Hospital

Remember this tape from last year? Well, it's now been rightly afforded the extra shine of a more official vinyl release. If you missed it first time around (like we almost did), HOSPITAL II is the product of one evening and several years of friendship. Kevin Linn (Sad Eyed Beatniks, Present Electric) who runs Paisley Shirt Records, a mostly tape label in San Francisco, was releasing the Present Electric S/T. He needed a bonus cassette to go with it, since he always sends one out with an official release. He asked his friends Mike Ramos (Tony Jay, Flowertown) and Karina Gill (Cindy, Flowertown) to come over and see what they could make together in the space of an evening. It's as overtly experimental as I've heard any of them be, threading together 16 patchwork tracks of varying degrees of free-form krauty noise, lilting psych song, lo-fi ambience and lullaby drone. The sound, ostensibly, of three friends in a room reaching around their shared inspirations and allowing themselves to be led wherever those roads might bend. Think Robespierre's Velvet Basement by way of Stoned Rehearsal with a little Finklestein to rough up the edges. Or Swell Maps' second (yknow, all the best stuff). Though their sound may be far less spiky, they seem to share a similar scattershot spirit to fellow San Fran-ers Famous Mammals and Cuneiform Tabs, charged by an equally non-professional zeal, in service only to the idea and the feeling. The only things worth being in service to. Tough Love's vinyl reissue arrives alongside an additional bonus 7" which contains four previously unheard recordings from that same fruitful night. Edition of 250.