December 7 street date. At its core Del Mar is an album about addiction, paranoia, regret, and generally just living an unfulfilled life. When I listen back to it, I guess I see it as an expression of gratitude: gratitude that my actual life didn’t end the way it does in this alternate timeline.
September 3 street date. Underground rock festered and splintered as it spread through the U.S. in the mid-1990s, the alternative boom giving rise to microcosmic regional scenes singularly focused on feral powerviolence or screamo songs about breakfast. Boston's Karate emerged as a force that could grip a national youth movement whose disparate tastes still commingled in the inky pages of fanzines overflowing with florid prose and on concert calendars for volunteer-run DIY spaces, community centers, and bowling alleys. In this world, Karate's music was an enigma, one equally inviting to sneering punks and highfalutin indie-rock aficionados. Their 1996 self-titled debut, issued on Southern Records, set the standard. Lasooing together white-knuckle post-hardcore tension, sharply focused slowcore serenity, and resplendent jazz complexity, Karate eschewed settling in any one definiable style. But they certainly used the language of punk to get their point across; occasionally, guitarist Geoff Farina abandons his warm, hushed cadences for a hoarse shout that made him sound ragged, intensifying an aggression that burst out with every snaggletoothed guitar riff or drum snap that went off like canonfire.
September 17 street date. The Great Alternative Boom of the early 1990s had begun to wither on corporate FM barely halfway through the decade, but the ever-changing underground had almost entirely regenerated after two major-label thrifting trips. In the ever-in-flux city of Boston, Karate positioned themselves as a crucial tendril in a sprawling nationwide community. They did so largely by refusing to stick to any single formula from the myriad of styles at their root - slowcore, post-hardcore, and jazz. Karate made sense of seemingly polarizing styles, and "In Place of Real Insight" is arguably their best album because they allowed such disparate parts to co-mingle. In a subversive music community oscillating between radical polemics and hair-splitting musical orthodoxy, Karate were a question mark - one that exhibited the scene's best instincts, because they sounded like few others.
March 4 street date. A lingering guitar note. A cushion of a bassline nudging along a hushed cadence unspooling impressionistic poeticism one halting line at a time; the sparse snap of a snare providing punctuation. This is how Boston's Karate opened their third full-length, 1998's "The Bed Is In The Ocean". Perhaps this was a reaction to the aggressive punk tones that marked their previous album, or maybe they hoped to capture the somnambulant dusk on one of those pristine fall days that make living in a town whose population swells when colleges welcome back students all worthwhile. After expanding from a trio to a quartet and employing a dual-guitar attack with 1997's "In Place of Real Insight", founding member Eamonn Vitt hung up his axe to attend medical school. Karate soldiered on as a trio, with mid-stream addition Jeff Goddard's bass work helping establish a sidewinding path forward through the smoky jazz melodicism and sun-beaten blues brushstrokes that hung in the background of the band's catalogue.
Please note new street date: November 25. At the turn of the century and after three albums, Karate's tenure within the insular east coast indie rock scene had expired, but the band was just getting started. Collected here is the band's spacious, adventurous, and sometimes difficult second half presented in fastidious detail. This five LP box includes the trio's "Unsolved", "Some Boots", and "Pockets" albums, a first time vinyl pressing of their "Cancel/Sing" EP, and recently unearthed rehearsal recordings of two unreleased tracks, all annotated by Geoff Farina's account of Karate's adulthood and Andy Hong's insights into the trio's recording process.
May 5 street date. As Warped Tour pop-punk and American Apparel indie rock dominated the strange post-Y2K guitar-band milieu, Boston's Karate delivered an engrossing shot of rock that constantly shifted between several shades of subterranean sounds. The quiet moments on Karate's millennium busting fourth album carry much of that old, unbridled intensity, braided into subdued jazz melodies and slowcore restraint. Karate's transition into rock maturity bore supple fruit with "Unsolved", presented here with three previously unreleased songs.
May 5 street date. As Warped Tour pop-punk and American Apparel indie rock dominated the strange post-Y2K guitar-band milieu, Boston's Karate delivered an engrossing shot of rock that constantly shifted between several shades of subterranean sounds. The quiet moments on Karate's millennium busting fourth album carry much of that old, unbridled intensity, braided into subdued jazz melodies and slowcore restraint. Karate's transition into rock maturity bore supple fruit with "Unsolved", presented here with three previously unreleased songs.
May 5 street date. As Warped Tour pop-punk and American Apparel indie rock dominated the strange post-Y2K guitar-band milieu, Boston's Karate delivered an engrossing shot of rock that constantly shifted between several shades of subterranean sounds. The quiet moments on Karate's millennium busting fourth album carry much of that old, unbridled intensity, braided into subdued jazz melodies and slowcore restraint. Karate's transition into rock maturity bore supple fruit with "Unsolved", presented here with three previously unreleased songs.
September 15 street date. Crashing at the unlikely intersection of post-hardcore, slowcore, and jazz-rock, Karate spent a dozen years producing peerless recordings in their adopted hometown of Boston. Collected here are their six albums plus the "Cancel/Sing" and "In The Fishtank" EPs, singles, and split 7"s, a whopping 69 tracks spread across eight glorious compact discs. Leor Galil's career-spanning essay is illustrated with dozens of period-appropriate photos in the accompanying 80-page book.
September 27 street date. Karate Boogaloo bring you ‘KB’s Mixtape No. 2’ reminding us of the beauty of colouring outside the lines; their unconventional, wonky soul guided by a steadfast commitment to bending the rules. 2018's KB’s Mixtape No. 1, a self-produced and released collection of interpretations of hip hop samples done in Karate Boogaloo's immediately recognisable wonky style is fast becoming a cult classic amongst Melbourne’s diggers, selling out in local record stores through word of mouth alone. Now The KB's bring you the second in their ‘KB’s Mixtape’ series with songs from the 80s that were sampled into your favourite hits. Songs by Blondie, Kraftwerk, Patti LaBelle and Stevie Nicks sampled by artists such as Destiny's Child, Kanye West, Jay Z, Mariah Carey and Warren G, all flipped and twisted in Karate Boogaloo's unique way.
September 27 street date. Karate Boogaloo bring you ‘KB’s Mixtape No. 2’ reminding us of the beauty of colouring outside the lines; their unconventional, wonky soul guided by a steadfast commitment to bending the rules. 2018's KB’s Mixtape No. 1, a self-produced and released collection of interpretations of hip hop samples done in Karate Boogaloo's immediately recognisable wonky style is fast becoming a cult classic amongst Melbourne’s diggers, selling out in local record stores through word of mouth alone. Now The KB's bring you the second in their ‘KB’s Mixtape’ series with songs from the 80s that were sampled into your favourite hits. Songs by Blondie, Kraftwerk, Patti LaBelle and Stevie Nicks sampled by artists such as Destiny's Child, Kanye West, Jay Z, Mariah Carey and Warren G, all flipped and twisted in Karate Boogaloo's unique way.
Secret underground societies. Battles between super-powered heroes and villains. Metaphorical and literal deals with the Devil. Buried time capsules filled with ancient wisdom. All of these things,along with a hundred-year curse and one man's struggle to find meaning and hope, play a role in The League Of Tomorrow, the epic new album by San Francisco's Karate High School. The disc serves as a follow-up to the group's 2006 full-length EvoRecordings debut, Arcade Rock, which most notably featured the underground fan favorites "Good News And Bad News" and "Sweep The Leg."
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