"East New York teenagers ignoring the subjugating fantasies of mainstream rap and collaborating with outsider Brooklyn noisemakers." - Village Voice

"As performers they keep the hype level at a constant boil as only the truly young and alive can, and in an era of tidal mainstream vapidity, intelligent, militant teenagers are definitely something to be celebrated." - New York Post

"Nine 11 remind me of the early days of the Cold Crush Borthers, the way their energy just flows of one another."
- Charlie Ahearn, Director of Wild Style

Ground Zero Generals was made under the guidance of Representing NYC, a volunteer network of artists interested in youth development in Bushwick, Brooklyn whose mission is to bring the inspired Hip Hop related art work being done in the context of social services to bigger audiences through collaborations with professional artists from Brooklyn's underground music scene. Nine 11 Thesaurus are the most recent group of politically engaged MCs to emerge from East Brooklyn. Anywhere from 5 to 9 strong, these young MCs evoke early Wu Tang Clan concerts with their raw energy and masterful rhyme writing.

Nine 11 Thesaurus are named after the tragedy of September 11th 2001, when some of the MCs lost family members, thus spawning their oft recited tag "when the towers fell we rose". After years of writing rhymes, spitting, free-styling and battling, the current, and lasting line up of Shasty (Maurice Douglas), God'sun (Kevin Matos), P-dot (Frederic Aldeco), Riddic.C (Barrington Botswana Black), and Hollywood (Kaymel Matos), met and got organized at the Beacon Center for Arts and Leadership in Bushwick Brooklyn. It was there that the young MCs linked with Representing NYC founder (and member of Brooklyn band Zs) Sam Hillmer, beginning conversations, meetings, and later rehearsals, performances, and recording sessions that would result in Ground Zero Generals.

The album evolved during the 2008/09 academic year, and was perfected and recorded in 2010. It is Nine 11 Thesaurus' first studio recorded and professionally released album, (though they have a couple of mix tapes on the streets), and is also the 2nd installment of Representing NYC's recording series following The Fly Girlz' 'Da Bratz From Da Ville' release from 2009. As with all Representing NYC releases, the album features an unlikely pairing between MCs and producers, this time featuring production by Tim Dewit (Gang Gang Dance), and Matt Mehlan (Skeletons). Ground Zero Generals abandons the soulful break beat, the musical vehicle of choice for most revolutionary Hip Hop artists, in favor of something more grim, more cutting, but also more creative, evoking the aesthetic of Grime and Dubstep, and the content of Gil Scott Heron. From the introductory opening track onward, Nine 11 Thesaurus explore oft forgotten or overlooked dimensions of life in the streets of Brooklyn for young people – whether through illusion to the Black Panthers, discussions surrounding the ways in which the legacy of slavery lives on in the minds of their piers and the behavior of Police officers, or through abstract phantasmagoria of words and images presented in rhyme, they remain committed to excavating the unseen aspects of their experience as young urban people coming up in post September 11th New York City. Their findings are presented with incendiary precision, over futuristic sound collage of the highest order, on this compelling debut album.

The tracklisting for Ground Zero Generals is as follows:

1. INTRO
2. THE END OF THE WORLD
3. POLICE SIRENS
4. ROOKIE OF THE YEAR
5. STRESSIN'
6. LOST MEMORIES
7. 16 BARS
8. WOO HA!
9. METAL IN MY BODY
10. THE EXECUTIONER
11. BONDAGES
12. NATION TO NATION
13. PEN VS. BRAIN
14. FREE

“Zs have transformed itself into a battering ram of brackish sound and befuddling rhythms--think of Steve Reich phasing experiments produced into a blackened soup by the Boredoms and you’re getting close; think Black Dice performed by Sun Ra and you’re getting closer.”
- Village Voice

"Zs handle clangorous or fast or highly repetitive material with precision; what can sound like free improvisation or jamming is actually music composed so tightly. These pieces are all brain-benders; conceptual art objects that set form and content against each other — like, say, a perfect birthday cake made out of sawdust, or a perfect hammer made out of bird feathers." - New York Times on New Slaves

We are pleased to announce the new record from Brooklyn-based Zs entitled New Slaves Part II: Essence Implosion!; scheduled to be released January 25th in digital and LP formats. This record serves as a companion (or sequel) to New Slaves, their acclaimed double album from earlier this year and features remixes of that material by such luminaries as Thee Majesty (Genesis Breyer P-Orridge and Bryin Dall), JG Thirlwell (Foetus), Cex, Gabe Andruzzi (The Rapture), Zebrablood (Excepter), Weasel Walter (Flying Luttenbachers), and Ecstatic Sunshine. It is fascinating to hear these wholly individual talents pontificate about what the music of Zs is to them through their own sounds.

