josephine foster

josephine foster - graphic as a star (fire records, 2009)

Fire Records are very excited to have Josephine Foster joining the roster. Her new album Graphic as a Star is based upon the poems of the 19th century American poet Emily Dickenson. Josephine lays stairsteppy melodies beneath a collection of Dickenson gems and sings them with a burnished soulfullness like the purple sunsets so often described in the poems. Massachusetts mountains pearled spiderwebs and folk heroe William Tell are all present in this unforgetable meeting of Dickensons posey and Fosters music making a natural and inevitable whole.

No acabo de comprender la etiqueta de freak-folk que casi unánimemente se ha venido adherir con el paso del tiempo a las críticas de josie, no porque me disguste sino porque su música es producto de la inquietud. Para 'Graphic as a Star' la de Colorado vuelve a retroceder en el tiempo para anclarse en el S. XIX.

La insipiración parece ser que nació del aislamiento en un pueblecito de nuestro país, como si se tratase del Captain Beefheart & his Magic Band en busca de su 'Trout Mask Replica' particular. Sólo que aquí no hay experimentación, ni vanguardia (entendida como tal), josie opta por refugiarse en los poemas de Emily Dickenson y los recita a su manera, no los reinterpreta. Así nos encontramos con canciones mínimas que en realidad, son los poemas en la tan especial voz de Josephine, la cual es de capaz de contarte historias de héroes, montañas y naturaleza y conseguir que más de un escalofrío recorra tu cuerpo.

Tal es el respeto a la obra de Dickenson que varios de sus poemas son recitados a capella 'exultation is the going', 'wild nights!' o 'how happy is the little stone' donde parece estar más cerca que nunca de Shirley Collins. También hay serpenteantes melodías 'tell as a marksman', rasgeos mínimos 'the spider holds a silver ball', una harmónica mágica 'she sweeps with many-colored brooms'...en un disco tan único y personal que al igual que 'A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing' sólo de josie podría salir. Sí hoy día habláramos de appalachian-folk sólo esto podría ser.

aldea f.: jose-pine, a wolf in sheep's clothing, josie & the cherry blossoms, this coming gladness
microphones in the trees: australian tour, a diadem
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diminished men

diminished men - shadow instrumentals lp (abduction, 2009)

Seattles Diminished Men present a full-length record for the Abduction label. This LP is a limited edition of 500 copies and comes pressed on 180 gram vinyl. "If current instrumental music was always as majestic and compelling as this, Id hang up my retro-Italian soundtrack collectors boots for good. From the explosive drums rolls on the opening track, the only cover on the record, "LAppel du Vere," from Roman Polanskis The Tenant (music by Philippe Sarde), to the darkly exotic finale, "A Housewifes Dram," this album is a superbly crafted mosaic of whip-cracking vengeance, speak-easy hallucinations and haunted geography. Besides the Italian-Western overtones, the carnival-esque freakshow backdrops, Korshid-Egyptian guitar passages, and flipped-out electronic space-psych, are perhaps the best surf-inspired tracks Ive heard in years. Its spine-chilling how producer Randall Dunn (Sunn O))), Earth, Eyvind Kang, Sun City Girls, Secret Chiefs 3, Six Organs Of Admittance, Wayne Horvitz, Matt Chamberlain, Grails, Wolves In The Throne Room, etc.) managed to make this record the ultimate mid-60s surf-vampire-Western revival soundtrack. Elements of Joe Meeks best Moontrekkers productions cross with a dash of Badalamenti murder blues-drama, setting the stage for Steve Schmitts cobra-twilight guitar work and the outlaw drums of Dave Abramson to leave their indelible stains across this 41-minute epic journey." - Alan Bishop (Sun City Girls).

