David Grubbs - An Optimist Notes the Dusk [2008]

David Grubbs (born September 21, 1967), guitarist, pianist, and vocalist, was a founding member of Squirrel Bait, Bastro, and Gastr del Sol. He has also played in The Red Krayola and The Wingdale Community Singers.

Squirrel Bait was a 1980s Louisville, Kentucky punk rock group that released a 12" EP and an album on Homestead Records. Grubbs's next group was Bastro, which released two albums on Homestead. In 1991 Bastro morphed into the more avant-garde Gastr del Sol. This project soon became essentially a partnership between Grubbs and Jim O'Rourke. The albums released by the duo (including Crookt, Crackt, or Fly, Upgrade & Afterlife, and Camoufleur) have been described as a visionary and theoretical deconstruction of the songwriting process.[citation needed]

Since the partnership's breakup in 1997, Grubbs has released numerous solo and collaborative records, mostly on the Drag City label. In 2000, his album The Spectrum Between was named “Album of the Year” in the London Sunday Times. He operates his own label, Blue Chopsticks, which has released both new and archival recordings from Luc Ferrari, Derek Bailey and Noël Akchoté, Workshop, Van Oehlen, and Mats Gustafsson. He has appeared on recordings by Tony Conrad, Matmos, Palace Music, Pauline Oliveros, and many more. Grubbs is also known for his collaborations with writers Susan Howe, Rick Moody, and Kenneth Goldsmith as well as with visual artists including Anthony McCall, Angela Bulloch, Stephen Prina, and Cosima von Bonin.

Grubbs's soundtrack work includes music with Matmos for Thierry Jousse’s feature film Les Invisibles. He has composed the soundtracks for Angela Bulloch’s installations Z Point and Horizontal Technicolour, and Hybrid Song Box.4, and his music appears in two installations by Doug Aitken. Grubbs’s sound installation “Between a Raven and a Writing Desk” was included in the 1999 group exhibition “Elysian Fields” at the Centre Pompidou. Grubbs has also contributed music to the Red Krayola’s soundtrack to Norman and Bruce Yonemoto’s film Japan in Paris in LA as well as to Augusto Contento's film Strade Trasparenti, Braden King and Laura Moya’s film Dutch Harbor: Where the Sea Breaks its Back, and John Boskovich’s film North. Music by Gastr del Sol appears in the P.B.S. television series The United States of Poetry, Hal Hartley’s film The Book of Life, and Doug Aitken’s film The Diamond Sea. Grubbs composed music for Karl Bruckmaier’s radio adaptation of Peter Weiss’s Die Ästhetik des Widerstands, which was named “Hoerbuch des Jahres 2007” (Audio Book of the Year) by Hessischer Rundfunk.

From 1997-99, David Grubbs was a part-time instructor in the Liberal Arts and Sound departments at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is currently an assistant professor of Radio and Sound Art at Brooklyn College, CUNY, and director of Brooklyn College’s graduate programs in Performance and Interactive Media Arts (PIMA). Grubbs received a Ph.D. in English from the University of Chicago. His criticism has appeared in Conjunctions, Bookforum, Texte zur Kunst, and Purple, and from 1999-2007 he regularly contributed music criticism to the Munich newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung.

David participated as drummer 23 in the Boredoms 77 Boadrum performance which occurred on July 7th, 2007 at the Empire-Fulton Ferry State Park in Brooklyn, New York.

Grubbs lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Cathy Bowman, and their son Emmett Bowman-Grubbs.

wiki.

An Optimist Notes the Dusk [2008]

David Grubbs - The neophyte (Tanned Tin 2006)

Maserati - Inventions Remixes [2008]

Inventions Remixes begins with Thee Loving Hand (Tim Goldsworthy of The DFA, Hercules and Love Affair) stripping "The World Outside" to almost nothing, rebuilding it as a vintage European disco track from the ground up. Starting with a steady, far-off kick drum and a rogue, in-your-face hi hat, the song's seemingly disparate parts eventually lock into the kind of dirty disco that has made Goldsworthy a club legend. Equally club-friendly, !!!'s Justin Van Der Volgen brushes away the grit of the original "Inventions" and painstakingly buffs it to a shine as slick as black ice. The side-long trance mix maintains the sweaty atmosphere of the original, but removes the top-down drive in favor of a midnight jog. Strictly limited to a one-time pressing of 1,000 copies, Inventions Remixes is both an addendum to the successful reboot of Inventions For The New Season, as well as a testament to the broad spectrum of influences that flow in and out of Maserati's music.

