Category: catalog

  • Other Nothing – Not Songs

    1st Edition
    Catalog number: LTD031
    Release date: November 6, 2020
    Format: Cassette
    Edition size: 40

    2nd Edition
    Catalog number: LTD044
    Release date: December 1, 2023
    Format: Cassette
    Edition size: 100


    I’m not sure how to start the blurb for this one because treating it the same as a usual release feels wrong – this music wasn’t made with any connection to him, but it will always be closely tied to the memory of my friend Shaun Hall, who died this past January. At the time, Shaun was working on cover art for this album. A deeply affecting collection of miniatures, Not Songs is the first release by Other Nothing, a new project from Paul Kintzing of German Error Message. This music grew out of a series of recording experiments, initially meant as preparation for a new German Error Message album (which eventually became Mend, released in 2019) that quickly bloomed and ripened into a delicate soundscape of their own. We share them with you now on tape, fully matured, brittle and transient, like the rattle of autumn’s last leaves crumbling before their release. Sweep up the remains and see what we’re left with.

    We’ve decided to dedicate this release to Shaun, and it will be accompanied by a donation equaling production costs to Adelante Alabama, a mutual aid organization serving low-wage and immigrant workers in the Birmingham area, near where he lived. The digital release will include Shaun’s original cover art, while the tapes will be packaged in artwork based on his designs by Reb Ayşe.

    Dedicated to Shaun Hall (1985 – 2020)
    Music by Paul Kintzing
    Digital artwork by Shaun Hall
    Physical artwork by Reb Ayşe

  • Adeline Hotel – How Strange It Is to See

    Catalog number: LTD014
    Release date: August 11, 2015
    Format: Cassette
    Edition size: 35


    Adeline Hotel is a project comprising a revolving cast of musicians headed by songwriter and guitarist Dan Knishkowy. How Strange It Is To See finds the band (this time featuring Mike “Slo-Mo” Brenner of Magnolia Electric Co. on lap steel, among others) withdrawing from the breezy full-band stylings of their debut album, Leave the Lights, and zeroing in on a much more reserved and atmospheric sound. A short song cycle built from lonesome ruminations on needing to pick up and leave but not knowing where to go or how to get there, How Strange It Is To See takes all-too-familiar feelings of millennial restlessness and filters them through the lens of classic folk-rock and americana.

    Dan Knishkowy (vocals, guitars, keys)
    Andrew Stocker (bass, vocals)
    Jay Vega (bass)
    Mike Slo-Mo Brenner (lap steel)

    Engineered, mixed and mastered by Jay Vega at The Wilderness Recording Studio in Pittsburgh, PA

  • Red Sled Choir – Trades

    Catalog number: LTD016
    Release date: November 3, 2015
    Format: Cassette
    Edition size: 50


    From deep in rural New York comes a new EP by Red Sled Choir, the mostly-solo project of Matt Gordon, also known for his work with bands like Klessa and jordaan mason & the horse museum. Trades is the first Red Sled Choir release following a long period of experimentation and renewal, and, fittingly, these songs bring an expanded palette of textures and colors to Gordon’s vibrant and earthy songwriting. Loops and motifs rise up and fill the space like smoke from bonfires on the last nights of summer, and continue simmering in the dark afterwards. We’ll stay outside as long as we can, while the warmth lasts.

    Music by Matt Gordon, recorded late winter-spring 2015 at The Swift in Mecklenburg, NY
    Artwork designed and printed by Jeremy Ferris

  • naps – one hundred percent confident

    Catalog number: LTD017
    Release date: November 3, 2015
    Format: Cassette
    Edition size: 50


    naps is the most recent solo project of Jason Calhoun, whose previous tapes as Paper Armies on Bridgetown Records are among the most vividly emotional releases in the label’s impeccable catalog. A departure from the compact-yet-poignant vignettes found on napsounds, released earlier this year by Sweet Baby God Records, one hundred percent confident dives headfirst into deep wells of organ drone and tape collage. Familiar characters and memories take shape, distort, and dissipate – when the tape player stops you realize with a jolt that you’re right where you were when you pressed play, but everything looks different somehow. Sit still for a little while and take it all in.

