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NOTE: DIY pasted-on sleeve in assorted colors. Orders will be fulfilled with various color choices at random.
With “A Rare Caged Fern” our good friends in Rearranged Face and ambassadors to House of Tomothy and the Los Angeles DIY experience translate the energy, stomp, craze, and brouhaha typical of their live shows to tape. This was an absolute joy to record. For our first 12” here at Tomothy Records, across seven tracks, Rearranged Face weave us through a non-stop party of vocal yelps and whispers, looney tunes guitars, synth bumps, spooky samples, and caveman drumming. Yeah SICH FUN!
True-to-form at House of Tomothy, this record was recorded on ½ inch tape on our OTARI MX-5050 III 8-track tape machine over the course of one weekend and mixed down to ¼ inch tape on our OTARI MTR-10, 2 CHANNEL reel-to-reel deck by Timothy in January 2021.
Mastered tape-to-disk by Kevin Gray at Cohearent and pressed at Erika Records Inc. Artwork by Rearranged Face, risograph prints by Never Press, and handmade bootleg style packaging finished off by us and the band.
Committed and consistent with our goal at TOMOTHY RECORDS to highlight the best LA has to offer and embrace all things analog, no short cuts were taken and no computers were used in the creation of this record. Let’s hang in-person!
Our take: I first saw A Rare Caged Fern circulating on Bandcamp, where the cover art captured my attention. I gave it a listen, liked it, and ordered some copies for the store. Since the vinyl arrived, I like it even more. While Rearranged Face has some of the superficial trappings of egg punk (like jittery rhythms and mutated rock and roll riffing), A Rare Caged Fern is too unique to sum up with a simple genre description. The closest thing I can think of to Rearranged Face in overall vibe is Suburban Lawns; moments also remind me of early B-52’s (without so much camp) or Uranium Club (but less distant and cerebral). Rearranged Face builds songs around catchy, repetitive riffs, but spice things up with weird sci-fi noises, a yelpy vocalist, and jammed-out parts that edge into Can territory. “History of Things to Come” has some of the angular drive of Devo’s cover of “Satisfaction,” while “Chain Brute” breaks up the vibe with a cool disco beat. I’m struggling to get across what Rearranged Face sounds like, and while that can make for a frustrating writing experience, I love that this record’s sound isn’t quite like anything I’ve ever heard before. Fans of the more Rough Trade-informed end of the DIY punk spectrum (think the World or M.A.Z.E.) will love this, but A Rare Caged Fern is unique and charming enough that it will catch ears outside that world, too.