Guilty Ghosts - Enigma Variations (self release, 2010)

1 Mists & Tides 03:14
2 Renée 03:44
3 Kodachrome (Demo) 02:53
4 The Canal 04:11
5 Top Prize Fighter 05:50

Guilty Ghosts is the solo project of Tristan O'Donnell who lives and records in his hometown of Brooklyn, NY.
His music fuses somber washes of drone guitar with minimalist drum programming, creating a unique style of lo-fi instrumental bedroom pop.
Guilty Ghosts' songs are the kind fit for rainy days, everlasting evenings, and melancholy moments in solitude.

visit Guilty Ghosts (here or here)

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Loren Mazzacane Connors - Evangeline (Road Cone, 1998)

1 Evangeline
2 Dance Acadia
3 Ships
4 The Burning Of Grand Pre
5 Two Paths
6 The Bridegroom Of Snow
7 Voice Of The Ocean, 'Despair Not!'
8 Once You Touched Me
9 Jesuits
10 Sister Of Mercy
11 His Room (In The Almshouse)
12 Oh, My Beloved
13 Gabriel Dies
14 Evangeline

Sur ce disque Loren Mazzacane Connors retrace l'histoire d'une ancêtre de Suzanne Langille, Evangeline Bellefontaine à la recherche de son fiancé après que les anglais contraignirent les acadiens à l'exil en Nouvelle Ecosse, cette histoire étant également le thème d'un poème de Longfellow: atmosphère éthérée et beauté tragique....

This is an excellent starting point for those unfamiliar to Loren Mazzacane Connors, deftly combining an uncompromising take on the guitar with melodic grace. 'Evangeline' is a short (30 minutes) and austere suite, centered on the narrative of wife Suzanne Langille's distant ancestor, Evangeline Bellefontaine (also the subject of a famous Longfellow poem). Tragic and romantic, the story deals with the heroine's search for her beloved after the British exiled Nova Scotians in 1746, and Connors' abstractly conveys the story brilliantly. The disc may take a while to assimilate due to quiet, unassuming nature: most of the songs are short and sparse, and the lo-fi recording intensifies its ethereal atmosphere. This is a wonderful album by a remarkable artist.
Music Hills

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Teenager - Teenager (Second Sun Recordings, 2007)

A1 Honey Oak (1:38)
A2 Poplar Drive Blues (4:08)
A3 Smoke Song (3:38)
A4 Her Hand In Mine (2:03)
A5 Waiting By The Library Stairs (4:09)
B1 Bedroom Blue (1:12)
B2 Main Street Parade (3:59)
B3 Wooden Steps Hum Along (2:23)
B4 Sawdust (3:21)
B5 Lazy Melodies (2:13)
B6 Flowerpot (2:06)

Compilation de compositions folk et blues lo fi par Brian Grainger...

Half an hour of lo-fi instrumental folk and blues guitar songs that Brian recorded as far back as 1997. All of it has been harvested from hours and hours of recordings in various states of wear, most of it on old tapes with little more than a year or a location written on the labels. The sound of Teenager largely reflects the bare-bones acoustic songwriting that has always been at the heart of all of Brian's music, yet nothing this raw and primitive has ever been released until now. The playing is untrained, but melodic and endearing in a very homemade way. Recommended listening for the onset of Autumn and slow aimless driving through the country. This is intimate music that has been steeped in the southern landscape and reaches deep from the fading histories of a poor southern boy.
Second Sun Recordings

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The Jewelled Antler Library Book 3 et 4 (Porter Records, 2008)

Book Three Wayside
3-1 Claypipe Wayside (1:38)
3-2 Claypipe Constant (1:50)
3-3 Claypipe Industry (The Provision Of Cairns) (1:37)
3-4 Claypipe The Math Of Random Fractures (3:59)
3-5 Claypipe Crouching (4:09)
3-6 Claypipe Midnight At Mangawhai Beach (Skeleton) (4:57)
3-7 Claypipe ~~~ (1:47)
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3-8 Loren Chasse Footpath 7 (1:13)
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The Well At Land's End
3-9 The Muons Green Man (4:03)
3-10 The Muons Space Man (4:22)
3-11 The Muons Flowers (3:33)
3-12 The Muons Land's End (5:32)
3-13 The Muons Fishes (2:14)
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3-14 Loren Chasse Footpath 8 (1:27)
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Fable
3-15 Thuja Fable 1 (9:39)
3-16 Thuja Fable 2 (12:17)
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3-17 Loren Chasse Footpath 9 (2:49)

