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FTR 660LP
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$25.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 3/31/2023
"On a hot night in Philly -- Saturday August 9, 1998 -- Brooke Sietsons's backyard hosted the No More Bush tour. The line-up that evening was Zaïmph, Jack Rose, MV+EE, Tom Carter & Willie Lane, 50 Foot Women with Axolotl, and the sole known appearance of the Mike Watt/Charles Plymell duo. Plymell and Watt had met a year earlier at the Festival Ecstatique in Western Mass, and they hit it off like crazy. So, when this tour was coming together, and Charley agreed to reprise the work he did on the More Hair Less Bush tour in '94, we noticed Watt's path with the Stooges might intersect around the Philly area. As always, Watt was chuffed to not have to take a day off, and excited to team up with one of his literary heroes. Plymell was stoked as well, and the two were spieling and laughing from the moment they hooked up. When it was time for them to perform, they were ready to fucking rock. Watt starts things with a couple of his own poems (which were published as a booklet for this appearance) then Charley rolls into it, with Mike shifting to bass. Starting with classics -- "Song for Neal Cassady," "Was Poe Afraid?," etc. -- Plymell adds a couple of new ones at the end, while Watt pulls spectral bass lines from the aether, and the dark hot night soaks it all in. The whole event was pretty amazing, but this meeting of the minds, was really the high point for most of us. You might not have been there, but thanks to the recording made by Laki Vazakas and the pics taken by Dan Cohoon, you can now lie and say you were! Just remember -- we were all sweating. Even Charles Burns!" --Byron Coley, 2023
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FTR 565LP
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$22.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 3/17/2023
Co-release with UK Shagrat label. "Because he is a relentless seeker of strange truths (especially as they relate to music), Nigel Cross was the gent who uncovered the fact that the London-based artist, Jill Tipping, had been a member of a Sunforest-style folk-rock group back in the day . . . Here are some notes from Jill on what's what. It's early '70s London and in a small all-girls grammar school a band is born. There had been an extant group of sixth-formers -- The Folk Group -- who provided musical filling at morning assemblies and religious services, but they were moving on. The spot became vacant, so up stepped Janice, Kim, Lesley, and Jill, with Barbara for moral support. Like many teens at the time, they had guitars and teach-yourself books, so they started strumming their way through religious songs, folk tunes and Beatles songbooks and attempted the music that was all around them. Some was pop charty -- Monkees, Kinks, Faces; some was folky -- Pentangle, Steeleye Span, Simon and Garfunkel; some rocky -- King Crimson, Pink Floyd, David Bowie; some singer/songwritey -- Cat Stevens, Joni Mitchell, and Elton John to name but a few . . . The quartet played in their teen bedrooms, as well as a couple of churches, school assemblies and events. They also had a very small taste of fame in the shape of an appearance on London education TV, which earned them a feature in the local papers. And luckily, there were recordings. Surviving house moves and dusty lofts for nearly 50 years, the tapes finally made their way into the hands of Shagrat's Nigel Cross . . . here are some songs from a previously unreleased girl group in all their genuine and sweetly harmonized innocence. A snapshot of '70s teenage-girlhood, an era predating TV talent shows and the internet. Along with traditional tunes "Sovey" and "Sinner Man," are covers of Lesley Duncan's "Love Song" (by way of Elton John's version on his Tumbleweed Connection album) and an endearingly scratchy "Moonchild" (courtesy of King Crimson), plus six lovely original songs of happiness, sadness, love, loss, anxiety, hope, yearning . . . The cover and inner sleeve are a collage of photos and ephemera with generous notes telling the story of The Folk Group/Saffron/Saphron/Red Amber -- they never quite settled on a name -- while the label (and badges) are by ace artist Savage Pencil." --Byron Coley. Edition of 450.
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LP
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FTR 656LP
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$22.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 3/3/2023
"Tennessee-based string bender, Joseph Allred likes to change things up from album to album. But usually, he does this one element or instrument at a time. On What Strange Flowers Grow in the Shade, Joseph adds a whole heck of a lot of elements. And he does so without ever really disguising the identity of his music. The six tracks here were all recorded with different line-ups. 'The Valley' features Chris Davis (Cherry Blossoms) and the Magic Tuber Stringband. 'The Ruins' is a Basho-esque solo piece created with large varieties of instrumental glisten. 'A Long Winter' features previous collusionists, Mikey Allred on trombone and Matt Johnson on synth. 'Lake Erie' features Jen Powers on dulcimer and Matthew J. Rolin on electric guitar. 'Sunburst' features Michael Pierce (Sweeteartflying) on synth. 'The Flood' features Anthony Ford (of Hellbender and Holy Mountaintop Removers) on drums and Patrick Shiroishi on sax. This may seem like wild and wooly selection of players (which it is), as might Joseph's decision to play electric guitar (amongst many other instruments), but it's really just another step along Allred's long and winding road. He had recorded on electric earlier, with both Hellbender and Graceless, but, as he wrote, 'I got a Fender Jaguar guitar at the beginning of the pandemic lock down and that really influenced the album too. I've been big into shoegaze and no wave kind of stuff for >20 years but didn't ever have a guitar like that for some reason until now. Fenders in general and especially a guitar like the Jaguar with all the chrome on it feels more like a contraption than a musical instrument in a lot of ways. Leo Fender was an inventor/tinkerer who wasn't a musician at all and was more influenced by car manufacturing than traditional instrument making. That guitar really encouraged me to use the volume knob and whammy bar a lot and I ended up with a kind of ethereal bowed string section sound by doing that and recording a lot of layers. That became the basis for all the tracks except for one where I started with an open tuned autoharp and a bunch of bass clarinet tracks for some reason.' The music on What Strange Flowers... was also influenced by the work of Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, Glenn Branca, My Bloody Valentine, Loren Connors, Sonic Youth, and a variety of other folks, but as always, Allred's sound has signature spiritual components that are uniquely his own. And no matter how wide he opts to cast his stylistic net, there is a core depth to his music you can always recognize, even if you can't quite describe it. As ever, it's a real pleasure to have a new Joseph Allred LP to dig in to. So get diggin'." --Byron Coley, 2022