TRACK LISTING :

1. The World Outside (Thee Loving Hand Remix)
2. Inventions (Justin Van Der Volgen's "Enjoy Your Prog" Remix)

Temporary Residence Limited

Inventions Remixes [2008]

Maserati "Inventions"

Windy & Carl - Songs For The Broken Hearted [2008]

songs for the broken hearted

Cover Imagethis is an album about love. everyone has known love, and everyone has known loss. love is not just about warm fuzzy feelings, although that would be the part people say they like the best. and in any span of time, love changes and means different things to different people.

i never thought this would be an album. we started these recordings the same weekend i started I Hate People. it was a dark time, and when the tapes were taken off the reels i really thought that was the end of them. they were just going to sit and rot away somewhere.

but between christmas and new year of 2007, carl pulled them out and decided to finish them. he became obsessed with them somehow, i suppose in much the same way i had become obbsessed with finishing my own album earlier in the year. he worked every night for weeks, and as i wandered around the house i heard those songs everytime they played. and some of them made me cry, everytime. they sounded sad to me, because they were started in such a sad time. carl kept talking about wanting to have a new record out for 2008, and i told him only if it was named Songs For The Broken Hearted. he said fine, he just wanted it done.

so in early 2008 he gave me a cdr with what he felt were finished tracks, and asked me to write words for them. i had no ideas, i just kept crying when they were on. it really did not seem important to me to get them done because they only reminded me of things..........and then, one night, i started writing. i wrote words for 4 or 5 songs that night, and started singing the next evening. and we did rough mixes that i listened to for a week or so, and then i pulled out my journals, the gang of them that i had been filling since the fall of 2007, and i picked a few pieces that seemed like they would go with the music. i rerecorded some of the tracks with the new words, and resang some vocals i thought could be better. and the songs went from being all sad to being a reflection of how love works. how we are affected - by ourselves and others. how love makes you swoon and lonliness makes you cry. how when you love someone in this world you love them no matter where they are, and the connections you feel to and with them. love can make you blind, both when things are good and when they are not, and how do you react to being blind? what choices do you make and how do they change the world around you............

source

Songs For The Broken Hearted [2008]

Undercurrent

Bardo Pond - 4.3.06 [2006] / Bardo Pond & Pre - Split 10" [2007]

Bardo Pond live @ The Maze, Nottingham. Thursday 30th November 2006.

For years, I compared Bardo Pond to Sonic Youth, for anyone who had either never heard them or heard any of the lesser known bands similar to them, only because Sonic Youth is the most famous band that sounds kind of like Bardo Pond. The second comparison would be to My Bloody Valentine. But, over the years, Bardo's sound has evolved, and these comparisons are no longer accurate. Nowadays, to be precise, one must use references from all spectrums of rock, and even avant garde jazz, to describe the full fuzz of Bardo Pond.

Trying to use no comparisons at all, imagine the sound of an electrified hummingbird: sometimes there will be motion, with twists and turns in their songs; other times, the sound is feverishly kept, hovering in place. Bardo Pond creates an intense wall of sound that you expect to break through your skin, but, instead, it just hums and buzzes all over you.

source

Bardo Pond & Pre - Split 10" [2007]

4.3.06 [2006]

Tommy Gun Angel from Album: Lapsed

Clear Horizon [2003]

Jessica Bailiff has recorded and released three solo recordings on kranky. David Pearce lives the U.K. and spent most of the 90s in a band whose name he'd just as soon not mention. If the words "rural psychedelia" mean anything to you; you can probably figure out what band. Or, as Jon Dale wrote in Signal to Noise about the debut Clear Horizon release; "If the album in toto brings a few memory shards forward in your mind, so be it."

