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)

Chad VanGaalen - Soft Airplane [2008]

"No one knows where go when we're dead or when we're dreaming."

After powering through most of God Is Not Great on the plane yesterday, it's hard to immediately change gears and spend time questioning what happens after you die. That being said, when the questions come courtesy of the beautiful songs Chad VanGaalen wrote for Soft Airplane, the experience is a rewarding one. Chad has always written tales of death, murder and rage, but in a way that forces you to start asking the same questions and feeling the same emotions.

I read an interesting review of the new Okkervil River record on Rawkblog where Dave mentioned that "critics as musicians are failures, much more often than not; they know too much to fuck up, which is unfortunately a preventative measure to playing rock 'n' roll music." If that statement is true, the other side of the coin would indicate that only when a musical soul is secluded from the shouts and whispers of the critical public can true greatness or incredible failure occur. Such is the case for VanGaalen.

I hesitate to rely on the easy play of labeling him as a musical recluse riddled with insecurities when I talk about his songs, because that cheapen the success of this record. Even if it's only subconscious, those words force the reader to think the sounds were contrived by luck or simply good timing; the result of someone stumbling upon the combination of sounds without much thought and that couldn't be less true when it comes to VanGaalen.

He's obviously a unique man with social anxiety and an unquenchable thirst for creative expression and as a result Soft Airplane is incredibly spontaneous and challenging, but at the same time multiple listens show how well the record is thought out. Sound effects, textures and emotion are nestled into the folds and corners, and until you can listen to the complete song, you aren't really hearing Chad's visions.

source

Soft Airplane [2008]

Chad VanGaalen - Molten Light

Pumajaw - Curiosity Box [2008]

A brand new album from Pinky Maclure and John Wills, Curiosity Box finds Pumajaw faithfully replicating the post folk revival fusions of the early '70s with a little help from fellow Brit folkers Alidair Roberts and James Yorkston. While the songwriting and vocal delivery is very much shaped by traditional folk values, the sort of instrumentation Pumajaw utilize defies convention, having more in common with Six Organs Of Admittance than Shirley Collins, something demonstrated ably by the trance-inducing psychedelia of 'Visiting Hour Pt. 2'. The relatively faithful harmonium-driven balladry of 'Mother & The Two Trees' shows that the duo can adhere to old-fashioned values when they want to, although it's not long before the almost inevitable close call with Wicker Man-style wyrdness crops up on 'Buds', which in no small way resembles an electronically enhanced 'Willow's Song'. Curisosity Box has a lot going for it - it's a highly enjoyable and gratifyingly unpredictable alt. folk outing with all the right leanings towards gothic storytelling and pastoral melancholy.

boomkat

Curiosity Box [2008]

PuMaJaW

Vic Chesnutt, Elf Power, The Amorphous Strums - Dark Developments [2008]

Vic Chesnutt is somewhat of a dark horse. One of those that races like beer bubbles beneath the radar. The Southern-fried songwriter has released competent material for over a decade, despite few people noticing. Last year, Chesnutt released a beast of an album with post-rock legends A Silver Mt. Zion titled North Star Deserter and no one noticed; same goes with his influences on scores of artists, including Michael Stipe. But throughout his career, a few simple syllogisms have carried through each album, regardless of its context. Despair is one, usually coerced by drugs or alcohol of some sort, and another is political disenchantment. But few are better than Chesnutt at coiling stories together from these black muses, and Dark Developments is no different. Yes, we have fellow Athens, Georgia/Elephant Six members Elf Power and sometimes accompanying band The Amorphous Strums contributing here, but start-to-finish this is a Vic Chesnutt sonic dystopia. And if you’re familiar with the man at the helm, this collaboration will excite. If this Georgian songwriter is foreign territory, best not start with Dark Developments (suggestions where to start are welcomed in the comments below).

source

Dark Developments [2008]

Vic Chesnutt with Elf Power "Everything i say"

Sun Kil Moon - April [2008]

Is there such a thing as closure? Crime writer James Ellroy’s mother was murdered when he was 10 years old, and Ellroy has spent his entire career writing his way out of it with no expectation of emotional settlement. It’s made him who he is. Chances are Mark Kozelek—formerly of Red House Painters, currently of Sun Kil Moon—will also write his way through memory and fate until the end of his days. His Ohio childhood, his classic-rock album collection, his love for the guitar, his friends and especially the death of loved ones—including the tragic passing of an important early muse—have made Kozelek the songwriter he is. He takes solace in the beautiful landscapes that surround him. He travels to faraway cities and dreams of home, and then he comes home and dreams of elsewhere.

