MTS New Release: RAT HENRY "Material Pop Volume One" LP
Out this Friday 7/12/2024
Minimum Table Stacks is proud to present the debut vinyl LP by Brooklyn, NY’s RAT HENRY, “Material Pop Volume One”, limited to 300 copies on black vinyl with a fold-out poster and sticker. All sounds written, recorded and produced by Rat Henry at Helicopter Honeymoon Studio in Brookly, NY. All artwork by Rat Henry.
After several self-released cassettes and sporadic live shows over the course of the past 5-6 years, Rat Henry delivers his most cohesive yet disorienting collection of what can only be described as “industrial pop music”. Henry’s music peers back into the 80’s “cassette underground” where anonymous artists all over the world used simple analog electronics and home studio set-ups to create sonic canvases blending everything from the dark psych of Syd Barrett and Marc Bolan to the post-industrial sounds of Current 93, Nurse With Wound and Psychic TV to the simple catchy pop tunes coming from the early Flying Nun roster down in New Zealand. “Material Pop Volume One” finds itself both confounding and uncategorizable, yet comforting and familiar.
Here’s what some friends have to say about the album:
“Deftly synthesizes post-punk and industrial influences into a compellingly murky and occasionally endearingly jaunty sound-broth that is able to pull off nuanced experimentation, melancholic pop and bleakly psychedelic vistas.” - Macrae Semans, Starr Suites Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
“Material Pop Volume One feels concocted from staticky memory. On its face the record reads like John Cale or Mayo Thompson with Flying Nun production and sound design informed by the occult British Industrial scene. It follows the rhythm one finds internally, sitting in the dull warmth of the shade on a hot day, or standing in the inky black shadows cast by a bright lamp late at night. Disheveled and sincere, partly legible, partly lost. A tranquil baritone voice, the panned triptych of simple production, noisy but gentle. The four-track inner space on this album gives me chills, and I bow to the vision: the lonely seams of honest, self-made art.” - Andy White, Tonstartssbandht
“After a couple of self-released cassettes and a stint as a full band live concern featuring some of the cream of NYC punk, Ray Zarnowitz's Rat Henry project has gestated and bloomed into its most complete form with Material Pop Vol. 1. This record weaves lessons well-learned from the modern American noise underground, the loamy heritage of UK DIY, and punk as lifestyle/vocation into a strikingly personal statement. The comparisons that will form in the mind of the astute listener - This Degenerate Little Town as a mail collaboration between Jim Shepard and Storm Bugs, Afterbathinginturpentine with cutting social critique in the place of dilaudid fog, a production of Bad Lieutenant held on the Street Level Studios soundstage with Pierpaolo Zoppo heading the AV crew - are rendered secondary in light of Ray's vision. Material Pop Vol. 1 wields genuinely idiosyncratic songcraft and rock and roll joie de vivre like corrosive agents, eating away at the tape loop sediment encasing its songs, and at the indignities of modern urban existence.” - Daniel Dimaggio, Home Blitz
The album will be available Friday, July 12, 2024 from our Bandcamp and Big Cartel (Big Cartel will also have some brand new impossible to find vinyl goodies from some friends too!). As always: stores and distros get in touch if you’d like to carry MTS releases. Otherwise, Revolver/Midheaven has copies. Thank you for your support.