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FTR 640LP
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$20.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 2/24/2023
"Manual of the Bayonet is hopefully just the first volume of archival recordings by this most excellent destructo-unit from the Pacific Northwest. The material here was recorded in Portland OR, between the years of 1999 and 2001, with some combination of ten members participating in the sessions. We always viewed JOMF as the West Coast version of free-rock collectives like NYC's No Neck Blues Band and Boston's Sunburned Hand of the Man. JOMF emerged from the Smegma-damaged wing of the Northwest sub-underground, and when you'd go see them about all you could figure was that the line-up would include Tom Greenwood. Although, now that I think about it, I recall a tour they did with Godspeed! where Tom was absent, and Samara Lubelski kinda led the shows. So there ya go. It was a collective effort. And a real damn good one. The period represented by these recordings is around the time of the Magick Fire Music (2000) and Liberation (2001) albums, which was when (in my opinion) JOMF really took off. Their original, somewhat goofy weirdness was now supplanted by a fully-freaked free-rock pulse and energetic explorations of various improvisational nooks. Like No Neck and Sunburned, JOMF just let it rip, and created flowing jagged sheets of sound that routed straight from their heads. Elements of jazz, new music, and rock of all sorts were mushed together into a great pile of strings, keys, horns, thuds, and grooves, then rolled right off a cliff. The splat this made when it landed could be magnificent, as you will surely confirm when you spin this disk. In the words of the critic Kevin Whitehead (albeit in a different context), this is 'nuts music, as free as the squirrels.' Load up." --Byron Coley, 2022
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FTR 647LP
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$22.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 2/17/2023
"The fourth release by this Durham NC-based duo is also their second on Feeding Tube. We did their excellent When Sorrows Encompass Me 'Round cassette in 2021 (FTR 378CS), and are delighted to be able to do this new one on 45 RPM vinyl. The players, as always are Courtney Werner on cello and fiddle, with Evan Morgan playing guitars, banjo, pump organ, and shruti box. Tarantism came together in the depths of the Plague in the spring and summer of 2020 while the pair was living on a mountainside near Hayesville NC. As with their other recordings, the musical textures they play with have traditional Appalachian resonances, but their compositional approach often cuts against any orthodox grain. Courtney writes about the strange juxtaposition of the death throes going on in the world then, as contrasted with the bursting blooms of nature surrounding them in their rural retreat. And you can hear that on the album, as harsher globs of sound merge into softer edged drones that twist into Magic Tuber's more trad folk instrumentals. As with many good things, it's a journey. A totally wonderful record whether you suffer from Tarantism or not." --Byron Coley, 2022
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FTR 631LP
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$22.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 2/10/2023
"Herewith is an extraordinary 45 RPM album of solo electronic music by NZ's great contrarian, Bruce Russell. The pieces were all created using machines built by Clinton Williams, whose musical work under the OMIT moniker has long been championed by Bruce. Unlike many of Williams's own recordings, which contain kosmiche extensions recalling the '70s work of Klaus Schulze, the 15 improvised Sonatas presented here mix a few of those sorts of sonorities with a variety of more harshly-edged tones. There are also post-techno references recalling the work of folks like Scott Foust and Stefan Jaworzyn, in addition to the artists to whom some of the pieces are dedicated -- musicians Ralf Wehowsky and Martin Rev -- as well as philosopher Paul Feyerabend. As with much of Russell's music, the music's surface feel is restless, ornery, and questing. The pieces often feel as though they were devised while attempting to answer specific questions or notions that Bruce was wrestling with. But as always, one suspects some pieces are just pure fuckery, for which a conceptual framework was built ex post facto. Or not. Regardless of intent (and/or imagined intent), Russell has come up with another album that ends up being both about itself, and also about something big and conceptual that keeps fidgeting just outside my brain's grasp. The best approach may just be to dive in a float around in this excellent music. Context be damned. Because, really, sometimes a Sonata is just a Sonata. Y'know?" --Byron Coley, 2022
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FTR 654LP
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"Spiral Joy Band are one of the descendants of Richmond VA's legendary musical juggernaut, Pelt. Active and mutating for nearly 20 years, the iteration of the Spiral Joy Band who recorded this session in Madison Wisconsin in 2011 was a trio. Troy Schafer, Patrick Best and Mikel Dimmick play an array of instruments -- violin, viola, harmonium -- to produce lush tapestries of the multiphonic drones for which they are known. I remember Pelt getting called 'The Hillbilly Theatre of Eternal Music' at the '98 Terrastock Festival in San Francisco. And indeed, that was a definite part of Pelt's sound at that point in their evolution. But since 2004, Spiral Joy Band have focused on and explored that particular niche with firm resolve. All versions of the group have reveled in the use of acoustic instruments to create tones to saturate the air with colors, while avoiding the technical shortcuts offered by electronics. The two sidelong pieces on In the River, reportedly inspired by Ka Baird (from Spires That in the Sunset Rise) and the Minneapolis string genius, Paul Metzger, are open-ended musical discussions about the existence of infinity, and how portions of infinite space might be corralled in ways that suggest continuously expanding horizons. Both the pieces are exquisite and function equally well as Furniture Music (as defined by Eric Satie) or active meditation fields, unveiling endless spools of drone in which a listener can wallow deeply. The closer you listen, the more you'll be able to hear. But even as a 'mere' soundtrack to the day, In the River offers the kind of textural beauty that makes everything feel better. Spiral Joy Band are sonic explorers dedicated to very specific corner of the universe, but it's one that contains the sort of magical powers we all need more than ever. If I were a doctor. I'd prescribe a daily dose of their music as an antidote to the rigors of reality as we know it. As Pink Floyd once suggested, 'Take Up Thy Stethscope and Walk.' Words to live by, eh?" --Byron Coley, 2022 Edition of 450.
