dredd foole with mv & ee

dredd foole with mv & ee ~ blues sermon with congregation lp (humito, 2012)

"Blues Sermon With Congregation is basically a trio set, with Dredd Foole aka Dan Ireton on vocals and guitar backed by Matthew Valentine and Erika Elder in full-on Spectrasound head-fuck mode. Christina Carter also guests on one track, here credited as Christiina Madoniia.  Blues Sermon combines the kind of wood and wire vortices of Alan Silva and the Revolutionary Ensemble with those amazing post-Starsailor/Buckley vocal flights, keening in a high cosmo style that is just impossibly beautiful. With free folk the emphasis was always on the free part of the equation, an improvisatory stance that was lost on most beards but this is the absolute apex of that approach, think Robbie Basho’s spine-tingling take on “Salangadou” as played by Don Cherry’s Organic Music Society and with Pat Kilroy on form-destroying raga guitar and feedback visions. Matt & Erika generate some of their most F/X heavy sonic environments, Christina Carter ascends through visions of atonal vocal/guitar bliss and the trio rip through a take on Robert Johnson’s “Stones In My Pathway” that sounds like it is being broadcast over centuries via Sun Ra’s vision of tomorrow in yesterday. A stunning avant/folk/psych private press masterpiece in an edition of only 400 copies. Highest possible recommendation!" volcanic tongue

creo que a partir de ahora, cuando lea la palabra 'spectrasound' inmediatamente pensaré en 'blues sermon with congregation' y especialmente en el hechizo hecho canción llamado 'oro is god', cuya chriistina madoniia no es otra que nuestra querida christina carter. es tan fácil entender el entusiasmo de david keenan y heather leigh murray y que sea 'tip of the tongue' y tan difícil explicar el porqué... blues sermon no es ese 'otro' disco de mv & ee, es folk espectral de la pradera extraído directamente de las raíces de child of microtones, jazz, blues pantanoso, avant, experimental y tradicional, demasiado 'demasiado' para poder describirlo. sólo puedo recomendar de corazón este encuentro casi fantasmal entre dredd foole, erika elder, matt valentine y christina carter, que, a pesar de no ser un disco fácil, es de los que hace honor al tópico y consigue que cada nueva escucha sea un descubrimiento de nuevas sensaciones, tan creativo y rico en matices como clásico y fascinante. todo encaja a la perfección en un encuentro improvisado y lleno de misterio en el que sólo faltaría otro ser de otro mundo para que fuera más que perfecto: keijo virtanen y sus rambling boys. y además está editado en humito, el sello de rafi bookstaber.

out of stock ~ download

mv & ee

 mv & ee - space homestead (woodsist, 2012)

 
Coming at Space Homestead after heavy lifting with the recent Suub Duub live box, the first thing that hits you is the heightened articulacy of the group’s arrangements, which somehow stand out amid the blissfully languid performances. There are plenty of beautiful MV & EE songs out there, but very few quite as weightless and hallucinatory as “Moment,” where Valentines’s falsetto melts into Elder’s dream-sigh, buoys bobbing in an estuary of reverb for two criminally short minutes, while guitar and piano play a lover’s retreat, easy and gentle. The first half of Space Homestead feels almost uncommonly beatific and becalmed, the group playing through a haze of smoke, with Valentine and Elder’s voices sitting somewhere between an unforced drawl and soft susurration.

