Desert rock progenitors Yawning Man have announced reissues through Heavy Psych Sounds for 2016’s Historical Graffiti (review here), 2010’s Nomadic Pursuits (review here) and the 2007 tape demo compilation, The Birth of Sol (discussed here), continuing a stretch of catalog deep-diving that has also seen them issue their 2005 debut album, Rock Formations (discussed here), on Ripple Music, as well as the Live at Giant Rock LP, also on Heavy Psych Sounds. Can a reissue of the 2013 Euro tour split between Yawning Man and Fatso Jetson (discussed here) be far behind? Only time and the PR wire will tell.

Plenty to chew on, either way. Nomadic Pursuits, which gets new art here, stands as a sentimental favorite for me personally, while Historical Graffiti marked a moment of departure for the long-running instrumentalist three-piece, recording in Buenos Aires with an expanded lineup to produce something distinct even within Yawning Man‘s varied discography. The Birth of Sol is rough in its actual sound — as a collection of ’80s and/or ’90s-era demos might be — but has a cult following even within that of the band itself, and was previously released on a double-cassette in 2018. I bought that shit. No regrets.

Might buy this version too, because, well, it’s Yawning Man, and the more you get this, the more likely they are to make another new record, and that’s how this thing works.

So work it:

YAWNING MAN – THE BIRTH OF SOL + HISTORICAL GRAFFITI + NOMADIC PURUSITS

Today we are stoked to start the presale of 3 YAWNING MAN reissues: The Birth Of Sol, Historical Graffiti and Nomadic Pursuits !!!

ALBUMs PRESALE:
https://www.heavypsychsounds.com/shop-usa.htm

USA PRESALE:
https://www.heavypsychsounds.com/shop-usa.htm

HPS201 *** YAWNING MAN – THE BIRTH OF SOL ***

REISSUE of the legendary album with brand new cover and coloured vinyls

RELEASED IN DOUBLE GATEFOLD VINYL:

10 ULTRA LTD TEST PRESS VINYLS
100 ULTRA LTD TRANSPARENT BACK. SPLATTER BLACK AND RED VINYLS
400 LTD RED VINYLS
BLACK VINYLS
DIGIPAK

PRESALE STARTS:
AUGUST 24th

RELEASE DATE:
OCTOBER 14th

TRACKLIST

SIDE A
Tuff Dude
Dots, Lines And Mesh
Faith Cakes
Devil’s Ladder
Sour Glaze
Kone Of Meet
Menso
Sinkhole

SIDE B
SLAB
Fires Of Pap’s Chile
Saucey And Saggy
Paseo Lindo
Change For A Beggar
Bet I’ll Six

SIDE C
Sweet Nuggat
Saco
Three Legged Table
Deaf Conductor

SIDE D
Catamaran
Crack, Harden & Dry
Friends Of Me
The Lonely Rancher

ALBUM DESCRITPION
Heavy Psych Sounds is reissuing the Yawning Man old demo recordings The Birth Of Sol in brand new coloured vinyls and new cover.

Dating back to 1986, these demo recordings by Yawning Man were originally only spread amongst close friends of the band. They were released on iTunes in 2009. Today you can have them on brand new coloured vinyls in gatefold sleeve.

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HPS202 *** YAWNING MAN – HISTORICAL GRAFFITI ***

REISSUE of the legendary album with brand new cover and coloured vinyls

RELEASED IN:

10 ULTRA LTD TEST PRESS VINYL
100 ULTRA LTD 3 COLORS STRIPED VINYL
400 LTD PINK VINYL
BLACK VINYL
DIGIPAK

PRESALE STARTS:
AUGUST 24th

RELEASE DATE:
OCTOBER 14th

TRACKLIST

SIDE A
The Wind Cries Edalyn – 8:32
Her Phantom Finger Of Copenhagen – 6:58
Naomi Crayola – 3:05

SIDE B
The Secret Language Of Elephants – 6:27
Historical Graffiti – 7:49

ALBUM DESCRITPION
Heavy Psych Sounds is reissuing the Yawning Man legendary album Historical Graffiti in brand new coloured vinyls.

