ed askew | joshua burkett

ed askew ~ imperfiction (drag city, 2011 ~ 1984 reissue)

"this is a collection of songs written, more or less, in the late 1970s and early 1980s in New Haven; mostly songs that had never been recorded before. it was all done in one session. with some retakes. i had only recently stopped performing and still knew everything by heart." ed askew

'everybody knows music heals the soul' ~ ed askew's art and life

buy | download

joshua burkett ~ live at the festival of endless gratitude (copenhagen, 2010)

"fragile and enticing late-night, bed-time and beyond, psychedelic folk music for those not-so-well-balanced people who can still appreciate beauty in its roughest forms." aural innovations

"...full of appalachia, psychedelia, and raga. the tracks are spectral and smokey, astral projections for an astral mind." killing time kills

listen | download

ed askew & joshua burkett ~ live at wfmu on hatch's show (November 2, 2007)

"after languishing in obscurity for decades, the music of idiosyncratic singer-songwriter Ed Askew is finally getting the attention it deserves. "Ask The Unicorn", his 1968 debut album for esp-disk, has often been compared to the work of labelmates Pearls Before Swine. Askew's equally wonderful second album, Little Eyes, was recorded a few years later but remained unreleased until the De Stijl label pressed a limited edition lp in 2003. this year, they finally made it available on cd. although Askew once accompanied himself on a kind of Latin American soprano guitar called a tiple, carpal tunnel syndrome now prevents him from playing. For this live session, contemporary psychedelic folk artist Joshua Burkett plays the instrument for him." Hatch wfmu

listen | download

fotos 2 & 3: elliot michael fairhurst

meg baird

meg baird ~ seasons on earth (drag city 2011)

"...on “Friends” Baird sings “One day maybe I’ll buy myself an island and there with my friends you know I’d stay.” This may illustrate the best way to enjoy “Seasons on Earth.” You have to go away with it for a little bit."

otra dimensión

buy / download

michael yonkers

michael yonkers • lovely gold [drag city 2010]

"Utilizing original photos and the exact layout and notes of the planned 1977 "Lovely Gold" release, a lost classic at last becomes available. As of late 2009, the legend of Michael Yonkers has taken its place among the great stories of underground rock and roll music. He’d been playing rock and roll for nearly forty years when “Microminiature Love” was finally issued in 2003 (Sire had taken a pass way back in 1968). A thousand noise-rock ears pricked up, as Yonkers, a reclusive Minneapolis dancer-musician with a handful of self-released records over the years, had seminally prefigured proto-punk/metal/noise through his own brand of amped up garage rock. Since the revelation, Michael has picked up where he left off, exploring blown-out frequencies with collaborators around the globe, and his work has claimed a seat next to immortals like The Fugs, Velvet Underground, Sonic Youth and even Jimi Hendrix.

What a lot of folks still don’t know is that Michael put aside his hand-built fuzz boxes and bellowing vocal style in the 1970s to record and self-release some truly curious albums of lilting loner-folk music, including “Grimwood”, “Goodby Sunball” and “Michael Lee Yonkers”. Of this holy trio of albums, only “Grimwood” has yet seen reissue. Throughout this time, Yonkers layered madrigal-like vocals, simple acoustic guitars, and used electricity in only the most subtle of ways - all to serve his sombre, mesmerizing songs.

This brings us to “Lovely Gold”. Planned as the fourth LP in his 70s trilogy, it was never released - a true crime, because it is an exotic work of homespun brilliance. Recorded in 1977 on a four-channel ‘tube type’ tape recorder that Michael built himself by combining parts of other machines, it is perhaps his most multi-faceted solo album. The trademark Yonkers chug appears (though more stripped-down and dreamlike) and even some spraying acidic guitar on the title track, but the sweeping choral voice arrangements on gorgeous hymns like “Will It Be” are entirely unique and indeed lovely creations. What’s more, while digging through his archives Michael located previously lost cuts intended for the album, including the harrowing, near- Krautrock glide of “Nevermore”." piccadilly records

download | buy

no sé ustedes pero entre el sol, viento y carambolas se antoja un mucho de rock, o no?

fotola: **meagan

six organs of admittance

six organs of admittance - luminous night (drag city 2009)

"...What is it about the man that buries his sound in the ground? He has faith in the earth, for one. When we think of Six Organs of Admittance, we think of a man with six-string ambitions, a rambler with mystic beliefs and dark electric visions. It’s a big universe and we’re only human, which basically means that we’ve got spirit and that were going to die. But until then, we live. Six Organs of Admittance has lived to tell about it on Luminous Night.
Six Organs of Admittance have been watching you listening to them for ten years now. Change is constant. Six Organs of Admittance is your secret friend. You will meet soon, in the glow of a night’s performance." drag city

download

bill callahan

bill callahan - sometimes i wish we were an eagle (drag city 2009)

“She lay beside me like a branch from a tender willow tree / I was as still as a river could be”

download

bill callahan

jim cain

my friend

the wind and the dove

click

six organs of admittance

six organs of admittance - rtz (drag city 2009)

"There might be Six Organs of Admittance, but there will be two discs or three vinyl LPs in the new collection from Ben Chasny, named RTZ after the four-track button called "return-to-zero." (Somewhere, the number five is lonely.)
The box set will include early recordings from splits ("Resurrection" with the Charlambadies and "Warm Earth, Which I've Been Told" with Vibracathedral Orchestra and Magic Carpithans), subscription cds ("You Can Always See the Sun" from Three Lobed Recordings) and limited editions ("Nightly Trembling" appeared on a 33-copy run), plus previously unreleased material and half a dozen Six Organs live performances which are apparently impossible to find anywhere else." paste

más cosas sobre rtz en naturalismo

download a * download b

six organs of admittance

el sol del dios

Six Organs of Admittance - the sun awakens (drag city)

no es un disco fácil, es oscuro, es luminoso, pero ante todo, es.

