renaissance fairytale of botched suicide. Somehow, everyone gets on the same page, and a strange hour-long tapestry is woven. There are ballerinas, motorcycle goths, Help!-era Richard Lester goofiness, and lots of monsters – prehistoric birds, vampires, wolfmen, serial killers, haunted bunnies, hungry cartoon dogs and killer bats. There were 33 tracks on Terrorbird and there are 32 videos collected here – quite a feat for a band whose booking agent is a 19-year-old from Dekalb, Illinois. Also included is The Celebration Tour, the feature-length tour movie documenting the Mae Shi’s first U.S. tour, when the band booked a 31-date tour by publicly offering to play any celebratory event—be it a birthday party, wedding or bar mitvah—for $100. Davyde Wachell came along to capture it all. Then Wachell and Jamie Flam distilled the 60 hours of footage into an ambitious hybrid of The Power of Salad and Milkshakes and Waterworld. It’s got everything your average tour documentary has – wide open roads, empty bars, dishonest promoters and drunken hijinx—but with the added bonus of animated flying monsters, firework accidents and a laugh track.

5RC Sur La Mer Samp-le-mer CD $10
Welcome to the very first 5RC sampler, featuring 10 never before released tracks! 5RC was started way back in 1997 by Slim Moon with the very first Deerhoof record. Since then, 5RC has picked up more and more acclaim by releasing challenging and entertaining albums from Xiu Xiu, xbxrx, The Seconds, Hella etc. This past year 5RC REALLY went nuts, releasing records from The No-Neck Blues Band, Metalux, Need New Body, The Planet The, The Mae Shi, Wooden Wand and the Vanishing Voice, The Robot Ate Me, BARR, etc. So we thought it was high time for a label sampler to show off the exciting bands we’ve been working with. You should know that 5RC is the sound of Now, it is music for the 21st Century. You will not find rehashed rock and roll on this sampler (that’s soooo 20th century). But you will find genre crossing, uncomfortable moments mixed with highly danceable ones, and truly great songs.

THE SECONDS Kratitude CD $12
The Seconds play repetitive folk music driven by a profound expression of KRATITUDE. Within The Seconds social circles, it is believed that repetition is the simplest and most direct form of communication; the most effective method for achieving emphasis or apathy, passion or indifference, confusion or clarity; the most "economical" of compositional devices. Coupled with the musematic repetitive strategies, the compact and easy-to-follow song structures give the Seconds music a natural accessibility. Their music is driven by a profound expression of KRATITUDE. Primitive and urgent, the voices, generally monophonic in approach, intone rather than sing. Language is exploited for its rhythmic and phonetic properties. The concepts normally associated with words are dissolved in the repetition and all that remain are the sounds of the mouth, tongue, and throat. The Seconds straddle the line of communication breakdown. The rhythms and percussive aspects of the instruments are derived from the rhythmic meter of the vocal phrases. The rhythms of the instruments and those of the voices work together to form interlocking parts. Melody, usually found in the guitar or bass, generally takes a subordinate role to rhythm but stands out when necessary. Harmony is often replaced by density. Some important influences on parts of Kratitude were found in North Indian Classical music, West African drumming styles, and Just Intonation tuning theory. There is one cover on this record.

WOODEN WAND AND THE VANISHING VOICE Gipsy Freedom CD $12/double lp $11
Gipsy Freedom is the sound of the band combining their influences more fluently than ever before. While past releases saw the band's avant folk dosed somewhat conservatively with the blues, free jazz, heavy psych and metal, Gipsy Freedom brings these other, non-folk elements to the fore and generally turns the volume up. You may hear the faint echoes of Island Harvest era Albert Ayler on one track, Iommi-derived riffage on the next, torch songs that sound torn straight from the Gershwin songbook on the next, and Can-style epic grooves on the next. Radically different, yet sustaining the band's high level of musical and thematic consistency, Gipsy Freedom is the sound of a band breaking out of the box and using the discarded shapes to construct strange new universes.

THE ADVANTAGE Elf-Titled CD $12
This 2006 5RC Advantage record is the elf titled follow-up to their 2004 self-titled debut. This record wasn't always recorded, in fact it was recorded and elf produced recently in the spring of 2005. It all started when Slim Moon (elf made man and owner of 5rc records) decided to let the band help thems elves to another recording. After being evicted from their elf storage unit where the record was intended to be recorded, the future for The Advantage seemed hopeless. The members spent weeks over elf medicating and feeling sorry for thems elves, until a concerned parent gave the band an elf help book that pushed the band to elf realize the path ahead. It was now clear that the only chance for the band was to quit their elf-defense classes and record a bitchin' record in a real big time studio. With the addition of new elf taught guitarist Robby Moncrieff, the already elf determined band was ready to rumble.

THE ADVANTAGE Elf-Titled T-shirt $13
You know you've been waiting for this: the new shirt from The Advantage is here!! Satanic nintendo controller on yellow t-shirt.  Available in girl medium, girl large, small, medium, large, and xl.