Cains & Abels sound is a mixture of Plymouth Brethren-inspired folk singing, thick reverberating guitar melodies, and elemental drumming. It comes together in what the band describes as “the most real and honest music we can make.” David Sampson’s voice reaches out in a way that is both resonant and unsettling, creating an atmosphere that “combines the eerie with the beautiful.”

‘Call Me Up’ tells the story of a specific relationship unraveling, bringing to life Sampson's tumultuous inner world, torn apart by divorce and doubt, while revealing his vulnerable desire to be healed. The lyrics intone bleak pictures of birds of prey, bones, lonely highway drives and isolating landscapes, but are able to yield an overriding sense of hope.

‘Call Me Up’ was recorded by Erik Hall of the band NOMO and was released on CD by States Rights Records (Portland) in 2009. Positive Beat Recordings (Chicago) is pleased to present ‘Call Me Up’ for the first time on vinyl.

Limited to 525 copies.

Includes a free MP3 download of the entire record.

"Songs for Boats" is an album of love songs at the end of the world. It is a new folk music made to resonate now rather than endure for decades. Written while Mike Tolan was living/studying in Spain and the world was sliding into recession, these boat songs came into being as he wondered how he would get home once the world fell apart. The boats are escape and rescue. They are diversion and reminiscence. They are hopeful but unsteady in the face of an unclear future.

"Songs for Boats" begins on "The Next Day" (in classic Cold-War-Era-Cinema fashion), when the world economy finally collapses and the US slips into relative chaos. The album hints around the idea of a simpler, more unsure life (but do to personal limitations as opposed to global ones). A dangerous time, but a time where some will feel closer to the "real life" that they had not experienced before. A harder life. Almost certainly a shorter one. But a life of physical survival over virtual boredom. Maybe it is an unrealistic vision but with "Songs for Boats", Talons' approaches this bleak future with humor and honesty.

The "Songs for Boats" are carried by the voices of Mike and Sommer Tolan but beneath their surfaces an array of acoustic guitars, autoharps, chord organs, clarinets, violin and lapsteel interact as they drift throughout the stereo spectrum creating a constant sonic ebb and flow. This musical arsenal is manned in part by the Talons' Band, comprised of close friends and constant collaborators Keith Freund and Linda Lejsovka (of Trouble Books), Jen Court and Jacob Trombetta (of Dinomania), Brian Straw, and Warren Kroll (of Forrest/Dorosoto), whose contributions carry the songs beyond the realms of standard indie folk, creating a delicate world within which the songs come alive, sway, and pull themselves along towards humble hopeful ends.

Positive Beat Recordings is proud to announce the release of The Price is Right, a new five song EP from Chicago’s Cains & Abels. Following their debut album Call Me Up on States Rights Records (CD) and Positive Beat Recordings (LP) The Price is Right is a batch of four new tunes as well as a cover of the Wesley Willis classic “Vultures Ate My Dead Ass Up”. The recording feels a bit more loose than previous ones, all the while keeping true to their vision of making real, honest music. The tracks were recorded during the last days of winter in 2010 and functions as both a reflection of the years past and look forward into the unknown.

David Sampson’s’ voice wails and is deep with emotive feeling as always. He sings about the death of a close friend, the end of an era, wasted time, feelings of isolation and death wishes. Sampson writes it as he sees it and these are dark times – “Now I’m getting that hard hearts feeling back, and I feel alone again / I don’t want to be in your new club…”. Though dark, these recordings are not with out a good dose of piercingly dry humor, which often crops up in Sampson’s’ writing. The opening track creates a mantra of sorts to wasted time, and with lines like “ I will stay home tonight with a kite tied to my wrist, and a car key in my fist and a plastic bag of my own money” he paints a sad but very honest picture of our present moment.

The album leaves you looking forward but not without looking back as well, "This year will be good / be all I ever am to me". In talking with Sampson about the final lines of the EP he said,

“What I'm saying in that song is that in striving to be independent in all regards, I actually sabotage my own success. "This year will be good" is what I say every year. It never happens quite like I want it to, and that's because I'm ignoring the difficult and important things ("turn the headlights off / don't put the headlights on") that lead to personal growth. I am being "good" to myself only in the sense that I am ignoring difficulty and struggle. It's not actually being good to me; it's self-destructive. It's hopeful in a way, but it's a hope in ignorance. “

The EP is a digital only release available exclusively on cainsandabels.bandcamp and is available in three ways – for free / as a donation of your choice / or for $12. The $12 option comes with a limited edition screen-printed poster by Sonnenzimmer Prints. The poster is an edition of 35.