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CD
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FTR 721CD
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"Gorgeous quintet improv space explored at Chicago's ProMusica studios. Long-time partners Przemyslaw Drazek (trumpet, strings, percussion) and Brent Fuscaldo (voice, guitar, percussion, harmonica) join up again with Hamid's percussion, Tatsu's bass and shamisen, and Thymme's piano and various, just as they did on last year's amazing Ourania (FTR 592LP). The sounds now are spacious, comfortable explorations of unknown sonic turf. There may be a bit less of the aggressive edge that marked their earlier work, but the music generates an equal amount of head-shaking wonder. Thymme's piano and the hails of percussive energy now sometimes set the stage in the way the band's trumpet and guitar once did. There's a magnificent moodiness to the way this music is put together. And trying to squeeze it into a genre definition is harder than ever. Rock, jazz and experimental textures are all allowed to roam freely throughout the session, with the result being a splendid sort of audio anarchy head birthing chunks of sound that are sculpted into boulders of cosmic beauty. There's almost no telling which way things are going to turn in the course of Formless, but the results are always warm blurs you can almost feel massaging your tympanic membranes. Amazing stuff. As usual! Also worth noting, the band will be dropping Mako Sica as a working name after this LP, and will henceforth be using Drazek/Fuscaldo, along with whatever special riders choose to come along. You have been warned." --Byron Coley, 2022
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FTR 685LP
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"If Coley can do anything and, I assure you, he can do a few things, some very well indeed -- cooking, drinking, smoking, chortling, collecting, dissecting, inspecting, sniffing, gassing, pranking -- to name but a few, he can, without a beat gone by, make you wanna listen to the goddamn records he's criteeking whether it be in old ishes of Forced Exposure, Boston Rock, New York Rocker, or the LA Weekly or his nugget column in Wire. For many his obscurant references to what is already an obscure contempo side can be so layered -- as if the review is some kind of lit cuz to Jodorowsky's spiraling labyrinthian masterpiece of surrealist Espanola 'huh?' cinema, The Holy Mountain -- that the narco-eclectic desire to actually hear what the fuk this accredited gourmandizer is -- in various temperaments -- jazzed about, that you actually find yrself hunting the lathe cut edition of minus three and sending all yr rent money to grip it -- 'Coley wrote about this -- s'posed to be 'insane''. He and Ted Lee have been manning the formidable and replete Feeding Tube emporium for a few years now in the wilds of Western Mass and what at first appeared to be an unlikely pair have become quite a prolific bastion of bonkerism rock and experimental otherness like a water tap stuck on unthreaded gush. Open heads recognize and learn/teach from each other without too many questions being asked (look, listen, have a cold one, step out for a smoke) They play sax? Good toot? sign 'em up! Music is an exchange, a gift, has nothing to do with making money only in making friends and neighbors ('that's where we meet!' --Ornette). Putting out cool records is -- a well worn trope I know, but it's true as trout -- a LABOR OF LOVE. Ted Lee gleans sound art music in organic intrigue obviously from the day he was released from the chute of procreation and it stands to cosmic reason that he can hang tuff and throw down smooth licks with Coley's verbacious loquacity. These readings with sound spoo are just a taste of the cream dream epiphanies these gents collude so instantaneously on. Time is of the essence and music is time, so are thoughts and words like diamond juice dripping from the corners of Don Cherry's pocket trumpet maw -- at least that's what I hear when I hear these cats yowling half past the end of nowhere on a fence behind our collective houses full of records, books, and nudie mags. Life is fuckin sweet." --Thurston Moore, London 2022
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FTR 394CS
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"Five years after the magnificent Valosta Valoon LP (FTR 331LP, 2017), Finnish multi-instrumentalist, Niko Karlsson is back with a new swab of sound that is even more organic than its predecessor. This time out the focus is more on acoustic strings and percussion, with a minimum of machine-driven sounds, even when things get cinematically tense (especially on the B-side). But the bulk of Niko's new tape (which he had first suggested be released sans any artist info) is a mesmeric assemblage of small gestures that feel something like a meditation exercise taking place in the great outdoors. Acoustic strings swirl around your head like a flock of soft ravens, then expand spectral fingers to search your spine for arcane gifts. Gongs ignite barely visible fires in the distance. And you start to quiver until the earth shakes. That said, there are certainly a few more ominous passages where the sound gathers up more like storm clouds than sunshine, but the shade these portions cast are ultimately transitory. The music on Its Own Phantom has a charmed ruralist glow that is sure to delight wanderers of many stripes. So pick a fork. Any fork. The kingdom of heaven is within you." --Byron Coley, 2022
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FTR 392CS