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helena espvall & masaki batoh

helena espvall & masaki batoh - overloaded ark (drag city, 2009)

A sequel to last year's eponymous debut as a duo, this new Drag City LP from Espers cellist Helena Espvall and Ghost's Masaki Batoh delves even deeper into traditional and ancient musics, making use of an armoury of instruments that extends beyond 'mildly obscure' (renaissance harp, sho, hurdy gurdy, etc) and enters into the realm of 'are you sure you haven't just made that up?' (auschpfeife, crumhorn, cornamuse, rig and darbuka). On hand to assist in this piece of instrumental archeology is ancient music specialist Haruo Kondo as well as two of Batoh's Ghost bandmates (namely Junzo Tateiwa and Kazuo Ogino). Overloaded Ark reinterprets songs dug up from a variety of different cultures, from Scandinavian folk to French and Italian medieval court dances - with a spot of German madrigal thrown in as a crowd-pleaser. In addition to the album's appropriation of Cuban protest songs and Latin hymns, you do actually get to hear some original compositions by the duo themselves: beautiful, elongated pieces like 'Until Tomorrow' and 'Over The Luminescence Land' find the pair on terrific form, with the former in particular capturing the unearthly prog-folk magic (possibly with a 'k' at the end) these two can summon up. Recommended.

Esperaba con inquietud e incertidumbre una segunda colaboración y al final llegó... y que decir, Ghost es un favorito entre favoritos, el primer disco parecía difícil de superar pero lo han conseguido. Helena se deja llevar y aterrizan en un universo más cercano al de Ghost pero en él sólo aflora una hipnótica y diversa tradición, hasta Helena se atreve en español rodeada de serpientes. Habría tanto que decir que lo voy a dejar aquí: mistery-magic-folk.

aldea f.: in stormy nights, helena espvall & masaki batoh
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united bible studies

united bible studies - the jonah (camera obscura, 2009)

The album title is a reference to the James Herbert novel where a "Jonah" is a cursed person who brings bad luck everywhere, and is also the title of the 16 minute avant/progressive folk suite that forms the record's centerpiece. Richard Youngs' progressive rock project Ilk provided the impetus for the band to make a "Prog Album" (which was the working title) so they started with the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink opus "The Jonah". It was the first track recorded for this album during a two week burst of industry and creativity when the band locked themselves away in Mullingar. David's imagery for the first section was partially inspired by the Vin Diesel film Pitch Black and it takes flight in all kinds of different dream directions from there. Running the gamut from delicate acoustic guitar to Sunn 0))) style doom metal and back again, it's an extraordinary feat of the imagination.

With a sound like expiring infant suns weeping for worlds they'll never warm, "The Jonah" should appeal to lovers of the likes of Espers, Black Forest/Black Sea, Sharron Kraus, and Nick Castro, as well as darker matter like Current 93 and Sol Invictus.

microphones in the trees: the shore that fears the sea

noah howard

noah howard - patterns/message to south africa (1971/79)

Noah Howard remains one of the great, under-appreciated saxophonists of free America. The tension-fraught brilliance of his alto playing during the1960s &1970s has an edge of palpable liberation that is both unquestionable & unmatched. A student of Sonny Simmons & Dewey Johnson, Mr. Howard's success in transmuting thejoy-wedge of his instrument's post-Ornette identity is well documented on sessions issued by the ESP, Freedom, & America labels.

Originally issued on his own Alt Sax label in 1971, the "Patterns" session is one of the great mystery spots in the Noah Howard canon. Mr. Howard was in Europe, subsequent to the American jazz diaspora of the 1960s. His Parisian-based group with Frank Wright, Muhammad Ali & Bobby Few was in merge process with Alan Silva to form the Center of the World Collective. When a Dutch radio broadcast beckoned, Mr. Howard connected with fellow expatriates, bassist Earl 'Goggles' Freeman (who the following year would appear on Noah's Live at the Village Vanguard), & conga player Steve Boston. Enlisted for the rhythm section were Han Bennink and Misha Mengelberg, then in the heat of their duo functionality as ICP, along with the guitarist Jeep Schoonhoven (Wally Tax, etc), who is blinding here. The resultant music was a thirty-eight minute spasm of creative thunder.

The 'Message to South Africa' session is another kind of spirit flare. Written in Paris the week that Steve Biko was killed, the date came together around two of the great South African jazz exiles, pianist Chris McGregor & bassist Johnny Dyani. Drummer Noel McGhee (who had played on Noah's Live at the Swing Club date) was enlisted to give the band Caribbean representation. In Paris as well was Kali Fasteau, who lends the proceedings some of the same vibrational magic she had used so notably on Archie Shepp's Bijou.