FFO: Silver Jews, Neil Young, Karen Dalton, Will Oldham

Long live Randy Newman
R.I.P Harry Nilsson

Printed on standard canvas totes by our friend Andrew Neyer at YES gallery in Cincinnati. Perfect for hauling records and/or just about anything else you can fit in a 12x12 in. square.

Limited to 35 so act fast!

Positive Beat is pleased to be distributing 'Lost Time' released by Tokyo's Powershovel Audio label in October of 2010. "Lost Time" compiles 20 songs from a number of out-of-print CDr recordings released by Talons' between 2005-2009.

The CD is packaged in a beautiful 52 page photo book featuring photos shot by the band. Positive Beat has received a limited quantity of these albums to sell.

More info on the release is available here:
http://www.powershovelaudio.com

Younger is Matt Joynt (Anathallo) and Ryan Daniel Hammer (Unwed Sailor, The Skull). The two began collaborating in 2007 after discovering a mutual interest in attempting forms of risk-taking that produce unhindered presence. Early performances with Lucky Dragons and High Places were about the naked terror and ecstasy of showing up without any songs. Whatever happened was an attempt to sonically mirror their internal experiences coming together. Over the past few years their sets have produced caverns of ricocheting sine waves and improvised mantra-like lyrical meditations. Other times they have been beat-heavy, dissonant, far out, and even embarrassing.

New Message is the culmination of a friendship spent entertaining the possibilities that unfold from a don’t just do something, stand there approach to being. The record was written, recorded and mixed in an intensive week before Hammer relocated to San Francisco from Chicago in the summer of 2011. Each side of the LP contains an edited long-form improvisation born out of conversations about the elusive nature of meaning. The music - constructed mostly from analog synthesizers, a light-sensitive Theremin, and micro-edited vocal sampling - falls somewhere between the worlds of psychedelic drone and pop. Whereas “I’m Gonna Miss U So Bad” is a simple meditation that mourns and praises the inescapability of emotional attachment, the minimalistic beat of “New Message” lays the groundwork for heavily gated vocals to hover in the air, pulsing with easy-going levity.

Utilizing a mash up of barely rhythmically compatible sounds and melodies on top of one another, in order to create competing pieces of music, mummyz daddy is an impromptu noise project hoping to rethink the concept of musical performance. The desired effect on the listener is aural warfare, where sounds start and stop as they please all while melody comes and goes, paying no mind to musical correctness. Translation: What if mummyz, brains rotted out and all, played in an experimental electronic band? Mummyz Daddy is a slave to fun.

Iamurri layers homemade beats and innovative arrangements over buoyant melodies. Like a sheet of translucent vellum or a scrim, these layers create a washed-out texture that enhances each tune rather than obscuring it. Recalling the pop music of the ’50s and ’60s he used to listen to on his dad’s record player as a kid —the Motown and Stax Records catalogs, The Beach Boys, Harry Nilsson, The Kinks—he wanted to re-imagine these sounds by adding elements of the eclectic music he has gotten into since, stuff like Brazilian pop, shoegaze, Tropicália, Italo house and Balearic beat. Experimenting further, he left in various “blips and blaps” that came through in recording, such as the click of his computer’s track pad or a plosive vocal that peaked out. You may hear an occasional cough or Iamurri affirm his collaborating musicians at the end of one track. (“Nice.”) All this represents an exercise in letting whatever happens happen, recording-wise, which is based on the philosophy of aleatoric music. It’s a refreshingly unselfconscious approach, one that points back to the idea of doing what comes naturally. Speaking of what comes naturally, the title of the album was inspired by the literal arrival of Spring (he recorded the songs through February of 2011).

Arranged, performed, and recorded by Anthony Iamurri in Chicago, Illinois from December 2009 through February 2011.

Other contributors include:
Elliot Bergman / tenor & baritone sax (tracks 4&8)
Jacob Daneman / clarinet (track 9)
Joshua Iamurri / guitar (track 2)
Trevor Naud / guitar & vocals (track 6)

Mastered by Jonathan Schenke in Brooklyn, New York.