Historical Graffiti is the band’s fourth full-length, out in 2016. Gary Arce, the guitarist, seems comfortable sitting on a single vamp throughout the opener ‘The Wind Cries Edalyn’, allowing the additions of violin and bandoleon accordion (played by the tango musicians Sara Ryan and Adolfo Trepiana, respectively) to weave melodies in between. Despite the titular connection to the Jimi Hendrix song, it bears no discernible resemblance to ‘The Wind Cries Mary’ and it is a deceptive number; what seems such a simple, almost easy-listening song reveals more colour with every listen.

‘Her Phantom Finger of Copenhagen’ is slightly darker and almost sounds, with the slight distortion on Arce’s guitar, as if it could have come from Pot Head, the EP the band released in 2005. Mario Lalli, the bass player, begins the third song, ‘Naomi Crayola’ with a throbbing single note, aided by Bill Stimson’s metronomic drumming. Imagine if Can grew up near the beach, it’s that sort of vibe. The only problem with the song – and the album, as it happens – is that it is too short. Ryan’s violin returns in ‘The Secret Language of Elephants’, this time playing the role of keeping the main vamp alive while Arce’s guitar generates an evocative soundscape that opens in your mind a wide, violet sky like that above a desert the moment after the sun disappears for the night.

The closing song and title track is the most free of the five on the album, with Stimson’s beat conjuring memories of Kyuss’s more mellow moments from Welcome to Sky Valley, Lalli’s bass marking the simplest of bottom ends and Arce having a ball over the top.
(taken from the band’s Bandcamp)

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HPS203 *** YAWNING MAN – NOMADIC PURSUITS ***

REISSUE of the legendary album with brand new cover and coloured vinyls

RELEASED IN:

10 ULTRA LTD TEST PRESS VINYL
100 ULTRA LTD TRANSPARENT BACK. SPLATTER BLUE/ORANGE VINYL
400 LTD GREEN VINYL
BLACK VINIYL
DIGIPAK

PRESALE STARTS:
AUGUST 24th

RELEASE DATE:
OCTOBER 21st

TRACKLIST

SIDE A
CAMEL TOW 5:02
SAND WHIP 6:54
FAR-OFF ADVENTURE 8:28

SIDE B
BLUE FOAM 4:31
GROUND SWELL 6:16
CAMEL TOW TWO 5:00
LASTER ARTE 4:28

ALBUM DESCRIPTION

Heavy Psych Sounds is reissuing the Yawning Man legendary album Nomadic Pursuits in brand new coloured vinyls and new cover. Nomadic Pursuits is the second Yawning Man studio album, released in 2010. With a five-year gap between the first album and this one, the band had time to further expand on their freeform desert sound. Heavy Psych Sounds is now giving new life to this psychedelic gem with a new special edition!

YAWNING MAN IS:
Gary Arce – Guitar
Mario Lalli – Bass
Bill Stinson – Drums

https://www.facebook.com/yawningmanofficial/
https://yawningman.bandcamp.com
http://www.yawningman.com/

https://www.facebook.com/HEAVYPSYCHSOUNDS
http://www.heavypsychsounds.com
https://heavypsychsoundsrecords.bandcamp.com

Yawning Man, Historical Graffiti (2016)

Yawning Man, Nomadic Pursuits (2010)

Yawning Man, The Birth of Sol – The Demo Tapes (2009)

Yawning Man, The Birth of Sol (2009)

Still kind of surprising that a physical pressing of Yawning Man‘s demo collection, The Birth of Sol, has never surfaced. There was talk for a while of doing one, but it never manifest, and the persistently-underrated, due-for-their-due desert rock progenitors oversaw a digital version in 2009 through Cobraside that remains as close as The Birth of Sol has come to-date. Granted, the material is pretty rough. Recorded over the course of 1986-’87 — or somewhere around there, anyhow — it’s basically pre-digital rehearsal-space recordings. You can hear the warped tape as you listen through the near-90-minute span of 24 tracks (as well as a couple CD skips, oddly), which span avant jazz weirdness to a brand of bouncing punk that’s indistinguishable from that would shortly become Fatso Jetson, all the more for Mario Lalli‘s even-then-recognizable voice and quick-turning rhythmic progressions. It would be nearly two decades before Yawning Man put their first album out — that was Rock Formations, in 2005 — but like Across the River‘s even-earlier 1985 Demo Tape (discussed here), The Birth of Sol is an integral document of what was coalescing in the California desert at the time.