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the skygreen leopards

the skygreen leopards - gorgeous johnny - (jagjaguwar, 2009)

When the Jewelled Antler crew ‘broke’ all those years ago, most of us pigeonholed them as back-to-nature, field-recording characters – hippies, basically, though of a surer cut than usual. But while there was some overlap with the free-folk underground, their concept was more complex and fascinating than most of their contemporaries: each branch from the tree (Thuja, Blithe Sons, Giant Skyflower Band, Der TPK, etc) further complicated your understanding of what they were about. The Skygreen Leopards (a.k.a. Glenn Donaldson and Donovan Quinn) first appeared a good number of years ago, and across a number of albums they’ve refined their chamber-pop duo-cum-collective approach, such that Gorgeous Johnny feels effortless while ticking all the right referential boxes. (...)

When listening to Gorgeous Johnny, I’m strangely reminded of the almost polemicalXYZ album. This was an important move, because it broke with general (and reductive) understandings of the ground that ‘underground artists’ could rightfully cover. With Gorgeous Johnny, avant-pop, folk, improv etc artists Donaldson and Quinn similarly light down in an imagined reconstruction – this time, of fey ’60s baroque – which, given how hampered underground discourse is by its language of unexamined extremity and drone/noise redundancy, feels pretty wilfully contrary, in a welcome way. But most importantly, all of the songs here are strong enough to be bolstered (rather than swamped) by their rococo touches and period piece flourishes. recuperation of country and folk undertaken by one-time shoe-gazers Moose in the early 1990s, their leap from the by-numbers guitar-noise-pop of “Jack” to the Buckley/Hardin/Gentry fantasia of 1992’s

aldea f.: disciples of california, donovan quinn & the 13th month, franciscan hobbies
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circulus

circulus - thought becomes reality (mythical cake, 2009)

Circulus make me want to take my clothes off. Not in a do a streak across the centre court at Wimbledon way, no, that wouldn't do at all. No, it's in the stripping away all the clutter and burden of modern life sense, I would of course then don the gold lamé jump suit or suit of armour that Michael Tyack, the funky medieval main-man of Circulus, demanded of me and board the good ship Circulus for a voyage amongst the glittering orbs of outer space...

Hence we have the third Circulus album, Thought Becomes Reality, and it throws a teeny dose of psychedelic space rock into the bubbling witches brew of medieval pomp that we know and love. The line-up has changed slightly, most noticeably in the departure of the distinctive voice of Lo Polidoro, however the addition of Holly-Jane Shears and the 'Circulus Ladies Choir' more than makes up for her absence. Within You Is The Sun being a dreamy highlight.

Adiós a rise above, el tercer larga duración de Circulus llega desde su propio sello, no es ésta la única novedad, hay nuevas incorporaciones y Lo Polidoro ya no es la fémina de Circulus y se nota. Puede seguir hablándose de medieval folk-rock con las reverberaciones electrónicas acostumbradas, psicodelia... pero éste es su disco más preciosista, soleado, accesible, menos intricado, así Dando Shaft o Pentagle parecen ya olvidados. Otro horizonte es el que se ve tras la irrestible 'within you is the sun'.

aldea f.: clocks are people

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ilyas ahmed

ilyas ahmed - goner (root strata, 2009)

Portland, OR. bedroom wanderer Ilyas Ahmed emerges from the shadows and offers up his first new batch of songs in some time. Over a year in the making, ‘Goner’ sees Ahmed telescoping his previous acoustic wanderings into fuzzed out rockers and a hypnotic set of beautifully tight knit nocturnes. The whole things kicks off with a massive rush to the head called ‘Earn Your Blood’ which has Ilyas effortlessly channeling any number of stoned out trajectories found in a Topanga Canyon ditch circa mid 70’s. Massive waves of hiss still penetrate the mix, and so do the smeared vocal trails, it’s just that it’s all a little more in focus this time around. The comedown into ‘Exit Twilight’ with Grouper at the helm is a haunting broadcast that will for sure knock around in your skull for days. Edition of 1000 CD's in an offset buff case with maroon ink.

