In Gowan Ring x 4

"This is one of only a few recent releases that might genuinely be called inspired. As a songwriter and musician B'eirth is easily the equal of psychedelic folk legends Robin Williamson (Incredible String Band) or the late Nick Drake. Comparisons to virtually any other musicians exploring similar territory would simply not do this justice." - Joshua Buckley for TYR Journal


"A unique synthesis of folk, mediaeval and psychedelia that could only be In Gowan Ring. Listening to this album is like sliding into a warm bath infused with oils and perfumes. Mellow and beautiful, B'eirth's gentle voice and music are a delight. The lyrics are obscure, but still suggestive and a source of inspiration and contemplation for those who make the effort to listen to them." -RIK for Flux Europa

"There is a depth to these songs that is revealed only upon repeated listens. It is this natural gift for creating multi-layered compositions that is so attractive about In Gowan Ring's work in general and Hazel Steps through a Weathered Home in particular. Quite simply, one of the half dozen or so best releases of the year." -Jeff Penczak for FakeJazz.com


"It's been worth the wait everyone. This album is B's best work, and my words, plain as the farmboy I am, can not do it justice. B', you've mastered the art of song my friend. My heart swells and my head swirls! I'm in awe." - Tim Renner, Some Dark Holler


"In Gowan Ring's "The Glinting Spade" is as beautiful as any psych-folk album can be without completely materializing. "Hazel Steps Through A Weathered Home" as a whole, is a more stripped down effort. However, that doesn't really diminish the album's preternatural feel. The songs are much starker and darker than on "The Glinting Spade", but they also have more gravity and substance. It can easily ensnare the unsuspecting listener in its magical folds."-J. M. for Opuszine


"The music of In Gowan Ring is rather timeless, archaic perhaps but not from a clearly-defined period. The lyrics are rather introspective but most images evoked by the texts are quite clear. The songs are really a pleasure to listen to and the album as a (very coherent) whole is very moving, solemn and melancholic, but it does not make me sad - I get the feeling that spring must be near... Really a recommended album." - HD for FunProx.com


"Very poetic release of intimate mystic songs, more minimal as earlier releases, sparsely arranged, towards the core of an essential expression. The album has the richness and calmness of an introspective vision. The style is minimal without being repetitive with a rich sound through its poetic vision. The whole album is beautiful and recommended." -Gerald for Van Hett PSYCH FOLK

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-Glinting Spade (1999)
Though arguably the best In Gowan Ring experience is live -- B'eirth plays the medieval troubadour quite well and mysteriously, but doesn't forget humor or the fact that the Industrial Revolution has in fact happened -- The Glinting Spade is quite a lovely listen indeed. Anyone captivated by folk that either consciously explores its very early roots or the acid folk approach that psychedelia let in will find something to like here; B'eirth's approach suggests Edward Ka-Spel as much as it does the mythical figure of Ossian, say. His generally acoustic bent is more carefully seasoned by low-key experimentation throughout The Glinting Spade -- extended tones, strange echoes, and buried sounds expand the palette of his work to an intriguing degree, with "In the Dream of the Queen" being an especially striking example. That said, the choice of instruments tends to be tried and true -- everything from church organ to zither is credited, along with more esoteric choices of fire, chalice, bow and arrow, even oats! Quite what the role of everything is meant to be is unclear, but if the effect is to create a sense of a shadowy ritual out of time past, In Gowan Ring succeeds quite well. B'eirth isn't one to shout or scream -- what's the point, after all? -- and his style of singing is very, very restrained, avoiding the sometimes tiresome drama of similarly minded revivalists who apparently think they really are about to summon up the Horned King and the Great Hunt. Songs like "To Thrum a Glassy Stem" and "Bow Star" are quiet beauties, while the lusher approach of "Cipher's String on the Tree" suggests a great lord's minstrels performing a late-night service. ~ Ned Raggett, All Music Guide

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In Gowan Ring - From the land of little Osmonds, comes this nomadic bunch of sprites and pot-headed pixies, led by the enigmatic B'eirth and wielding such modern day contraptions as sackbut, cornetto, cittern, psaltry, zither, timbrel, whistles, bells, gongs and tons of other weird sounding shit too numerous to mention. Epic lengthed drones are nestled comfortably amidst some of the finest acid/psych/wyrdfolk on this (or any other) planet.

