https://www.specsmgmt.com/home daily 1.0 2022-08-18 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/606db559d6f7bb2fac9f40ff/afa175ec-df03-4597-b52d-968b2606edd4/Julia+Blair_Press+Photo+1.jpg Home Julia Blair https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/606db559d6f7bb2fac9f40ff/f1d9262a-4360-4cbb-9ee2-89080a8b430b/a_img081.jpg Home Color Temperature https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/606db559d6f7bb2fac9f40ff/05a017a2-bd3c-4f48-837b-c23c15d22573/IMG_6781.JPG Home https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/606db559d6f7bb2fac9f40ff/9e1b0f66-fc15-4b18-a614-8678bca80e38/duskpic.jpeg Home Dusk https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/606db559d6f7bb2fac9f40ff/1eec4200-d308-4728-8e07-ce4087715f12/mainpic1.jpeg Home Reduction Plan https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/606db559d6f7bb2fac9f40ff/71f9a6ec-27c4-41b7-8863-e9bbdd6824f5/GA11.JPG Home Georgia Sackler https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/606db559d6f7bb2fac9f40ff/392ba3dd-abbe-4a07-b7a1-0f0e54842c8b/SM-FINAL-16-3.jpg Home Seeking Madras https://www.specsmgmt.com/about daily 0.75 2021-11-08 https://www.specsmgmt.com/georgia-sackler daily 0.75 2022-08-18 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/606db559d6f7bb2fac9f40ff/1629667943604-IHC38K9IU5ITAPRP2W2V/GA11.JPG Georgia Sackler - Georgia Sackler Georgia Sackler is a singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and actor living in Brooklyn, New York. Creating at the crossroads of nostalgia-steeped tradition and hopeful promise, her classical voice background informs a deep musical and poetic sensitivity, a "fresh air of song writing." Her debut EP, Where Once Grew Green, is a modern folk tale. It offers listeners a tender memorial of youth and innocence, paired with an emotional thesis for the future. Georgia wrestles with the passage of time—facing loss, grief, and mental health struggles—and upholds that we need not suffer these things alone. The narrative she crafts is undeniably melancholic, but woven together with threads of hope; where once grew green will again renew. The EP is available everywhere you buy or stream music. Listen // Facebook // Instagram // Twitter https://www.specsmgmt.com/seeking-madras daily 0.75 2022-08-18 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/606db559d6f7bb2fac9f40ff/1629669151050-SYKF2DR916WCLN59J6IR/SM-FINAL-16-3.jpg Seeking Madras - Seeking Madras Seeking Madras sprang forth from singer-guitarist Sean Martin’s urge to reconnect with the multifaceted meanderings of his musical past. Looking back to those halcyon days, Martin crafted nine songs with evocative melodies and lilting structures, songs that paid homage to his influences: the garage and art rock of the 60s, the British indie movements of the 80s and 90s, and the left-of-the dial songs filling American college radio. On Bike Ride, his 2018 debut as Seeking Madras, Martin recorded the songs direct to cassette on a Tascam 4-track, playing every instrument himself and layering the vocals with heavy reverb. He eventually rounded up a group of like-minded musicians and began gigging around coastal North Carolina. 2020’s One Goes Forward finds this quartet bringing Martin’s songwriting to life. Recorded as a unit, Martin, Corkery, Page, and Crawford maintained the DIY aesthetic of Bike Ride, again relying solely on analog cassettes to lay down and bounce each track. One Goes Forward demonstrates a step forward in terms of songwriting and musicianship. There is a freedom in each song, and while Martin’s remains the group’s driving force, Page, Crawford, and Corkery are afforded room to expand his vision. The compact songs featured on One Goes Forward burst with openness, arousing sentiments and provoking the listener to reminisce on themes of innocence and experience, love and longing, spontaneity and prudence, all the while traveling through a spectrum of settings, seasons, and places in time. There’s a palpable paradox found in each song on both Seeking Madras LPs: going back, but always looking ahead. Listen // Instagram https://www.specsmgmt.com/reduction-plan daily 0.75 2022-08-18 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/606db559d6f7bb2fac9f40ff/1629668183917-09RKOFUU34I7PIAMV1R9/mainpic1.jpeg Reduction Plan - Reduction Plan Reduction Plan's music comes from within solitude's frigid embrace. Pulling from 80s goth, industrial, dream-pop, as well as cacophonous no-wave, Reduction Plan uses both noise and space to illustrate the power of silence. Synth swells, hypnotic guitars, pulsing drum machines, and haunting murmurs form the foundation of the project’s sound. What originally started as an exercise in sonic experimentation for lead vocalist, founder and project mastermind Daniel Manning has since flourished into