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THIS IS A PRE-ORDER. OFFICIAL RELEASE DATE IS 10/27/2023. RECORDS WILL SHIP THAT WEEK.

You’ve heard Stuart Bogie before because he’s played saxophone, clarinet, and flute on a lot of records. TV On The Radio, Foals, Sharon Van Etten, Beth Orton, Run the Jewels, Antibalas, the list goes on and on and on.

We connected with Stuart during the early clutches of COVID through Korey Richey, DFA Studios engineer and LCD Soundsystem band member. 

Stuart had been cooped up in the apartment that he shared with his partner, Karyn, and their family. It was Karyn who suggested a restless Stuart start playing clarinet on Instagram Live every morning, a ritual he kept for 150 straight days. Along the way, he solicited drones and other sounds from his friends as accompaniment.

Korey asked James if he had anything lying around that might fit. Uncharacteristically, James said yes. There was this long, plaintive drone of treated piano made sometime in the 90s that he’d just found. And another similarly droning but slightly darker organ piece made for an installation in the mid-2000s. Stuart played over both in separate sessions, improvising these beautiful, delicate clarinet runs for the sheltered, live-streaming few.

We listened back to the recordings in the office and couldn’t shake how great they were. They felt like a decompression valve, relief from the persistent, creeping apocalypse. They deserved a more meaningful existence than that of a shitty MP3. 

So, Stuart came into DFA and recorded them properly. This time Korey ran him through a stack of delay units that stretched and smeared that clarinet into each drone until they were one bewildering whole. Each recording clocked in at roughly twenty minutes - perfect side-long lengths. It all fell into place so naturally.

“Morningside” is the name of the album. Two tracks on two sides. Produced by Korey and James, mixed by James, mastered and cut by Bob. It’s out October 27. You can listen to a few snippets of each side and pre-order the vinyl below. (Since it’s only two “songs,” we aren’t releasing anything officially beforehand.)

A final, but important note: the cover features a detail of a photograph called “The Burial Vault” by the excellent photographer Gregory Crewdson, taken from his recent series “Eveningside.” (The full photograph is featured on a printed insert inside the record package.) A few months earlier, Gregory was finishing what would become “Eveningside” and asked James (a friend) if he might, y’know, have anything lying around. A video was being made about the work and music was needed. James sent these recordings, which evidently sort of stopped Gregory in his tracks. And just like that another piece of the puzzle fell into place. The connection was so natural that Stuart also finally found the title he’d been searching for (until that point, we’d been calling the record simply “Clarinet and Delay.”)

CREDITS
Produced by James Murphy for the DFA & Korey Richey
Mixed by James Murphy
Mastered by Bob Weston at Chicago Mastering Service
Clarinet recorded by Korey Richey at DFA Studios, Brooklyn, NY on November 6, 2022

“Morningside” treated piano recorded at DFA Recording, Manhattan, 2009 originally for an installation at Palais De Tokyo, Paris, in October 2009. Engineered by Matt Thornley and James Murphy.

“Eveningside” feedback and organ recorded sometime in 1993 at Plantain Recording House, Brooklyn, originally for a video art installation. Engineered by James Murphy.

Album art direction by Sam Duke
Cover and insert photograph by Gregory Crewdson, The Burial Vault,
2021-2022, Digital pigment print, image size: 34.5 x 46 in. © Gregory Crewdson

Pressed at Citizen Vinyl in Asheville, NC.

THIS IS A PRE-ORDER. OFFICIAL RELEASE DATE IS 11/17/2023. RECORDS WILL SHIP THAT WEEK.

The album that, in many ways, started it all. Repressed for the first time since its release in 2003.

Produced by James Murphy and Tim Goldsworthy for the DFA.

Pressed at Citizen Vinyl in Asheville, NC from lacquers cut by Bob Weston at Chicago Mastering Service.

THIS IS A PRE-ORDER. RECORDS WILL SHIP JUST BEFORE THE OCTOBER 13, 2023 RELEASE DATE.

• Lacquer cut by Bob Weston
• Pressed at Citizen Vinyl in Asheville, NC
• Single LP in a gatefold jacket, printed insert, and 24" x 36" fold out poster

In 2012, LIGHT ASYLUM - part of the larger DFA family tree, featuring the superhuman vocalist Shannon Funchess, who sang on stage with LCD at MSG the year prior, and her then collaborator Bruno Coviello - released their self-titled debut album. It remains widely streaming, but for whatever reason has flown under the radar since those in between days. The notable exception is Discogs, where vinyl copies have been selling for like $200. When revisiting the record a few years ago, wondering as we always did how a track like “A Certain Person” never became a Very Big Song, given that it would make even the coldest, crabbiest heart burst into flames, we were confronted with this imbalance and felt compelled to act.

That LIGHT ASYLUM found a sort of rarefied status makes sense. It’s the kind of record cherished by Those Who Know: perfectly crafted, spiritually commanding synth-pop with a voice that sounds like some kind of goth oracle from beyond. It’s simply too good to remain out of print.

This version was pressed at Citizen Vinyl in Asheville, NC from lacquers cut by Bob Weston at Chicago Mastering Service. The package includes all of the original art - gatefold jacket, printed insert, 24” x 36” fold-out poster - with a slightly tweaked cover: where there were once three different shots of Shannon, now there is only one, definitive version.