Clear Horizon was recorded over the course of two years, as Bailiff and Pearce exchanged tapes across the Atlantic. Each member contributed vocals and guitars and layers of effects, piano and percussion gradually accumulated during the recording process. The debut, self-titled CD/LP was released in November, 2003. Since then Bailiff and Pearce have met in England to record face-to-face. The process, so far, has involved songwriting and improvisation.

kranky

Clear Horizon [2003]

jessica bailiff - mary

Laika - Silver Apples of the Moon [1994]

Producer: Not Credited, Engineer: Margaret Fiedler & Guy Fixsen, Tracks: Sugar Daddy; Marimba Song; Let Me Sleep; Itchy & Scratchy; Coming Down Glass; If You Miss; 44 Robbers; Red River; Honey in Heat; Thomas; Spider Happy Hour.

Laika are a really cool band on the Too Pure label. Too Pure releases are now being distributed in the U.S. by American Recordings. Laika are extremely hard to pigeonhole. They manage to stand many styles on their respective ears and twist them in such a fashion as to fit their vision. Their vision is very hard to describe in words. They are kind of like a pop-industrial/ambient/neo-techno group that might sound like a wispier PJ Harvey fronting Nine Inch Nails with a less-dance-able Deee-Lite providing the groove bed. This could be the coolest album you hear for a long while. Nifty shit!

Silver Apples of the Moon [1994]

Piano Instrumental for the Itchy & Scratchy Show - Simpsons

Tom Carter & Christian Kiefer - A Rather Solemn Promise / From The Great American Songbook [2007/2008]

From The Great American Songbook CD

Preservation sure now how to package their releases: this second collaboration between Charalambides' Tom Carter and Christian Keefer comes housed in a lovely fold-out sleeve housing thick card inserts with liner notes for each song as penned by some of the avant-folk royalty these two are prone to hanging around with. Wooden Wand, Sharron Kraus, Glenn Jones, Tetuzi Akiyama and Tony Conrad are among the writers who pay tribute not only to Tom and Christian, but their source material - all of which comes from American traditional folk songs now in the public domain. As you'd probably expect, these two aren't always prone to sticking closely to their original texts, and familiar standards like 'Camptown Races' are given a fairly liberal overhaul. Tony Conrad writes at length about the interesting use of 'Doodah' in the original, citing this as one of the earliest examples of scat singing. That's the kind of info most albums just wouldn't bother giving you, but you'll be glad of the pains Preservation have gone to in providing context for these often very obscure songs (usually made that little bit more obscure by the adventurous cover artists). Highly Recommended.

A Rather Solemn Promise CD

Charalambides' Tom Carter teams up with fellow string alchemist Christian Kiefer for some Loren Mazzacane Connors-influenced spectral blues. Once you've got over the gorgeous hand-screened sleeves (courtesy of Badgerlore's Rob Fisk) you're in for the kind of freeform guitar duets that made similarly-minded outings (such as last year's excellent Tetuzi Akiyama & Donald McPherson head-to-head) such captivating listening. The tone varies between the rollicking Takoma-isms of 'Glass Palace' and the slide guitar weirdness of 'Song the Land Sings', via the ghostly banjo bust-ups of 'Snake River', with each piece delivered with a stereo dynamics setup whereby one musician takes the left, the other the right, giving a real sense of being in and amongst the performance. Tom Carter's guitar in Charalambides has always been enriched with a kind of starkly atmospheric resonance, and in Kiefer he's clearly found a likeminded artist. Consequently, it's a great pleasure to hear the two meandering through these psyched-up American Primitive discourses with such a gnarled authenticity.

boomkat

From The Great American Songbook [2008]

A Rather Solemn Promise [2007]

Christian Kiefer *Live* George Washington

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

Polmo Polpo

Alien8 Recordings and its sub-label Substractif will release the debut full-length, “The Science of Breath”, by Toronto producer Sandro Perri, a.k.a. Polmo Polpo, who blends deep, murky techno with rich layers of feedback and densely orchestrated melodies. Recently the artist has enjoyed an explosion in popularity, thanks in part to a number of opening performances for Do Make Say Think, Pan Sonic and Oval.

