SKiN GRAFT News for You's

B A L L P E E N ( ! ) B U L L E T I N S

updated: August 15th, 2014

AVAILABLE NOW!:ZEEK SHECK
"Joinus" Gatefold 2x160 gram LP
with Digital Download
Limited to 300 copies: Resipiscent Records

RECENT RELEASES OUT NOW:

SAX RUINS
LP / CD

THE BEATOFFS
LP / CD

STRANGULATED BEATOFFS CD

U.S. MAPLE
DIECUT METAL LP

U.S. MAPLE
CD / LP

SKiN GRAFT LOGO
2-SIDED T-SHIRT

ATHLETIC AUTOMATON LP / MOD CD

YOWIE
LP / MOD CD

LOVELY LITTLE GIRLS LP / MOD CD

CHROME JACKSON
LP / MOD CD

DOOMSDAY STUDENT
LP / MOD CD

XADDAX
LP / MOD CD

PRE
EP / MOD CD

KOENJIHYAKKEI
LIVE DVD

RUINS ALONE
LP / CD

All titles available for ORDER at

Hi Everyone!
This is Mark - filling in for News Desk reporter Jazzy Joe - with a quick update on some familiar faces - CHILD ABUSE, LOVELY LITTLE GIRLS, DOOMSDAY STUDENT and ZEEK SHECK.

ITEM!: It's not easy to find info on ZEEK SHECK - and that's a good thing - because some things are best left to the imagination. Back in Chicago, sometime in 1996 during the heyday of our music community's Now Wave lovefest, I formally met Rose Perkins-Meyers. We'd met before, but this was different. She handed me a copy of her nearly completed debut CD "I Love You: Hotlines For The Children" and I heard her for who she really was.

Here's a LINK to a worthwhile story about Rose from the Chicago Reader dated November 21st, 1996.

The album was unlike anything I'd heard at the time, so I acquired the CD from Rose to release on SKiN GRAFT proper. With our typical fanfare & hyperbole, we mailed out promotional copies to radio and press and were met with deafening silence. - LOL - We stuck together and I was even enlisted to perform in her band on occasion. After her next album and remix LP were released, this is what Drowned in Sound had to say:

"Mysterious cult one-woman-band... There is NOTHING straightforward about Ms. Zeek Sheck, who has birthed some of the strangest concept albums of the 1990s (even by Skin Graft standards), with the assistance/devotion of certain other Chicago-area eccentrics. Zeek Sheck is a drummer, too. She's better than John Bonham or David Lombardo. Then again, they never ruled the Cloud People, either. It is impossible to discuss this record in an objective and linear fashion. Nonsensical chants ebb and flow, drums refuse to keep a steady backbeat, strange instruments are conjured up and then smashed to bits. Think of Diamanda Galas on nitrous oxide backed up by a big band group where every member has lost at least one major limb. My brother hated it -- that is a very good thing."

This month, the fine fellows at Resipiscent Records are publishing ZEEK SHECK "Joinus", the conclusion to the story that SKiN GRAFT began with Rose on "I Love You: Hotlines For the Children", and carried on with "Good Luck Suckers" and the "Good Luck Remix" LP.

Here is the official solicitation:

A saga that began four albums and five comic books ago with a fat stub of flesh burrowing beneath the grass to uncover hex givers, beepers, and severed sisters’ heads, draws to its epic finale deep within The Maze: Once a war sanctuary, then a home, now a biomechanized sarcophagus, and the only way out is up.

“The machine stirred, searching for a response. Chairs, table, out of proportion swollen in the dark. The ceiling pressing down. A discontinuous lump of flesh asks, “Who Are You!?”

“Nothing. Complete nothings. An empty space surrounded by an empty space.” He was coming closer to the truth. “That’s right!”

Though this story is crushing, the resulting shards dance, creak and spill into a psychic underground vast enough for cymbal, cello, tuba, storms, timpani, piano, guitar, foghorn, harmonica, double reeds, trumpet, Sylvester Stallone vocals, and synth that makes Pink Floyd blush. Audiophiles will test their high end gear with this album; laughing teenagers will crank it, flying top speed to the ocean.

Zeek Sheck’s sound is singular, unmistakable: sleep talking, skidding drums, 64th note woodwinds at full tilt, cult chorales, resplendent horns, and escape-velocity dance anthems. For such odd music to achieve a maturity is both rare and gorgeous; "Joinus" is spare yet lustrous, by turns mysterious and dangerously riotous. Listeners will scramble to hear the early records all over again.

We have a limited qty of ZEEK SHECK "Joinus" Gatefold 2xLP pressed on 160 gram vinyl up for pre-order now in the SKiN GRAFT Shop. All orders will include a free digital download of the album as well.

In addition to the new double LP, you can find plenty of ZEEK's classic releases from SKiN GRAFT in the paypal shop HERE. We're keeping the audio of "Joinus" under wraps, but here is a free MP3 of "Victory" from ZEEK SHECK's second SKiN GRAFT full length "Good Luck Suckers".

Mail Orders: SKiN GRAFT Records PAYPAL SHOP

ITEM!: In our last update, I announced that we were preparing to release the third album from New York's CHILD ABUSE.The album is titled "Trouble In Paradise" and it will be out on LP and CD this October to coincide with their European Tour. We are also planning on offering a special Ultimate Edition direct to SKiN GRAFT mailiorder customers which will bundle a colored vinyl LP with a CD version and a bonus non-LP track. We'll have more details soon, but to get your ears salivating, we're uploaded a preview MP3 of the track "Straight Out Of Compton" at the SKiN GRAFT Audio Page HERE.

