Sonny and the Sunsets - Hairdressers From Heaven (2019)

Nitro. Astro. Boogeyman from space. This is a Sonny & the Sunsets recording. We started a label. Rocks in Your Head Records, named after a record shop I used to spend time in, in Soho New York two decades ago that uplifted me in a way only old record stores can. The first release is this record, Hairdressers from Heaven. We are going to put out some records that would end up in that old store. Some weird bands, some fictional bands, some real bands. San Francisco has taken hits. Clubs have closed. Artists have left. People have made eulogies - This is something up with which we cannot put! There are good bands in this city. There are great artists making bizarre shit. There are underground HAPPENINGS. There are SECRET shows. There are artists in the streets duking it out with Nazis. Shit is going down. The corporate bulldozers ran through the city and now their security apparatus tanks roll around the neighborhoods trying to keep the arts on lock down. The tanks are called Death and they bring a foul stench. Humbly, this label is our version of throwing nails at the tank tires.
Hairdressers from Heaven, it’s odd. Can I tell you it’s the only record this label has put out I stand behind? It’s a mixtape. Different sounds, different musicians, on here, things got loose. Piano driven at times, drum machines, some strange harmonies, it was made by instinct, very unconsciously, loose. I don’t know how Kelley came up with a circular Kraut like bass line for Ghost Days but he did, or how on Someday I’d like to Be an Artist, we slowed the tape down and made a strange arpeggiated piano solo and then Dylan Edrich turned it into a Moondog like orchestral solo. Or for Man Without a Past we made a bongo bass instrumental song then perennial collab Rusty Miller put a synth bass on it later, then what? Bruce Ackley brought his saxophone to my apartment. Now it’s almost Sun Ra. Or longtime sunset T-bone Harbour started singing about worms in the subways and cafes with cloves and berets, or James Mercer stepped in to produce and brought us into his back yard barn studio and harmonized on a country song about death and it became transcendent and kind of life affirming, or when co-producer Yuuki Matthews put a minimal dance bass over Shayde Sartin's already punk bass on Drug Lake. The record is full of weird shit like this, like a complicated accident, I saw it happen, but I can’t say how.

And also, this new label will include a Zine with every release, like the days of SST and Raymond Pettibon. So with Hairdressers comes Zine #1, about watching the apocalypse on the phone, and how Nazis should always be beaten up and things of that nature.