Book Four
Harbinger Of Spring
4-1 Fursaxa Harbinger Of Spring (17:50)
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4-2 Loren Chasse Footpath 10 (2:26)
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Nuuhanihaka
4-3 Kemialliset Ystavat Kyy2 (4:01)
4-4 Kemialliset Ystavat Kyy1 (5:37)
4-5 Kemialliset Ystavat Kw (4:19)
4-6 Kemialliset Ystavat Kyy4 (2:35)
4-7 Kemialliset Ystavat Kx (3:13)
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4-8 Loren Chasse Footpath 11 (1:13)
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As Far As Anything, Nothing
4-9 The Ways Of God To Man Nothing (11:27)
4-10 The Ways Of God To Man Everything (7:18)
4-11 The Ways Of God To Man Anything (9:37)
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4-12 Loren Chasse Footpath 12 (1:52)

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Big Blood - Sew Your Wild Days Tour Vol. II (Dontrustheruin, 2007)

1. Haystack
2. She Said Nothing II
3. Rodin Deadpan
4. Frost Farm
5. Got Wings?
6. I'm So Glad
7. So Po Swing
8. Moon Perfume
9. 'Preese 'Preese
10. I've Been a Baby All My Life (I Hope You Don't Expect a Man)

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Big Blood - Sew Your Wild Days Tour Vol. I (Dontrustheruin, 2007)

1 Adversaries & Enemies
2 Vitamin C
3 Spit Shine
4 Don't Trust The Ruin II
5 Moonin' Away
6 Wrinkles & Ribbons
7 Song For Baltimore

Duo formé de Caleb Mulkerin et Colleen Kinsella (ex-Cerberus Shoal) qui nous livre là une indispensable folk psychédélique lo-fi (à noter l'excellente reprise de Vitamin C de Can)...

The ‘Sew Your Wild Days’ Tour discs share no more than any other pair of discs; in fact, Volume I may be the most fractured collection of songs found on any of the discs, beginning innocuously with the casual honky-tonk anthem “Adversaries & Enemies” – a familiar mix of lone, plucky banjo and Colleen like an army of voices – but breaking miraculously into a rendition of CAN’s “Vitamin C”, a brilliant reading with acoustic instruments of hand claps, accordion, and guitar; the first instance that Colleen’s delivery is anything less than confident (perhaps it’s the daunting task of replicating Suzuki), her doubled shriek/quiver is stabilized with slashes of distorted guitar which echo like a departing electric storm. Rather than return home, “Spit Shine” continues to push in new directions with a quickened rock’n’roll gait, sort of Meat Puppets, with sharp, high-end guitar leading a chugging army of weaving strings, cymbal percussion, and a possible singing saw; “Don’t Trust The Ruin II” introduces a new electronic element, with crackles and whispy streaks over a distorted loop of piano, Colleen’s sing-song a pleasantly different, free-form pop recital which indicates no continuity with the tune’s prequel. The unusually brief (1:55), unusually dancey “Moonin’ Away” features looped guitar riffage with a weird bass bounce, sliding into the Isaac Brock carnival of loops, “Wrinkles & Ribbons”. Cutting ahead to Volume II, the gauze of static on the recording “Haystack (a.p.)” materializes Colleen’s words as she begins “sitting in this bedroom/…/and all my dreams have turned to static” over a gentle acoustic guitar and the echo of her own voice. Another sequel, “She Said Nothing II” actually recalls the melody of the original, this time a wordless reissue with an added patina of cross-channel noise, then fading as Caleb does his best Uncle Charlie [R.I.P.] for the weird Sun City Girls pop song “Rodin Deadpan” (SGC again recalled ‘Torch of the Mystics’-style on the sardonic “Got Wings?”), and again switching attitudes with “Frost Farm”, a melancholy song of banjo and what is likely thumb-piano, Colleen’s vocal part somehow reminiscent the Brit-pop gloom of The Sundays, etc. “I’m So Glad” is a painfully brief Skip James cover sung by Colleen, funneled through an aging machine which washes all trace of era from her voice and lone guitar. A curveball, the John Fahey guitar of “Moon Perfume” comes out of no where like a David Grubbs instrumental, accented by recorded rainfall and traffic. In the end, “I’ve Been A Baby All My Life (I Hope You Don’t Expect A Man)” returns the thick atmospheric of the opening song, summarizing the album’s “roots” feel with a folksy guitar song only slightly-skewed by Caleb’s falsetto.