Trying to describe the sound of Polmo Polpo is not an easy task. The marriage of deep rhythms with shifting waves of melody and sometimes brutal white noise is certainly not a commonly used formula. This music is beyond catchy, the sound of the slide guitar shifting in and out of Gas-style minimalism gives the music a driving force that so much of the genre lacks.

alien8recordings
sandroperri web site

Like Hearts Swelling [2003]

The Science of Breath [2002]

Sandro Perri - Changes - @ Music Hall Portsmouth

Bark Haze - One For Merz [2008]

bark haze — one for merz CD

released march 3, 2008 as an installment in the oscillation III series. sold only as a part of the set.

over the course of the thirty-six minute one for merz, thurston moore (sonic youth, et al) and andrew macgregor (gown, the bastard wing) present the listener with just that - a dense and heady brew of squall and fury. the duo gets down and really gets dirty. seriously, little more is needed by way of description. recorded live by andrew kesin on january 19, 2007 at the issue project room in brooklyn.

threelobed

One For Merz [2008]

Thurston Moore, Pete Nolan, and Gown

Stereolab - Chemical Chords & Eps [2008]

In an admiring review of their 2004 album Margarine Eclipse, Spin magazine hailed Stereolab as one of pop’s 50 most influential ensembles. “No one can do beautiful, energising crossover pop like Stereolab,” concurred The Independent, while a US writer, one Eric Greenwood, echoed the sentiments of thousands of ‘Lab devotees when describing the band’s enduring appeal thus: “The formula has never been broken; it’s only tweaked slightly with each new album, and I never want it to end.”

Indeed, over fifteen prolific years of qualitatively consistent output, Stereolab have accrued a vast, peerless cache of work, hallmarked by a unique, carefully evolving but instantly recognizable sonic signature. In addition to over a dozen glittering LPs, their back catalogue is littered with fan-pleasing gems: limited editions, one-off collaborations, split singles et al. In the process they’ve galvanised an extensive, staunchly loyal international fanbase; become a byword for playful, stylish excellence; struck a blow for the feminisation of rock and booked a permanent seat at experimental pop’s high table.

All of which is not bad for a group who eschew many of the established calling cards of rock ‘careerism’ in favour of dedication to a singular, picturesque muse. To all intents and purposes, Stereolab continue to inhabit some hermetic parallel universe forever redolent with the innocent-yet-glamorous promise of space age futurism and timeless radical chic; their essential fluorescence blissfully unsullied by the dreary spreadsheet certainties of the modern music industry.

Theirs is a rich, overflowing palette, readily able to blur the gulf between Os Mutantes and the BBC Radiophonic Orchestra; merge Krzysztof Komeda with the Velvet Underground, Francoise Hardy with Neu! and Burt Bacharach with Esquivel. A super-deluxe blend, in other words, with ingredients plucked assiduously from pop’s coolest outposts: 50’s lounge pop, Rive Gauche chanson, Brazilian tropicalia, North American art rock, East European film music, Krautrock. hi-fi test recordings, library music and more. Somehow they distil these apparently incongruent components into an ageless exotica that is all their own.

Their song titles alone are evocative exercises in arcane modernism: John Cage Bubblegum, Lo Boob Oscillator, Jaunty Monty And The Bubbles Of Silence, Motorotor Scalatron, Ticker-tape Of The Unconscious, Suggestion Diabolique and the like - designations that are evocative, smart, mischievous and, like the music they frame, somehow impossibly sophisticated yet beguilingly childlike. Ditto a litany of vivid, graphically alluring, naively modish record sleeves.