The second side of the record hits heavier. “Too Far To See” starts drowsy, swimming out on a tide of slide guitar, but about 90 seconds in, the song cuts to a more tense and fervid pace, as though David Crosby and his gang got all uptight during the recording of “Laughing.” When you reach the closing “Porchlight,” MV & EE finally surrender the reins to their more extended side, with what sounds like live recordings, carved up, exposed to the elements, and then bolted on to the front of a particularly weightless chunk of meandering blues, close to perhaps MV & EE’s clearest predecessors, the great Souled American. But it’s the preceding “Wasteland” that hits hardest, gifted with a graceful, slow, countrified gait, Elder and Valentine singing in unison over chord changes that seem to pull the ground out from underneath your feet, leaving you suspended mid-air and happy with it, before a fuzz-tone guitar solo carves firework shapes through the clouds. It’s another in a long line of seductive drift-songs from this most wise, peripatetic and yet enigmatic duo. dusted magazine

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willie lane

willie lane ~ guitar army of one, lp (cord-art, 2012)

"...Willie Lane remains one of the most unique string thinkers, forging links with mv & ee, Joshua Burkett, Steve Gunn and Grant Acker from Un, with whom he shares the Slurp Dogs duo. Lane has an odd, skewered vision of the potential for endlessly over-dubbed steel strings to open up new vectors of sound and thought, and here he lays down weird, repeat chord sequences and then bisects them with screaming lead guitar and odd, melancholy night-time movements that will have you pulling out Neil Young’s Dead Man soundtrack and Misato Minami’s 1971 side The Tropics. as with all of Lane’s material there’s a subtle humour in the titles, “Imaginary Labelmate”, “Spaghetti Eastern”, “Rare Psych For Wayne” but the overall atmosphere is lugubrious, haunted, seemingly bled straight to four-track in the early hours. indeed, the set almost feels like a Japanese cousin of Matthew Valentine’s experiments in Spectrasound, with a tone that matches the raging iconoclasm of Masayuki Takayanagi and Takashi Mizutani while wrapping the whole thing up in a form of supremely lonesome blues and hermetic tone poetry that has little parallel outside of some of the foggier Loren Connors material...." volcanic tongue

instrumentales desde el otro lado de la luna, un viajero del tiempo sumergido en las raíces profundas de los trovadores de campos de algodón, spectradsound, rural psych, amaneceres anaranjados... willie lane ha vuelto a ganar mi corazón. hasta los silbidos suenan lunares e ingrávidos, de un mundo paralelo, el del niño de los microtonos o del inolvidable yogur caducado de plexiglas. si le añadiéramos la voz de keith wood tal vez sería ese disco de hush arbors con el que me gustaría reencontrarme, lo que fueron, lo que nunca deberían haber dejado de ser

out of stock/try ~ download  

transcendental rodeo | matthew albert dunn

transcendental rodeo ~ vol I (beniffer editions, 2009)

"four track album from this lysergic country/lunar blues group featuring matthew 'doc' dunn of mv & ee fame. the sound is raggedy communal goodtime ala the cherry blossoms, with mouth harp, banjo, guitar et al rendered in a lower east side hoedown style that is sure to appeal to fans of the holy modal rounders, mike nesmith, pat kilroy, david peel, tower recordings, peter grudzien, matthew valentine et al." volcanic tongue

sold out | download

matthew albert dunn ~ peace be your rider (beniffer editions, 2009)

"this is heady album of acoustic layers and dazed out folk. really great set of two tracks zoned out in a mist of haze" lucid owls

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matt valentine

matt valentine ~ what i became (woodsist 2011)

"...elements of deep forest psychedelia brush against Crazy Horse guitar / vocal flourishes that explode to reveal volk-based form mayhem at its hickiest. My particular fave here is PK Dick, a paean to nth dimensional logic in the form of a Swedish psych-folk readymade. My son prefers the haunted-Harvest-vibe (his words) of  Ave. B. My wife goes for the Seventh Sons approach offered by Sweet Little Indian Girl (always a fave with the ladies). And my daughter nods in the direction of Continuing the Good Life for reasons she will not explain. All this just goes to show that What I Became is a fun album for the whole family. It will soothe your savage breasts. It will turn your evil mother-in-law into a porpoise. It will wash your dishes and darn your socks. Darn them! Motherfucker, who else would do that? Nobody, Jack, except Matt Valentine. This guy has the magic touch. And it has never been displayed better than here..." woodsist

otro disco para seguir en modo floating...ease my eyes, por decir alguna, es maravillosa. neil young vs wooden wand, hush arbors & satya sai, sin ecstatic peace. 'this guy has the magic touch', mil veces sí!