He’s always been obsessed by longing and desire. 1992’s accomplished Red House Painters demo-tape-turned-debut-album Down Colorful Hill was a Technicolor tragedy filled with tortured romances and aching childhood memories, a perfect fit for the boutique 4AD label that released it. The young man who composed that record has changed over the years. Nothing dramatic, no abrupt refutations of his past; just a deepening, a settling into the man he has become. Kozelek’s music is now warmer, more able to reconcile its classic-rock roots within its ethereal structures. The reverb canyons and domineering vocals have given way to richer guitar textures and sweet, anguished mumbles. His songs remain personal, as likely to express shockingly candid details as to wrap them in personal symbolism only he can unravel. When Kozelek sings “I promised always through me she would shine” on April’s 10-minute centerpiece “Tonight the Sky,” you picture the man alone, howling at the moon, shaking his fists in frustration at the universe.

source

April [2008] (part1/part2)

Sun Kil Moon - Moorestown

Greg Weeks - The Hive [2008]

To purchase any past or present Greg Weeks or related titles please venture to Greg's Language of Stone label site: www.languageofstone.com


For European booking please contact: Isla at Toutpartout (isla@toutpartout.be)


Returning visitors may have noticed the profile makeover (har har). My new pic is the cover panel from my forthcoming record "The Hive." The record will find release in Europe on Wichita in late October (with a month long support tour in November) and will become available here in North America in February on Language of Stone.


Joining me on tour in November will be Festival, who, along with Wooly Mar, will make up my touring band. Excitement abounds!


Please take a moment to check out the online residence of the record label I run, Language of Stone. If you like my stuff there's a very strong chance you will like a lot of the artists I release. I should also mention that all items in my back catalog are available for purchase there: www.languageofstone.com


All prior band/artist information is now irrelevent. You need only know this:

1. Stones give and receive energy.
2. The great Giza pyramid was really a power plant.
3. Liver stones are occluding your bile ducts.
4. Greg Weeks is also an Esper, and a Grass, and a The Valerie Project, and a La Secta.

myspace

The Hive [2008]

Made - Greg Weeks

Jolie Holland - The Living and the Dead [2008]

Jolie Holland is a Texas-born singer and performer who combines elements of folk, traditional country, jazz, and blues. She is one of the founding members of The Be Good Tanyas. Labelmates Tom Waits and Sage Francis are both outspoken fans of Holland's. Tom Waits nominated her for the Shortlist music prize.[1] Sage Francis has said that Holland's album Escondida was his most listened to album of 2005.[2] Holland also collaborated with him on two tracks on his album Human the Death Dance.

wiki.

The Living and The Dead CD :

Yes, Jolie Holland knows Jack Kerouac's Mexico City Blues. Over the mariachi horns of "Mexico City," the Texas singer introduces Jack, who drinks too much because "there was nowhere else to go." That apocalyptic feeling pervades this sepia-toned album, boosted by M. Ward's scraggly hooks. Holland has a soft spot for sad sacks — the "ghost-faced junkie" of "Corrido por Buddy," the lover who made her "little heart a graveyard" on "Palmyra" — but her honeyed harmonies keep the mood from getting too gloomy. And when she busts out a fiddle on "Sweet Loving Man," a Fifties-style country tune about a velvet-tongued drifter, you can picture Kerouac nodding in approval.

rollingstone

The Living and the Dead [2008]

"Mad Tom of Bedlam" / 2006

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

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!

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

Vashti Bunyan - Some Things Just Stick In Your Mind / Singles and Demos [1964 -1967]

Some Things Just Stick In Your Mind / Singles and Demos [1964 -1967]:
(Disc. 1) (Disc. 2)

British folk chanteuse Vashti Bunyan learned guitar while attending art school, and in 1964 was expelled for spending more time writing songs than painting; through theatrical agent Monte Mackay she soon met Rolling Stones manager/producer Andrew Loog Oldham, and in 1965 signed to Decca to release her debut single, the Mick Jagger/Keith Richards-penned "Some Things Just Stick in Your Mind." The record earned little attention, and Bunyan moved to Columbia for the follow-up, "Train Song"; after recording a handful of unreleased tracks for Immediate she cut ties with Oldham and ostensibly retired from music, leaving London in 1968 in a horse-drawn wagon on a two-year journey to the Hebrides, with the ultimate goal of meeting folk icon Donovan on the Isle of Skye. Throughout her travels Bunyan continued writing songs, however, and in 1969 she teamed with legendary producer Joe Boyd to record her lone full-length LP, the lovely Just Another Diamond Day. After completing the album she left for Ireland, dropping out of music to raise a family. Long out-of-print and a highly-prized collectible, Just Another Diamond Day was finally reissued on CD in the summer of 2000. In 2005 she returned with Lookaftering, a reference to her years "lookaftering" her family. The album appeared on Fat Cat's DiCristina imprint and featured artwork by Vashti's daughter.

www.allmusic.com

I want to be alone

Simon & Garfunkel - The Graduate - Soundtrack [1968]

Descarga.

Sound Of Silence - Simon & Garfunkel (live sound)