Stereolab owe their genesis to C86 generation indie janglers McCarthy, helmed by East London record obsessive Tim Gane. As McCarthy fizzled out at the turn of the ‘90s, so Gane began a relationship with French-born singer Laetitia Sadier, the latter contributing to McCarthy’s final recordings. The pair quickly regrouped, launching Stereolab in 1991 with Faith Healers’ drummer Joe Dilworth, ex-Chills bassist Martin Kean and singer Gina Morris.

The band released a clutch of singles (sold by mail order, on tour, or through London’s Rough Trade shop) which were corralled by Too Pure Records in 1992 and released as the LP Switched On. The wider world was thus introduced to Sadier’s stately, impassive vocal style (Nico by way of Jane Birkin and Laurie Anderson) essaying incisive disquisitions on the ennui of consumer culture. Inspired by Mai ’68 polity and French Situationist philosophy (rather than the oft-quoted ‘Marxism’), Sadier’s voice wafting cerebral Gallic cool over the band’s insistent dronescapes, instantly established one of modern pop’s most distinctive sonic marques. Indeed, to many, Stereolab seemed to have arrived ready formed; the perfect retro-futurist art band with impeccable influences and polemical power to add.

Equally full-bodied debut-proper Peng! also hit the racks in ‘92 just as the band was evolving into a formidable live entity, welcoming Australian harmony vocalist/guitarist Mary Hansen and drummer Andy Ramsay as core ‘Lab technicians. Further limited edition singles and EPs ensued, helping cement a burgeoning cult following.

With an unquenchable appetite for touring, Stereolab were already eyeing the globe and, on the back of one such EP - The Groop Played Space Age Bachelor Pad Music EP - signed to Elektra/Warner Bros for worldwide releases in 1993. ‘The Groop’ now featured bassist Duncan Brown and ex-Microdisney multi-instrumentalist Sean O’Hagan who helped graft an urbane, faux-‘50s lounge quality onto the band’s already trademark motorik chassis, broadening their appeal still further.

Stereolab’s own bespoke indie label, Duophonic Super 45s, had been initiated in 1991 as a conduit for their early singles. 1993 saw a split Super 45s 10”(with Nurse With Wound) entitled Crumb Duck and the sister Duophonic Ultra High Frequency Discs would henceforth become the band’s UK home imprint. (Duophonic would later release music by the likes of La Bradford, Tortoise, Broadcast and Gane and O’Hagan’s sometime splinter group Turn On).

Transient Random-Noise Bursts With Announcements – their major label Elektra/Duophonic debut - followed in late 1994. It remains one of the band’s best loved longplayers, with all eighteen minutes of the cyclic, luminescent Jenny Ondioline at its core. A significant college hit throughout North America, the album also consolidated flourishing European and Japanese fanbases. Stereolab’s soon became the underground name to drop and the band capitalized with 1994’s Mars Audiac Quintet. - a showcase for Sadier and Hansen’s preternaturally intertwined vocal descants. Mars… was another transatlantic indie hit, boasted a new keyboardist, Katherine Gifford, and prefaced a deviation from beat combo chug in the shape of 1995’s Music For The Amorphous Body – an EP created for an interactive installation by artist Charles Long.

source

Chemical Chords [2008] (part1/part2)

Spool of Collusion EP [2008]

Three Women EP [2008]

"Neon Beanbag"

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!

Cyann & Ben - Spring / Happy Like An Autum Tree / Sweet Beliefs [2003 / 2004 / 2006]

..> CYANN & BEN release their first album for Ever Records on September 11th. SWEET BELIEFS is an epic and yet intimate album that gives the space rock template a Gallic makeover by adding a much needed romantic grandeur. CYANN & BENs Paris is not the one you see in Amelie its dirty, dark and stressful as much as beautiful and SWEET BELIEFS, with its multi-layered and ambitious sweep, sounds as unsettling as it is irresistible. "a slow motion hurricane ripping apart your temporal lobe" Magnet /// "...a rare strain of "epic" music, where bravado does not exceed the composition, but remains at all times within it. Cyann & Ben are masters of this subtlety." Pitchfork /// "Chaude et froide a la fois, [la musique de Cyann et Ben] est sublime parce que fiévreuse, effrayante parce que toujours sur la sellette, lumineuse et sombre, tendue et limpide ... " Les Inrockuptibles /// "...toujours intelligente mais pas hautaine, évidente et unique en même temps. " Rock Sound /// "douce rêverie éveillée, cotonneuse et poignante. " Magic /// "un ailleurs elegiaque et mysterieux" Teknikart ///

myspace

Sweet Beliefs (2006) (part1/part2)