A cover of the almighty Alan Vega tune recorded during the This Is Happening sessions, original released in 2009, never repressed for whatever reason (life?), and played live exactly five times:

• 1x at MSG in 2011
• 1x at the Panorama Festival in NYC in 2016 (right after Alan died)
• 3x at the Brooklyn Steel 2022 residency

Figured since it's back in the rotation, it was worth a repress.

Four color print on a reverse board sleeve.

Poly-lined inner.

Cut by Bob Weston at 45RPM. Pressed at IRP in Bordentown, NJ.

Of the many arresting moments that fill LCD Soundsystem's This Is Happening, perhaps the most unexpected comes less than halfway through album opener "Dance Yrself Clean." The seemingly unassuming, low-key rumble of a song morphs from its mumbled beginnings into an outsized flash of synth ballast and wailing vocals. The sudden shift is like the flicking on of a light, the perfect example of frontman-songwriter-mastermind James Murphy's effortless balance of restraint and release, organic rock and electro pop, and muted cool and vibrant emotion. This study in contrasts pervades LCD Soundsystem's third, and possibly final, release--an album where Murphy refracts images of heartbreak and longing through the scattered light of a disco ball. 

The cautious observations and honest reveals that follow are literally and figuratively quieter moments than that initial blare. On "All I Want," against a wall of whirling guitar, Murphy recognizes a relationship that can't be saved, and instead asks for "your pity" and "your bitter tears." "Get Along" shuffles over pulsing keys and bubbling percussion as Murphy tries to bridge physical and emotional distance, singing, "You might forget, forget the sound of a voice / Still, you shouldn't forget the things we laughed about." Conversely, the sparsely decorated, sauntering "Somebody's Calling Me" is almost hopeful in comparison: "Somebody's calling me" Murphy half whispers, "to be my girl." 

There are stretches of lyrical levity here, too. "You Wanted a Hit," which sits atop shiny synths, a driving bass-line and layers of handclaps, laments record label demands on what turns out to be one of the album's hookiest tracks. "Pow Pow" veers toward past "talkies" like "Losing My Edge," and features keyboardist Nancy Whang shouting in unison with Murphy. 

With This Is Happening, Murphy has created a work of both nuanced introspection and distanced observation. DFA is proud to offer the vinyl version of this much lauded release, which also includes contributions from drummer Pat Mahoney and sound collagist Gavin Russom.

The debut LP from LCD Soundsystem.

1xLP in a reverse board sleeve.

Track Listing:

1. Daft Punk Is Playing At My House
2. Too Much Love
3. Tribulations
4. Movement
5. Never As Tired As When I'm Waking Up
6. On Repeat
7. Thrills
8. Disco Infiltrator
9. Great Release

Whilst digging for the old Bye Bye Bayou 12" artwork, Vadino worked up a version of the DFA logo using the same color block treatment.

So we made a slipmat. And a shirt!

These are bulkier than our normal slipmats. Nice and thick.

1/8" thickness

21 oz. weight

11.75" width

Whilst digging for the old Bye Bye Bayou 12" artwork, Vadino worked up a version of the DFA logo using the same color block treatment.

So we made a shirt. And a slipmat.

Printed on Gildan G5000 heavyweight or Comfort Colors 1717 depending upon blank availability.

Needle drop and a floaty, child-like piano sucks you into the post-punk papier-mâché world of JJULIUS, where everyone speaks Swedish, listens to Young Marble Giants and eats nothing but Twizzlers.

Vol. 2 is, perhaps obviously, a continuation of the world-building JJULIUS did on Vol. 1, which is a little more raw, a little wilder in spirit and sold out at both source and every record store that managed to get its hand on a copy. It will also re-arrive this summer on DFA this summer alongside its successor. (Order here.)

JJULIUS is Gotebörg’s Julius Pierstorff, who, with his partner Elin Engström aka Loopsel, also records as Monokultur and runs the tiny label Mamma’s Mysterious Jukebox.

The music they make both together and separately is entirely their own, with its own rules of what instruments come and go; when a song begins and ends or swells like a marshmallow. And yet! It’s also referencing all the records we love and know - Young Marble Giants, Postcard Records, early Cabaret Voltaire, and even contemporary local peers like Mathaverskan.

Buy the ticket, take the trip.

Like a dream foggily remembered, Loopsel’s Öga for Öga is tempting in its beauty yet slightly menacing in its depth. These songs, like paths in the forest forest, are heavily, almost treacherously, reverberated, with finger-plucked guitars acting as your signposts amongst the flora and fauna of field recordings, pads, and the cool, calm voice of Elin Engström.

The album is the second from Engström as Loopsel. She is a Gothenburg-based musician and one-half of both the group Monokultur and the team behind the tiny Mamma’s Mystersika Jukebox label with her partner JJULIUS.

During what seemed like the nadir of the pandemic, the blurry, otherworldly sounds emanating from their living room snaked into the DFA office, where the otherwise dutifully DIY pair found the scale of worldwide release and distribution.

Öga for Öga is the second release from that partnership (following JJULIUS’ VOL. 2 in 2022).