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"Ad Hoc is this Spanish trio's first release with which they've disguised themselves as a popular American drug store chain. There was an earlier cassette issued under the Cunningham/Volt/Serra banner, which is probably a more elucidating name, but brevity being the soul of wit (and all that), it's surely more modern a choice to go with the acronym they occasionally employ. Acronyms, after all, suggest a kind of sleekness. And the music created by CVS is as sleek as a goddamn otter. The line-up is unusual. Our great friend, Mark Cunningham (of Mars, Blood Quartet, etc.), plays trumpet. Trumpet is also the chosen 'axe' of fellow Barcelonan underground musician, Pablo Volt. The third member, Andreu Serra (who also works and records widely under various soubriquets), focuses here on guitar and sax. I'm having a tough time naming another unit with this line-up, and indeed, CVS doesn't sound quite like any other band I can easily conjure. Both trumpeters work in a hybridized cool/avant tradition. Their lines certainly go 'out' at times, but there's none of the smear/fracture of Don Cherry, who is the main model for so many trumpeters. If you need to point fingers, Mark and Pablo's styles might be said to share a resonance with the later work of Bill Dixon, although both of them favor warmer tones. Andreu's approach to both sax and guitar is equally off-center, with outwardly-focused splange of strange but genteel nature. But this is not a 'jazz' album by any means. Cunningham (and his collusionists) have employed jazzoid moves as component parts of an avant/jazz/rock hybrid since the days of Don King (and maybe before.) The avant electronic passages and rockoid forward motion are huge parts of this music's character. Ad Hoc is just another step on a path with a long, storied history and a luminous, infinite future." --Byron Coley, 2022
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FTR 390CS
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"Recorded at three dates on a 2019 tour of Western North America, this new release by the reboutable duo of Marcia Bassett (guitar) and Samara Lubelski (violin) is the first trade release of a tape originally done in an edition of 23 to be sold on tour. The music is as brilliant as it always is when these two stars collide. Marcia's control of feedback drones is exquisite and pairs perfectly with Samara's long-tone string work. The three pieces here are uniformly awesome assemblages of harmonic frequencies and textures that flow into each other as though they were poured from a single head. The two shorter pieces on the a-side slide through each others' tone holes like electric eels playing basketball with hoop snakes. It can be hard to differentiate sources for the individual voicing, but the results resonate with glowing purity of purpose, and a sort of feverish dream logic that ebbs and flows like blood. The longer piece on the B-side is a full-on carousel ride through a landscape shifting constantly beneath your feet. It's like riding the break of a slow-motion earthquake, where the land itself forms curls you can shoot through if you have the balance to hang on. It's great stuff to hear if you happen to live inside the west coast's 'Ring of Fire,' but it's also mighty fine listening heard from the safety of the Pioneer Valley. Or wherever you happen to reside. So do it." --Byron Coley, 2022
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FTR 716CD
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"Portuguese bassist Margarida Garcia has collaborated with some of our favorite artists -- Marcia Bassett, Loren Connors, and Chris Corsano, among them. Loren even wrote the liner notes for Good Night, which is about as a solid an endorsement as anyone is ever likely to get. So, we are proud and excited to present the first solo album she's released through a US label. The three tracks on Good Night are all lovely slides into pools of quivering dream gel. Performed on an amplified upright bass, the arco flow of her playing (with what I assume to be light electronic effects in certain passages) moves like a field of lava sheets overlapping as they move away from their source. The effect is a bit dizzying, since as a listener you feel attached to these sheets in one place or another, and they are constantly shifting. The sound of Garcia's bass is hard to place in one genre. There are bits that remind of Bertran Turetsky's modern classical work, but other parts have drone content with distinctly psychedelic undercurrents (a truly subjective opinion), and others that put me in mind of Randall McClellan's droned-based electronics pieces like 'Distant Voices.' All over the map? You might say that. But only if you had a very fine damn map. Margarida Garcia's Good Night will take your brain to a lot of new places. For just pennies a mile. Dig it." --Byron Coley, 2022
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FTR 641LP
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"This is the first in a series of Feeding Tube vinyl releases devoted to the Insect and Western catalog of recordings, newly mastered and often with added material. 'Mourning of the Praying Mantis' was created in the earliest series of Insect and Western scores, first performed by the Bull Fiddle contrabass quartet of Oakland in 1996. Following what I felt was a classic interpretation by the Insect and Western Party trios and quartets, the piece circulated through the evenings devoted to my Insect and Western music at concerts taking place around the United States. By 1997 I had an interesting and diverse set of recordings in a variety of media and assembled a long version of the piece blending many of the soloists featured in the different performances. This was the centerpiece of the first commercially released collections of my Insect and Western pieces, a CD entitled Insect Attracter on the British Leo label. 'Mourning of the Praying Mantis' was one of the scores I brought to a duet session with master percussionist Warren Smith in 2012. In creating a new special archive of Insect and Western for the Feeding Tube label, my priority regarding 'Mourning of the Praying Mantis' was to bring in the Warren Smith recording, to my great personal enjoyment which I now hope to share with the listener. Now also including the 2012 New York City sessions with Warren Smith, the 20 plus minutes of is fabricated from, in roughly the order the location appears, all from 1997: 1. Studio session, Wyandotte, Michigan/Frank Pahl, engineer; 2. Concert at Barking Legs Theatre, Chattanooga, Tennessee, Dec. 5-6; 3. Concert at Venue 9, San Francisco, California, Oct. 16; 4. Concert at Knitting Factory, New York City, NY, July 29; 5. Concert at Lunar Cabaret, Chicago, Illinois, Sept. 10-11; 6. Concert at art gallery, Louisville, Kentucky, Sept. 14; 7. Concert at Alligator Lounge, Los Angeles, California, October."
