Today's Hotness: Benjamin Shaw, Lubec

>> London-based propagator of beautiful noise Benjamin Shaw will release Feb. 25 a new collection titled Summer In The Box Room on the newly minted Glass Reservoir Records. A preview track, a spooky, discordant instrumental titled "Oh Jesus, Close The Curtains," was posted to Soundcloud in the last day or so. The song arranges a series of drones and some three-legged-cat piano into a curiously gripping, quasi-cinematic sequence of audible events. Mr. Shaw's last full-length recording, There's Always Hope, There's Always Cabernet, was issued by clever facsimile of a record label Audio Antihero in 2011; we dubbed it a "[h]opelessly beautiful, crumbling chamber pop masterpiece" and named it as one of Clicky Clicky's favorites of that year. Concerned about a potential blow to Audio Antihero's roster, such as it is, we traded messages with the label, which assured us Mr. Shaw has not abandoned ship and the label and Shaw continue to discuss working together on future projects. Summer In The Box Room's art is already posted to the Glass Reservoir Records web site right here, and a detail of same is posted above this item, but order details for the record are as yet unavailable. In the meantime, there is an album trailer of sorts at YouTube here. Watch this space, or one quite similar to it, for further information, and stream "Oh Jesus, Close The Curtains" via the embed below.



>> Portland, Ore.-based sculpt-pop concern Lubec has placed online for a limited time two brilliant demos of songs from the band's planned sophomore set. The unsurprisingly sonically adventurous tunes include the chugging, anthemic hand-clapper "Adam" and "Many Worlds," a dense strummer with attractively layered vocals. The pair are offered at no charge -- get them while the getting's good! Lubec's full-length debut Wilderness Days compiles a dozen early tracks from the band's oeuvre and recently began shipping to fans after various production delays, as attentive Clicky Clicky readers know. Publicly available details of the forthcoming long-player are few and far between, but the notes to the demos do report the set is "currently being engineered and produced by Robert Comitz at the Frawg Pound in Portland, OR. To be completed Spring, 2013." Spring, my friends, is not terribly far off. Start getting excited now.