Browse by Label: BIRDWAR (UK)

Artist:	LAST OF THE REAL HARDMEN
Title:	10,000 Miles
Label:	BIRDWAR (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	BWR 002CD

"Chris Summerlin's debut album under the boastful, ironic pseudonym Last of the Real Hardmen follows six years of releasing lathe-cut vinyl and hand-crafted CD-Rs that received tiny circulation to no more than a small circle of fans. The quality of the tunes on offer suggest this is a third or fourth album rather than an excitable first. Summerlin is a virtuoso guitarist and lays down electric guitar patterns with drums, field recordings and the occasional bottleneck to provide depth and variation. Instrumental music can be hard to keep interesting and this is where Summerlin's skill really kicks in, injecting his form of purist instrumental music with nods towards inevitably John Fahey merged with the full-bodied widescreen emissions of Tortoise. The lovely folks at Birdwar have also included 6 tracks from Summerlin's ultra-limited lathe cut 10" originally released on Lone Hand recordings and this faultlessly adds to the mass of an almost worryingly beautiful album. Despite costing 30p to make on a cassette 4-track, this is otherworldly and timeless music."

Artist:	BROUGHTON, DAVID THOMAS
Title:	It's In There Somewhere...
Label:	BIRDWAR (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$16.00
Catalog #:	BWR 003CD

"Now relocated to the musical hotbed that is Manchester, David Thomas Broughton has seen it fit to root through his boxes of tapes and CDRs to come up with this retrospective of his life in recording. It's In There Somewhere... is the follow-up to last year's hugely acclaimed The Complete Guide to Insufficiency, and collects thirteen tracks from his dusty collection of recordings. Unusually though, instead of this being a throwaway collection of sketches, these intimate and sometimes haunting songs even transcend his debut, and contain a sincerity and honesty rarely heard on disc. These songs sound like they were never written for the ears of the masses, and embody everything that the modern 'nu-folk' scene purports to be. One part Devendra Banhart and one part Daniel Johnston, we have crumbling synthesized drum-machine ditties ('Circle Is Never Complete') set against gorgeous whispering avant-folk epics ('Gracefully Silent') yet never do the tracks grate or feel like they weren't meant to be heard together. Rather, this is like discovering a priceless artefact from the past, something once loved which can so easily be loved again -- just listen to the pseudo-electro-folk beauty of 'Ain't Got No Sole' for more than enough evidence of this. Broughton has created an album of utterly unique outsider folk-pop which is sure to catapult him again into the eyes of the world's music press, but we all know that his music is more than that, more personal and more innocent than anyone could portray with mere words. Listen and be converted to the church of Broughton."

Artist:	7 HERTZ
Title:	Tender Almost Vulgar
Label:	BIRDWAR (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$16.00
Catalog #:	BWR 006CD

"Fluid and engaging, 7 Hertz fluctuate and mutate live before your very ears. Incorporating all or none of the following instruments -- bassoon, violin, voice, double bass, French horn, glockenspiel, clarinet, mandolin, trumpet -- they create glorious pieces with total, beautiful spontaneity. With imaginations that rival those of Tom Waits and Stravinsky, this is modern 'classical' music that writhes and soothes. Their debut full-length, Tender, Almost Vulgar, is a record that mixes their own blend of improvised and composed work that walks the line between chamber, folk, jazz and a range of contemporary music. The resulting album (recorded in St. Mark's Church, Leeds, lends to the proceedings a hauntingly beautiful slant) is a unique and boundary-defying body of work from a band evidently confident in each others' company. As 7 Hertz themselves describe the process "...we find mutual ground through listening to each other, and making it up as we go along." To put it simply -- similarities can be drawn between 7 Hertz and a plateau of others -- Stravinsky, Ligeti, Terry Riley's Cadenza on the Night Plain, Gabriel Prokofiev's recent string quartets or anything from the New York downtown free music scene -- but this is a truly original listening experience. The Birdwar label seems to be going from strength to strength recently, but how they managed to wrangle 7 Hertz away from the heavyweights of the division such as Tzadik is truly admirable. One of the most delightful debuts of this or any year."

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