I’ll gladly argue that Yawning Man‘s most pivotal days, sound-wise, were still ahead of them when they tracked the material on The Birth of Sol, but even if you listen through these songs, you can hear that desert rock, as it was, was already something different from punk, from the heavy metal of its day, and even from the post-hardcore slowdowns that, soon enough, would become grunge. Even in their rawest form, Yawning Man stood apart from that, and that makes a release like The Birth of Sol all the more special.

The band’s last full-length was 2010’s Nomadic Pursuits (review here), and while the years since have seen a flurry of activity from founding guitarist and principle figure Gary Arce (2012 interview here) both in Yawning Man — who did a split with Fatso Jetson in 2013 — and outside of it, in collaboration with Hotel Wrecking City Traders, Yawning Sons, WaterWays or Zun, whose debut stands among my most anticipated releases for 2016, word of Yawning Man proper’s next full-length has yet to materialize outside of some long-teased Raymond Pettibon art, the title Gravity is Good for You, and the occasional snippet or rough mix. Come to think of it, that’s plenty of word. I guess what I’m looking for is a release date.

When/if I happen upon one or one happens upon me, I’ll let you know, but until then, enjoy The Birth of Sol and take it for what it is. There’s plenty to get lost in, and from where I sit, it’s still worth hoping it gets pressed up one way or another one of these days.

—

As I write this, it’s actually Thursday night, a little bit before 11:30PM. I’m taking a half-day from work tomorrow (today by the time this gets posted) and figured I’d sleep better if I didn’t have this hanging over my head. Plus I miss writing at night, headphones in, the little dog Dio and The Patient Mrs., the latter of whom has been suffering from a cold for most of the week, both conked out. It’s already a seven-post day — rare, even rarer for the end of a week — but the holdover from yesterday was the Eight Bells news, and I thought it seemed tacky to post something about Portland when they obviously had bigger things going on in Oregon, what with the mass shooting and all.

And as to that, it seems pretty clear to me that we as a people, Americans, don’t give a fuck about it. We’re willing to sacrifice bunches of people for the illusion of what we’re told is a freedom. Trust cops. Buy more. Eat what they feed you. I don’t care anymore either. Not when there’s so much on Netflix to see! Until somebody picks up a molotov cocktail and starts a revolution — violent uprising is not the only way of producing substantive cultural change, but you can’t argue with a decent track record — nothing will change. Because we don’t want it to. Pumpkin spice! Selfies! Internet snark! Mass murder. Hallmarks of our season and our age.

What was I doing? Oh yeah, putting the blinders back on.

Headed to CT this weekend because I hear there’s a hurricane coming and fuck it, that’s how I wanna go out. Bedroom Rehab Corporation play the release show for their new one on Saturday in New London and it’s a killer lineup, so I’ll be at that, and look for a review on Monday. Also next week, reviews of Clutch and Graveyard. Both are late, but seriously, I reviewed 50 fucking records this week — more if you count streams, which at this point I do — so if that’s not enough for you I don’t know what to say. If I have time, I might do Monster Magnet or Snail as well, but we’ll see if I get there. Both are on the docket though either way. Also got an Admiral Browning tape that I’d very much enjoy writing up. Might save that for next Friday and treat myself a bit. And the interview with Lori S. from Acid King. That will be up somewhere in there as well. Busy week all of a sudden.

There are a lot of shows coming up I wish I could see. I will not get to all of them, but I will do my best. It bums me out deeply and sincerely to report that I’ll be unable to make the trip to Munich for Keep it Low. Car trouble for both The Patient Mrs. and I has severely sapped funds that would’ve otherwise gone toward a plane ticket, and my student loans are apparently in default if the increasingly disturbing emails I get from Navient: Or Whatever the Fuck They’re Called this Week can be remotely trusted. Whatever. Amnesty now for immigrants and students. Too big to fail is too big to exist. Let them dock my pay if they want my money so fucking bad.

Got myself all jazzed up tonight. So much for sleeping.

Have a great and safe weekend. Please. Consider it a favor to me. And while you’re doing me favors, please check out the forum and radio stream.

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