microphones in the trees

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

pocahaunted

"Teepees turned in for shanties. Moccasins turned in for high tops. Spirit fog turned in for purple haze. This is the sound of the world town. Amanda and Bethany have had S. LA metal head Bobb Bruno play electric drums on their tracks in the past, but the results of this album is something entirely different than anything they attempted before. It is less Bobb playing drums with Pocahaunted, than it is an entirely new entity operating in perfect unity. Dubbed out and drenched in the grime of the streets, Island Diamonds features the same vocal come downs and chord repetition/progression to infinity that P-haunt is know for, but with the addition of almost (dare I say) “danceable” beats. This is the record that Pocahaunted have always wanted to make, the crown jewel of an epic sistership. Rub soap in your eye make it red so you look raw. Recorded/mixed/mastered over a period of three months, and the effort/time shows; Pocahaunted’s most developed/realized work yet; features additional saxophone riffage by Andy Spore (of Raccoo-oo-oon, Youth of the Beast, Pukers) mastered by James Plotkin. In an edition of 500 Rasta colored LP’s on clear yellow vinyl with pro-printed jackets with art by Crystal Stokowski, labels by A+B, and an insert." arbor

no se puede pedir más: las voces de Bethany y Amanda empapadas de dub

...para muestra, un botón

christina carter

christina carter - texas working blues (blackest rainbow 2008)

"Texas Working Blues is an impressive coup for the burgeoning Blackest Rainbow cassette / CD-R label. It might well seem like over-the-top claim to make having only lived with this tape for a short while, but this is Christina Carter’s finest solo material yet. It doesn’t top the enchantment of the Carter/Murray/Carter Charalambides line-up, it’s too song-based for that comparison, but it isn’t too far in the wake of it.
Despite the title and the Texan-referencing liners, there doesn’t feel like there’s a profound Texas influence in the expected sense of the word. It’s more in the way she interleaves sun-fried guitar and the vocals-through-haze shimmer. “Bird’s Nest” makes this intangibly explicit, lost somewhere between Autumnal wanders and summer smog. The jangle of quiet guitars and breathy vocals is offset with lead guitar parts that sound like her Charalambides partner Tom Carter may not responsible for the most skyward parts of their chemistry. All the usual Christina Carter superlatives apply here, only tenfold – gorgeous tunes, dust rising in sunshine sounds, clipped notes of honeyed 70s psych and with enough disassociation to keep it non-pop. There are flavours of Richard Youngs’ primitive-weird-traditional “Autumn Response” vibe across “Texas Working Blues”. The mix of weird sidereal guitar sounds with the gentle feedback lulling and wire-crawling electric lead lines gives Carter a perfect balance between worlds. 10/10" scott mckeating (foxy digitalis)

seguro que Kath Bloom y Loren Mazzacane Connors tienen algo que ver en el sonido de de Texas Working Blues, deliciosa psicodelia de atmósfera tejana. para mí lo más bonito de Ms. Carter. es tan prolífica que me daría pena que este disco se perdiese como uno más.

Sunday, April 27, 2008

meg ashling


"cuando Meg Ashling apareció en el escenario me quedé sorprendido. era, bueno...alta. y en aquel escenario relativamente pequeño, parecía más grande que la vida en muchos sentidos, especialmente cuando empezó a cantar.

Meg también es la cantante y guitarrista del grupo de Minneapolis the Gilded Age. supongo que la comparación con Billie Holiday es bastante obvia. no es su doble, pero sí puedes sentir el característico trino de Holiday. y aunque sí es cierto que muchas cantantes suenan como Billie Holiday (ahora mismo me viene a la cabeza Madeleine Peyroux) es interesante ver cómo utiliza ese sonido en canciones de country y folk. ella y Jolie Holland deberían hacer un duo algún día.