A special treat rather arbitrarily included with Volume I, ‘A Quiet Lousy Roar’ is a 4” x 4” comic book by artist Michael Connor inspired by Big Blood’s first CDr. The imagery is reminiscent of the Tony Millionaire fantasy ‘Billy Hazelnuts’, yet with that book’s dementia replaced by an adoring, almost fawning optimism inspired by the Kinsella-Mulkerin family. As with previous Big Blood CDrs, each printed disc comes packaged with handmade covers designed by Colleen, assorted art scrap, vellum set list, and family pictures. In my transparent efforts to gain honorary membership in this band, I exhaust myself; as I wait with baited breath, I simultaneously fear the day a new bundle of songs arrives which I will inevitably prostrate myself before (figuratively, of course). Such is my fate.

Animal Psi

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The Golden Hours - The Mystery & Her Crew (Not Not Fun Records, 2005)

Ships At Sea
Young Eyes
Shallow Breath
When Two Giants Are Forced Into The Hills
Drop Anchor

Une seule cassette à leur actif en 2005, The Golden Hours dont les cinq titres sonnent comme une pop lo-fi charmeuse, raconte avec optimisme des histoires de mort et de désespoir.... 100 copies réalisées.

April 12, 2006 - The Golden Hours is made up of long-time friends Raf Spielman, Eliza Sohn and Brian Yoder. The band met in high school, when Spielman and Yoder were in the same German class and Sohn played co-ed soccer with Spielman.

Yoder and Sohn started the group shortly after graduating from high school. Spielman joined first as a "guest musician," later sticking around for good. Their first cassette tape was recorded and mixed to 4-track in less than a day, using a "no-name brand computer microphone." Their first show was at Voodoo Doughnuts in Portland, Ore., a doughnut shop featuring Portland's "Smallest and Tallest Stage," which is about ten feet off the ground, above the bathroom.

Shortly after playing on the tiny, vertigo-inducing stage, The Golden Hours teamed up with Los Angeles' small, experimental Not Not Fun Records. Not Not Fun specializes in handcrafted, carefully decorated small-run releases. The Golden Hours released 100 glow-in-the-dark copies of their "mini-album," The Mystery and Her Crew, which sold out quickly. While Not Not Fun's reputation is centered on the L.A. noise scene, The Golden Hours play dreamily quaint pop songs.

With Sohn and Yoder living in Portland and Spielman studying in Providence, R.I., the individual Golden Hours write songs in their respective homes and plan on putting them to use when the band is together in Portland this summer.

NPR

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Christina Carter - Masque Femine (Many Breaths, 2008)

1		All Alone (1:59)
		Written By - Berlin
2		Ask Me Now (2:41)
		Written By - Hendricks
3		Centerpiece (2:45)
		Written By - Hendricks
4		Quiet Nights (3:43)
		Written By - Lees
5		End Of A Love Affair (2:39)
		Written By - Redding
6		Blues Are Brewing (3:00)
		Written By - Delange
7		Honey Moon (1:52)
		Written By - Unknown
8		Just Friends (1:35)
		Written By - Lewis
9		Last Night When We Were Young (2:09)
		Written By - Harburg
10		Looking Back (1:40)
		Written By - Otis
11		Love Letters In The Sand (0:35)
		Written By - Kenny
12		Memories Of You (1:13)
		Written By - Razaf
13		I Fall In Love Too Easily (1:35)
		Written By - Cahn
14		So Many Stars (3:19)
		Written By - Bergman
15		Some Other Spring (1:28)
		Written By - Herzog
16		Who Wants Love? (1:44)
		Written By - Kahn
17		You Will Be My Music (3:33)
		Written By - Raposo

Latest dazzling jewel in Christina Carters 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

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