Warm tape distortion casts a little grime over the jangling arrangements, with Ahmed's swirling acoustic and electric guitars taking up the most space in the mix, providing a bluesy lynchpin for the recordings.organic percussion and filtered out vocals also adorn these songs, but you get the impression that Ahmed is first and foremost a guitarist - certainly that's how the album's been mixed, and it's always great to hear such a florid and accomplished musician rising out of the lo-fi dirge of underground Americana. With great songs like 'Some Of None' and 'Love After Love' Ahmed proves himself as a writer in the traditional mode, while 'As Another' finds him in Loren Connors mode, taking off with ether-dwellng lead guitars and spine-tingling, weightless melancholy. boomkat

aldea f.: towards the night
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sir richard bishop

sir richard bishop - the freak of araby (drag city, 2009)

Listen through Sir Richard Bishop's six readily available solo albums, and you get the picture that the worldview of the former Sun City Girls’ guitarist is not only complex, but also more than a little ambiguous. What exactly is Richard Bishop? A dealer in the exotic? A dabbler in esoteric mysticism? A “traveling salesman”? The Freak of Araby doesn’t make Bishop’s worldview any simpler for us, but it does clarify it some. He is, first and foremost, a traveler, picking up inspiration as he roams, but he is also a worshiper at the altar of the guitar, occasionally himself transforming into a guitar hero/idol.

On The Freak of Araby that challenge is the guitar styling of Omar Khorshid, an Egyptian-born guitarist and composer of music for film. After a period of immersion in Khorshid’s music, Bishop recorded a handful of standards from the Arabic world alongside a few from his own pen. Playing exclusively on electric guitar again and with a bare-bones band (bass guitar, drum kit and hand percussion), Bishop does his best to inhabit Khorshid’s spirit, eschewing any extended soloing in favor of concise variations on simple, sensual themes, some of them Morricone-like in their directness and memorability (...)

Bishop’s interpretations of standards little known in the West are enlightening and his originals a nice complement, but they feel a little dry at times, even flat. One would’ve wished for more of the adventure he shows on pieces like “Taqasim for Omar,” a brilliant solo feature, or the delay-pedal and reverb orgy of “Sidi Mansour,” a piece that reaches for the same psychedelic excess Khorshid could unleash. In this case, a little less tribute and a little more irreverence would have been very welcome.

Sir Richard Bishop prosigue su andadura de fingerpicking aventurero, despojado de ataduras y convencionalismos. The Freak of Araby, se desenvuelve en intrincadas melodías enraizadas en el middle-east. Junto a Rasheed Al-Qahira a la guitarra, Mohammed Bandari y Abdulla Basheem a la percusión y Ahmed Sharif al bajo, Bishop revisiona el folclore egipcio, marroquí y libanés, a Omar Khorshid, a Peter Walker, a Robbie Basho, hay ecos del pasado, terrenos fronterizos, psicodelia. Resulta sorprendente su habilidad para moverse en la tradición y dejar señas de su espirítu insólito y único. El mejor disco del ex-Sun City Girls, atrapado en 'Blood Stained Sands' y la maravillosa 'Solenzara'.

aldea f.: while my guitar violently bleeds
microphones in the trees: fingering the devil
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beth jeans houghton

beth jeans houghton - golden [ep] (static caravan, 2009)

Newcastle-based singer-songwriter Beth Jeans Houghton is only 18-years old, yet this single suggests a far more mature talent. The beautifully knitted together harmonies of 'Golden' bring to mind Josephine Foster (albeit with the 'mad old lady with too many cats' vibes toned down) and it's a superior piece of acoustic songcraft all round. 'Night Swimmer' keeps the densely woven vocals but favours glistening tuned percussion over guitar, lending a sense of breadth to Houghton's music and suggesting she's got a few more tricks up her sleeve than your run-of-the-mill troubadour.

En espera del disco, la jovencita Beth regresa con otro 7'', esta vez para Static Caravan y 500 copias que ya han volado. Tan sólo dos canciones en las que continúa en la senda de trovadora nocturna de su primer ep, son la brillante y preciosa 'Golden' y una inspirada y aventurera 'Night Summer'. Entre Joanna Newsom y Vashti Bunyan e incluso como dicen en Boomkat a una Josephine Foster en baja frecuencia. Cada vez me gusta más, habrá que añadirla a la lista de imperdibles féminas.

