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CD
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SIS 008CD
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"Taking their name from a children's fantasy novel, Doran is a four-person freak folk collective hailing from rural Virginia, New York, and the Pacific Northwest. Together, singer and banjo-player Elizabeth Laprelle (Anna & Elizabeth), multi-media performance artists and musicians Channing Showalter and Annie Schermer (West Of Roan), and ethnomusicologist and multi-instrumentalist Brian Dolphin draw from their respective work in story, song, archetype and image, and advance it into an untapped experimental terrain that is newly raw, wintry, moody, and tender. The result is an intimately collaborative record of rich and often eerie modal harmonies, supported by sparse acoustic arrangements, and grounded by the group's strong background in traditional Appalachian ballad singing, Eastern European choral music, Celtic folklore, and improvisation. Songs ranging from sorrowful to playful twine together in a hauntingly beautiful cohesive album one could imagine hearing on the soundtrack of the next A24 folk horror film. Doran's layered, searching debut reaches into the spaces between self and other, past and future, inner landscape and outer, and returns with a new language to describe the journey."
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CD
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SIS 007CD
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"While the collection of songs on Philadelphia / Michigan musician Rosali's electrifying third album, No Medium, explores the often dark territory of loss, death, sexuality, self-sabotage, and addiction, there is a surprising lightness to its sonic being. Backed by members of the David Nance Group, Rosali (Long Hots, Wandering Shade, Monocot) wades through the emotional mire with infectious, earworm melodies led by her luminous voice. With their rich, raw instrumentation, these rock ballads sound like the resilience discovered in facing one's darkest moments, the assurance of the calm and clarity that comes after the storm. As she sings on the second track, 'Bones,' 'Through the darkness of the field / I walk through without yielding / To the rest of the feelings / I'm carrying.' With her confident song craft, Rosali illustrates the ability to push through, moving toward something greater without being destroyed by the weight of trauma. The influences for the sound of No Medium reflect this pairing of assured vulnerability, in the stylistic coherence of Bob Dylan's Desire, the tender delivery in Iain Matthews' Journey From Gospel Oak, the strut and swagger of Bowie's Hunky Dory, the ambition and beauty of Gene Clark's No Other, and the playful catharsis of Harry Nilsson's Nilsson Schmilsson. Engineered by James Shroeder and featuring Shroeder (Simon Joyner, DNG, Connor Oberst), Kevin Donahue (Simon Joyner), David Nance, Noah Sterba, Colin Duckworth, and Daniel Knapp, the album was recorded in ten days and the raw immediacy of the music is palpable across these ten tracks. Added adornment was contributed by Philadelphia's Robbie Bennett (War on Drugs) on organ and keys, and Matt Barrick (The Walkmen, Jonathan Fire Eater, Muzz) makes a percussion cameo on 'Whisper,' which was tracked at Philly's Silent Partner Studio, where No Medium was mixed by Quentin Stoltzfus (Mazarin, Light Heat). The open creative collaboration elevated the songs, resulting in the exciting, vibrant sound of the album."
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LP
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SIS 006LP
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"With her ambidextrous and pedidextrous, multi-instrumental techniques of her own making and influences ranging from video games to West African griots subverting the predominantly white male canon of fingerstyle guitar, Yasmin Williams is truly a guitarist for the new century. So too is her stunning sophomore release, Urban Driftwood, an album for and of these times. Though the record is instrumental, its songs follow a narrative arc of 2020, illustrating both a personal journey and a national reckoning, through Williams' evocative, lyrical compositions. Williams, 24, began playing electric guitar in eighth grade, after she beat the video game Guitar Hero 2 on expert level. Initially inspired by Jimi Hendrix and other shredders she was familiar with through the game, she quickly moved on to acoustic guitar, finding that it allowed her to combine fingerstyle techniques with the lap-tapping she had developed, as well as perform as a solo artist. Deriving no lineage from 'American primitive' and rejecting the problematic connotations of the term, Williams' influences include the smooth jazz and R&B she listened to growing up, Hendrix and Nirvana, go-go and hip-hop. On Urban Driftwood, Williams references the music of West African griots through the inclusion of kora and hand drumming of 150th generation djeli Amadou Kouyate, on the title track. Yasmin Williams is virtuosic in her mastery of the guitar and in the techniques of her own invention, but her playing never sacrifices lyricism, melody, and rhythm for pure demonstration of skill. Storytelling through sound is important to her too. As detailed in the liner notes, the songs on Urban Driftwood were completed during the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdown, in the midst of a national uprising of Black Lives Matter protests in response to the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. But while Urban Driftwood illustrates current struggle, can't help but open-heartedly offer a timeless solace."
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