Musicians in order or appearance: Eugene Chadbourne - five-string banjo, Deering electric "Crossfire" banjo; Carrie Shull - oboe; Brian Ritchie - bass guitar, shakuhachil; Warren Smith - bass marimba, vibraphone, percussion; Mischa Feigin - balilika; Carrie Biolo - vibraphone; Steve Good - bass clarinet; Joee Conroy - violin; Dan Plonsey - soprano saxophone; Gino Robair - mandolin; Ashley Adams - contrabass; Brent Dunn - contrabass; Tom Heasley - tuba; Bruce Wagner - mandolin; Bob Stagner - drums; Charles Waters - soprano saxophone; Barry Mitterhof - mandolin; Ted Reichman - accordion; Bunk Gardner - flute.
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FTR 624LP
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"Another wonderful album by this Swedish-based guitarist/carpenter. This is the fourth (and I believe final, at least for now) addition to Collin's series of site-based outdoor recordings. The first three (FTR 399LP, FTR 418LP, and FTR 534LP) were stellar examples of Jon's finger-thinking, and this one is as well. He seems to have embraced a romantic form of melodicism over the course of these albums, contrasting with some of the harsher blues evocations he's explored recently. And as much as I enjoy everything Jon plays, there is something very special and satisfying about his more overt beauty-motion. There are four compact pieces on the first side. These have a certain hint of John Renbourn's attack, but with a more harmonically scrambled bent and a soupçon of the quiet, wordless vocalizing Collin has added to other tunes in the Water & Rock sequence. As has been noted, these share a bit of conceptual similarity to Loren Connors's earliest solo works, but Jon manages to remove the violence that seemed to animate Loren for a while. Perhaps one distinction is the setting for the recordings themselves -- near the water, outdoors in the sunlight of Stockholm, rather than in a freezing, abandoned warehouse in New Haven -- but I do not want to infer that either of these artists is unable to transcend physical realities in quest of sonic truth. Still, it's a question I might ask them both. There's some slide work in evidence here, but it's balanced by plenty of finger picking. And each of the four pieces on side one (all entitled "Nothing") has a distinct approach to sustained tones, some of which evoke memories of Fahey for me. The long piece on the flip is called "The Stream of the Consciousness (Prelude)," and it's lovely through-and-through. Melodies are slowly unbound and savored before they gradually mutate into new aural visions or gentle, exploratory splendor. The only thing missing is your own big fat head! Hop to!" --Byron Coley, 2022
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FTR 703CD
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"It is our honor to present the seventh album by French composer Jean-Baptiste Favory, whose work we first encountered while reissuing a record with the Mexican art collective, Los Lichis. J-B made an annual trip to Mexico to participate in Los Lichis' musical and visual anarchy -- Dog (FTR 229LP, 2016), and Savage Lichis Religion: El Ultimo Grito with Pakito Bolino (FTR 354LP, 2018) -- and was considered a full member of this estimable outfit. We soon discovered he was also the France's long-running experimental radio show Epsilonia, as well as an exciting solo musician. This led to us releasing his wonderful 2017 LP, Things Under: Compositions for Guitars and Electronics (FTR 333LP). Favory's main interest remains in electronics composition, so the next project he offered us was Ciels -- six gorgeous synthesizer pieces, written and played on a variety of instruments. The title track was created on a 1981 PPG Wave 2, which is one of the earliest digital synths, and has a 'metallic and shiny' sound, that was used to make a lot of '80s synth-wave music. Under Favory's touch, it assumes a spacy, pulsating attitude more akin to mid-period Heldon than A-ha. 'The Naked Now' was done on a UNISONO synth with Max-MSP software. Its many layers of action run at a variety of speeds and display multifarious textures. There is a kind of slickness underlying the basic sounds, but they're all handled in weird ways, with the output recorded via microphone off a guitar amp, so the smooth individual threads are woven into rough aural burlap. There's a slinky Eastern feel to the music at times, but the small sections into which the piece is divided are highly variant. 'Time on Time' was written and played on Eliane Radigue's 1971 ARP 2500 during a two-week residency at Paris's Groupe Recherches Musicale. This piece revolves around chiming tone sequences and the moist sorts of edits one associates with word-based assemblages and gently slurped pulses. It moves through the air like a spice worm looking for an angry fix. 'Love Structure' uses a 1972 AKS synth from EMS, which was popular with rock dudes for its rough, straight sounds. Typically Favory bends the poor machine to his will, conjuring up a weightless episode of heavy kosmiche space rotation. There are a couple other tracks, which I will leave you to discover yourselves. J-B even pulls his guitar out for a bit, but you'll have to figure out where that happens. I don't wanna spoil the surprise." --Byron Coley, 2022
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FTR 652LP