Os dejo este golden y su primer y homónimo Ep que ya estuvo en f. aquí.

aldea f.: beth jeans houghton

sand snowman

sand snowman - two way mirror (tonefloat, 2009)

Like a beautiful trilogy with a comparable compositional concept this is the third LP reissue (now also on a mini-double LP sleeve CD). The backing vocalists are Steven Wilson (Porcupine Tree), Jason Ninnis and Moonswift. The whole album sounds like a well thought over large composition in different sections and with a natural, semi-improvisational nature. The mood brings you in an eternal timeless atmosphere where everything seems to disappear except sound and its visions expressed in time and harmony signatures. The acoustic guitar (or two) lead more often these quiet themes, while distant electrified guitars bring textures and confirm the feeling of being at that time in a bubble in space. When piano is added, this can change into a contemporary classical atmosphere, as something of a 20s 30s time adventurous perspective. Sometimes this piano is quiet as well. The intensity of this meditative different time-perspective can be intense in its minimal character, while textures surrounds and before like on one part other elements appear, when a voice comes in at a certain point it sounds as if this is a cello part for a classical composition. The whole music unfolds like colours seen from a drifting boat. But also songs are added or better said are part of the transformation of moods. Harmony vocals, flute arrangements all are able to become part of this expression.

Another rather brilliant album, from a highly recommended pair of three.

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ananda shankar (rare earth XXIV)

ananda shankar - ananda shankar (india, 1970)

For lovers of psychedelic sitars, here is the classic 1970 release by Ananda Shankar (Ravi's nephew). A full rock band backs Ananda, a hip and genuine master of the sitar. Great raga instrumentals, as well as versions of "Jumping Jack Flash" and "Light My Fire" are laced with trippy moogs, effects etc. Easily the best album of it's kind.Sitars and psychedelia,a 1970 cult classic.

Regresan los rare earth tras demasiado tiempo ausentes y con muchos discos en borradores, para continuar en la India. El sobrino de Ravi Shankar grabó durante finales de los 60 y principios de los 70 un puñado de discos tan oscuros como notables, poniendo sus miras en los grandes nombres del momento pero al cobijo de la influencia musical con la que había crecido. El mejor ejemplo quizá sea este homónimo álbum, infecciosos y mágicos ragas de etnic-psychedelic, de los que emanan libres sitares, moogs y más y más efectos. No hay palabras para la versión de "Jumping Jack Flash" convertido en un himno del raga-rock. Sirva además este rare earth como antesala a un preferido, el turco Mustafa Özkent y su inencontrable Genclikle Elele, quien también circula por las latitudes del eastern-rock que mira hacia occidente.

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harappian night recordings

harappian night recordings - the glorious gongs of hainuwele (bo'weavil, 2009)

Upon hearing Harappian Night Recordings it is common for people to assume that it is a collage of field-recordings from a varied cast of inhabitants from the non-industrialised parts of the world. Such is the rich depth, vitality and authenticity of the recordings. The music and sounds however are created entirely by one man, Dr Syed Kamran Ali. He has such an instinctive feel for putting seemingly incongruous sounds together and such audacious irreverence in utilising any instrument or object from around the globe he can lay his hands on that what he creates is unique. The real miracle however is that his attention-defecit scatter-gun one-take approach so often works. It’s an anarchic buzz of ideas constantly usurping each other. Duelling ouds, whirling mizmars, screeching jouhikkos, tapping finger harps, rumbling monosynths, groaning harmoniums, a fist full of khene, talking gamelan lila derdeba popping giving a bent backed Dante's ring hell or like an Egyptian civilian army shitting on Eden's skull, or a Cuban guerilla force stepping on Eisenhower's throat emptying their glorious bladders on his face. And you can dance to it, Tuareg style.
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Sounding not unlike a Sublime Frequencies release from some obscure South Pacific Isle, the mysterious Harappian Night Recordings is in fact the handiwork of just one man, Dr Syed Kamran Ali, who throws together a host of different instruments from various cultures to the effect of creating a kind of hybrid polyethnic sound incorporating ouds, jouhikkos, thumb pianos, synthesizers, mizmars and gamelan noises. Boomkat

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acid mothers temple & the melting paraiso u.f.o

acid mothers temple & the melting paraiso u.f.o. -lord of the underground vishnu and the magic elixir (alien 8, 2009)

We are celebrating Acid Mothers Temple’s return to North America by honoring them with a new release, their fourth for the label. The band toured North America in early spring 2009 in support of “Lord of the Underground: Vishnu and the Magic Elixir.” The album is made up entirely of new studio recordings that have documented the band in fine form. The band is flying at full speed dishing out 3 slabs of Turkish Psych meets Krautrock, served up Acid Mothers Temple style. “Lord of the Underground” will see the light of day on both limited edition vinyl and CD.

