originally from New Jersey, but now living in Olympia (where he's been for the last few years), Josh Hoey has been making music for pretty much his entire adult life, previously in Box Fan and Parasol, among countless others. Special Moves is basically his "solo" band, meaning that it's himself and whatever friend is around at the time (in fact, in the credits, he even suggests that it could one day be YOU!). In 2018, Josh embarked on the ambitious project of releasing a cassingle every month on his own Reflective Tapes label with a few songs written and recorded the prior month; sadly, he stopped three months shy of the end of the year (the project was a bit overwhelming, after all), but this disc collects the best songs from the nine tapes he did release. Musically, this is pretty damn lo-fi, particularly reminding me of the first couple Portastatic singles, with a bit of Tall Dwarfs and Capstan Shafts mixed in. Despite the lo-fi nature of the recordings, though, the songs are frequently right on the mark, with hits including "Cars", "What I Wanna Du" and his ode to one of the kings of four-tracking himself, "Big Like Bob", as well as his cool take on a Magnetic Fields classic. And this low-budget disc is just a sampler for his forthcoming debut album, so stay tuned!

Not limited. All songs written by Special Moves, except track 4 written by the Magnetic Fields, track 9 written by Bruce Springsteen and track 12 written by Loudon Wainwright III. Available digitally on Bandcamp.