Track list:

A1 Backyards   3:18
A2 Hollows   3:37
A3 Verdant   4:48
A4 Coastal Route   6:08
A5 Resigned   4:03

B1 1995   3:31
B2 Monticello Farm   2:55
B3 Sicily   6:16
B4 Island Lake   4:43
B5 Mill Shoals   3:40

LANTERNA - Backyards
vinyl edition LP - IPR71

Independent Project Records is pleased to announce a vinyl edition of Backyards, the beautiful new album from Champaign, Illinois’ Lanterna. The ten-song collection (licensed from Badman Recording Company’s instrumental label Jemez Mountain) is multi-instrumentalist Henry Frayne’s most compelling work to date, where he crafts musical landscapes interweaving layers of warm, instrumental sonic tapestries. Backyards is the fifth Lanterna CD to be released by Badman/Jemez Mountain, and the first of them to be released on vinyl.

"The song Backyards was written on an acoustic guitar, humming the melody that would become the twangy guitar part,” explains Frayne. “Behind most of the songs on the Backyards album is an acoustic guitar part written while sitting outside in the open air with a hummed melody later replaced by echoey guitars."

For Frayne, the inception of Backyards began almost a decade ago and is a culmination of his career as a versatile musician best known for blending genres and bending guitar styles to create layers of airy overtones. For this album, most of the songs sprung from an orphaned blond Conrad hollow body six-string bequeath from a friend in 1995 along with a Gibson acoustic, purchased in a farmyard in Maine in 1983 for $5, after having survived a fire. Frayne composed the underlying textures of the record with a heavy influence from the Nashville tuning, the practice of utilizing very light strings to produce an angelic sound. Frayne learned this Nashville tuning from bandmate Brendan Gamble during their time in The Moon Seven Times.

The cinematic photos of Boston-based Kevin Salemme have graced many a Lanterna album and Backyards is thankfully no exception.  Bruce Licher, guitarist of the band Scenic and of Licher Art & Design, (and of Independent Project Records and Press) once again steps in to design Lanterna's album artwork.  Lanterna has always been about taking a journey through sound, and through these photographic images Salemme and Licher once again hold up their end of the bargain.

“As I’ve worked on the album Backyards I was drawn to some old live recordings of The Syndicate, Ack-Ack, Area, and The Moon Seven Times, bands I played with in the past,” Frayne explains. “Before things like cassettes and reel-to-reel tapes degrade and pass from this earth I wanted to archive old shows and recordings by bands I was lucky enough to share the stage and studio with. There are echoes of these four groups all over this new album. Much of the time between 2006 and 2014 was literally spent in one backyard or another working on outdoor projects great and small, but Backyards was always playing in the back of my mind!”

The first pressing vinyl LP is an edition of 500 copies.  See our SHOP page to order.

RED TEMPLE SPIRITS
limited edition 3 x CD set - IP063/064/065CD

Independent Project Records is thrilled to announce the long-awaited CD re-issue of the two phenomenal albums released by this enigmatic Los Angeles band from the late 1980's: Dancing To Restore An Eclipsed Moon and If Tomorrow I Were Leaving For Lhasa, I Wouldn’t Stay a Minute More...  Originally released in 1988 and 1989, these two albums sound like nothing else from the period, deftly blending gothic post-punk sounds with pagan tribal psychedelia. 

Red Temple Spirits’ debut has been described as a haunting masterpiece of psychedelic post-punk, laden with exotic musicianship and a deft blending of Native American and Eastern mysticism.  While shimmering guitar textures weave patterns over heavy hypnotic rhythms, the enchanting lyrical imagery of vocalist William Faircloth brings a trippy, shamanistic quality to the proceedings.  Easily some of the most mesmerizing and vital post-punk music ever created, Red Temple Spirits play with an austerity, grace, and pureness to form that remains fresh over two decades after it was originally recorded.

Both albums have been completely re-mastered, and are supplemented with three bonus tracks and a bonus CDep reproducing the band's first demo tape.  Packaged in a deluxe over-sized 4-color hand-letterpress Discfolio package,  with full-color lyric inserts & gilded letterpress-printed glassine inner sleeves, this essential re-issue is released as a limited, numbered edition of 1000 copies.  

See our SHOP page to order this limited edition CD set, along with other related RED TEMPLE SPIRITS items.

Disc 1: Dancing To Restore An Eclipsed Moon

1. Exorcism / Waiting For The Sun  7:02
2. Liquid Temple  5:42
3. Dark Spirits  4:20
4. Bear Cave 4:19
5. Dreamings Ending  4:52
6. Electric Flowers  5:07
7. Moonlight  5:34
8. Where Merlin Played  5:56
9. Nile Song  3:18
10. Lost In Dreaming  4:50
11. Light of Christ / This Hollow Ground  13:36
+ bonus track:
12. New Land (demo)  4:05

Disc 2: If Tomorrow I Were Leaving For Lhasa, I Wouldn't Stay A Minute More...

1. City of Millions  3:50
2. Soft Machine  3:57
3. Dive In Deep  4:01
4. Alice 4:19
5. Wild Hills  6:56
6. A Black Rain  5:58
7. Meltdown  3:19
8. Confusion  2:26
9. Rainbows End  5:02
10. Set The Controls  7:02
11. Rollercoaster  4:01
+ bonus tracks:
12. Exodus From Lhasa  3:24
13. New Land  (second version) 3:51

Disc 3: original demo recordings

1. Moonlight  5:37
2. The Alchemists Stone  5:15
3. Dreamings Ending  4:50
4. The Light of Christ / This Hallowed Ground  10:58