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"Brilliant new instrumental fork-bending from the always amazing Elkhorn, presented here in a quartet setting I had not heard before. The basic band remains Drew Gardner on electric guitar and Jesse Sheppard on acoustic, but as often seems to happen with these guys, there are a couple more faces in the studio. This time it's two drummers. One is Ian McColm, a Virginia tub monster who has played in many excellent situations, including a 2012 Feeding Tube duo cassette with Daniel Bachman. The other drummer is DC-based Nate Scheible who does his own records and has also worked with everyone from Mark McGuire to Matt Wascovich. The wide foundational base these two provide allows Drew and Jesse to climb higher than they have ever dared before. By shifting the basic conceptual thrust closer to rock-qua-rock, this formation is capable of psyching-out with pure guitar force. The Ouroboran elements of open-form improvisation-based music really gel when the snakes are encouraged to eat their own tails. The drumming adds shimmer to the acoustic passages, and power distensions to the electric ones. Holding the strings accountable to forces of rhythm forces both the note and chord lines to twist in ways they otherwise mightn't. It's like the percussion challenges the guitars to not get too comfortable with a groove. Be prepared, fellas. Anything could happen. That said, Distances is a beautiful-sounding record. The core of Elkhorn has always known how to get to a real special musical spot, where acid flash meets acoustic burn. I'm just saying, the drums take this sound even deeper. You will get a lot of spins out of this one. Or I'll eat my hat." --Byron Coley, 2022
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FTR 644LP
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"Four years after their magnificent, eponymous debut, this Connecticut trio returns to vinyl with another brain-blurring set of tunes. Picking up where that last LP left off, drummer Michael Kiefer, guitarist/vocalist Jon Schlesinger and guitarist/bassist/mandolinist/electronics/mark tree-rep, Steubs, dig ever deeper into the pulse of the Earth. The first track here, 'Hot Peace,' sounds like stuttering, shimmering emanations from the core of the planet. Remember that episode of the Superman TV show, where mole men come up out of the world's deepest oil well? The instrumental parts of this album remind me of those little dudes. Because everything they touched started glowing. And even though one gets the feeling there's more than a soupçon of anger in the way More Klementines attack their instruments, who amongst us doesn't believe a little glowing psychedelic aggression is called for in this dismal day and age? The two instrumentals on the flip have more pastoral flows. Guitar tones whirl off into the aether the way piss flies from a carousel, but the way the drops hit your skin makes them feel like beads of the purest dew, quivering in extreme close-up as you squint in the sunlight to make them out. But just when you think the drugs have totally taken over, a searing sequence of riffs emerge that make you sit up straight, so the drums can slap your head back and forth. Indeed, much of this album seesaws between the poles of abstraction and focus. Just like tripping! There's also one vocal track, 'Key of Caesar,' which has lyrics I can't figure out, but makes me think of Bob Pollard doing a blues tune based on 'Take the Skinheads Bowling.' Which is just the kind of thing he might do if he'd deign to swap his frosty mug for a sugar cube. Which ain't happening this week. But Who Remembers Light is happening right now and will continue to do so every time you slap it on the box. Which should be often." --Byron Coley, 2022
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FTR 391CS
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"Rootless (or, more properly, rootless) is a solo project that's been going for better than five years now, helmed by Brooklyn's Jeremy Hurewitz. Two types of sounds are created under this banner -- low key electronics is one, and fingerpicked acoustic guitar is the other. what the truth leaves out focuses on the latter. The shared thread between these styles is a highly personal and intimate feel. When listening to rootless, you often get the sense this is music created solely for the pleasure of the artist himself. The aura of introspection is as deep as the night, so it's possible to almost feel like a voyeur while listening in. But hey, Jeremy sent us this stuff to hear, so we played it and asked him if he'd let us put it out, and like a true gentleman he agreed. The music goes in a couple of directions. Some of the pieces are patchworks of small, beautiful sonic fields. They possess mixed flashes of sunlight seen through smoke and are laced together with complete melodic threads. Other pieces are less attuned to resolution. They're more like questions left unanswered, and these questions are posed in a variety of languages. You can hear bits of Chadbournian flamenco fake-outs, circular breathing as done by fingers, and even a snippet of the wandering teacup raga if I'm not mistaken. The music of rootless manages to communicate and keep its secrets at the same time. Even when it gets abstract, there are obvious emotions powering everything. Like private performance for the public good. I'm not sure if this's driven by altruism or sheer cussedness, but whatever the root of the rootless sound, I'm a fan." --Byron Coley, 2022
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FTR 692CD
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"This is our fifth release with the Vienna-based guitarist Eric Arn, and as with each of his albums, Kost Nix (No Cost) is different from all that have preceded it. Eric is a musician whose interests and techniques are constantly evolving, so it has been a pleasure to observe his evolution from a power raunch generator (with Crystalized Movements, then Primordial Undermind) into the wildly unpredictable improviser he has become. This is the third duo album we've done with him, following Paranza Corta (FTR 384LP) with Margaret Unknown, and Hydromancy (FTR 493LP) with Jasmine Pender, and it is another stone killer. Eric's sparring partner this time is Eyal Maoz, the great Israel-born, NYC-based guitarist who has long been an important part of John Zorn's circle. Eyal has had loads of projects and solo outings, and also plays in a dizzying array of styles, so this match-up was a dream date. The recording was done live in October 2021, at VEKKS Vienna, and the set is explosive. Because both players are incredibly mutable (and I have no visual clues), it's all but impossible for me to tell who exactly is doing what. The massive sound of their collaboration creates its own unique sonic field. The grace of their interaction makes it seem like they've been doing this for years, but we can just chalk that up to a combination of good ears and good reflexes. They also display more skill and taste than most musicians can manifest in a year. The three long pieces move through a vast array of moods and tones. 'Quiet Concessions' has passages of almost classical delicacy, merging into tangled webs of zoned space improvs akin to Sonic Youth's extended string break-downs, with nods to the shattered weirdness of the Dead's '68 noise eruptions. 'Luminous Motion' starts like a collaboration between Donald Miller and Hans Reichel, with a drunk baby controlling their knob settings, until it settles into a valley of low twangs and drones. 'Optimus Locus ad Finem' is a slow, damp bramble with light fingered weirdness generating a very special kind of tension. And that's it. The breadth of this collaboration will definitely make you want to see these guys live, if only so you can see who's doing what. How likely that is, I cannot say, but hey -- why not dream big? Life is short, art is long. Don't be a sissy." --Byron Coley