Zs also insinuate themselves in to the mix contributing the opening track “MMW IV: Essence Implosion!,” a side long epic which uses the aforementioned remixes as a sound palette from which to compose. On it they have furthered the band’s kalaedoscopic membership principle that has long centered around the vision of tenor/saxist Sam Hillmer. For this recording he is joined by no-wave hero Weasel Walter, WFMU’s Marty McSorely (to put the mix in the remix at the tables), and long-time Zs drummer Ian Antonio. The track also sees the return of founding Zs member, and Extra Life pioneer, Charlie Looker.

On New Slaves Part II: Essence Implosion! Zs’ continue to embrace the studio as instrument, including not just the faculties of a studio in their process, but outside remixers and producers as well, demonstrating the ultimately collaborative nature of their approach to music. It is both the perfect accompaniment to New Slaves and a definitive musical statement in its own right. Zs have managed to craft a work that both reflects on (and even interacts with) their past, while also looking forward to its future through new collaborations. New Slaves Part II: Essence Implosion! will be available as a limited 12” (500 copies) as well as a digital version featuring extra tracks.

The tracklisting for both versions of New Slaves Part II: Essence Implosion! is as follows:

LP VERSION:

1. MMW IV: ESSENCE IMPLOSION!
2. CONCERT BLACK [THEE MAJESTY REMIX]
3. ACRES [CEX VS. ZS REMIX]
4. NEW SLAVES [JG THIRLWELL REMIX]

DIGITAL VERSION:

1. MMW IV: ESSENCE IMPLOSION!
2. CONCERT BLACK (SPACEWALKING VERSION) [ECSTATIC SUNSHINE REMIX]
3. NEW SLAVES [WEASEL WALTER REMIX]
4. DIAMOND TERRIFIER [ZEBRABLOOD REMIX]
5. CONCERT BLACK [THEE MAJESTY REMIX]
6. ACRES [CEX VS. ZS REMIX]
7. NEW SLAVES [JG THIRLWELL REMIX]
8. ACRESRMX [GABE ANDRUZZI REMIX]

All tracks from the digital version are available with the LP version via a free download.

Click here to hear "AcresRMX [Gabe Andruzzi Remix]"

This month Zs will be heading to the West Coast for a short tour. In celebration of New Slaves Part II: Essence Implosion! they have put together a special live performance: building entirely off of the New Slaves Remixes, and off of fragments from New Slaves the album, they have reconstructed a set of music that encapsulates the New Slaves set while moving into another territory altogether. Working with DJ equipment, adopting and mutilating a model taken from Hip Hop, Zs finds another way to challenge physical limitations of audience and performer. This tour will prove to be a completely individual experience that is not to be missed.

Full details of the tour are:

November 16th at The Shooting Range in Oakland, CA
November 17th at Milk Bar in San Francisco, CA
November 18th at The Hub in Sacramento, CA
November 19th at Acrobatics Everyday in Irvine, CA
November 20th at Soda Bar in San Diego, CA
November 21st at The Smell in Los Angeles, CA
November 22nd at Biko Garage in Isla Vista, CA
November 23rd at Hustle House in North Hollywood, CA

* all dates are with Arrington De Dionyso

For all promo, interview and guestlist requests please contact: jim@thesocialregistry.com

More dates TBA

For all guestlist, promo or interview requests please contact contact: jim@thesocialregistry.com

“A summer-suited sprawl, with tuck-and-roll guitar lines like kids on a grassy slope, tip-tapping percussion breezy as a white linen shirt, and backing singers so sanguine in their hums and coos and “woos,” they can only be supine in swaying hammocks” – Pitchfork



“These songs sound like they belong to the earth itself and have been playing themselves forever in some enchanted wonderland woodland clearing - there’s a brilliant cyclical feeling to them that seems endless and natural.” - Transparent



Best Bless is the debut EP from Highlife, and is scheduled for release on CD, LP and digital formats through The Social Registry on September 28th. Highlife is Sleepy Doug Shaw with, on this recording, a backing band featuring members of White Magic, Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti and Gang Gang Dance.

Shaw left his hometown of London, England at the age of 19, arriving onto the NYC music scene in 2003. At that time accompanied by only by an acoustic guitar, he was soon showcasing his preternatural singing abilities and strong focused fingerpicking blues skills around the city playing under the moniker Sleepy Doug Shaw; and before long he had joined the entrancing psychedelic soul band White Magic.