...y además hace una versión de Cracklin' Rosie" music for robots

de momento no hay nada publicado, tan sólo un disco casero con demos, tan bonito y especial como aquel primer disco de Jolie Holland.

vetiver

vetiver - thing of the past (gnomonsong 2008)
"two years after To Find Me Gone, Andy Cabic and Vetiver return with a new album of old songs, all hidden treasures, entitled Thing of the Past. Think of it as Cabic's fully realized mix tape to the world--a collection of some of his favorite songs from some of his favorite records--but presented, sequenced, and in this case performed by Cabic himself, with a little help from his friends far and wide. includes contributions from two of Cabic's heroes, Vashti Bunyan (who duets on "Sleep A Million Years") and Michael Hurley (who does likewise on his own "Blue Driver").
From good-time rocking on Hawkwind's "Hurry On Sundown" and Loudon Wainwright III's "The Swimming Song" to the beautiful triptych of songs that runs from Biff Rose's "To Baby" through Ian Matthews' "Road To Ronderlin" and Garland Jeffreys' "Lon Chaney," this is a diverse and harmonious collection of songs. As Cabic comments, "I think this is the best album I've yet to make, in no small part because the songs are so good, but also because I didn't write them, which offered me a useful combination of restraint and freedom in performing them, bringing out the best in myself and the other musicians. It was an experiment, and it was one of the best experiences I've yet to have recording anything." midheaven

versiones de clásicos que me recuerdan a otros clásicos como fleetwood mac, a 'a horse with no name' de america, a 'cottton fields' de creedence. 'roll on babe' es ya como una caricia, 'hook & ladder' es demasiado bonita, 'the swimming song' es la esencia, elegante, sencilla y con banjo. y luego está 'road to ronderlin' que es, desde ya, una de mis canciones favoritas...y así todas

Saturday, April 26, 2008

one fine summer morning

01 pocahaunted - warpaint
02 cursillistas - moccasin tramp
03
amber lions - faretheewell
04
meg ashling - lovely like wine
05
evie sands - one fine summer morning
06
karen dalton - something on your mind
07
holly golightly - whoopie ti yi yo
08
odetta - gallows tree, gallows pole
09 djuna bel - mighty
10
fern knight - loch na fooey
11
pajaro sunrise - romeos tune
12
grizzly bear - plans
13
pepi ginsberg - in my bones
14
the cave singers - royal lawns
15
fire on fire - liberty unknown
16
wooden wand - blood
17
inca ore - sun
18
pocahaunted - time fist
19
fursaxa - kokopelli
20
desert linx - supple spine steals day sun from only one
21
hezekiah jones - dark hollow
22
isobel campbell & mark lanegan - something to believe
23
mateo messina - up the spout
24
the cave singers - cold eye
25
fleet foxes - white winter hymnal

imagen: 'remember when' de katie

Friday, April 25, 2008

the child readers

"Heartbreaking and childlike, “Music Heard Far Off” evokes the surreal poetry of good Dylan with a saner than Daniel Johnston, but still as awed a worldview. If Brian Wilson had been born in 1970, he would have made this record at some point.
Even semi-abrasive tracks like the muted metallic sheen of “Planet Waters” or the lo-fi skronk of “A Tree Waits” have awesomely positive vibes. There is hope by the bucketsful in the seeming chaos and improvisational daring.
This is a naked record too, as the duo of Jason Honea (Social Unrest) and Loren Chasse (Thuja) offer literate haikus that sound confessional even when surreal. Listening to “Son of Man” in particular, one of the more stripped down tracks, feels like an invasion of privacy.
Guitars acoustic and electric drive the grooves, though there are touches of ambient and musique concrete, as well as a dull hiss that often appears as a kind of guide through this poetic and disorienting landscape.
The Child Readers can be trusted, and “Music Heard Far Off” makes you want to trust. This is a gorgeous, if unsettling release that mixes the avant-garde and traditional, the hermetic and open, in stunning fashion. 9/10" Mike Wood (Foxy Digitalis)
por fin se ha hecho realidad el nuevo disco de the Child Readers, y escuchando 'Son of Man' creo que ha valido la pena esperar un año. 'oraciones musicales al campo, momentos del día', y mucha variedad en el tipo de canciones, tonos y referencias (Jewelled Antler, sello carismático y entrañable donde los haya). dieciséis canciones de colores pastel que nacen y mueren en apenas dos minutos, siempre a punto de romperse, como si fueran grabadas con lo que había a mano...

