Tales, by Iota

Tales

by Iota

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Rhett Huebschmann Man... dem riffs! I thought I had perused the Small Stone catalog from front to back, but I missed this one big time! This has all the elements from heavy psych, to heavy stoner, to LSD mindfuck that a boy could ask for. Extra special thanks to Love Among Ruins for the heads up that this even existed! Favorite track: Dimensional Orbiter.

Steve Rodger Need more Iota..... Favorite track: We Are the Yithians.

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Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
180 gram vinyl, Limited edition of 500 units in a Clear with Black swirl color combination. This album is currently being pressed via Furnace Record Pressing and will be available in March of 2019. "Tales" was remastered for vinyl by Chris Goosman at Baseline Audio in Ann Arbor, MI. The original running order of the album has been slightly altered to fit on the LP format.

Side A:
New Mantis 4:39
The Sleeping Heathen 10:40
Opiate Blues 8:12

Side B:
Dimensional Orbiter 20:04
We Are The Yithians 3:37

Includes unlimited streaming of Tales via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

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edition of 500

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	1.	New Mantis 04:39
	2.	We Are the Yithians 03:36
	3.	The Sleeping Heathen 10:41
	4.	Dimensional Orbiter 22:55
	5.	Opiate Blues 08:14

about

When Iota’s Tales was first released more than a decade ago, it immediately heralded a change in the scope of heavy rock and roll. From the hard punch of its opening duo “New Mantis” and “We are the Yithians,” it departed into three extended cuts that drew together already-classic elements of weighted riffs with a doors-thrown-open sense of space and jammed into scorched-solo psychedelic oblivion. With Joey Toscano, who’d go on to form Dwellers, on guitar and vocals, the suitably wizardly Oz on bass, and recording engineer Andy Patterson, who soon enough would join SubRosa, Iota raised a monolith of singular intent and showed throughout Tales a potential that was entirely their own.

The Salt Lake City trio had been around for over five years by then, having formed in 2002 and released two demos before the album as they earned local praise and found themselves supporting the likes of Brant Bjork, High on Fire, Black Cobra, Eternal Elysium, The Sword and others. And that’s all well and good, but it would be Tales that defined them, whether it was “The Sleeping Heathen” started off at a sprint on its 10-minute run, “Opiate Blues” sure enough finding room for some harp alongside its dirt-covered riffs and foresight-laden heavy blues pulsations, or the massive sprawl of the 22-minute “Dimensional Orbiter” that dream-jammed its way toward the outer reaches of cosmic sensation. Tantric, broad and a gorgeous showcase of a dynamic ready to storm the earth, it helped earn Iota a cult following that persists over 10 years later.

And along with anyone else who might be fortunate to stumble upon it, that cult, quite frankly, deserves to have Tales on vinyl. This is the first official LP release of the album, so call it a reissue or don’t. It doesn’t matter. Music this good exists out of time, and whether Tales is new to a listener or a well-kept secret regarded as a classic unto itself, it still sounds as far-reaching as it did when Iota unfurled it the first time around. It wasn’t to be missed then. It’s not to be missed now. -- JJ Koczan / Jan. 2019

credits

released June 10, 2008

Iota is:
Joey Toscano: Guitars, Vocals
Oz: Bass
Andy Patterson: Drums

Recorded and Mixed by Andy Patterson.
Mastered by Chris Goosman at Baseline Audio - Ann Arbor, MI.
Blues harp on “Opiate Blues” by Bad Brad Wheeler.
Artwork by Brian Koschak.

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Small Stone Recordings

Peddling the finest in rock n' roll, psychedelic, stoner, doom, blues, hard rock, fuzz, metal, sludge, vintage 70's style rawk, etc, since 1995!!! True, honest music, made by real, honest people. Available on CD, vinyl, and digital.

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