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-Exists & Entrances vol. 1
"Am I the only one here who has these moments where you've fallen asleep in the chair, and when you "wake up" you feel like you've got no control over your body but you can watch while your limbs move & haul you around the room and? Really? Well anyway that's what the finer moments of this disc feel like ... as the tree ears sprout from between my toes and I keep whispering, "it's only a cd-r, it's only a cd-r". "

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"The songs have a somber feel, as though the innkeeper let the lyre player have a little too much mead, and now the whole room is treated to his many laments on nature and love." -Brainwashed

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"The American neo-hippies from In Gowan Ring produced a fragile and melodic atmosphere. Pantheistic odes to the forgotten beauty of nature – the great in the small. " -Medusa's Head

website

Love Charms [1994]

The Glinting Spade [1999]

Flower Moon [2005]

Time Is a Spiral [2007]

"the seer and the seen"

Rachel Goswell

Rachel Goswell (born May 16, 1971 in Fareham, England) is a singer-songwriter who was a vocalist with shoegazing pioneers Slowdive. Following Slowdive's dissolution, Goswell joined Slowdive alumni Neil Halstead and Ian McCutcheon to form Mojave 3, an indie pop/dream pop outfit. This new band also included Simon Rowe (of Chapterhouse fame) and Alan Forrester.

The year 2004 saw Goswell release solo recordings with co-writer Joe Light and producer David Naughton. Nine months after Mojave 3 released Spoon and Rafter, she released The Sleep Shelter EP. Waves Are Universal, her first full-length recording, appeared a month later. In 2005, a limited edition remix 12" (now available as a download) entitled Coastline / Plucked was issued. This recording, released on Valentine's Day, features two mixes apiece from The Earlies and Ulrich Schnauss.

Goswell was married to Cuba's Christopher Andrews from 1994 until 2000.

While on tour with Slowdive in 1993, one of her eardrums burst, and it has troubled her ever since, in the form of persistent infections, partial deafness (which she employs a hearing aid to correct) and ataxia. This has prevented her from performing on occasion, and she was absent from the last Mojave 3 album, 2006's 'Puzzles Like You'.

wiki.

Waves Are Universal [2004]

EP 02 - Coastline Plucked [2005]

EP 01 - The Sleep Shelter [2004]

Mojave 3 - Some Kinda Angel

P a j o

David Pajo is an American alternative rock musician. He has, however, played a wide variety of music, loosely fitting into several other genres: hardcore, math-rock, post-rock, electronica, folk, and even indie-pop. Though a multi-instrumentalist (playing guitar, bass, banjo, drums, and possibly many more instruments), he is best known for his guitar work.

A native of Louisville, Kentucky, he played with three Louisville hardcore and hardcore-inflected bands in his early career. He got his start as guitarist for Maurice, but he first recorded with Solution Unknown. He rose to prominence, however, for work with the influential post-rock band Slint. Since its breakup, he has seldom held positions in other bands for very long, moving from one to the other quite often. As a result he has contributed to many lineups, playing and recording with Will Oldham, The For Carnation, Tortoise, Stereolab, Royal Trux, King Kong, Bush League, Zwan, and Peggy Honeywell.

He has also released music as a solo artist using various monikers, as Aerial M, M, and most notably, Papa M. Among his many 7" and splits with various bands, he has released (as Aerial M) 1997's Aerial M, and (as Papa M) 1999's Live from a Shark Cage, 2001's Whatever, Mortal, and 2003's Hole of Burning Alms.

In February and March 2005 he joined his old friends from Slint, Britt Walford and Brian McMahan, for a reunion tour, and in April released his first solo album not bearing a pseudonym, simply entitled Pajo. The follow up to Pajo, entitled 1968, was released in August 2006.

Around the middle of 2005, he helped to form the band Dead Child, with Todd Cook (from Shipping News, Retsin, The For Carnation, and Aerial M—and who also played guitar on the 2005 Slint reunion tour), Michael McMahan (from The For Carnation, Starkiller, and Phantom Family Halo—and who also joined Slint on the reunion tour), and Tony Bailey (from Anomoanon, The Party Girls, Verktum, and Aerial M).

wiki.

