This Friday, Retail Drugs — the recording moniker of NYC-based artist Jake Brooks — will release his second album of 2025, Factory Reset, via Fire Talk Records’ emerging artists imprint Angel Tapes (Dorothy, Jawdropped, shower curtain, and more). Today, Retail Drugs present its final advance single, “Knifetime,” alongside an accompanying music video helmed by the Brooks and longtime collaborators Josiah and David Martuscello. “Knifetime” is irresistibly warped, a detour-filled jolt of energy that injects hypnotic mantras into a kinetic punk palette. “Knifetime” follows a trail of singles which preview Factory Reset’s abrasive palette, which straddles noise, rock, and electronics to create an entry unlike anything else in Retail Drugs’ prolific discography.
Of the track, Brooks adds: “‘Knifetime’ is a track about disassociation and intrusive thoughts. My mind will sometimes slip around and I start making situations up in my head. Sometimes I think shutting down completely is the only response to life. The knife is that other person in my head that wants to see me disappear. They want to give it all up. However, since I'm me, I'll never give that person too much time to speak.”
To celebrate the release of Factory Reset, Retail Drugs will perform a hometown gig at Alphaville, followed by a special engagement in Chicago for an Angel Tapes showcase. A full list of tour dates are below, and all tickets are on sale now.
Watch Retail Drugs' "Knifetime" Video
Where Retail Drugs first releases were centered around Brooks’ guitar and home tape recording set-up, Factory Reset — the band’s true sophomore LP, and third full-length release in the span of 2 years — engages alternative faculties. “I was so sick of writing music on the guitar,” Brooks says of the initial sessions that shaped Factory Reset’s explosive digital soundscape. As for the tape recording once central to his craft? “I ran out of cassette tapes.” The resulting Factory Reset challenges any pre-existing conceptions of Retail Drugs’ music, and simultaneously feels like a natural extension of Brooks’ creative process, which at its core has always been a reflection of his “hatred of genre, and the joy of music.” Brooks often describes his fast and intuitive writing habits as “leisurely” and “a pretty relaxing process,” providing an intriguing juxtaposition to Factory Reset’s urgent and alarming compositions.
For Factory Reset, Brooks tackled the project in sequential order, tracking improvisations straight to Ableton and honing in the compositions over 8 months across 2023 and 2024. Factory Reset’s album artwork, designed by John DeSousa in a batch of artwork options for Retail Drugs’ debut outing i love you so !, also served as a guiding light throughout Factory Reset’s creation, with Brooks’ inhabiting the perspective of the artwork’s central figure when writing and recording. “My two rules for this record were to write songs with the green guy in mind, and no guitar.” Across punk inflections, harsh electronics and noise, Factory Reset is a charged redirection. “I felt like the green mountain man wouldn’t fuck with shoegaze,” Brooks explains. Instead, Factory Reset deploys synth sounds and microphone feedback to create a caustic, confrontational statement.
Factory Reset eschews the norms of Retail Drugs’ prior writing and recording habits, but it’s in no way a declarative statement of where Brooks sees the project going next. “Retail Drugs is an outlet for me,” he says, continuing, “I suppose I’m just in a perpetual state of recording and making music for it.” For Factory Reset, creating that music largely involved abandoning all things tried and true, but Brooks confesses: “I did some acoustic guitar on ‘He Hears Us (Reprise)’ so I did break the rules. But fuck it rules are meant to be broken.”
Retail Drugs Tour Dates
Sat. Dec. 13 - New York, NY @ Alphaville [ALBUM RELEASE SHOW]
Sat. Jan. 30 - Chicago, IL @ Schubas [ANGEL TAPES SHOWCASE