Highlife was born in 2008 when Shaw, along with White Magic collaborator Mira Billotte, retreated from New York to the small island of Gaspar Grande off the coast of Trinidad, at the southernmost point of the Carribean trail. The pair spent long, wandering nights chanting and inducing trance, recording on a portable setup that Shaw had lugged along. Shaw chose the name Highlife to imbue a feeling of rejoicing and high consciousness, while also giving a nod to the genre of african music ‘Highlife’, which has greatly influenced his guitar style. With the sun indelible in mind, Shaw and Billotte crossed the Atlantic, returning to his hometown of London. It was there at Southern Studios that full-band versions of the songs were recorded by the brilliant Harvey Birrel (Crass, Sir Richard Bishop, Buzzcocks). Shaw and Billotte were joined on these sessions by Tim Koh (Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffitti) and Jesse Lee (Gang Gang Dance), who play bass and drums respectively on ‘Burying Stones’.



Whistling missiles drop and machine-gun guitars unload over a Mahmoud Ahmed percussion loop for Best Bless’ opening song “War Fair.” Next, “F Kenya Rip” leaps into it’s bright circular canter, guitars intwine - teasing at becoming tangled, as Shaw begins the inquiry and a chorus of Billotte’s voices bursts forth. A blissful West-African style lilt ensues, with piano cascading and bass bouncing - and the song circles itself in it’s revery as though it is intent on it’s eternity. Shaw drew influence for “F Kenya Rip” from the style of the F Kenya Guitar Band, in particular their song “Madame Zehae Ala” (Just As I Am), whose refrain is repeated throughout “F Kenya Rip”.



“Burying Stones” is a tripped out, circular four to the floor, devotional anthem. A hysteria inducing loop is swallowed by bubbling guitars and pianos, as drums build and Shaw pronounces “The old new was like new”. Therein the song drops into an incessant riding groove, as harmonizing guitars jump down the neck, oscillating against one another in echoed tremolo. “Tuareg Dancehall” plays to it’s name, invoking the melodic musical rudiments of the Tuareg nomads, as a journey unfurls towards a distant desert dancehall. Best Bless closes out with the subdued home recording of “Wet Palm Trees,” penned and recorded in London very shortly after Shaw left Trinidad.

As of late Highlife has relocated back to NYC where he has been gracing stages of all sizes, toured with Animal Collective, and has still found time to moonlight as Gang Gang Dance’s bass player...

The tracklisting of Best Bless is as follows:

1. WAR FAIR (0.46)
2. F KENYA RIP (5.38)
3. BURYING STONES (5.10)
4. TUAREG DANCEHALL (6.52)
5. WET PALM TREES (2.23)

Click here to to listen to F Kenya Rip

For all promo requests please contact: jim@thesocialregistry.com

NYMPH was recorded and mixed by Jason Meagher (of No Neck Blues Band) at Black Dirt Studios in upstate New York and by David Tolomei at DNA in New York City from late autumn 2007 – summer 2009, and mastered by Sarah Register (of Talk Normal) at The Lodge studios in New York City. Originally self- released as a very limited double LP we are very proud to be bringing the album to wider attention.



NYMPH’S compositional palette encompasses an ebullient kaleidoscope of sound: imagine 13th Floor Elevators essaying a Rahsaan Roland Kirk jam and you begin to get the picture. Or maybe Steve Reich bonging out on Pandit Pran Nath and jamming with This Heat. The four-piece’s orgiastic din is composed and orchestrated by the nucleus of Matty McDermott (formerly of Coyote – Birdman Records) and Eri Shoji; and currently featuring the thundering harmonic prowess of bassist Nickle Emmet, with Jason Robira (Dark Meat) pounding the skins.



Matty comes most avowedly from a rock n roll, free jazz and noise background. He conjures the spirits of chaos and harmony he earned in those Osirian trenches thus endowing his sonic deftness into the nimbus of NYMPH. Matty’s inner animal comes mostly to bear in his monstrous guitar sound: echoed, reverbed, distorted, slack-jawed, claw-toothed and sharp as lethal icicles, it is equal parts Greg Ginn and Erkin Koray. The blissful spirit and luxuriant execution of Matty’s showering riffage has much more in common with the excursions of later-era John Coltrane and Can than it does with an orthodox devotion to the stereotypical three chords that has come to be recognized of late as “Psychedelia.”



Eri, like the caterwauls of a Japanese banshee, expells the piercing vocal counterpoint to Matty’s mesmeric guitar. Eri relies on intuitive vocal exression largely free from the semantic bounds of lyric; her mode finds form in a cavalcade of orgasmic yelps, howls & piercing screams. Eri has studied Hindustani classical singing, as well as spent time with the teachings of La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela, while bringing a lived-in knowledge of improvisational Gagaku and Butoh traditions of her native shores. With a handmade array of percussion instruments reminiscent of the Sun Ra “lightening drum” (including ankle bells, tambourines, ghavals and vests made of prayer bells) Eri cuts an extremely magnetic and ethereal presence. Her iconoclastic style and impassioned percussion-via-dancing provides the visual linchpin and hyper-sexual tension that propels the band through their hypnotic live show.

