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Lifeguard - Ripped And Torn Vinyl LP
by Lifeguard
Original price
£20.99
-
Original price
£20.99
Original price
£20.99
-
Original price
£20.99
Original price
Current price
£20.99
£20.99
-
£20.99
Current price
£20.99
Pre-Order - Available
67 Commercial Way Woking, England GU21 6HN
We will fulfil the order on/around the release date
Black Vinyl LP
Release Year: 2025
Catalogue Number: OLE2145LP
Barcode: 0191401214513
Record Grading: Mint (M)
Sleeve Grading: Mint (M)
Condition Note: Brand New
Track Listing / Description
01 A Tightwire
02 It Will Get Worse
03 Me and My Flashes
04 Under Your Reach
05 How to Say Deisar
06 (I Wanna) Break Out
07 Like You'll Lose
08 Music for 3 Drums
09 France And
10 Charlie's Vox
11 Ripped + Torn
12 T.L.A.
On June 6th, Chicago's Lifeguard will release their debut album Ripped and Torn on Matador Records. The youthful trio of Asher Case (bass, baritone guitar, vocals), Isaac Lowenstein (drums, synth), and Kai Slater (guitar, vocals) have been making music together since they were in high school, nearly a quarter of their lives. Noisy and immediate, cryptic but heartfelt, they draw inspiration from punk, dub, power-pop and experimental sounds, and bring them all together in explosive cacophony.
Recorded last year in Chicago with producer Randy Randall (No Age), the album captures a claustrophobic scrappiness that evokes the feeling and energy of house parties and tightly-packed rooms, where ears are easily overwhelmed, and ragged improvisations connect with the same force as melodic hooks.
The members of Lifeguard are no longer kids. As they've grown up, their tastes and identities have naturally diverged with Case, Lowenstein, and Slater each immersing themselves into passions and subcultures that lay outside of the group's initial scope. But they've learned to make space for one another, mirroring the motto of UK experimental icons This Heat: "All possible processes. All channels open. Twenty-four hour alert."
"It Will Get Worse" evokes early punk, with Lowenstein swapping seamlessly between a blistering d-beat and a shuddering odd-time break. The dub-inflected "Like You'll Lose" takes inspiration from Lee Perry's tight drum sound and expansive lo-fi atmospherics, with Case's baseline providing a center of gravity for skittering rhythms and tumbling echoes.
"Under Your Reach" has become a linchpin of the Lifeguard live set, where its electric organ intro often signals the close of a mid-set free-form freakout. That drone gives way to Slater's laser-beam guitar riff, and to his and Case's eerily anthemic vocals, before ultimately blasting off into buzzsaw noise in the song's climactic breakdown.
Lifeguard remains a singular and intimate space where freedom, noise, and melody find visceral form. "The physical element is something we're all very together on," explains Slater. "The immediacy of making music. The instant pleasure and satisfaction of it."