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FTR 658LP
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Orange vinyl (US exclusive). "Here we have the third solo LP by London's Alison Cotton, following on previous successes, All Quiet at the Ancient Theatre (FTR 424LP, 2019) and Only Darkness Now (FTR 564LP, 2020). And as with each of Cotton's projects it is a stylistic advance as well as another example of her dark signature sound. Alison's work with bands is well documented by recordings with Saloon, 18th Day of May, Trimdon Grange Explosion, and her current, ecstatic folk/psych duo, The Left Outsides. But her solo recordings always seem a bit more experimental in terms of song structure and musical texture, as the six tracks on The Portrait You Painted of Me clearly demonstrate. The touchstones of her sound are viola, harmonium, and voice, but these are merged together in all sorts of different ways, creating a rich and thoroughly artastic suite of songs. 'Murmurations Over the Moor,' is a wordless piece of layered vocals, drifting like fog towards a sunset over the green undulations of Northeast England (from whence she hails.) 'The Last Wooden Ship' evokes the shipyards of Sunderland using droning harmonium and viola lines, laced with piano and percussion events, while her voice calls out like one of Tim Buckley's Sirens urging listeners to a rocky demise. 'I Buried the Candlesticks' has a haunted, traditional feel with its dolorously folky viola melody laid across a thick carpet harmonium, and small bursts of percussion that sound like cannonade heard through the thick cold walls of a castle in winter. 'That Tunnel Underground Seemed Neverending' is a musical vision of Northumberland's mining culture at the dawn of the 20th Century -- labyrinthine, subterranean, dimmer than night. 'Violet May,' the only 'song' on the album, was inspired by a trip to Vita Sackville-West's Sissinghurst Castle. Its plot deals with a reclusive artist who has forsaken all else for a life of solitary creation in her tower. The structure and sound, make me think of a post-modern approach to lyrical concerns dealt with by folk singers of the British '60s, but the actual arrangement is closer to something John Cale might have done with Nico on The Marble Index. And finally, we have '17th November 1962,' inspired by nearly forgotten memories of disaster with a fishing boat, a storm and an ill-fated rescue attempt. The song (and album) ends with what sounds like a forlorn foghorn cutting across waves of night with Alison's voice again evoking the Sirens. Damn, what a good spin. As with its predecessors, The Portrait You Painted of Me was recorded at home in London, beautifully produced by Alison's partner, Mark Nicholas. She expressed concern at one point that the album might be a little too heavy in spots for some listeners, but that is a canard. I think one of the main things people relish about Alison's solo work is exactly the somber, exquisite melancholy she creates. This is some serious and remarkable stuff." --Byron Coley, 2022
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FTR 381CS
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"Deep new Quarantine Vibes from this hard lovin' Western Mass trio. Two of the tracks were recorded during Donkey No No's superb appearance on the QuaranTunes Zoom concert series (Friday May 14, 2021), the third was done three months later at an undisclosed location. The building blocks, as usual, are Omeed's alternately chipper and fragmentary guitar lines, Jen Gelineau's fluid viola/violin runs, and the weep and sizzle dynamism of Ted Lee's bowed cymbals. If their namesake metal donkey was harmed at any point during these sessions, you won't prove it by me. There is a bit less of rural heft on this tape than on some of the band's other releases. I'm not absolutely certain why this is, but I think it may be there are too many abstract elements in Omeed's playing to reconcile it with the straight line management required of true farmers. Call it creeping city slickerism if you must, but I don't think that captures its raison d'etre. The basis of Donkey No No's sound has always been based on slow-bore improvisation, and their music this time mirrors the unsettled feel so rampant back in mid-2021, evoking the clunky push-pull of continuously evolving disease and protection theories. The trio's earlier music had a much more placid center, built on a general benevolence of spirit quite lacking at the time of these performances. Since their creative process is organic, it's natural for these three to reflect the roil of the days surrounding them. The QuaraTunes tracks definitely evoke this. The August material has a heightened sense of composure to it, but there's still an acerbic bite to both strings and bows. The pre-electric feel that often lends their material some of the same ghostliness as the very earliest work by Dirty Three is definitely present, but the collective reluctance to embrace easy melodies gives everything a very modern cast. It'll be interesting to see if this change in direction is something momentary or more lasting. Either way, Donkey No No's music will be as cool to hear as always." --Byron Coley, 2022
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FTR 423LP
