Imaginary Psychology

Tonight

2015-11-21T10:35:00.001-08:00

Wild Boy

2015-02-18T13:09:00.003-08:00

The new Matt Baldwin LP is called Wild Boy and it's ready to go. Recorded by Sam Flax. Art by Matt Fishbeck. Limited to 100 copies.

Listen/buy here.

Show

2015-01-26T17:08:00.000-08:00

Tonight

2015-01-08T08:00:00.000-08:00

The Funk with Macho Alex

2015-01-05T23:42:00.000-08:00

I am super excited to announce that I have just reissued one of my favorite records of all time. It's called The Funk with Macho Alex - a record of high outsiderdom that I first heard 20 years ago. It takes a little a bit of a story to explain.

Back in 1993 I entered middle school and among the new friends I made there was Alex Rinehart. He was easily one of the strangest and funniest people I had ever met, a skinny only child with this kind of crazy look in his eyes. He was very wild and badly behaved and there are a lot of great stories about that.

Alex was one of the first people I knew who was interested in music. He introduced me to The Doors and John Fahey - real quantum leaps for ages 11 to 12! Around the time we met he was also making music of his own, recordings of which were eventually gathered together and released on the cassette, The Funk with Macho Alex. It came out in 1995 in an edition of around 12 copies. He sold them at recess for two dollars each.

It's hard to know how to describe the music that came to be called simply, The Funk. It really needs to be heard rather than described. I'd say it's on par with The Shaggs in terms of its naive strangeness. I just listened to it for maybe the thousandth time and all I can say is that it is just as funny and weird as when I first heard it two decades ago. Macho Alex is The Outsider par excellence. For the first time you can hear this record without hanging out in my living room.

Cassette, CD and high res downloads available HERE.

I am a Macho Alex believer,

Matt Baldwin - Psychic Arts

2014-11-23T02:16:00.004-08:00

I went to see Pauline Oliveros at the Berkeley Art Museum on Friday night. She didn't touch an instrument or make a sound in any way during the performance. Instead she sat perfectly still at the center of the vast multilevel space as the ensemble members moved around her, making music that was the closest thing to the Taj Mahal Travellers I've ever heard performed live. Her thing was listening.

It was a big crowd and while they applauded she stood up on her seat and people on either side held her hands up like a boxing champ. Maybe that's why I went home later that night and rewatched the Mike Tyson fight where he uses Coil as his entrance music. A similar feeling, in a way.

Anyway, after that I went over and told her how much I love her music. When I shook her hand it felt like my grandmother's.

This.

Show

2014-10-25T22:34:00.002-07:00

Show

2014-10-11T15:05:00.001-07:00

2014-10-09T21:16:00.000-07:00

Aquarius published this just in time for it to sell out:

BALDWIN, MATT "Golden Twins" (Sloow Tapes) cassette 9.98
Two gorgeous longform tracks of psychedelic nu-age made with electric guitar, synths and field recordings from this Bay-Area based multi-instrumentalist and Psychic Arts label-head. The A-side, a deep excursion into synth drones that leads to an exuberant takeoff of ecstatic and majestic electric guitar leads, was only released on vinyl in an edition of ONE for his girlfriend/wife, so we can basically say these two tracks have not been widely available to a large audience. The B-side is more meditative with delicate filigrees of guitar widely spaced between long passages of field recordings of bird sounds and ocean waves. Both tracks filling up either side of the tape, these are two keen examples of intrepid guitar and synth wizardry from one of the Bay Area's finest practitioners. Limited!

Tonight

2014-08-22T15:39:00.001-07:00

I'm collaborating with artist Moses Hacmon at SOMArts in San Francisco. I will be performing side A of Golden Twins and he will be using the vibes to create fantastic projections with patterns occurring in water. It's something like a Chladni plate except wilder. See you there.

934 Brannan St. SF

$15

PS - more info here:

http://www.soundwavesf.com/6/aug22/

2014-07-20T14:42:00.001-07:00

I recently wrote this review for one of my all time favorite self-released albums. Waxidermy posted it earlier today with original sound clips. You can find everything here.

I am a Macho Alex Believer.

Golden Twins

2014-07-02T17:39:00.000-07:00

It's done. Golden Twins has been released by Belgian label Sloow Tapes. Two side-long pieces for synth and hundreds of layers of guitar.

Sloow has already sold out of their copies. I have 25 that were sent stateside and I am dropping most of them off at Aquarius Records tonight. Email me if you want one of the few remaining copies: baldwinunlimited@gmail.com

Twelve bucks includes postage.

XO

Matt

Show

2014-04-27T22:01:00.004-07:00

Wire Magazine Review

2014-04-18T17:07:00.002-07:00

Also:

- A new interview with the "It's Psychedelic Baby Magazine" here.