todo lo bonito que podía ser ben chasny quedó retratado en 'school of the flower', él dice ahora que para bonito bonito vintage burden de Charalambides, y tanto que sí digo yo. me cuesta bastante entrelazar las asociaciones o describir los sentimientos. tengo aquí a la izquierda sus anteriores discos, en la mesa unos artículos y en la pantalla una ventana con la nota de prensa de Drag City. creo que deberíamos hablar de la persona;

hace un par de años con motivo de la gira que le llevó por primera vez a españa y portugal pudimos saber que a Ben Chasny le costaba mucho hablar de su lado espiritual, tenía miedo de que al oirle, la gente pensase que estaba loco, decía esto un tipo que prefería tocar en un restaurante antes que en una sala de conciertos al uso porque en ellas no sentía cercanía con las personas, hablaba también de que hacía música con el fín de unir a las personas, defendía la idea de un todo que necesitaba llegar a lo más íntimo a través de la individualidad. ambientes, melodías, mantras capaces de relacionar los yoes con el universo. música dedicada para aquellas personas que por las noches tienen problemas para dormir. hablaba de que el miedo es muy importante, el miedo a lo desconocido y sobre todo la voluntad de luchar contra él, también aludía a la plenitud y el vacío, a esos sentimientos semejantes y desemejantes que son los mismos y a todas las verdades que son semiverdades. al mismo tiempo que reivindicaba el caracter dual de todo lo que nos rodea, afirmaba que las cosas ya no podían hacerse como las hacía Bob Dylan, ahora es tiempo de buscar automatismos inmediatos corazón con corazón, cavar un agujero en lo desconocido y liberar fantasmas. contaba anécdotas de la niñez que llevaban a recordarle como en la casa que vivía de pequeño se oían ruidos, espíritus inquietos decía.

'the sun awakens' es maravilloso se mire por donde se mire, cuando lo haces apuntando a 'torn by wolves', 'bless your blood', 'black wall', 'attar', 'wolves' pup' o 'the desert is a circle' sonríes, gritas, pataleas y bailas, cuando apartas la vista y la vuelves hacia 'river of transfiguration', entiendes el caracter sobrenatural del disco, la búsqueda de la luz más radiante de todas, la del sol, para iluminar aquel recoveco que se quedó grabado a fuego en tu memoria y no quiere desaparecer, entiendes que este es el disco que siempre quisiste hacer y al que nunca llegarás pongas como te pongas porque Ben Chasny ya no hace música, lo suyo va de adoctrinar.

-rafa

"today is the winter solstice
the rooster crows
the sun awakens"

Octavio Paz

faun fables

faun fables - the transit rider (drag city, 2006)

Faun Fables es sobre todo y ante todo el frondoso y fascinante mundo interior de Dawn 'the Fawn' McCarthy y Nils Frydahl. y The Transit Rider la banda sonora de una obra de 'cabaret/folk avant garde' que cuenta la historia de una joven inocente atrapada en el subterráneo de una estación de trenes encantada, que busca incansable ese hogar idílico al que un día perteneció, y que apenas consigue recordar. dicen que su directo es espectacular, un circo ambulante de malabarismos vocales, cabaret, nanas paganas, mandolinas, mini arpas, tonadillas montañesas, preciosas baladas tradicionales inglesas (The House Carpenter), y surrealistas historias de trenes. the House Carpenter, I'd like to be (...i'd like to be like the wind floating around, like the cloud under the sun...) y Dream on a Train son canciones de las de aprenderse de memoria y tararear nota a nota...el resto, ahí están, apasionadas, ambientales, esbozadas pero listas para covertirse en esa combinación sugerente e imposible entre Charlie Patton, Clarence Ashley y Bertolt Brecht. como Pumajaw, folk de ojos rasgados y feroces

Transit Theme (mp3 de The Transit Rider)

The Crumb (sample de Early Song)

Apple Trees (sample de Early Song)

Sleepwalker (sample de Mother Twilight)

Eyes of a Bird (sample de Family Album)

más samples, fotos, atrezzo... aquí

ghost

 ghost - lama rabi rabi (drag city 1996)

Cualquier disco suyo podría estar aquí...pero hoy me quedo con éste. Lama Rabi Rabi es al mismo tiempo una cascada de agua, un camino rodeado de árboles y un acantilado...Japón, La India, indios nativos americanos, el viejo Oeste, Can, psicodelia... y el mejor disco de Ghost. Un crescendo interminable y luminoso de mil y un sonidos diferentes y de un universo que no parece ser el nuestro. Graban, casi, en cualquier sitio que no sea un estudio de grabación: templos budistas, iglesias, ruinas, metros, bosques y cuevas.

Masaki Batoh: Vocal, Acoustic Guitar, Hurdy Gurdy, Banjo, etc. Kazuo Ogino: Piano, Oscilator, Recorder, Lute, etc. Michio Kurihara: Electric Guitar Junzo Tateiwa: Tabla, Percussions, Drums Takuyuki Moriya: Elecric Bass, Contra Bass Taishi Takizawa (aka Giant): Theremin, Flute Saxophone