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

peaceable kingdom

no he podido evitar pensar en esto el día de la tierra, felicidades!

Monday, April 14, 2008

dolphins of east belgium / edgar wappenhalter


"very lookalike action.... Dolphins play the new hyms of the ages. duo consisting of Pulsating in the Eye of Vision and Wietske Van Gils. heavy trance. Edgar Wappenhalter sings the message of the future. he is a member of the Funeral Folk / Silvester Anfang troupe of kindred spirits. secret folkballads, sung for the heart. xerox cover, full color inserts."

"...his side of this split is an absolute smash from beginning to enddroning, smokey ragas smelling like musty Sandy Bull bootlegs, particularly when Sandy plays along to tapes because Wappenhalter's got a tabla thing going here that's just totally in tune. There's a couple of other magnificently minimal solo guitar think-overs and even some nice tunes with dazed, murky female vocals. Elsewhere he peppers a dark acoustic number strangely reminiscent of "Stairway to Heaven" with tightly-wound electronic squeaks, drags out a ghostly bummer of a folk song that sounds like it was sourced from twelfth-generation recordings, and contemporary-sounding death chant-ed loner mantras.

...Dolphins of East Belgium, on the other hand, are a duo featuring members known from releases under the names Wietske Van Gils and Pulsating in the Eye of Vision. What you get is another splended side, this one featuring individual-sized portions of gentle looped drones, generated via synthesizers and keyboards and tape players and the like. At first I was in Kathmandu with Angus MacLise but as the tracks came and went I was even picking up more Spacemen 3 feels, don't ask. Another reference point immediately jumping out was Jefre Cantu-Ledesma's Twonicorn tape..." outer space gamelan

davenport, ben reynolds, dolphins into the future, ...un disco bonito descubierto gracias a Clay Ruby

Thursday, April 10, 2008

nalle

nalle - the sirens wave (locust 2008)

Nalle is the Glasgow based avant folk trio of visual artist Hanna Tuulikki, Chris Hladowski and Aby Vulliamy, from The One Ensemble and Scatter. Hanna’s enthralling multioctave vocal range and singular delivery brought comparisons to other women vocalists who have explored the limits of the voice within traditional musical conventions but as the Wire noted, Nalle’s “clear individuality banishes lazy comparisons to others operative in this area of folk-inflected new music, like Lau Nau or Joanna Newsom.” Top this off with a fearless and accomplished integration of the musical traditions & instruments of the world’s people and you have the prescription for something that, in its very globally minded embrace , touches on the other worldly. Siren’s Wave is a dense & deliberate album of tightly woven song suites where few sounds and few silences, if any, are left unconsidered..." locust

fursaxa

"What a stunning album! Simply breathtaking! This is easily my favorite Fursaxa outing since her infamous Mandrake. It's certainly one of her most trippy to date. Listening to Kobold Moon is like traveling to a far off place where witches, folkloric gods and bizarre beasts, both fascinating and repulsive, still roam the planet. Either that or this is the result of one hell of a shamanic drug experience; but I prefer thinking of this album in terms of the fantastic. Alternating between absolute beauty and awkward, eerie moments, Kobold Moon is like experiencing a fable, an ancient children's tale. Not reading it, living it! The unfamiliar, the comic, the tender, the terrifying and the weird!" my record collection