Audrey & Pajo [2006]

1968 [2006]

David Pajo [2005]

papa m - Krusty

Carrie Yury (feat. Will and Paul Oldham, Colin Gagon, and Richard Schuler) Mutter [2005]

Back in June, the California-based photographer and Dolce Volante alum Carrie Yury displayed 700 free copies of her latest solo outing, the Mutter EP, in light-box towers at LA Design Center, and the exhibition itself seems to serve as an interesting bit of context to the incredibly engaging six-song disc. The installation's five CD towers are all clean, well-lighted lines, the mechanical tones of blacks and whites complemented by the blank steel-gray slate of the shrink-wrapped CD cover, a possible homage to the Table of the Elements label. In photographs posted on Yury's website, this cold and almost sterile precision is amplified by an absence of viewers and participants. Except for a lone woman in black coat and jeans passing through one frame, the displayed discs exist as pieces of art without audience, documents forged without the smudged and imperfect wonder of human fingerprints. The disc couldn't be more the opposite.

Recorded in Shelbyville, Kentucky in May, the disc is tender and fragile in the most human of ways — a 23-minute collection of folk-pop gems that are as a beautiful as they are beautifully understated. Far from the cold and well-plotted precision of the LA Design Center installation, the disc is warm and disarming and clearly benefits from the comforting charms of contributors Will and Paul Oldham, Colin Gagon, and Richard Schuler. While Schuler's able drum work may be best known from King Kong and the early days of Louisville punk heroes Squirrel Bait, it's the musical context brought to the table by Gagon and the Oldhams that may be most identifiable by listeners, a colloquial kind of folk-pop that may have defined itself best on post-Palace outings like Joya or Ease Down The Road.

source

Mutter [2005]

Photography : (My) Performance Anxiety

Late last year I did a performance piece with three other women. We danced around on stage wearing dirndls, doing the Chicken Dance, then peed on stage. The only way I got the courage to perform was by doing the whole thing wearing an animal mask. I was traumatized by the experience, not least because I was the only one of the four dancers who DIDN’T get performance anxiety (i.e. I was the only one who was able to pee; the other women just squatted in vain).

The series of drawings “(My) Performance Anxiety” is about my conflicted relationship to performance art: on the one hand, it terrifies me (both as performer and as spectator), and on the other, I have an incredible amount of respect for and am inspired by performance artists. In the drawings I project my shame and anxiety about performance art on to the images of famous feminist performance artists by placing animal masks on their faces. The simple, gestural drawings are a way of expressing or working through both my reverence for the artists I depict, and my feelings of personal inadequacy for not being brave enough to perform without wearing a mask. The colorful, playful mask neutralizes or makes comical work that, in its original context, was revolutionary, confrontational, and irreverent, thereby underscoring the importance of the women’s bare faces encountering and interacting with the audience.

For more images please Click Here.

ENJOY!

Elizabeth Anka Vajagic

Elizabeth Anka Vajagic is a singer and guitarist who was born in Montreal, Canada. She "writesraw, uncompromising gothic folk/blues music with modern dissonances and timeless catharsesand has been unleashing her devastating voice in chillingly controlled doses around town for a few years now."

lastfm.

"A la infinita y sombría pulsación eléctrica saludan brotes temblorosos de la sal mojada en su cuerpo de mujer elevándose por túneles en contraste magnético universal, el sonido de lados super emotivo, durante un lapso delimitado, Elizabeth Anka Vajagic dibuja formulas de Post Rock violeta, mientras sostiene en su mano plantas alucinógenas para esparcirlas al publico adormesido, el viaje de los agudos valores estimados en conciencia sin algún sentido anteriormente subrayado, el suelo grisáceo se camufló con los aceites que ahora generan en grandes cantidades para detener el invierno, para olvidar, o para darle un rumbo humano, el material es usted, deje que ella le llame antes ysabrá caer al profundo timbal para anunciar la partida al mar, de las olas, con todo lo necesario para sobrevivir al fin."

Stand With The Stillness Of This Day [2004]

Nostalgia Pain Ep [2005]

ENJOY!

