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Auto Locator

by Del Paxton

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    12" 180g Black Vinyl LP

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    12" Blue Galaxy Vinyl

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  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    Del Paxton's "Auto Locator" on CD

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  • Cassette + Digital Album

    Del Paxton's "Auto Locator" on blue tinted cassettes

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1.
there's a freight train headed this way, get up off the ground get out of the way. draw it up and push it away, up out of the ground, back into its place. right back into its place. put it right back into its place, left underground, don't give it a name. when you woke up still in a daze, was holding your hand and you slipped away. right back into its place. time to make corrections, left some on the page, the rest distorts the image, there was something in the way. short me out. freight train headed this way get up off the ground, get out the way. draw it out and push it away, up out of the ground, back into its place. right back into its place. see you on the outside, when you don't have the shakes, meet you in your hometown when the sky is turning grey. rising in the distance, collapsing into space, a compromised resistance, there was something in the way. dont short me out. divided up and split the difference, past expiration, forced into this position. and i will offer no resistance - a shorted circuit well into decomposition. when the ground begins to shake, take til there's nothing left to take. the ground begins to shake.
2.
no shame, no shame at all. you break down your buildings when you know its the only thing that makes this place at all. towers over forest looking for us on some parallel road. we hid from them for four years and then they built a shitty hotel. no shame, no shame at all. preservationist. miles and piles of bricks. in your room, stressed out and dressed up with a twist.
3.
spent all the dough, shaken faith and new clothes. hold your own, and hold your friends and family close. you and me, whatever happens naturally. when the time is right, we'd watch it all come back to life. i'm good with all that i have. we're watching 8 1/2, just happy to be here, we don't even need to expand, to get back.
4.
Chart Reader 03:07
can you feel it, has it kicked in. shot through the limbs and we could fix this disconnection. still trying to run from the day your heart died. I-79 til we're a long way from the west side. carolina, west virginia, hop off the astral plane to pick up where you left off. and we'd climb back to the surface like the dream where you were falling and you wake up feeling weightless. time for taking you home that's the time that i'm taking you home.
5.
Airport 05:13
soft grey, one-way tunnels of outcomes connecting the days. your eyes springtime, slightly open the window at night. listen, hear them, deer in the side yard and planes overhead. red light left side, blinking a code and you're breathing in time. always an airport, phone on the floor, note on the front door. you focus on the light and i’m sleeping on the right and you’re farther and i’m starboard and i woke up in an airport terminal, worried and miserable.
6.
thought it over then i thought it up, then i saw her standing there. right around me in a warmer month, little summer in your hair and you lied when you said you were fine. air conditioning, smell your room from the road. yes, depression, i don’t know where to go, i don’t know.
7.
flurries on the 90, going 90 in a hurry. big flakes, we’re running late on the straight shot to the 585. cars caught in a hoarfrost, cut the crust off with your bank card. then the drinks hit and you’re tucked in, lake blanket, goodnight. slow down, blown snow on the highway now you’re thinking bout a 100 words in the whiteout.
8.
5's and 6's 03:56
when you wake up, put on your make up, left your keys upon the table, said "i'm not able", get brushed up, and in and out of bed and to get that back. if we could make decisions and stick to them, to count the fives and sixes, a seventh sense. the time we have is running out. still running on a feeling with nowhere else to go, we're headed back to buffalo. can we can back into the ocean?
9.
Palpitations 03:51
drive back, spin hats, sunburn, save that. i’m turning, turning blue. talk back, ocean. i'm turning, turning blue. in conversation, in odd vibrations, heart palpitations all the symptoms all the black. palpitations.
10.
re-establish pathways to the unconscious mind. disassociation of a form and color, observed and recollected. isolation by a gesture, or a portion of space or a phenomenon.

about

Buffalo’s Del Paxton recorded their second full length Auto Locator straight to tape over three cloudy days in a solar powered barn, somewhere in New York’s Finger Lakes. Named for the rewind mechanism on the reel to reel tape machine on which the band tracked the album, Auto Locator coils up the chemical trails of ribbon binding old places and head spaces to our consciousness. Static and hiss leach between analog track layers, blurring the normal and paranormal to remind us that no memory is totally separate from a fiction – just like no drum track is totally separate from bass.

Over Auto Locator’s ten songs, Del Paxton rip shit like a band entering their second decade of existence. On-the-nose opener “Freight Train Metaphor” throws listeners face first into the band’s first album since 2017, with a syncopated pulse and arpeggiating guitar foreshadowing a record replete with punkish, serpentine composition. “Up With a Twist,” the album’s lead track, deals in Del Paxton’s crashing punk vibrance, through which the band explores and laments the uninspired architecture of American sprawl.

Second single “Chart Reader”, whose origins trace back to a psychedelic dream inspired by Wayfaring Strangers: Cosmic American Music, sees the trio dabbling in emo Americana, even featuring a nod to John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads.” Such unashamed references abound throughout Auto Locator, which takes further inspiration from bands like Mock Orange, Third Eye Blind, and Jimmy Eat World, all of whose influence is clear on “Palpitations” and third single “Spiritual Gymnastics.”

Del Paxton’s mix of nostalgic references aims to serve as their primary tool for exploring the contemporary, resulting in a post mortem of the American Empire. Whether intentional or otherwise, it’s an appropriate result for the Upstate NY trio, whose self-awareness feels like a main component of Auto Locator, a feature as crucial to the band as the eponymous tool they used to record their music.

text by Joe McGrath and William Osiecki

credits

released October 6, 2023

Auto Locator was recorded on 16 track 1” tape from April 13th-17th 2022 at Sunwood Studios in Trumansburg New York by Chris Ploss.
Chris Ploss played Wurlitzer on Chart Reader
Mixed by Adam Korbesmeyer
Mastered by Jack Shirley
All songs by Del Paxton
Del Paxton is Dylan England, Zack Schoedel, Greg McClure
Wurlitzer on Chart Reader by Chris Ploss

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Del Paxton Buffalo, New York

Dylan- Guitar
Zack - Bass
Greg - Drums

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