a fully functioning three-piece band. Reduction Plan’s third full-length ‘Somewhere’ saw Manning further refining his experiments into a singular vision - an icy call from the abyss, searching for a place to belong, all the while surrounded by chorus-laiden guitars and a thick layer of reverb. If ‘Somewhere’ was a record born in the cold and the dark, Reduction Plan’s latest ‘(Ae) Maeth’ was molded in chaos and fire. The title draws inspiration from the folktale of the Golem, a creature molded from clay and animated to life through the inscription of “æmaeth”, or “truth,” on its head, only to have that same life snuffed out by erasing the first two letters to form the word “maeth”, or “death.” ‘(Ae) Maeth’ is a search for truth in death, a hunt for meaning in the face of vast oblivion. It is a record driven by loss, anxiety, fear, chaos, and a search for purpose. The record finds Manning expanding Reduction Plan’s sound into heavier, more distorted territory. Album opener “An Act of Self-Immolation” leads with an ominous synth hum, followed swiftly by an explosive wash of distorted guitars. Second track “Meridian” is an eerie, bass-driven dirge inspired by the turmoil and brutality of Cormac McCarthy’s seminal novel ‘Blood Meridian.’ It isn’t all doom and gloom throughout the opening moments, however, as “The River” opens with a soaring saxophone solo, bouncing drum machine groove, and shimmering, chorus-heavy guitars. (Ae) Maeth marks the first time Manning has enlisted outside help in the early stages of creation - starting with producer and engineer Kevin McMahon (Swans, The Walkmen, Pile), who helped shape Manning’s home recordings into dynamic, finely-tuned compositions. There are a notable number of collaborations across the record’s 9 tracks as well - with band member Luis Durango lending guitar squalls and feedback to the album opener, and Jack Tomascak adding essential saxophone bursts to “The River”. Manning is not the only voice heard on the record either, a first for the project, as album closer and title track “(Ae) Maeth” features haunting vocal contributions from Jae Matthews of Boy Harsher. ‘(Ae) Maeth’ represents a massive leap forward for Reduction Plan - in concept, composition, and production. With each song, Manning pulls his industrial-goth brainchild out of the hazy fog of previous releases and breathes new life into it - reborn in the fire. Listen // Facebook // Instagram // Twitter https://www.specsmgmt.com/color-temperature daily 0.75 2022-08-18 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/606db559d6f7bb2fac9f40ff/1629667533661-BI15B8V8WGSZH3M3SOTY/Color+Temperature Color Temperature - Color Temperature Color Temperature is the solo project created by Ross Page of Wilmington, North Carolina, by way of Connecticut. Influenced by the likes of Alex G, Loving, and Built to Spill, Color Temperature crafts a small home on a hill swarming with harmony and invites you to stay awhile. An experimental hybrid of homespace rock and shoegaze, if it were contained in a terrarium—softer vocals that reverberate within the bell jar, until the layers blend together forming an ecosystem all its own. Listen // Instagram // Twitter https://www.specsmgmt.com/dusk daily 0.75 2023-10-23 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/606db559d6f7bb2fac9f40ff/66ad5d63-5b09-4918-966b-3940898a42f9/DSC_0385.jpg Dusk - Dusk Dusk is a group that walks the shadowed path. It's well known in the rural pastures of Wisconsin, where all of the members of this group were raised, that the traditional music of the common people is Polka, but the most respected form of musical expression is Country and Western. Dusk walks cleanly between these two worlds; pulling influence from both but most strongly associating with Rock & Roll and Rhythm & Blues. They bring with them a strong, informed, melodic statement that draws a line between themselves and the trend of bubble gum pop and country-influenced mall schlock. The group consists of vocalist Julia Blair on Wurlitzer electric piano, Colin "Wild Man" Wilde on drums and percussion, Amos Pitsch on bass guitar and vocals, Tyler Ditter on lead guitar, and Ryley Crowe on rhythm guitar, pedal steel, and vocals. Amos also doubles as a member of Appleton, Wisconsin punk band Tenement. The group is often compared to 60's garage and R&B groups like NRBQ and THE LOVIN SPOONFUL, early 70's country rock pioneers THE FLYING BURRITO BROTHERS, and at times the primitive rock and roll sound of a group like THE VELVET UNDERGROUND. They hint at all these things, even as something in their music seems to breathe modern air. It's a feeling that few musicians that attempt to nod to prior generations can capture without bastardising the very music that they intended to salute. Dusk have done it well, and in their music, you'll find this