Monade: Socialisme ou Barbarie / A Few Steps More / Monstre Cosmic [2003 / 2005 / 2008]

One of Stereolab's many spin-offs and side projects, Monade (pronounced mon-ard) originally featured Laetitia Sadier and Pram's Rosie Cuckston. The duo began collaborating in the mid-'90s, and Sadier recorded the first Monade tracks in 1996 at Pram's studio, with Cuckston playing and also helping to engineer the session. Some of these tracks were released by Duophonic as the Sunrise Telling and Witch Hazel/Ode to a Keyring singles. Sadier continued to record at Stereolab's own studio without Cuckston, and one of these tracks, "Cache Cache," ended up as a B-side on Stereolab's Calimero single. In between her Stereolab duties, Sadier completed enough material for Monade's debut album, Socialisme Ou Barbarie: The Bedroom Recordings, which was released by Duophonic in Europe and by Drag City in the U.S. in spring 2003. For Monade's second album A Few Steps More, the band moved to Too Pure and expanded to include bassist/vocalist Marie Merlet, keyboardist Nicolas Etienne and drummer Xavier Chabellard. Monstre Cosmic arrived in 2008 and featured collaborations with the Bordeaux Conservatoire and the Toulousse-based group Momotte.

www.allmusic.com

Monstre Cosmic [2008]

A Few Steps More [2005]

Socialisme ou Barbarie [2003]

Monade au Divan du Monde le 21 février 2008

Sufjan Stevens: Illinois [2005]

Like the self-proclaimed "Spiderman" who climbed Chicago's Sears Tower with no harness, Sufjan Stevens scales dusty prairies, steel factories, and two hundred years of history in the second installment of his 50 State Project, "ILLINOIS", a 22-track anthematic tone poem to The Prairie State.

An engrossing musical road trip, "Illinois" takes you through ghost towns, grain mills, hospital rooms, and the City of Broad Shoulders, with guest appearances by a poet, a president, a serial murderer, UFOs, Superman, the goat that cursed the Cubs, and Decatur's famous Chickenmobile. Sufjan weaves variegated musical styles (jazz, funk, pop, folk, and Rodgers and Hammerstein-like flourishes) and the textures of 25 instruments into a tapestry of persons and places famous, infamous, iconic and anonymous. Invoking the muse of poet Carl Sandburg, "Illinois" ushers in trumpets on parade, string quartets, female choruses and ambient piano scales arranged around Stevens' emerging falsetto.

ashtmatic kitty records

Illinois [2005] (part1/part2)

Sufjan Stevens- Chicago

1-Speed Bike - Droopy Butt Begone! / Someone Told me Life Gets Easier In Your 50's [2000-2005]

1-Speed Bike is the DJ and mobile soundsystem alter-ego of Aidan Girt, drummer for Montreal-based bands Exhaust and Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Making his first appearance remixing tracks on an ancient 12-bit AKAI sampler for Exhaust’s debut record, 1-Speed Bike went on to build a large sample bank sourced from his own live drumming and made a full-length album (with full 16-bit resolution) for Constellation in 2000. He has also moshed things up at numerous street actions and benefits over the years, and has gone on to release a series of records on Broklyn Beats. Aidan was a member of the Montreal Anarchist Bookstore collective and lived in Amsterdam for a while before settling into a cabin in the woods outside Montreal, where he continues to speed things up and slow things down at his home studio.

cstrecords

Someone Told me Life Gets Easier In Your 50's [2005]

Droopy Butt Begone! [2000]

1-Speed Bike - Easy E White House Dinner Menu Problem

Sir Richard Bishop - Improvika / Fingering the Devil (Special Edition) / While My Guitar Violently Bleeds [2005-2007]

IMPROVIKA (CD - Locust Music, 2004. LP Issued by Bo Weavil, 2005)
"The nine compositions of “Improvika” are influenced by folk music of all corners of the world with the music of India and the Middle East playing particularly prominent roles. This is not, however, post-modern pastiche or multicultural collage. Quite the contrary, it is something that synthesizes all these disparate elements into something wholly new. Bishop has a somewhat improvisational rhythmic language that is all his own as well as a compositional sense that (even if these pieces are, in fact, improvisations as the title might suggest) carries this album easily through its 45 minute running time." - Nick Hennies (Foxy Digitalis)

FINGERING THE DEVIL (CD/LP - Southern Records, UK, 2006)
"Bishop’s seamless blend of gypsy jazz and flamenco guitar embraces the duality of nomadic life, its exuberance and world-weariness. Overall Bishop’s pace is slightly slower here than on his previous full length "Improvika" except on the album’s galloping closer “Howrah Station.” In “Dance of the Lotus Eaters,” he scatters his notes sparingly in sections and coaxes the steady growth of melodies from single chords, rather than frantic runs across the fret board. Bishop also embraces these gentle melodies more fully, shying away from the experimental atonality of "Improvika"’s “Cryptonymous.” This release is full of patience and powerful lyricism." - Jamie Townsend (Foxy Digitalis)

