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LP
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FTR 288LP
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"As I recall, the idea seemed pretty reasonable at the time. It was late 1996. I'd met Fahey a couple of years earlier, and partly as an outgrowth of that meeting he had decided he wanted to meet and play with 'noise musicians.' This resulted in a lot of music that made his olden fans weep, but who was I to argue with The Great Koonaklaster? Anyway, it was late '96 and Fahey wanted to play some gigs on the east coast. He also wanted Thurston to be on the bill with him, and so Mr. Moore asked me for suggestions about who might be cool to duet with. We ruled out a lot of people for various reasons, then had a flash about asking the great Pep Lester (aka Phil Milstein). Although best known as a writer and designer, Phil had also done lots of music in various configurations, and I was hoping he'd deign to play the musical saw he had started practicing a few years earlier. Phil had other ideas, though, mostly revolving around the tape creations and loops he'd been doing with Thalia Zedek's band, Uzi, in the mid '80s. Thankfully, he also agreed to play some saw, and you will hear some of that instrument's beautiful tones floating around the tape jabber and guitar circularity that makes up much of this record's basis. This show was recorded on the first night of Fahey's East coast jaunt, at the Iron Morse Music Hall in Northampton MA. The audience was primed for transcendental waterfalls, and didn't seem too delighted by Phil and Thurston's opening set, but fuck 'em. Fahey was enthralled. And when we pulled the tapes out to listen to for the first time in many a year, we were all pretty chuffed about how nuts and timeless the music sounded. Although the second night's sound was previously issued by Chris Corsano's Hot Cars Warp Records label, this is the first issue for this fantastic set. Roll yourself a fatty and swing!" --Byron Coley, 2016. Edition of 400.
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LP+CD
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TR 288LP
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LP version. Includes CD of full album. We're all a bit lost inside, trying to put on a brave face and front out through the days, doing whatever it takes to make sense of the mind and body's tangled lines of communication. Martin Carr does it with music; has been for 25 years now, via a string of acclaimed records with The Boo Radleys, then his bravecaptain alias, and latterly under his own name. Hearing his new album, The Breaks, you're bound to think he's never done it any better than this, right here and now. The Breaks was recorded in January 2014, but most of its songs were written three or four years previously. Having self-released his previous album, Ye Gods and Little Fishes, Martin recorded some demos and sent them "far and wide." People seemed to like the songs but no one was offering to release them, and after a while Martin gave up and began working on different songs. Then, at the end of 2013, he got an email from Tapete, an independent record company based in Hamburg. Tapete's roster is large and varied: lots of local bands, but also some from the U.S., Scandinavia and Austria, plus, in Lloyd Cole and Bill Pritchard, a couple of hugely accomplished UK artists with deep history and maverick tendencies. Martin Carr fits that bill perfectly: a songwriter whose work is pop but not necessarily populist, and whose trajectory reveals an ambivalent relationship with conventional sensibilities. The song -- "Mainstream," of course -- features rapturous female harmony vocals and is a fuzzy-headed lachrymose wallow in the finest tradition of Harry Nilsson or Jeff Lynne, but with a down-home intimacy that makes Martin's voice feel like a confessional echo of the self-doubts we all experience. Such is the hallmark of reserves of lyrical chutzpah demonstrated amid "I Don't Think I'll Make It" wherein Carr rhymes "heart" with "Descartes." The songs are performed with equal amounts attitude, soul and empathy by Carr and a group of musicians assembled specifically for the sessions: the rhythm section features Andy Fung on drums and Corin Ashley on bass, while the piano and organ are courtesy of BAFTA award-winning composer John Rae. The latter's presence was pure kismet: he was studio manager at Cardiff's soon-to-be-demolished ITV buildings where the sessions took place. Carr has never sung his own songs better than he does here. It's a voice that both grounds and elevates The Breaks. Martin Carr is doing more than just getting by -- he's just made his best album.
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