ALL THREE RELEASES OUT 7/29/2016! PRE-ORDER NOW!

COUPLER BLUE ROOM SESSIONS

In October of 2015 we invited Nashville purveyors of deliberate ambience, Coupler, to record with a full orchestra of nine friends and musicians, and it turned out to be a very special piece exploring the nether-regions where the organic collides with the electronic. It was 20+ minutes of of captivating and unhurried techno played on both electronic and acoustic instruments that sounded bucolic and propulsive with a deft momentum. However, this wasn't our typical TMR show. We kept it a relatively intimate affair, with the stage in the center of the room, and only sold a handful of tickets to those interested in seeing a recording process become a performance, making this our first installment in The Blue Room Sessions series.

If you're new to the magic of Coupler, you can think of them as an "organization" rather than a band. Ryan Norris' objectives go beyond leading a band - he aims to use Coupler as a vehicle for writing, photography, installation art, film-scoring, etc, and above all this, he aims to collaborate with the creative people around him that inspire him. In the case of this particular performance, the organization core live members, Rodrigo Avendaño, Rollum Haas and Norris, plus a group of auxiliary players: Adam Bednarik, Mark Bond, Matt Glassmeyer, Mia Krout and Ben Marcantel. The icing on the cake was Kelli Shay Hix and her light installation. The performance was tackled from an oblique angle, using group improvisation to reinvent the trajectory as they played. The end result? The birth of a new series, and one of our favorite musical creations to which the Blue Room has ever played host.

Listen to a clip from "Invention 4 Silenzio" above, and pre-order the 12" single now. Coupler will have a release show on July 29 at The East Room in Nashville with direct support from local band Future Daze.

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ESSENTIAL TREMORS - THE VISITOR EP

Essential Tremors is something of an anomaly in a city steeped in twang, bathed in sunshine and besieged with hootenannies. Code Knr, Miller, Read Only Memory, Tan, and Eerie Neighbor make up the group voted most likely to trigger a cold sweat, and we love them for it. In the past year, the band has made the charge away from guitar music with a quiet strategy of sporadic shows of crawly, four-track downer violence. During this metamorphosis, the band cut tracks with former Terrible Two and current Serration Pulse synth-lord and tone-boss Daniel Tomczak, crafting a crisp record that is globally exasperated and groovy against all odds: a nosedive into a cesspool of circuit-bent pollution with all the precision intact, notoriously tense, rife with white-knuckle paranoia and fog. Throw in well-placed pangs of electroclash, swirling synth, waterlogged bass lines, and dark-sided shit, and you have an important reminder that good times are not forever, which we are honored to bring to your turntable. This is music for strays. Do you have a home?

A Side: The Visitor
MTA
B Side: Death Perception

Listen to "The Visitor" above, and pre-order the 12" EP now. The release show for Essential Tremors is on August 5 at Soft Junk Nashville with support from Spodee Boy, Serration Pulse, and Aquarian Blood.
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WILLIAM TYLER - LIVE AT THIRD MAN RECORDS

Recorded on July 18th, 2014 as the opening set for Peter Walker's psychedelic guitar experience, William Tyler's Live at Third Man Records LP was buried for far too long in our backlog of masters. To release it too soon would have been to unleash the secrets of the transcendent and acclaimed new record Modern Country (Merge, 2016) before they had a chance to manifest. To wait any longer would have been torture for us. Originally planned to be a live single, the full, 5-song performance was too truthy, too seamless, and too perfectly whole to be whittled down to two tracks. So, surprise! A live LP is born.

For those unfamiliar with William Tyler, his story is Nashville legend... born into a songwriting family, Tyler was tapped by Kurt Wagner to become a member of Lambchop at age 19 (two decades younger than the other members), and quickly became the "architect of the band's sound." From there, Tyler went on to back up the Silver Jews, Bonnie "Prince" Billy, Charlie Louvin, and others... all the while writing songs for his configuration of choice: fingerpicking solo guitar. The acoustic simplicity of his first two albums remains in his most recent effort (which he describes as "a love letter to what we're losing in America. To what we've already lost"), and on this live LP, but Tyler is bringing more depth and more experimentation to his compositions of late. "Gone Clear" (known as "Going Clear" at the time of our recording) which appears on both records, is a melting pot of ideas: a drone reminiscent of Hindustani classical music, a central melody that sounds distinctly Appalachian, a devolution into a kaleidoscope of colors and ideas that it's hard to believe is being produced by a single musician. This layering of textures is Tyler's trademark, and even more awe-inspiring live.

We like to think that with the purposeful lack of smart phones, bars to saddle up to, and, of course, corners, concert-goers in the Blue Room tend to be more in-the-moment than in most performance venues. But it's a rare artist who can take the already focused atmosphere in the room and quiet every last busy mind - Tyler did just that. This immortalization of the performance in all its transmundane glory will entrance you from first note.

TRACKLIST:
1. We Can't Go Home Again
2. Terrace of the Leper King
3. Missionary Ridge
4. Going Clear
5. Tears and Saints

Listen to "Gone Clear" above, and pre-order the 12" LP now.

Upcoming Tour Dates

August
13- Eaux Claires Festival- Eau Claire, WI (full band)
14- Bluestem Center for The Arts Amphitheatre- Moorhead, MN (full band w/ Wilco)
16- CrossroadsKC- Kansas City, MO (full band w/ Wilco)
17- The Fabulous Fox Theatre- St. Louis, MO (full band w/ Wilco)

October
12- The Troubadour- Los Angeles, CA (solo w/ Margo Price)
13- The Troubadour- Los Angeles, CA (solo w/ Margo Price)
14- Great American Music Hall- San Francisco, CA (solo w/ Margo Price)
17- Mississippi Studios- Portland, OR (solo w/ Margo Price)
19- Imperial- Vancouver, BC (solo w/ Margo Price)
21- The Olympic- Boise, ID (solo w/ Margo Price)
22- The State Room- Salt Lake City, UT (solo w/ Margo Price)
24- Bluebird Theater- Denver, CO (solo w/ Margo Price)
28- Ancienne Belgique- Brussels, Belgium (w/ Wilco)
29- Centrale- Gent, Belgium (w/ Bombino)

November
2- DR Koncerthuset- Copenhagen, Denmark (w/ Wilco)
3- Sentrum Scene-Oslo, Norway (w/ Wilco)
4- Annexet- Stockholm, Sweden (w/ Wilco)
5- Pustervik- Goteberg, Sweden
7- Tempodrom- Berlin, Germany (w/ Wilco)
9- TivoliVredenburg- Utrecht, Netherlands (w/ Wilco)
12- Fabrique- Milan, Italy (w/ Wilco)
14- Museumsquartier- Vienna, Austria (w/ Wilco)
15- Volkshaus- Zürich, Switzerland (w/ Wilco)
16- Casino de Paris- Paris, France (w/ Wilco)
20- Bush Hall- London, United Kingdom (full band)