The tracklisting of NYMPH is as follows:



1. II-YO (10.39) 

2. REEDS OF OSIRION (6.16)

3. SNOW SONG (5.11)

4. BIRD SONG (7.27) 

5. NAMU (21.59)

For all promo requests please contact contact me:
jim@thesocialregistry.com

NYMPH have a couple of forthcoming live shows planned in NYC:



July 22 at Zebulon in Brooklyn, NY (w/ White Out, Messages)

July 30 at Secret Project Robot in Brooklyn, NY (w/ Hidden Fees)

Psychic Ills are back with Catoptric, a 12" to be released in a limited edition of 500 copies June 22nd. The record is a document of the time spent in the studio surrounding the recording of their last album, 2009's expansive trance rock epic Mirror Eye, and contains music recorded between 2006 and 2009 that the band have decided to release to close that chapter. Some of these tracks were recorded when Psychic Ills were operating as a three-piece configuration of Elizabeth Hart, Brian Tamborello and Tres Warren, and another was recorded later after Jimy SeiTang joined the ranks. Most of it was laid down by Mitch Rackin at the now defunct Junkyard Audio Salvage in Brooklyn. Additional jamming and tinkering was done with No Necks Blues Bands’ Jason Meagher at his Black Dirt studios upstate and the final mixes were resolved at Barry London’s Acropolis studios in Brooklyn.

Catoptric begins with “Transmute,” a circular descent into the maze. Initially based around hypnotic sitar-like guitar and hand drum repetition, ascending and descending synth shifts give way to ceremonial sounding percussion and echoed incantations that eventually dissolve back from where they came. The cavernous throb of “Secret Flower” follows with its stiff beat, pulsing bass line and droning yet melodic synth and guitar components. “Indus Echo” closes out the side with hazy synth loops, raga like scales and nearly inaudible chanting driven forward the whole time by warm echoed bass and persistent hand drumming that reconfirms the bands preoccupation with picking things up and putting them down.

The second side of Catoptric ups the drone ante with “Outvocation,” a side long cut that could be the soundtrack to an unwritten film. Beginning with sparse distant gong hits that give way to minimal percussion and modular synth sounds before diving into a void of synthesizers, filtered effects and vocalizations, eventually arriving at a simultaneously tranquil and chaotic repetition.

At once intangible and familiar, Psychic Ills’ way of blending free flowing pieces and song ideas made of both organic and electronic sounds make Catoptric a condensed epic of sorts.

The tracklisting of Catoptric is as follows:

1. TRANSMUTE (5.14)
2. SECRET FLOWER (4.41)
3. INDUS ECHO (4.47)
4. OUTVOCATION (11.36)

For promo requests please email: jim@thesocialregistry.com

London collective, Sian Alice Group - Sian Ahern, Rupert Clervaux and Ben Crook – have been confirmed as main support to Florence and the Machine throughout Europe in February and March. The band have also confirmed 2 UK shows as part of Drowned in Sound’s DiScover shows with Esben & The Witch on the 10th and 11th February.

With support for the band constantly growing following the release of their acclaimed second album of lush, panoramic torch songs,  Troubled, Shaken Etc. Sian Alice Group continue to build on previous successes and continue to innovate along the way.

Details are as follows:

February 10th at The Harley in Sheffield, UK* with Esben And The Witch
February 11th at The Deaf Institute in Manchester, UK* with Esben And The Witch
February 21st at Vooruit in Gent, Belgium **
February 22nd at Paradiso in Amsterdam, Holland **
February 24th at Bataclan in Paris, France **
February 25th at Batschkapp in Frankfurt, Germany **
February 26th at Astra in Berlin, Germany **
February 28th at Vega in Copenhagen, Denmark **
March 1st at Rockefeller in Oslo, Norway **
March 2nd at Debaser Medis in Stockholm, Sweden **
March 3rd at Tavastia in Helsinki, Finland **
March 6th at Stodola in Warsaw, Poland **
March 7th at Indoor Arena in Vienna, Austria **
March 9th at Estragon in Bologna, Italy **
March 10th at Rohstofflager in Zurich, Italy **
March 11th at Transbordeur in Lyon, France **
March 13th at Bikini in Barcelona, Spain **
March 15th at Heineken in Madrid, Spain **
March 16th at Aula Magna in Lisbon, Portugal **

* with Esben And The Witch
** with Florence & The Machine