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"As the '80s dawned, Phil Milstein was living in Central Square in Cambridge, setting type and working on the machinations of the Velvet Underground Appreciation Society. He was also beginning to explore his musical alter-ego, Pep Lester, with the first evidence of this appearing on an L.A.F.M.S. comp tape. Phil was also a maniacal tape trader in those days, and one of the people he regularly swapped mixes with was a juvenile delinquent from Athol, Massachusetts named Dana Hatch, whom he'd met when he bought a copy of Phil's VU fanzine What Goes On from him. Dana and a couple of his high school pot buddies started a band called The Rags to make a bunch of noise and play the annual school concert, although they had to change their name to The 4-Letter Words to do it. As a devoted fan of extreme arcana, Milstein soon signed on as the 4LW's manager, arranging for a gig at the grubby Boston venue, Cantone's, opening for Jad Fair. Phil also set up a recording session to precede the gig, at Men & Volts' rehearsal space in a former telescope factory in the Boston neighborhood of Jamaica Plain, with Roger Stevenson and David Greenberger manning the levels. Band In Boston documents the momentous events of that day -- July 15, 1981. The studio session is amazingly crude. It reminds me of the promo sticker on a Kim Fowley project called Underground All Stars -- 'GENUINE ALL STAR HYPE! REALLY TEENAGE!' Playing a mix of covers and originals, the vocals are howled, the guitar is fuzzed, the beats primitive. In short, it's pretty much everything you need for a good time. And judging from the sound of the audience, a good time is just what everyone at Cantone's had later that night. The Modern Lovers cover sounds particularly apt, as Cantone's was essentially the home club for the Real Kids, whose leader, John Felice, was an original Modern Lover. But everything is done wild, loose and full of juice. And man, the audience digs it. Alas, the 4LW didn't last much longer in its protean form. A few years later and weary of the limitations of the criminal lifestyle Dana moved to Boston, where he hooked up with the Shannon brothers, and Cheater Slicks was born. But that's another and much longer story. 4 Letter Words are short and sweet. Just like the band itself. Go nuts. You deserve it." - Byron Coley, 2022
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FTR 698CD
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"It has been a couple of years (that felt like a lifetime) since we released lloyd Thayer's last album, Duets (FTR 406LP, 2020), which he recorded with the drummer Jerome Deupree. The intervening time has been weird as hell, but Thayer (master of every string that's ever been strung) has made the decision to create a fantastic, sprawling solo suite for himself. And now it is time to share the beauty with you. Unlike the music on Duets, the piece here was played entirely on double-necked Weissenborn guitar, although the sounds are altered and layered in ways that are a far cry from the delicate slide work for which the Weissenborn is best known. And if there's not a temple bowl in the mix somewhere, I'll eat a bottleneck! Still, many of the same tactics employed on Duets, like mixing Eastern sonances with blues-based art music, are on full display on Twenty20. The extended piece is broken into distinct segments, with different moods, tones, and styles of attack, but the transitions tend to be subtle. You are drifting amidst cool tendrils of acoustic guitar and almost before you know it, there are sparking cables of electrical menace hanging nearby while ghost-tones quiver ominously in the darkness. Because this piece evolved over the two years it did, I am assuming there's a dark narrative thread lurking somewhere in its interior. But here's the thing -- lloyd's playing and writing are as beautiful to listen to as ever, so I'm not sure it's really worth getting bogged down in interpretation. Perhaps the best idea is to just go with the exquisite flow of the music, and damn the torpedoes. Just dig the beauty. Y'know?" --Byron Coley, 2022
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FTR 695CD
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"Jeffrey Alexander is one of those guys whose brain and hands are constantly in motion whether working with bands, doing solo stuff, installations, paintings, label shit... whatever. Anyway, he's always a pleasure to work with, and we have done so on many occasions. That said, I sorta feel as though this new CD might be closer to taking a walk through Jeffrey's head than anything else I've heard. Flutterings was done using guitars, keys, percussion, electronics and gimcracks of all descriptions. The pieces were created specifically to be used inside the Tactile Dome at San Francisco's Exploratorium, which is one of the more delightful places yet invented by humans. The Dome itself is almost like a sensory deprivation maze, pitch black, through which you feel your way before being popped back out into the light. This music was broadcast inside the darkness, so that folks would have a way to orient themselves via sound. Cool idea, and cooler music. Although they don't really share any common construction details, this music puts me in mind of Ned Lagin's Seastones project (IMPREC 479LP), maybe with a little Hooteroll stirred in. What they all share is a sense of occupying middle ground between 'serious' music and purely stoned improvisation. Even though you understand on some level this shit is being done with compositional intent, there's a looseness to the details that makes it a very fine album to just space out to. Melodies aren't the point so much as harmonics and a general flow that will not be stanched. It is a very fine soundtrack for losing your ego, if you know what I mean. The material on Flutterings was recorded in the mid-Teens, but only really got assembled for release during the Lockdown. Proof again, that lots of good things have been happening in the background, no matter how dire the foreground can appear. A lesson worth remembering." --Byron Coley, 2022
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