As a warm-up for her early-2011 album for Rhymesayers, south-side MC Psalm One is releasing a new ten-song EP produced by MP, Earmint, Fluffy, and her bad self. Nine tracks from Woman at Work Vol. 1 will be free to download from psalmone.tv on May 1; a tenth, the single “Better Than My Last,” is already streaming free and downloadable for $1. Speaking to Gossip Wolf, Psalm said she’s completed tracks for the just-released DJ Jay Illa mixtape Return of the Backpacks 2. She also has a cameo on the recent Canibus album Melatonin Magik.
Though their debut long player for Kranky, Lux, drops next week, guitar slingers Disappears are already heading back into the studio, recording at Clava with drummer/engineer Graeme Gibson for an EP to be released in the fall.
Dutch anarcho-punks the Ex blew through town last week to record their 13th studio album with Steve Albini at Electrical Audio. They plan to mix and master it themselves and release it on their own label, Ex Records, in September. It’s the Ex’s first LP since the departure of cofounder and singer G.W. Sok last year; he’s been replaced by Arnold de Boer.
Empty Bottle Inc. expanded again last Thursday with the opening of the Chicago outpost of the Beauty Bar chain. While the establishment was packed, there were no celeb sightings—though last week Joanna Newsom was spotted horfing down some ‘tato skins at their other newest venture, Longman & Eagle. In other Bottle news, talent buyer Pete Toalson refused to confirm or deny rumors that DeBarge (currently fronted by Glenn Tipton) will headline on New Year’s Eve.
WTTW pledge-drive mainstays Celtic Woman will be at Rosemont Theatre April 9-10. Tickets are $50 and $75, though you can sit in a Dumpster licking a Billy Joel cassette all day for free.
DC indie-funk favorites of yore Dismemberment Plan rose to prominence before the MP3 glut spawned the vinyl renaissance, so 12-inches were never part of their discography. Barsuk Records will remedy this with a deluxe re-ish of Emergency & I, complete with an oral history of the band compiled by the Onion A.V. Club’s Josh Modell; no release date is set.
The A.V. Club is rife with historians these days: music staffer Kyle Ryan is hard at work on a long overdue oral history of the landmark Chicago industrial label Wax Trax, working title Chewing on Glass. It’s due in fall 2011 from Soft Skull. You can follow his progress and gather Thrill Kill Kult factoids via Twitter @ChewingOnGlass.
Shaun Flynn, formerly of the Thurston-approved Wzt Hearts, and IDM wonderboy Cex have a new band called Full On Void; they expect to start playing outside Baltimore come summer.
KinsellaWatch: According to a source inside the Joan of Arc organization, late last week bandleader Tim Kinsella went to Bob San “for some sushi” but then decided he was “hungry for Italian instead.”
Bazillion Points, the publishing house run by metal scribe Ian Christe, is preparing to release the 576-page coffee-table book Touch and Go: The Complete Hardcore Punk Fanzine 1979-1983 on June 30. The book collects the complete run of the legendary fanzine that became the legendary record label that helped define midwestern punk. It features artwork by Pushead and a veritable armada of introductory essays by founders Tesco Vee and Dave Stimson, editor Steve Miller, Henry Rollins, Keith Morris, Peter Davis, Henry Owings, Byron Coley, Corey Rusk, John Brannon, Ian MacKaye, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jan Terri, the tamale guy (blue cooler), Skyler Jett, Robert Gibbs, the original lineup of Breadwinner, Steve Kroner, Conrad Bain, Fluss, original Styx drummer John Panozzo, and the reanimated corpse of Family Feud host Richard Dawson.