Listen to Mark Jenkins' review The Tools and the Stuff (originally aired 9/5/2008 on WAMU)

"their trance punk riot will keep you coming back for more"
--DC Rocks

"Like a musical altar built of barbed wire, scrap metal and broken glass, The Tools & The Stuff hammers ungraceful materials into something like beauty."
--The Village Voice

“The Tools & The Stuff is about real invention and inspiration, but it’s also about demoralization and about how withdrawal or half-efforts or even failures can work their own saving grace. The Shadows tell these stories unflinchingly; from an internal vantage that few, if any, ever expected from them. They uncover these moments, measure and own them, and then they move on. It's a remarkable achievement, and like Henry Miller's best personal writings, it’s a story that opens up the times that it portrays and then reveals the possibilities of the human spirit. Possibilities that aren’t always easy."
--Rolling Stone

The Tools & The Stuff is dirty, foul mouthed and gaudy as red light porn…and yet, it’s a musical masterpiece.”
--Vibe

"Surprise, surprise: The Tools & The Stuff, music tapped out over three years on a manual typewriter, turns out to be the work of two masterful essayists, compelling cultural observers and, yes, poets masquerading as trapeze artists. We knew Moglia and Wingo could write; we simply didn't know that they could write so well, or that these professionals could revisit their back pages with such warmth, compassion and insight."
--Bulgarian News Network

“The Tools & The Stuff makes its case with expansive intelligence, pristine prose and occasional bleary wit. Anyone who claims to have listened to five better albums is mad…or a liar.”
--Spin

"Every song on The Tools & The Stuff reverberates with the bone marrow shaking snarl of the mesmerizing voice that rose from the ashes of the Crippled Pilgrims. Magical, it takes its place next to Woody Guthrie's “Bound for Glory” and Greg Behrendt’s “He’s Just Not That Into You: The No-Excuses Truth To Understanding Guys” as an essential record of an American artist’s manifest destiny."
--Le Journel de Tangiers

Moglia and Wingo are engaging songwriters. Though they says they never “got Faulkner” in one of the long name-dropping sections in their liner notes where they cite the books that made an impression on two young sponges in New York City in the late ‘70s; they have a similar gift for evoking atmosphere and describing life with poetic precison. If their old pal Mr. Potato Head were still alive, a man mentioned only by reference here, I'm betting he would review The Tools & The Stuff with great relish and admiration."
--Detroit Free Press

"Generous, incisive, and disarmingly sincere. The Ramblin Shadows latest record portrays a landscape being excavated, the off-center types who'll eventually populate it and the fresh mysteries rising out of poker-faced antiquities. Full of songs where casual-sounding words ricochet through the room like chain lightning. A language that means to knock you sideways into Judgment Day, but still leaves a smile on your face."
--Austrian Jewish News

"this is the amazingly great debut album by DC's Rambling Shadows. it's hard to believe people still make music this good in a world controlled by corporate uniformity and bland pop pablum. the band is Jay Moglia and Scott Wingo from Crippled Pilgrims, and Charles Steck from Velvet Monkeys. the sound is an amalgam of classic DC punk and psychedelic rock n' roll full. no filler here, every song is a potent concoction of energy and art that hits hard right between the eyes, with a more than a nod to the third eye. an aggressive double guitar attack weaved around a truly heavy, pulsating rhythm section. every song is a different chapter in a book you don't want to end. for those who must have new, meaningful, hard-rockin' music, this is just what the doctor ordered. The Tools and The Stuff is the rare perfect album that comes along so infrequently these daze."
--The Ubiquitous Bill Hanke (Amazon.com)

"unapologetically boneheaded"
--Washington City Paper

"extremely loud and worth the ear damage"
--DC Rocks

Night World Records
Night World Records is a small co-op label in the DC area run by the eccentric recluse Philip Stevenson. The main thing the bands on this label have in common is that they were recorded at Philip's Scary Clown studio located in Potomac, MD. In addition to being the de facto head of the label, Philip is also one of the label's artists. He writes for Tape Op and brings the sort of sensibility associated with that magazine to his production work. He records with an old Studer 8 track tape machine and has a great ear as a producer, encouraging bands to go for "in-the-room" takes rather than relying on excessive overdubs and studio gadgetry. Though the all-analog process can sometimes be painful when compared with the modern digital "mixes are cheap" approach, in the end, the care and talent behind the Night World method shine through.

That Day Has Arrived

HEY HEY HEY HEY LOOK LOOK LOOK LOOK! The era you've all been waiting for has arrived! It's the era of Rambling Shadows' electrifying debut release  The Tools and the Stuff. SEE SEE SEE SEE--Now is the time to download your digital copies at one of the links below. Don't delay--y'all need to step up!

The Tools and the Stuff - Rambling Shadows

And Don't Forget to Get the Disc, too!

Click this cool looking CD cover, and purchase your own copy of The Tools and the Stuff:

 RAMBLING SHADOWS: The Tools and the Stuff