    Music by Jason Calhoun
    Mastered by A.F. Jones at Laminal Audio

  • The National Park Service – Secret Wind

    Catalog number: LTD019
    Release date: November 14, 2016
    Format: Cassette
    Edition size: 50


    Following a run of amazing tapes on labels like Rok Lok, PSI LAB, and cerealbowl collective, as well as a steady stream of self-published releases, The National Park Service returns with their first full-length tape on Lily Tapes & Discs in 3 years, almost exactly to the day. Secret Wind is the clearest distillation yet of the knotty aural terrain that NPS calls home, perfectly encapsulating the autumnal psychedelia and sun-fried tape experimentation that’s been the cornerstone of their discography while building it up even higher. Like a chilly late afternoon hike and the breathless drive back home, it invigorates as it soothes.

    Recorded September 2015 – July 2016

  • Distant Reader – Home Power

    Catalog number: LTD021
    Release date: March 13, 2017
    Format: Cassette
    Edition size: 50


    Home Power is the long-gestating debut release by Distant Reader, a project centered around the songwriting of Emmerich Anklam. Assembled from ideas gathered and developed over several years, it emerges now as a fully formed statement – one that is awe-inspiring in its scope and ambition, yet disarming in its clarity and directness. It’s a testament to the power of unblinking sincerity, a love letter to the great writers and musicians who taught us how to express it, and a warm hug for the friends who give weight to those words.

    “I made this record when I was 21. Nearly all of the recording happened in three weeks. Songs originated as long ago as 2008, but it had been years since I’d written or recorded any music in such an intensive way. Fragments and ideas appeared on long walks and bike rides or during late nights, and several hung around until the dam finally burst in 2015. With a very simple recording setup, I began to extract the sounds I’d been trying to reach for so long. The lyrics came from a similar place of exhilaration and uncertainty. I wrote these songs specifically for friends to hear, and through them I wanted to get at the reasons I appreciated the people around me, the ambiguities of human connection, the practice of taking a step outside yourself without forgetting what you care about. Every “you” here refers to many people, and the meanings of the words shift a little depending on the specific “you.”

    I was listening to Jason Molina a lot while making Home Power, and nothing influenced this tape more than Molina’s push for solidarity and directness with his audience, and his ability to do that without giving in to a mawkish imitation of “authenticity.” In one way, this record is a big homage to him, a battle against chilly disdain in favor of time-deepened warmth and vulnerability. I look back at these recordings, and already they sometimes sound like a different person made them, and certain moments seem like they come from a very young place. But then half the process of moving ahead is about circling back and examining old impulses, seeing what still lingers and why.”

    -Emmerich Anklam, 2016 

    Music by Emmerich Anklam
    Recorded August 2014-August 2015 in Northern California

  • naps – bask

    Catalog number: LTD022
    Release date: March 13, 2017
    Format: Cassette
    Edition size: 50

    “bask,” a new work by Philadelphia’s naps, plays almost like a companion piece to 2015’s “one hundred percent confident” – except this time the deep submersion and murky textures give way to a newfound brightness and clarity. If “confident” was the dive down, here we find ourselves resurfacing. It’s sunny out, and there’s plenty of shade but fragments of light still break through, shifting and converging as you drift. They’re bringing something down with them – but don’t worry about what you’re looking for, just let it come into focus.

    Music by Jason Calhoun
    Mastered by A.F. Jones at Laminal Audio
    Artwork by Shaun Hall

  • vierzig skizzen – travels in public

    Catalog number: LTD024
    Release date: January 3, 2018
    Format: Cassette
    Edition size: 60

    For our latest batch of releases, Lily Tapes & Discs reaches across the Atlantic for the first time to welcome vierzig skizzen of Kiel, Germany to the fold. Partly inspired by a recent move away from home, travels in public translates the nervous optimism of leaving the known behind and embracing the new into a collection of road-weary journal entries. It’s music that radiates from the overlap between wistful recollection and hesitant beginnings, like watching tracers of late night scenery on the other side of a bus window, or imagining familiar faces emerging on unfamiliar streets. It’s a lonesome soundtrack to what we see when unknown surroundings make us feel like spectators to our own lives.