- Two new records: Wild Boy and Golden Twins

- A show with Richard Pinhas (yow!)

2014-01-09T19:39:00.000-08:00

Imaginary Psychology Reissue

2013-12-23T12:35:00.000-08:00

Friends at the Spiritual Pajama's label in SF have released an LP edition of my 2010 CDr Imaginary Psychology. This version is definitive - with white vinyl, expanded track listing, a transparent flexi single of a Martin Newell tune and sublime artwork by Matt Fishbeck (Holy Shit). Of all the projects I've been involved in this is easily my favorite.

So far it's gotten a nice review from Aquarius Records and made John Mulvey's 43rd playlist of 2013 for Uncut Magazine. You can find that here.

Limited to 500 copies, you can order one here.

More reviews and California release shows soon. Merry etc.

Coming Soon...

2013-10-27T16:46:00.002-07:00

Aquarius reviews Psychic Arts

2013-10-12T23:13:00.000-07:00

BLAKESLEE, GUY "Thirdeye Memories Vol. 2" (Psychic Arts) cd-r 9.98

We flipped for the first installment in Guy Blakeslee's Thirdeye Memories cd-r series, which we described on the last list in our review of Volume 1 as falling somewhere between Fahey-like devotional Appalachia and more droned out abstract looped and layered psychedelic ragas, and for those of you (like us) who felt like one volume just wasn't enough, well, you might want to grab one of these before they're gone, cuz like the first one it's limited to just FIFTY copies (and we do have a tiny handful left of volume 1 if you missed out). Blakeslee is the frontman for psych rockers The Entrance Band, but for these solo excursions, the sound is much more intimate, and delicate and lovely, the opener here is a glistening sprawl of dreamlike guitar melodies, super fluid finger picking, the vibe almost carol-like, a warm glowing swirl of lovely Appalachian folk. But it doesn't take long for the disc to drift into far trippier realms, "Digital Sage" takes the sound of the opener and turns it inside out, flips it backwards, adding gloriously slippery reverse melodies and woozy shimmery FX blur, it's the sort of dreamy sonic trip out we could get lost in forever. And so it goes, the whole record unfurling in a washed out kosmische dream folk haze, slipping from crystalline beauty to dreamily dizzying trippy psych swirl, and back again, perfectly balancing sweet melodies, with something a bit more shadowy and lysergic. Like the first volume, fantastic! And like the first volume, packaged in a simple screen printed origami style sleeve, LIMITED TO 50 COPIES, each one hand numbered!

Order here.

2013-09-05T22:00:00.000-07:00

Golden Twins

2013-08-17T16:14:00.000-07:00

RIP

2013-07-28T12:13:00.001-07:00

2013-06-11T01:43:00.001-07:00

New AQ Reviews

2013-05-28T14:08:00.001-07:00

Adam Snider - Decomposer

First full length from this Bay Area guitarist, who we first heard on the Berkeley Guitar compilation back in 2006, which also featured Matt Baldwin (whose Psychic Arts label released this!) and Sean Smith. And like his tracks on the comp, Snider displays quite a knack for sweetly melodic, pastoral Appalachia, conjuring up warm chordal swells, wrapped in delicate fingerpicked melodies, the tracks peppered with some subtle slippery slide guitar. Snider's style is generally not super flashy, and isn't about cascades of rapid fire notes, or dizzying melodic flurries, instead he tends to gently coax a hushed melancholia from his guitar, obviously the shadows of Fahey and Kottke and the rest loom large, but Snider definitely sounds right at home amongst such esteemed company. Most of the tracks here are dreamy and wistful, but a few (like "Val Verde Nights"), do display a more shadowy side, giving those tracks a moody minor key vibe. Good stuff.

LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, each one hand numbered, and packaged in an origiami style folded jacket, with pasted on cover art and a photocopied insert.

Nightcrawlers - Space Ritual at St. Mary's

A rare live recording from uber-obscure early Tangerine Dream worshippers, Nightcrawlers, a three piece out of New Jersey who released cassettes of their "cosmic floating space music" between 1979 and 1992. Recorded in a church in 1985, these two 30 minute tracks take full advantage of the reverent resonance of the live cathedral environment with beautiful bowed drones, glacial organ and intensely meditative flourishes of futuristic kosmiche. Super-Limited to 50 copies, this group presaged the new age krautrock revival by about 20 years and are long overdue for rediscovery.

Order either one HERE at the Aquarius Records site. They will be sold out soon.

RIP

2013-05-22T14:53:00.001-07:00

A Visit To Stickboy

2013-05-06T09:43:00.000-07:00

Friend

"You just draw the faces out..."

Liturgical Resources