Continuing on their winning streak, Acid Mothers Temple bringing their J-psych alchemy to Alien8, dispensing three new pieces. 'Eleking The Clay' begins with some church-like organ figures, ushering in a bit of a Keith Emerson vibe before the guitars kick into an echoing drone-raga, venturing into some outlandishly protracted fuzzed up riffing hinging on Eastern harmonies. Offering a brief interlude, 'Sorcerer's Stone Of The Magi' arrives with a hushed, folksy and acoustic feel, washing your ears out in time for the epic 'Vishnu And The Magic Elixir' a sludgy, meandering twenty-five minutes that holds off the overdrive pedals for a good twelve minutes or so, spending time delving into deep, dark sixties weirdness laden with sitars and cavernous acoustics. When the band do hit their stride you get the obligatory fuzz solo payoff with plenty of far-out blues licks and all those trademark AMT oscillator sweeps.

aldea f.: have you seen the other side sky, iao chant from the cosmic inferno

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of (loren chasse)

of (loren chasse) - rocks will open (digitals, 2009)

Loren Chasse is responsible for a whole host of vital albums. He was a founding member of the Jewelled Antler label and has sparked so many great moments from the likes of Thuja, The Blithe Sons, Softwar, and of course his main solo guise, Of. For years this project has evolved into something of absolute magical grandeur. "Rocks Will Open" is the latest opus in Chasse's catalog. The music on this album is as organic as it gets. Each tone, each sound feels like it has been culled directly from the Earth's crust. Gentle drones arc toward the hazy sunlight, flickering like distant birds sailing out over the sea. Between the ghostly echoes rises a cacacphony of plucked strings dancing toward oblivion. Loren Chasse's vision is perfectly expressed on "Rocks Will Open." Limited to 500 copies. Special Edition limited to 100 copies and includes exclusive cassette, "Morphological Echo.

Mainstay of Thuja and the Jewelled Antler collective, Loren Chasse is the man behind this album, and it's a wonderful distillation of the San Franciscan's art. In part reminiscent of his work for the Naturestrip label, these compositions draw heavily from environmental sounds and recordings made in the field. Chasse's proven himself a skilled sound recordist on releases like The Air In The Sand, and Rocks WIll Open finds him incorporating these abilities into a more sculpted, more 'musical' context. 'Trail Of Hornfel' is a wonderfully illustrative piece of music, placing you in some imaginary sonic wonderland filled with creaking environmental texture, endless sustaining tones and chiming bells. Next up, 'Coal Seam' draws on quiet yet massively resonant filtered acousmatics, followed up by the more openly melodic 'The Paper Raft' which makes clear its use of instruments to carve out melodic routes. Dulcimer figures jump out from a cavern of muted reverberations and singing on 'Agate Cups' and 'Oolitic Feelings', but it's during the album's rich centrepiece 'Violets In The Mountain Have Broken The Rocks' that Chasse is at his best, unfurling dense, unpredictable soundscapes that are as grounded in mysterious concrete sound as they are in subtle, supplementary instrumentation. Highly recommended.

aldea f.:donovan quinn & the 13th month , ulaan khol - ii, ulaan khol - i, skygreen leopards, hala strana, franciscan hobbies
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scott tuma & mike weis

scott tuma & mike weis - taradiddle (digitalis, 2009)

Scott Tuma made his triumphant return earlier this year with "Not For Nobody" and continues to answer the call with this new, exquisite offering in collaboration with Zelienople's Mike Weis. "Taradiddle" is a new journey down similar terrain, searching out something new in a landscape that's been visited before. Take Tuma's capable hands and add the fantastic percussive talents of Weis and it's like the wheel reinvented. These two play off one another beautifully, with Weis creating layers of havoc beneath Tuma's pastoral missives. It's beautiful and dissonant.

