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Cassette
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BNSD 021CS
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Comprised of songs, vignettes, and arrangement experiments, Sketchbook: March 2015 - March 2016 presents selected studio recordings made by drummer Neal Morgan. It is his fourth solo record, and includes, for the first time, music composed using instruments other than drums and voices. Half of the songs were composed as "music intended to score imagined scenes" in response to the story of the Rajneeshpuram settlement near Antelope, Oregon in the mid-1980s. About the scoring work, Neal wrote: "On March 11, 2015, I tagged along with filmmakers Chapman and Maclain Way to see the former Rajneeshpuram site. The brothers told me about much of their research during that visit and showed me some archival footage. Particular visuals stuck with me: the desert landscape; the different hues of the red robes; the shining Rolls Royces out in the desert; the eyes and smile of the guru Bhagwan; red robes with rifles; the formerly homeless men expressing hopes and thanks for community and rebirth. Dreams of acceptance, family, utopia, safety, and then also fear and pain. . . . At its core, drumming, like scoring for moving image and story, is about creating and managing tension. I made many sketches responding to the elements that haunted me -- things that perhaps had happened or been felt or thought of by children or adults there. Situations, colors, visuals. The music in turn created new stories, new sights, and new tensions. It was like making music to score -- and simultaneously to create and direct -- imagined scenes of an imagined film." Morgan is perhaps best known for his work with two of the finest songwriters of his generation, Joanna Newsom and Bill Callahan. He first accompanied Newsom in 2006, when he arranged drums and percussion for the live performance of her classic second album Ys (2006) and began performing as a part of her touring band. He arranged and performed all of the drums and percussion on Newsom's triple album Have One On Me (2010) and on three of the songs from Divers (2015). He began playing with Callahan as a duo in 2009 and arranged and performed drums and percussion on Apocalypse (2011). Screen printed in Portland at The Make House; Hand-painted by Morgan in Berkeley. Includes a fold-out insert designed by the artist and a download code; Edition of 100.
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CD
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NM 001CD
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"To The Breathing World is, as the title implies, a debut album, as well as a letter of love to the world at large and small. Sober of voice, ecstatic in heart and mind, Neal Morgan has broken through, and coming through the polyphony of voices and blur of arms and legs and sticks and cymbals is the sound of a manifesto. You see, To The Breathing World is composed entirely of Neal's own drumming and singing -- it's a purposeful venture into the world of song from a singing drummer's perspective behind the traps. It is all Neal, all the time -- just the voices from his head and the kit under his hands. Drums captured with distorted basement thrump, adorned with sweet configurations of vocals that flutter alive above the din -- weaving and swimming, expanding... From episodic pieces like 'Salamanders' to the rolling funk of 'Love Me World,' To The Breathing World is a sculpture -- no, a mobile, balancing on top of the turrets of the sandcastles of tradition. Or maybe it's a flag, blowing in the natural air, declaring this territory in the name of Neal Morgan. This is new music -- this particular flavor of drum and voice composition is a sound not previously presented for commercial consumption, but for Neal, it's been a long time coming. He's been drumming for twenty years. Over the past few, he's been widely heard and seen as Joanna Newsom's barefooted drummer, appearing on her EP & The Ys Street Band, as well as on tour dates around the world (and on her forthcoming album!). It was between those engagements, hacking away back home in the woodshed, that Neal found the sound he'd been listening for -- and the place to call his own that he'd always hoped to find. Drumming and singing were sacred -- but in order to write songs, he felt he needed other skills and had learned other instruments over the years with which he felt no special bond. As a result, the music never felt like it was his. What had eluded him all along was the recognition that all that he needed was just the drumming and singing!"
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LP
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NM 001LP
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LP version with lyric sheet.
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