    Music by Daniel Stuhr, written and recorded spring 2016 – spring 2017

  • Lung cycles

    1st Edition:
    Catalog number: LTD027
    Release date: November 2, 2018
    Format: Cassette
    Edition size: 100

    2nd Edition:
    Catalog number: LTD033
    Release date: 2020
    Format: Cassette
    Edition size: 60

    “I want to say this is Lung Cycles’ first full-length collection of songs in five years, but the word “song” feels out of place. A song implies a singer at center stage, a voice that plays ruler of the song’s little kingdom. There’s something deist about these new songs, as if the musicians are setting them up and then sneaking away quietly while the music continues to play. Lung Cycles aren’t erasing themselves from the picture, but they’re not imposing themselves on you either. They’re giving themselves the freedom to move into the background and observe the play of light and color and shadow, savoring the loose embrace of a warm night, making their richly textured collective dreams responsive to the outside world’s serendipity.

    Even though Ben Lovell says few words on this album, his delivery is composed and deliberate, and even his silences are articulate. He sings about anxiety and frustration, but he does it in the voice of hard-won calm. It’s like he’s speaking softly to a confidant late at night, recounting the strains of the day while acknowledging the need to let them go. Perhaps he’s just talking to himself while he’s on a mind-clearing walk, the kind he mentions in “Blue Rochester moon.” Even if he is, the outlook here is profoundly sane. Underneath the shallowness of our modern perpetual stress complex, we can find verdant nooks like this, as long as we can slow ourselves enough to notice them. This is a nook worth noticing.”

    -Emmerich Anklam

    Performed and recorded by (in alphabetical order):
    Jason Calhoun
    Bill Delaney
    Jeremy Ferris
    Dan Knishkowy
    Benjamin Lovell
    Francis Lyons
    Daniel Stuhr

    Written & compiled in Rochester, NY by Benjamin Lovell
    Artwork designed and printed in Providence, RI by Jeremy Ferris
    Mastered by M Deetz

  • Hour – Anemone Red

    1st Edition:
    Catalog number: LTD028
    Release date: November 2, 2018
    Format: Cassette
    Edition size: 75

    2nd Edition:
    Catalog number: LTD041 / DLR047 (co-release with Dear Life Records)
    Release date: June 7, 2023
    Format: Double Cassette (packaged together with Tiny Houses)
    Edition size: 100

    Philadelphia’s Hour make their Lily Tapes & Discs debut with Anemone Red, the follow-up to Tiny Houses, released earlier this year by our friends at Sleeper Records. Named in reference to the flower that grew from a mixture of blood and tears in the Greek myth of Aphrodite and Adonis, Anemone Red is a meditation on the colors and moods that rise between shared lives, and in the wake of doubt and loss. Its phrases hover and shine like dust particles, glowing in a patch of light refracted through an attic window at dusk. Each track brushes slowly at the outline of an unknowable story, flipping through curled, faded memories, stirring up a deep longing for someone you never truly met, if at all.

    All songs written by Michael Cormier (BMI)

    Jason Calhoun – synth, violin
    Michael Cormier – guitar
    Lauren Costello – cello
    Matt Fox – viola
    Pete Gill – drums
    Abi Reimold – guitar
    Dan Wriggins – accordion

    Recorded and mixed by Francis Lyons in Philadelphia, PA
    Produced by Hour and Francis Lyons
    Mastered by M Deetz
    Anemone painting by Sarah Jurkofsky
    Photography by Abi Reimold

    Reissue artwork designed and printed by Fran Lyons

    Tiny Houses credits:
    Jason Calhoun – synth, violin, field recordings
    Michael Cormier – guitar, songs, field recordings
    Matt Fox – viola
    Pete Gill – drums
    Abi Reimold – guitar

    Recorded by Evan M. Marré in Philadelphia, PA
    Mastered by M Deetz
    Cover photo by Ron Morris

    originally released on tape by Sleeper Records