HAPPY NEW YEAR! 2013 HONORS FOR TTOTALS AND MICHAEL BEACH

Happy New Year! Man, what a year 2013 was. While it wasn’t our busiest in terms of the number of releases we put out, it was definitely one of our most exciting. I had the pleasure of watching Ttotals perform at this year’s Austin Psych Fest and meeting in the flesh excited fans who had just placed orders online for their critically acclaimed Spectrums of Light 7-inch that we released days before. Another highlight was meeting the man who had a hand in making this record sound so damn good hours before he blew us all away on stage…Spacemen 3’s Sonic Boom. While Tate Eskew expertly handled recording and engineering duties, Sonic mastered this A/B slab of outer blues. Expect more doses of brooding psych sure to set your soul ablaze from these guys in 2014 in the form of a new LP. 

Ttotals at Cake Shop, NYC

August saw the release of Michael Beach’s sophomore LP, Golden Theft, a real genre-bending stunner. I got to tour the East Coast with Beach, backing him on drums, while his regular bandmates waited for him to return home to San Francisco for some West Coast dates. That week saw us share the stage with Matt Valentine (MV&EE) and John Moloney's (Chelsea Light Moving) new project, Home Comfort, as well as Chris Forsyth and other great bands, like the Estrogen Highs, Fatal Film, and Margaret Mead. We managed to wrangle a gig in an old church on the stunningly beautiful Monhegan Island off the coast of Maine. What a blast!

Beach at The Elevens, Northampton, MA

Both of the aforementioned additions to our catalog turned many heads this year and earned end-of-year honors. Ttotals appeared on The Styrofoam Drone’s Top 7” Records of 2013 list, while Beach broke the top 5 on both The Vinyl District and SF Weekly’s Top Albums of 2013 lists.

Twin Lakes has never been about the sheer volume of output…it has been and always will be about turning people on to the music we carefully curate because we love it. We’re looking forward to continuing to do so in 2014 with more from Ttotals, long-awaited releases from Closely Watched Trains and Myty Konkeror, and who knows what else? In the meantime, head on over to our Bandcamp page where you can download for free a Twin Lakes compilation.

MYTY KONKEROR IS BACK... BEACH BACK IN OZ WITH SHOVELS

Just wanted to get everyone up to speed on some key happenings in the Twin Lakes family. For starters, after taking about a year off from shows, Myty Konkeror is back in action. This coming Sunday the 17th, they will be helping heavy psych jammers Eidetic Seeing release their new LP at Brooklyn's Death By Audio.  The new record, Against Nature, features some serious stoner riffage amidst doses of improvisation, prog explorations, and some of the sweetest melodies we've heard from a band this heavy. I hear they put on a killer live show, too. And if you haven't seen Myty Konkeror in a while, you won't want to miss them either, as their live set continues to evolve and explore uncharted waters. They've been working on some new sounds for the follow-up to their highly-acclaimed 2011 LP "I miss the future." so come see what they've been up to. Check the full lineup here.

As always, Michael Beach remains active. Quick on the heels of his summer dusk tour around both US coasts, he's back in Australia for a long string of both solo shows and plenty of gigs with his mates from Electric Jellyfish, who have recently undergone a name change to mark the release of their new cassette--the eponymously titled SHOVELS. Same awesome riffs and intensity from these dudes who've mastered the art of unhinged Gothic blues-punk. 

Beach also continues to tour in support of Golden Theft, the genre-bending stunner of an LP that we put out in late August. One show in particular you will not want to miss if you're in "Brizzy" is this Thursday at the Beetle Bar. Our favorite music blogger from Brisbane, Sonic Masala, has curated a killer lineup with Beach as the headliner. Click here for details.