plain truth among many exciting secrets. Listen // Facebook // Instagram https://www.specsmgmt.com/softee daily 0.75 2022-07-29 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/606db559d6f7bb2fac9f40ff/ad42c357-ad1a-448b-ad2e-010aada73054/4635C523-06DF-4D6A-A4F4-75D7087B80D1.jpeg Softee - Softee Nina Grollman is your favorite local DIY pop star – but you can call her Softee. With only a handful of co-producer credits, her autodidactic production techniques assert the autonomous vision of a self-sufficient woman in a genre that tends to dismiss their technical abilities. Wearing her influences proudly on her sleeve, Softee combines the saccharine-sweet synth pop of Charli XCX, the nostalgic glamour of Gwen Stefani and deep, soulful vocals that find themselves somewhere between Kate Bush and Robyn. Commanding the dancefloor with 80’s excellence and three-part harmonies that are sugary sweet and soft just like her, Softee asks for nothing less than the attention of the room. Listen // Instagram // Twitter https://www.specsmgmt.com/julia-blair daily 0.75 2022-08-18 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/606db559d6f7bb2fac9f40ff/af81d518-21ae-4b44-85f7-1231676c40af/Julia+Blair_Press+Photo+1.jpg Julia Blair - Julia Blair Julia Blair was born of this world as a force to smother the disquieting agents of despair- and as a gentle soul that no-less employs her mighty voice to speak truth to power. Those who know her personally know this, and those who have heard her sing know this as well. On her debut solo album for Crutch of Memory Enterprises, Better Out Than In, Julia proclaims her fondness for self-expression and demonstrates her aptitude for dynamics: from the explosive nature of a pop hook to the firm, comforting grip of a lullaby. She does so at-times anecdotally, while utilizing the marriage of sophisticated arrangements and plain-spoken lyrical language. If the root of a sound runs parallel to the origin of its creator, we must follow this root to Hartford, Wisconsin, which sits just Northwest of the Milwaukee metro area; a small blue collar town built on auto manufacturing at the dawn of the automobile industry. Humble and unassuming; Hartford naturally boasts the kind of environment that fosters menial work and punch-the-clock mentality. It’s where creative individuals learn their rudiments and move onto brighter spotlights. It’s also a visually idyllic community nestled between rolling hills and glacial landmarks- that in some cases, have been adopted as religious sanctuaries. This is where Julia’s musical story began: with the discovery of Vivaldi and Beethoven in an elementary school music class that would ignite an ever-evolving love of the classical idiom. As she absorbed and studied classical music and its theory into her college years, an encounter with the simplicity and pure-expression of folk music eventually unlocked a door to a new world for her- one which the self-importance of a university music conservatory could never open. Here, she began writing and performing with the avant-folk collective Holy Sheboygan! and later co-founded country-rock band Dusk, who released their self-titled debut album on Don Giovanni Records in 2018 and have served as session musicians for many of our label subsidiary releases. Better Out Than In draws from all of these experiences. The album leans heavily on pop structure on some of its centerpieces such as “Relax”, “Just A Cue”, and “Fantasize”; the flow split up by three sequentially evolving lullabies, much like a series of intermissions. Folk and classical traditions still make their way into the fold however; particularly on the aforementioned lullabies, almost-impressionist ballad “Barbara”, and the string-heavy finale, “Waste Away”. It was recorded and mixed over the course of three years at Crutch of Memory Studios by Amos Pitsch with direction from Julia herself, and features performances from many of our frequent collaborators and session stand-ins: Ridley Tankersley (Dusk, darn it.), Andy Harris (HPA, Phylums, The Goodnight Loving), Amos Pitsch (Tenement, Dusk), and Colin Wilde (Black Thumb, Dusk), among many others. The virtue in this set of songs lies in its ability to equip the disadvantaged with fuel to keep pushing. To uplift the disheartened. To anchor unsteady feet in an increasingly turbulent world. Julia Blair’s voice is the equalizer within and Crutch of Memory is proud to bring it to you as the second edition of our flagship series. We hope you surrender yourself to the truth within this album and that you too find that the power of expression is left Better Out Than In. Listen // Instagram https://www.specsmgmt.com/sofia-dobrushin daily 0.75 2022-08-18 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/606db559d6f7bb2fac9f40ff/19c47fc3-da10-4c69-adea-16d7b4d73559/IMG_6781.JPG