Happy Like An Autum Tree (2004)

Spring (2003)

Cyann & Ben - Sparks of Love

Set Fire To Flames: Signs Reign Rebuilder [2001]

Set fire to flames are a collective of thirteen musicians from the musical community of Montreal. Brooding and beautiful, haunted and haunting, sings reign rebuilder is so stunningly / lovingly played and skillfully assembled, infused throughout with a massive sense of slow-burning tension and periods of weighty, rousing release.

Initially the idea was to gather a group of folks together in a members montreal apartment and record as much as they could over a five day period. As set fire to flames explains, ”...[we wanted] to conduct the whole five day recording session like a series of experiments… to get lost in the sound as it was actually happening… to make the whole recording an exploded intense event… to push tolerance levels and limitations with a group of people sonically… to become shut-ins… to operate on no sleep/confinement/ intoxication… some of us were interested in seeing what would actually happen if we attempted to record improvised drones and textures under those conditions… and what impact that might have on yr. head… how individual/collective tension would play out… and what the end result would sound like… so a lot of experimentation with tolerance, repetition and duration… drones…”

“And so these set fire to flames recordings happened… we piled all of the gear into the first floor (kitchen/living room) of this old, falling down apartment in montreal (the place has a crazy history to it…built in 1878…used to be a 10¢ shoe shine parlour and a brothel in the forties)... the control/mixing room was in a bedroom on the second floor (up a rickety wooden staircase)... you can hear the house all over the recording… (the staircase/ groaning floorboards/creaking chairs/traffic and police cars outside/men coming out of the mosque downstairs)... all of these sounds became an important part of the final recording…”

“Five days of continuous recording netted us roughly twelve hours of raw sound… all of it was hacked apart and later rebuilt… and the final document of that five day period (which was magic and the fucking house was levitating…..) now makes up ‘sings reign rebuilder’... the record is about 60% improvised and 40% composed… the five-day recording stint turned into something more than originally intended… it wasn’t just thirteen people droning aimlessly to infinity… things worked out somehow and we got lucky…”

Packaged in beautiful full-colour gate-fold heavy paper jacket, including a 24 page booklet. Available as a single compact disc or a double vinyl.

This title is being released by Alien8 Recordings for the territory of North America only. A new label by the folks at Fat Cat will release the CD and vinyl for Europe and the UK. P-Vine will release the CD for Japan.

Release date: October 09, 2001

Label: Alien8 Recordings

Signs Reign Rebuilder [2001] (part1/part2)

reign rebuilder...set fire to flames

T o r t o i s e

Throughout their 10-year history, Tortoise have been one of the most singularly dynamic bands in modern music. With each record they have not only redefined their own sound, but helped to nudge music itself in unique and exciting new directions. Their members are perpetually involved with multiple projects, thus it is quite noteworthy that It's All Around You, Tortoise's fifth full-length, is the first album that the band has ever made without a single lineup change. The results of this are a record that is the product of five distinctly visionary musicians who are able to synergistically unite like never before. This consistent lineup also allowed the band to move forward in directions that were previously unexplored, and It's All Around You contains a number of Tortoise firsts.

It's All Around You was written largely in the studio, in the midst of recording, over the course of a full year. This allowed Tortoise to use John McEntire's Soma Electronic Music Studios (whose clients include Wilco, Stereolab, and many others) not just as a state-of-the-art recording facility but as a compositional tool as well. It took months of continuous writing, recording, tinkering, mixing, and perfecting to bring It's All Around You to its finalized state. Tortoise are one of the only bands of their size and status who have always produced their own records, and it largely because of this that they are able to achieve and maintain such a distinct and precise sound. The band's extensive knowledge of the studio's equipment allows them to use it for composing, editing, and coloring their compositions. The band are very at home in this environment, and without a restrictive deadline (normally present with hired producers/studios), the band can explore a multitude of approaches. The results of this process are clear in the lush, orchestrated tones, intricate melodies, and densely elaborate rhythms that make It's All Around You Tortoise's most adventurous and thoughtful record to date. These songs build deliberately and consistently, amassing music of great detail; exploring their layers is both exciting and infinitely rewarding.