Weis is the perfect foil for Tuma's brittle sound world. The music breathes underwater, building and building on itself until it's risen into this majestic monument of glass. Archaic drones spit bombastic blasts of fire while the resulting sparks flicker into a million directions, flourescent in the night sky. Acoustic guitars drenched in reverb ring hollow with pianos echoing in the distance. Weis creates a river with swishing cymbals puncuated by fragile bells. Everything is bright, vivid, and new on "Taradiddle." Everything is perfect.
LP comes in fold-out silkscreened poster-style sleeve and is strictly limited to 300 copies.

El el que fuera miembro de Souled American regresa tras el cautivador 'Not for Nobody'. Disonancia y belleza, dos palabras son suficientes, paisajes subterráneos, poesía en desorden, Scott & Mike crean su propio mundo al son de drones y percusiones, uno tan bello y utópico que no puede existir. Jamás Digitals publicó algo tan ensoñador, no quiero salir de 'Tried'. En estos momentos algo más que el disco del año.

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matt elliott

Matt Elliott, Valladolid, 14/03/09

Hace un par de semanas Matt visitó un sábado noche Valladolid, yo me acerqué hasta la ciudad y junto a unas escasas 50 personas, asistí a uno de esos conciertos que no se olvidan. Enseñé la entrada, y una vez en la sala, me senté en uno de los bancos que había a los laterales, a mi lado estaba Matt quién sonrió, cuando ya estábamos todos comenzó: la primera fue 'Our weight in oil' para sorpresa y regocijo personal a la que ya le siguió todo Howlings Songs: una magnífica 'The kübler-ross model', la resquebrajante 'Something About Ghost, 'I name this ship the tragedy, bless her & all who sail with her', 'A broken flamenco'... y la apoteosis final recordando a Third Eye Foundation.

Gélido e impasible ese es el Matt Elliott que se vislumbra en el escenario en esa búsqueda de la tradición eslava y de si mismo en la que se ha sumergido con su trilogía. Un continuo enfrentamiento entre el folk y el ruido, entre sus miedos y secretos. Matt se confiesa desde lo más profundo sin ningún ápice de grandeza o pretensión, se expresa con tal naturalidad y frialdad que su viaje sin regreso a través de soundcapes, ecos y rasgeos de guitarras es de lo más verdadero que he podido experimentar.

Ya fuera del escenario me acerqué, cruzamos unas palabras y es una persona encantadora, cercana, con esa naturalidad que le caracteriza y agradecido con aquellos quienes valoramos su trabajo, hasta tuvo un detalle. Gracias Matt.

Pd.: aquí está la sorpresa -no muy favorecedora-.

torngat

torngat - la petit nicole (alien8, 2009)

Torngat return with “La petite Nicole”, the follow up to the critically acclaimed 2007 effort, “You Could Be”. This time around the band is sporting a grittier, propulsive sounding record that more closely resembles the bands live sound. “La petite Nicole” offers forays into dub-heavy elements of post rock as well hints of kraut rock and the occasional miniature freak-outs. Aside from these flirtations in new directions, the same sound that has made them popular in Canada and festival stages remains. One gets the feeling that the band is creating music for yet-to-be-made films; while cinematic references may be considered standard when describing instrumental music, Torngat’s creations are particularly evocative of the medium.

Torngat put on a very energetic and inspiring performance and sound a lot bigger than a trio. The heavy use of organs recalls elements of Tom Waits and even hints at the pre-jazz era of Soft Machine. Up until now much of the hype about this young band has been linked to their affiliation to Chamber-pop sensations Bell Orchestre and the Luya’s, amongst countless other guest appearances with various Montreal projects.
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Ghostly keyboard figures take the lead with a distorted organ creaking into life, gathering up momentum for the haunting title track - a piece of music that owes as much to Harmonic 33-style library music pastiche as it does to instrumental prog and post-rock. Throughout the record the sound takes on a warm, muffled and generally rather enigmatic feel that's just the right side of lo-fi, with the comparatively full-blooded closing number 'Going What's What' permitting just enough of the track's lamenting brass melodies to poke through the mix. A beautiful album, and one that doesn't quite sound like anything else. Bookmat

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no neck blues band

no-neck blues band - clomeim (locust, 2008)

Clomeim is the new studio album from New York's No-Neck Blues Band.
Clomeim is an evolution, a vital document of Change in The No-Neck Blues Band's 15+ years of para-musical activity. This pivotal recording is a creative distillation of the collective at a new and startling saturation
point.

