Christina Carter - Original Darkness / Texas Working Blues [2008]

Christina Carter was born in the bayou city of Houston, Texas in November of 1968, and co-founded the group Charalambides there in December of 1991. Ever since then, she has deeply mined her own vein of sound-as-music with voice, guitar (both electric and acoustic), piano, and keys. For the past several years, Christina has utilized extended improvisational guitar passages within and without song-medley structures; re-contextualized certain Charalambides songs within the spare single guitar/voice form that birthed much of the group's music; and recently, investigated 'the song' as a thing unto itself, specifically concentrating on 'the word'- both in her own lyric writing and her interpretions of the work of other lyricists.

In addition to performing extensively in the US, UK and Europe as a solo artist, Christina has played and recorded in various groups and duos with Black Forest/Black Sea, Maria Chavez (as Weird Cookie), Loren Connors, Chris Corsano, Dredd Foole, Paul Flaherty, Gown (as The Bastard Wing), Shawn David McMillen, and Thurston Moore. She is also a permanent member of Babes On The Loose, Hot Assphalt, Scorces (with Heather Leigh Murray), Scorpiio Flower, Soft Hair, and Space(space)Child (a Spirit tribute band with Jessi Leigh Swenson).

Concurrent with her work as a musician, Christina has expanded her involvement in writing and visual art. Her poetry has been published by Digitalis Industries, The Ecstatic Peace Poetry Journal, Glass Eye, and Slow Toe Press. In 2007, her art piece Forever 21 appeared at Salon Mijangos in San Antonio, Texas as part of a concert/exhibit featuring Tom Carter, Warmer Milks, and Tetuzi Akiyama. Forever 21 was a labor of love and destruction- six of her handwritten diaries cut up painstakingly with scissors into miniscule pieces, which then filled a medium size yellow plastic shopping bag.

Christina currently resides in Austin, Texas. Her latest albums are the Charalambides CD Likeness (Kranky), the solo CDR Masque Femine (Many Breaths), and the solo CS Texas Blues Working (Blackest Rainbow). Her forthcoming releases are the solo CD Original Darkness (Kranky), The Bastard Wing CD To Contain Love (Ultra Hard Gel) which will both be released in the Fall of 2008, and the Scorces LP I Turn Into You (Not Not Fun) which will be released in July 2008. Also in 2008 she will publish Because Of Her In A Familiar Place (Many Breaths), a book of lyrics, poems and drawings.

manybreaths

Original Darkness [2008]

Texas Working Blues [2008] (part1/part2)

CHRISTINA CARTER - LIVE AT UPSET THE RHYTHM

Charalambides

To say that the words "unique" and "singular" are over-used in describing music is to state the obvious. To apply these words to the sounds created by the various duo/trio configurations of the Texas group Charalambides over the last decade plus would be understatement. To be sure there are numerous antecedents to their music; to deny this of any artist's work would be akin to saying that they are deaf. But they have surely broken new ground in the primitive/folk/mystic/improv/psych valley in which they toil. As Marcus Boon wrote in The Wire; "...here is a truly 21st century experimental ethnic music that explores quietness and stasis... in the same way that musicians in the second half of the 20th century discovered amplification, noise and speed."

Originally a duo comprised of Tom Carter (who had been playing guitar in the Houston grunt-psych band The Mike Gunn) and Christina Carter, Charalambides released a cassette called Our Bed Is Green on their own Wholly Other label in 1992 (later reissued on CD and double LP). The two Carters showed a firm grasp on the haunting nature of American blues and country, as well as a mastery of tape manipulation, a disregard for genre boundaries, and a marked tendency towards vertically stacked guitar drone. A full length album called Union was released by the Siltbreeze label, and many other releases followed, both as a duo and trio (first with Jason Bill, and later with pedal steel player Heather Leigh Murray). Although better known as a trio through their various tours with both Heather and Jason, Tom and Christina have returned to concentrating on their duo work in more recent years, fusing introspective, open-ended, and often spacious song structures with blasts of feedback and explosive sound often startling to fans familiar only with the band's deceptively low-key reputation.

In 2005, Tom and Christina met in California to record the tracks for their new kranky CD, A Vintage Burden. Besides commemorating the return to the duo format, the album represents a culmination of the threads of repetition and psychedelic song that run through much of the duo's work Although partially an homage to the clarity and ambience of 60s and 70s production and songwriting, the album retains the spook, space and mystery of even their most extreme releases: "Tom and Christina Carter here again showcase their seemingly innate ability to lock into a shared orbit across the darkening sky, their luminous drift scaled down to its essential, irreducible core." (quote from Pitchfork).

Tom and Christina are planning several tours of varying durations through the rest of 2006 and the beginning of 2007 (and beyond). Despite being a duo, their live sound achieves an energy and ferocity not often glimpsed on their releases, while maintaining the hissing delicacy of their most haunting studio work.