 buy / download (gracias, davide)

doc dunn

doc dunn ~ mountain wind, mountain rain (medusa 2011)

"Doc Dunn's release is a cassette reissue of his 2004 private press cd-r, Mountain Wind, Mountain Rain. It originally appeared in a miniscule edition of maybe 25 copies and included a small block of painted wood, wrapped in beautiful paper and some pine needles. Listening to this tape is like driving up a circuitous route around a holy mountain through dense fog, rain and sunlight. Carrying the weight of the psychic past ascending towards breaking though into the atmosphere in orbital spiritual modal nodes. Handmade, fold-out 'cigarette box' with 2 inserts by Jacob Horwood." medusa

foto: marshall ryan

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download up on mud flats & you are the water

mv & ee

mv & ee ~ muskie & manitou (brave mysteries 2010)

"...this tape presents the mv & ee tour of Summer 2009, fresh from the sweetest spot in the taper's pit. As last Summer was coming to a cool simmer, mv & ee strolled into the collegiate utopia of Madison, Wisconsin; to perform at a tiny art gallery for their faithful Midwestern brethren. The room was packed with flannel-clad friendlies and the atmosphere was thick and balmy, as Matt mumbled his way to the opening heatstroke of "Summer Magic", the micro-brewed smiles crept across all our faces, and we were all real gone for a change. This tape effortlessly captures the magic of that evening and and opens the portal, gazing back into the hypnotic waves of Matt and Erika's secret mountain bonfire." brave mysteries

foto: quiezip

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mv & ee

mv & ee ~ liberty rose (child of microtones 2010)

"a collection of massively dosed studio recordings, Liberty Rose opens with beams of elegiac solo guitar before dropping into a classic slow-burning jag with puffs of echo/delay damaged vocals melting into hallucinatory afterimages while Erika slides quicksilver runs all the way down your spine. “Crow Jane Environs” has a deep desert feel that could almost be Mu if it wasn’t for Erika’s oracular vocals and Matt Valentine’s post-Takayanagi soloing. The stark, stripped down version of “Death Is My Friend” features a stunning/chilling vocal performance from Erika and Doc Dunn joins the duo for the last two tracks, with “Out In Space” as dazed and lonely as anything on Skip Spence’s Oar and “Streams” featuring clouds of lucid unison vocals that you could disappear inside. Dedicated to Dr Ragtime. Highly recommended." volcanic tongue

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mv & ee

mv & ee ~ sweetheart of the nascar 7'' (electric temple 2010)

"The always prolific Matt Valentine & Erika Elder are back at it with the debut 7-inch on Electric Temple Records, Sweetheart of the Nascar. Rising from the depths of the grass-roots, free-riding psychedelic underground, MV&EE provide the nighttime companion over two midnight-oil burning tracks to their recent masterwork for Thurston Moore’s Ecstatic Peace label, Barn Nova. The A-Side title-track, “Sweetheart of the Nascar” is perhaps one of the duo’s heaviest tracks to date, pushing the threshold of Rust Never Sleeps-era Neil Young into sludge metal meets Mark Hollis ambience. The b-side, “Crow Jane Variations” is a slow-burner featuring Erika Elder’s reverb-drenched echoes behind a wash of lap-steel guitar and minor-key rustic psychedelic vibes. The inventive technique is highlighted on “Sweetheart of the Nascar” with two drummers playing – one in the left channel, one in the right, spread across a gorgeous stereo-pan." electric temple

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willie lane

willie lane - known quantity lp (cord art 2009)