"Limited album from Tara Burke aka Fursaxa, packaged in marbled, psychedelic card slipcases and wraparound inner sleeves and released on her own label.. The whole disc has a heavy Judee Sill feel that hasn’t really been so apparent in her back catalogue until now. It all ends with one of the most spell-binding movements in her entire catalogue, with a chaos of vocal hiss functioning as a long, slow pan through the kind of fog-bound territory previously mapped by Andrew Chalk and Christoph Heemann as Mirror. One of her darkest and most otherworldly set of space-whispers to date. Highly recommended." volcanic tongue

foto: alexander binder

nalle

"Nalle from Glasgow, Scotland are Hanna Tuulikki (vocals, kantele, flute), Aby Vulliamy (viola) & Chris Hladowski (bouzouki, clarinet) - they are also members of The One Ensemble. Beautiful improvisation, folky instrumentation, lovely floating vocals. We prepared this live cd-r to coincide with Nalle's first usa tour (March 2008), which was booked by Secret Eye. Numbered edition of 100."

Wednesday, April 09, 2008

christina carter

"A concept album. Interpretations of seventeen jazz and show tune 'standards', mostly solo voice. Recorded in two late night sessions, impromptu melodies were created for classic lyrics, all telling the story of 'the end of a love affair'. Four of the songs feature multi-tracked resonator guitar accompaniment." many breaths
"Latest dazzling jewel in Christina Carter's growing discography. All covers of standards and ballads, and aside from a couple of acoustic guitar numbers, all solo voice. Melt. Hand made addition of 80 copies. Terrifyingly good." root blog

charalambides / pocahaunted

"charalambides side is an extra pristine hi fi slice of harmolodic vox/gtr layering recorded live in basque country in 2007. i've been on the farm so i haven't heard the pocahaunted side, but based on live evidence it's got to be great. this is part of the bored fortress split 7". wholly other
"Charalambides venture even further into Lilith Fair terrain, guitar outlining the blues around its Rubenesque form. Can’t hang. Pocahaunted, who I’ve not heard before this, offer up a likable loose psych drone, building up a nice atmospheric head of corroding guitar before the big, booming rhythm section lumbers in. Can’t argue with it; it’s an agreeable, spaced-out late evening exploration into the sunset. Sounds like the first Bardo Pond single, almost. Looks like subscriptions are still available if you wanna get in the grind this year." dusted

Tuesday, April 08, 2008

mountainhood

“Limited edition of 50 copies. Brother The Cloud is a 78 minute, nineteen track acidic psychedelic folk album. Following on from his sold out Year Of The Mountain ep. The album is a big leap on from the ep. It features varied instrumentation, guitars, percussion, recorders, hand claps and communal style singing. The eye-catching covers are printed in fluorescent orange and lime green on red, yellow, orange and purple card.” reverb worship
"Mountainhood is the new project from the guy who formerly recorded as Almaden and this is his second release on Reverb Worship; the first sold out pretty fast. The deals in similar territory late night lo-fi melancholy..." apex on line

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

inca ore

"This one has been a dream since the start. Literally, as Eva Saelens wrote us one day out of the clearest blue saying she had a dream one night that she sent us her brand new album and that we fell in love with it and released it. Well the dream’s become reality, as her latest spirit quest in pursuit of the inmost voice dazzled us instantly and lingered like déjà vu. An 11-song slideshow of psychedelic secrecy, rippling whispers, and private ghost ballads, Birthday of Bless You finds Inca Ore at her most lithe and longing, shifting focus from microscopic mood meditations to wide-lens surrealist romance fantasies in a heartbeat, then back again. A black-lit bedroom soon forgotten, a midnight garden of lucid sound, an LP to have and to hold. Mastered for wax by Pete Swanson. Black vinyl in jackets with collage-art by IO, plus a full-color 11x11 collage insert. Edition of 500." nnf

Sunday, March 16, 2008

the ray pacino ensemble

the ray pacino ensemble - be my lonely night/golden greats (lal lal lal 2008)