Christina Carter: electric guitar, acoustic guitar, voice
Tom Carter: electric guitar, lap steel guitar, acoustic guitar

kranky


























Album Discography:


01 - Our Bed is Green [1992] (part1/part2)
02 - Union [1993]
03 - Market Square [1995] (part1/part2)
04 - Historic 6th Ward [1996] (part1/part2)
05 - Charalambides [1997] (part1/part2)
06 - Houston [1998]
07 - Internal Eternal [1999]
08 - Branches [2001]
09 - CHT [2002]
10 - In Cr Ea Se [2002] (part1/part2)
11 - Live Hand Held [2002]
12 - Unknown Spin [2003]
13 - Joy Shapes [2006] (part1/part2)
14 - Strangle the Wretched Heavens [2006]
15 - Dead/Live [2006]
16 - A Vintage Burden [2006]
17 - Emerald Message [2006]
18 - Electricity Ghost [2007]
19 - Likeness [2007]
20 - Rose Thron [2008]


Brainwashed.com: The Eye - Charalambides (1 of 3)

Christina Carter - Masque Femine [2008]

Singings, a voice that flows in the shore of a blue lake, every wave loads his feminine melodies in the soul the one who listens to them, I suggest him to travel, only you for the old ways of stone and land, surrounded from big trees up, in the mountain stop introspection when small parts of guitar are glimpsed in mysterious phrases those that with quality they it guide, the way continues, and already it gets dark, alone continue, do not return until this assurance of his your relief, this she out of the enormous greed of the corporations, they work out united that is time to think a respite.

Cantos, una voz que fluye en la orilla de un lago azul, cada ola carga sus melodías femeninas en el alma de quien las escuche, le sugiero viajar, solo usted por los caminos viejos de piedra y tierra, rodeado de grandes arboles hacia arriba, en la montaña detengáis introspección cuando pequeñas partes de guitarra se vislumbren en frases misteriosas las que con cualidad lo guían, el camino sigue, y ya se oscurece, solo prosiga, no vuelva hasta que este seguro de su alivio, ella esta fuera de la enorme codicia de las corporaciones, salgan juntos que es hora de tomarse un respiro.

Christina Carter first joined Tom Carter and Kyle Silfer in an unnamed trio in 1991 that became a duo called Charalambides . That group went on to become a singular entity that has constantly defined itself by gripping music and an operation outside the parameters of the music industry. Beginning with self-released cassettes, then moving on to the Siltbreeze label in 1993, Charalambides garnered attention from those in the know with their unique mix of noise, gospel, folk and blues.

Jon Dale wrote in Signal to Noise that

"For more than a decade, the trio have continually re-defined an attitude towards music-making that's about capturing the emotional and spiritual intensities of the moment, working from within skeletal song-forms and expanding outward through improvisational tactics and psychedelic sound-mapping to reach an ideosyncratic space of pure heart-to-heart communication."

Operating their own label, Wholly Other, Tom and Christina Carter have released music by themselves, Charalambides as well as friends' bands and collaborative efforts. Wholly Other utilizes short run CD-R releases to capture the spontaneity of live and improvised music-making and to keep inventory at a minimum and flexibilty at a maximum.

As Christina told Word in April 2004;

"We developed the belief that it is a good thing to know how to take care of things yourself, take initiative, know the whole process from beginning to end... In our minds the short runs weren't so short. When we were gettings CDs and CDRs made for us by an outside manufacturing place we were making enough to sell through in a good amount of time. Then we could move on to the next release without having a bunch of extra copies sitting around."

Christina had worked with Heather Leigh Murray in a duo called Scorces, and by 2000 Murray had joined Charalambides for a tour and eventually a series of recordings that would culminate in the Joy Shapes album released by kranky in spring 2004. Christina Carter had worked on numerous solo recordings, using guitar and voice recorded in the simplest manner possible. Living Contact is a compendium of those self-recordings made between breaks in Charalambides activity. Originally released in an edition of 100 CDRs by Wholly Other, this stunning recording is being released by kranky as a part of the reissues program that includes Tom Carter's Monument CD and the Charalambides Unknown Spin album. Living Contact is more than a history lesson or an exercise to see what happens when Christina is subtracted from the group setting. The acoustic guitar playing and singing stand on their own as riveting music. Placed directly in front of the listener, this music stands on its own.

Christina Carter and Tom Carter are no longer married and live on the east and west coasts, respectively. Heather Leigh Murray is living in Scotland. Charalambides continues as the duo of Christina and Tom and the group will be playing out and recording together in the future. Christina's plans for late 2004 and early 2005 include a European tour with Black Forest/ Black Sea, a CD-R on the Irish Deserted Village label, a cassette release on the Finnish Invited Out imprint, a split release with the Italian band My Cat is an Alien and books of poetry on Slow Toe Press from Cleveland and a self-released book of poetry called Many Breaths.

kranky titles available
Electrice
Living Contact

see also
Charalambides - Our Bed Is Green
Charalambides - Joy Shapes
Charalambides - Unknown Spin

christina carter

Masque Femine [2008]

Christina Carter (Madonia): Live at Psychotropic Zone