ITEM!: "Doomsday Student is some of the loudest shit ever and an amazing take on post-hardcore. They wear all black, except for their orange shoes. Eric Paul is one of the most incredible frontman of any band ever, self-flagellating all over the stage, eyes bulging out of his shaven skull and screaming. They have really nice equipment, and they aren't just playing: every screaming guitar note and drum beat is not only turned up to 11, but maxed out on every channel."
- Impose Magazine

Yes (!), we can confirm that, like their debut, "A Jumper's Handbook", SKiN GRAFT Records will release a limited run pressed CD version of the upcoming album from DOOMSDAY STUDENT "A Walk Through Hysteria Park" this October. Vinyl is coming through our pals at Three One G, but we'll see about bringing some copies of the LP in here to make available though SKiN GRAFT mailorder too.

We've received the cover art from Lightning Bolt's Brian Chippendale and you can take a peak at it up at the top of this News Desk update. Prose lovers, lyrics will be included in the CD version (just finished the layout!) and we'll have it up for pre-orders soon - a little closer to the release date. To celebrate the announcement, the extreme slideshow women's collective PLANCHETTE has collaborated with the band for a video of the opening track "Disappearing". Check it out above and then visit the SKiN GRAFT AUDIO page for a free MP3 download!

ITEM!: And finally, I've gotten a number of emails at the News Desk asking if any of us here had seen the cover art to the new FKA Twigs album, which oddly resembles the cover to the latest LOVELY LITTLE GIRLS album. Cover artist and LLG vocalist Gregory Jacobsen has chimed in stating that he likes the FKA Twigs cover a lot and doesn't believe it is a rip off, but it is an interesting similarity... So what do you think- coincidence, divine inspiration or rip off?

'Til Next Time -

Mark

MORE NEW NEWS:

updated: June 23rd, 2014

YOUR DATES WITH LOVELY LITTLE GIRLS!:

CALLING ALL CARDS: A Message From Lovely Little Girls:
We are bringing the entire nine-piece band on the road with a new crop of material that will caress your ears in a pleasurable manner! We bring our own vocal microphones to avoid the sickness and death of inhaled third party halitosis.

About Lovely Little Girls:
Chicago's Lovely Little Girls construct theatrical No-Wave suites that morph from off-kilter dance anthems to punishing and ridiculous progressive rock. Simple musical motifs quickly deform into charges of odd harmony and tangled polyrhythms, punctuated by syllable-stuffed cut-and-paste prose; and grounded in a love for catchy melodies - a gravy-encrusted GLEE for the regressive metal and free jazz set. “Cleaning the Filth From a Delicate Frame”, the band's latest recording and first for SKiN GRAFT Records is Lovely Little Girls' most cohesive work yet - a seven stage Théâtre de l'Absurde concept record.

The visual does aural.

PICK YOUR DATE WITH LOVELY LITTLE GIRLS:

6/24: Pittsburgh at Howler’s with Guerrilla Toss, Radon Chong, Outlander

6/25: Baltimore at The Crown (1910 N. Charles St.)

6/26: Brooklyn at Silent Barn (603 Bushwick Ave.)
with The Wayward, Couch Slut, Radiation Blackbody

6/27: Boston at Great Scott (1222 Commonwealth Ave, Allston, MA)
with Guerrilla Toss and Faun & a Pan Flute

6/28: Providence at Dusk

6/29: Philly at The Vat with RadioShock and Taiwan Housing Project

6/30 Athens, OH at The Smiling Skull with Big Neck Police

ITEM!: SURPRISE! In their ten years of existence, CHILD ABUSE have become much more than a jarring name. The NY trio has fused elements of Noise, Death Metal, Free Jazz and Grind into something entirely their own, all the while becoming one of the most innovative, and polarizing bands in New York.Their upcoming album "Trouble in Paradise" (the band's third), expands on their forays into uncharted musical territory and is going to fuck folks up.

We at SKiN GRAFT are pleased to announce that the label will be releasing CHILD ABUSE "Trouble in Paradise" this Fall and the band is preparing a European tour in conjunction with the release. Stay tuned for more details - - - - and keep reading below for the skinny on all of SKiN GRAFT's latest releases, including:

SAX RUINS "Blimmguass"
STRANGULATED BEATOFFS "The Beatoffs" (aka the White Album)
ATHLETIC AUTOMATON "5 Days In Africa: Extended"
U.S. MAPLE "Long Hair In Three Stages"
STRANGULATED BEATOFFS "Days Of Our Lives"

Thanks!

Mark

All titles available for ORDER at

Click HERE for MORE NEWS ( ! )

RECENT RELEASES OUT NOW:

SAX RUINS LP / CD	THE BEATOFFS LP / CD	STRANGULATED BEATOFFS CD

U.S. MAPLE DIECUT METAL LP	U.S. MAPLE CD / LP	SKiN GRAFT LOGO 2-SIDED T-SHIRT

ATHLETIC AUTOMATON LP / MOD CD	YOWIE LP / MOD CD	LOVELY LITTLE GIRLS LP / MOD CD

CHROME JACKSON LP / MOD CD	DOOMSDAY STUDENT LP / MOD CD	XADDAX LP / MOD CD

PRE EP / MOD CD	KOENJIHYAKKEI LIVE DVD	RUINS ALONE LP / CD