Over the past decade, Tortoise have produced some of the most innovative and influential albums in all of music. From the deep and understated rhythms and tones on their 1996 landmark, Millions Now Living Will Never Die, to the bombastic rock of 2001's Standards, Tortoise have always been ahead of their time. It's All Around You finds Tortoise doing what they do best; building and rebuilding upon melodies and rhythms with their own remarkable touch. A song like "On The Chin," born of a guitar line that Jeff Parker and Doug McCombs wrote, is transformed into a something delicately complex, fiercely catchy, and unmistakably Tortoise.

Contributing to and resulting from Tortoise's diverse musical talents are the multitude of other musical projects that each member pursues. In between the recording of Standards and It's All Around You Tortoise's members have kept extremely busy. John McEntire has recorded/mixed bands such as The Sea and Cake (of which he is also a member), US Maple, Beans, Radian, Chicago Underground, Neil Michael Hagerty, Savath & Savalas, and many others. Future projects include Tuxedomoon, Fred Anderson & Hamid Drake, and Teenage Fanclub. John Herndon made his first solo album as A Grape Dope (Missing Dragons, on Galaxia), recorded with Savath & Savalas, The Aluminum Group, The Eternals, and Beans. John also toured as A Grape Dope, opening for Prefuse73, and playing drums along side Scott and DJ Leb Laze in the P73 live band earlier this year. Doug McCombs released his third Brokeback album (Looks At The Bird, on Thrill Jockey), and played shows with Eleventh Dream Day (of which he is a founding member), and Abeliene. Jeff Parker has played in a large number of jazz and improvising ensembles (alongside players such as Josh Abrams, Guillermo Gregorio, Chad Taylor, Nori Tanaka, Michael Zerang, Kevin Drumm, and others. He released a solo album (Like Coping, on Delmark). He recently recorded with Joshua Redman and Azita, and is writing horn arrangements for the next Aluminum Group album. Dan Bitney has produced a number of "mutant home studio jams" for AV band Spectralina, in which Bitney provides digital musical manipulation and drumming for Selina Trepp's poetic, political, and abstract visuals. In addition to all of this, McEntire and Parker will be contributing short audio pieces to the "1%" project, a permanent sound installation which will be set up in the elevators of the new Paris Ministry for Culture and Communication. McEntire, Herndon and Bitney will be producing an album of original breakbeats, samples, and grooves this winter, intended for DJ and music production use. The group will also be contributing an original track to the upcoming feature film "Moog," a documentary about the life and times of electronic music pioneer Robert Moog.

Thrill Jockey Records

Discography:

01 - Lonesome Sound EP [1993]
02 - Mosquito EP [1993]
03 - Tortoise [1994]
04 - Rhythms, resolutions and clusters [1995]
05 - Gamera 12'' [1995]
06 - Millions Now Living Will Never Die [1996]
07 - Appears on = Yaus Speedy Car [Stereolab Tortoise] (1996)
08 - The Taut and the Tame - The Luke Vibert Mix Find the One
00 - [Wait, Abstraction No. 3] (1996)
09 - Remixed [1996]
10 - A Digest Compendium of the Tortoise's World [1996]
11 - TNT [1998] (part1/part2)
12 - Tortoise vs. Derrick Carter [1998]
13 - Tortoise vs. Autechre [1998]
14 - Standards [2001]
15 - It's All Around You [2004]
16 - Tortoise and Bonnie 'Prince' Billy - The Brave and the Bold [2006]
17 - A Lazarus Taxon [2006]


Tortoise - Live at Werchter [full set]

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)

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