"Lane is best known for his work with Matthew Valentine and Erika Elder and the one cd he dropped on Child Of Microtones is a regular late-night bomb at volcanic tongue. Known Quantity expands on the eerie 3am raga guitar sound of that particular side, with a series of solo guitar setting that run across 6 and 12 string acoustic, electric guitar, banjo and dulcimer with a guest appearance from Samara Lubelski on bass. There’s a heady Spectrasound feel to the recordings, a still, urban quality that isn’t a million miles from the Siltbreeze aesthetic but it’s the playing that really raises this above the countless post-Fahey/Rose/Valentine sides set on sinking six string euphorics with polished technique and nada in terms of vision. Lane’s style is weird, non-linear, spider-slow and hypnotic." volcanic tongue


foto: sharon tingley

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mv/ee with the golden road

mv/ee with the golden road - astral bleachers/big moment: pete’s picks volume one (ecstatic peace 2008)

"real raw 'you are here' sound captured live in the deep tapers pit by number one uk golden road archivist pete coward. this disck is a window into sweet harvests from a handful of shows, most notably an electric "easy livin" eye opener from a back room in brighton from the 'gettin' gone in aquarius' tour, plus a soaked "tea devil" from dylan nyoukis' 'colour out of space festival' as well as a blown out epic "canned happiness" from this years 'golden cherry ball' jam at instal. fasten yr jaw on the big league chew-z "environments" bubble featuring the usual heads (mv/ee/doc dunn/samara/chris davis) along with mick flower, chris corsano, the cherry blossoms and phil todd. child of microtones and ecstatic peace joint release - golden roadies unite!" ecstatic peace

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mv & ee

mv & ee - hick smoke (child of microtones 2008)

"howdy lunar listeners, it's been awhile since a real moonblood Child of Microtones was birthed, so we offer you Child of Microtones 33, mv & ee "hick smoke". mainly recorded at maximum arousal farm in pure analog, this one is limited to 99 copies and comes in a heavy oilboard sleeve with color covers, insert and astral dimensions in spectrasound. ayup, spectrasound. a good new year palette/pallet cleanser for the 'too much is not enough' synapse. hope you all are diggin' the arrival of the capricorn moon. eternal thanx for a great year...

featuring contributions from the golden road (doc dunn/mike smith), jeremy earl (woods), asa irons (feathers, et. al)..."

foto: grandylion

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mv & ee with the golden road

mv & ee with the golden road - drone trailer (dicristina 2008)

"Drone Trailer is a consolidation of the previous musical high-life of the duo's space shanties for the 21st century. In other words, mv & ee explore their unique mix of lunar raga and astral string band music, with a couple deep-space burners/covert jams such as opening blast "Anyway" thrown in to bust it all open. Nobody is gonna mind if they hear a little Crazy Horse and Neil Young" midheaven
"Creating a new rural psychedelia mv & ee alternate extended guitar freakouts with more pastoral, folky tunes. Highlights include "Weatherhead Hollow" and the hypnotic title track."

¿es the hungry stones la canción más bonita del mundo?

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mv & ee

mv & ee - meet snake pass & other human conditions (singing knives 2008)

"Recorded at Sheffield's Heeley Institute in 2006, this lp by Matt Valentine & Erika Elder finds the prolific duo stripped to barest most essential selves. There's no heavy fuzz or psychedelic chicanery on this lp, just supremely eloquent acoustic blues and some magnificently bizarre and off-kilter slide guitar. The seven songs collected here show that for all their perceived otherness and tendencies toward fuzztone digressions, or twenty-minute rehearsal room experiments, mv & ee are highly gifted musicians, and Valentine's fingerpicking is as sensitive, articulate, and for that matter proficient, as they come. Playing through songs that proven to be live staples this surely stands as one of the very best recordings of the duo's music from this time and one of the purest, cleanest documents of their unique sound..." boomkat

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mv & ee

mv & ee - ragas of the culvert / total loss songs (three lobed 2008)

