We're incredibly excited to be partnering with our friends at Numero Group to help make two beloved Karate titles available again on vinyl. Pre-order your copy of their 1996 debut, Karate, on Flame (Orange Swirl) + In Place of Real Insight, available on Clear Dark Teal. These variants are exclusive to the Polyvinyl store and are limited to 500 copies each.

Underground rock festered and splintered as it spread through the U.S. in the mid-’90s, the alternative boom giving rise to microcosmic regional scenes singularly focused on feral powerviolence or screamo songs about breakfast. Boston's Karate emerged as a force that could grip a national youth movement whose disparate tastes still commingled in the inky pages of fanzines overflowing with florid prose and on concert calendars for volunteer-run DIY spaces, community centers, and bowling alleys. 

In this world, Karate’s music was an enigma, one equally inviting to sneering punks and highfalutin indie-rock aficionados. They did so largely by refusing to stick to any single formula from the myriad of styles at their root—slowcore, post-hardcore, and jazz. Karate made sense of seemingly polarizing styles. In a subversive music community oscillating between radical polemics and hair-splitting musical orthodoxy, Karate were a question mark—one that exhibited the scene’s best instincts, because they sounded like few others.