"And speaking of Lal Lal Lal and its documentation of some of the sicker sounds of new Sweden, they've also gone and released a gatefold double LP by the one and only Ray Pacino Ensemble. Their Be My Lonely Night cassette was one of the best things Lal Lal Lal put out in 2006, and that whole thing has been reissued here as the first record, with all new songs on the second slab. I'm not quite sure how to describe this band from the village of Järna except to say that they sound like 2000s post-punk weirdos possessed simultaneously by the spirits of a 1930s Scandinavian dancehall oompah band and some cracked 1960s folk troubadours. Ten listens later and I can't do any better than that, but no matter how strange it gets, The Ray pacino Ensemble is always there to play another song, and they're all surprising catchy and avant-garde and inexplicably effective. As is the hand-sewn gatefold sleeve, with its art by Jelle Crama and totally incomprehensible liner notes...." blastitude

 download 

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

spires that in the sunset rise

"The fourth album by Chicago avant rock trio Spires That in the Sunset Rise is the group's most musically direct and immediately accessible work yet. The album was recorded in Philadelphia in collaboration with the Philly acid folk veteran Greg Weeks at his own Hexham Head Studio; members of Weeks' band, Espers, contribute as well. Gone is the deliberately noisy "free folk" aesthetic, in favor of a more controlled blend of folk, psychedelia, and Sun City Girls-like world music explorations, like the dramatic "Equus Haar" which weaves influences that echo Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe, and North Africa at the same time. Even at the album's most chaotic points, such as the dissonant interludes of oddly tuned harmonies and gamelan-like percussion that recur throughout the nearly ten-minute epic "Party Favors" there is a sense of restraint that was rarely a factor in earlier Spires That in the Sunset Rise releases. One song, "Java Pop", is so direct and tuneful (with backing vocals by Weeks and a hypnotic central riff) that it's easily the closest the group has ever come to a straightforward pop song. Those who liked singer/guitarist Kathleen Baird's more measured solo work (under her own name and as Traveling Bell) but found earlier Spires That in the Sunset Rise forbiddingly impenetrable will certainly find Curse the Traced Bird more to their liking. ~ Stewart Mason, All Music Guide

es casi lo más bonito que han hecho nunca, tremendamente bonito. tengo mi primera favorita y es Pouring mind, un pastel rosa y suave que me recuerda a Pocahaunted. y Black earth, tan decadente, tan hipnótica, con esa voz casi monacal de Kathleen Baird. no sé qué más decir, sólo que como siempre me encanta

Saturday, March 08, 2008

donovan quinn

donovan quinn - october lanterns (soft abuse 2008)

donovan quinn is a singer-songwriter from san francisco, california. since 2001 he’s performed his songs with the skygreen leopards (collaborating with glenn donaldson) & under the name verdure. currently he can be found operating solo, occasionally being joined by various friends & collaborators, under the umbrella of the 13th month. donovan’s first solo record, produced in collaboration with jason quever (papercuts), will be released in the spring of 2008.” bruno schulz

"Sean Penn’s “Into the Wild” would have been a much better movie if, for its soundtrack, Penn had replaced Eddie Vedder by Donovan Quinn. For the ten tracks on “October Lanterns” show just the right degree of hinterwaldlerdom without ever venturing too far off the beaten track. Sure, when Quinn recorded these fine songs in ‘02 and ’03, he used a wide array of folk instruments. But whether hammond organ, melodica, mouth harp, or mandolin: They all blissfully sound as if the still wore the price tag of the music supply store. That, however, is not a problem at all, but provides track like “At the tent revival” with an awkward quality not to be found elsewhere. Recorded at his former home studio on a horse ranch in Walnut Creek, CA, “October Lanterns” is Quinn’s debut under his own name. He has recorded with The Skygreen Leopards and solo under the Verdure moniker. This cd-r, limited as it is to handmade 100 copies, should help him to get established further in a field ruled by the likes of Hala Strana or Hush Arbors." foxy digitalis