"The contents of LP Ragas Of The Culvert from MV & EE were previously released on cd-r (on their own label Heroine Celestial Agriculture, less then 50 copies were made) and on tape (called "The Ground Ain't Dirty" on Fuck It Tapes) with an additional track omitted on lp. Preordered copies of this release came with a bonus cd called Total Loss Songs of songs recorded late 2007 and early 2008. The cd has its own folded coversheet and comes in a vellum jacket. The lp is pressed in an edition of a total of 840 copies on 180gr HQ-vinyl in an "old style" stoughton lp sleeve. The lp/cd preorder combo was limited to 480 copies. Both media were recorded at Maximum Arousal Farm, produced in "MV Spectrasound." discogs

ragas of the culvert * total loss songs

dredd foole

  dredd foole - kissing the contemporary bliss (child of microtones 2005; family vineyard 2008)

"For over 30 years troubadour wailer Dan Ireton, aka Dredd Foole, has called upon the spirit of 78 shellac blues n' psychedelic Stooges n' Velvets to fuel his guttural, pure soul ethos of the song. Whether solo or leading mass, Foole hints at the classic forms of Blood On The Tracks and the celestial fug of Sun Ra's third-eye vision to create an approach untraveled yet increasingly influential (see: Six Organs of Admittance, Sunburned Hand of the Man).

Produced in multi-dimensional spectrasound by Matt Valentine, Kissing The Contemporary Bliss spans 50 miles of elbow room and kicks up the most outward bound and staggering approaches to Gus Cannon's "Walk Right In" and Robert Johnson's "Stones In My Passway" while offering ear-popping originals colored by Erika Elder's jug blowin' and Coot Moon's ecstatic, reverb dosed banjo. You'll hear nothing like this in 2008 or beyond.." family vineyard

foto: philip hunter

 cd1 & cd2

willie lane

willie lane - recliner ragas (child of microtones 2006)

"Willie “Gutbucket” Lane is a young guitar player from Maine who is also the protégé of Matt Valentine. This is his first release on MV’s own Child of Microtones label and it features Lane travelling similar paths as those trodden by MV himself or Joshua Burkett.

Lane’s playing, though very clear and assured, is unmistakably imbued with these unique kind of “psychedelic” fixtures as found on the most far-out mv/ee outings. I’m thinking of the “Ragas and Blues” lp or any of those “free folk” excursions that alternate more straightforward guitar playing with a very controlled and measured use of delays, reverse effects and other sound altering devices...." foxy digitalis

Recliner ragas es otro de esos discos pequeños y especiales salidos de la nada y de los que se sabe muy poco, sólo una referencia en Foxy Digitalis y apariciones en los 'blues lunares' de Matt Valentine & Erika Elder. Willie Lane se sitúa justo a un paso de Matt Valentine & Erika Elder con una colección de deliciosos ragas que siempre apetece escuchar y que resumiría en dos palabras y una frase: ingravidez instrumental y una preciosidad de principio a fin.

foto: leon rouge

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the temptation to zoology

part one # part two

a film by Matt Valentine, Erika Elder and Gabriel Walsh

"The "Zoology" picture is an incredible myth of things seen in the skysea concerning an animal, so human, and its transfiguration during a journey to the trysting place of an aeon. Starring Dredd Foole, Pat Ireton, mv, ee, Barry Weisblat, Samara Lubelski, P.G. Six, Alan Licht, Greg Anderson, Noah Wall, Joshua Burkett, Cynthia Meadows, Gabe Walsh, Tim Dedman, Nouri, Pegasus, Boletus and Richie Midnight".