WHILE MY GUITAR VIOLENTLY BLEEDS (LP/CD - Locust Music, 2007)
"The three long meditations that make up this release are violent in the sense of deep passion. For Bishop, these songs are a form of prayer, and as such are as deeply felt an acoustic set as you are likely to hear, one that does not fall into the traps of the pseudo-spiritual, but which maintains an emotional peak throughout. “Zurvan” is the most quiet of the set, an almost traditional blues-based instrumental that still explores some mighty deft territory, both musically and emotionally. It begins the record by reassuring the listener that s/he will be in good hands. “Smashana” dips into a more layered drone, with aspects of psych that help to deepen the piece, and to build off the first song. The real meat is the final, 25+ minute “Mahavidya,” which explores both fretboard and soul, and takes the drone of “Smashana” toward raga, and toward a mystic conclusion to the set." - Dave Segal (OC Weekly)

Sir Richard Bishop | By Appointment To Her Majesty, The Queen

While My Guitar Violently Bleeds [2007]

Fingering the Devil (Special Edition) [2005]

Improvika [2005]

Sir Richard Bishop Torch of the Mystics

My Country of Illusion - American Dreamlife [2005]

My Country of Illusion is a project of Barnmaster Scud and Doctor Tiki.
The two have collaborated for over ten years playing experimental psychedelic "jambient" sounds at various strange and obscure locations in New Mexico and galaxies far, far away. My Country of Illusion's name derives from Disney's Mexican release of Alice in Wonderland, "Alicia en el pais de ilusion." The name reflects the illusory nature of reality experienced by the artists, and also is a commentary on the dream world in which the sounds and samples from their music emanate.

The music of My Country of Illusion is based on guitar improvisation but is deconstructed and reconstructed through an intuitive process of sampling and sequencing. Many of the cuts on American Dream Life are live recordings, while others are looped and reassembled dispatches from the harmonic underworld and Goodwill record bins. Voices and thoughts stream in and out of the music as if one were floating through an electronic bardo, drifting through the grid like phantasms. This is the afterlife of the American Dream, the world of the pop undead, mixed
jambient soundbites from the collective sonic mind.

BIO:

Doctor Tiki
AKA
Cryptomaga
Antonio López

The curious path that has brought López to the current sonic offerings can be traced back to his days early in the 1980s during LA's punk underground. In high school he co-founded the LA punk fanzine, Ink Disease, and continued to write about music for national magazines.
López is a self-trained musician who's floated in the alternative music scene for over 20 years. While in college López fronted a post-punk group, Beef Church, which gigged around the Bay Area until they disbanded in 1989. For over ten years López focused on a career in journalism and media, but continued to play and record music, collaborating under the name El Tiki. In addition to playing music, he currently works with digital video and teaches media literacy and video production to Native American high schoolers. He also makes films.

Official selections in the Free Radio HDTS; High Desert Test Sites 4 at High Desert Test Sites, Joshua Tree, CA; and Strange Animals at L.A.C.E., Los Angeles, CA. 2004:
“Radio Alchemist”
“AM Clock Radio Jam”
"Temple"

BARNMASTER SCUD AKA
Scud Mandrill Scott Randolph

Scud has been an experimental musician for more than 20 years living first in San Francisco then in New Mexico. He has also contributed Scudtoon drawings and cover art for the xines BraveEar & Bananafish, as well as the album covers for Vomit Launch.

Discography:
The Whitefronts - Roast Belief 1985 Bogden Records
The Whitefronts - Burl Slab 1986 Bogden Records
The Whitefronts - Mamo WaVes 1987 Bogden/Pitch a Tent
Emerson Lake and Cheesedoodle 1987 Bananafish/Tedium House
(w/Seymour Glass, Barbara Manning & Greg Freeman)
Freight Brain - Act Natural 1991 Dr I
Lords of Howling - Seeing the Elephant 1997 Discobolus
Dang Head - Nounsville 1999 Discobolus
Art of Flying - Galdlit (fossil fish) 2001 Cochon Records

myspace

American Dreamlife [2005]

My Country of Illusion- OBE