Destroyer - Ken - VINYL LP

Vinyl LP pressing. More than an arcane puzzle for the listener, Labyrinthitis warps and winds through unfamiliar territory for Bejar as well. Written largely in 2020 and recorded the following spring, the album most often finds Bejar and frequent collaborator John Collins seeking the mythic artifacts buried somewhere under the dance floor, from the glitzy spiral of InchIt Takes a ThiefInch to the Books-ian collage bliss of the title track. Initial song ideas ventured forth from disco, Art of Noise, and New Order, Bejar and Collins championing the over-the-top madcappery. InchJohn is in his 50s, and I'm almost there, but we used to go to clubs,Inch Bejar laughs. InchOur version may have been punk clubs, but our touchstones for the album were more true to disco.Inch Album Tracks 1. It's in Your Heart Now 2. Suffer 3. June 4. All My Pretty Dresses 5. Tintoretto, It's for You 6. Labyrinthitis 7. Eat the Wine, Drink the Bread 8. It Takes a Thief 9. The States 10. The Last Song

Vinyl LP pressing. In the hallowed Destroyer discography, the early trinity of City Of Daughters, Thief and Streethawk A Seductionholds an important place; for not only does it document Dan Bejar's evolution from lo-fi bedroom tyro to bona fide master of the rock album, it also contains a massive percentage of superlative Destroyer Inchclassics.Inch 1998's City of Daughters features some of the first steps out of the demo-tapey experimentation of earlier recordings, with songs like InchComments On The World As WillInch refining the sound of that stripped-down earlier work, and the seminal InchNo Cease FiresInch offering us the first taste of just what a full-band Destroyer might conjure. Album Tracks 1. Comments on the World As Will 2. No Cease Fires! (Crimes Against the State of Our Love, Baby) 3. Dark Purposes 4. Emax I 5. I Want This Cyclops 6. Loves of a Gnostic 7. Emax II 8. State of the Union 9. School, and the Girls Who Go There 10. The Space Race 11. Melanie and Jennifer and Melanie 12. War on Jazz II or How I Learned to Love the War on Jazz 13. Emax III 14. You Were So Cruel 15. Signs 16. Rereading the Marble Faun 17. Son of the Earth

Dan Bejar initially conceived of Have We Met as a Y2K album. He was already active during the era but not heard overhead in a cafe or salon, which is perhaps what the idea of the Y2K sound evokes nearly two decades later. Bejar assigned frequent producer and bandmate John Collins the role of layering synth and rhythm sections over demos with the period-specific Björk, Air, and Massive Attack in mind, but he soon realized the sonic template was too removed from Destroyer's own, and the idea of a concept was silly anyway. So, he abandoned it and gave Collins the most timeless instruction of all InchMake it sound cool.Inch Atmosphere and loose approximations of a place or feeling are what we've come to expect from any new Destroyer record-certainly not an easily defined and stridently adhered to theme or concept. Have We Met manages to meet somewhere between those disparate Y2K reference points and Destroyer's own area of expertise, gliding deftly into territory that marries the old strident Destroyer with the new, aged crooning one of late. Album Tracks 1. Crimson Tide 2. Kinda Dark 3. It Just Doesn't Happen 4. The Television Music Supervisor 5. The Raven 6. Cue Synthesizer 7. University Hill 8. Have We Met 9. The Man in Black's Blues 10. Foolssong