mv & ee

mv & ee - mars delta (child of microtones cd-r 2007)

la postal más entrañable, dos pitufos posan sonrientes bajo una seta de colores y un amor enorme por toda la música. sería una pena que Mars Delta quedase como otra grabación más en la trayectoria de Matt Valentine & Erika Elder. primero porque me parece indescriptiblemente mágico, y segundo porque, después de la (muy muy muy) ligera decepción que supuso, al menos para mí, Green Blues, recoge como ningún otro el testigo de Mother of Thousands. no existe casi información, es un cdr y no está editado en ningún gran sello, pero tras un título tan descriptivo como bonito se esconden miles de notas desafinadas que fluyen como por arte de magia, enseñándonos que el blues y el folk puede reflejar muchas caras distintas. la consecuencia, imagino, de vivir retirados y felices en una 'casita' de madera en el campo, rodeados de vinilos, y de esa búsqueda incansable de nuevos caminos que explorar. hay blues del delta, folk ancestral y ragas siderales. sus voces, más presentes que nunca, suenan contagiosas, palpables, calurosas. el ataque frontal que es 'When Yer Way Gets Dark' me deja sin aliento. voces con eco e interferencias, una retransmisión desde Marte de un concierto de Charley Patton reencarnado en Erika Elder, protagonista también de una brumosa e irreconocible 'Poor Boy' de Mississippi Fred McDowell. una slide multiplicada por cien, una acústica, el antídoto definitivo, el paraíso del blues. Matt canta mi favorita, 'I'm gwine down the revine', en la que con una voz y una melodías pequeñas, mínimas, da un do de pecho espectacular. y Erika hace lo propio con 'Preachin Blues', blues comatoso de efectos terapéuticos en la que sólo me viene una imagen a la cabeza, Kim Gordon y B.B. King suspendidos en el interior de una burbuja espacial. podría pasarme el día escuchando 'Snowstorm Blues', una delicia que sólo puede dar paso a otra delicia como 'Be True Blues'. grillos, pajaritos, el murmullo del río, harmónicas y acústicas y la voz destartalada ponen el broche final. una vía austera pero más clarividente que todas las superproducciones del mundo...

i'm gwine down the ravine (mp3)

the saltimbanques of the moon (mp3 de 'Ragantula')

the bummer road

the bummer road - rural dimensions (child of microtones, 2006)

"Gorgeous-looking tour-only COM from the Bummer Road trio line-up (mv & ee and Moses Jiggs with occasional input from Sparrow Wildchild on flute). Atmosphere is somewhere between an unknown Sea Ensemble jam with Sonny Sharrock and Byard Lancaster and a Go Hirano disc featuring Jutok Kaneko and Sandy Bull covering devotional German jugband with nothing but a blat of electricity, a set hard-twonking strings, hand-smelted metal percussion and a pair of lungs full of thick purple smoke. One of the group's furthest circumnavigations of known blues form to date, this comes in a hand painted/lettered hard card gatefold sleeve complete with booklet of prose pomes and art snap." Volcanic Tongue

no es fácil decidirse por un único disco de los muchos que publican MV/EE, núcleo de the Tower Recordings, con o sin The Bummer Road. una buena opción sería 'Play Ellas McDaniels Who Do You Love' de la serie Three Lobed, por ser sencillamente genial su versión de Bo Didley. sin embargo prefiero 'Rural Dimensions' porque es el mensaje interespacial mejor descodificado desde 'Folkscene' y también porque es aquí donde confluye todo ese inabarcable mundo de Matt Valentine y Erika Elder: oriente y occidente, ragas & blues, hipnosis, ofrendas a los dioses del kraut, drones, reverberaciones, harmónicas, flautas, jams flotando en el espacio..en 'Moon mermaids' impresiona el eco psicodélico y casi fantasmal de la voz de Erika, como si viniera desde el más allá, oculto entre distorsiones de guitarra y percusiones enlatadas. cerrando los ojos es fácil imaginársela vagando entre las paredes de algún viejo monasterio, vestida con una sotana oscura, tambura en mano, invocando a las fuerzas cósmicas...

file under: ladies & gentlemen, we are floating in rural space

para hacerse una muy pequeña idea, dos muestras de Mother of Thousands

Anthem of the Cocola y&t (mp3)

Cold Rain (mp3)