based out of wallingford, redscroll records is not just a great record store — they’re a record label that curates some of the region’s best music. recently, they announced that they were relaunching their label with a half-dozen releases scheduled over the next half-dozen months. that’s wild, right? making up for lost time, they’ve announced two new albums: kidnapped’s collected works: 2017 – 2019 and reduction plan’s (ae) maeth.
kidnapped is a brutal metal band who have put out a few digital/cassettes releases, and the upcoming collected works will host them for the first time on vinyl. their music is fast, loud, and tough as hell — they’ve got a cassette called connecticut powerviolence for crying out loud, and if that isn’t the coolest name for a release, i don’t know what is. i was just thinking about naming my dog that. that album will come out on july 19th, and the band will play their release show the following week on july 26th at the space ballroom in hamden.
and yesterday, reduction plan announced an upcoming lp: (ae) maeth. if you haven’t heard reduction plan yet, daniel manning’s music is a dark, gothic, moody, kinda-industrial expressionistic affair. he/they are able to strike a remarkable balance of intimate and grandiose — a strange kind of internal-brooding alchemy. i’ve always felt like their music was lovecraftian in a way, that it speaks to some nonverbal truths that are too horrifying to put into words. reduction plan worked with kevin mcmahon, who has helped engineer records from swans and pile, so you can expect a huge wave of sound from the new record (even more than usual). you can find the first single, “the river”, streaming below. the record was inspired by the brutality of cormac mccarthy’s blood meridian, so i’m going to listen to (ae maeth) closely to try to figure out exactly what happened in that outhouse at the end of the book…
so there we have it: two of the six secret releases that redscroll records are working on. a little bird may have mentioned that there will be another announcement friday, so stay tuned for that too. and if you haven’t checked it out, i recommend giving their podcast a listen — they’ve interviewed a wide variety of ct artists and figures, including the two aforementioned groups along with perennial, spacecamp, and seventh circle booking. you can follow redscroll records on instagram, which is always interesting if for (a) being able to see the intensive and diverse catalog of records they have and (b) checking in on the live shows they visit.
a quick fun story: reduction plan recently performed at NG2BC in new haven, and i commented on one of their video clips of that performance. “we love reduction plan!”, they said, while i assume smiling, knowing that redscroll records would soon be announcing (ae) maeth.