For three rainy days in March 2007, the seven-headed hydra that is NNCK holed up in Black Dirt Studios, their newly outfitted recording studio in the foothills of upstate New York. With a discipline & a clarity of vision they've rarely displayed before,the collective channeled all of their energies into hours of recording live, real-time improvisation.After months spent sculpting and recasting the raw material, Clomeim emerged--a distinct whole, recalling in its parts the communal howl of Algarnas Tradgard, the dead spirit channeling of Geino Yamashiro Gumi, the glacial shadowplay of 'Heresie' era Univers Zero, and Krautrock zenith Faust at their finest hour.
Clomeim is that rare hybrid - a rock exterior with a cryptic, experimental core; a dense groover and a burning, exploratory psychedelic grimoire for the new dark ages.

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aldea f.: Qvaris, Embryonnck

donovan quinn and the 13th month

donovan quinn and the 13th month - donovan quinn and the 13th month (soft abuse, 2008)

The son of Dave Carter, bassist & vocalist for legendary 60's psychedelic group Country Weather (consult Pokora...), and named after Mr. Leitch, Quinn grew up on a horse ranch in Walnut Creek, CA and began writing songs at an early age. Donovan's growing reputation as a first rate darkly romantic penman (thanks to contributions to The Skygreen Leopards and solo as Verdure) has culminated with his latest endeavor, a new solo vehicle known as Donovan Quinn & the 13th Month.Rather than aping or ducking genres, Quinn has crafted a bright spectrum of songs best described as 'American.' X-ian folk, languid indie pop, VU cool, loner country, and west coast psych are touchstones, with Quinn's singular lyrical abilities & taste for sun-baked song at the fore.

Ever the flower bed romantic, Quinn has – at the risk of over-simplification - written a classic "break-up record;" albeit one filtered through surrealistic tenderness and riddled with red herrings & feelings of betrothal. Though not exactly lost in a sea of scarves, Quinn is indebted to the vulnerability, humor and bitterness present in the works of Ronnie Lane, Skip Spence, Nikki Sudden, Gene Clark and Basement Tapes-era Dylan. Weaving earthy melodies around Quinn's characteristically hazy vocals is The 13th Month: a small rotating cast of players that includes Jason Quever (Papercuts), Karl Bauer (Axolotl), Hélène Renaut, and Jess Roberts.

aldea f.: the skygreen leopards
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ignatz

ignatz - iii (k-raa-k, 2008)

III projects the atmosphere of Jack London and The Iditarod Trail Sled Dog onto a modern world ruled by technology. Devens brings us the most genuine melancholy contemporary pop music has seen since quite some time. This album leaves the underground scenery that is troubled by trends so often far behind and just shows us the pure essence of what Music has to be: raw emotions put to sound.

With his third full album Bram Devens has once again amazed us with a masterpiece. In his usual brain-melting retro-futuristic blues folk, he summons the devilish spirits of Bukka White, Robert Pete Williams and Sleepy John Estes as seen through the eyes of an adolescent Lou Reed. III tells a fictive and blurred story about the death of music genres. Tragedies built upon screeching, atonal and repetitive melodies. Smelling like a wet dog or a badly dried towel. III breathes a much more sentimental atmosphere compared to Devens’ previous work because of his grousing voice, that is not unlike Skip James’s. After the closing track “Dead By noon”, the tormented soul frees the listener from a heavy personal trip and leaves him dazzled. III projects the atmosphere of Jack London and The Iditarod Trail Sled Dog onto a modern world ruled by technology. Devens brings us the most genuine melancholy contemporary pop music has seen since quite some time. This album leaves the underground scenery that is troubled by trends so often far behind and just shows us the pure essence of what Music has to be: raw emotions put to sound.

El old-drone blues de Bram Devens, continúa cada vez más sumergido en escenarios subterráneos y atmósferas por las que sólo los maldecidos se pasean entre tormentas, aquellas en las que resúenan los ecos de Ornette Coleman y Henry Flynt. En III, el mejor disco de Ignatz, salen a la luz las melodías de un trovador del appalachian-folk, eso sí, uno extraño y misterioso a lo Jandek, pero más mutado por sus rasgadas guitarras. Como es seña de identidad, música para escuchar, imposible de describir.

aldea f.: ignatz

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